CHAPTER I. THE CORONATION.

Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger

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 moved 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

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 he

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!”

“And a grateful heart with it, sir,” said Vernon, warmly, evidently

affected, as he started from his indolent position and took the hand

extended to him. “Believe me, I do not covet your wealth, nor do I envy

my cousin anything so much as the first place in your regard.”

“Prettily said, my boy, and I don’t suspect you of insincerity. What

think you, then, of my plan?”

Mr. Vernon seemed embarrassed; but recovering himself with his usual

ease, he replied archly: “Perhaps, sir, it will be of little use to know

what I think of your plan; my fair cousin may have upset it already.”

“Ha, sir! let me look at you. So, so! you are not jesting. What the

deuce do you mean? ‘Gad, man, speak out!”

“Do you not think that Mr. Monderling--Mandolin--what’s his name,

eh?--do you not think that he is a very handsome young fellow?” said Mr.

Vernon, drawing out his snuffbox and offering it to his kinsman.

“Damn your snuff,” quoth Sir Miles, in great choler, as he rejected the

proffered courtesy with a vehemence that sent half the contents of the

box upon the joint eyes and noses of the two canine favourites dozing

at his feet. The setter started up in an agony; the spaniel wheezed and

sniffled and ran off, stopping every moment to take his head between his

paws. The old gentleman continued without heeding the sufferings of his

dumb friends,--a symptom of rare discomposure on his part.

“Do you mean to insinuate, Mr. Vernon, that my niece--my elder niece,

Lucretia Clavering--condescends to notice the looks, good or bad, of

Mr. Mainwaring? ‘Sdeath, sir, he is the son of a land-agent! Sir, he is

intended for trade! Sir, his highest ambition is to be partner in some

fifth-rate mercantile house!”

“My dear Sir Miles,” replied Mr. Vernon, as he continued to brush away,

with his scented handkerchief, such portions of the prince’s mixture as

his nankeen inexpressibles had diverted from the sensual organs of Dash

and Ponto--“my dear Sir Miles, ca n’empeche pas le sentiment!”

“Empeche the fiddlestick! You don’t know Lucretia. There are many girls,

indeed, who might not be trusted near any handsome flute-playing spark,

with black eyes and white teeth; but Lucretia is not one of those; she

has spirit and ambition that would never stoop to a mesalliance; she has

the mind and will of a queen,--old Queen Bess, I believe.”

“That is saying much for her talent, sir; but if so, Heaven help her

intended! I am duly grateful for the blessings you propose me!”

Despite his anger, the old gentleman could not help smiling.

“Why, to confess the truth, she is hard to manage; but we men of the

world know how to govern women, I hope,--much more how to break in a

girl scarce out of her teens. As for this fancy of yours, it is sheer

folly: Lucretia knows my mind. She has seen her mother’s fate; she has

seen her sister an exile from my house. Why? For no fault of hers, poor

thing, but because she is the child of disgrace, and the mother’s sin is

visited on her daughter’s head. I am a good-natured man, I fancy, as

men go; but I am old-fashioned enough to care for my race. If Lucretia

demeaned herself to love, to encourage, that lad, why, I would strike

her from my will, and put your name where I have placed hers.”

“Sir,” said Vernon, gravely, and throwing aside all affectation of

manner, “this becomes serious; and I have no right even to whisper a

doubt by which it now seems I might benefit. I think it imprudent, if

you wish Miss Clavering to regard me impartially as a suitor to her

hand, to throw her, at her age, in the way of a man far superior to

myself, and to most men, in personal advantages,--a man more of her own

years, well educated, well mannered, with no evidence of his inferior

birth in his appearance or his breeding. I have not the least ground for

supposing that he has made the slightest impression on Miss Clavering,

and if he has, it would be, perhaps, but a girl’s innocent and

thoughtless fancy, easily shaken off by time and worldly reflection; but

pardon me if I say bluntly that should that be so, you would be wholly

unjustified in punishing, even in blaming, her,--it is yourself you must

blame for your own carelessness and that forgetful blindness to human

nature and youthful emotions which, I must say, is the less pardonable

in one who has known the world so intimately.”

“Charles Vernon,” said the old baronet, “give me your hand again! I was

right, at least, when I said you had the heart of a true gentleman. Drop

this subject for the present. Who has just left Lucretia yonder?”

“Your protege, the Frenchman.”

“Ah, he, at least, is not blind; go and join Lucretia!”

Vernon bowed, emptied the remains of the Madeira into a tumbler, drank

the contents at a draught, and sauntered towards Lucretia; but she,

perceiving his approach, crossed abruptly into one of the alleys that

led to the other side of the house, and he was either too indifferent or

too well-bred to force upon her the companionship which she so evidently

shunned. He threw himself at length upon one of the benches on the lawn,

and leaning his head upon his hand, fell into reflections which, had he

spoken, would have shaped themselves somewhat thus into words:--

“If I must take that girl as the price of this fair heritage, shall I

gain or lose? I grant that she has the finest neck and shoulders I ever

saw out of marble; but far from being in love with her, she gives me a

feeling like fear and aversion. Add to this that she has evidently no

kinder sentiment for me than I for her; and if she once had a heart,

that young gentleman has long since coaxed it away. Pleasant auspices,

these, for matrimony to a poor invalid who wishes at least to decline

and to die in peace! Moreover, if I were rich enough to marry as I

pleased; if I were what, perhaps, I ought to be, heir to Laughton,--why,

there is a certain sweet Mary in the world, whose eyes are softer than

Lucretia Clavering’s. But that is a dream! On the other hand, if I do

not win this girl, and my poor kinsman give her all, or nearly all, his

possessions, Vernon Grange goes to the usurers, and the king will find

a lodging for myself. What does it matter? I cannot live above two or

three years at the most, and can only hope, therefore, that dear stout

old Sir Miles may outlive me. At thirty-three I have worn out fortune

and life; little pleasure could Laughton give me,--brief pain the Bench.

‘Fore Gad, the philosophy of the thing is on the whole against sour

looks and the noose!” Thus deciding in the progress of his revery, he

smiled, and changed his position. The sun had set, the twilight was

over, the moon rose in splendour from amidst a thick copse of mingled

beech and oak; the beams fell full on the face of the muser, and the

face seemed yet paler and the exhaustion of premature decay yet more

evident, by that still and melancholy light: all ruins gain dignity by

the moon. This was a ruin nobler than that which painters place on their

canvas,--the ruin, not of stone and brick, but of humanity and spirit;

the wreck of man prematurely old, not stricken by great sorrow, not

bowed by great toil, but fretted and mined away by small pleasures and

poor excitements,--small and poor, but daily, hourly, momently at their

gnome-like work. Something of the gravity and the true lesson of the

hour and scene, perhaps, forced itself upon a mind little given to

sentiment, for Vernon rose languidly and muttered,--

“My poor mother hoped better things from me. It is well, after all, that

it is broken off with Mary. Why should there be any one to weep for me?

I can the better die smiling, as I have lived.”

Meanwhile, as it is necessary we should follow each of the principal

characters we have introduced through the course of an evening more

or less eventful in the destiny of all, we return to Mainwaring and

accompany him to the lake at the bottom of the park, which he reached as

its smooth surface glistened in the last beams of the sun. He saw, as he

neared the water, the fish sporting in the pellucid tide; the dragonfly

darted and hovered in the air; the tedded grass beneath his feet gave

forth the fragrance of crushed thyme and clover; the swan paused, as

if slumbering on the wave; the linnet and finch sang still from the

neighbouring copses; and the heavy bees were winging their way home with

a drowsy murmur. All around were images of that unspeakable peace which

Nature whispers to those attuned to her music; all fitted to lull, but

not to deject, the spirit,--images dear to the holiday of the world-worn

man, to the contemplation of serene and retired age, to the boyhood of

poets, to the youth of lovers. But Mainwaring’s step was heavy, and his

brow clouded, and Nature that evening was dumb to him. At the margin of

the lake stood a solitary angler who now, his evening’s task done,

was employed in leisurely disjointing his rod and whistling with much

sweetness an air from one of Izaak Walton’s songs. Mainwaring reached

the angler and laid his hand on his shoulder.

“What sport, Ardworth?”

“A few large roach with the fly, and one pike with a gudgeon,--a noble

fellow! Look at him! He was lying under the reeds yonder; I saw his

green back, and teased him into biting. A heavenly evening! I wonder you

did not follow my example, and escape from a set where neither you nor I

can feel very much at home, to this green banquet of Nature, in which at

least no man sits below the salt-cellar. The birds are an older family

than the St. Johns, but they don’t throw their pedigree in our teeth,

Mainwaring.”

“Nay, nay, my good friend, you wrong old Sir Miles; proud he is, no

doubt, but neither you nor I have had to complain of his insolence.”

“Of his insolence, certainly not; of his condescension, yes! Hang it,

William, it is his very politeness that galls me. Don’t you observe that

with Vernon, or Lord A----, or Lord B----, or Mr. C----, he is easy and

off-hand; calls them by their names, pats them on the shoulder, rates

them, and swears at them if they vex him. But with you and me and his

French parasite, it is all stately decorum and punctilious courtesy:

‘Mr. Mainwaring, I am delighted to see you;’ ‘Mr. Ardworth, as you are

so near, dare I ask you to ring the bell?’ ‘Monsieur Dalibard, with the

utmost deference, I venture to disagree with you.’ However, don’t let

my foolish susceptibility ruffle your pride. And you, too, have a worthy

object in view, which might well detain you from roach and jack-fish.

Have you stolen your interview with the superb Lucretia?”

“Yes, stolen, as you say; and, like all thieves not thoroughly hardened,

I am ashamed of my gains.”

“Sit down, my boy,--this is a bank in ten thousand; there, that old root

to lean your elbow on, this soft moss for your cushion: sit down and

confess. You have something on your mind that preys on you; we are old

college friends,--out with it!”

“There is no resisting you, Ardworth,” said Mainwaring, smiling, and

drawn from his reserve and his gloom by the frank good-humour of his

companion. “I should like, I own, to make a clean breast of it; and

perhaps I may profit by your advice. You know, in the first place, that

after I left college, my father, seeing me indisposed for the Church, to

which he had always destined me in his own heart, and for which, indeed,

he had gone out of his way to maintain me at the University, gave me the

choice of his own business as a surveyor and land-agent, or of entering

into the mercantile profession. I chose the latter, and went to

Southampton, where we have a relation in business, to be initiated

into the elementary mysteries. There I became acquainted with a good

clergyman and his wife, and in that house I passed a great part of my

time.”

“With the hope, I trust, on better consideration, of gratifying your

father’s ambition and learning how to starve with gentility on a cure.”

“Not much of that, I fear.”

“Then the clergyman had a daughter?”

“You are nearer the mark now,” said Mainwaring, colouring,--“though it

was not his daughter. A young lady lived in his family, not even

related to him; she was placed there with a certain allowance by a rich

relation. In a word, I admired, perhaps I loved, this young person; but

she was without an independence, and I not yet provided even with

the substitute of money,--a profession. I fancied (do not laugh at my

vanity) that my feelings might be returned. I was in alarm for her as

well as myself; I sounded the clergyman as to the chance of obtaining

the consent of her rich relation, and was informed that he thought it

hopeless. I felt I had no right to invite her to poverty and ruin, and

still less to entangle further (if I had chanced to touch at all) her

affection. I made an excuse to my father to leave the town, and returned

home.”

“Prudent and honourable enough, so far; unlike me,--I should have run

off with the girl, if she loved me, and old Plutus, the rascal, might

have done his worst against Cupid. But I interrupt you.”

“I came back when the county was greatly agitated,--public meetings,

speeches, mobs; a sharp election going on. My father had always taken

keen interest in politics; he was of the same party as Sir Miles,

who, you know, is red-hot upon politics. I was easily led--partly by

ambition, partly by the effect of example, partly by the hope to give a

new turn to my thoughts--to make an appearance in public.”

“And a devilish creditable one too! Why, man, your speeches have been

quoted with rapture by the London papers. Horribly aristocratic and

Pittish, it is true,--I think differently; but every man to his taste.

Well--”

“My attempts, such as they were, procured me the favour of Sir Miles. He

had long been acquainted with my father, who had helped him in his own

elections years ago. He seemed cordially delighted to patronize the son;

he invited me to visit him at Laughton, and hinted to my father that I

was formed for something better than a counting-house: my poor father

was intoxicated. In a word, here I am; here, often for days, almost

weeks, together, have I been a guest, always welcomed.”

“You pause. This is the primordium,--now comes the confession, eh?”

“Why, one half the confession is over. It was my most unmerited

fortune to attract the notice of Miss Clavering. Do not fancy me so

self-conceited as to imagine that I should ever have presumed so high,

but for--”

“But for encouragement,--I understand! Well, she is a magnificent

creature, in her way, and I do not wonder that she drove the poor little

girl at Southampton out of your thoughts.”

“Ah! but there is the sore,--I am not sure that she has done so.

Ardworth, I may trust you?”

“With everything but half-a-guinea. I would not promise to be rock

against so great a temptation!” and Ardworth turned his empty pockets

inside out.

“Tush! be serious, or I go.”

“Serious! With pockets like these, the devil’s in it if I am not

serious. Perge, precor.”

“Ardworth, then,” said Mainwaring, with great emotion, “I confide to you

the secret trouble of my heart. This girl at Southampton is Lucretia’s

sister,--her half-sister; the rich relation on whose allowance she lives

is Sir Miles St. John.”

“Whew! my own poor dear little cousin, by the father’s side! Mainwaring,

I trust you have not deceived me; you have not amused yourself with

breaking Susan’s heart? For a heart, and an honest, simple, English

girl’s heart she has.”

“Heaven forbid! I tell you I have never even declared my love; and if

love it were, I trust it is over. But when Sir Miles was first kind to

me, first invited me, I own I had the hope to win his esteem; and since

he had always made so strong and cruel a distinction between Lucretia

and Susan, I thought it not impossible that he might consent at last to

my union with the niece he had refused to receive and acknowledge. But

even while the hope was in me, I was drawn on, I was entangled, I was

spell-bound, I know not how or why; but, to close my confidence, while

still doubtful whether my own heart is free from the remembrance of the

one sister, I am pledged to the other.”

Ardworth looked down gravely and remained silent. He was a joyous,

careless, reckless youth, with unsteady character and pursuits, and

with something of vague poetry, much of unaccommodating pride about his

nature,--one of those youths little likely to do what is called well in

the world; not persevering enough for an independent career, too blunt

and honest for a servile one. But it was in the very disposition of such

a person to judge somewhat harshly of Mainwaring’s disclosure, and not

easily to comprehend what, after all, was very natural,--how a young

man, new to life, timid by character, and of an extreme susceptibility

to the fear of giving pain, had, in the surprise, the gratitude, the

emotion, of an avowed attachment from a girl far above him in worldly

position, been forced, by receiving, to seem, at least, to return her

affection. And, indeed, though not wholly insensible to the brilliant

prospects opened to him in such a connection, yet, to do him justice,

Mainwaring would have been equally entangled by a similar avowal from

a girl more his equal in the world. It was rather from an amiability

bordering upon weakness, than from any more degrading moral

imperfections, that he had been betrayed into a position which neither

contented his heart nor satisfied his conscience.

With far less ability than his friend, Ardworth had more force and

steadiness in his nature, and was wholly free from that morbid delicacy

of temperament to which susceptible and shy persons owe much of their

errors and misfortunes. He said, therefore, after a long pause: “My

good fellow, to be plain with you, I cannot say that your confession

has improved you in my estimation; but that is perhaps because of the

bluntness of my understanding. I could quite comprehend your forgetting

Susan (and, after all, I am left in doubt as to the extent of her

conquest over you) for the very different charms of her sister. On the

other hand, I could still better understand that, having once fancied

Susan, you could not be commanded into love for Lucretia. But I do

not comprehend your feeling love for one, and making love to the

other,--which is the long and short of the business.”

“That is not exactly the true statement,” answered Mainwaring, with

a powerful effort at composure. “There are moments when, listening to

Lucretia, when, charmed by that softness which, contrasting the rest of

her character, she exhibits to none but me, struck by her great mental

powers, proud of an unsought triumph over such a being, I feel as if

I could love none but her; then suddenly her mood changes,--she utters

sentiments that chill and revolt me; the very beauty seems vanished from

her face. I recall with a sigh the simple sweetness of Susan, and I feel

as if I deceived both my mistress and myself. Perhaps, however, all

the circumstances of this connection tend to increase my doubts. It is

humiliating to me to know that I woo clandestinely and upon sufferance;

that I am stealing, as it were, into a fortune; that I am eating Sir

Miles’s bread, and yet counting upon his death; and this shame in myself

may make me unconsciously unjust to Lucretia. But it is useless to

reprove me for what is past; and though I at first imagined you could

advise me for the future, I now see, too clearly, that no advice could

avail.”

“I grant that too; for all you require is to make up your mind to be

fairly off with the old love, or fairly on with the new. However, now

you have stated your case thus frankly, if you permit me, I will take

advantage of the strange chance of finding myself here, and watch,

ponder, and counsel, if I can. This Lucretia, I own it, puzzles and

perplexes me; but though no Oedipus, I will not take fright at the

sphinx. I suppose now it is time to return. They expect some of the

neighbours to drink tea, and I must doff my fishing-jacket. Come!”

As they strolled towards the house, Ardworth broke a silence which had

lasted for some moments.

“And how is that dear good Fielden? I ought to have guessed him at once,

when you spoke of your clergyman and his young charge; but I did not

know he was at Southampton.”

“He has exchanged his living for a year, on account of his wife’s

health, and rather, I think also, with the wish to bring poor Susan

nearer to Laughton, in the chance of her uncle seeing her. But you are,

then, acquainted with Fielden?”

“Acquainted!--my best friend. He was my tutor, and prepared me for Caius

College. I owe him, not only the little learning I have, but the little

good that is left in me. I owe to him apparently, also, whatever chance

of bettering my prospects may arise from my visit to Laughton.”

“Notwithstanding our intimacy, we have, like most young men not related,

spoken so little of our family matters that I do not now understand how

you are cousin to Susan, nor what, to my surprise and delight, brought

you hither three days ago.”

“Faith, my story is easier to explain than your own, William. Here

goes!”

But as Ardworth’s recital partially involves references to family

matters not yet sufficiently known to the reader, we must be pardoned if

we assume to ourselves his task of narrator, and necessarily enlarge on

his details.

The branch of the illustrious family of St. John represented by Sir

Miles, diverged from the parent stem of the Lords of Bletshoe. With them

it placed at the summit of its pedigree the name of William de St. John,

the Conqueror’s favourite and trusted warrior, and Oliva de Filgiers.

With them it blazoned the latter alliance, which gave to Sir Oliver St.

John the lands of Bletshoe by the hand of Margaret Beauchamp (by her

second marriage with the Duke of Somerset), grandmother to Henry VII. In

the following generation, the younger son of a younger son had founded,

partly by offices of state, partly by marriage with a wealthy heiress, a

house of his own; and in the reign of James the First, the St. Johns of

Laughton ranked amongst the chief gentlemen of Hampshire. From that

time till the accession of George III the family, though it remained

untitled, had added to its consequence by intermarriages of considerable

dignity,--chosen, indeed, with a disregard for money uncommon amongst

the English aristocracy; so that the estate was but little enlarged

since the reign of James, though profiting, of course, by improved

cultivation and the different value of money. On the other hand, perhaps

there were scarcely ten families in the country who could boast of a

similar directness of descent on all sides from the proudest and noblest

aristocracy of the soil; and Sir Miles St. John, by blood, was, almost

at the distance of eight centuries, as pure a Norman as his ancestral

William. His grandfather, nevertheless, had deviated from the usual

disinterested practice of the family, and had married an heiress who

brought the quarterings of Vernon to the crowded escutcheon, and with

these quarterings an estate of some 4,000 pounds a year popularly known

by the name of Vernon Grange. This rare occurrence did not add to the

domestic happiness of the contracting parties, nor did it lead to the

ultimate increase of the Laughton possessions. Two sons were born. To

the elder was destined the father’s inheritance,--to the younger the

maternal property. One house is not large enough for two heirs. Nothing

could exceed the pride of the father as a St. John, except the pride of

the mother as a Vernon. Jealousies between the two sons began early

and rankled deep; nor was there peace at Laughton till the younger had

carried away from its rental the lands of Vernon Grange; and the

elder remained just where his predecessors stood in point of

possessions,--sole lord of Laughton sole. The elder son, Sir Miles’s

father, had been, indeed, so chafed by the rivalry with his brother that

in disgust he had run away and thrown himself, at the age of fourteen,

into the navy. By accident or by merit he rose high in that profession,

acquired name and fame, and lost an eye and an arm,--for which he was

gazetted, at the same time, an admiral and a baronet.

Thus mutilated and dignified, Sir George St. John retired from

the profession; and finding himself unmarried, and haunted by the

apprehension that if he died childless, Laughton would pass to his

brother’s heirs, he resolved upon consigning his remains to the nuptial

couch, previous to the surer peace of the family vault. At the age

of fifty-nine, the grim veteran succeeded in finding a young lady of

unblemished descent and much marked with the small-pox, who consented to

accept the only hand which Sir George had to offer. From this marriage

sprang a numerous family; but all died in early childhood, frightened

to death, said the neighbours, by their tender parents (considered the

ugliest couple in the county), except one boy (the present Sir Miles)

and one daughter, many years younger, destined to become Lucretia’s

mother. Sir Miles came early into his property; and although the

softening advance of civilization, with the liberal effects of travel

and a long residence in cities, took from him that provincial austerity

of pride which is only seen in stanch perfection amongst the lords of a

village, he was yet little less susceptible to the duties of maintaining

his lineage pure as its representation had descended to him than the

most superb of his predecessors. But owing, it was said, to an early

disappointment, he led, during youth and manhood, a roving and desultory

life, and so put off from year to year the grand experiment matrimonial,

until he arrived at old age, with the philosophical determination

to select from the other branches of his house the successor to the

heritage of St. John. In thus arrogating to himself a right to neglect

his proper duties as head of a family, he found his excuse in adopting

his niece Lucretia. His sister had chosen for her first husband a friend

and neighbour of his own, a younger son, of unexceptionable birth and

of very agreeable manners in society. But this gentleman contrived to

render her life so miserable that, though he died fifteen months after

their marriage, his widow could scarcely be expected to mourn long for

him. A year after Mr. Clavering’s death, Mrs. Clavering married again,

under the mistaken notion that she had the right to choose for herself.

She married Dr. Mivers, the provincial physician who had attended her

husband in his last illness,--a gentleman by education, manners, and

profession, but unhappily the son of a silk-mercer. Sir Miles never

forgave this connection. By her first marriage, Sir Miles’s sister had

one daughter, Lucretia; by her second marriage, another daughter, named

Susan. She survived somewhat more than a year the birth of the latter.

On her death, Sir Miles formally (through his agent) applied to Dr.

Mivers for his eldest niece, Lucretia Clavering, and the physician

did not think himself justified in withholding from her the probable

advantages of a transfer from his own roof to that of her wealthy uncle.

He himself had been no worldly gainer by his connection; his practice

had suffered materially from the sympathy which was felt by the

county families for the supposed wrongs of Sir Miles St. John, who was

personally not only popular, but esteemed, nor less so on account of his

pride,--too dignified to refer even to his domestic annoyances, except

to his most familiar associates; to them, indeed, Sir Miles had said,

briefly, that he considered a physician who abused his entrance into

a noble family by stealing into its alliance was a character in whose

punishment all society had an interest. The words were repeated; they

were thought just. Those who ventured to suggest that Mrs. Clavering, as

a widow, was a free agent, were regarded with suspicion. It was the

time when French principles were just beginning to be held in horror,

especially in the provinces, and when everything that encroached

upon the rights and prejudices of the high born was called “a French

principle.” Dr. Mivers was as much scouted as if he had been a

sans-culotte. Obliged to quit the county, he settled at a distance;

but he had a career to commence again; his wife’s death enfeebled his

spirits and damped his exertions. He did little more than earn a bare

subsistence, and died at last, when his only daughter was fourteen,

poor and embarrassed On his death-bed he wrote a letter to Sir Miles

reminding him that, after all, Susan was his sister’s child, gently

vindicating himself from the unmerited charge of treachery, which had

blasted his fortunes and left his orphan penniless, and closing with a

touching yet a manly appeal to the sole relative left to befriend her.

The clergyman who had attended him in his dying moments took charge of

this letter; he brought it in person to Laughton, and delivered it to

Sir Miles. Whatever his errors, the old baronet was no common man. He

was not vindictive, though he could not be called forgiving. He had

considered his conduct to his sister a duty owed to his name and

ancestors; she had placed herself and her youngest child out of the pale

of his family. He would not receive as his niece the grand-daughter of

a silk-mercer. The relationship was extinct, as, in certain countries,

nobility is forfeited by a union with an inferior class. But, niece or

not, here was a claim to humanity and benevolence, and never yet had

appeal been made by suffering to his heart and purse in vain.

He bowed his head over the letter as his eye came to the last line, and

remained silent so long that the clergyman at last, moved and hopeful,

approached and took his hand. It was the impulse of a good man and a

good priest. Sir Miles looked up in surprise; but the calm, pitying face

bent on him repelled all return of pride.

“Sir,” he said tremulously, and he pressed the hand that grasped his

own, “I thank you. I am not fit at this moment to decide what to do;

to-morrow you shall know. And the man died poor,--not in want, not in

want?”

“Comfort yourself, worthy sir; he had at the last all that sickness

and death require, except one assurance, which I ventured to whisper

to him,--I trust not too rashly,--that his daughter would not be left

unprotected. And I pray you to reflect, my dear sir, that--”

Sir Miles did not wait for the conclusion of the sentence; he rose

abruptly, and left the room. Mr. Fielden (so the good priest was named)

felt confident of the success of his mission; but to win it the more

support, he sought Lucretia. She was then seventeen: it is an age when

the heart is peculiarly open to the household ties,--to the memory of

a mother, to the sweet name of sister. He sought this girl, he told his

tale, and pleaded the sister’s cause. Lucretia heard in silence: neither

eye nor lip betrayed emotion; but her colour went and came. This was the

only sign that she was moved: moved, but how? Fielden’s experience in

the human heart could not guess. When he had done, she went quietly to

her desk (it was in her own room that the conference took place), she

unlocked it with a deliberate hand, she took from it a pocketbook and a

case of jewels which Sir Miles had given her on her last birthday. “Let

my sister have these; while I live she shall not want!”

“My dear young lady, it is not these things that she asks from you,--it

is your affection, your sisterly heart, your intercession with her

natural protector; these, in her name, I ask for,--‘non gemmis, neque

purpura venale, nec auro!’”

Lucretia then, still without apparent emotion, raised to the good man’s

face deep, penetrating, but unrevealing eyes, and said slowly,--

“Is my sister like my mother, who, they say, was handsome?”

Much startled by this question, Fielden answered: “I never saw your

mother, my dear; but your sister gives promise of more than common

comeliness.”

Lucretia’s brows grew slightly compressed. “And her education has been,

of course, neglected?”

“Certainly, in some points,--mathematics, for instance, and theology;

but she knows what ladies generally know,--French and Italian, and such

like. Dr. Mivers was not unlearned in the polite letters. Oh, trust me,

my dear young lady, she will not disgrace your family; she will justify

your uncle’s favour. Plead for her!” And the good man clasped his hands.

Lucretia’s eyes fell musingly on the ground; but she resumed, after a

short pause,--

“What does my uncle himself say?”

“Only that he will decide to-morrow.”

“I will see him;” and Lucretia left the room as for that object.

But when she had gained the stairs, she paused at the large embayed

casement, which formed a niche in the landing-place, and gazed over the

broad domains beyond; a stern smile settled, then, upon her lips,--the

smile seemed to say, “In this inheritance I will have no rival.”

Lucretia’s influence with Sir Miles was great, but here it was not

needed. Before she saw him he had decided on his course. Her precocious

and apparently intuitive knowledge of character detected at a glance

the safety with which she might intercede. She did so, and was chid into

silence.

The next morning, Sir Miles took the priest’s arm and walked with him

into the gardens.

“Mr. Fielden,” he said, with the air of a man who has chosen his course,

and deprecates all attempt to make him swerve from it, “if I followed my

own selfish wishes, I should take home this poor child. Stay, sir, and

hear me,--I am no hypocrite, and I speak honestly. I like young faces; I

have no family of my own. I love Lucretia, and I am proud of her; but a

girl brought up in adversity might be a better nurse and a more docile

companion,--let that pass. I have reflected, and I feel that I cannot

set to Lucretia--set to children unborn--the example of indifference

to a name degraded and a race adulterated; you may call this pride

or prejudice,--I view it differently. There are duties due from an

individual, duties due from a nation, duties due from a family; as my

ancestors thought, so think I. They left me the charge of their name, as

the fief-rent by which I hold their lands. ‘Sdeath, sir!--Pardon me the

expletive; I was about to say that if I am now a childless old man, it

is because I have myself known temptation and resisted. I loved, and

denied myself what I believed my best chance of happiness, because the

object of my attachment was not my equal. That was a bitter struggle,--I

triumphed, and I rejoice at it, though the result was to leave all

thoughts of wedlock elsewhere odious and repugnant. These principles of

action have made a part of my creed as gentleman, if not as Christian.

Now to the point. I beseech you to find a fitting and reputable home

for Miss--Miss Mivers,” the lip slightly curled as the name was said;

“I shall provide suitably for her maintenance. When she marries, I will

dower her, provided only and always that her choice fall upon one who

will not still further degrade her lineage on her mother’s side,--in a

word, if she select a gentleman. Mr. Fielden, on this subject I have no

more to say.”

In vain the good clergyman, whose very conscience, as well as reason,

was shocked by the deliberate and argumentative manner with which

the baronet had treated the abandonment of his sister’s child as an

absolutely moral, almost religious, duty,--in vain he exerted himself

to repel such sophisms and put the matter in its true light. It was easy

for him to move Sir Miles’s heart,--that was ever gentle; that was

moved already: but the crotchet in his head was impregnable. The

more touchingly he painted poor Susan’s unfriended youth, her sweet

character, and promising virtues, the more Sir Miles St. John considered

himself a martyr to his principles, and the more obstinate in the

martyrdom he became. “Poor thing! poor child!” he said often, and

brushed a tear from his eyes; “a thousand pities! Well, well, I hope she

will be happy! Mind, money shall never stand in the way if she have a

suitable offer!”

This was all the worthy clergyman, after an hour’s eloquence, could

extract from him. Out of breath and out of patience, he gave in at last;

and the baronet, still holding his reluctant arm, led him back towards

the house. After a prolonged pause, Sir Miles said abruptly: “I have

been thinking that I may have unwittingly injured this man,--this

Mivers,--while I deemed only that he injured me. As to reparation to

his daughter, that is settled; and after all, though I do not publicly

acknowledge her, she is half my own niece.”

“Half?”

“Half,--the father’s side doesn’t count, of course; and, rigidly

speaking, the relationship is perhaps forfeited on the other. However,

that half of it I grant. Zooks, sir, I say I grant it! I beg you ten

thousand pardons for my vehemence. To return,--perhaps I can show at

least that I bear no malice to this poor doctor. He has relations of his

own,--silk mercers; trade has reverses. How are they off?”

Perfectly perplexed by this very contradictory and paradoxical, yet, to

one better acquainted with Sir Miles, very characteristic, benevolence,

Fielden was some time before he answered. “Those members of Dr. Mivers’s

family who are in trade are sufficiently prosperous; they have paid his

debts,--they, Sir Miles, will receive his daughter.”

“By no means!” cried Sir Miles, quickly; then, recovering himself, he

added, “or, if you think that advisable, of course all interference on

my part is withdrawn.”

“Festina lente!--not so quick, Sir Miles. I do not yet say that it

is advisable,--not because they are silk-mercers, the which, I humbly

conceive, is no sin to exclude them from gratitude for their proffered

kindness, but because Susan, poor child, having been brought up in

different habits, may feel a little strange, at least at first, with--”

“Strange, yes; I should hope so!” interrupted Sir Miles, taking snuff

with much energy. “And, by the way, I am thinking that it would be well

if you and Mrs. Fielden--you are married, sir? That is right; clergymen

all marry!--if you and Mrs. Fielden would take charge of her yourselves,

it would be a great comfort to me to think her so well placed. We

differ, sir, but I respect you. Think of this. Well, then, the doctor

has left no relations that I can aid in any way?”

“Strange man!” muttered Fielden. “Yes; I must not let one poor youth

lose the opportunity offered by your--your--”

“Never mind what; proceed. One poor youth,--in the shop, of course?”

“No; and by his father’s side (since you so esteem such vanities) of an

ancient family,--a sister of Dr. Mivers married Captain Ardworth.”

“Ardworth,--a goodish name; Ardworth of Yorkshire?”

“Yes, of that family. It was, of course, an imprudent marriage,

contracted while he was only an ensign. His family did not reject him,

Sir Miles.”

“Sir, Ardworth is a good squire’s family, but the name is Saxon; there

is no difference in race between the head of the Ardworths, if he were

a duke, and my gardener, John Hodge,--Saxon and Saxon, both. His family

did not reject him; go on.”

“But he was a younger son in a large family; both himself and his wife

have known all the distresses common, they tell me, to the poverty of

a soldier who has no resource but his pay. They have a son. Dr. Mivers,

though so poor himself, took this boy, for he loved his sister dearly,

and meant to bring him up to his own profession. Death frustrated this

intention. The boy is high-spirited and deserving.”

“Let his education be completed; send him to the University; and I will

see that he is put into some career of which his father’s family would

approve. You need not mention to any one my intentions in this respect,

not even to the lad. And now, Mr. Fielden, I have done my duty,--at

least, I think so. The longer you honour my house, the more I shall be

pleased and grateful; but this topic, allow me most respectfully to say,

needs and bears no further comment. Have you seen the last news from the

army?”

“The army! Oh, fie, Sir Miles, I must speak one word more. May not my

poor Susan have at least the comfort to embrace her sister?”

Sir Miles paused a moment, and struck his crutch-stick thrice firmly on

the ground.

“I see no great objection to that; but by the address of this letter,

the poor girl is too far from Laughton to send Lucretia to her.”

“I can obviate that objection, Sir Miles. It is my wish to continue

to Susan her present home amongst my own children. My wife loves her

dearly; and had you consented to give her the shelter of your own roof,

I am sure I should not have seen a smile in the house for a month after.

If you permit this plan, as indeed you honoured me by suggesting it, I

can pass through Southampton on my way to my own living in Devonshire,

and Miss Clavering can visit her sister there.”

“Let it be so,” said Sir Miles, briefly; and so the conversation closed.

Some weeks afterwards, Lucretia went in her uncle’s carriage, with four

post-horses, with her maid and her footman,--went in the state and pomp

of heiress to Laughton,--to the small lodging-house in which the kind

pastor crowded his children and his young guest. She stayed there some

days. She did not weep when she embraced Susan, she did not weep when

she took leave of her; but she showed no want of actual kindness, though

the kindness was formal and stately. On her return, Sir Miles forbore to

question; but he looked as if he expected, and would willingly permit,

her to speak on what might naturally be uppermost at her heart.

Lucretia, however, remained silent, till at last the baronet, colouring,

as if ashamed of his curiosity, said,--

“Is your sister like your mother?”

“You forget, sir, I can have no recollection of my mother.”

“Your mother had a strong family likeness to myself.”

“She is not like you; they say she is like Dr. Mivers.”

“Oh!” said the baronet, and he asked no more.

The sisters did not meet again; a few letters passed between them, but

the correspondence gradually ceased.

Young Ardworth went to college, prepared by Mr. Fielden, who was no

ordinary scholar, and an accurate and profound mathematician,--a more

important requisite than classical learning in a tutor for Cambridge.

But Ardworth was idle, and perhaps even dissipated. He took a common

degree, and made some debts, which were paid by Sir Miles without a

murmur. A few letters then passed between the baronet and the clergyman

as to Ardworth’s future destiny; the latter owned that his pupil was not

persevering enough for the Bar, nor steady enough for the Church. These

were no great faults in Sir Miles’s eyes. He resolved, after an effort,

to judge himself of the capacities of the young man, and so came the

invitation to Laughton. Ardworth was greatly surprised when Fielden

communicated to him this invitation, for hitherto he had not conceived

the slightest suspicion of his benefactor; he had rather, and naturally,

supposed that some relation of his father’s had paid for his maintenance

at the University, and he knew enough of the family history to look upon

Sir Miles as the proudest of men. How was it, then, that he, who would

not receive the daughter of Dr. Mivers, his own niece, would invite the

nephew of Dr. Mivers, who was no relation to him? However, his curiosity

was excited, and Fielden was urgent that he should go; to Laughton,

therefore, had he gone.

We have now brought down to the opening of our narrative the general

records of the family it concerns; we have reserved our account of the

rearing and the character of the personage most important, perhaps, in

the development of its events,--Lucretia Clavering,--in order to place

singly before the reader the portrait of her dark, misguided, and

ill-boding youth.

CHAPTER II. LUCRETIA.

When Lucretia first came to the house of Sir Miles St. John she was

an infant about four years old. The baronet then lived principally

in London, with occasional visits rather to the Continent or a

watering-place than to his own family mansion. He did not pay any minute

attention to his little ward, satisfied that her nurse was sedulous, and

her nursery airy and commodious. When, at the age of seven, she began

to interest him, and he himself, approaching old age, began seriously

to consider whether he should select her as his heiress, for hitherto

he had not formed any decided or definite notions on the matter, he was

startled by a temper so vehement, so self-willed and sternly imperious,

so obstinately bent upon attaining its object, so indifferently

contemptuous of warning, reproof, coaxing, or punishment, that her

governess honestly came to him in despair.

The management of this unmanageable child interested Sir Miles. It

caused him to think of Lucretia seriously; it caused him to have her

much in his society, and always in his thoughts. The result was, that by

amusing and occupying him, she forced a stronger hold on his affections

than she might have done had she been more like the ordinary run of

commonplace children. Of all dogs, there is no dog that so attaches a

master as a dog that snarls at everybody else,--that no other hand can

venture to pat with impunity; of all horses, there is none which so

flatters the rider, from Alexander downwards, as a horse that nobody

else can ride. Extend this principle to the human species, and you may

understand why Lucretia became so dear to Sir Miles St. John,--she got

at his heart through his vanity. For though, at times, her brow darkened

and her eye flashed even at his remonstrance, she was yet no sooner

in his society than she made a marked distinction between him and the

subordinates who had hitherto sought to control her. Was this affection?

He thought so. Alas! what parent can trace the workings of a child’s

mind,--springs moved by an idle word from a nurse; a whispered

conference between hirelings. Was it possible that Lucretia had not

often been menaced, as the direst evil that could befall her, with her

uncle’s displeasure; that long before she could be sensible of mere

worldly loss or profit, she was not impressed with a vague sense of Sir

Miles’s power over her fate,--nay, when trampling, in childish wrath and

scorn, upon some menial’s irritable feelings, was it possible that she

had not been told that, but for Sir Miles, she would be little better

than a servant herself? Be this as it may, all weakness is prone to

dissimulate; and rare and happy is the child whose feelings are as pure

and transparent as the fond parent deems them. There is something

in children, too, which seems like an instinctive deference to the

aristocratic appearances which sway the world. Sir Miles’s stately

person, his imposing dress, the respect with which he was surrounded,

all tended to beget notions of superiority and power, to which it was no

shame to succumb, as it was to Miss Black, the governess, whom the

maids answered pertly, or Martha, the nurse, whom Miss Black snubbed if

Lucretia tore her frock.

Sir Miles’s affection once won, his penetration not, perhaps, blinded

to her more evident faults, but his self-love soothed towards regarding

them leniently, there was much in Lucretia’s external gifts which

justified the predilection of the haughty man. As a child she was

beautiful, and, perhaps from her very imperfections of temper, her

beauty had that air of distinction which the love of command is apt to

confer. If Sir Miles was with his friends when Lucretia swept into the

room, he was pleased to hear them call her their little “princess,” and

was pleased yet more at a certain dignified tranquillity with which she

received their caresses or their toys, and which he regarded as the

sign of a superior mind; nor was it long, indeed, before what we call “a

superior mind” developed itself in the young Lucretia. All children are

quick till they are set methodically to study; but Lucretia’s quickness

defied even that numbing ordeal, by which half of us are rendered

dunces. Rapidity and precision in all the tasks set to her, in the

comprehension of all the explanations given to her questions, evinced

singular powers of readiness and reasoning.

As she grew older, she became more reserved and thoughtful. Seeing but

few children of her own age, and mixing intimately with none, her mind

was debarred from the usual objects which distract the vivacity, the

restless and wondrous observation, of childhood. She came in and out

of Sir Miles’s library of a morning, or his drawing-room of an evening,

till her hour for rest, with unquestioned and sometimes unnoticed

freedom; she listened to the conversation around her, and formed her own

conclusions unchecked. It has a great influence upon a child, whether

for good or for evil, to mix early and habitually with those grown

up,--for good to the mere intellect always; the evil depends upon the

character and discretion of those the child sees and hears. “Reverence

the greatest is due to the children,” exclaims the wisest of the Romans

[Cicero. The sentiment is borrowed by Juvenal.],--that is to say, that

we must revere the candour and inexperience and innocence of their

minds.

Now, Sir Miles’s habitual associates were persons of the

world,--well-bred and decorous, indeed, before children, as the best of

the old school were, avoiding all anecdotes; all allusions, for which

the prudent matron would send her girls out of the room; but with that

reserve speaking of the world as the world goes: if talking of young

A----, calculating carelessly what he would have when old A----, his

father, died; naturally giving to wealth and station and ability their

fixed importance in life; not over-apt to single out for eulogium some

quiet goodness; rather inclined to speak with irony of pretensions to

virtue; rarely speaking but with respect of the worldly seemings which

rule mankind. All these had their inevitable effect upon that keen,

quick, yet moody and reflective intellect.

Sir Miles removed at last to Laughton. He gave up London,--why, he

acknowledged not to himself; but it was because he had outlived his age.

Most of his old set were gone; new hours, new habits, had stolen in.

He had ceased to be of importance as a marrying man, as a personage

of fashion; his health was impaired; he shrank from the fatigues of a

contested election; he resigned his seat in parliament for his native

county; and once settled at Laughton, the life there soothed and

flattered him,--there all his former claims to distinction were still

fresh. He amused himself by collecting, in his old halls and chambers,

his statues and pictures, and felt that, without fatigue or trouble, he

was a greater man at Laughton in his old age than he had been in London

during his youth.

Lucretia was then thirteen. Three years afterwards, Olivier Dalibard

was established in the house; and from that time a great change became

noticeable in her. The irregular vehemence of her temper gradually

subsided, and was replaced by an habitual self-command which rendered

the rare deviations from it more effective and imposing. Her pride

changed its character wholly and permanently; no word, no look of scorn

to the low-born and the poor escaped her. The masculine studies which

her erudite tutor opened to a grasping and inquisitive mind, elevated

her very errors above the petty distinctions of class. She imbibed

earnestly what Dalibard assumed or felt,--the more dangerous pride of

the fallen angel,--and set up the intellect as a deity. All belonging

to the mere study of mind charmed and enchained her; but active and

practical in her very reveries, if she brooded, it was to scheme, to

plot, to weave, web, and mesh, and to smile in haughty triumph at

her own ingenuity and daring. The first lesson of mere worldly wisdom

teaches us to command temper; it was worldly wisdom that made the once

impetuous girl calm, tranquil, and serene. Sir Miles was pleased by

a change that removed from Lucretia’s outward character its chief

blot,--perhaps, as his frame declined, he sighed sometimes to think

that with so much majesty there appeared but little tenderness; he took,

however, the merits with the faults, and was content upon the whole.

If the Provencal had taken more than common pains with his young pupil,

the pains were not solely disinterested. In plunging her mind amidst

that profound corruption which belongs only to intellect cultivated

in scorn of good and in suppression of heart, he had his own views to

serve. He watched the age when the passions ripen, and he grasped at

the fruit which his training sought to mature. In the human heart ill

regulated there is a dark desire for the forbidden. This Lucretia felt;

this her studies cherished, and her thoughts brooded over. She detected,

with the quickness of her sex, the preceptor’s stealthy aim. She

started not at the danger. Proud of her mastery over herself, she rather

triumphed in luring on into weakness this master-intelligence which had

lighted up her own,--to see her slave in her teacher; to despise or to

pity him whom she had first contemplated with awe. And with this mere

pride of the understanding might be connected that of the sex; she had

attained the years when woman is curious to know and to sound her power.

To inflame Dalibard’s cupidity or ambition was easy; but to touch his

heart,--that marble heart!--this had its dignity and its charm. Strange

to say, she succeeded; the passion, as well as interests, of this

dangerous and able man became enlisted in his hopes. And now the game

played between them had a terror in its suspense; for if Dalibard

penetrated not into the recesses of his pupil’s complicated nature, she

was far from having yet sounded the hell that lay, black and devouring,

beneath his own. Not through her affections,--those he scarce hoped

for,--but through her inexperience, her vanity, her passions, he

contemplated the path to his victory over her soul and her fate. And so

resolute, so wily, so unscrupulous was this person, who had played upon

all the subtlest keys and chords in the scale of turbulent life, that,

despite the lofty smile with which Lucretia at length heard and repelled

his suit, he had no fear of the ultimate issue, when all his projects

were traversed, all his mines and stratagems abruptly brought to a

close, by an event which he had wholly unforeseen,--the appearance of

a rival; the ardent and almost purifying love, which, escaping a while

from all the demons he had evoked, she had, with a girl’s frank heart

and impulse, conceived for Mainwaring. And here, indeed, was the great

crisis in Lucretia’s life and destiny. So interwoven with her nature had

become the hard calculations of the understanding; so habitual to her

now was the zest for scheming, which revels in the play and vivacity of

intrigue and plot, and which Shakspeare has perhaps intended chiefly to

depict in the villany of Iago,--that it is probable Lucretia could never

become a character thoroughly amiable and honest. But with a happy and

well-placed love, her ambition might have had legitimate vents; her

restless energies, the woman’s natural field in sympathies for another.

The heart, once opened, softens by use; gradually and unconsciously

the interchange of affection, the companionship with an upright and

ingenuous mind (for virtue is not only beautiful, it is contagious),

might have had their redeeming and hallowing influence. Happier, indeed,

had it been, if her choice had fallen upon a more commanding and lofty

nature! But perhaps it was the very meekness and susceptibility of

Mainwaring’s temper, relieved from feebleness by his talents, which,

once in play, were undeniably great, that pleased her by contrast with

her own hardness of spirit and despotism of will.

That Sir Miles should have been blind to the position of the lovers is

less disparaging to his penetration than it may appear; for the very

imprudence with which Lucretia abandoned herself to the society of

Mainwaring during his visits at Laughton took a resemblance to candour.

Sir Miles knew his niece to be more than commonly clever and well

informed; that she, like him, should feel that the conversation of a

superior young man was a relief to the ordinary babble of their country

neighbours, was natural enough; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, had

crossed his mind and rendered him more touched than he liked to own by

Vernon’s remarks, it had vanished upon perceiving that Lucretia never

seemed a shade more pensive in Mainwaring’s absence. The listlessness

and the melancholy which are apt to accompany love, especially where

unpropitiously placed, were not visible on the surface of this strong

nature. In truth, once assured that Mainwaring returned her affection,

Lucretia reposed on the future with a calm and resolute confidence; and

her customary dissimulation closed like an unruffled sea over all the

undercurrents that met and played below. Still, Sir Miles’s attention

once, however slightly, aroused to the recollection that Lucretia was

at the age when woman naturally meditates upon love and marriage, had

suggested, afresh and more vividly, a project which had before been

indistinctly conceived,--namely, the union of the divided branches of

his house, by the marriage of the last male of the Vernons with the

heiress of the St. Johns. Sir Miles had seen much of Vernon himself at

various intervals; he had been present at his christening, though he had

refused to be his godfather, for fear of raising undue expectations; he

had visited and munificently “tipped” him at Eton; he had accompanied

him to his quarters when he joined the prince’s regiment; he had come

often in contact with him when, at the death of his father, Vernon

retired from the army and blazed in the front ranks of metropolitan

fashion; he had given him counsel and had even lent him money. Vernon’s

spendthrift habits and dissipated if not dissolute life had certainly

confirmed the old baronet in his intentions to trust the lands of

Laughton to the lesser risk which property incurs in the hands of

a female, if tightly settled on her, than in the more colossal and

multiform luxuries of an expensive man; and to do him justice, during

the flush of Vernon’s riotous career he had shrunk from the thought of

confiding the happiness of his niece to so unstable a partner. But of

late, whether from his impaired health or his broken fortunes, Vernon’s

follies had been less glaring. He had now arrived at the mature age of

thirty-three, when wild oats may reasonably be sown. The composed and

steadfast character of Lucretia might serve to guide and direct him; and

Sir Miles was one of those who hold the doctrine that a reformed rake

makes the best husband. Add to this, there was nothing in Vernon’s

reputation--once allowing that his thirst for pleasure was slaked--which

could excite serious apprehensions. Through all his difficulties, he had

maintained his honour unblemished; a thousand traits of amiability and

kindness of heart made him popular and beloved. He was nobody’s enemy

but his own. His very distresses--the prospect of his ruin, if left

unassisted by Sir Miles’s testamentary dispositions--were arguments

in his favour. And, after all, though Lucretia was a nearer relation,

Vernon was in truth the direct male heir, and according to the usual

prejudices of family, therefore, the fitter representative of the

ancient line. With these feelings and views, he had invited Vernon to

his house, and we have seen already that his favourable impressions had

been confirmed by the visit.

And here we must say that Vernon himself had been brought up in boyhood

and youth to regard himself the presumptive inheritor of Laughton. It

had been, from time immemorial, the custom of the St. Johns to pass by

the claims of females in the settlement of the entails; from male to

male the estate had gone, furnishing warriors to the army, and senators

to the State. And if when Lucretia first came to Sir Miles’s house the

bright prospect seemed somewhat obscure, still the mesalliance of the

mother, and Sir Miles’s obstinate resentment thereat, seemed to warrant

the supposition that he would probably only leave to the orphan the

usual portion of a daughter of the house, and that the lands would go

in their ordinary destination. This belief, adopted passively, and as a

thing of course, had had a very prejudicial effect upon Vernon’s career.

What mattered that he overenjoyed his youth, that the subordinate

property of the Vernons, a paltry four or five thousand pounds a year,

went a little too fast,--the splendid estates of Laughton would recover

all. From this dream he had only been awakened, two or three years

before, by an attachment he had formed to the portionless daughter of

an earl; and the Grange being too far encumbered to allow him the proper

settlements which the lady’s family required, it became a matter of

importance to ascertain Sir Miles’s intentions. Too delicate himself to

sound them, he had prevailed upon the earl, who was well acquainted with

Sir Miles, to take Laughton in his way to his own seat in Dorsetshire,

and, without betraying the grounds of his interest in the question,

learn carelessly, as it were, the views of the wealthy man. The result

had been a severe and terrible disappointment. Sir Miles had then fully

determined upon constituting Lucretia his heiress; and with the usual

openness of his character, he had plainly said so upon the very first

covert and polished allusion to the subject which the earl slyly made.

This discovery, in breaking off all hopes of a union with Lady Mary

Stanville, had crushed more than mercenary expectations. It affected,

through his heart, Vernon’s health and spirits; it rankled deep, and

was resented at first as a fatal injury. But Vernon’s native nobility of

disposition gradually softened an indignation which his reason convinced

him was groundless and unjust. Sir Miles had never encouraged the

expectations which Vernon’s family and himself had unthinkingly formed.

The baronet was master of his own fortune, and after all, was it not

more natural that he should prefer the child he had brought up and

reared, to a distant relation, little more than an acquaintance, simply

because man succeeded to man in the mouldy pedigree of the St. Johns?

And, Mary fairly lost to him, his constitutional indifference to money,

a certain French levity of temper, a persuasion that his life was

nearing its wasted close, had left him without regret, as without

resentment, at his kinsman’s decision. His boyish affection for the

hearty, generous old gentleman returned, and though he abhorred the

country, he had, without a single interested thought or calculation,

cordially accepted the baronet’s hospitable overtures, and deserted, for

the wilds of Hampshire, “the sweet shady side of Pall-Mall.”

We may now enter the drawing-room at Laughton, in which were already

assembled several of the families residing in the more immediate

neighbourhood, and who sociably dropped in to chat around the national

tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or

three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for

in that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in

the houses of our rural Thanes. Our country seats became bustling and

animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families

resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates. The Continent was

closed to us; the fastidious exclusiveness which comes from habitual

residence in cities had not made that demarcation, in castes and in

talk, between neighbour and neighbour, which exists now. Our squires

were less educated, less refined, but more hospitable and unassuming.

In a word, there was what does not exist now, except in some districts

remote from London,--a rural society for those who sought it.

The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus. But first we must cast

a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to be the first object

to attract a stranger’s notice. It was a long, and not particularly

well-proportioned apartment,--according, at least, to modern

notions,--for it had rather the appearance of two rooms thrown into one.

At the distance of about thirty-five feet, the walls, before somewhat

narrow, were met by an arch, supported by carved pilasters, which opened

into a space nearly double the width of the previous part of the room,

with a domed ceiling and an embayed window of such depth that the recess

almost formed a chamber in itself. But both these divisions of the

apartment corresponded exactly in point of decoration,--they had the

same small panelling, painted a very light green, which seemed almost

white by candlelight, each compartment wrought with an arabesque; the

same enriched frieze and cornice; they had the same high mantelpieces,

ascending to the ceiling, with the arms of St. John in bold relief. They

had, too, the same old-fashioned and venerable furniture, draperies

of thick figured velvet, with immense chairs and sofas to

correspond,--interspersed, it is true, with more modern and commodious

inventions of the upholsterer’s art, in grave stuffed leather or lively

chintz. Two windows, nearly as deep as that in the farther division,

broke the outline of the former one, and helped to give that irregular

and nooky appearance to the apartment which took all discomfort from

its extent, and furnished all convenience for solitary study or detached

flirtation. With little respect for the carved work of the panels, the

walls were covered with pictures brought by Sir Miles from Italy; here

and there marble busts and statues gave lightness to the character of

the room, and harmonized well with that half-Italian mode of decoration

which belongs to the period of James the First. The shape of the

chamber, in its divisions, lent itself admirably to that friendly and

sociable intermixture of amusements which reconciles the tastes of young

and old. In the first division, near the fireplace, Sir Miles, seated

in his easy-chair, and sheltered from the opening door by a seven-fold

tapestry screen, was still at chess with his librarian. At a little

distance a middle-aged gentleman and three turbaned matrons were cutting

in at whist, shilling points, with a half-crown bet optional, and not

much ventured on. On tables, drawn into the recesses of the windows,

were the day’s newspapers, Gilray’s caricatures, the last new

publications, and such other ingenious suggestions to chit-chat. And

round these tables grouped those who had not yet found elsewhere their

evening’s amusement,--two or three shy young clergymen, the parish

doctor, four or five squires who felt great interest in politics, but

never dreamed of the extravagance of taking in a daily paper, and who

now, monopolizing all the journals they could find, began fairly with

the heroic resolution to skip nothing, from the first advertisement to

the printer’s name. Amidst one of these groups Mainwaring had bashfully

ensconced himself. In the farther division, the chandelier, suspended

from the domed ceiling, threw its cheerful light over a large circular

table below, on which gleamed the ponderous tea-urn of massive silver,

with its usual accompaniments. Nor were wanting there, in addition to

those airy nothings, sliced infinitesimally, from a French roll,

the more substantial and now exiled cheer of cakes,--plum and seed,

Yorkshire and saffron,--attesting the light hand of the housekeeper and

the strong digestion of the guests. Round this table were seated, in

full gossip, the maids and the matrons, with a slight sprinkling of

the bolder young gentlemen who had been taught to please the fair. The

warmth of the evening allowed the upper casement to be opened and the

curtains drawn aside, and the July moonlight feebly struggled against

the blaze of the lights within. At this table it was Miss Clavering’s

obvious duty to preside; but that was a complaisance to which she rarely

condescended. Nevertheless, she had her own way of doing the honour of

her uncle’s house, which was not without courtesy and grace; to glide

from one to the other, exchange a few friendly words, see that each

set had its well-known amusements, and, finally, sit quietly down to

converse with some who, from gravity or age, appeared most to neglect

or be neglected by the rest, was her ordinary, and not unpopular mode of

welcoming the guests at Laughton,--not unpopular; for she thus avoided

all interference with the flirtations and conquests of humbler damsels,

whom her station and her endowments might otherwise have crossed or

humbled, while she insured the good word of the old, to whom the young

are seldom so attentive. But if a stranger of more than provincial

repute chanced to be present; if some stray member of parliament, or

barrister on the circuit, or wandering artist, accompanied any of the

neighbours,--to him Lucretia gave more earnest and undivided attention.

Him she sought to draw into a conversation deeper than the usual babble,

and with her calm, searching eyes, bent on him while he spoke, seemed to

fathom the intellect she set in play. But as yet, this evening, she had

not made her appearance,--a sin against etiquette very unusual in her.

Perhaps her recent conversation with Dalibard had absorbed her thoughts

to forgetfulness of the less important demands on her attention. Her

absence had not interfered with the gayety at the tea-table, which

was frank even to noisiness as it centred round the laughing face of

Ardworth, who, though unknown to most or all of the ladies present,

beyond a brief introduction to one or two of the first comers from Sir

Miles (as the host had risen from his chess to bid them welcome), had

already contrived to make himself perfectly at home and outrageously

popular. Niched between two bouncing lasses, he had commenced

acquaintance with them in a strain of familiar drollery and fun, which

had soon broadened its circle, and now embraced the whole group in

the happy contagion of good-humour and young animal spirits. Gabriel,

allowed to sit up later than his usual hour, had not, as might have been

expected, attached himself to this circle, nor indeed to any; he might

be seen moving quietly about,--now contemplating the pictures on the

wall with a curious eye; now pausing at the whist-table, and noting the

game with the interest of an embryo gamester; now throwing himself on an

ottoman, and trying to coax towards him Dash or Ponto,--trying in vain,

for both the dogs abhorred him; yet still, through all this general

movement, had any one taken the pains to observe him closely, it might

have been sufficiently apparent that his keen, bright, restless eye,

from the corner of its long, sly lids, roved chiefly towards the three

persons whom he approached the least,--his father, Mainwaring, and Mr.

Vernon. This last had ensconced himself apart from all, in the angle

formed by one of the pilasters of the arch that divided the room, so

that he was in command, as it were, of both sections. Reclined, with the

careless grace that seemed inseparable from every attitude and motion of

his person, in one of the great velvet chairs, with a book in his hand,

which, to say truth, was turned upside down, but in the lecture of which

he seemed absorbed, he heard at one hand the mirthful laughter that

circled round young Ardworth, or, in its pauses, caught, on the other

side, muttered exclamations from the grave whist-players: “If you

had but trumped that diamond, ma’am!” “Bless me, sir, it was the best

heart!” And somehow or other, both the laughter and the exclamations

affected him alike with what then was called “the spleen,”--for the one

reminded him of his own young days of joyless, careless mirth, of which

his mechanical gayety now was but a mocking ghost; and the other seemed

a satire, a parody, on the fierce but noiseless rapture of gaming,

through which his passions had passed, when thousands had slipped away

with a bland smile, provoking not one of those natural ebullitions

of emotion which there accompanied the loss of a shilling point. And

besides this, Vernon had been so accustomed to the success of the

drawing-room, to be a somebody and a something in the company of wits

and princes, that he felt, for the first time, a sense of insignificance

in this provincial circle. Those fat squires had heard nothing of Mr.

Vernon, except that he would not have Laughton,--he had no acres, no

vote in their county; he was a nobody to them. Those ruddy maidens,

though now and then, indeed, one or two might steal an admiring glance

at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him not with the female

interest he had been accustomed to inspire. They felt instinctively that

he could be nothing to them, nor they to him,--a mere London fop, and

not half so handsome as Squires Bluff and Chuff.

Rousing himself from this little vexation to his vanity with a conscious

smile at his own weakness, Vernon turned his looks towards the door,

waiting for Lucretia’s entrance, and since her uncle’s address to him,

feeling that new and indescribable interest in her appearance which is

apt to steal into every breast when what was before but an indifferent

acquaintance, is suddenly enhaloed with the light of a possible wife.

At length the door opened, and Lucretia entered. Mr. Vernon lowered

his book, and gazed with an earnestness that partook both of doubt and

admiration.

Lucretia Clavering was tall,--tall beyond what is admitted to be tall

in woman; but in her height there was nothing either awkward or

masculine,--a figure more perfect never served for model to a sculptor.

The dress at that day, unbecoming as we now deem it, was not to her--at

least, on the whole disadvantageous. The short waist gave greater

sweep to her majestic length of limb, while the classic thinness of the

drapery betrayed the exact proportion and the exquisite contour. The

arms then were worn bare almost to the shoulder, and Lucretia’s arms

were not more faultless in shape than dazzling in their snowy colour;

the stately neck, the falling shoulders, the firm, slight, yet rounded

bust,--all would have charmed equally the artist and the sensualist.

Fortunately, the sole defect of her form was not apparent at a distance:

that defect was in the hand; it had not the usual faults of female

youthfulness,--the superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness

of colour,--on the contrary, it was small and thin; but it was,

nevertheless, more the hand of a man than a woman: the shape had a man’s

nervous distinctness, the veins swelled like sinews, the joints of the

fingers were marked and prominent. In that hand it almost seemed as if

the iron force of the character betrayed itself. But, as we have said,

this slight defect, which few, if seen, would hypercritically notice,

could not, of course, be perceptible as she moved slowly up the room;

and Vernon’s eye, glancing over the noble figure, rested upon the

face. Was it handsome? Was it repelling? Strange that in feature it

had pretensions to the highest order of beauty, and yet even that

experienced connoisseur in female charms was almost as puzzled what

sentence to pronounce. The hair, as was the fashion of the day,

clustered in profuse curls over the forehead, but could not conceal a

slight line or wrinkle between the brows; and this line, rare in women

at any age, rare even in men at hers, gave an expression at once of

thought and sternness to the whole face. The eyebrows themselves were

straight, and not strongly marked, a shade or two perhaps too light,--a

fault still more apparent in the lashes; the eyes were large, full,

and though bright, astonishingly calm and deep,--at least in ordinary

moments; yet withal they wanted the charm of that steadfast and open

look which goes at once to the heart and invites its trust,--their

expression was rather vague and abstracted. She usually looked aslant

while she spoke, and this, which with some appears but shyness, in

one so self-collected had an air of falsehood. But when, at times, if

earnest, and bent rather on examining those she addressed than guarding

herself from penetration, she fixed those eyes upon you with sudden and

direct scrutiny, the gaze impressed you powerfully, and haunted you

with a strange spell. The eye itself was of a peculiar and displeasing

colour,--not blue, nor gray, nor black, nor hazel, but rather of that

cat-like green which is drowsy in the light, and vivid in the shade.

The profile was purely Greek, and so seen, Lucretia’s beauty seemed

incontestable; but in front face, and still more when inclined between

the two, all the features took a sharpness that, however regular, had

something chilling and severe: the mouth was small, but the lips were

thin and pale, and had an expression of effort and contraction which

added to the distrust that her sidelong glance was calculated to

inspire. The teeth were dazzlingly white, but sharp and thin, and the

eye-teeth were much longer than the rest. The complexion was pale,

but without much delicacy,--the paleness seemed not natural to it, but

rather that hue which study and late vigils give to men; so that she

wanted the freshness and bloom of youth, and looked older than she

was,--an effect confirmed by an absence of roundness in the cheek not

noticeable in the profile, but rendering the front face somewhat

harsh as well as sharp. In a word, the face and the figure were not in

harmony: the figure prevented you from pronouncing her to be masculine;

the face took from the figure the charm of feminacy. It was the head of

the young Augustus upon the form of Agrippina. One touch more, and

we close a description which already perhaps the reader may consider

frivolously minute. If you had placed before the mouth and lower part of

the face a mask or bandage, the whole character of the upper face would

have changed at once,--the eye lost its glittering falseness, the brow

its sinister contraction; you would have pronounced the face not only

beautiful, but sweet and womanly. Take that bandage suddenly away and

the change would have startled you, and startled you the more because

you could detect no sufficient defect or disproportion in the lower part

of the countenance to explain it. It was as if the mouth was the key

to the whole: the key nothing without the text, the text uncomprehended

without the key.

Such, then, was Lucretia Clavering in outward appearance at the age of

twenty,--striking to the most careless eye; interesting and perplexing

the student in that dark language never yet deciphered,--the human

countenance. The reader must have observed that the effect every face

that he remarks for the first time produces is different from the

impression it leaves upon him when habitually seen. Perhaps no two

persons differ more from each other than does the same countenance in

our earliest recollection of it from the countenance regarded in the

familiarity of repeated intercourse. And this was especially the case

with Lucretia Clavering’s: the first impulse of nearly all who beheld it

was distrust that partook of fear; it almost inspired you with a sense

of danger. The judgment rose up against it; the heart set itself on its

guard. But this uneasy sentiment soon died away, with most observers, in

admiration at the chiselled outline, which, like the Grecian

sculpture, gained the more the more it was examined, in respect for the

intellectual power of the expression, and in fascinated pleasure at the

charm of a smile, rarely employed, it is true, but the more attractive

both for that reason and for its sudden effect in giving brightness and

persuasion to an aspect that needed them so much. It was literally like

the abrupt breaking out of a sunbeam; and the repellent impression of

the face thus familiarized away, the matchless form took its natural

influence; so that while one who but saw Lucretia for a moment might

have pronounced her almost plain, and certainly not prepossessing in

appearance, those with whom she lived, those whom she sought to please,

those who saw her daily, united in acknowledgment of her beauty; and

if they still felt awe, attributed it only to the force of her

understanding.

As she now came midway up the room, Gabriel started from his seat and

ran to her caressingly. Lucretia bent down, and placed her hand upon his

fair locks. As she did so, he whispered,--

“Mr. Vernon has been watching for you.”

“Hush! Where is your father?”

“Behind the screen, at chess with Sir Miles.”

“With Sir Miles!” and Lucretia’s eye fell, with the direct gaze we have

before referred to, upon the boy’s face.

“I have been looking over them pretty often,” said he, meaningly: “they

have talked of nothing but the game.” Lucretia lifted her head, and

glanced round with her furtive eye; the boy divined the search, and

with a scarce perceptible gesture pointed her attention to Mainwaring’s

retreat. Her vivid smile passed over her lips as she bowed slightly to

her lover, and then, withdrawing the hand which Gabriel had taken in his

own, she moved on, passed Vernon with a commonplace word or two, and was

soon exchanging greetings with the gay merry-makers in the farther

part of the room. A few minutes afterwards, the servants entered, the

tea-table was removed, chairs were thrust back, a single lady of a

certain age volunteered her services at the piano, and dancing began

within the ample space which the arch fenced off from the whist-players.

Vernon had watched his opportunity, and at the first sound of the piano

had gained Lucretia’s side, and with grave politeness pre-engaged her

hand for the opening dance.

At that day, though it is not so very long ago, gentlemen were not

ashamed to dance, and to dance well; it was no languid saunter through

a quadrille; it was fair, deliberate, skilful dancing amongst the

courtly,--free, bounding movement amongst the gay.

Vernon, as might be expected, was the most admired performer of the

evening; but he was thinking very little of the notice he at last

excited, he was employing such ingenuity as his experience of life

supplied to the deficiencies of a very imperfect education, limited to

the little flogged into him at Eton, in deciphering the character and

getting at the heart of his fair partner.

“I wonder you do not make Sir Miles take you to London, my cousin, if

you will allow me to call you so. You ought to have been presented.”

“I have no wish to go to London yet.”

“Yet!” said Mr. Vernon, with the somewhat fade gallantry of his day;

“beauty even like yours has little time to spare.”

“Hands across, hands across!” cried Mr. Ardworth.

“And,” continued Mr. Vernon, as soon as a pause was permitted to him,

“there is a song which the prince sings, written by some sensible

old-fashioned fellow, which says,--

“‘Gather your rosebuds while you may, For time is still a flying.”’

“You have obeyed the moral of the song yourself, I believe, Mr. Vernon.”

“Call me cousin, or Charles,--Charley, if you like, as most of my

friends do; nobody ever calls me Mr. Vernon,--I don’t know myself by

that name.”

“Down the middle; we are all waiting for you,” shouted Ardworth.

And down the middle, with wondrous grace, glided the exquisite nankeens

of Charley Vernon.

The dance now, thanks to Ardworth, became too animated and riotous to

allow more than a few broken monosyllables till Vernon and his partner

gained the end of the set, and then, flirting his partner’s fan, he

recommenced,--

“Seriously, my cousin, you must sometimes feel very much moped here.”

“Never!” answered Lucretia. Not once yet had her eye rested on Mr.

Vernon. She felt that she was sounded.

“Yet I am sure you have a taste for the pomps and vanities. Aha! there

is ambition under those careless curls,” said Mr. Vernon, with his easy,

adorable impertinence.

Lucretia winced.

“But if I were ambitious, what field for ambition could I find in

London?”

“The same as Alexander,--empire, my cousin.”

“You forget that I am not a man. Man, indeed, may hope for an empire. It

is something to be a Pitt, or even a Warren Hastings.”

Mr. Vernon stared. Was this stupidity, or what?

“A woman has an empire more undisputed than Mr. Pitt’s, and more

pitiless than that of Governor Hastings.”

“Oh, pardon me, Mr. Vernon--”

“Charles, if you please.”

Lucretia’s brow darkened.

“Pardon me,” she repeated; “but these compliments, if such they are

meant to be, meet a very ungrateful return. A woman’s empire over gauzes

and ribbons, over tea-tables and drums, over fops and coquettes, is not

worth a journey from Laughton to London.”

“You think you can despise admiration?”

“What you mean by admiration,--yes.”

“And love too?” said Vernon, in a whisper.

Now Lucretia at once and abruptly raised her eyes to her partner. Was he

aiming at her secret? Was he hinting at intentions of his own? The look

chilled Vernon, and he turned away his head.

Suddenly, then, in pursuance of a new train of ideas, Lucretia altered

her manner to him. She had detected what before she had surmised.

This sudden familiarity on his part arose from notions her uncle had

instilled,--the visitor had been incited to become the suitor. Her

penetration into character, which from childhood had been her passionate

study, told her that on that light, polished, fearless nature scorn

would have slight effect; to meet the familiarity would be the best

means to secure a friend, to disarm a wooer. She changed then her

manner; she summoned up her extraordinary craft; she accepted the

intimacy held out to her, not to unguard herself, but to lay open her

opponent. It became necessary to her to know this man, to have such

power as the knowledge might give her. Insensibly and gradually she led

her companion away from his design of approaching her own secrets or

character, into frank talk about himself. All unconsciously he began

to lay bare to his listener the infirmities of his erring, open heart.

Silently she looked down, and plumbed them all,--the frivolity, the

recklessness, the half gay, half mournful sense of waste and ruin.

There, blooming amongst the wrecks, she saw the fairest flowers of

noble manhood profuse and fragrant still,--generosity and courage and

disregard for self. Spendthrift and gambler on one side the medal;

gentleman and soldier on the other. Beside this maimed and imperfect

nature she measured her own prepared and profound intellect, and as she

listened, her smile became more bland and frequent. She could afford to

be gracious; she felt superiority, scorn, and safety.

As this seeming intimacy had matured, Vernon and his partner had

quitted the dance, and were conversing apart in the recess of one of the

windows, which the newspaper readers had deserted, in the part of the

room where Sir Miles and Dalibard, still seated, were about to commence

their third game at chess. The baronet’s hand ceased from the task of

arranging his pawns; his eye was upon the pair; and then, after a long

and complacent gaze, it looked round without discovering the object it

sought.

“I am about to task your kindness most improperly, Monsieur Dalibard,”

said Sir Miles, with that politeness so displeasing to Ardworth, “but

will you do me the favour to move aside that fold of the screen? I wish

for a better view of our young people. Thank you very much.”

Sir Miles now discovered Mainwaring, and observed that, far from

regarding with self-betraying jealousy the apparent flirtation going

on between Lucretia and her kinsman, he was engaged in animated

conversation with the chairman of the quarter sessions. Sir Miles was

satisfied, and ranged his pawns. All this time, and indeed ever since

they had sat down to play, the Provencal had been waiting, with the

patience that belonged to his character, for some observation from Sir

Miles on the subject which, his sagacity perceived, was engrossing his

thoughts. There had been about the old gentleman a fidgety restlessness

which showed that something was on his mind. His eyes had been

frequently turned towards his niece since her entrance; once or twice

he had cleared his throat and hemmed,--his usual prelude to some

more important communication; and Dalibard had heard him muttering to

himself, and fancied he caught the name of “Mainwaring.” And indeed the

baronet had been repeatedly on the verge of sounding his secretary,

and as often had been checked both by pride in himself and pride for

Lucretia. It seemed to him beneath his own dignity and hers even to

hint to an inferior a fear, a doubt, of the heiress of Laughton. Olivier

Dalibard could easily have led on his patron, he could easily, if he

pleased it, have dropped words to instil suspicion and prompt question;

but that was not his object,--he rather shunned than courted any

reference to himself upon the matter; for he knew that Lucretia, if

she could suppose that he, however indirectly, had betrayed her to her

uncle, would at once declare his own suit to her, and so procure his

immediate dismissal; while, aware of her powers of dissimulation and her

influence over her uncle, he feared that a single word from her would

suffice to remove all suspicion in Sir Miles, however ingeniously

implanted, and however truthfully grounded. But all the while, under his

apparent calm, his mind was busy and his passions burning.

“Pshaw! your old play,--the bishop again,” said Sir Miles, laughing, as

he moved a knight to frustrate his adversary’s supposed plan; and then,

turning back, he once more contemplated the growing familiarity between

Vernon and his niece. This time he could not contain his pleasure.

“Dalibard, my dear sir,” he said, rubbing his hands, “look yonder: they

would make a handsome couple!”

“Who, sir?” said the Provencal, looking another way, with dogged

stupidity.

“Who? Damn it, man! Nay, pray forgive my ill manners, but I felt glad,

sir, and proud, sir. Who? Charley Vernon and Lucretia Clavering.”

“Assuredly, yes. Do you think that there is a chance of so happy an

event?”

“Why, it depends only on Lucretia; I shall never force her.” Here Sir

Miles stopped, for Gabriel, unperceived before, picked up his patron’s

pocket-handkerchief.

Olivier Dalibard’s gray eyes rested coldly on his son. “You are not

dancing to-night, my boy. Go; I like to see you amused.”

The boy obeyed at once, as he always did, the paternal commands. He

found a partner, and joined a dance just begun; and in the midst of the

dance, Honore Gabriel Varney seemed a new being,--not Ardworth himself

so thoroughly entered into the enjoyment of the exercise, the lights,

the music. With brilliant eyes and dilated nostrils, he seemed

prematurely to feel all that is exciting and voluptuous in that

exhilaration which to childhood is usually so innocent. His glances

followed the fairest form; his clasp lingered in the softest hand; his

voice trembled as the warm breath of his partner came on his cheeks.

Meanwhile the conversation between the chess-players continued.

“Yes,” said the baronet, “it depends only on Lucretia. And she seems

pleased with Vernon: who would not be?”

“Your penetration rarely deceives you, sir. I own I think with you. Does

Mr. Vernon know that you would permit the alliance?”

“Yes; but--” the baronet stopped short.

“You were saying, but--But what, Sir Miles?”

“Why, the dog affected diffidence; he had some fear lest he should not

win her affections. But luckily, at least, they are disengaged.”

Dalibard looked grave, and his eye, as if involuntarily, glanced towards

Mainwaring. As ill-luck would have it, the young man had then ceased his

conversation with the chairman of the quarter sessions, and with arms

folded, brow contracted, and looks, earnest, anxious, and intent, was

contemplating the whispered conference between Lucretia and Vernon.

Sir Miles’s eye had followed his secretary’s, and his face changed. His

hand fell on the chess board and upset half the men; he uttered a very

audible “Zounds!”

“I think, Sir Miles,” said the Provencal, rising, as if conscious that

Sir Miles wished to play no more,--“I think that if you spoke soon to

Miss Clavering as to your views with regard to Mr. Vernon, it might

ripen matters; for I have heard it said by French mothers--and our

Frenchwomen understand the female heart, sir--that a girl having no

other affection is often prepossessed at once in favour of a man whom

she knows beforehand is prepared to woo and to win her, whereas without

that knowledge he would have seemed but an ordinary acquaintance.”

“It is shrewdly said, my dear Monsieur Dalibard; and for more reasons

than one, the sooner I speak to her the better. Lend me your arm. It is

time for supper; I see the dance is over.”

Passing by the place where Mainwaring still leaned, the baronet looked

at him fixedly. The young man did not notice the gaze. Sir Miles touched

him gently. He started as from a revery.

“You have not danced, Mr. Mainwaring.”

“I dance so seldom, Sir Miles,” said Mainwaring, colouring.

“Ah! you employ your head more than your heels, young gentleman,--very

right; I must speak to you to-morrow. Well, ladies, I hope you have

enjoyed yourselves? My dear Mrs. Vesey, you and I are old friends, you

know; many a minuet we have danced together, eh? We can’t dance now,

but we can walk arm-in-arm together still. Honour me. And your little

grandson--vaccinated, eh? Wonderful invention! To supper, ladies, to

supper!”

The company were gone. The lights were out,--all save the lights of

heaven; and they came bright and still through the casements. Moonbeam

and Starbeam, they seemed now to have the old house to themselves. In

came the rays, brighter and longer and bolder, like fairies that march,

rank upon rank, into their kingdom of solitude. Down the oak stairs,

from the casements, blazoned with heraldry, moved the rays, creepingly,

fearfully. On the armour in the hall clustered the rays boldly and

brightly, till the steel shone out like a mirror. In the library, long

and low, they just entered, stopped short: it was no place for their

play. In the drawing-room, now deserted, they were more curious and

adventurous. Through the large window, still open, they came in freely

and archly, as if to spy what had caused such disorder; the stiff chairs

out of place, the smooth floor despoiled of its carpet, that flower

dropped on the ground, that scarf forgotten on the table,--the rays

lingered upon them all. Up and down through the house, from the base to

the roof, roved the children of the air, and found but two spirits awake

amidst the slumber of the rest.

In that tower to the east, in the tapestry chamber with the large gilded

bed in the recess, came the rays, tamed and wan, as if scared by the

grosser light on the table. By that table sat a girl, her brow leaning

on one hand; in the other she held a rose,--it is a love-token:

exchanged with its sister rose, by stealth, in mute sign of reproach for

doubt excited,--an assurance and a reconciliation. A love-token!--shrink

not, ye rays; there is something akin to you in love. But see,--the hand

closes convulsively on the flower; it hides it not in the breast; it

lifts it not to the lip: it throws it passionately aside. “How long!”

muttered the girl, impetuously,--“how long! And to think that will here

cannot shorten an hour!” Then she rose, and walked to and fro, and each

time she gained a certain niche in the chamber she paused, and then

irresolutely passed on again. What is in that niche? Only books. What

can books teach thee, pale girl? The step treads firmer; this time

it halts more resolved. The hand that clasped the flower takes down a

volume. The girl sits again before the light. See, O rays! what is the

volume? Moon and Starbeam, ye love what lovers read by the lamp in the

loneliness. No love-ditty this; no yet holier lesson to patience, and

moral to hope. What hast thou, young girl, strong in health and rich in

years, with the lore of the leech,--with prognostics and symptoms and

diseases? She is tracing with hard eyes the signs that precede the grim

enemy in his most sudden approach,--the habits that invite him, the

warnings that he gives. He whose wealth shall make her free has twice

had the visiting shock; he starves not, he lives frae! She closes the

volume, and, musing, metes him out the hours and days he has to live.

Shrink back, ye rays! The love is disenhallowed; while the hand was on

the rose, the thought was on the charnel.

Yonder, in the opposite tower, in the small casement near the roof, came

the rays. Childhood is asleep. Moon and Starbeam, ye love the slumbers

of the child! The door opens, a dark figure steals noiselessly in. The

father comes to look on the sleep of his son. Holy tenderness, if this

be all! “Gabriel, wake!” said a low, stern voice, and a rough hand shook

the sleeper.

The sharpest test of those nerves upon which depends the mere animal

courage is to be roused suddenly, in the depth of night, by a violent

hand. The impulse of Gabriel, thus startled, was neither of timidity

nor surprise. It was that of some Spartan boy not new to danger; with a

slight cry and a fierce spring, the son’s hand clutched at the father’s

throat. Dalibard shook him off with an effort, and a smile, half in

approval, half in irony, played by the moonlight over his lips.

“Blood will out, young tiger,” said he. “Hush, and hear me!”

“Is it you, Father?” said Gabriel. “I thought, I dreamed--”

“No matter; think, dream always that man should be prepared for defence

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.

CHAPTER III. CONFERENCES.

The next day Sir Miles did not appear at breakfast,--not that he was

unwell, but that he meditated holding certain audiences, and on such

occasions the good old gentleman liked to prepare himself. He belonged

to a school in which, amidst much that was hearty and convivial, there

was much also that nowadays would seem stiff and formal, contrasting the

other school immediately succeeding him, which Mr. Vernon represented,

and of which the Charles Surface of Sheridan is a faithful and admirable

type. The room that Sir Miles appropriated to himself was, properly

speaking, the state apartment, called, in the old inventories, “King

James’s chamber;” it was on the first floor, communicating with the

picture-gallery, which at the farther end opened upon a corridor

admitting to the principal bedrooms. As Sir Miles cared nothing for

holiday state, he had unscrupulously taken his cubiculum in this

chamber, which was really the handsomest in the house, except the

banquet-hall, placed his bed in one angle with a huge screen before it,

filled up the space with his Italian antiquities and curiosities; and

fixed his favourite pictures on the faded gilt leather panelled on the

walls. His main motive in this was the communication with the adjoining

gallery, which, when the weather was unfavourable, furnished ample

room for his habitual walk. He knew how many strides by the help of his

crutch made a mile, and this was convenient. Moreover, he liked to

look, when alone, on those old portraits of his ancestors, which he

had religiously conserved in their places, preferring to thrust his

Florentine and Venetian masterpieces into bedrooms and parlours,

rather than to dislodge from the gallery the stiff ruffs, doublets, and

farthingales of his predecessors. It was whispered in the house that

the baronet, whenever he had to reprove a tenant or lecture a dependant,

took care to have him brought to his sanctum, through the full length of

this gallery, so that the victim might be duly prepared and awed by the

imposing effect of so stately a journey, and the grave faces of all the

generations of St. John, which could not fail to impress him with the

dignity of the family, and alarm him at the prospect of the injured

frown of its representative. Across this gallery now, following the

steps of the powdered valet, strode young Ardworth, staring now and then

at some portrait more than usually grim, more often wondering why his

boots, that never creaked before, should creak on those particular

boards, and feeling a quiet curiosity, without the least mixture of fear

or awe as to what old Squaretoes intended to say to him. But all feeling

of irreverence ceased when, shown into the baronet’s room, and the door

closed, Sir Miles rose with a smile, and cordially shaking his hand,

said, dropping the punctilious courtesy of Mister: “Ardworth, sir, if I

had a little prejudice against you before you came, you have conquered

it. You are a fine, manly, spirited fellow, sir; and you have an old

man’s good wishes,--which are no bad beginning to a young man’s good

fortune.”

The colour rushed over Ardworth’s forehead, and a tear sprang to his

eyes. He felt a rising at his throat as he stammered out some not very

audible reply.

“I wished to see you, young gentleman, that I might judge myself what

you would like best, and what would best fit you. Your father is in the

army: what say you to a pair of colours?”

“Oh, Sir Miles, that is my utmost ambition! Anything but law, except the

Church; anything but the Church, except the desk and a counter!”

The baronet, much pleased, gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Ha,

ha! we gentlemen, you see (for the Ardworths are very well born, very),

we gentlemen understand each other! Between you and me, I never liked

the law, never thought a man of birth should belong to it. Take money

for lying,--shabby, shocking! Don’t let that go any farther! The

Church-Mother Church--I honour her! Church and State go together! But

one ought to be very good to preach to others,--better than you and I

are, eh? ha, ha! Well, then, you like the army,--there’s a letter for

you to the Horse Guards. Go up to town; your business is done. And, as

for your outfit,--read this little book at your leisure.” And Sir Miles

thrust a pocketbook into Ardworth’s hand.

“But pardon me,” said the young man, much bewildered. “What claim have

I, Sir Miles, to such generosity? I know that my uncle offended you.”

“Sir, that’s the claim!” said Sir Miles, gravely. “I cannot live long,”

he added, with a touch of melancholy in his voice; “let me die in peace

with all! Perhaps I injured your uncle,--who knows but, if so, he hears

and pardons me now?”

“Oh, Sir Miles!” exclaimed the thoughtless, generous-hearted young man;

“and my little playfellow, Susan, your own niece!”

Sir Miles drew back haughtily; but the burst that offended him rose

so evidently from the heart, was so excusable from its motive and the

youth’s ignorance of the world, that his frown soon vanished as he said,

calmly and gravely,--

“No man, my good sir, can allow to others the right to touch on his

family affairs; I trust I shall be just to the poor young lady. And so,

if we never meet again, let us think well of each other. Go, my boy;

serve your king and your country!”

“I will do my best, Sir Miles, if only to merit your kindness.”

“Stay a moment: you are intimate, I find, with young Mainwaring?”

“An old college friendship, Sir Miles.”

“The army will not do for him, eh?”

“He is too clever for it, sir.”

“Ah, he’d make a lawyer, I suppose,--glib tongue enough, and can talk

well; and lie, if he’s paid for it?”

“I don’t know how lawyers regard those matters, Sir Miles; but if you

don’t make him a lawyer, I am sure you must leave him an honest man.”

“Really and truly--”

“Upon my honour I think so.”

“Good-day to you, and good luck. You must catch the coach at the lodge;

for I see by the papers that, in spite of all the talk about peace, they

are raising regiments like wildfire.”

With very different feelings from those with which he had entered the

room, Ardworth quitted it. He hurried into his own chamber to thrust

his clothes into his portmanteau, and while thus employed, Mainwaring

entered.

“Joy, my dear fellow, wish me joy! I am going to town,--into the army;

abroad; to be shot at, thank Heaven! That dear old gentleman! Just throw

me that coat, will you?”

A very few more words sufficed to explain what had passed to Mainwaring.

He sighed when his friend had finished: “I wish I were going with you!”

“Do you? Sir Miles has only got to write another letter to the Horse

Guards. But no, you are meant to be something better than food for

powder; and, besides, your Lucretia! Hang it, I am sorry I cannot stay

to examine her as I had promised; but I have seen enough to know that

she certainly loves you. Ah, when she changed flowers with you, you did

not think I saw you,--sly, was not I? Pshaw! She was only playing with

Vernon. But still, do you know, Will, now that Sir Miles has spoken to

me so, that I could have sobbed, ‘God bless you, my old boy!’ ‘pon

my life, I could! Now, do you know that I feel enraged with you for

abetting that girl to deceive him?”

“I am enraged with myself; and--”

Here a servant entered, and informed Mainwaring that he had been

searching for him; Sir Miles requested to see him in his room.

Mainwaring started like a culprit.

“Never fear,” whispered Ardworth; “he has no suspicion of you, I’m

sure. Shake hands. When shall we meet again? Is it not odd, I, who am

a republican by theory, taking King George’s pay to fight against the

French? No use stopping now to moralize on such contradictions. John,

Tom,--what’s your name?--here, my man, here, throw that portmanteau

on your shoulder and come to the lodge.” And so, full of health, hope,

vivacity, and spirit, John Walter Ardworth departed on his career.

Meanwhile Mainwaring slowly took his way to Sir Miles. As he approached

the gallery, he met Lucretia, who was coming from her own room. “Sir

Miles has sent for me,” he said meaningly. He had time for no more, for

the valet was at the door of the gallery, waiting to usher him to his

host. “Ha! you will say not a word that can betray us; guard your

looks too!” whispered Lucretia, hurriedly; “afterwards, join me by the

cedars.” She passed on towards the staircase, and glanced at the large

clock that was placed there. “Past eleven! Vernon is never up before

twelve. I must see him before my uncle sends for me, as he will send

if he suspects--” She paused, went back to her room, rang for her maid,

dressed as for walking, and said carelessly, “If Sir Miles wants me,

I am gone to the rectory, and shall probably return by the village, so

that I shall be back about one.” Towards the rectory, indeed, Lucretia

bent her way; but half-way there, turned back, and passing through the

plantation at the rear of the house, awaited Mainwaring on the bench

beneath the cedars. He was not long before he joined her. His face was

sad and thoughtful; and when he seated himself by her side, it was with

a weariness of spirit that alarmed her.

“Well,” said she, fearfully, and she placed her hand on his.

“Oh, Lucretia,” he exclaimed, as he pressed that hand with an emotion

that came from other passions than love, “we, or rather I, have done

great wrong. I have been leading you to betray your uncle’s trust, to

convert your gratitude to him into hypocrisy. I have been unworthy of

myself. I am poor, I am humbly born, but till I came here, I was rich

and proud in honour. I am not so now. Lucretia, pardon me, pardon me!

Let the dream be over; we must not sin thus; for it is sin, and the

worst of sin,--treachery. We must part: forget me!”

“Forget you! Never, never, never!” cried Lucretia, with suppressed but

most earnest vehemence, her breast heaving, her hands, as he dropped the

one he held, clasped together, her eyes full of tears,--transformed at

once into softness, meekness, even while racked by passion and despair.

“Oh, William, say anything,--reproach, chide, despise me, for mine is

all the fault; say anything but that word ‘part.’ I have chosen you, I

have sought you out, I have wooed you, if you will; be it so. I cling

to you, you are my all,--all that saves me from--from myself,” she added

falteringly, and in a hollow voice. “Your love--you know not what it is

to me! I scarcely knew it myself before. I feel what it is now, when you

say ‘part.’”

Agitated and tortured, Mainwaring writhed at these burning words, bent

his face low, and covered it with his hands.

He felt her clasp struggling to withdraw them, yielded, and saw her

kneeling at his feet. His manhood and his gratitude and his heart all

moved by that sight in one so haughty, he opened his arms, and she fell

on his breast. “You will never say ‘part’ again, William!” she gasped

convulsively.

“But what are we to do?”

“Say, first, what has passed between you and my uncle.”

“Little to relate; for I can repeat words, not tones and looks.

Sir Miles spoke to me, at first kindly and encouragingly, about my

prospects, said it was time that I should fix myself, added a few

words, with menacing emphasis, against what he called ‘idle dreams and

desultory ambition,’ and observing that I changed countenance,--for I

felt that I did,--his manner became more cold and severe. Lucretia,

if he has not detected our secret, he more than suspects my--my

presumption. Finally, he said dryly, that I had better return home,

consult with my father, and that if I preferred entering into the

service of the Government to any mercantile profession, he thought

he had sufficient interest to promote my views. But, clearly and

distinctly, he left on my mind one impression,--that my visits here are

over.”

“Did he allude to me--to Mr. Vernon?”

“Ah, Lucretia! do you know him so little,--his delicacy, his pride?”

Lucretia was silent, and Mainwaring continued:--

“I felt that I was dismissed. I took my leave of your uncle; I came

hither with the intention to say farewell forever.”

“Hush! hush! that thought is over. And you return to your

father’s,--perhaps better so: it is but hope deferred; and in your

absence I can the more easily allay all suspicion, if suspicion exist.

But I must write to you; we must correspond. William, dear William,

write often,--write kindly; tell me, in every letter, that you love

me,--that you love only me; that you will be patient, and confide.”

“Dear Lucretia,” said Mainwaring, tenderly, and moved by the pathos

of her earnest and imploring voice, “but you forget: the bag is always

brought first to Sir Miles; he will recognize my hand. And to whom can

you trust your own letters?”

“True,” replied Lucretia, despondingly; and there was a pause. Suddenly

she lifted her head, and cried: “But your father’s house is not far from

this,--not ten miles; we can find a spot at the remote end of the park,

near the path through the great wood: there I can leave my letters;

there I can find yours.”

“But it must be seldom. If any of Sir Miles’s servants see me, if--”

“Oh, William, William, this is not the language of love!”

“Forgive me,--I think of you!”

“Love thinks of nothing but itself; it is tyrannical, absorbing,--it

forgets even the object loved; it feeds on danger; it strengthens by

obstacles,” said Lucretia, tossing her hair from her forehead, and with

an expression of dark and wild power on her brow and in her eyes. “Fear

not for me; I am sufficient guard upon myself. Even while I speak, I

think,--yes, I have thought of the very spot. You remember that hollow

oak at the bottom of the dell, in which Guy St. John, the Cavalier, is

said to have hid himself from Fairfax’s soldiers? Every Monday I will

leave a letter in that hollow; every Tuesday you can search for it, and

leave your own. This is but once a week; there is no risk here.”

Mainwaring’s conscience still smote him, but he had not the strength to

resist the energy of Lucretia. The force of her character seized upon

the weak part of his own,--its gentleness, its fear of inflicting

pain, its reluctance to say “No,”--that simple cause of misery to the

over-timid. A few sentences more, full of courage, confidence, and

passion, on the part of the woman, of constraint and yet of soothed and

grateful affection on that of the man, and the affianced parted.

Mainwaring had already given orders to have his trunks sent to him at

his father’s; and, a hardy pedestrian by habit, he now struck across the

park, passed the dell and the hollow tree, commonly called “Guy’s Oak,”

and across woodland and fields golden with ripening corn, took his way

to the town, in the centre of which, square, solid, and imposing,

stood the respectable residence of his bustling, active, electioneering

father.

Lucretia’s eye followed a form as fair as ever captivated maiden’s

glance, till it was out of sight; and then, as she emerged from the

shade of the cedars into the more open space of the garden, her usual

thoughtful composure was restored to her steadfast countenance. On the

terrace, she caught sight of Vernon, who had just quitted his own room,

where he always breakfasted alone, and who was now languidly stretched

on a bench, and basking in the sun. Like all who have abused life,

Vernon was not the same man in the early part of the day. The spirits

that rose to temperate heat the third hour after noon, and expanded into

glow when the lights shone over gay carousers, at morning were flat and

exhausted. With hollow eyes and that weary fall of the muscles of the

cheeks which betrays the votary of Bacchus,--the convivial three-bottle

man,--Charley Vernon forced a smile, meant to be airy and impertinent,

to his pale lips, as he rose with effort, and extended three fingers to

his cousin.

“Where have you been hiding? Catching bloom from the roses? You have the

prettiest shade of colour,--just enough; not a hue too much. And there

is Sir Miles’s valet gone to the rectory, and the fat footman puffing

away towards the village, and I, like a faithful warden, from my post at

the castle, all looking out for the truant.”

“But who wants me, cousin?” said Lucretia, with the full blaze of her

rare and captivating smile.

“The knight of Laughton confessedly wants thee, O damsel! The knight of

the Bleeding Heart may want thee more,--dare he own it?”

And with a hand that trembled a little, not with love, at least, it

trembled always a little before the Madeira at luncheon,--he lifted hers

to his lips.

“Compliments again,--words, idle words!” said Lucretia, looking down

bashfully.

“How can I convince thee of my sincerity, unless thou takest my life as

its pledge, maid of Laughton?”

And very much tired of standing, Charley Vernon drew her gently to

the bench and seated himself by her side. Lucretia’s eyes were still

downcast, and she remained silent; Vernon, suppressing a yawn, felt

that he was bound to continue. There was nothing very formidable in

Lucretia’s manner.

“‘Fore Gad!” thought he, “I suppose I must take the heiress after all;

the sooner ‘t is over, the sooner I can get back to Brook Street.”

“It is premature, my fair cousin,” said he, aloud,--“premature, after

less than a week’s visit, and only some fourteen or fifteen hours’

permitted friendship and intimacy, to say what is uppermost in my

thoughts; but we spendthrifts are provokingly handsome! Sir Miles, your

good uncle, is pleased to forgive all my follies and faults upon one

condition,--that you will take on yourself the task to reform me. Will

you, my fair cousin? Such as I am, you behold me. I am no sinner in the

disguise of a saint. My fortune is spent, my health is not strong; but

a young widow’s is no mournful position. I am gay when I am well,

good-tempered when ailing. I never betrayed a trust,--can you trust me

with yourself?”

This was a long speech, and Charley Vernon felt pleased that it was

over. There was much in it that would have touched a heart even closed

to him, and a little genuine emotion had given light to his eyes, and

color to his cheek. Amidst all the ravages of dissipation, there was

something interesting in his countenance, and manly in his tone and

his gesture. But Lucretia was only sensible to one part of his

confession,--her uncle consented to his suit. This was all of which

she desired to be assured, and against this she now sought to screen

herself.

“Your candour, Mr. Vernon,” she said, avoiding his eye, “deserves

candour in me; I cannot affect to misunderstand you. But you take me by

surprise; I was so unprepared for this. Give me time,--I must reflect.”

“Reflection is dull work in the country; you can reflect more amusingly

in town, my fair cousin.”

“I will wait, then, till I find myself in town.”

“Ah, you make me the happiest, the most grateful of men,” cried

Mr. Vernon, rising, with a semi-genuflection which seemed to imply,

“Consider yourself knelt to,”--just as a courteous assailer, with a

motion of the hand, implies, “Consider yourself horsewhipped.”

Lucretia, who, with all her intellect, had no capacity for humour,

recoiled, and looked up in positive surprise.

“I do not understand you, Mr. Vernon,” she said, with austere gravity.

“Allow me the bliss of flattering myself that you, at least, are

understood,” replied Charley Vernon, with imperturbable assurance. “You

will wait to reflect till you are in town,--that is to say, the day

after our honeymoon, when you awake in Mayfair.”

Before Lucretia could reply, she saw the indefatigable valet formally

approaching, with the anticipated message that Sir Miles requested to

see her. She replied hurriedly to this last, that she would be with her

uncle immediately; and when he had again disappeared within the porch,

she said, with a constrained effort at frankness,--

“Mr. Vernon, if I have misunderstood your words, I think I do not

mistake your character. You cannot wish to take advantage of my

affection for my uncle, and the passive obedience I owe to him, to

force me into a step of which--of which--I have not yet sufficiently

considered the results. If you really desire that my feelings should be

consulted, that I should not--pardon me--consider myself sacrificed to

the family pride of my guardian and the interests of my suitor--”

“Madam!” exclaimed Vernon, reddening.

Pleased with the irritating effect her words had produced, Lucretia

continued calmly, “If, in a word, I am to be a free agent in a choice

on which my happiness depends, forbear to urge Sir Miles further at

present; forbear to press your suit upon me. Give me the delay of a few

months; I shall know how to appreciate your delicacy.”

“Miss Clavering,” answered Vernon, with a touch of the St. John

haughtiness, “I am in despair that you should even think so grave an

appeal to my honour necessary. I am well aware of your expectations and

my poverty. And, believe me, I would rather rot in a prison than enrich

myself by forcing your inclinations. You have but to say the word, and

I will (as becomes me as a man and gentleman) screen you from all chance

of Sir Miles’s displeasure, by taking it on myself to decline an honour

of which I feel, indeed, very undeserving.”

“But I have offended you,” said Lucretia, softly, while she turned aside

to conceal the glad light of her eyes,--“pardon me; and to prove that

you do so, give me your arm to my uncle’s room.”

Vernon, with rather more of Sir Miles’s antiquated stiffness than his

own rakish ease, offered his arm, with a profound reverence, to his

cousin, and they took their way to the house. Not till they had passed

up the stairs, and were even in the gallery, did further words pass

between them. Then Vernon said,--

“But what is your wish, Miss Clavering? On what footing shall I remain

here?”

“Will you suffer me to dictate?” replied Lucretia, stopping short with

well-feigned confusion, as if suddenly aware that the right to dictate

gives the right to hope.

“Ah, consider me at least your slave!” whispered Vernon, as, his

eye resting on the contour of that matchless neck, partially and

advantageously turned from him, he began, with his constitutional

admiration of the sex, to feel interested in a pursuit that now seemed,

after piquing, to flatter his self-love.

“Then I will use the privilege when we meet again,” answered Lucretia;

and drawing her arm gently from his, she passed on to her uncle, leaving

Vernon midway in the gallery.

Those faded portraits looked down on her with that melancholy gloom

which the effigies of our dead ancestors seem mysteriously to acquire.

To noble and aspiring spirits, no homily to truth and honour and fair

ambition is more eloquent than the mute and melancholy canvas from which

our fathers, made, by death, our household gods, contemplate us still.

They appear to confide to us the charge of their unblemished names. They

speak to us from the grave, and heard aright, the pride of family is the

guardian angel of its heirs. But Lucretia, with her hard and scholastic

mind, despised as the veriest weakness all the poetry that belongs

to the sense of a pure descent. It was because she was proud as the

proudest in herself that she had nothing but contempt for the virtue,

the valour, or the wisdom of those that had gone before. So, with a

brain busy with guile and stratagem, she trod on, beneath the eyes of

the simple and spotless Dead.

Vernon, thus left alone, mused a few moments on what had passed between

himself and the heiress; and then, slowly retracing his steps, his eye

roved along the stately series of his line. “Faith!” he muttered, “if

my boyhood had been passed in this old gallery, his Royal Highness would

have lost a good fellow and hard drinker, and his Majesty would have had

perhaps a more distinguished soldier,--certainly a worthier subject. If

I marry this lady, and we are blessed with a son, he shall walk through

this gallery once a day before he is flogged into Latin!”

Lucretia’s interview with her uncle was a masterpiece of art. What pity

that such craft and subtlety were wasted in our little day, and on such

petty objects; under the Medici, that spirit had gone far to the shaping

of history. Sure, from her uncle’s openness, that he would plunge at

once into the subject for which she deemed she was summoned, she evinced

no repugnance when, tenderly kissing her, he asked if Charles Vernon had

a chance of winning favour in her eyes. She knew that she was safe in

saying “No;” that her uncle would never force her inclinations,--safe

so far as Vernon was concerned; but she desired more: she desired

thoroughly to quench all suspicion that her heart was pre-occupied;

entirely to remove from Sir Miles’s thoughts the image of Mainwaring;

and a denial of one suitor might quicken the baronet’s eyes to the

concealment of the other. Nor was this all; if Sir Miles was seriously

bent upon seeing her settled in marriage before his death, the dismissal

of Vernon might only expose her to the importunity of new candidates

more difficult to deal with. Vernon himself she could use as the shield

against the arrows of a host. Therefore, when Sir Miles repeated his

question, she answered, with much gentleness and seeming modest sense,

that Mr. Vernon had much that must prepossess in his favour; that in

addition to his own advantages he had one, the highest in her eyes,--her

uncle’s sanction and approval. But--and she hesitated with becoming and

natural diffidence--were not his habits unfixed and roving? So it was

said; she knew not herself,--she would trust her happiness to her uncle.

But if so, and if Mr. Vernon were really disposed to change, would it

not be prudent to try him,--try him where there was temptation, not in

the repose of Laughton, but amidst his own haunts of London? Sir Miles

had friends who would honestly inform him of the result. She did but

suggest this; she was too ready to leave all to her dear guardian’s

acuteness and experience.

Melted by her docility, and in high approval of the prudence which

betokened a more rational judgment than he himself had evinced, the

good old man clasped her to his breast and shed tears as he praised and

thanked her. She had decided, as she always did, for the best; Heaven

forbid that she should be wasted on an incorrigible man of pleasure!

“And,” said the frank-hearted gentleman, unable long to keep any thought

concealed,--“and to think that I could have wronged you for a moment, my

own noble child; that I could have been dolt enough to suppose that

the good looks of that boy Mainwaring might have caused you to forget

what--But you change colour!”--for, with all her dissimulation, Lucretia

loved too ardently not to shrink at that name thus suddenly pronounced.

“Oh,” continued the baronet, drawing her still nearer towards him, while

with one hand he put back her face, that he might read its expression

the more closely,--“oh, if it had been so,--if it be so, I will pity,

not blame you, for my neglect was the fault: pity you, for I have known

a similar struggle; admire you in pity, for you have the spirit of your

ancestors, and you will conquer the weakness. Speak! have I touched on

the truth? Speak without fear, child,--you have no mother; but in age a

man sometimes gets a mother’s heart.”

Startled and alarmed as the lark when the step nears its nest, Lucretia

summoned all the dark wile of her nature to mislead the intruder. “No,

uncle, no; I am not so unworthy. You misconceived my emotion.”

“Ah, you know that he has had the presumption to love you,--the

puppy!--and you feel the compassion you women always feel for such

offenders? Is that it?”

Rapidly Lucretia considered if it would be wise to leave that impression

on his mind. On one hand, it might account for a moment’s agitation; and

if Mainwaring were detected hovering near the domain, in the exchange of

their correspondence, it might appear but the idle, if hopeless, romance

of youth, which haunts the mere home of its object,--but no; on

the other hand, it left his banishment absolute and confirmed. Her

resolution was taken with a promptitude that made her pause not

perceptible.

“No, my dear uncle,” she said, so cheerfully that it removed all doubt

from the mind of her listener; “but M. Dalibard has rallied me on the

subject, and I was so angry with him that when you touched on it, I

thought more of my quarrel with him than of poor timid Mr. Mainwaring

himself. Come, now, own it, dear sir! M. Dalibard has instilled this

strange fancy into your head?”

“No, ‘S life; if he had taken such a liberty, I should have lost my

librarian. No, I assure you, it was rather Vernon; you know true love is

jealous.”

“Vernon!” thought Lucretia; “he must go, and at once.” Sliding from her

uncle’s arms to the stool at his feet, she then led the conversation

more familiarly back into the channel it had lost; and when at last

she escaped, it was with the understanding that, without promise or

compromise, Mr. Vernon should return to London at once, and be put upon

the ordeal through which she felt assured it was little likely he should

pass with success.

CHAPTER IV. GUY’S OAK.

Three weeks afterwards, the life at Laughton seemed restored to the

cheerful and somewhat monotonous tranquillity of its course, before

chafed and disturbed by the recent interruptions to the stream. Vernon

had departed, satisfied with the justice of the trial imposed on him,

and far too high-spirited to seek to extort from niece or uncle any

engagement beyond that which, to a nice sense of honour, the trial

itself imposed. His memory and his heart were still faithful to Mary;

but his senses, his fancy, his vanity, were a little involved in his

success with the heiress. Though so free from all mercenary meanness,

Mr. Vernon was still enough man of the world to be sensible of the

advantages of the alliance which had first been pressed on him by Sir

Miles, and from which Lucretia herself appeared not to be averse. The

season of London was over, but there was always a set, and that set the

one in which Charley Vernon principally moved, who found town fuller

than the country. Besides, he went occasionally to Brighton, which was

then to England what Baiae was to Rome. The prince was holding gay court

at the Pavilion, and that was the atmosphere which Vernon was habituated

to breathe. He was no parasite of royalty; he had that strong personal

affection to the prince which it is often the good fortune of royalty to

attract. Nothing is less founded than the complaint which poets put into

the lips of princes, that they have no friends,--it is, at least, their

own perverse fault if that be the case; a little amiability, a little of

frank kindness, goes so far when it emanates from the rays of a crown.

But Vernon was stronger than Lucretia deemed him; once contemplating the

prospect of a union which was to consign to his charge the happiness of

another, and feeling all that he should owe in such a marriage to the

confidence both of niece and uncle, he evinced steadier principles than

he had ever made manifest when he had only his own fortune to mar, and

his own happiness to trifle with. He joined his old companions, but he

kept aloof from their more dissipated pursuits. Beyond what was then

thought the venial error of too devout libations to Bacchus, Charley

Vernon seemed reformed.

Ardworth had joined a regiment which had departed for the field of

action. Mainwaring was still with his father, and had not yet announced

to Sir Miles any wish or project for the future.

Olivier Dalibard, as before, passed his mornings alone in his

chamber,--his noons and his evenings with Sir Miles. He avoided all

private conferences with Lucretia. She did not provoke them. Young

Gabriel amused himself in copying Sir Miles’s pictures, sketching from

Nature, scribbling in his room prose or verse, no matter which (he never

showed his lucubrations), pinching the dogs when he could catch them

alone, shooting the cats, if they appeared in the plantation, on

pretence of love for the young pheasants, sauntering into the cottages,

where he was a favourite because of his good looks, but where he always

contrived to leave the trace of his visits in disorder and mischief,

upsetting the tea-kettle and scalding the children, or, what he loved

dearly, setting two gossips by the ears. But these occupations were over

by the hour Lucretia left her apartment. From that time he never left

her out of view; and when encouraged to join her at his usual privileged

times, whether in the gardens at sunset or in her evening niche in

the drawing-room, he was sleek, silken, and caressing as Cupid, after

plaguing the Nymphs, at the feet of Psyche. These two strange persons

had indeed apparently that sort of sentimental familiarity which is

sometimes seen between a fair boy and a girl much older than himself;

but the attraction that drew them together was an indefinable instinct

of their similarity in many traits of their several characters,--the

whelp leopard sported fearlessly around the she-panther. Before

Olivier’s midnight conference with his son, Gabriel had drawn close and

closer to Lucretia, as an ally against his father; for that father he

cherished feelings which, beneath the most docile obedience, concealed

horror and hate, and something of the ferocity of revenge. And if young

Varney loved any one on earth except himself, it was Lucretia Clavering.

She had administered to his ruling passions, which were for effect

and display; she had devised the dress which set off to the utmost his

exterior, and gave it that picturesque and artistic appearance which he

had sighed for in his study of the portraits of Titian and Vandyke. She

supplied him (for in money she was generous) with enough to gratify and

forestall every boyish caprice; and this liberality now turned against

her, for it had increased into a settled vice his natural taste for

extravagance, and made all other considerations subordinate to that

of feeding his cupidity. She praised his drawings, which, though

self-taught, were indeed extraordinary, predicted his fame as an

artist, lifted him into consequence amongst the guests by her notice and

eulogies, and what, perhaps, won him more than all, he felt that it

was to her--to Dalibard’s desire to conceal before her his more cruel

propensities--that he owed his father’s change from the most refined

severity to the most paternal gentleness.

And thus he had repaid her, as she expected, by a devotion which she

trusted to employ against her tutor himself, should the baffled aspirant

become the scheming rival and the secret foe. But now,--thoroughly aware

of the gravity of his father’s objects, seeing before him the chance

of a settled establishment at Laughton, a positive and influential

connection with Lucretia; and on the other hand a return to the poverty

he recalled with disgust, and the terrors of his father’s solitary

malice and revenge,--he entered fully into Dalibard’s sombre plans,

and without scruple or remorse, would have abetted any harm to his

benefactress. Thus craft, doomed to have accomplices in craft,

resembles the spider, whose web, spread indeed for the fly, attracts the

fellow-spider that shall thrust it forth, and profit by the meshes it

has woven for a victim, to surrender to a master.

Already young Varney, set quietly and ceaselessly to spy every movement

of Lucretia’s, had reported to his father two visits to the most retired

part of the park; but he had not yet ventured near enough to discover

the exact spot, and his very watch on Lucretia had prevented

the detection of Mainwaring himself in his stealthy exchange of

correspondence. Dalibard bade him continue his watch, without hinting at

his ulterior intentions, for, indeed, in these he was not decided. Even

should he discover any communication between Lucretia and Mainwaring,

how reveal it to Sir Miles without forever precluding himself from the

chance of profiting by the betrayal? Could Lucretia ever forgive the

injury, and could she fail to detect the hand that inflicted it? His

only hope was in the removal of Mainwaring from his path by other

agencies than his own, and (by an appearance of generosity and

self-abandonment, in keeping her secret and submitting to his fate) he

trusted to regain the confidence she now withheld from him, and use it

to his advantage when the time came to defend himself from Vernon. For

he had learned from Sir Miles the passive understanding with respect

to that candidate for her hand; and he felt assured that had Mainwaring

never existed, could he cease to exist for her hopes, Lucretia, despite

her dissimulation, would succumb to one she feared but respected, rather

than one she evidently trifled with and despised.

“But the course to be taken must be adopted after the evidence is

collected,” thought the subtle schemer, and he tranquilly continued his

chess with the baronet.

Before, however, Gabriel could make any further discoveries, an event

occurred which excited very different emotions amongst those it more

immediately interested.

Sir Miles had, during the last twelve months, been visited by two

seizures, seemingly of an apoplectic character. Whether they were

apoplexy, or the less alarming attacks that arise from some more gentle

congestion, occasioned by free living and indolent habits, was matter

of doubt with his physician,--not a very skilful, though a very

formal, man. Country doctors were not then the same able, educated, and

scientific class that they are now rapidly becoming. Sir Miles himself

so stoutly and so eagerly repudiated the least hint of the more

unfavourable interpretation that the doctor, if not convinced by his

patient, was awed from expressing plainly a contrary opinion. There are

certain persons who will dismiss their physician if he tells them the

truth: Sir Miles was one of them.

In his character there was a weakness not uncommon to the proud. He

did not fear death, but he shrank from the thought that others should

calculate on his dying. He was fond of his power, though he exercised

it gently: he knew that the power of wealth and station is enfeebled in

proportion as its dependants can foresee the date of its transfer. He

dreaded, too, the comments which are always made on those visited by his

peculiar disease: “Poor Sir Miles! an apoplectic fit. His intellect

must be very much shaken; he revoked at whist last night,--memory sadly

impaired!” This may be a pitiable foible; but heroes and statesmen have

had it most: pardon it in the proud old man! He enjoined the physician

to state throughout the house and the neighbourhood that the attacks

were wholly innocent and unimportant. The physician did so, and was

generally believed; for Sir Miles seemed as lively and as vigorous

after them as before. Two persons alone were not deceived,--Dalibard

and Lucretia. The first, at an earlier part of his life, had studied

pathology with the profound research and ingenious application which he

brought to bear upon all he undertook. He whispered from the first to

Lucretia,--“Unless your uncle changes his habits, takes exercise, and

forbears wine and the table, his days are numbered.”

And when this intelligence was first conveyed to her, before she had

become acquainted with Mainwaring, Lucretia felt the shock of a grief

sudden and sincere. We have seen how these better sentiments changed

as human life became an obstacle in her way. In her character, what

phrenologists call “destructiveness,” in the comprehensive sense of the

word, was superlatively developed. She had not actual cruelty; she was

not bloodthirsty: those vices belong to a different cast of character.

She was rather deliberately and intellectually unsparing. A goal was

before her; she must march to it: all in the way were but hostile

impediments. At first, however, Sir Miles was not in the way, except to

fortune, and for that, as avarice was not her leading vice, she could

well wait; therefore, at this hint of the Provencal’s she ventured to

urge her uncle to abstinence and exercise. But Sir Miles was touchy on

the subject; he feared the interpretations which great change of habits

might suggest. The memory of the fearful warning died away, and he felt

as well as before; for, save an old rheumatic gout (which had long since

left him with no other apparent evil but a lameness in the joints that

rendered exercise unwelcome and painful), he possessed one of those

comfortable, and often treacherous, constitutions which evince no

displeasure at irregularities, and bear all liberties with philosophical

composure. Accordingly, he would have his own way; and he contrived

to coax or to force his doctor into an authority on his side: wine was

necessary to his constitution; much exercise was a dangerous fatigue.

The second attack, following four months after the first, was less

alarming, and Sir Miles fancied it concealed even from his niece; but

three nights after his recovery, the old baronet sat musing alone for

some time in his own room before he retired to rest. Then he rose,

opened his desk, and read his will attentively, locked it up with a

slight sigh, and took down his Bible. The next morning he despatched

the letters which summoned Ardworth and Vernon to his house; and as he

quitted his room, his look lingered with melancholy fondness upon the

portraits in the gallery. No one was by the old man to interpret these

slight signs, in which lay a world of meaning.

A few weeks after Vernon had left the house, and in the midst of the

restored tranquillity we have described, it so happened that Sir Miles’s

physician, after dining at the Hall, had been summoned to attend one of

the children at the neighbouring rectory; and there he spent the night.

A little before daybreak his slumbers were disturbed; he was recalled

in all haste to Laughton Hall. For the third time, he found Sir Miles

speechless. Dalibard was by his bedside. Lucretia had not been made

aware of the seizure; for Sir Miles had previously told his valet (who

of late slept in the same room) never to alarm Miss Clavering if he was

taken ill. The doctor was about to apply his usual remedies; but when he

drew forth his lancet, Dalibard placed his hand on the physician’s arm.

“Not this time,” he said slowly, and with emphasis; “it will be his

death.”

“Pooh, sir!” said the doctor, disdainfully.

“Do so, then; bleed him, and take the responsibility. I have studied

medicine,--I know these symptoms. In this case the apoplexy may

spare,--the lancet kills.”

The physician drew back dismayed and doubtful.

“What would you do, then?”

“Wait three minutes longer the effect of the cataplasms I have applied.

If they fail--”

“Ay, then?”

“A chill bath and vigorous friction.”

“Sir, I will never permit it.”

“Then murder your patient your own way.”

All this while Sir Miles lay senseless, his eyes wide open, his

teeth locked. The doctor drew near, looked at the lancet, and said

irresolutely,--

“Your practice is new to me; but if you have studied medicine, that’s

another matter. Will you guarantee the success of your plan?”

“Yes.”

“Mind, I wash my hands of it; I take Mr. Jones to witness;” and he

appealed to the valet.

“Call up the footman and lift your master,” said Dalibard; and the

doctor, glancing round, saw that a bath, filled some seven or eight

inches deep with water, stood already prepared in the room. Perplexed

and irresolute, he offered no obstacle to Dalibard’s movements. The

body, seemingly lifeless, was placed in the bath; and the servants,

under Dalibard’s directions, applied vigorous and incessant friction.

Several minutes elapsed before any favourable symptom took place. At

length Sir Miles heaved a deep sigh, and the eyes moved; a minute or two

more, and the teeth chattered; the blood, set in motion, appeared on the

surface of the skin; life ebbed back. The danger was passed, the

dark foe driven from the citadel. Sir Miles spoke audibly, though

incoherently, as he was taken back to his bed, warmly covered up, the

lights removed, noise forbidden, and Dalibard and the doctor remained in

silence by the bedside.

“Rich man,” thought Dalibard, “thine hour is not yet come; thy wealth

must not pass to the boy Mainwaring.” Sir Miles’s recovery, under the

care of Dalibard, who now had his own way, was as rapid and complete as

before. Lucretia when she heard, the next morning, of the attack, felt,

we dare not say a guilty joy, but a terrible and feverish agitation.

Sir Miles himself, informed by his valet of Dalibard’s wrestle with the

doctor, felt a profound gratitude and reverent wonder for the simple

means to which he probably owed his restoration; and he listened, with

a docility which Dalibard was not prepared to expect, to his learned

secretary’s urgent admonitions as to the life he must lead if he desired

to live at all. Convinced, at last, that wine and good cheer had not

blockaded out the enemy, and having to do, in Olivier Dalibard, with a

very different temper from the doctor’s, he assented with a tolerable

grace to the trial of a strict regimen and to daily exercise in the

open air. Dalibard now became constantly with him; the increase of his

influence was as natural as it was apparent. Lucretia trembled; she

divined a danger in his power, now separate from her own, and which

threatened to be independent of it. She became abstracted and uneasy;

jealousy of the Provencal possessed her. She began to meditate schemes

for his downfall. At this time, Sir Miles received the following letter

from Mr. Fielden:--

SOUTHAMPTON, Aug. 20, 1801.

DEAR SIR MILES,--You will remember that I informed you when I arrived

at Southampton with my dear young charge; and Susan has twice written

to her sister, implying the request which she lacked the courage, seeing

that she is timid, expressly to urge, that Miss Clavering might again be

permitted to visit her. Miss Clavering has answered as might be expected

from the propinquity of the relationship; but she has perhaps the same

fears of offending you that actuate her sister. But now, since the

worthy clergyman who had undertaken my parochial duties has found the

air insalubrious, and prays me not to enforce the engagement by which we

had exchanged our several charges for the space of a calendar year, I am

reluctantly compelled to return home,--my dear wife, thank Heaven, being

already restored to health, which is an unspeakable mercy; and I am

sure I cannot be sufficiently grateful to Providence, which has not only

provided me with a liberal independence of more than 200 pounds a year,

but the best of wives and the most dutiful of children,--possessions

that I venture to call “the riches of the heart.” Now, I pray you, my

dear Sir Miles, to gratify these two deserving young persons, and to

suffer Miss Lucretia incontinently to visit her sister. Counting on your

consent, thus boldly demanded, I have already prepared an apartment for

Miss Clavering; and Susan is busy in what, though I do not know much of

such feminine matters, the whole house declares to be a most beautiful

and fanciful toilet-cover, with roses and forget-me-nots cut out of

muslin, and two large silk tassels, which cost her three shillings and

fourpence. I cannot conclude without thanking you from my heart for your

noble kindness to young Ardworth. He is so full of ardour and spirit

that I remember, poor lad, when I left him, as I thought, hard at

work on that well-known problem of Euclid vulgarly called the Asses’

Bridge,--I found him describing a figure of 8 on the village pond, which

was only just frozen over! Poor lad! Heaven will take care of him, I

know, as it does of all who take no care of themselves. Ah, Sir Miles,

if you could but see Susan,--such a nurse, too, in illness! I have the

honour to be, Sir Miles,

Your most humble, poor servant, to command,

MATTHEW FIELDEN.

Sir Miles put this letter in his niece’s hand, and said kindly, “Why not

have gone to see your sister before? I should not have been angry. Go,

my child, as soon as you like. To-morrow is Sunday,--no travelling that

day; but the next, the carriage shall be at your order.”

Lucretia hesitated a moment. To leave Dalibard in sole possession of the

field, even for a few days, was a thought of alarm; but what evil could

he do in that time? And her pulse beat quickly: Mainwaring could come

to Southampton; she should see him again, after more than six weeks’

absence! She had so much to relate and to hear; she fancied his last

letter had been colder and shorter; she yearned to hear him say, with

his own lips, that he loved her still. This idea banished or prevailed

over all others. She thanked her uncle cheerfully and gayly, and the

journey was settled.

“Be at watch early on Monday,” said Olivier to his son.

Monday came; the baronet had ordered the carriage to be at the door

at ten. A little before eight, Lucretia stole out, and took her way to

Guy’s Oak. Gabriel had placed himself in readiness; he had climbed a

tree at the bottom of the park (near the place where hitherto he had

lost sight of her); she passed under it,--on through a dark grove of

pollard oaks. When she was at a sufficient distance, the boy dropped

from his perch; with the stealth of an Indian he crept on her trace,

following from tree to tree, always sheltered, always watchful. He saw

her pause at the dell and look round; she descended into the hollow;

he slunk through the fern; he gained the marge of the dell, and looked

down,--she was lost to his sight. At length, to his surprise, he saw the

gleam of her robe emerge from the hollow of a tree,--her head stooped

as she came through the aperture; he had time to shrink back amongst the

fern; she passed on hurriedly, the same way she had taken, back to the

house; then into the dell crept the boy. Guy’s Oak, vast and venerable,

with gnarled green boughs below, and sere branches above, that told that

its day of fall was decreed at last, rose high from the abyss of

the hollow, high and far-seen amidst the trees that stood on the

vantage-ground above,--even as a great name soars the loftier when it

springs from the grave. A dark and irregular fissure gave entrance

to the heart of the oak. The boy glided in and looked round; he saw

nothing, yet something there must be. The rays of the early sun did not

penetrate into the hollow, it was as dim as a cave. He felt slowly in

every crevice, and a startled moth or two flew out. It was not for moths

that the girl had come to Guy’s Oak! He drew back, at last, in despair;

as he did so, he heard a low sound close at hand,--a low, murmuring,

angry sound, like a hiss; he looked round, and through the dark, two

burning eyes fixed his own: he had startled a snake from its bed. He

drew out in time, as the reptile sprang; but now his task, search, and

object were forgotten. With the versatility of a child, his thoughts

were all on the enemy he had provoked. That zest of prey which is

inherent in man’s breast, which makes him love the sport and the chase,

and maddens boyhood and age with the passion for slaughter, leaped up

within him; anything of danger and contest and excitement gave Gabriel

Varney a strange fever of pleasure. He sprang up the sides of the dell,

climbed the park pales on which it bordered, was in the wood where the

young shoots rose green and strong from the underwood. To cut a staff

for the strife, to descend again into the dell, creep again through

the fissure, look round for those vengeful eyes, was quick done as the

joyous play of the impulse. The poor snake had slid down in content and

fancied security; its young, perhaps, were not far off; its wrath had

been the instinct Nature gives to the mother. It hath done thee no harm

yet, boy; leave it in peace! The young hunter had no ear to such whisper

of prudence or mercy. Dim and blind in the fissure, he struck the ground

and the tree with his stick, shouted out, bade the eyes gleam, and

defied them. Whether or not the reptile had spent its ire in the first

fruitless spring, and this unlooked-for return of the intruder rather

daunted than exasperated, we leave those better versed in natural

history to conjecture; but instead of obeying the challenge and courting

the contest, it glided by the sides of the oak, close to the very feet

of its foe, and emerging into the light, dragged its gray coils through

the grass; but its hiss still betrayed it. Gabriel sprang through the

fissure and struck at the craven, insulting it with a laugh of scorn

as he struck. Suddenly it halted, suddenly reared its crest; the throat

swelled with venom, the tongue darted out, and again, green as emeralds,

glared the spite of its eyes. No fear felt Gabriel Varney; his arm was

averted; he gazed, spelled and admiringly, with the eye of an artist.

Had he had pencil and tablet at that moment, he would have dropped his

weapon for the sketch, though the snake had been as deadly as the viper

of Sumatra. The sight sank into his memory, to be reproduced often by

the wild, morbid fancies of his hand. Scarce a moment, however, had he

for the gaze; the reptile sprang, and fell, baffled and bruised by

the involuntary blow of its enemy. As it writhed on the grass, how its

colours came out; how graceful were the movements of its pain! And still

the boy gazed, till the eye was sated and the cruelty returned. A blow,

a second, a third,--all the beauty is gone; shapeless, and clotted with

gore, that elegant head; mangled and dissevered the airy spires of that

delicate shape, which had glanced in its circling involutions, free

and winding as a poet’s thought through his verse. The boy trampled the

quivering relics into the sod, with a fierce animal joy of conquest, and

turned once more towards the hollow, for a last almost hopeless survey.

Lo, his object was found! In his search for the snake, either his staff

or his foot had disturbed a layer of moss in the corner; the faint ray,

ere he entered the hollow, gleamed upon something white. He emerged from

the cavity with a letter in his hand; he read the address, thrust it

into his bosom, and as stealthily, but more rapidly, than he had come,

took his way to his father.

CHAPTER V. HOUSEHOLD TREASON.

The Provencal took the letter from his son’s hand, and looked at him

with an approbation half-complacent, half-ironical. “Mon fils!” said he,

patting the boy’s head gently, “why should we not be friends? We want

each other; we have the strong world to fight against.”

“Not if you are master of this place.”

“Well answered,--no; then we shall have the strong world on our side,

and shall have only rogues and the poor to make war upon.” Then, with a

quiet gesture, he dismissed his son, and gazed slowly on the letter.

His pulse, which was usually low, quickened, and his lips were tightly

compressed; he shrank from the contents with a jealous pang; as a

light quivers strugglingly in a noxious vault, love descended into that

hideous breast, gleamed upon dreary horrors, and warred with the noxious

atmosphere: but it shone still. To this dangerous man, every art that

gives power to the household traitor was familiar: he had no fear that

the violated seals should betray the fraud which gave the contents to

the eye that, at length, steadily fell upon the following lines:--

DEAREST, AND EVER DEAREST,--Where art thou at this moment? What are

thy thoughts,--are they upon me? I write this at the dead of night. I

picture you to myself as my hand glides over the paper. I think I see

you, as you look on these words, and envy them the gaze of those dark

eyes. Press your lips to the paper. Do you feel the kiss that I leave

there? Well, well! it will not be for long now that we shall be divided.

Oh, what joy, when I think that I am about to see you! Two days more,

at most three, and we shall meet, shall we not? I am going to see my

sister. I subjoin my address. Come, come, come; I thirst to see you once

more. And I did well to say, “Wait, and be patient;” we shall not wait

long: before the year is out I shall be free. My uncle has had another

and more deadly attack. I see its trace in his face, in his step, in his

whole form and bearing. The only obstacle between us is fading away.

Can I grieve when I think it,--grieve when life with you spreads smiling

beyond the old man’s grave? And why should age, that has survived all

passion, stand with its chilling frown, and the miserable prejudices the

world has not conquered, but strengthened into a creed,--why should

age stand between youth and youth? I feel your mild eyes rebuke me as

I write. But chide me not that on earth I see only you. And it will be

mine to give you wealth and rank! Mine to see the homage of my own heart

reflected from the crowd who bow, not to the statue, but the pedestal.

Oh, how I shall enjoy your revenge upon the proud! For I have drawn

no pastoral scenes in my picture of the future. No; I see you leading

senates, and duping fools. I shall be by your side, your partner, step

after step, as you mount the height, for I am ambitious, you know,

William; and not less because I love,--rather ten thousand times more

so. I would not have you born great and noble, for what then could we

look to,--what use all my schemes, and my plans, and aspirings? Fortune,

accident, would have taken from us the great zest of life, which is

desire.

When I see you, I shall tell you that I have some fears of Olivier

Dalibard; he has evidently some wily project in view. He, who never

interfered before with the blundering physician, now thrusts him aside,

affects to have saved the old man, attends him always. Dares he think to

win an influence, to turn against me,--against us? Happily, when I shall

come back, my uncle will probably be restored to the false strength

which deceives him; he will have less need of Dalibard; and then--then

let the Frenchman beware! I have already a plot to turn his schemes

to his own banishment. Come to Southampton, then, as soon as you

can,--perhaps the day you receive this; on Wednesday, at farthest. Your

last letter implies blame of my policy with respect to Vernon. Again I

say, it is necessary to amuse my uncle to the last. Before Vernon can

advance a claim, there will be weeping at Laughton. I shall weep, too,

perhaps; but there will be joy in those tears, as well as sorrow,--for

then, when I clasp thy hand, I can murmur, “It is mine at last, and

forever!”

Adieu! No, not adieu,--to our meeting, my lover, my beloved! Thy

LUCRETIA.

An hour after Miss Clavering had departed on her visit, Dalibard

returned the letter to his son, the seal seemingly unbroken, and bade

him replace it in the hollow of the tree, but sufficiently in sight to

betray itself to the first that entered. He then communicated the plan

he had formed for its detection,--a plan which would prevent Lucretia

ever suspecting the agency of his son or himself; and this done, he

joined Sir Miles in the gallery. Hitherto, in addition to his other

apprehensions in revealing to the baronet Lucretia’s clandestine

intimacy with Mainwaring, Dalibard had shrunk from the thought that

the disclosure would lose her the heritage which had first tempted his

avarice or ambition; but now his jealous and his vindictive passions

were aroused, and his whole plan of strategy was changed. He must crush

Lucretia, or she would crush him, as her threats declared. To ruin her

in Sir Miles’s eyes, to expel her from his house, might not, after all,

weaken his own position, even with regard to power over herself. If

he remained firmly established at Laughton, he could affect

intercession,--he could delay, at least, any precipitate union with

Mainwaring, by practising on the ambition which he still saw at work

beneath her love; he might become a necessary ally; and then--why, then,

his ironical smile glanced across his lips. But beyond this, his quick

eye saw fair prospects to self-interest: Lucretia banished; the heritage

not hers; the will to be altered; Dalibard esteemed indispensable to the

life of the baronet. Come, there was hope here,--not for the heritage,

indeed, but at least for a munificent bequest.

At noon, some visitors, bringing strangers from London whom Sir

Miles had invited to see the house (which was one of the lions of the

neighbourhood, though not professedly a show-place), were expected.

Aware of this, Dalibard prayed the baronet to rest quiet till his

company arrived, and then he said carelessly,--

“It will be a healthful diversion to your spirits to accompany them a

little in the park; you can go in your garden-chair; you will have new

companions to talk with by the way; and it is always warm and sunny at

the slope of the hill, towards the bottom of the park.”

Sir Miles assented cheerfully; the guests came, strolled over the house,

admired the pictures and the armour and the hall and the staircase,

paid due respect to the substantial old-fashioned luncheon, and

then, refreshed, and in great good-humour, acquiesced in Sir Miles’s

proposition to saunter through the park.

The poor baronet was more lively than usual. The younger people

clustered gayly round his chair (which was wheeled by his valet),

smiling at his jests and charmed with his courteous high-breeding.

A little in the rear walked Gabriel, paying special attention to the

prettiest and merriest girl of the company, who was a great favourite

with Sir Miles,--perhaps for those reasons.

“What a delightful old gentleman!” said the young lady. “How I envy Miss

Clavering such an uncle!”

“Ah, but you are a little out of favour to-day, I can tell you,” said

Gabriel, laughingly; “you were close by Sir Miles when we went through

the picture-gallery, and you never asked him the history of the old

knight in the buff doublet and blue sash.”

“Dear me, what of that?”

“Why, that was brave Colonel Guy St. John, the Cavalier, the pride and

boast of Sir Miles; you know his weakness. He looked so displeased when

you said, ‘What a droll-looking figure!’ I was on thorns for you!”

“What a pity! I would not offend dear Sir Miles for the world.”

“Well, it’s easy to make it up with him. Go and tell him that he must

take you to see Guy’s Oak, in the dell; that you have heard so much

about it; and when you get him on his hobby, it is hard if you can’t

make your peace.”

“Oh, I’ll certainly do it, Master Varney;” and the young lady lost no

time in obeying the hint. Gabriel had set other tongues on the same

cry, so that there was a general exclamation when the girl named the

subject,--“Oh, Guy’s Oak, by all means!”

Much pleased with the enthusiasm this memorial of his pet ancestor

produced, Sir Miles led the way to the dell, and pausing as he reached

the verge, said,--

“I fear I cannot do you the honours; it is too steep for my chair to

descend safely.”

Gabriel whispered the fair companion whose side he still kept to.

“Now, my dear Sir Miles,” cried the girl, “I positively won’t stir

without you; I am sure we could get down the chair without a jolt. Look

there, how nicely the ground slopes! Jane, Lucy, my dears, let us take

charge of Sir Miles. Now, then.”

The gallant old gentleman would have marched to the breach in such

guidance; he kissed the fair hands that lay so temptingly on his chair,

and then, rising with some difficulty, said,--

“No, my dears, you have made me so young again that I think I can walk

down the steep with the best of you.”

So, leaning partly on his valet, and by the help of the hands extended

to him, step after step, Sir Miles, with well-disguised effort, reached

the huge roots of the oak.

“The hollow then was much smaller,” said he, “so he was not so easily

detected as a man would be now, the damned crop-ears--I beg pardon, my

dears; the rascally rebels--poked their swords through the fissure, and

two went, one through his jerkin, one through his arm; but he took care

not to swear at the liberty, and they went away, not suspecting him.”

While thus speaking, the young people were already playfully struggling

which should first enter the oak. Two got precedence, and went in and

out, one after the other. Gabriel breathed hard. “The blind owlets!”

thought he; “and I put the letter where a mole would have seen it!”

“You know the spell when you enter an oak-tree where the fairies have

been,” he whispered to the fair object of his notice. “You must turn

round three times, look carefully on the ground, and you will see the

face you love best. If I was but a little older, how I should pray--”

“Nonsense!” said the girl, blushing, as she now slid through the crowd,

and went timidly in; presently she uttered a little exclamation.

The gallant Sir Miles stooped down to see what was the matter, and

offering his hand as she came out, was startled to see her holding a

letter.

“Only think what I have found!” said the girl. “What a strange place for

a post-office! Bless me! It is directed to Mr. Mainwaring!”

“Mr. Mainwaring!” cried three or four voices; but the baronet’s was

mute. His eye recognized Lucretia’s hand; his tongue clove to the roof

of his mouth; the blood surged, like a sea, in his temples; his face

became purple. Suddenly Gabriel, peeping over the girl’s shoulder,

snatched away the letter.

“It is my letter,--it is mine! What a shame in Mainwaring not to have

come for it as he promised!”

Sir Miles looked round and breathed more freely.

“Yours, Master Varney!” said the young lady, astonished. “What can make

your letters to Mr. Mainwaring such a secret?”

“Oh! you’ll laugh at me; but--but--I wrote a poem on Guy’s Oak, and Mr.

Mainwaring promised to get it into the county paper for me; and as he

was to pass close by the park pales, through the wood yonder, on his way

to D---- last Saturday, we agreed that I should leave it here; but he

has forgotten his promise, I see.”

Sir Miles grasped the boy’s arm with a convulsive pressure of gratitude.

There was a general cry for Gabriel to read his poem on the spot; but

the boy looked sheepish, and hung down his head, and seemed rather more

disposed to cry than to recite. Sir Miles, with an effort at simulation

that all his long practice of the world never could have nerved him

to, unexcited by a motive less strong than the honour of his blood and

house, came to the relief of the young wit that had just come to his

own.

“Nay,” he said, almost calmly, “I know our young poet is too shy to

oblige you. I will take charge of your verses, Master Gabriel;” and with

a grave air of command, he took the letter from the boy and placed it in

his pocket.

The return to the house was less gay than the visit to the oak. The

baronet himself made a feverish effort to appear blithe and debonair as

before; but it was not successful. Fortunately, the carriages were all

at the door as they reached the house, and luncheon being over, nothing

delayed the parting compliments of the guests. As the last carriage

drove away, Sir Miles beckoned to Gabriel, and bade him follow him into

his room.

When there, he dismissed his valet and said,--

“You know, then, who wrote this letter. Have you been in the secret

of the correspondence? Speak the truth, my dear boy; it shall cost you

nothing.”

“Oh, Sir Miles!” cried Gabriel, earnestly, “I know nothing whatever

beyond this,--that I saw the hand of my dear, kind Miss Lucretia; that

I felt, I hardly knew why, that both you and she would not have those

people discover it, which they would if the letter had been circulated

from one to the other, for some one would have known the hand as well

as myself, and therefore I spoke, without thinking, the first thing that

came into my head.”

“You--you have obliged me and my niece, sir,” said the baronet,

tremulously; and then, with a forced and sickly smile, he added: “Some

foolish vagary of Lucretia, I suppose; I must scold her for it. Say

nothing about it, however, to any one.”

“Oh, no, sir!”

“Good-by, my dear Gabriel!”

“And that boy saved the honour of my niece’s name,--my mother’s

grandchild! O God! this is bitter,--in my old age too!”

He bowed his head over his hands, and tears forced themselves through

his fingers. He was long before he had courage to read the letter,

though he little foreboded all the shock that it would give him. It was

the first letter, not destined to himself, of which he had ever broken

the seal. Even that recollection made the honourable old man pause; but

his duty was plain and evident, as head of the house and guardian to his

niece. Thrice he wiped his spectacles; still they were dim, still the

tears would come. He rose tremblingly, walked to the window, and saw

the stately deer grouped in the distance, saw the church spire that rose

above the burial vault of his ancestors, and his heart sank deeper and

deeper as he muttered: “Vain pride! pride!” Then he crept to the door

and locked it, and at last, seating himself firmly, as a wounded man to

some terrible operation, he read the letter.

Heaven support thee, old man! thou hast to pass through the bitterest

trial which honour and affection can undergo,--household treason. When

the wife lifts high the blushless front and brazens out her guilt; when

the child, with loud voice, throws off all control and makes boast of

disobedience,--man revolts at the audacity; his spirit arms against

his wrong: its face, at least, is bare; the blow, if sacrilegious, is

direct. But when mild words and soft kisses conceal the worst foe Fate

can arm; when amidst the confidence of the heart starts up the form of

Perfidy; when out from the reptile swells the fiend in its terror; when

the breast on which man leaned for comfort has taken counsel to deceive

him; when he learns that, day after day, the life entwined with his own

has been a lie and a stage-mime,--he feels not the softness of grief,

nor the absorption of rage; it is mightier than grief, and more

withering than rage,--it is a horror that appalls. The heart does not

bleed, the tears do not flow, as in woes to which humanity is commonly

subjected; it is as if something that violates the course of nature

had taken place,--something monstrous and out of all thought and

forewarning; for the domestic traitor is a being apart from the orbit of

criminals: the felon has no fear of his innocent children; with a price

on his head, he lays it in safety on the bosom of his wife. In his home,

the ablest man, the most subtle and suspecting, can be as much a dupe as

the simplest. Were it not so as the rule, and the exceptions most rare,

this world were the riot of a hell!

And therefore it is that to the household perfidy, in all lands, in all

ages, God’s curse seems to cleave, and to God’s curse man abandons it;

he does not honour it by hate, still less will he lighten and share

the guilt by descending to revenge. He turns aside with a sickness

and loathing, and leaves Nature to purify from the earth the ghastly

phenomenon she abhors.

Old man, that she wilfully deceived thee, that she abused thy belief

and denied to thy question and profaned maidenhood to stealth,--all this

might have galled thee; but to these wrongs old men are subjected,--they

give mirth to our farces; maid and lover are privileged impostors. But

to have counted the sands in thine hour-glass, to have sat by thy side,

marvelling when the worms should have thee, and looked smiling on

thy face for the signs of the death-writ--Die quick, old man; the

executioner hungers for the fee!

There were no tears in those eyes when they came to the close; the

letter fell noiselessly to the floor, and the head sank on the breast,

and the hands drooped upon the poor crippled limbs, whose crawl in the

sunshine hard youth had grudged. He felt humbled, stunned, crushed; the

pride was clean gone from him; the cruel words struck home. Worse than a

cipher, did he then but cumber the earth? At that moment old Ponto, the

setter, shook himself, looked up, and laid his head in his master’s lap;

and Dash, jealous, rose also, and sprang, not actively, for Dash was

old, too, upon his knees, and licked the numbed, drooping hands. Now,

people praise the fidelity of dogs till the theme is worn out; but

nobody knows what a dog is, unless he has been deceived by men,--then,

that honest face; then, that sincere caress; then, that coaxing whine

that never lied! Well, then,--what then? A dog is long-lived if he live

to ten years,--small career this to truth and friendship! Now, when Sir

Miles felt that he was not deserted, and his look met those four fond

eyes, fixed with that strange wistfulness which in our hours of trouble

the eyes of a dog sympathizingly assume, an odd thought for a sensible

man passed into him, showing, more than pages of sombre elegy, how deep

was the sudden misanthropy that blackened the world around. “When I am

dead,” ran that thought, “is there one human being whom I can trust to

take charge of the old man’s dogs?”

So, let the scene close!

CHAPTER VI. THE WILL

The next day, or rather the next evening, Sir Miles St. John was seated

before his unshared chicken,--seated alone, and vaguely surprised at

himself, in a large, comfortable room in his old hotel, Hanover Square.

Yes, he had escaped. Hast thou, O Reader, tasted the luxury of escape

from a home where the charm is broken,--where Distrust looks askant from

the Lares? In vain had Dalibard remonstrated, conjured up dangers, and

asked at least to accompany him. Excepting his dogs and his old valet,

who was too like a dog in his fond fidelity to rank amongst bipeds, Sir

Miles did not wish to have about him a single face familiar at Laughton,

Dalibard especially. Lucretia’s letter had hinted at plans and designs

in Dalibard. It might be unjust, it might be ungrateful; but he grew

sick at the thought that he was the centre-stone of stratagems and

plots. The smooth face of the Provencal took a wily expression in his

eyes; nay, he thought his very footmen watched his steps as if to count

how long before they followed his bier. So, breaking from all roughly,

with a shake of his head and a laconic assertion of business in

London, he got into his carriage,--his own old bachelor’s lumbering

travelling-carriage,--and bade the post-boys drive fast, fast! Then,

when he felt alone,--quite alone,--and the gates of the lodge swung

behind him, he rubbed his hands with a schoolboy’s glee, and chuckled

aloud, as if he enjoyed, not only the sense, but the fun of his safety;

as if he had done something prodigiously cunning and clever.

So when he saw himself snug in his old, well-remembered hotel, in the

same room as of yore, when returned, brisk and gay, from the breezes of

Weymouth or the brouillards of Paris, he thought he shook hands again

with his youth. Age and lameness, apoplexy and treason, all were

forgotten for the moment. And when, as the excitement died, those grim

spectres came back again to his thoughts, they found their victim braced

and prepared, standing erect on that hearth for whose hospitality he

paid his guinea a day,--his front proud and defying. He felt yet that

he had fortune and power, that a movement of his hand could raise and

strike down, that at the verge of the tomb he was armed, to punish or

reward, with the balance and the sword. Tripped in the smug waiter, and

announced “Mr. Parchmount.”

“Set a chair, and show him in.” The lawyer entered.

“My dear Sir Miles, this is indeed a surprise! What has brought you to

town?”

“The common whim of the old, sir. I would alter my will.”

Three days did lawyer and client devote to the task; for Sir Miles was

minute, and Mr. Parchmount was precise, and little difficulties arose,

and changes in the first outline were made, and Sir Miles, from the very

depth of his disgust, desired not to act only from passion. In that last

deed of his life, the old man was sublime. He sought to rise out of

the mortal, fix his eyes on the Great Judge, weigh circumstances and

excuses, and keep justice even and serene.

Meanwhile, unconscious of the train laid afar, Lucretia reposed on

the mine,--reposed, indeed, is not the word; for she was agitated and

restless that Mainwaring had not obeyed her summons. She wrote to him

again from Southampton the third day of her arrival; but before his

answer came she received this short epistle from London:--

“Mr. Parchmount presents his compliments to Miss Clavering, and, by

desire of Sir Miles St. John, requests her not to return to Laughton.

Miss Clavering will hear further in a few days, when Sir Miles has

concluded the business that has brought him to London.”

This letter, if it excited much curiosity, did not produce alarm. It

was natural that Sir Miles should be busy in winding up his affairs; his

journey to London for that purpose was no ill omen to her prospects,

and her thoughts flew back to the one subject that tyrannized over them.

Mainwaring’s reply, which came two days afterwards, disquieted her much

more. He had not found the letter she had left for him in the tree. He

was full of apprehensions; he condemned the imprudence of calling on her

at Mr. Fielden’s; he begged her to renounce the idea of such a risk.

He would return again to Guy’s Oak and search more narrowly: had she

changed the spot where the former letters were placed? Yet now, not even

the non-receipt of her letter, which she ascribed to the care with which

she had concealed it amidst the dry leaves and moss, disturbed her

so much as the evident constraint with which Mainwaring wrote,--the

cautious and lukewarm remonstrance which answered her passionate appeal.

It may be that her very doubts, at times, of Mainwaring’s affection

had increased the ardour of her own attachment; for in some natures the

excitement of fear deepens love more than the calmness of trust. Now

with the doubt for the first time flashed the resentment, and her

answer to Mainwaring was vehement and imperious. But the next day came

a messenger express from London, with a letter from Mr. Parchmount that

arrested for the moment even the fierce current of love.

When the task had been completed,--the will signed, sealed, and

delivered,--the old man had felt a load lifted from his heart. Three or

four of his old friends, bons vivants like himself, had seen his arrival

duly proclaimed in the newspapers, and had hastened to welcome him.

Warmed by the genial sight of faces associated with the frank joys

of his youth, Sir Miles, if he did not forget the prudent counsels of

Dalibard, conceived a proud bitterness of joy in despising them. Why

take such care of the worn-out carcass? His will was made. What was

left to life so peculiarly attractive? He invited his friends to a feast

worthy of old. Seasoned revellers were they, with a free gout for a vent

to all indulgence. So they came; and they drank, and they laughed, and

they talked back their young days. They saw not the nervous irritation,

the strain on the spirits, the heated membrane of the brain, which made

Sir Miles the most jovial of all. It was a night of nights; the old

fellows were lifted back into their chariots or sedans. Sir Miles

alone seemed as steady and sober as if he had supped with Diogenes. His

servant, whose respectful admonitions had been awed into silence, lent

him his arm to bed, but Sir Miles scarcely touched it. The next morning,

when the servant (who slept in the same room) awoke, to his surprise

the glare of a candle streamed on his eyes. He rubbed them: could he

see right? Sir Miles was seated at the table; he must have got up and

lighted a candle to write,--noiselessly, indeed. The servant looked and

looked, and the stillness of Sir Miles awed him: he was seated on an

armchair, leaning back. As awe succeeded to suspicion, he sprang up,

approached his master, took his hand: it was cold, and fell heavily from

his clasp. Sir Miles must have been dead for hours.

The pen lay on the ground, where it had dropped from the hand; the

letter on the table was scarcely commenced: the words ran thus,--

“LUCRETIA,--You will return no more to my house. You are free as if I

were dead; but I shall be just. Would that I had been so to your mother,

to your sister! But I am old now, as you say, and--”

To one who could have seen into that poor proud heart at the moment

the hand paused forever, what remained unwritten would have been clear.

There was, first, the sharp struggle to conquer loathing repugnance, and

address at all the false and degraded one; then came the sharp sting of

ingratitude; then the idea of the life grudged and the grave desired;

then the stout victory over scorn, the resolution to be just; then the

reproach of the conscience that for so far less an offence the sister

had been thrown aside, the comfort, perhaps, found in her gentle and

neglected child obstinately repelled; then the conviction of all earthly

vanity and nothingness,--the look on into life, with the chilling

sentiment that affection was gone, that he could never trust again,

that he was too old to open his arms to new ties; and then, before felt

singly, all these thoughts united, and snapped the cord.

In announcing his mournful intelligence, with more feeling than might

have been expected from a lawyer (but even his lawyer loved Sir Miles),

Mr. Parchmount observed that “as the deceased lay at a hotel, and as

Miss Clavering’s presence would not be needed in the performance of

the last rites, she would probably forbear the journey to town.

Nevertheless, as it was Sir Miles’s wish that the will should be opened

as soon as possible after his death, and it would doubtless contain

instructions as to his funeral, it would be well that Miss Clavering and

her sister should immediately depute some one to attend the reading

of the testament on their behalf. Perhaps Mr. Fielden would kindly

undertake that melancholy office.”

To do justice to Lucretia, it must be said that her first emotions,

on the receipt of this letter, were those of a poignant and remorseful

grief, for which she was unprepared. But how different it is to count

on what shall follow death, and to know that death has come! Susan’s

sobbing sympathy availed not, nor Mr. Fielden’s pious and tearful

exhortations; her own sinful thoughts and hopes came back to her,

haunting and stern as furies. She insisted at first upon going to

London, gazing once more on the clay,--nay, the carriage was at the

door, for all yielded to her vehemence; but then her heart misgave her:

she did not dare to face the dead. Conscience waved her back from the

solemn offices of nature; she hid her face with her hands, shrank again

into her room; and Mr. Fielden, assuming unbidden the responsibility,

went alone.

Only Vernon (summoned from Brighton), the good clergyman, and the

lawyer, to whom, as sole executor, the will was addressed, and in whose

custody it had been left, were present when the seal of the testament

was broken. The will was long, as is common when the dust that it

disposes of covers some fourteen or fifteen thousand acres. But out of

the mass of technicalities and repetitions these points of interest rose

salient: To Charles Vernon, of Vernon Grange, Esq., and his heirs by

him lawfully begotten, were left all the lands and woods and manors

that covered that space in the Hampshire map known by the name of the

“Laughton property,” on condition that he and his heirs assumed the

name and arms of St. John; and on the failure of Mr. Vernon’s issue, the

estate passed, first (with the same conditions) to the issue of Susan

Mivers; next to that of Lucretia Clavering. There the entail ceased; and

the contingency fell to the rival ingenuity of lawyers in hunting out,

amongst the remote and forgotten descendants of some ancient St. John,

the heir-at-law. To Lucretia Clavering, without a word of endearment,

was bequeathed 10,000 pounds,--the usual portion which the house of St.

John had allotted to its daughters; to Susan Mivers the same sum, but

with the addition of these words, withheld from her sister: “and my

blessing!” To Olivier Dalibard an annuity of 200 pounds a year; to

Honore Gabriel Varney, 3,000 pounds; to the Rev. Matthew Fielden, 4,000

pounds; and the same sum to John Walter Ardworth. To his favourite

servant, Henry Jones, an ample provision, and the charge of his dogs

Dash and Ponto, with an allowance therefor, to be paid weekly, and cease

at their deaths. Poor old man! he made it the interest of their guardian

not to grudge their lease of life. To his other attendants, suitable and

munificent bequests, proportioned to the length of their services.

For his body, he desired it to be buried in the vault of his ancestors

without pomp, but without a pretence to a humility which he had not

manifested in life; and he requested that a small miniature in his

writing-desk should be placed in his coffin. That last injunction was

more than a sentiment,--it bespoke the moral conviction of the happiness

the original might have conferred on his life. Of that happiness his

pride had deprived him; nor did he repent, for he had deemed pride a

duty. But the mute likeness, buried in his grave,--that told the might

of the sacrifice he had made! Death removes all distinctions, and in the

coffin the Lord of Laughton might choose his partner.

When the will had been read, Mr. Parchmount produced two letters, one

addressed, in the hand of the deceased, to Mr. Vernon, the other in

the lawyer’s own hand to Miss Clavering. The last enclosed the fragment

found on Sir Miles’s table, and her own letter to Mainwaring, redirected

to her in Sir Miles’s boldest and stateliest autograph. He had, no

doubt, meant to return it in the letter left uncompleted.

The letter to Vernon contained a copy of Lucretia’s fatal epistle, and

the following lines to Vernon himself:--

MY DEAR CHARLES,--With much deliberation, and with natural reluctance to

reveal to you my niece’s shame, I feel it my duty to transmit to you the

accompanying enclosure, copied from the original with my own hand, which

the task sullied.

I do so first, because otherwise you might, as I should have done

in your place, feel bound in honour to persist in the offer of your

hand,--feel bound the more, because Miss Clavering is not my heiress;

secondly, because had her attachment been stronger than her interest,

and she had refused your offer, you might still have deemed her hardly

and capriciously dealt with by me, and not only sought to augment her

portion, but have profaned the house of my ancestors by receiving

her there as an honoured and welcome relative and guest. Now, Charles

Vernon, I believe, to the utmost of my poor judgment, I have done what

is right and just. I have taken into consideration that this young

person has been brought up as a daughter of my house, and what the

daughters of my house have received, I bequeath her. I put aside, as far

as I can, all resentment of mere family pride; I show that I do so, when

I repair my harshness to my poor sister, and leave both her children the

same provision. And if you exceed what I have done for Lucretia, unless,

on more dispassionate consideration than I can give, you conscientiously

think me wrong, you insult my memory--and impugn my justice. Be it in

this as your conscience dictates; but I entreat, I adjure, I command,

at least that you never knowingly admit by a hearth, hitherto sacred

to unblemished truth and honour, a person who has desecrated it

with treason. As gentleman to gentleman, I impose on you this solemn

injunction. I could have wished to leave that young woman’s children

barred from the entail; but our old tree has so few branches! You

are unwedded; Susan too. I must take my chance that Miss Clavering’s

children, if ever they inherit, do not imitate the mother. I conclude

she will wed that Mainwaring; her children will have a low-born father.

Well, her race at least is pure,--Clavering and St. John are names to

guarantee faith and honour; yet you see what she is! Charles Vernon, if

her issue inherit the soul of gentlemen, it must come, after all, not

from the well-born mother! I have lived to say this,--I who--But perhaps

if we had looked more closely into the pedigree of those Claverings--.

Marry yourself,--marry soon, Charles Vernon, my dear kinsman; keep the

old house in the old line, and true to its old fame. Be kind and good to

my poor; don’t strain on the tenants. By the way, Farmer Strongbow owes

three years’ rent,--I forgive him. Pension him off; he can do no good to

the land, but he was born on it, and must not fall on the parish. But to

be kind and good to the poor, not to strain the tenants, you must learn

not to waste, my dear Charles. A needy man can never be generous without

being unjust. How give, if you are in debt? You will think of this

now,--now,--while your good heart is soft, while your feelings are

moved. Charley Vernon, I think you will shed a tear when you see my

armchair still and empty. And I would have left you the care of my dogs,

but you are thoughtless, and will go much to London, and they are used

to the country now. Old Jones will have a cottage in the village,--he

has promised to live there; drop in now and then, and see poor Ponto

and Dash. It is late, and old friends come to dine here. So, if anything

happens to me, and we don’t meet again, good-by, and God bless you.

Your affectionate kinsman, MILES ST. JOHN.

CHAPTER VII. THE ENGAGEMENT.

It is somewhat less than three months after the death of Sir Miles

St. John; November reigns in London. And “reigns” seems scarcely a

metaphorical expression as applied to the sullen, absolute sway which

that dreary month (first in the dynasty of Winter) spreads over the

passive, dejected city.

Elsewhere in England, November is no such gloomy, grim fellow as he is

described. Over the brown glebes and changed woods in the country, his

still face looks contemplative and mild; and he has soft smiles, too,

at times,--lighting up his taxed vassals the groves; gleaming where

the leaves still cling to the boughs, and reflected in dimples from the

waves which still glide free from his chains. But as a conqueror who

makes his home in the capital, weighs down with hard policy the mutinous

citizens long ere his iron influence is felt in the province, so the

first tyrant of Winter has only rigour and frowns for London. The very

aspect of the wayfarers has the look of men newly enslaved: cloaked

and muffled, they steal to and fro through the dismal fogs. Even the

children creep timidly through the streets; the carriages go cautious

and hearse-like along; daylight is dim and obscure; the town is not

filled, nor the brisk mirth of Christmas commenced; the unsocial shadows

flit amidst the mist, like men on the eve of a fatal conspiracy. Each

other month in London has its charms for the experienced. Even from

August to October, when The Season lies dormant, and Fashion forbids her

sons to be seen within hearing of Bow, the true lover of London finds

pleasure still at hand, if he search for her duly. There are the early

walks through the parks and green Kensington Gardens, which now change

their character of resort, and seem rural and countrylike, but yet with

more life than the country; for on the benches beneath the trees, and

along the sward, and up the malls, are living beings enough to interest

the eye and divert the thoughts, if you are a guesser into character,

and amateur of the human face,--fresh nursery-maid and playful children;

and the old shabby-genteel, buttoned-up officer, musing on half-pay, as

he sits alone in some alcove of Kenna, or leans pensive over the rail

of the vacant Ring; and early tradesman, or clerk from the suburban

lodging, trudging brisk to his business,--for business never ceases in

London. Then at noon, what delight to escape to the banks at Putney or

Richmond,--the row up the river; the fishing punt; the ease at your inn

till dark! or if this tempt not, still Autumn shines clear and calm over

the roofs, where the smoke has a holiday; and how clean gleam the vistas

through the tranquillized thoroughfares; and as you saunter along, you

have all London to yourself, Andrew Selkirk, but with the mart of

the world for your desert. And when October comes on, it has one

characteristic of spring,--life busily returns to the city; you see the

shops bustling up, trade flowing back. As birds scent the April, so the

children of commerce plume their wings and prepare for the first slack

returns of the season. But November! Strange the taste, stout the lungs,

grief-defying the heart, of the visitor who finds charms and joy in a

London November.

In a small lodging-house in Bulstrode Street, Manchester Square,

grouped a family in mourning who had had the temerity to come to town

in November, for the purpose, no doubt, of raising their spirits. In the

dull, small drawing-room of the dull, small house we introduce to you,

first, a middle-aged gentleman whose dress showed what dress now fails

to show,--his profession. Nobody could mistake the cut of the cloth and

the shape of the hat, for he had just come in from a walk, and not

from discourtesy, but abstraction, the broad brim still shadowed his

pleasant, placid face. Parson spoke out in him, from beaver to buckle.

By the coal fire, where, through volumes of smoke, fussed and flickered

a pretension to flame, sat a middle-aged lady, whom, without being a

conjurer, you would pronounce at once to be wife to the parson; and

sundry children sat on stools all about her, with one book between

them, and a low whispered murmur from their two or three pursed-up

lips, announcing that that book was superfluous. By the last of three

dim-looking windows, made dimmer by brown moreen draperies, edged

genteelly with black cotton velvet, stood a girl of very soft and

pensive expression of features,--pretty unquestionably, excessively

pretty; but there was something so delicate and elegant about her,--the

bend of her head, the shape of her slight figure, the little fair hands

crossed one on each other, as the face mournfully and listlessly turned

to the window, that “pretty” would have seemed a word of praise too

often proffered to milliner and serving-maid. Nevertheless, it was

perhaps the right one: “handsome” would have implied something statelier

and more commanding; “beautiful,” greater regularity of feature, or

richness of colouring. The parson, who since his entrance had been

walking up and down the small room with his hands behind him, glanced

now and then at the young lady, but not speaking, at length paused

from that monotonous exercise by the chair of his wife, and touched

her shoulder. She stopped from her work, which, more engrossing than

elegant, was nothing less than what is technically called “the taking

in” of a certain blue jacket, which was about to pass from Matthew,

the eldest born, to David, the second, and looked up at her husband

affectionately. Her husband, however, spoke not; he only made a sign,

partly with his eyebrow, partly with a jerk of his thumb over his right

shoulder, in the direction of the young lady we have described, and then

completed the pantomime with a melancholy shake of the head. The wife

turned round and looked hard, the scissors horizontally raised in one

hand, while the other reposed on the cuff of the jacket. At this moment

a low knock was heard at the street-door. The worthy pair saw the girl

shrink back, with a kind of tremulous movement; presently there came the

sound of a footstep below, the creak of a hinge on the ground-floor, and

again all was silent.

“That is Mr. Mainwaring’s knock,” said one of the children.

The girl left the room abruptly, and, light as was her step, they heard

her steal up the stairs.

“My dears,” said the parson, “it wants an hour yet to dark; you may go

and walk in the square.”

“‘T is so dull in that ugly square, and they won’t let us into the

green. I am sure we’d rather stay here,” said one of the children, as

spokesman for the rest; and they all nestled closer round the hearth.

“But, my dears,” said the parson, simply, “I want to talk alone with

your mother. However, if you like best to go and keep quiet in your own

room, you may do so.”

“Or we can go into Susan’s?”

“No,” said the parson; “you must not disturb Susan.”

“She never used to care about being disturbed. I wonder what’s come to

her?”

The parson made no rejoinder to this half-petulant question. The

children consulted together a moment, and resolved that the square,

though so dull, was less dull than their own little attic. That being

decided, it was the mother’s turn to address them. And though Mr.

Fielden was as anxious and fond as most fathers, he grew a little

impatient before comforters, kerchiefs, and muffettees were arranged,

and minute exordiums as to the danger of crossing the street, and the

risk of patting strange dogs, etc., were half-way concluded; with a

shrug and a smile, he at length fairly pushed out the children, shut the

door, and drew his chair close to his wife’s.

“My dear,” he began at once, “I am extremely uneasy about that poor

girl.”

“What, Miss Clavering? Indeed, she eats almost nothing at all, and sits

so moping alone; but she sees Mr. Mainwaring every day. What can we do?

She is so proud, I’m afraid of her.”

“My dear, I was not thinking of Miss Clavering, though I did not

interrupt you, for it is very true that she is much to be pitied.”

“And I am sure it was for her sake alone that you agreed to Susan’s

request, and got Blackman to do duty for you at the vicarage, while we

all came up here, in hopes London town would divert her. We left all at

sixes and sevens; and I should not at all wonder if John made away with

the apples.”

“But, I say,” resumed the parson, without heeding that mournful

foreboding,--“I say, I was then only thinking of Susan. You see how pale

and sad she is grown.”

“Why, she is so very soft-hearted, and she must feel for her sister.”

“But her sister, though she thinks much, and keeps aloof from us, is not

sad herself, only reserved. On the contrary. I believe she has now got

over even poor Sir Miles’s death.”

“And the loss of the great property!”

“Fie, Mary!” said Mr. Fielden, almost austerely.

Mary looked down, rebuked, for she was not one of the high-spirited

wives who despise their husbands for goodness.

“I beg pardon, my dear,” she said meekly; “it was very wrong in me; but

I cannot--do what I will--I cannot like that Miss Clavering.”

“The more need to judge her with charity. And if what I fear is the

case, I’m sure we can’t feel too much compassion for the poor blinded

young lady.”

“Bless my heart, Mr. Fielden, what is it you mean?”

The parson looked round, to be sure the door was quite closed, and

replied, in a whisper: “I mean, that I fear William Mainwaring loves,

not Lucretia, but Susan.”

The scissors fell from the hand of Mrs. Fielden; and though one point

stuck in the ground, and the other point threatened war upon flounces

and toes, strange to say, she did not even stoop to remove the

chevaux-de-frise.

“Why, then, he’s a most false-hearted young man!”

“To blame, certainly,” said Fielden; “I don’t say to the

contrary,--though I like the young man, and am sure that he’s more timid

than false. I may now tell you--for I want your advice, Mary--what I

kept secret before. When Mainwaring visited us, many months ago, at

Southampton, he confessed to me that he felt warmly for Susan, and asked

if I thought Sir Miles would consent. I knew too well how proud the

poor old gentleman was, to give him any such hopes. So he left, very

honourably. You remember, after he went, that Susan’s spirits were

low,--you remarked it.”

“Yes, indeed, I remember. But when the first shock of Sir Miles’s death

was over, she got back her sweet colour, and looked cheerful enough.”

“Because, perhaps, then she felt that she had a fortune to bestow on Mr.

Mainwaring, and thought all obstacle was over.”

“Why, how clever you are! How did you get at her thoughts?”

“My own folly,--my own rash folly,” almost groaned Mr. Fielden. “For

not guessing that Mr. Mainwaring could have got engaged meanwhile to

Lucretia, and suspecting how it was with Susan’s poor little heart, I

let out, in a jest--Heaven forgive me!--what William had said; and the

dear child blushed, and kissed me, and--why, a day or two after, when it

was fixed that we should come up to London, Lucretia informed me, with

her freezing politeness, that she was to marry Mainwaring herself as

soon as her first mourning was over.”

“Poor, dear, dear Susan!”

“Susan behaved like an angel; and when I broached it to her, I thought

she was calm; and I am sure she prayed with her whole heart that both

might be happy.”

“I’m sure she did. What is to be done? I understand it all now. Dear

me, dear me! a sad piece of work indeed.” And Mrs. Fielden abstractedly

picked up the scissors.

“It was not till our coming to town, and Mr. Mainwaring’s visits to

Lucretia, that her strength gave way.”

“A hard sight to bear,--I never could have borne it, my love. If I had

seen you paying court to another, I should have--I don’t know what I

should have done! But what an artful wretch this young Mainwaring must

be.”

“Not very artful; for you see that he looks even sadder than Susan.

He got entangled somehow, to be sure. Perhaps he had given up Susan in

despair; and Miss Clavering, if haughty, is no doubt a very superior

young lady; and, I dare say, it is only now in seeing them both

together, and comparing the two, that he feels what a treasure he has

lost. Well, what do you advise, Mary? Mainwaring, no doubt, is bound in

honour to Miss Clavering; but she will be sure to discover, sooner or

later, the state of his feelings, and then I tremble for both. I’m sure

she will never be happy, while he will be wretched; and Susan--I dare

not think upon Susan; she has a cough that goes to my heart.”

“So she has; that cough--you don’t know the money I spend on

black-currant jelly! What’s my advice? Why, I’d speak to Miss Clavering

at once, if I dared. I’m sure love will never break her heart; and she’s

so proud, she’d throw him off without a sigh, if she knew how things

stood.”

“I believe you are right,” said Mr. Fielden; “for truth is the best

policy, after all. Still, it’s scarce my business to meddle; and if it

were not for Susan--Well, well, I must think of it, and pray Heaven to

direct me.”

This conference suffices to explain to the reader the stage to which

the history of Lucretia had arrived. Willingly we pass over what it were

scarcely possible to describe,--her first shock at the fall from the

expectations of her life; fortune, rank, and what she valued more than

either, power, crushed at a blow. From the dark and sullen despair into

which she was first plunged, she was roused into hope, into something

like joy, by Mainwaring’s letters. Never had they been so warm and so

tender; for the young man felt not only poignant remorse that he had

been the cause of her downfall (though she broke it to him with more

delicacy than might have been expected from the state of her feelings

and the hardness of her character), but he felt also imperiously

the obligations which her loss rendered more binding than ever. He

persuaded, he urged, he forced himself into affection; and probably

without a murmur of his heart, he would have gone with her to the altar,

and, once wedded, custom and duty would have strengthened the chain

imposed on himself, had it not been for Lucretia’s fatal eagerness to

see him, to come up to London, where she induced him to meet her,--for

with her came Susan; and in Susan’s averted face and trembling hand and

mute avoidance of his eye, he read all which the poor dissembler fancied

she concealed. But the die was cast, the union announced, the time

fixed, and day by day he came to the house, to leave it in anguish

and despair. A feeling they shared in common caused these two unhappy

persons to shun each other. Mainwaring rarely came into the usual

sitting-room of the family; and when he did so, chiefly in the evening,

Susan usually took refuge in her own room. If they met, it was by

accident, on the stairs, or at the sudden opening of a door; then not

only no word, but scarcely even a look was exchanged: neither had the

courage to face the other. Perhaps, of the two, this reserve weighed

most on Susan; perhaps she most yearned to break the silence,--for she

thought she divined the cause of Mainwaring’s gloomy and mute constraint

in the upbraidings of his conscience, which might doubtless recall, if

no positive pledge to Susan, at least those words and tones which betray

the one heart, and seek to allure the other; and the profound melancholy

stamped on his whole person, apparent even to her hurried glance,

touched her with a compassion free from all the bitterness of selfish

reproach. She fancied she could die happy if she could remove that cloud

from his brow, that shadow from his conscience. Die; for she thought not

of life. She loved gently, quietly,--not with the vehement passion that

belongs to stronger natures; but it was the love of which the young and

the pure have died. The face of the Genius was calm and soft; and only

by the lowering of the hand do you see that the torch burns out, and

that the image too serene for earthly love is the genius of loving

Death.

Absorbed in the egotism of her passion (increased, as is ever the case

with women, even the worst, by the sacrifices it had cost her), and if

that passion paused, by the energy of her ambition, which already began

to scheme and reconstruct new scaffolds to repair the ruined walls of

the past,--Lucretia as yet had not detected what was so apparent to the

simple sense of Mr. Fielden. That Mainwaring was grave and thoughtful

and abstracted, she ascribed only to his grief at the thought of her

loss, and his anxieties for her altered future; and in her efforts to

console him, her attempts to convince him that greatness in England did

not consist only in lands and manors,--that in the higher walks of life

which conduct to the Temple of Renown, the leaders of the procession

are the aristocracy of knowledge and of intellect,--she so betrayed, not

generous emulation and high-souled aspiring, but the dark, unscrupulous,

tortuous ambition of cunning, stratagem, and intrigue, that instead

of feeling grateful and encouraged, he shuddered and revolted. How,

accompanied and led by a spirit which he felt to be stronger and more

commanding than his own,--how preserve the whiteness of his soul, the

uprightness of his honour? Already he felt himself debased. But in the

still trial of domestic intercourse, with the daily, hourly dripping on

the stone, in the many struggles between truth and falsehood, guile

and candour, which men--and, above all, ambitious men--must wage,

what darker angel would whisper him in his monitor? Still, he was

bound,--bound with an iron band; he writhed, but dreamed not of escape.

The day after that of Fielden’s conference with his wife, an unexpected

visitor came to the house. Olivier Dalibard called. He had not seen

Lucretia since she had left Laughton, nor had any correspondence passed

between them. He came at dusk, just after Mainwaring’s daily visit was

over, and Lucretia was still in the parlour, which she had appropriated

to herself. Her brow contracted as his name was announced, and the

maid-servant lighted the candle on the table, stirred the fire, and gave

a tug at the curtains. Her eye, glancing from his, round the mean room,

with its dingy horsehair furniture, involuntarily implied the contrast

between the past state and the present, which his sight could scarcely

help to impress on her. But she welcomed him with her usual stately

composure, and without reference to what had been. Dalibard was secretly

anxious to discover if she suspected himself of any agency in the

detection of the eventful letter; and assured by her manner that no

such thought was yet harboured, he thought it best to imitate her own

reserve. He assumed, however, a manner that, far more respectful than

he ever before observed to his pupil, was nevertheless sufficiently kind

and familiar to restore them gradually to their old footing; and that

he succeeded was apparent, when, after a pause, Lucretia said abruptly:

“How did Sir Miles St. John discover my correspondence with Mr.

Mainwaring?”

“Is it possible that you are ignorant? Ah, how--how should you know it?”

And Dalibard so simply explained the occurrence, in which, indeed, it

was impossible to trace the hand that had moved springs which seemed

so entirely set at work by an accident, that despite the extreme

suspiciousness of her nature, Lucretia did not see a pretence for

accusing him. Indeed, when he related the little subterfuge of Gabriel,

his attempt to save her by taking the letter on himself, she felt

thankful to the boy, and deemed Gabriel’s conduct quite in keeping with

his attachment to herself. And this accounted satisfactorily for the

only circumstance that had ever troubled her with a doubt,--namely, the

legacy left to Gabriel. She knew enough of Sir Miles to be aware that he

would be grateful to any one who had saved the name of his niece,

even while most embittered against her, from the shame attached to

clandestine correspondence.

“It is strange, nevertheless,” said she, thoughtfully, after a pause,

“that the girl should have detected the letter, concealed as it was by

the leaves that covered it.”

“But,” answered Dalibard, readily, “you see two or three persons had

entered before, and their feet must have displaced the leaves.”

“Possibly; the evil is now past recall.”

“And Mr. Mainwaring? Do you still adhere to one who has cost you so

much, poor child?”

“In three months more I shall be his wife.”

Dalibard sighed deeply, but offered no remonstrance.

“Well,” he said, taking her hand with mingled reverence and

affection,--“well, I oppose your inclinations no more, for now there

is nothing to risk; you are mistress of your own fortune; and since

Mainwaring has talents, that fortune will suffice for a career. Are

you at length convinced that I have conquered my folly; that I was

disinterested when I incurred your displeasure? If so, can you restore

to me your friendship? You will have some struggle with the world, and,

with my long experience of men and life, even I, the poor exile, may

assist you.”

And so thought Lucretia; for with some dread of Dalibard’s craft, she

yet credited his attachment to herself, and she felt profound admiration

for an intelligence more consummate and accomplished than any ever

yet submitted to her comprehension. From that time, Dalibard became

an habitual visitor at the house; he never interfered with Lucretia’s

interviews with Mainwaring; he took the union for granted, and conversed

with her cheerfully on the prospects before her; he ingratiated himself

with the Fieldens, played with the children, made himself at home, and

in the evenings when Mainwaring, as often as he could find the excuse,

absented himself from the family circle, he contrived to draw Lucretia

into more social intercourse with her homely companions than she had

before condescended to admit. Good Mr. Fielden rejoiced; here was the

very person,--the old friend of Sir Miles, the preceptor of Lucretia

herself, evidently most attached to her, having influence over her,--the

very person to whom to confide his embarrassment. One day, therefore,

when Dalibard had touched his heart by noticing the paleness of Susan,

he took him aside and told him all. “And now,” concluded the pastor,

hoping he had found one to relieve him of his dreaded and ungracious

task, “don’t you think that I--or rather you--as so old a friend, should

speak frankly to Miss Clavering herself?”

“No, indeed,” said the Provencal, quickly; “if we spoke to her, she

would disbelieve us. She would no doubt appeal to Mainwaring, and

Mainwaring would have no choice but to contradict us. Once put on his

guard, he would control his very sadness. Lucretia, offended, might

leave your house, and certainly she would regard her sister as having

influenced your confession,--a position unworthy Miss Mivers. But do not

fear: if the evil be so, it carries with it its inevitable remedy. Let

Lucretia discover it herself; but, pardon me, she must have seen, at

your first reception of Mainwaring, that he had before been acquainted

with you?”

“She was not in the room when we first received Mainwaring; and I have

always been distant to him, as you may suppose, for I felt disappointed

and displeased. Of course, however, she is aware that we knew him before

she did. What of that?”

“Why, do you think, then, he told her at Laughton of this

acquaintance,--that he spoke of Susan? I suspect not.”

“I cannot say, I am sure,” said Mr. Fielden.

“Ask her that question accidentally; and for the rest, be discreet, my

dear sir. I thank you for your confidence. I will watch well over my

poor young pupil. She must not, indeed, be sacrificed to a man whose

affections are engaged elsewhere.”

Dalibard trod on air as he left the house; his very countenance had

changed; he seemed ten years younger. It was evening; and suddenly, as

he came into Oxford Street, he encountered a knot of young men--noisy

and laughing loud--obstructing the pavement, breaking jests on the more

sober passengers, and attracting the especial and admiring attention of

sundry ladies in plumed hats and scarlet pelisses; for the streets then

enjoyed a gay liberty which has vanished from London with the lanterns

of the watchmen. Noisiest and most conspicuous of these descendants of

the Mohawks, the sleek and orderly scholar beheld the childish figure

of his son. Nor did Gabriel shrink from his father’s eye, stern and

scornful as it was, but rather braved the glance with an impudent leer.

Right, however, in the midst of the group, strode the Provencal, and

laying his hand very gently on the boy’s shoulder, he said: “My son,

come with me.”

Gabriel looked irresolute, and glanced at his companions. Delighted at

the prospect of a scene, they now gathered round, with countenances

and gestures that seemed little disposed to acknowledge the parental

authority.

“Gentlemen,” said Dalibard, turning a shade more pale, for though

morally most resolute, physically he was not brave,--“gentlemen, I must

beg you to excuse me; this child is my son!”

“But Art is his mother,” replied a tall, raw-boned young man, with

long tawny hair streaming down from a hat very much battered. “At the

juvenile age, the child is consigned to the mother! Have I said it?” and

he turned round theatrically to his comrades.

“Bravo!” cried the rest, clapping their hands.

“Down with all tyrants and fathers! hip, hip, Hurrah!” and the hideous

diapason nearly split the drum of the ears into which it resounded.

“Gabriel,” whispered the father, “you had better follow me, had you not?

Reflect!” So saying, he bowed low to the unpropitious assembly, and as

if yielding the victory, stepped aside and crossed over towards Bond

Street.

Before the din of derision and triumph died away, Dalibard looked back,

and saw Gabriel behind him.

“Approach, sir,” he said; and as the boy stood still, he added, “I

promise peace if you will accept it.”

“Peace, then,” answered Gabriel, and he joined his father’s side.

“So,” said Dalibard, “when I consented to your studying Art, as you

call it, under your mother’s most respectable brother, I ought to have

contemplated what would be the natural and becoming companions of the

rising Raphael I have given to the world.”

“I own, sir,” replied Gabriel, demurely, “that they are riotous fellows;

but some of them are clever, and--”

“And excessively drunk,” interrupted Dalibard, examining the gait of his

son. “Do you learn that accomplishment also, by way of steadying your

hand for the easel?”

“No, sir; I like wine well enough, but I would not be drunk for the

world. I see people when they are drunk are mere fools,--let out their

secrets, and show themselves up.”

“Well said,” replied the father, almost admiringly. “But a truce with

this bantering, Gabriel. Can you imagine that I will permit you any

longer to remain with that vagabond Varney and yon crew of vauriens? You

will come home with me; and if you must be a painter, I will look out

for a more trustworthy master.”

“I shall stay where I am,” answered Gabriel, firmly, and compressing his

lips with a force that left them bloodless.

“What, boy? Do I hear right? Dare you disobey me? Dare you defy?”

“Not in your house, so I will not enter it again.” Dalibard laughed

mockingly.

“Peste! but this is modest! You are not of age yet, Mr. Varney; you are

not free from a father’s tyrannical control.”

“The law does not own you as my father, I am told, sir. You have said my

name rightly,--it is Varney, not Dalibard. We have no rights over each

other; so at least says Tom Passmore, and his father’s a lawyer!”

Dalibard’s hand griped his son’s arm fiercely. Despite his pain, which

was acute, the child uttered no cry; but he growled beneath his teeth,

“Beware! beware! or my mother’s son may avenge her death!”

Dalibard removed his hand, and staggered as if struck. Gliding from his

side, Gabriel seized the occasion to escape; he paused, however, midway

in the dull, lamp-lit kennel when he saw himself out of reach, and then

approaching cautiously, said: “I know. I am a boy, but you have made me

man enough to take care of myself. Mr. Varney, my uncle, will maintain

me; when of age, old Sir Miles has provided for me. Leave me in peace,

treat me as free, and I will visit you, help you when you want me,

obey you still,--yes, follow your instructions; for I know you are,” he

paused, “you are wise. But if you seek again to make me your slave, you

will only find your foe. Good-night; and remember that a bastard has no

father!”

With these words he moved on, and hurrying down the street, turned the

corner and vanished.

Dalibard remained motionless for some minutes; at length he muttered:

“Ay, let him go, he is dangerous! What son ever revolted even from the

worst father, and throve in life? Food for the gibbet! What matters?”

When next Dalibard visited Lucretia, his manner was changed; the

cheerfulness he had before assumed gave place to a kind of melancholy

compassion; he no longer entered into her plans for the future, but

would look at her mournfully, start up, and walk away. She would have

attributed the change to some return of his ancient passion, but she

heard him once murmur with unspeakable pity, “Poor child, poor child!” A

vague apprehension seized her,--first, indeed, caught from some remarks

dropped by Mr. Fielden, which were less discreet than Dalibard had

recommended. A day or two afterwards, she asked Mainwaring, carelessly,

why he had never spoken to her at Laughton of his acquaintance with

Fielden.

“You asked me that before,” he said, somewhat sullenly.

“Did I? I forget! But how was it? Tell me again.”

“I scarcely know,” he replied confusedly; “we were always talking of

each other or poor Sir Miles,--our own hopes and fears.”

This was true, and a lover’s natural excuse. In the present of love all

the past is forgotten.

“Still,” said Lucretia, with her sidelong glance,--“still, as you must

have seen much of my own sister--”

Mainwaring, while she spoke, was at work on a button on his gaiter

(gaiters were then worn tight at the ankle); the effort brought the

blood to his forehead.

“But,” he said, still stooping at his occupation, “you were so little

intimate with your sister; I feared to offend. Family differences are so

difficult to approach.”

Lucretia was satisfied at the moment; for so vast was her stake in

Mainwaring’s heart, so did her whole heart and soul grapple to the rock

left serene amidst the deluge, that she habitually and resolutely thrust

from her mind all the doubts that at times invaded it.

“I know,” she would often say to herself,--“I know he does not love as

I do; but man never can, never ought to love as woman! Were I a man,

I should scorn myself if I could be so absorbed in one emotion as I am

proud to be now,--I, poor woman! I know,” again she would think,--“I

know how suspicious and distrustful I am; I must not distrust him,--I

shall only irritate, I may lose him: I dare not distrust,--it would be

too dreadful.”

Thus, as a system vigorously embraced by a determined mind, she had

schooled and forced herself into reliance on her lover. His words now,

we say, satisfied her at the moment; but afterwards, in absence, they

were recalled, in spite of herself,--in the midst of fears, shapeless

and undefined. Involuntarily she began to examine the countenance, the

movements, of her sister,--to court Susan’s society more than she had

done; for her previous indifference had now deepened into bitterness.

Susan, the neglected and despised, had become her equal,--nay, more

than her equal: Susan’s children would have precedence to her own in the

heritage of Laughton! Hitherto she had never deigned to talk to her in

the sweet familiarity of sisters so placed; never deigned to confide to

her those feelings for her future husband which burned lone and ardent

in the close vault of her guarded heart. Now, however, she began to name

him, wind her arm into Susan’s, talk of love and home, and the days to

come; and as she spoke, she read the workings of her sister’s face.

That part of the secret grew clear almost at the first glance. Susan

loved,--loved William Mainwaring; but was it not a love hopeless and

unreturned? Might not this be the cause that had made Mainwaring so

reserved? He might have seen, or conjectured, a conquest he had not

sought; and hence, with manly delicacy, he had avoided naming Susan to

Lucretia; and now, perhaps, sought the excuses which at times had chafed

and wounded her for not joining the household circle. If one of those

who glance over these pages chances to be a person more than usually

able and acute,--a person who has loved and been deceived,--he or she,

no matter which, will perhaps recall those first moments when the doubt,

long put off, insisted to be heard. A weak and foolish heart gives way

to the doubt at once; not so the subtler and more powerful,--it rather,

on the contrary, recalls all the little circumstances that justify trust

and make head against suspicion; it will not render the citadel at the

mere sound of the trumpet; it arms all its forces, and bars its gates

on the foe. Hence it is that the persons most easy to dupe in matters of

affection are usually those most astute in the larger affairs of

life. Moliere, reading every riddle in the vast complexities of human

character, and clinging, in self-imposed credulity, to his profligate

wife, is a type of a striking truth. Still, a foreboding, a warning

instinct withheld Lucretia from plumbing farther into the deeps of her

own fears. So horrible was the thought that she had been deceived, that

rather than face it, she would have preferred to deceive herself.

This poor, bad heart shrank from inquiry, it trembled at the idea of

condemnation. She hailed, with a sentiment of release that partook of

rapture, Susan’s abrupt announcement one morning that she had accepted

an invitation from some relations of her father to spend some time with

them at their villa near Hampstead; she was to go the end of the week.

Lucretia hailed it, though she saw the cause,--Susan shrank from

the name of Mainwaring on Lucretia’s lips; shrank from the familiar

intercourse so ruthlessly forced on her! With a bright eye, that day,

Lucretia met her lover; yet she would not tell him of Susan’s intended

departure, she had not the courage.

Dalibard was foiled. This contradiction in Lucretia’s temper, so

suspicious, so determined, puzzled even his penetration. He saw that

bolder tactics were required. He waylaid Mainwaring on the young man’s

way to his lodgings, and after talking to him on indifferent matters,

asked him carelessly whether he did not think Susan far gone in a

decline. Affecting not to notice the convulsive start with which the

question was received, he went on,--

“There is evidently something on her mind; I observe that her eyes are

often red, as with weeping, poor girl. Perhaps some silly love-affair.

However, we shall not see her again before your marriage; she is going

away in a day or two. The change of air may possibly yet restore her,--I

own, though, I fear the worst. At this time of the year, and in your

climate, such complaints as I take hers to be are rapid. Good-day. We

may meet this evening.”

Terror-stricken at these barbarous words, Mainwaring no sooner reached

his lodging than he wrote and despatched a note to Fielden, entreating

him to call.

The vicar obeyed the summons, and found Mainwaring in a state of mind

bordering on distraction. Nor when Susan was named did Fielden’s words

take the shape of comfort; for he himself was seriously alarmed for

her health. The sound of her low cough rang in his ears, and he rather

heightened than removed the picture which haunted Mainwaring,--Susan

stricken, dying, broken-hearted!

Tortured both in heart and conscience, Mainwaring felt as if he had but

one wish left in the world,--to see Susan once more. What to say,

he scarce knew; but for her to depart,--depart perhaps to her grave,

believing him coldly indifferent,--for her not to know at least his

struggles, and pronounce his pardon, was a thought beyond endurance.

After such an interview both would have new fortitude,--each would

unite in encouraging the other in the only step left to honour. And this

desire he urged upon Fielden with all the eloquence of passionate grief

as he entreated him to permit and procure one last conference with

Susan. But this, the plain sense and straightforward conscience of the

good man long refused. If Mainwaring had been left in the position to

explain his heart to Lucretia, it would not have been for Fielden

to object; but to have a clandestine interview with one sister while

betrothed to the other, bore in itself a character too equivocal to meet

with the simple vicar’s approval.

“What can you apprehend?” exclaimed the young man, almost fiercely;

for, harassed and tortured, his mild nature was driven to bay. “Can you

suppose that I shall encourage my own misery by the guilty pleadings

of unavailing love? All that I ask is the luxury--yes, the luxury, long

unknown to me, of candour--to place fairly and manfully before Susan the

position in which fate has involved me. Can you suppose that we shall

not both take comfort and strength from each other? Our duty is plain

and obvious; but it grows less painful, encouraged by the lips of a

companion in suffering. I tell you fairly that see Susan I will and

must. I will watch round her home, wherever it be, hour after hour; come

what may, I will find my occasion. Is it not better that the interview

should be under your roof, within the same walls which shelter her

sister? There, the place itself imposes restraint on despair. Oh, sir,

this is no time for formal scruples; be merciful, I beseech you, not to

me, but to Susan. I judge of her by myself. I know that I shall go to

the altar more resigned to the future if for once I can give vent to

what weighs upon my heart. She will then see, as I do, that the path

before me is inevitable; she will compose herself to face the fate that

compels us. We shall swear tacitly to each other, not to love, but

to conquer love. Believe me, sir, I am not selfish in this prayer; an

instinct, the intuition which human grief has into the secrets of human

grief, assures me that that which I ask is the best consolation you can

afford to Susan. You own she is ill,--suffering. Are not your fears for

her very life--O Heaven? for her very life--gravely awakened? And yet

you see we have been silent to each other! Can speech be more fatal in

its results than silence? Oh, for her sake, hear me!”

The good man’s tears fell fast. His scruples were shaken; there was

truth in what Mainwaring urged. He did not yield, but he promised to

reflect, and inform Mainwaring, by a line, in the evening. Finding this

was all he could effect, the young man at last suffered him to leave

the house, and Fielden hastened to take counsel of Dalibard; that wily

persuader soon reasoned away Mr. Fielden’s last faint objection. It now

only remained to procure Susan’s assent to the interview, and to arrange

that it should be undisturbed. Mr. Fielden should take out the children

the next morning. Dalibard volunteered to contrive the absence of

Lucretia at the hour appointed. Mrs. Fielden alone should remain within,

and might, if it were judged proper, be present at the interview,

which was fixed for the forenoon in the usual drawing-room. Nothing but

Susan’s consent was now necessary, and Mr. Fielden ascended to her room.

He knocked twice,--no sweet voice bade him enter; he opened the door

gently,--Susan was in prayer. At the opposite corner of the room, by the

side of her bed, she knelt, her face buried in her hands, and he heard,

low and indistinct, the murmur broken by the sob. But gradually, as he

stood unperceived, sob and murmur ceased,--prayer had its customary and

blessed effect with the pure and earnest. And when Susan rose, though

the tears yet rolled down her cheeks, the face was serene as an angel’s.

The pastor approached and took her hand; a blush then broke over her

countenance,--she trembled, and her eyes fell on the ground. “My child,”

he said solemnly, “God will hear you!” And after those words there was a

long silence. He then drew her passively towards a seat, and sat down

by her, embarrassed how to begin. At length he said, looking somewhat

aside, “Mr. Mainwaring has made me a request,--a prayer which relates

to you, and which I refer to you. He asks you to grant him an interview

before you leave us,--to-morrow, if you will. I refused at first,--I am

in doubt still; for, my dear, I have always found that when the feelings

move us, our duty becomes less clear to the human heart,--corrupt, we

know, but still it is often a safer guide than our reason. I never knew

reason unerring, except in mathematics; we have no Euclid,” and the good

man smiled mournfully, “in the problems of real life. I will not urge

you one way or the other; I put the case before you: Would it, as the

young man says, give you comfort and strength to see him once again

while, while--in short, before your sister is--I mean before--that is,

would it soothe you now, to have an unreserved communication with him?

He implores it. What shall I answer?”

“This trial, too!” muttered Susan, almost inaudibly,--“this trial which

I once yearned for;” and the hand clasped in Fielden’s was as cold as

ice. Then, turning her eyes to her guardian somewhat wildly, she cried:

“But to what end, what object? Why should he wish to see me?”

“To take greater courage to do his duty; to feel less unhappy at--at--”

“I will see him,” interrupted Susan, firmly,--“he is right; it will

strengthen both. I will see him!”

“But human nature is weak, my child; if my heart be so now, what will be

yours?”

“Fear me not,” answered Susan, with a sad, wandering smile; and she

repeated vacantly: “I will see him!”

The good man looked at her, threw his arms round her wasted form, and

lifting up his eyes, his lips stirred with such half-syllabled words as

fathers breathe on high.

CHAPTER VIII. THE DISCOVERY.

Dalibard had undertaken to get Lucretia from the house,--in fact,

her approaching marriage rendered necessary a communication with Mr.

Parchmount, as executor to her uncle’s will, relative to the transfer

of her portion; and she had asked Dalibard to accompany her thither; for

her pride shrank from receiving the lawyer in the shabby parlour of the

shabby lodging-house; she therefore, that evening, fixed the next day,

before noon, for the visit. A carriage was hired for the occasion, and

when it drove off, Mr. Fielden took his children a walk to Primrose

Hill, and called, as was agreed, on Mainwaring by the way.

The carriage had scarcely rattled fifty yards through the street when

Dalibard fixed his eyes with deep and solemn commiseration on Lucretia.

Hitherto, with masterly art, he had kept aloof from direct explanations

with his pupil; he knew that she would distrust no one like himself. The

plot was now ripened, and it was time for the main agent to conduct the

catastrophe. The look was so expressive that Lucretia felt a chill at

her heart, and could not, help exclaiming, “What has happened? You have

some terrible tidings to communicate!”

“I have indeed to say that which may, perhaps, cause you to hate me

forever; as we hate those who report our afflictions. I must endure

this; I have struggled long between my indignation and my compassion.

Rouse up your strong mind, and hear me. Mainwaring loves your sister!”

Lucretia uttered a cry that seemed scarcely to come from a human

voice,--

“No, no!” she gasped out; “do not tell me. I will hear no more; I will

not believe you!”

With an inexpressible pity and softness in his tone, this man, whose

career had given him such profound experience in the frailties of the

human heart, continued: “I do not ask you to believe me, Lucretia;

I would not now speak, if you had not the opportunity to convince

yourself. Even those with whom you live are false to you; at this moment

they have arranged all, for Mainwaring to steal, in your absence, to

your sister. In a few moments more he will be with her; if you yourself

would learn what passes between them, you have the power.”

“I have--I have not--not--the courage; drive on--faster--faster.”

Dalibard again was foiled. In this strange cowardice there was something

so terrible, yet so touching, that it became sublime,--it was the grasp

of a drowning soul at the last plank.

“You are right perhaps,” he said, after a pause; and wisely forbearing

all taunt and resistance, he left the heart to its own workings.

Suddenly, Lucretia caught at the check-string. “Stop,” she

exclaimed,--“stop! I will not, I cannot, endure this suspense to last

through a life! I will learn the worst. Bid him drive back.”

“We must descend and walk; you forget we must enter unsuspected;” and

Dalibard, as the carriage stopped, opened the door and let down the

steps.

Lucretia recoiled, then pressing one hand to her heart, she descended,

without touching the arm held out to her. Dalibard bade the coachman

wait, and they walked back to the house.

“Yes, he may see her,” exclaimed Lucretia, her face brightening. “Ah,

there you have not deceived me; I see your stratagem,--I despise it;

I know she loves him; she has sought this interview. He is so mild and

gentle, so fearful to give pain; he has consented, from pity,--that is

all. Is he not pledged to me? He, so candid, so ingenuous! There must

be truth somewhere in the world. If he is false, where find truth? Dark

man, must I look for it in you,--you?”

“It is not my truth I require you to test; I pretend not to truth

universal; I can be true to one, as you may yet discover. But I own your

belief is not impossible; my interest in you may have made me rash and

unjust,--what you may overhear, far from destroying, may confirm forever

your happiness. Would that it may be so!”

“It must be so,” returned Lucretia, with a fearful gloom on her brow and

in her accent; “I will interpret every word to my own salvation.”

Dalibard’s countenance changed, despite his usual control over it. He

had set all his chances upon this cast, and it was more hazardous than

he had deemed. He had counted too much upon the jealousy of common

natures. After all, how little to the ear of one resolved to deceive

herself might pass between these two young persons, meeting not to avow

attachment, but to take courage from each other! What restraint might

they impose on their feelings! Still, the game must be played out.

As they now neared the house, Dalibard looked carefully round, lest they

should encounter Mainwaring on his way to it. He had counted on arriving

before the young man could get there.

“But,” said Lucretia, breaking silence, with an ironical

smile,--“but--for your tender anxiety for me has, no doubt, provided all

means and contrivance, all necessary aids to baseness and eavesdropping,

that can assure my happiness--how am I to be present at this interview?”

“I have provided, as you say,” answered Dalibard, in the tone of a man

deeply hurt, “those means which I, who have found the world one foe and

one traitor, deemed the best to distinguish falsehood from truth. I have

arranged that we shall enter the house unsuspected. Mainwaring and your

sister will be in the drawing-room; the room next to it will be vacant,

as Mr. Fielden is from home: there is but a glass-door between the two

chambers.”

“Enough, enough!” and Lucretia turned round and placed her hand lightly

on the Provencal’s arm. “The next hour will decide whether the means you

suggest to learn truth and defend safety will be familiar or loathsome

to me for life,--will decide whether trust is a madness; whether you, my

youth’s teacher, are the wisest of men, or only the most dangerous.”

“Believe me, or not, when I say I would rather the decision should

condemn me; for I, too, have need of confidence in men.”

Nothing further was said; the dull street was quiet and desolate as

usual. Dalibard had taken with him the key of the house-door. The door

opened noiselessly; they were in the house. Mainwaring’s cloak was in

the hall; he had arrived a few moments before them. Dalibard pointed

silently to that evidence in favour of his tale. Lucretia bowed her head

but with a look that implied defiance; and (still without a word) she

ascended the stairs, and entered the room appointed for concealment.

But as she entered, at the farther corner of the chamber she saw Mrs.

Fielden seated,--seated, remote and out of hearing. The good-natured

woman had yielded to Mainwaring’s prayer, and Susan’s silent look that

enforced it, to let their interview be unwitnessed. She did not perceive

Lucretia till the last walked glidingly, but firmly, up to her, placed

a burning hand on her lips, and whispered: “Hush, betray me not; my

happiness for life--Susan’s--his--are at stake; I must hear what passes:

it is my fate that is deciding. Hush! I command; for I have the right.”

Mrs. Fielden was awed and startled; and before she could recover even

breath, Lucretia had quitted her side and taken her post at the fatal

door. She lifted the corner of the curtain from the glass panel, and

looked in.

Mainwaring was seated at a little distance from Susan, whose face was

turned from her. Mainwaring’s countenance was in full view. But it

was Susan’s voice that met her ear; and though sweet and low, it

was distinct, and even firm. It was evident from the words that the

conference had but just begun.

“Indeed, Mr. Mainwaring, you have nothing to explain, nothing of which

to accuse yourself. It was not for this, believe me,”--and here Susan

turned her face, and its aspect of heavenly innocence met the dry, lurid

eye of the unseen witness,--“not for this, believe me, that I consented

to see you. If I did so, it was only because I thought, because I feared

from your manner, when we met at times, still more from your evident

avoidance to meet me at all, that you were unhappy (for I know you kind

and honest),--unhappy at the thought that you had wounded me, and my

heart could not bear that, nor, perhaps, my pride either. That you

should have forgotten me--”

“Forgotten you!”

“That you should have been captivated,” continued Susan, in a more

hurried tone, “by one so superior to me in all things as Lucretia, is

very natural. I thought, then--thought only--that nothing could cloud

your happiness but some reproach of a conscience too sensitive. For this

I have met you,--met you without a thought which Lucretia would have a

right to blame, could she read my heart; met you,” and the voice for the

first time faltered, “that I might say, ‘Be at peace; it is your sister

that addresses you. Requite Lucretia’s love,--it is deep and strong;

give her, as she gives to you, a whole heart; and in your happiness

I, your sister--sister to both--I shall be blest.’” With a smile

inexpressibly touching and ingenuous, she held out her hand as she

ceased. Mainwaring sprang forward, and despite her struggle, pressed it

to his lips, his heart.

“Oh,” he exclaimed, in broken accents, which gradually became more clear

and loud, “what--what have I lost!--lost forever! No, no, I will be

worthy of you! I do not, I dare not, say that I love you still! I feel

what I owe to Lucretia. How I became first ensnared, infatuated; how,

with your image graven so deeply here--”

“Mainwaring--Mr. Mainwaring--I must not hear you. Is this your promise?”

“Yes, you must hear me yet. How I became engaged to your sister,--so

different indeed from you,--I start in amaze and bewilderment when I

seek to conjecture. But so it was. For me she has forfeited fortune,

rank, all which that proud, stern heart so prized and coveted. Heaven is

my witness how I have struggled to repay her affection with my own! If I

cannot succeed, at least all that faith and gratitude can give are hers.

Yes, when I leave you, comforted by your forgiveness, your prayers, I

shall have strength to tear you from my heart; it is my duty, my fate.

With a firm step I will go to these abhorred nuptials. Oh, shudder not,

turn not away. Forgive the word; but I must speak,--my heart will out;

yes, abhorred nuptials! Between my grave and the altar, would--would

that I had a choice!”

From this burst, which in vain from time to time Susan had sought to

check, Mainwaring was startled by an apparition which froze his veins,

as a ghost from the grave. The door was thrown open, and Lucretia stood

in the aperture,--stood, gazing on him, face to face; and her own was

so colourless, so rigid, so locked in its livid and awful solemnity of

aspect that it was, indeed, as one risen from the dead.

Dismayed by the abrupt cry and the changed face of her lover, Susan

turned and beheld her sister. With the impulse of the pierced and loving

heart, which divined all the agony inflicted, she sprang to Lucretia’s

side, she fell to the ground and clasped her knees.

“Do not heed, do not believe him; it is but the frenzy of a moment. He

spoke but to deceive me,--me, who loved him once! Mine alone, mine is

the crime. He knows all your worth. Pity--pity--pity on yourself, on

him, on me!”

Lucretia’s eyes fell with the glare of a fiend upon the imploring face

lifted to her own. Her lips moved, but no sound was audible. At length

she drew herself from her sister’s clasp, and walked steadily up to

Mainwaring. She surveyed him with a calm and cruel gaze, as if she

enjoyed his shame and terror. Before, however, she spoke, Mrs. Fielden,

who had watched, as one spellbound, Lucretia’s movements, and, without

hearing what had passed, had the full foreboding of what would ensue,

but had not stirred till Lucretia herself terminated the suspense and

broke the charm of her awe,--before she spoke, Mrs. Fielden rushed in,

and giving vent to her agitation in loud sobs, as she threw her arms

round Susan, who was still kneeling on the floor, brought something of

grotesque to the more tragic and fearful character of the scene.

“My uncle was right; there is neither courage nor honour in the

low-born! He, the schemer, too, is right. All hollow,--all false!” Thus

said Lucretia, with a strange sort of musing accent, at first scornful,

at last only quietly abstracted. “Rise, sir,” she then added, with her

most imperious tone; “do you not hear your Susan weep? Do you fear in my

presence to console her? Coward to her, as forsworn to me! Go, sir, you

are free!”

“Hear me,” faltered Mainwaring, attempting to seize her hand; “I do not

ask you to forgive; but--”

“Forgive, sir!” interrupted Lucretia, rearing her head, and with a look

of freezing and unspeakable majesty. “There is only one person here who

needs a pardon; but her fault is inexpiable: it is the woman who stooped

beneath her--”

With these words, hurled from her with a scorn which crushed while it

galled, she mechanically drew round her form her black mantle; her eye

glanced on the deep mourning of the garment, and her memory recalled

all that love had cost her; but she added no other reproach. Slowly she

turned away. Passing Susan, who lay senseless in Mrs. Fielden’s arms,

she paused, and kissed her forehead.

“When she recovers, madam,” she said to Mrs. Fielden, who was moved and

astonished by this softness, “say that Lucretia Clavering uttered a vow

when she kissed the brow of William Mainwaring’s future wife!”

Olivier Dalibard was still seated in the parlour below when Lucretia

entered. Her face yet retained its almost unearthly rigidity and calm;

but a sort of darkness had come over its ashen pallor,--that shade so

indescribable, which is seen in the human face, after long illness, a

day or two before death. Dalibard was appalled; for he had too often

seen that hue in the dying not to recognize it now. His emotion was

sufficiently genuine to give more than usual earnestness to his voice

and gesture, as he poured out every word that spoke sympathy and

soothing. For a long time Lucretia did not seem to hear him; at last her

face softened,--the ice broke.

“Motherless, friendless, lone, alone forever, undone, undone!” she

murmured. Her head sank upon the shoulder of her fearful counsellor,

unconscious of its resting-place, and she burst into tears,--tears which

perhaps saved her reason or her life.

CHAPTER IX. A SOUL WITHOUT HOPE.

When Mr. Fielden returned home, Lucretia had quitted the house. She left

a line for him in her usual bold, clear handwriting, referring him to

his wife for explanation of the reasons that forbade a further residence

beneath his roof. She had removed to an hotel until she had leisure to

arrange her plans for the future. In a few months she should be of age;

and in the meanwhile, who now living claimed authority over her? For the

rest, she added, “I repeat what I told Mr. Mainwaring: all engagement

between us is at an end; he will not insult me either by letter or by

visit. It is natural that I should at present shrink from seeing Susan

Mivers. Hereafter, if permitted, I will visit Mrs. Mainwaring.”

Though all had chanced as Mr. Fielden had desired (if, as he once half

meditated, he had spoken to Lucretia herself); though a marriage that

could have brought happiness to none, and would have made the misery of

two, was at an end,--he yet felt a bitter pang, almost of remorse, when

he learned what had occurred. And Lucretia, before secretly disliked

(if any one he could dislike), became dear to him at once, by sorrow

and compassion. Forgetting every other person, he hurried to the hotel

Lucretia had chosen; but her coldness deceived and her pride repelled

him. She listened dryly to all he said, and merely replied: “I feel only

gratitude at my escape. Let this subject now close forever.”

Mr. Fielden left her presence with less anxious and commiserating

feelings,--perhaps all had chanced for the best. And on returning home,

his whole mind became absorbed in alarm for Susan. She was delirious,

and in great danger; it was many weeks before she recovered. Meanwhile,

Lucretia had removed into private apartments, of which she withheld the

address. During this time, therefore, they lost sight of her.

If amidst the punishments with which the sombre imagination of poets has

diversified the Realm of the tortured Shadows, it had depicted some soul

condemned to look evermore down into an abyss, all change to its gaze

forbidden, chasm upon chasm yawning deeper and deeper, darker and

darker, endless and infinite, so that, eternally gazing, the soul

became, as it were, a part of the abyss,--such an image would symbol

forth the state of Lucretia’s mind.

It was not the mere desolation of one whom love has abandoned and

betrayed. In the abyss were mingled inextricably together the gloom of

the past and of the future,--there, the broken fortunes, the crushed

ambition, the ruin of the worldly expectations long inseparable from her

schemes; and amidst them, the angry shade of the more than father, whose

heart she had wrung, and whose old age she had speeded to the grave.

These sacrifices to love, while love was left to her, might have haunted

her at moments; but a smile, a word, a glance, banished the regret and

the remorse. Now, love being razed out of life, the ruins of all else

loomed dismal amidst the darkness; and a voice rose up, whispering: “Lo,

fool, what thou hast lost because thou didst believe and love!” And this

thought grasped together the two worlds of being,--the what has been,

and the what shall be. All hope seemed stricken from the future, as

a man strikes from the calculations of his income the returns from a

property irrevocably lost. At her age but few of her sex have parted

with religion; but even such mechanical faith as the lessons of her

childhood, and the constrained conformities with Christian ceremonies,

had instilled, had long since melted away in the hard scholastic

scepticism of her fatal tutor,--a scepticism which had won, with little

effort, a reason delighting in the maze of doubt, and easily narrowed

into the cramped and iron logic of disbelief by an intellect that

scorned to submit where it failed to comprehend. Nor had faith given

place to those large moral truths from which philosophy has sought to

restore the proud statue of Pagan Virtue as a substitute for the meek

symbol of the Christian cross. By temperament unsocial, nor readily

moved to the genial and benevolent, that absolute egotism in which

Olivier Dalibard centred his dreary ethics seemed sanctioned to Lucretia

by her studies into the motives of man and the history of the world. She

had read the chronicles of States and the memoirs of statesmen, and

seen how craft carries on the movements of an age. Those Viscontis,

Castruccios, and Medici; those Richelieus and Mazarins and De Retzs;

those Loyolas and Mohammeds and Cromwells; those Monks and Godolphins;

those Markboroughs and Walpoles; those founders of history and

dynasties and sects; those leaders and dupers of men, greater or lesser,

corrupters or corrupt, all standing out prominent and renowned from

the guiltless and laurelless obscure,--seemed to win, by the homage of

posterity, the rewards that attend the deceivers of their time. By a

superb arrogance of generalization, she transferred into private life,

and the rule of commonplace actions, the policy that, to the abasement

of honour, has so often triumphed in the guidance of States. Therefore,

betimes, the whole frame of society was changed to her eye, from the

calm aspect it wears to those who live united with their kind; she

viewed all seemings with suspicion; and before she had entered the

world, prepared to live in it as a conspirator in a city convulsed,

spying and espied, schemed against and scheming,--here the crown for the

crafty, there the axe for the outwitted.

But her love--for love is trust--had led her half way forth from this

maze of the intellect. That fair youth of inexperience and candour which

seemed to bloom out in the face of her betrothed; his very shrinking

from the schemes so natural to her that to her they seemed even

innocent; his apparent reliance on mere masculine ability, with the

plain aids of perseverance and honesty,--all had an attraction that

plucked her back from herself. If she clung to him firmly, blindly,

credulously, it was not as the lover alone. In the lover she beheld the

good angel. Had he only died to her, still the angel smile would have

survived and warned. But the man had not died; the angel itself had

deceived; the wings could uphold her no more,--they had touched the

mire, and were sullied with the soil; with the stain, was forfeited the

strength. All was deceit and hollowness and treachery. Lone again in the

universe rose the eternal I. So down into the abyss she looked, depth

upon depth, and the darkness had no relief, and the deep had no end.

Olivier Dalibard alone, of all she knew, was admitted to her seclusion.

He played his part as might be expected from the singular patience and

penetration which belonged to the genius of his character. He forbore

the most distant allusion to his attachment or his hopes. He evinced

sympathy rather by imitating her silence, than attempts to console. When

he spoke, he sought to interest her mind more than to heal directly the

deep wounds of her heart. There is always, to the afflicted, a certain

charm in the depth and bitterness of eloquent misanthropy. And Dalibard,

who professed not to be a man-hater, but a world-scorner, had powers of

language and of reasoning commensurate with his astute intellect and his

profound research. His society became not only a relief, it grew almost

a want, to that stern sorrower. But whether alarmed or not by the

influence she felt him gradually acquiring, or whether, through some

haughty desire to rise once more aloft from the state of her rival and

her lover, she made one sudden effort to grasp at the rank from which

she had been hurled. The only living person whose connection could

re-open to her the great world, with its splendours and its scope to

ambition, was Charles Vernon. She scarcely admitted to her own mind

the idea that she would now accept, if offered, the suit she had before

despised; she did not even contemplate the renewal of that suit,--though

there was something in the gallant and disinterested character of

Vernon which should have made her believe he would regard their

altered fortunes rather as a claim on his honour than a release to his

engagements. But hitherto no communication had passed between them;

and this was strange if he retained the same intentions which he

had announced at Laughton. Putting aside, we say, however, all such

considerations, Vernon had sought her friendship, called her “cousin,”

enforced the distant relationship between them. Not as lover, but as

kinsman,--the only kinsman of her own rank she possessed,--his position

in the world, his connections, his brilliant range of acquaintance, made

his counsel for her future plans, his aid in the re-establishment of her

consequence (if not--as wealthy, still as well-born), and her admission

amongst her equals, of price and value. It was worth sounding the depth

of the friendship he had offered, even if his love had passed away with

the fortune on which doubtless it had been based.

She took a bold step,--she wrote to Vernon: not even to allude to what

had passed between them; her pride forbade such unwomanly vulgarity.

The baseness that was in her took at least a more delicate exterior. She

wrote to him simply and distantly, to state that there were some books

and trifles of hers left at Laughton, which she prized beyond their

trivial value, and to request, as she believed him to be absent from

the Hall, permission to call at her old home, in her way to a visit in

a neighbouring county, and point out to whomsoever he might appoint to

meet her, the effects she deemed herself privileged to claim. The letter

was one merely of business, but it was a sufficient test of the friendly

feelings of her former suitor.

She sent this letter to Vernon’s house in London, and the next day came

the answer.

Vernon, we must own, entirely sympathized with Sir Miles in the solemn

injunctions the old man had bequeathed. Immediately after the death of

one to whom we owe gratitude and love, all his desires take a sanctity

irresistible and ineffable; we adopt his affection, his dislikes,

his obligations, and his wrongs. And after he had read the copy of

Lucretia’s letter, inclosed to him by Sir Miles, the conquest the poor

baronet had made over resentment and vindictive emotion, the evident

effort at passionless justice with which he had provided becomingly

for his niece, while he cancelled her claims as his heiress, had filled

Vernon with a reverence for his wishes and decisions that silenced all

those inclinations to over-generosity which an unexpected inheritance

is apt to create towards the less fortunate expectants. Nevertheless,

Lucretia’s direct application, her formal appeal to his common courtesy

as host and kinsman, perplexed greatly a man ever accustomed to a

certain chivalry towards the sex; the usual frankness of his disposition

suggested, however, plain dealing as the best escape from his dilemma,

and therefore he answered thus:--

MADAM,--Under other circumstances it would have given me no common

pleasure to place the house that you so long inhabited again at your

disposal; and I feel so painfully the position which my refusal of

your request inflicts upon me, that rather than resort to excuses and

pretexts, which, while conveying an impression of my sincerity, would

seem almost like an insult to yourself, I venture frankly to inform you

that it was the dying wish of my lamented kinsman, in consequence of

a letter which came under his eye, that the welcome you had hitherto

received at Laughton should be withdrawn. Pardon me, Madam, if I express

myself thus bluntly; it is somewhat necessary to the vindication of my

character in your eyes, both as regards the honour of your request

and my tacit resignation of hopes fervently but too presumptuously

entertained. In this most painful candour, Heaven forbid that I

should add wantonly to your self-reproaches for the fault of youth and

inexperience, which I should be the last person to judge rigidly, and

which, had Sir Miles’s life been spared, you would doubtless have amply

repaired. The feelings which actuated Sir Miles in his latter days might

have changed; but the injunction those feelings prompted I am bound to

respect.

For the mere matter of business on which you have done me the honour

to address me, I have only to say that any orders you may give to the

steward, or transmit through any person you may send to the Hall,

with regard to the effects you so naturally desire to claim, shall be

implicitly obeyed.

And believe me, Madam (though I do not presume to add those expressions

which might rather heighten the offence I fear this letter will give

you), that the assurance of your happiness in the choice you have made,

and which now no obstacle can oppose, will considerably--lighten

the pain with which I shall long recall my ungracious reply to your

communication.

I have the honour to be, etc., C. VERNON ST. JOHN.

BROOK STREET, Dec. 28, 18--.

The receipt of such a letter could hardly add to the profounder grief

which preyed in the innermost core of Lucretia’s heart; but in repelling

the effort she had made to distract that grief by ambition, it blackened

the sullen despondency with which she regarded the future. As the insect

in the hollow snare of the ant-lion, she felt that there was no footing

up the sides of the cave into which she had fallen; the sand gave way to

the step. But despondency in her brought no meekness; the cloud did not

descend in rain; resting over the horizon, its darkness was tinged with

the fires which it fed. The heart, already so embittered, was stung and

mortified into intolerable shame and wrath. From the home that should

have been hers, in which, as acknowledged heiress, she had smiled down

on the ruined Vernon, she was banished by him who had supplanted her,

as one worthless and polluted. Though, from motives of obvious delicacy,

Vernon had not said expressly that he had seen the letter to Mainwaring,

the unfamiliar and formal tone which he assumed indirectly declared

it, and betrayed the impression it had made, in spite of his reserve.

A living man then was in possession of a secret which justified his

disdain, and that man was master of Laughton! The suppressed rage

which embraced the lost lover extended darkly over this witness to

that baffled and miserable love. But what availed rage against either?

Abandoned and despoiled, she was powerless to avenge. It was at this

time, when her prospects seemed most dark, her pride was most crushed,

and her despair of the future at its height, that she turned to Dalibard

as the only friend left to her under the sun. Even the vices she

perceived in him became merits, for they forbade him to despise her. And

now, this man rose suddenly into another and higher aspect of character.

Of late, though equally deferential to her, there had been something

more lofty in his mien, more assured on his brow; gleams of a secret

satisfaction, even of a joy, that he appeared anxious to suppress, as

ill in harmony with her causes for dejection, broke out in his looks

and words. At length, one day, after some preparatory hesitation, he

informed her that he was free to return to France; that even without

the peace between England and France, which (known under the name of

the Peace of Amiens) had been just concluded, he should have crossed the

Channel. The advocacy and interest of friends whom he had left at Paris

had already brought him under the special notice of the wonderful man

who then governed France, and who sought to unite in its service every

description and variety of intellect. He should return to France, and

then--why, then, the ladder was on the walls of Fortune and the foot

planted on the step! As he spoke, confidently and sanguinely, with the

verve and assurance of an able man who sees clear the path to his goal,

as he sketched with rapid precision the nature of his prospects and his

hopes, all that subtle wisdom which had before often seemed but vague

and general, took practical shape and interest, thus applied to the

actual circumstances of men; the spirit of intrigue, which seemed mean

when employed on mean things, swelled into statesmanship and masterly

genius to the listener when she saw it linked with the large objects of

masculine ambition. Insensibly, therefore, her attention became earnest,

her mind aroused. The vision of a field, afar from the scenes of

her humiliation and despair,--a field for energy, stratagem, and

contest,--invited her restless intelligence. As Dalibard had profoundly

calculated, there was no new channel for her affections,--the source was

dried up, and the parched sands heaped over it; but while the heart lay

dormant, the mind rose sleepless, chafed, and perturbed. Through the

mind, he indirectly addressed and subtly wooed her.

“Such,” he said, as he rose to take leave, “such is the career to which

I could depart with joy if I did not depart alone!”

“Alone!” that word, more than once that day, Lucretia repeated to

herself--“alone!” And what career was left to her?--she, too, alone!

In certain stages of great grief our natures yearn for excitement. This

has made some men gamblers; it has made even women drunkards,--it had

effect over the serene calm and would-be divinity of the poet-sage. When

his son dies, Goethe does not mourn, he plunges into the absorption of

a study uncultivated before. But in the great contest of life, in

the whirlpool of actual affairs, the stricken heart finds all,--the

gambling, the inebriation, and the study.

We pause here. We have pursued long enough that patient analysis, with

all the food for reflection that it possibly affords, to which we were

insensibly led on by an interest, dark and fascinating, that grew more

and more upon us as we proceeded in our research into the early history

of a person fated to pervert no ordinary powers into no commonplace

guilt.

The charm is concluded, the circle closed round; the self-guided seeker

after knowledge has gained the fiend for the familiar.

CHAPTER X. THE RECONCILIATION BETWEEN FATHER AND SON.

We pass over an interval of some months.

A painter stood at work at the easel, his human model before him. He

was employed on a nymph,--the Nymph Galatea. The subject had been taken

before by Salvator, whose genius found all its elements in the

wild rocks, gnarled, fantastic trees, and gushing waterfalls of the

landscape; in the huge ugliness of Polyphemus the lover; in the grace

and suavity and unconscious abandonment of the nymph, sleeking her

tresses dripping from the bath. The painter, on a larger canvas (for

Salvator’s picture, at least the one we have seen, is among the small

sketches of the great artistic creator of the romantic and grotesque),

had transferred the subject of the master; but he had left subordinate

the landscape and the giant, to concentrate all his art on the person of

the nymph. Middle-aged was the painter, in truth; but he looked old.

His hair, though long, was gray and thin; his face was bloated by

intemperance; and his hand trembled much, though, from habit, no trace

of the tremor was visible in his work.

A boy, near at hand, was also employed on the same subject, with a rough

chalk and a bold freedom of touch. He was sketching his design of a

Galatea and Polyphemus on the wall; for the wall was only whitewashed,

and covered already with the multiform vagaries whether of master or

pupils,--caricatures and demigods, hands and feet, torsos and monsters,

and Venuses. The rude creations, all mutilated, jarring, and mingled,

gave a cynical, mocking, devil-may-care kind of aspect to the sanctum of

art. It was like the dissection-room of the anatomist. The boy’s sketch

was more in harmony with the walls of the studio than the canvas of the

master. His nymph, accurately drawn, from the undressed proportions of

the model, down to the waist, terminated in the scales of a fish. The

forked branches of the trees stretched weird and imp-like as the hands

of skeletons. Polyphemus, peering over the rocks, had the leer of a

demon; and in his gross features there was a certain distorted, hideous

likeness of the grave and symmetrical lineaments of Olivier Dalibard.

All around was slovenly, squalid, and poverty-stricken,--rickety,

worn-out, rush-bottom chairs; unsold, unfinished pictures, pell-mell

in the corner, covered with dust; broken casts of plaster; a lay-figure

battered in its basket-work arms, with its doll-like face all smudged

and besmeared. A pot of porter and a noggin of gin on a stained deal

table, accompanied by two or three broken, smoke-blackened pipes, some

tattered song-books, and old numbers of the “Covent Garden Magazine,”

betrayed the tastes of the artist, and accounted for the shaking hand

and the bloated form. A jovial, disorderly, vagrant dog of a painter was

Tom Varney. A bachelor, of course; humorous and droll; a boon companion,

and a terrible borrower. Clever enough in his calling; with pains and

some method, he had easily gained subsistence and established a name;

but he had one trick that soon ruined him in the business part of his

profession. He took a fourth of his price in advance; and having once

clutched the money, the poor customer might go hang for his picture.

The only things Tom Varney ever fairly completed were those for which

no order had been given; for in them, somehow or other, his fancy became

interested, and on them he lavished the gusto which he really possessed.

But the subjects were rarely salable. Nymphs and deities undraperied

have few worshippers in England amongst the buyers of “furniture

pictures.” And, to say truth, nymph and deity had usually a very

equivocal look; and if they came from the gods, you would swear it was

the gods of the galleries of Drury. When Tom Varney sold a picture,

he lived upon clover till the money was gone. But the poorer and less

steady alumni of the rising school, especially those at war with the

Academy, from which Varney was excluded, pitied, despised, yet liked

and courted him withal. In addition to his good qualities of blithe

song-singer, droll story-teller, and stanch Bacchanalian, Tom Varney was

liberally good-natured in communicating instruction really valuable to

those who knew how to avail themselves of a knowledge he had made almost

worthless to himself. He was a shrewd, though good-natured critic, had

many little secrets of colouring and composition, which an invitation to

supper, or the loan of ten shillings, was sufficient to bribe from him.

Ragged, out of elbows, unshaven, and slipshod, he still had his set

amongst the gay and the young,--a precious master, a profitable set for

his nephew, Master Honore Gabriel! But the poor rapscallion had a heart

larger than many honest, painstaking men. As soon as Gabriel had found

him out, and entreated refuge from his fear of his father, the painter

clasped him tight in his great slovenly arms, sold a Venus half-price to

buy him a bed and a washstand, and swore a tremendous oath that the son

of his poor guillotined sister should share the last shilling in his

pocket, the last drop in his can.

Gabriel, fresh from the cheer of Laughton, and spoiled by the prodigal

gifts of Lucretia, had little gratitude for shillings and porter.

Nevertheless, he condescended to take what he could get, while he

sighed, from the depths of a heart in which cupidity and vanity had

become the predominant rulers, for a destiny more worthy his genius, and

more in keeping with the sphere from which he had descended.

The boy finished his sketch, with an impudent wink at the model, flung

himself back on his chair, folded his arms, cast a discontented glance

at the whitened seams of the sleeves, and soon seemed lost in his own

reflections. The painter worked on in silence. The model, whom Gabriel’s

wink had aroused, half-flattered, half-indignant for a moment, lapsed

into a doze. Outside the window, you heard the song of a canary,--a

dingy, smoke-coloured canary that seemed shedding its plumes, for they

were as ragged as the garments of its master; still, it contrived to

sing, trill-trill-trill-trill-trill, as blithely as if free in its

native woods, or pampered by fair hands in a gilded cage. The bird was

the only true artist there, it sang as the poet sings,--to obey its

nature and vent its heart. Trill-trill-trillela-la-la-trill-trill, went

the song,--louder, gayer than usual; for there was a gleam of April

sunshine struggling over the rooftops. The song at length roused up

Gabriel; he turned his chair round, laid his head on one side, listened,

and looked curiously at the bird.

At length an idea seemed to cross him; he rose, opened the window, drew

in the cage, placed it on the chair, then took up one of his uncle’s

pipes, walked to the fireplace, and thrust the shank of the pipe into

the bars. When it was red-hot he took it out by the bowl, having first

protected his hand from the heat by wrapping round it his handkerchief;

this done, he returned to the cage. His movements had wakened up the

dozing model. She eyed them at first with dull curiosity, then with

lively suspicion; and presently starting up with an exclamation such as

no novelist but Fielding dare put into the mouth of a female,--much less

a nymph of such renown as Galatea,--she sprang across the room, wellnigh

upsetting easel and painter, and fastened firm hold on Gabriel’s

shoulders.

“The varment!” she cried vehemently; “the good-for-nothing varment! If

it had been a jay, or a nasty raven, well and good; but a poor little

canary!”

“Hoity-toity! what are you about, nephew? What’s the matter?” said Tom

Varney, coming up to the strife. And, indeed, it was time; for Gabriel’s

teeth were set in his catlike jaws, and the glowing point of the

pipe-shank was within an inch of the cheek of the model.

“What’s the matter?” replied Gabriel, suddenly; “why, I was only going

to try a little experiment.”

“An experiment? Not on my canary, poor dear little thing! The hours and

hours that creature has strained its throat to say ‘Sing and be merry,’

when I had not a rap in my pocket! It would have made a stone feel to

hear it.”

“But I think I can make it sing much better than ever,--only just let me

try! They say that if you put out the eyes of a canary, it--”

Gabriel was not allowed to conclude his sentence; for here rose that

clamour of horror and indignation from both painter and model which

usually greets the announcement of every philosophical discovery,--at

least, when about to be practically applied; and in the midst of the

hubbub, the poor little canary, who had been fluttering about the cage

to escape the hand of the benevolent operator, set up no longer the

cheerful trill-trillela-la-trill, but a scared and heart-breaking

chirp,--a shrill, terrified twit-twit-twitter-twit.

“Damn the bird! Hold your tongues!” cried Gabriel Varney, reluctantly

giving way, but still eying the bird with the scientific regret with

which the illustrious Majendie might contemplate a dog which some brute

of a master refused to disembowel for the good of the colics of mankind.

The model seized on the cage, shut the door of the wires, and carried it

off. Tom Varney drained the rest of his porter, and wiped his forehead

with the sleeve of his coat.

“And to use my pipe for such cruelty! Boy, boy, I could not have

believed it! But you were not in earnest; oh, no, impossible! Sukey, my

love--Galatea the divine--calm thy breast; Cupid did but jest.

‘Cupid is the God of Laughter, Quip and jest and joke, sir.’”

“If you don’t whip the little wretch within an inch of his life, he’ll

have a gallows end on’t,” replied Galatea.

“Go, Cupid, go and kiss Galatea, and make your peace.

`Oh, leave a kiss within the cup, And I’ll not ask for wine.’

And ‘t is no use asking for wine, or for gin either,--not a drop in the

noggin!”

All this while Gabriel, disdaining the recommendations held forth to

him, was employed in brushing his jacket with a very mangy-looking

brush; and when he had completed that operation he approached his uncle,

and coolly thrust his hands into that gentleman’s waistcoat-pockets.

“Uncle, what have you done with those seven shillings? I am going out to

spend the day.”

“If you give them to him, Tom, I’ll scratch your eyes out,” cried the

model; “and then we’ll see how you’ll sing. Whip him, I say, whip him!”

But, strange to say, this liberty of the boy quite reopened the heart

of his uncle,--it was a pleasure to him, who put his hands so habitually

into other people’s pockets, to be invested with the novel grandeur

of the man sponged upon. “That’s right, Cupid, son of Cytherea; all’s

common property amongst friends. Seven shillings, I have ‘em not. ‘They

now are five who once were seven;’ but such as they are, we’ll share.

‘Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown.’”

“Crowns bear no division, my uncle,” said Gabriel, dryly; and he

pocketed the five shillings. Then, having first secured his escape by

gaining the threshold, he suddenly seized one of the rickety chairs by

its leg, and regardless of the gallantries due to the sex, sent it right

against the model, who was shaking her fist at him. A scream and a

fall and a sharp twit from the cage, which was hurled nearly into the

fireplace, told that the missive had taken effect. Gabriel did not wait

for the probable reaction; he was in the streets in an instant. “This

won’t do,” he muttered to himself; “there is no getting on here. Foolish

drunken vagabond! no good to be got from him. My father is terrible, but

he will make his way in the world. Umph! if I were but his match,--and

why not? I am brave, and he is not. There’s fun, too, in danger.”

Thus musing, he took his way to Dalibard’s lodgings. His father was at

home. Now, though they were but lodgings, and the street not in fashion,

Olivier Dalibard’s apartments had an air of refinement, and even

elegance, that contrasted both the wretched squalor of the abode Gabriel

had just left and the meanness of Dalibard’s former quarters in London,

The change seemed to imply that the Provencal had already made some way

in the world. And, truth to say, at all times, even in the lowest ebb

of his fortunes, there was that indescribable neatness and formality of

precision about all the exterior seemings of the ci-devant friend of

the prim Robespierre which belong to those in whom order and method are

strongly developed,--qualities which give even to neediness a certain

dignity. As the room and its owner met the eye of Gabriel, on whose

senses all externals had considerable influence, the ungrateful young

ruffian recalled the kind, tattered, slovenly uncle, whose purse he had

just emptied, without one feeling milder than disgust. Olivier Dalibard,

always careful, if simple, in his dress, with his brow of grave

intellectual power, and his mien imposing, not only from its calm, but

from that nameless refinement which rarely fails to give to the student

the air of a gentleman,--Olivier Dalibard he might dread, he might even

detest; but he was not ashamed of him.

“I said I would visit you, sir, if you would permit me,” said Gabriel,

in a tone of respect, not unmingled with some defiance, as if in doubt

of his reception.

The father’s slow full eye, so different from the sidelong, furtive

glance of Lucretia, turned on the son, as if to penetrate his very

heart.

“You look pale and haggard, child; you are fast losing your health

and beauty. Good gifts these, not to be wasted before they can be

duly employed. But you have taken your choice. Be an artist,--copy Tom

Varney, and prosper.” Gabriel remained silent, with his eyes on the

floor.

“You come in time for my farewell,” resumed Dalibard. “It is a comfort,

at least, that I leave your youth so honourably protected. I am about to

return to my country; my career is once more before me!”

“Your country,--to Paris?”

“There are fine pictures in the Louvre,--a good place to inspire an

artist!”

“You go alone, Father!”

“You forget, young gentleman, you disown me as father! Go alone! I

thought I told you in the times of our confidence, that I should marry

Lucretia Clavering. I rarely fail in my plans. She has lost Laughton,

it is true; but 10,000 pounds will make a fair commencement to fortune,

even at Paris. Well, what do you want with me, worthy godson of Honore

Gabriel Mirabeau?”

“Sir, if you will let me, I will go with you.”

Dalibard shaded his brow with his hand, and reflected on the filial

proposal. On the one hand, it might be convenient, and would certainly

be economical, to rid himself evermore of the mutinous son who had

already thrown off his authority; on the other hand, there was much

in Gabriel, mutinous and even menacing as he had lately become, that

promised an unscrupulous tool or a sharp-witted accomplice, with

interests that every year the ready youth would more and more discover

were bound up in his plotting father’s. This last consideration, joined,

if not to affection, still to habit,--to the link between blood and

blood, which even the hardest find it difficult to sever,--prevailed. He

extended his pale hand to Gabriel, and said gently,--

“I will take you, if we rightly understand each other. Once again in my

power, I might constrain you to my will, it is true. But I rather confer

with you as man to man than as man to boy.”

“It is the best way,” said Gabriel, firmly.

“I will use no harshness, inflict no punishment,--unless, indeed, amply

merited by stubborn disobedience or wilful deceit. But if I meet with

these, better rot on a dunghill than come with me! I ask implicit

confidence in all my suggestions, prompt submission to all my requests.

Grant me but these, and I promise to consult your fortune as my own, to

gratify your tastes as far as my means will allow, to grudge not your

pleasures, and when the age for ambition comes, to aid your rise if I

rise myself,--nay, if well contented with you, to remove the blot from

your birth, by acknowledging and adopting you formally as my son.”

“Agreed! and I thank you,” said Gabriel. “And Lucretia is going? Oh, I

so long to see her!”

“See her--not yet; but next week.”

“Do not fear that I should let out about the letter. I should betray

myself if I did,” said the boy, bluntly betraying his guess at his

father’s delay.

The evil scholar smiled.

“You will do well to keep it secret for your own sake; for mine, I

should not fear. Gabriel, go back now to your master,--you do right,

like the rats, to run from the falling house. Next week I will send for

you, Gabriel!”

Not, however, back to the studio went the boy. He sauntered leisurely

through the gayest streets, eyed the shops and the equipages, the fair

women and the well-dressed men,--eyed with envy and longings and visions

of pomps and vanities to come; then, when the day began to close, he

sought out a young painter, the wildest and maddest of the crew to whom

his uncle had presented their future comrade and rival, and went with

this youth, at half-price, to the theatre, not to gaze on the actors

or study the play, but to stroll in the saloon. A supper in the

Finish completed the void in his pockets, and concluded his day’s rank

experience of life. By the gray dawn he stole back to his bed, and as

he laid himself down, he thought with avid pleasure of Paris, its gay

gardens and brilliant shops and crowded streets; he thought, too, of

his father’s calm confidence of success, of the triumph that already

had attended his wiles,--a confidence and a triumph which, exciting

his reverence and rousing his emulation, had decided his resolution.

He thought, too, of Lucretia with something of affection, recalled her

praises and bribes, her frequent mediation with his father, and felt

that they should have need of each other. Oh, no, he never would tell

her of the snare laid at Guy’s Oak,--never, not even if incensed with

his father. An instinct told him that that offence could never be

forgiven, and that, henceforth, Lucretia’s was a destiny bound up in his

own. He thought, too, of Dalibard’s warning and threat. But with fear

itself came a strange excitement of pleasure,--to grapple, if necessary,

he a mere child, with such a man! His heart swelled at the thought. So

at last he fell asleep, and dreamed that he saw his mother’s trunkless

face dripping gore and frowning on him,--dreamed that he heard her say:

“Goest thou to the scene of my execution only to fawn upon my murderer?”

Then a nightmare of horrors, of scaffolds and executioners and grinning

mobs and agonized faces, came on him,--dark, confused, and indistinct.

And he woke, with his hair standing on end, and beard below, in the

rising sun, the merry song of the poor canary,--trill-lill-lill,

trill-trill-lill-lill-la! Did he feel glad that his cruel hand had been

stayed?

EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.

It is a year since the November day on which Lucretia Clavering quitted

the roof of Mr. Fielden. And first we must recall the eye of the reader

to the old-fashioned terrace at Laughton,--the jutting porch, the quaint

balustrades, the broad, dark, changeless cedars on the lawn beyond. The

day is calm, clear, and mild, for November in the country is often a

gentle month. On that terrace walked Charles Vernon, now known by his

new name of St. John. Is it the change of name that has so changed the

person? Can the wand of the Herald’s Office have filled up the hollows

of the cheek, and replaced by elastic vigour the listless languor of

the tread? No; there is another and a better cause for that healthful

change. Mr. Vernon St. John is not alone,--a fair companion leans on his

arm. See, she pauses to press closer to his side, gaze on his face, and

whisper, “We did well to have hope and faith!”

The husband’s faith had not been so unshaken as his Mary’s, and a slight

blush passed over his cheek as he thought of his concession to Sir

Miles’s wishes, and his overtures to Lucretia Clavering. Still, that

fault had been fairly acknowledged to his wife, and she felt, the moment

she had spoken, that she had committed an indiscretion; nevertheless,

with an arch touch of womanly malice she added softly,--

“And Miss Clavering, you persist in saying, was not really handsome?”

“My love,” replied the husband, gravely, “you would oblige me by not

recalling the very painful recollections connected with that name. Let

it never be mentioned in this house.”

Lady Mary bowed her graceful head in submission; she understood

Charles’s feelings. For though he had not shown her Sir Miles’s letter

and its enclosure, he had communicated enough to account for the

unexpected heritage, and to lessen his wife’s compassion for the

disappointed heiress. Nevertheless, she comprehended that her husband

felt an uneasy twinge at the idea that he was compelled to act hardly

to the one whose hopes he had supplanted. Lucretia’s banishment from

Laughton was a just humiliation, but it humbled a generous heart to

inflict the sentence. Thus, on all accounts, the remembrance of Lucretia

was painful and unwelcome to the successor of Sir Miles. There was a

silence; Lady Mary pressed her husband’s hand.

“It is strange,” said he, giving vent to his thoughts at that tender

sign of sympathy in his feeling,--“strange that, after all, she did not

marry Mainwaring, but fixed her choice on that subtle Frenchman. But

she has settled abroad now, perhaps for life; a great relief to my mind.

Yes, let us never recur to her.”

“Fortunately,” said Lady Mary, with some hesitation, “she does not seem

to have created much interest here. The poor seldom name her to me, and

our neighbours only with surprise at her marriage. In another year she

will be forgotten!”

Mr. St. John sighed. Perhaps he felt how much more easily he had been

forgotten, were he the banished one, Lucretia the possessor! His

light nature, however, soon escaped from all thoughts and sources of

annoyance, and he listened with complacent attention to Lady Mary’s

gentle plans for the poor, and the children’s school, and the cottages

that ought to be repaired, and the labourers that ought to be employed.

For though it may seem singular, Vernon St. John, insensibly influenced

by his wife’s meek superiority, and corrected by her pure companionship,

had begun to feel the charm of innocent occupations,--more, perhaps,

than if he had been accustomed to the larger and loftier excitements of

life, and missed that stir of intellect which is the element of those

who have warred in the democracy of letters, or contended for the

leadership of States. He had begun already to think that the country was

no such exile after all. Naturally benevolent, he had taught himself to

share the occupations his Mary had already found in the busy “luxury of

doing good,” and to conceive that brotherhood of charity which usually

unites the lord of the village with its poor.

“I think, what with hunting once a week,--I will not venture more

till my pain in the side is quite gone,--and with the help of some old

friends at Christmas, we can get through the winter very well, Mary.”

“Ah, those old friends, I dread them more than the hunting!”

“But we’ll have your grave father and your dear, precise, excellent

mother to keep us in order. And if I sit more than half an hour after

dinner, the old butler shall pull me out by the ears. Mary, what do

you say to thinning the grove yonder? We shall get a better view of the

landscape beyond. No, hang it! dear old Sir Miles loved his trees better

than the prospect; I won’t lop a bough. But that avenue we are planting

will be certainly a noble improvement--”

“Fifty years hence, Charles!”

“It is our duty to think of posterity,” answered the ci-devant

spendthrift, with a gravity that was actually pompous. “But hark! is

that two o’clock? Three, by Jove! How time flies! and my new bullocks

that I was to see at two! Come down to the farm, that’s my own Mary. Ah,

your fine ladies are not such bad housewives after all!”

“And your fine gentlemen--”

“Capital farmers! I had no idea till last week that a prize ox was so

interesting an animal. One lives to learn. Put me in mind, by the by, to

write to Coke about his sheep.”

“This way, dear Charles; we can go round by the village,--and see poor

Ponto and Dash.”

The tears rushed to Mr. St. John’s eyes. “If poor Sir Miles could have

known you!” he said, with a sigh; and though the gardeners were at work

on the lawn, he bowed his head and kissed the blushing cheek of his wife

as heartily as if he had been really a farmer.

From the terrace at Laughton, turn to the humbler abode of our old

friend the vicar,--the same day, the same hour. Here also the scene is

without doors,--we are in the garden of the vicarage; the children are

playing at hide-and-seek amongst the espaliers which screen the winding

gravel-walks from the esculents more dear to Ceres than to Flora. The

vicar is seated in his little parlour, from which a glazed door admits

into the garden. The door is now open, and the good man has paused from

his work (he had just discovered a new emendation in the first chorus of

the “Medea”) to look out at the rosy faces that gleam to and fro across

the scene. His wife, with a basket in her hand, is standing without the

door, but a little aside, not to obstruct the view.

“It does one’s heart good to see them,” said the vicar, “little dears!”

“Yes, they ought to be dear at this time of the year,” observed Mrs.

Fielden, who was absorbed in the contents of the basket.

“And so fresh!”

“Fresh, indeed,--how different from London! In London they were not fit

to be seen,--as old as---I am sure I can’t guess how old they were. But

you see here they are new laid every morning!”

“My dear,” said Mr. Fielden, opening his eyes,--“new laid every

morning!”

“Two dozen and four.”

“Two dozen and four! What on earth are you talking about, Mrs. Fielden?”

“Why, the eggs, to be sure, my love!”

“Oh,” said the vicar, “two dozen and four! You alarmed me a little;

‘t is of no consequence,--only my foolish mistake. Always prudent and

saving, my dear Sarah,--just as if poor Sir Miles had not left us that

munificent fortune, I may call it.”

“It will not go very far when we have our young ones to settle. And

David is very extravagant already; he has torn such a hole in his

jacket!”

At this moment up the gravel-walk two young persons came in sight. The

children darted across them, whooping and laughing, and vanished in the

further recess of the garden.

“All is for the best, blind mortals that we are; all is for the best,”

said the vicar, musingly, as his eyes rested upon the approaching pair.

“Certainly, my love; you are always right, and it is wicked to grumble.

Still, if you saw what a hole it was,--past patching, I fear!”

“Look round,” said Mr. Fielden, benevolently. “How we grieved for them

both; how wroth we were with William,--how sad for Susan! And now see

them; they will be the better man and wife for their trial.”

“Has Susan then consented? I was almost afraid she never would consent.

How often have I been almost angry with her, poor lamb, when I have

heard her accuse herself of causing her sister’s unhappiness, and

declare with sobs that she felt it a crime to think of William

Mainwaring as a husband.”

“I trust I have reasoned her out of a morbid sensibility which, while

it could not have rendered Lucretia the happier, must have insured the

wretchedness of herself and William. But if Lucretia had not married,

and so forever closed the door on William’s repentance (that is,

supposing he did repent), I believe poor Susan would rather have died of

a broken heart than have given her hand to Mainwaring.”

“It was an odd marriage of that proud young lady’s, after all,” said

Mrs. Fielden,--“so much older than she; a foreigner, too!”

“But he is a very pleasant man, and they have known each other so long.

I did not, however, quite like a sort of cunning he showed, when I came

to reflect on it, in bringing Lucretia back to the house; it looks as if

he had laid a trap for her from the first.”

“Ten thousand pounds,--a great catch for a foreigner!” observed Mrs.

Fielden, with the shrewd instinct of her sex; and then she added, in the

spirit of a prudent sympathy equally characteristic: “But I think you

say Mr. Parchmount persuaded her to allow half to be settled on herself.

That will be a hold on him.”

“A bad hold, if that be all, Sarah. There is a better,--he is a learned

man and a scholar. Scholars are naturally domestic, and make good

husbands.”

“But you know he must be a papist!” said Mrs. Fielden.

“Umph!” muttered the vicar, irresolutely.

While the worthy couple were thus conversing, Susan and her lover, not

having finished their conference, had turned back through the winding

walk.

“Indeed,” said William, drawing her arm closer to his side, “these

scruples, these fears, are cruel to me as well as to yourself. If you

were no longer existing, I could be nothing to your sister. Nay, even

were she not married, you must know enough of her pride to be assured

that I can retain no place in her affections. What has chanced was not

our crime. Perhaps Heaven designed to save not only us, but herself,

from the certain misery of nuptials so inauspicious!”

“If she would but answer one of my letters!” sighed Susan; “or if I

could but know that she were happy and contented!”

“Your letters must have miscarried,--you are not sure even of her

address. Rely upon it, she is happy. Do you think that she would a

second time have ‘stooped beneath her’”--Mainwaring’s lip writhed as he

repeated that phrase--“if her feelings had not been involved? I would

not wrong your sister,--I shall ever feel gratitude for the past, and

remorse for my own shameful weakness; still, I must think that the

nature of her attachment to me was more ardent than lasting.”

“Ah, William, how can you know her heart?”

“By comparing it with yours. Oh, there indeed I may anchor my faith!

Susan, we were formed for each other! Our natures are alike, save that

yours, despite its surpassing sweetness, has greater strength in its

simple candour. You will be my guide to good. Without you I should have

no aim in life, no courage to front the contests of this world. Ah, this

hand trembles still!”

“William, William, I cannot repress a foreboding, a superstition! At

night I am haunted with that pale face as I saw it last,--pale with

suppressed despair. Oh, if ever Lucretia could have need of us,--need of

our services, our affections,--if we could but repair the grief we have

caused her!”

Susan’s head sank on her lover’s shoulder. She had said “need of us,”

“need of our services.” In those simple monosyllables the union was

pledged, the identity of their lots in the dark urn was implied.

From this scene turn again; the slide shifts in the lantern,--we are

at Paris. In the antechamber at the Tuileries a crowd of expectant

courtiers and adventurers gaze upon a figure who passes with modest and

downcast eyes through the throng; he has just left the closet of the

First Consul.

“Par Dieu!” said B----, “power, like misery, makes us acquainted with

strange bedfellows. I should like to hear what the First Consul can have

to say to Olivier Dalibard.”

Fouche, who at that period was scheming for the return to his old

dignities of minister of police, smiled slightly, and answered: “In

a time when the air is filled with daggers, one who was familiar with

Robespierre has his uses. Olivier Dalibard is a remarkable man. He is

one of those children of the Revolution whom that great mother is bound

to save.”

“By betraying his brethren?” said B----, dryly.

“I do not allow the inference. The simple fact is that Dalibard has

spent many years in England; he has married an Englishwoman of birth and

connections; he knows well the English language and the English people;

and just now when the First Consul is so anxious to approfondir the

popular feelings of that strange nation, with whose government he is

compelled to go to war, he may naturally have much to say to so acute an

observer as Olivier Dalibard.”

“Um!” said B----; “with such patronage, Robespierre’s friend should hold

his head somewhat higher!”

Meanwhile, Olivier Dalibard, crossing the gardens of the palace, took

his way to the Faubourg St. Germain. There was no change in the aspect

of this man: the same meditative tranquillity characterized his downward

eyes and bonded brow; the same precise simplicity of dress which had

pleased the prim taste of Robespierre gave decorum to his slender,

stooping form. No expression more cheerful, no footstep more elastic,

bespoke the exile’s return to his native land, or the sanguine

expectations of Intellect restored to a career. Yet, to all appearance,

the prospects of Dalibard were bright and promising. The First Consul

was at that stage of his greatness when he sought to employ in his

service all such talent as the Revolution had made manifest, provided

only that it was not stained with notorious bloodshed, or too strongly

associated with the Jacobin clubs. His quick eye seemed to have

discovered already the abilities of Dalibard, and to have appreciated

the sagacity and knowledge of men which had enabled this subtle person

to obtain the friendship of Robespierre, without sharing in his crimes.

He had been frequently closeted with Bonaparte; he was in the declared

favour of Fouche, who, though not at that period at the head of the

police, was too necessary amidst the dangers of the time, deepened as

they were by the rumours of some terrible and profound conspiracy, to

be laid aside, as the First Consul had at one moment designed. One

man alone, of those high in the State, appeared to distrust Olivier

Dalibard,--the celebrated Cambaceres. But with his aid the Provencal

could dispense. What was the secret of Dalibard’s power? Was it, in

truth, owing solely to his native talent, and his acquired experience,

especially of England? Was it by honourable means that he had won the

ear of the First Consul? We may be sure of the contrary; for it is a

striking attribute of men once thoroughly tainted by the indulgence of

vicious schemes and stratagems that they become wholly blinded to those

plain paths of ambition which common-sense makes manifest to ordinary

ability. If we regard narrowly the lives of great criminals, we are

often very much startled by the extraordinary acuteness, the profound

calculation, the patient, meditative energy which they have employed

upon the conception and execution of a crime. We feel inclined to think

that such intellectual power would have commanded great distinction,

worthily used and guided; but we never find that these great criminals

seem to have been sensible of the opportunities to real eminence which

they have thrown away. Often we observe that there have been before

them vistas into worldly greatness which, by no uncommon prudence and

exertion, would have conducted honest men half as clever to fame and

power; but, with a strange obliquity of vision, they appear to have

looked from these broad clear avenues into some dark, tangled defile, in

which, by the subtlest ingenuity, and through the most besetting perils,

they might attain at last to the success of a fraud or the enjoyment of

a vice. In crime once indulged there is a wonderful fascination, and the

fascination is, not rarely, great in proportion to the intellect of the

criminal. There is always hope of reform for a dull, uneducated, stolid

man, led by accident or temptation into guilt; but where a man of great

ability, and highly educated, besots himself in the intoxication of dark

and terrible excitements, takes impure delight in tortuous and slimy

ways, the good angel abandons him forever.

Olivier Dalibard walked musingly on, gained a house in one of the

most desolate quarters of the abandoned faubourg, mounted the spacious

stairs, and rang at the door of an attic next the roof. After some

moments the door was slowly and cautiously opened, and two small, fierce

eyes, peering through a mass of black, tangled curls, gleamed through

the aperture. The gaze seemed satisfactory.

“Enter, friend,” said the inmate, with a sort of complacent grunt; and

as Dalibard obeyed, the man reclosed and barred the door.

The room was bare to beggary; the ceiling, low and sloping, was

blackened with smoke. A wretched bed, two chairs, a table, a strong

chest, a small cracked looking-glass, completed the inventory. The dress

of the occupier was not in keeping with the chamber; true that it was

not such as was worn by the wealthier classes, but it betokened no sign

of poverty. A blue coat with high collar, and half of military fashion,

was buttoned tight over a chest of vast girth; the nether garments

were of leather, scrupulously clean, and solid, heavy riding-boots came

half-way up the thigh. A more sturdy, stalwart, strong-built knave

never excited the admiration which physical power always has a right

to command; and Dalibard gazed on him with envy. The pale scholar

absolutely sighed as he thought what an auxiliary to his own scheming

mind would have been so tough a frame!

But even less in form than face did the man of thews and sinews contrast

the man of wile and craft. Opposite that high forehead, with its massive

development of organs, scowled the low front of one to whom thought

was unfamiliar,--protuberant, indeed, over the shaggy brows, where

phrenologists place the seats of practical perception, strongly marked

in some of the brutes, as in the dog, but almost literally void of those

higher organs by which we reason and imagine and construct. But in rich

atonement for such deficiency, all the animal reigned triumphant in

the immense mass and width of the skull behind. And as the hair, long

before, curled in close rings to the nape of the bull-like neck, you saw

before you one of those useful instruments to ambition and fraud which

recoil at no danger, comprehend no crime, are not without certain good

qualities, under virtuous guidance,--for they have the fidelity, the

obedience, the stubborn courage of the animal,--but which, under evil

control, turn those very qualities to unsparing evil: bull-dogs to rend

the foe, as bull-dogs to defend the master.

For some moments the two men gazed, silently at each other. At length

Dalibard said, with an air of calm superiority,--

“My friend, it is time that I should be presented to the chiefs of your

party!”

“Chiefs, par tous les diables!” growled the other; “we Chouans are all

chiefs, when it comes to blows. You have seen my credentials; you know

that I am a man to be trusted: what more do you need?”

“For myself nothing; but my friends are more scrupulous. I have

sounded, as I promised, the heads of the old Jacobin party, and they are

favourable. This upstart soldier, who has suddenly seized in his iron

grasp all the fruits of the Revolution, is as hateful to them as to you.

But que voulez vous, mon cher? men are men! It is one thing to destroy

Bonaparte; it is another thing to restore the Bourbons. How can the

Jacobin chiefs depend on your assurance, or my own, that the Bourbons

will forget the old offences and reward the new service? You apprise

me--so do your credentials--that a prince of the blood is engaged in

this enterprise, that he will appear at the proper season. Put me in

direct communication with this representative of the Bourbons, and I

promise in return, if his assurances are satisfactory, that you shall

have an emeute, to be felt from Paris to Marseilles. If you cannot do

this, I am useless; and I withdraw--”

“Withdraw! Garde a vous, Monsieur le Savant! No man withdraws alive from

a conspiracy like ours.”

We have said before that Olivier Dalibard was not physically brave; and

the look of the Chouan, as those words were said, would have frozen

the blood of many a bolder man. But the habitual hypocrisy of Dalibard

enabled him to disguise his fear, and he replied dryly,--

“Monsieur le Chouan, it is not by threats that you will gain adherents

to a desperate cause, which, on the contrary, requires mild words and

flattering inducements. If you commit a violence,--a murder,--mon cher,

Paris is not Bretagne; we have a police: you will be discovered.”

“Ha, ha! What then? Do you think I fear the guillotine?”

“For yourself, no; but for your leaders, yes! If you are discovered, and

arrested for crime, do you fancy that the police will not recognize the

right arm of the terrible George Cadoudal; that they will not guess

that Cadoudal is at Paris; that Cadoudal will not accompany you to the

guillotine?”

The Chouan’s face fell. Olivier watched him, and pursued his advantage.

“I asked you to introduce to me this shadow of a prince, under which

you would march to a counter-revolution. But I will be more easily

contented. Present me to George Cadoudal, the hero of Morbihan; he is a

man in whom I can trust, and with whom I can deal. What, you hesitate?

How do you suppose enterprises of this nature can be carried on? If,

from fear and distrust of each other, the man you would employ cannot

meet the chief who directs him, there will be delay, confusion, panic,

and you will all perish by the executioner. And for me, Pierre Guillot,

consider my position. I am in some favour with the First Consul; I have

a station of respectability,--a career lies before me. Can you think

that I will hazard these, with my head to boot, like a rash child?

Do you suppose that, in entering into this terrible contest, I would

consent to treat only with subordinates? Do not deceive yourself. Again,

I say, tell your employers that they must confer with me directly, or je

m’en lave les mains.”

“I will repeat what you say,” answered Guillot, sullenly, “Is this all?”

“All for the present,” said Dalibard, slowly drawing on his gloves, and

retreating towards the door. The Chouan watched him with a suspicious

and sinister eye; and as the Provencal’s hand was on the latch, he laid

his own rough grasp on Dalibard’s shoulder,--

“I know not how it is, Monsieur Dalibard, but I mistrust you.”

“Distrust is natural and prudent to all who conspire,” replied the

scholar, quietly. “I do not ask you to confide in me. Your employers

bade you seek me: I have mentioned my conditions; let them decide.”

“You carry it off well, Monsieur Dalibard, and I am under a solemn oath,

which poor George made me take, knowing me to be a hot-headed, honest

fellow,--mauvaise tete, if you will,--that I will keep my hand off

pistol and knife upon mere suspicion; that nothing less than his word,

or than clear and positive proof of treachery, shall put me out of good

humour and into warm blood. But bear this with you, Monsieur Dalibard:

if I once discover that you use our secrets to betray them; should

George see you, and one hair of his head come to injury through your

hands,--I will wring your neck as a housewife wrings a pullet’s.”

“I don’t doubt your strength or your ferocity, Pierre Guillot; but my

neck will be safe: you have enough to do to take care of your own. Au

revoir.”

With a tone and look of calm and fearless irony, the scholar thus spoke,

and left the room; but when he was on the stairs, he paused, and caught

at the balustrade,--the sickness as of terror at some danger past, or

to be, came over him; and this contrast between the self-command,

or simulation, which belongs to moral courage, and the feebleness of

natural and constitutional cowardice, would have been sublime if shown

in a noble cause. In one so corrupt, it but betrayed a nature doubly

formidable; for treachery and murder hatch their brood amidst the folds

of a hypocrite’s cowardice.

While thus the interview is going on between Dalibard and the

conspirator, we must bestow a glance upon the Provencal’s home.

In an apartment in one of the principal streets between the Boulevards

and the Rue St. Honore, a boy and a woman sat side by side, conversing

in whispers. The boy was Gabriel Varney, the woman Lucretia Dalibard.

The apartment was furnished in the then modern taste, which affected

classical forms; and though not without a certain elegance, had

something meagre and comfortless in its splendid tripods and thin-legged

chairs. There was in the apartment that air which bespeaks the struggle

for appearances,--that struggle familiar to those of limited income and

vain aspirings, who want the taste which smooths all inequalities and

gives a smile to home; that taste which affection seems to prompt,

if not to create, which shows itself in a thousand nameless, costless

trifles, each a grace. No sign was there of the household cares or

industry of women. No flowers, no music, no embroidery-frame, no

work-table. Lucretia had none of the sweet feminine habits which betray

so lovelily the whereabout of women. All was formal and precise, like

rooms which we enter and leave,--not those in which we settle and dwell.

Lucretia herself is changed; her air is more assured, her complexion

more pale, the evil character of her mouth more firm and pronounced.

Gabriel, still a mere boy in years, has a premature look of man. The

down shades his lip. His dress, though showy and theatrical, is no

longer that of boyhood. His rounded cheek has grown thin, as with the

care and thought which beset the anxious step of youth on entering into

life.

Both, as before remarked, spoke in whispers; both from time to time

glanced fearfully at the door; both felt that they belonged to a hearth

round which smile not the jocund graces of trust and love and the

heart’s open ease.

“But,” said Gabriel,--“but if you would be safe, my father must have no

secrets hid from you.”

“I do not know that he has. He speaks to me frankly of his hopes, of the

share he has in the discovery of the plot against the First Consul, of

his interviews with Pierre Guillot, the Breton.”

“Ah, because there your courage supports him, and your acuteness assists

his own. Such secrets belong to his public life, his political schemes;

with those he will trust you. It is his private life, his private

projects, you must know.”

“But what does he conceal from me? Apart from politics, his whole mind

seems bent on the very natural object of securing intimacy with his rich

cousin, M. Bellanger, from whom he has a right to expect so large an

inheritance.”

“Bellanger is rich, but he is not much older than my father.”

“He has bad health.”

“No,” said Gabriel, with a downcast eye and a strange smile, “he has not

bad health; but he may not be long-lived.”

“How do you mean?” asked Lucretia, sinking her voice into a still lower

whisper, while a shudder, she scarce knew why, passed over her frame.

“What does my father do,” resumed Gabriel, “in that room at the top of

the house? Does he tell you that secret?”

“He makes experiments in chemistry. You know that that was always his

favourite study. You smile again! Gabriel, do not smile so; it appalls

me. Do you think there is some mystery in that chamber?”

“It matters not what we think, belle-mere; it matters much what we know.

If I were you, I would know what is in that chamber. I repeat, to be

safe, you must have all his secrets, or none. Hush, that is his step!”

The door-handle turned noiselessly, and Olivier entered. His look

fell on his son’s face, which betrayed only apparent surprise at his

unexpected return. He then glanced at Lucretia’s, which was, as usual,

cold and impenetrable.

“Gabriel,” said Dalibard, gently, “I have come in for you. I have

promised to take you to spend the day at M. Bellanger’s; you are a great

favourite with Madame. Come, my boy. I shall be back soon, Lucretia. I

shall but drop in to leave Gabriel at my cousin’s.”

Gabriel rose cheerfully, as if only alive to the expectation of the

bon-bons and compliments he received habitually from Madame Bellanger.

“And you can take your drawing implements with you,” continued Dalibard.

“This good M. Bellanger has given you permission to copy his Poussin.”

“His Poussin! Ah, that is placed in his bedroom [It is scarcely

necessary to observe that bedchambers in Paris, when forming part of the

suite of reception-rooms, are often decorated no less elaborately than

the other apartments], is it not?”

“Yes,” answered Dalibard, briefly.

Gabriel lifted his sharp, bright eyes to his father’s face. Dalibard

turned away.

“Come!” he said with some impatience; and the boy took up his hat.

In another minute Lucretia was alone.

“Alone,” in an English home, is a word implying no dreary solitude to

an accomplished woman; but alone in that foreign land, alone in those

half-furnished, desolate apartments,--few books, no musical instruments,

no companions during the day to drop in,--that loneliness was wearying.

And that mind so morbidly active! In the old Scottish legend, the spirit

that serves the wizard must be kept constantly employed; suspend its

work for a moment, and it rends the enchanter. It is so with minds that

crave for excitement, and live, without relief of heart and affection,

on the hard tasks of the intellect.

Lucretia mused over Gabriel’s words and warning: “To be safe, you must

know all his secrets, or none.” What was the secret which Dalibard had

not communicated to her?

She rose, stole up the cold, cheerless stairs, and ascended to the attic

which Dalibard had lately hired. It was locked; and she observed that

the lock was small,--so small that the key might be worn in a ring. She

descended, and entered her husband’s usual cabinet, which adjoined the

sitting-room. All the books which the house contained were there,--a few

works on metaphysics, Spinoza in especial, the great Italian histories,

some volumes of statistics, many on physical and mechanical

philosophy, and one or two works of biography and memoirs. No light

literature,--that grace and flower of human culture, that best

philosophy of all, humanizing us with gentle art, making us wise through

the humours, elevated through the passions, tender in the affections of

our kind. She took out one of the volumes that seemed less arid than the

rest, for she was weary of her own thoughts, and began to read. To

her surprise, the first passage she opened was singularly interesting,

though the title was nothing more seductive than the “Life of a

Physician of Padua in the Sixteenth Century.” It related to that

singular epoch of terror in Italy when some mysterious disease,

varying in a thousand symptoms, baffled all remedy, and long defied all

conjecture,--a disease attacking chiefly the heads of families, father

and husband; rarely women. In one city, seven hundred husbands perished,

but not one wife! The disease was poison. The hero of the memoir was one

of the earlier discoverers of the true cause of this household epidemic.

He had been a chief authority in a commission of inquiry. Startling

were the details given in the work,--the anecdotes, the histories, the

astonishing craft brought daily to bear on the victim, the wondrous

perfidy of the subtle means, the variation of the certain murder,--here

swift as epilepsy, there slow and wasting as long decline. The lecture

was absorbing; and absorbed in the book Lucretia still was, when she

heard Dalibard’s voice behind: he was looking over her shoulder.

“A strange selection for so fair a student! En fant, play not with such

weapons.”

“But is this all true?”

“True, though scarce a fragment of the truth. The physician was a sorry

chemist and a worse philosopher. He blundered in his analysis of

the means; and if I remember rightly, he whines like a priest at the

motives,--for see you not what was really the cause of this spreading

pestilence? It was the Saturnalia of the Weak,--a burst of mocking

license against the Strong; it was more,--it was the innate force of the

individual waging war against the many.”

“I do not understand you.”

“No? In that age, husbands were indeed lords of the household; they

married mere children for their lands; they neglected and betrayed them;

they were inexorable if the wife committed the faults set before her for

example. Suddenly the wife found herself armed against her tyrant. His

life was in her hands. So the weak had no mercy on the strong. But man,

too, was then, even more than now, a lonely wrestler in a crowded arena.

Brute force alone gave him distinction in courts; wealth alone brought

him justice in the halls, or gave him safety in his home. Suddenly the

frail puny lean saw that he could reach the mortal part of his giant

foe. The noiseless sling was in his hand,--it smote Goliath from afar.

Suddenly the poor man, ground to the dust, spat upon by contempt, saw

through the crowd of richer kinsmen, who shunned and bade him rot; saw

those whose death made him heir to lordship and gold and palaces and

power and esteem. As a worm through a wardrobe, that man ate through

velvet and ermine, and gnawed out the hearts that beat in his way. No.

A great intellect can comprehend these criminals, and account for

the crime. It is a mighty thing to feel in one’s self that one is an

army,--more than an army! What thousands and millions of men, with

trumpet and banner, and under the sanction of glory, strive to

do,--destroy a foe,--that, with little more than an effort of the

will,--with a drop, a grain, for all his arsenal,--one man can do!”

There was a horrible enthusiasm about this reasoning devil as he spoke

thus; his crest rose, his breast expanded. That animation which a noble

thought gives to generous hearts kindled in the face of the apologist

for the darkest and basest of human crimes. Lucretia shuddered; but her

gloomy imagination was spelled; there was an interest mingled with her

terror.

“Hush! you appall me,” she said at last, timidly. “But, happily, this

fearful art exists no more to tempt and destroy?”

“As a more philosophical discovery, it might be amusing to a chemist to

learn exactly what were the compounds of those ancient poisons,” said

Dalibard, not directly answering the implied question. “Portions of

the art are indeed lost, unless, as I suspect, there is much credulous

exaggeration in the accounts transmitted to us. To kill by a flower,

a pair of gloves, a soap-ball,--kill by means which elude all possible

suspicion,--is it credible? What say you? An amusing research, indeed,

if one had leisure! But enough of this now; it grows late. We dine

with M. de----; he wishes to let his hotel. Why, Lucretia, if we knew

a little of this old art, par Dieu! we could soon hire the hotel! Well,

well; perhaps we may survive my cousin Jean Bellanger!”

Three days afterwards, Lucretia stood by her husband’s side in the

secret chamber. From the hour when she left it, a change was perceptible

in her countenance, which gradually removed from it the character

of youth. Paler the cheek could scarce become, nor more cold the

discontented, restless eye. But it was as if some great care had settled

on her brow, and contracted yet more the stern outline of the lips.

Gabriel noted the alteration, but he did not attempt to win her

confidence. He was occupied rather in considering, first, if it were

well for him to sound deeper into the mystery he suspected; and,

secondly, to what extent, and on what terms, it became his interest to

aid the designs in which, by Dalibard’s hints and kindly treatment, he

foresaw that he was meant to participate.

A word now on the rich kinsman of the Dalibards. Jean Bellanger had been

one of those prudent Republicans who had put the Revolution to profit.

By birth a Marseillais, he had settled in Paris, as an epicier, about

the year 1785, and had distinguished himself by the adaptability and

finesse which become those who fish in such troubled waters. He had

sided with Mirabeau, next with Vergniaud and the Girondins. These he

forsook in time for Danton, whose facile corruptibility made him a

seductive patron. He was a large purchaser in the sale of the emigrant

property; he obtained a contract for the supply of the army in the

Netherlands; he abandoned Danton as he had abandoned the Girondins, but

without taking any active part in the after-proceedings of the Jacobins.

His next connection was with Tallien and Barras, and he enriched himself

yet more under the Directory than he had done in the earlier stages

of the Revolution. Under cover of an appearance of bonhomie and good

humour, a frank laugh and an open countenance, Jean Bellanger had always

retained general popularity and good-will, and was one of those whom

the policy of the First Consul led him to conciliate. He had long since

retired from the more vulgar departments of trade, but continued to

flourish as an army contractor. He had a large hotel and a splendid

establishment; he was one of the great capitalists of Paris. The

relationship between Dalibard and Bellanger was not very close,--it was

that of cousins twice removed; and during Dalibard’s previous residence

at Paris, each embracing different parties, and each eager in his

career, the blood-tie between them had not been much thought of, though

they were good friends, and each respected the other for the discretion

with which he had kept aloof from the more sanguinary excesses of the

time. As Bellanger was not many years older than Dalibard; as the former

had but just married in the year 1791, and had naturally before him the

prospect of a family; as his fortunes at that time, though rising, were

unconfirmed; and as some nearer relations stood between them, in

the shape of two promising, sturdy nephews,--Dalibard had not

then calculated on any inheritance from his cousin. On his return,

circumstances were widely altered: Bellanger had been married some

years, and no issue had blessed his nuptials. His nephews, draughted

into the conscription, had perished in Egypt. Dalibard apparently became

his nearest relative.

To avarice or to worldly ambition there was undoubtedly something very

dazzling in the prospect thus opened to the eyes of Olivier Dalibard.

The contractor’s splendid mode of living, vying with that of the

fermier-general of old, the colossal masses of capital by which he

backed and supported speculations that varied with an ingenuity rendered

practical and profound by experience, inflamed into fever the morbid

restlessness of fancy and intellect which characterized the evil

scholar; for that restlessness seemed to supply to his nature vices not

constitutional to it. Dalibard had not the avarice that belongs either

to a miser or a spendthrift. In his youth, his books and the simple

desires of an abstract student sufficed to his wants, and a habit of

method and order, a mechanical calculation which accompanied all his

acts, from the least to the greatest, preserved him, even when

most poor, from neediness and want. Nor was he by nature vain and

ostentatious,--those infirmities accompany a larger and more luxurious

nature. His philosophy rather despised, than inclined to, show. Yet

since to plot and to scheme made his sole amusement, his absorbing

excitement, so a man wrapped in himself, and with no generous ends

in view, has little to plot or to scheme for but objects of worldly

aggrandizement. In this Dalibard resembled one whom the intoxication of

gambling has mastered, who neither wants nor greatly prizes the stake,

but who has grown wedded to the venture for it. It was a madness like

that of a certain rich nobleman in our own country who, with more money

than he could spend, and with a skill in all games where skill enters

that would have secured him success of itself, having learned the art of

cheating, could not resist its indulgence. No hazard, no warning, could

restrain him,--cheat he must; the propensity became iron-strong as a

Greek destiny.

That the possible chance of an inheritance so magnificent should dazzle

Lucretia and Gabriel, was yet more natural; for in them it appealed

to more direct and eloquent, though not more powerful, propensities.

Gabriel had every vice which the greed of gain most irritates and

excites. Intense covetousness lay at the core of his heart; he had

the sensual temperament, which yearns for every enjoyment, and takes

pleasure in every pomp and show of life. Lucretia, with a hardness of

mind that disdained luxury, and a certain grandeur (if such a word may

be applied to one so perverted) that was incompatible with the sordid

infirmities of the miser, had a determined and insatiable ambition, to

which gold was a necessary instrument. Wedded to one she loved, like

Mainwaring, the ambition, as we have said in a former chapter, could

have lived in another, and become devoted to intellectual efforts, in

the nobler desire for power based on fame and genius. But now she had

the gloomy cravings of one fallen, and the uneasy desire to restore

herself to a lost position; she fed as an aliment upon scorn to

bitterness of all beings and all things around her. She was gnawed by

that false fever which riots in those who seek by outward seemings

and distinctions to console themselves for the want of their own

self-esteem, or who, despising the world with which they are brought in

contact, sigh for those worldly advantages which alone justify to the

world itself their contempt.

To these diseased infirmities of vanity or pride, whether exhibited in

Gabriel or Lucretia, Dalibard administered without apparent effort, not

only by his conversation, but his habits of life. He mixed with those

much wealthier than himself, but not better born; those who, in the

hot and fierce ferment of that new society, were rising fast into new

aristocracy,--the fortunate soldiers, daring speculators, plunderers of

many an argosy that had been wrecked in the Great Storm. Every one about

them was actuated by the keen desire “to make a fortune;” the desire

was contagious. They were not absolutely poor in the proper sense of the

word “poverty,” with Dalibard’s annuity and the interest of Lucretia’s

fortune; but they were poor compared to those with whom they

associated,--poor enough for discontent. Thus, the image of the mighty

wealth from which, perhaps, but a single life divided them, became

horribly haunting. To Gabriel’s sensual vision the image presented

itself in the shape of unlimited pleasure and prodigal riot; to Lucretia

it wore the solemn majesty of power; to Dalibard himself it was but the

Eureka of a calculation,--the palpable reward of wile and scheme and

dexterous combinations. The devil had temptations suited to each.

Meanwhile, the Dalibards were more and more with the Bellangers. Olivier

glided in to talk of the chances and changes of the State and the

market. Lucretia sat for hours listening mutely to the contractor’s

boasts of past frauds, or submitting to the martyrdom of his victorious

games at tric-trac. Gabriel, a spoiled darling, copied the pictures on

the walls, complimented Madame, flattered Monsieur, and fawned on both

for trinkets and crowns. Like three birds of night and omen, these three

evil natures settled on the rich man’s roof.

Was the rich man himself blind to the motives which budded forth into

such attentive affection? His penetration was too acute, his ill opinion

of mankind too strong, perhaps, for such amiable self-delusions. But

he took all in good part; availed himself of Dalibard’s hints and

suggestions as to the employment of his capital; was polite to Lucretia,

and readily condemned her to be beaten at tric-trac; while he accepted

with bonhomie Gabriel’s spirited copies of his pictures. But at times

there was a gleam of satire and malice in his round gray eyes, and

an inward chuckle at the caresses and flatteries he received, which

perplexed Dalibard and humbled Lucretia. Had his wealth been wholly at

his own disposal, these signs would have been inauspicious; but the

new law was strict, and the bulk of Bellanger’s property could not be

alienated from his nearest kin. Was not Dalibard the nearest?

These hopes and speculations did not, as we have seen, absorb the

restless and rank energies of Dalibard’s crooked, but capacious and

grasping intellect. Patiently and ingeniously he pursued his main

political object,--the detection of that audacious and complicated

conspiracy against the First Consul, which ended in the tragic deaths of

Pichegru, the Duc d’Enghien, and the erring but illustrious hero of La

Vendee, George Cadoudal. In the midst of these dark plots for personal

aggrandizement and political fortune, we leave, for the moment, the

sombre, sullen soul of Olivier Dalibard.

Time has passed on, and spring is over the world. The seeds buried

in the earth burst to flower; but man’s breast knoweth not the sweet

division of the seasons. In winter or summer, autumn or spring alike,

his thoughts sow the germs of his actions, and day after day his destiny

gathers in her harvests.

The joy-bells ring clear through the groves of Laughton,--an heir is

born to the old name and fair lands of St. John. And, as usual, the

present race welcomes merrily in that which shall succeed and replace

it,--that which shall thrust the enjoyers down into the black graves,

and wrest from them the pleasant goods of the world. The joy-bell of

birth is a note of warning to the knell for the dead; it wakes the

worms beneath the mould: the new-born, every year that it grows and

flourishes, speeds the parent to their feast. Yet who can predict that

the infant shall become the heir? Who can tell that Death sits not side

by side with the nurse at the cradle? Can the mother’s hand measure out

the woof of the Parcae, or the father’s eye detect through the darkness

of the morrow the gleam of the fatal shears?

It is market-day at a town in the midland districts of England. There

Trade takes its healthiest and most animated form. You see not the

stunted form and hollow eye of the mechanic,--poor slave of

the capitalist, poor agent and victim of the arch disequalizer,

Civilization. There strides the burly form of the farmer; there waits

the ruddy hind with his flock; there, patient, sits the miller with his

samples of corn; there, in the booths, gleam the humble wares which form

the luxuries of cottage and farm. The thronging of men, and the clacking

of whips, and the dull sound of wagon or dray, that parts the crowd as

it passes, and the lowing of herds and the bleating of sheep,--all are

sounds of movement and bustle, yet blend with the pastoral associations

of the primitive commerce, when the link between market and farm was

visible and direct.

Towards one large house in the centre of the brisk life ebbing on, you

might see stream after stream pour its way. The large doors swinging

light on their hinges, the gilt letters that shine above the threshold,

the windows, with their shutters outside cased in iron and studded with

nails, announce that that house is the bank of the town. Come in with

that yeoman whose broad face tells its tale, sheepish and down-eyed,--he

has come, not to invest, but to borrow. What matters? War is breaking

out anew, to bring the time of high prices and paper money and credit.

Honest yeoman, you will not be refused. He scratches his rough head,

pulls a leg, as he calls it, when the clerk leans over the counter, and

asks to see “Muster Mawnering hisself.” The clerk points to the little

office-room of the new junior partner, who has brought 10,000 pounds and

a clear head to the firm. And the yeoman’s great boots creak heavily in.

I told you so, honest yeoman; you come out with a smile on your brown

face, and your hand, that might fell an ox, buttons up your huge

breeches pocket. You will ride home with a light heart; go and dine, and

be merry.

The yeoman tramps to the ordinary; plates clatter, tongues wag, and the

borrower’s full heart finds vent in a good word for that kind “Muster

Mawnering.” For a wonder, all join in the praise. “He’s an honour to the

town; he’s a pride to the country. Thof he’s such a friend at a pinch,

he’s a rale mon of business. He’ll make the baunk worth a million! And

how well he spoke at the great county meeting about the war, and the

laund, and them bloodthirsty Mounseers! If their members were loike him,

Muster Fox would look small!”

The day declines; the town empties; whiskeys, horses, and carts are

giving life to the roads and the lanes; and the market is deserted, and

the bank is shut up, and William Mainwaring walks back to his home at

the skirts of the town. Not villa nor cottage, that plain English

house, with its cheerful face of red brick, and its solid squareness of

shape,--a symbol of substance in the fortunes of the owner! Yet as he

passes, he sees through the distant trees the hall of the member for the

town. He pauses a moment, and sighs unquietly. That pause and that sigh

betray the germ of ambition and discontent. Why should not he, who

can speak so well, be member for the town, instead of that stammering

squire? But his reason has soon silenced the querulous murmur. He

hastens his step,--he is at home! And there, in the neat-furnished

drawing-room, which looks on the garden behind, hisses the welcoming

tea-urn; and the piano is open, and there is a packet of new books on

the table; and, best of all, there is the glad face of the sweet English

wife. The happy scene was characteristic of the time, just when the

simpler and more innocent luxuries of the higher class spread, not to

spoil, but refine the middle. The dress, air, mien, movements of the

young couple; the unassuming, suppressed, sober elegance of the house;

the flower-garden, the books, and the music, evidences of cultivated

taste, not signals of display,--all bespoke the gentle fusion of ranks

before rude and uneducated wealth, made in looms and lucky hits, rushed

in to separate forever the gentleman from the parvenu.

Spring smiles over Paris, over the spires of Notre Dame and the crowded

alleys of the Tuileries, over thousands and thousands eager, joyous,

aspiring, reckless,--the New Race of France, bound to one man’s destiny,

children of glory and of carnage, whose blood the wolf and the vulture

scent, hungry, from afar!

The conspiracy against the life of the First Consul has been detected

and defeated. Pichegru is in prison, George Cadoudal awaits his trial,

the Duc d’Enghien sleeps in his bloody grave; the imperial crown is

prepared for the great soldier, and the great soldier’s creatures

bask in the noonday sun. Olivier Dalibard is in high and lucrative

employment; his rise is ascribed to his talents, his opinions. No

service connected with the detection of the conspiracy is traced or

traceable by the public eye. If such exist, it is known but to those who

have no desire to reveal it. The old apartments are retained, but they

are no longer dreary and comfortless and deserted. They are gay with

draperies and ormolu and mirrors; and Madame Dalibard has her nights of

reception, and Monsieur Dalibard has already his troops of clients. In

that gigantic concentration of egotism which under Napoleon is called

the State, Dalibard has found his place. He has served to swell the

power of the unit, and the cipher gains importance by its position in

the sum.

Jean Bellanger is no more. He died, not suddenly, and yet of some quick

disease,--nervous exhaustion; his schemes, they said, had worn him out.

But the state of Dalibard, though prosperous, is not that of the heir

to the dead millionnaire. What mistake is this? The bulk of that wealth

must go to the nearest kin,--so runs the law. But the will is read;

and, for the first time, Olivier Dalibard learns that the dead man had

a son,--a son by a former marriage,--the marriage undeclared, unknown,

amidst the riot of the Revolution; for the wife was the daughter of a

proscrit. The son had been reared at a distance, put to school at Lyons,

and unavowed to the second wife, who had brought an ample dower, and

whom that discovery might have deterred from the altar. Unacknowledged

through life, in death at least the son’s rights are proclaimed; and

Olivier Dalibard feels that Jean Bellanger has died in vain! For days

has the pale Provencal been closeted with lawyers; but there is no hope

in litigation. The proofs of the marriage, the birth, the identity, come

out clear and clearer; and the beardless schoolboy at Lyons reaps all

the profit of those nameless schemes and that mysterious death. Olivier

Dalibard desires the friendship, the intimacy of the heir; but the heir

is consigned to the guardianship of a merchant at Lyons, near of kin to

his mother, and the guardian responds but coldly to Olivier’s letters.

Suddenly the defeated aspirant seems reconciled to his loss. The

widow Bellanger has her own separate fortune, and it is large beyond

expectation. In addition to the wealth she brought the deceased, his

affection had led him to invest vast sums in her name. The widow then

is rich,--rich as the heir himself. She is still fair. Poor woman, she

needs consolation! But, meanwhile, the nights of Olivier Dalibard are

disturbed and broken. His eye in the daytime is haggard and anxious; he

is seldom seen on foot in the streets. Fear is his companion by day, and

sits at night on his pillow. The Chouan, Pierre Guillot, who looked to

George Cadoudal as a god, knows that George Cadoudal has been betrayed,

and suspects Olivier Dalibard; and the Chouan has an arm of iron, and a

heart steeled against all mercy. Oh, how the pale scholar thirsted

for that Chouan’s blood! With what relentless pertinacity, with what

ingenious research, he had set all the hounds of the police upon the

track of that single man! How notably he had failed! An avenger lived;

and Olivier Dalibard started at his own shadow on the wall. But he did

not the less continue to plot and to intrigue--nay, such occupation

became more necessary, as an escape from himself.

And in the mean while, Olivier Dalibard sought to take courage from the

recollection that the Chouan had taken an oath (and he knew that oaths

are held sacred with the Bretons) that he would keep his hand from his

knife unless he had clear evidence of treachery; such evidence existed,

but only in Dalibard’s desk or the archives of Fouche. Tush, he was

safe! And so, when from dreams of fear he started at the depth of night,

so his bolder wife would whisper to him with firm, uncaressing lips:

“Olivier Dalibard, thou fearest the living: dost thou never fear the

dead? Thy dreams are haunted with a spectre. Why takes it not the

accusing shape of thy mouldering kinsman?” and Dalibard would answer,

for he was a philosopher in his cowardice: “Il n’y a que les morts qui

ne reviennent pas.”

It is the notable convenience of us narrators to represent, by what

is called “soliloquy,” the thoughts, the interior of the personages we

describe. And this is almost the master-work of the tale-teller,--that

is, if the soliloquy be really in words, what self-commune is in the dim

and tangled recesses of the human heart! But to this privilege we are

rarely admitted in the case of Olivier Dalibard, for he rarely communed

with himself. A sort of mental calculation, it is true, eternally

went on within him, like the wheels of a destiny; but it had become a

mechanical operation, seldom disturbed by that consciousness of thought,

with its struggles of fear and doubt, conscience and crime, which

gives its appalling interest to the soliloquy of tragedy. Amidst the

tremendous secrecy of that profound intellect, as at the bottom of

a sea, only monstrous images of terror, things of prey, stirred in

cold-blooded and devouring life; but into these deeps Olivier himself

did not dive. He did not face his own soul; his outer life and his

inner life seemed separate individualities, just as, in some complicated

State, the social machine goes on through all its numberless cycles

of vice and dread, whatever the acts of the government, which is the

representative of the State, and stands for the State in the shallow

judgment of history.

Before this time Olivier Dalibard’s manner to his son had greatly

changed from the indifference it betrayed in England,--it was kind and

affectionate, almost caressing; while, on the other hand, Gabriel, as if

in possession of some secret which gave him power over his father, took

a more careless and independent tone, often absented himself from the

house for days together, joined the revels of young profligates

older than himself, with whom he had formed acquaintance, indulged in

spendthrift expenses, and plunged prematurely into the stream of vicious

pleasure that oozed through the mud of Paris.

One morning Dalibard, returning from a visit to Madame Bellanger, found

Gabriel alone in the salon, contemplating his fair face and gay dress in

one of the mirrors, and smoothing down the hair, which he wore long

and sleek, as in the portraits of Raphael. Dalibard’s lip curled at the

boy’s coxcombry,--though such tastes he himself had fostered, according

to his ruling principles, that to govern, you must find a foible, or

instil it; but the sneer changed into a smile.

“Are you satisfied with yourself, joli garcon?” he said, with saturnine

playfulness.

“At least, sir, I hope that you will not be ashamed of me when you

formally legitimatize me as your son. The time has come, you know, to

keep your promise.”

“And it shall be kept, do not fear. But first I have an employment for

you,--a mission; your first embassy, Gabriel.”

“I listen, sir.”

“I have to send to England a communication of the utmost

importance--public importance--to the secret agent of the French

government. We are on the eve of a descent on England. We are in

correspondence with some in London on whom we count for support. A

man might be suspected and searched,--mind, searched. You, a boy, with

English name and speech, will be my safest envoy. Bonaparte approves my

selection. On your return, he permits me to present you to him. He loves

the rising generation. In a few days you will be prepared to start.”

Despite the calm tone of the father, so had the son, from the instinct

of fear and self-preservation, studied every accent, every glance of

Olivier,--so had he constituted himself a spy upon the heart whose

perfidy was ever armed, that he detected at once in the proposal some

scheme hostile to his interests. He made, however, no opposition to the

plan suggested; and seemingly satisfied with his obedience, the father

dismissed him.

As soon as he was in the streets, Gabriel went straight to the house

of Madame Bellanger. The hotel had been purchased in her name, and she

therefore retained it. Since her husband’s death he had avoided that

house, before so familiar to him; and now he grew pale and breathed hard

as he passed by the porter’s lodge up the lofty stairs.

He knew of his father’s recent and constant visits at the house; and

without conjecturing precisely what were Olivier’s designs, he connected

them, in the natural and acquired shrewdness he possessed, with

the wealthy widow. He resolved to watch, observe, and draw his own

conclusions. As he entered Madame Bellanger’s room rather abruptly, he

observed her push aside amongst her papers something she had been gazing

on,--something which sparkled to his eyes. He sat himself down close to

her with the caressing manner he usually adopted towards women; and in

the midst of the babbling talk with which ladies generally honour

boys, he suddenly, as if by accident, displaced the papers, and saw his

father’s miniature set in brilliants. The start of the widow, her blush,

and her exclamation strengthened the light that flashed upon his mind.

“Oh, ho! I see now,” he said laughing, “why my father is always praising

black hair; and--nay, nay--gentlemen may admire ladies in Paris,

surely?”

“Pooh, my dear child, your father is an old friend of my poor husband,

and a near relation too! But, Gabriel, mon petit ange, you had better

not say at home that you have seen this picture; Madame Dalibard might

be foolish enough to be angry.”

“To be sure not. I have kept a secret before now!” and again the boy’s

cheek grew pale, and he looked hurriedly round.

“And you are very fond of Madame Dalibard too; so you must not vex her.”

“Who says I’m fond of Madame Dalibard? A stepmother!”

“Why, your father, of course,--il est si bon, ce pauvre Dalibard; and

all men like cheerful faces. But then, poor lady,--an Englishwoman, so

strange here; very natural she should fret, and with bad health, too.”

“Bad health! Ah, I remember! She, also, does not seem likely to live

long!”

“So your poor father apprehends. Well, well; how uncertain life is! Who

would have thought dear Bellanger would have--”

Gabriel rose hastily, and interrupted the widow’s pathetic reflections.

“I only ran in to say Bon jour. I must leave you now.”

“Adieu, my dear boy,--not a word on the miniature! By the by, here’s a

shirt-pin for you,--tu es joli comme un amour.”

All was clear now to Gabriel; it was necessary to get rid of him, and

forever. Dalibard might dread his attachment to Lucretia,--he would

dread still more his closer intimacy with the widow of Bellanger, should

that widow wed again, and Dalibard, freed like her (by what means?), be

her choice! Into that abyss of wickedness, fathomless to the innocent,

the young villanous eye plunged, and surveyed the ground; a terror

seized on him,--a terror of life and death. Would Dalibard spare even

his own son, if that son had the power to injure? This mission, was it

exile only,--only a fall back to the old squalor of his uncle’s studio;

only the laying aside of a useless tool? Or was it a snare to the

grave? Demon as Dalibard was, doubtless the boy wronged him. But guilt

construes guilt for the worst.

Gabriel had formerly enjoyed the thought to match himself, should danger

come, with Dalibard; the hour had come, and he felt his impotence. Brave

his father, and refuse to leave France! From that, even his reckless

hardihood shrank, as from inevitable destruction. But to depart,--be the

poor victim and dupe; after having been let loose amongst the riot

of pleasure, to return to labour and privation,--from that option his

vanity and his senses vindictively revolted. And Lucretia, the only

being who seemed to have a human kindness to him! Through all the

vicious egotism of his nature, he had some grateful sentiments for her;

and even the egotism assisted that unwonted amiability, for he felt

that, Lucretia gone, he had no hold on his father’s house, that the home

of her successor never would be his. While thus brooding, he lifted his

eyes, and saw Dalibard pass in his carriage towards the Tuileries.

The house, then, was clear; he could see Lucretia alone. He formed his

resolution at once, and turned homewards. As he did so, he observed a

man at the angle of the street, whose eyes followed Dalibard’s carriage

with an expression of unmistakable hate and revenge; but scarcely had he

marked the countenance, before the man, looking hurriedly round, darted

away, and was lost amongst the crowd.

Now, that countenance was not quite unfamiliar to Gabriel. He had seen

it before, as he saw it now,--hastily, and, as it were, by fearful

snatches. Once he had marked, on returning home at twilight, a figure

lurking by the house; and something, in the quickness with which

it turned from his gaze, joined to his knowledge of Dalibard’s

apprehensions, made him mention the circumstance to his father when he

entered. Dalibard bade him hasten with a note, written hurriedly, to an

agent of the police, whom he kept lodged near at hand. The man was still

on the threshold when the boy went out on this errand, and he caught a

glimpse of his face; but before the police-agent reached the spot, the

ill-omened apparition had vanished. Gabriel now, as his eye rested full

upon that threatening brow and those burning eyes, was convinced that he

saw before him the terrible Pierre Guillot, whose very name blenched

his father’s cheek. When the figure retreated, he resolved at once

to pursue. He hurried through the crowd amidst which the man had

disappeared, and looked eagerly into the faces of those he jostled;

sometimes at the distance he caught sight of a figure which appeared to

resemble the one which he pursued, but the likeness faded on approach.

The chase, however, vague and desultory as it was, led him on till his

way was lost amongst labyrinths of narrow and unfamiliar streets. Heated

and thirsty, he paused, at last, before a small cafe, entered to ask for

a draught of lemonade, and behold, chance had favoured him! The man he

sought was seated there before a bottle of wine, and intently reading

the newspaper. Gabriel sat himself down at the adjoining table. In a

few moments the man was joined by a newcomer; the two conversed, but

in whispers so low that Gabriel was unable to hear their conversation,

though he caught more than once the name of “George.” Both the men were

violently excited, and the expression of their countenances was menacing

and sinister. The first comer pointed often to the newspaper, and read

passages from it to his companion. This suggested to Gabriel the demand

for another journal. When the waiter brought it to him, his eye rested

upon a long paragraph, in which the name of George Cadoudal frequently

occurred. In fact, all the journals of the day were filled with

speculations on the conspiracy and trial of that fiery martyr to an

erring adaptation of a noble principle. Gabriel knew that his father had

had a principal share in the detection of the defeated enterprise; and

his previous persuasions were confirmed.

His sense of hearing grew sharper by continued effort, and at length

he heard the first comer say distinctly, “If I were but sure that I

had brought this fate upon George by introducing to him that accursed

Dalibard; if my oath did but justify me, I would--” The concluding

sentence was lost. A few moments after, the two men rose, and from the

familiar words that passed between them and the master of the cafe, who

approached, himself, to receive the reckoning, the shrewd boy perceived

that the place was no unaccustomed haunt. He crept nearer and nearer;

and as the landlord shook hands with his customer, he heard distinctly

the former address him by the name of “Guillot.” When the men withdrew,

Gabriel followed them at a distance (taking care first to impress on his

memory the name of the cafe, and the street in which it was placed) and,

as he thought, unobserved; he was mistaken. Suddenly, in one street

more solitary than the rest, the man whom he was mainly bent on tracking

turned round, advanced to Gabriel, who was on the other side of the

street, and laid his hand upon him so abruptly that the boy was fairly

taken by surprise.

“Who bade you follow us?” said he, with so dark and fell an expression

of countenance that even Gabriel’s courage failed him. “No evasion,

no lies; speak out, and at once;” and the grasp tightened on the boy’s

throat.

Gabriel’s readiness of resource and presence of mind did not long

forsake him.

“Loose your hold, and I will tell you--you stifle me.” The man slightly

relaxed his grasp, and Gabriel said quickly “My mother perished on the

guillotine in the Reign of Terror; I am for the Bourbons. I thought I

overheard words which showed sympathy for poor George, the brave Chouan.

I followed you; for I thought I was following friends.”

The man smiled as he fixed his steady eye upon the unflinching child.

“My poor lad,” he said gently, “I believe you,--pardon me; but follow

us no more,--we are dangerous!” He waved his hand, and strode away and

rejoined his companion, and Gabriel reluctantly abandoned the pursuit

and went homeward. It was long before he reached his father’s house, for

he had strayed into a strange quarter of Paris, and had frequently to

inquire the way. At length he reached home, and ascended the stairs to

a small room in which Lucretia usually sat, and which was divided by a

narrow corridor from the sleeping-chamber of herself and Dalibard. His

stepmother, leaning her cheek upon her hand, was seated by the window,

so absorbed in some gloomy thoughts, which cast over her rigid face

a shade, intense and solemn as despair, that she did not perceive the

approach of the boy till he threw his arms round her neck, and then she

started as in alarm.

“You! only you,” she said, with a constrained smile; “see, my nerves are

not so strong as they were.”

“You are disturbed, belle-mere,--has he been vexing you?”

“He--Dalibard? No, indeed; we were only this morning discussing matters

of business.”

“Business,--that means money.”

“Truly,” said Lucretia, “money does make the staple of life’s business.

In spite of his new appointment, your father needs some sums in

hand,--favours are to be bought, opportunities for speculation occur,

and--”

“And my father,” interrupted Gabriel, “wishes your consent to raise the

rest of your portion?”

Lucretia looked surprised, but answered quietly: “He had my consent

long since; but the trustees to the marriage-settlement--mere men

of business, my uncle’s bankers; for I had lost all claim on my

kindred--refuse, or at least interpose such difficulties as amount to

refusal.”

“But that reply came some days since,” said Gabriel, musingly.

“How did you know,--did your father tell you?”

“Poor belle-mere!” said Gabriel, almost with pity; “can you live in this

house and not watch all that passes,--every stranger, every message,

every letter? But what, then, does he wish with you?”

“He has suggested my returning to England and seeing the trustees

myself. His interest can obtain my passport.”

“And you have refused?”

“I have not consented.”

“Consent!--hush!--your maid; Marie is not waiting without;” and Gabriel

rose and looked forth. “No, confound these doors! none close as they

ought in this house. Is it not a clause in your settlement that the half

of your fortune now invested goes to the survivor?”

“It is,” replied Lucretia, struck and thrilled at the question. “How,

again, did you know this?”

“I saw my father reading the copy. If you die first, then, he has all.

If he merely wanted the money, he would not send you away.”

There was a terrible pause. Gabriel resumed: “I trust you, it may be,

with my life; but I will speak out. My father goes much to Bellanger’s

widow; she is rich and weak. Come to England! Yes, come; for he is

about to dismiss me. He fears that I shall be in the way, to warn you,

perhaps, or to--to--In short, both of us are in his way. He gives you an

escape. Once in England, the war which is breaking out will prevent your

return. He will twist the laws of divorce to his favour; he will marry

again! What then? He spares you what remains of your fortune; he

spares your life. Remain here,--cross his schemes, and--No, no; come to

England,--safer anywhere than here!”

As he spoke, great changes had passed over Lucretia’s countenance. At

first it was the flash of conviction, then the stunned shock of horror;

now she rose, rose to her full height, and there was a livid and

deadly light in her eyes,--the light of conscious courage and power and

revenge. “Fool,” she muttered, “with all his craft! Fool, fool! As if,

in the war of household perfidy, the woman did not always conquer! Man’s

only chance is to be mailed in honour.”

“But,” said Gabriel, overhearing her, “but you do not remember what it

is. There is nothing you can see and guard against. It is not like an

enemy face to face; it is death in the food, in the air, in the touch.

You stretch out your arms in the dark, you feel nothing, and you die!

Oh, do not fancy that I have not thought well (for I am almost a man

now) if there were no means to resist,--there are none! As well make

head against the plague,--it is in the atmosphere. Come to England, and

return. Live poorly, if you must, but live--but live!”

“Return to England poor and despised, and bound still to him, or a

disgraced and divorced wife,--disgraced by the low-born dependant on my

kinsman’s house,--and fawn perhaps upon my sister and her husband for

bread! Never! I am at my post, and I will not fly.”

“Brave, brave!” said the boy, clapping his hands, and sincerely moved by

a daring superior to his own; “I wish I could help you!”

Lucretia’s eye rested on him with the full gaze, so rare in its looks.

She drew him to her and kissed his brow. “Boy, through life, whatever

our guilt and its doom, we are bound to each other. I may yet live

to have wealth; if so, it is yours as a son’s. I may be iron to

others,--never to you. Enough of this; I must reflect!” She passed her

hands over her eyes a moment, and resumed: “You would help me in my

self-defence; I think you can. You have been more alert in your watch

than I have. You must have means I have not secured. Your father guards

well all his papers.”

“I have keys to every desk. My foot passed the threshold of that room

under the roof before yours. But no; his powers can never be yours!

He has never confided to you half his secrets. He has antidotes for

every--every--”

“Hist! what noise is that? Only the shower on the casements. No, no,

child, that is not my object. Cadoudal’s conspiracy! Your father has

letters from Fouche which show how he has betrayed others who are

stronger to avenge than a woman and a boy.”

“Well?”

“I would have those letters. Give me the keys. But hold! Gabriel,

Gabriel, you may yet misjudge him. This woman--wife to the dead man--his

wife! Horror! Have you no proofs of what you imply?”

“Proofs!” echoed Gabriel, in a tone of wonder; “I can but see and

conjecture. You are warned, watch and decide for yourself. But again I

say, come to England; I shall go!”

Without reply, Lucretia took the keys from Gabriel’s half-reluctant

hand, and passed into her husband’s writing-room. When she had entered,

she locked the door. She passed at once to a huge secretary, of which

the key was small as a fairy’s work. She opened it with ease by one

of the counterfeits. No love-correspondence--the first object of her

search, for she was woman--met her eye. What need of letters, when

interviews were so facile? But she soon found a document that told all

which love-letters could tell,--it was an account of the moneys and

possessions of Madame Bellanger; and there were pencil notes on the

margin: “Vautran will give four hundred thousand francs for the lands

in Auvergne,--to be accepted. Consult on the power of sale granted to

a second husband. Query, if there is no chance of the heir-at-law

disputing the moneys invested in Madame B.’s name,”--and such memoranda

as a man notes down in the schedule of properties about to be his own.

In these inscriptions there was a hideous mockery of all love; like the

blue lights of corruption, they showed the black vault of the heart. The

pale reader saw what her own attractions had been, and, fallen as

she was, she smiled superior in her bitterness of scorn. Arranged

methodically with the precision of business, she found the letters she

next looked for; one recognizing Dalibard’s services in the detection of

the conspiracy, and authorizing him to employ the police in the search

of Pierre Guillot, sufficed for her purpose. She withdrew, and secreted

it. She was about to lock up the secretary, when her eye fell on the

title of a small manuscript volume in a corner; and as shet read, she

pressed one hand convulsively to her heart, while twice with the other

she grasped the volume, and twice withdrew the grasp. The title ran

harmlessly thus: “Philosophical and Chemical Inquiries into the Nature

and Materials of the Poisons in Use between the Fourteenth and Sixteenth

Centuries.” Hurriedly, and at last as if doubtful of herself, she left

the manuscript, closed the secretary, and returned to Gabriel.

“You have got the paper you seek?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Then whatever you do, you must be quick; he will soon discover the

loss.”

“I will be quick.”

“It is I whom he will suspect,” said Gabriel, in alarm, as that thought

struck him. “No, for my sake do not take the letter till I am gone. Do

not fear in the mean time; he will do nothing against you while I am

here.”

“I will replace the letter till then,” said Lucretia, meekly. “You have

a right to my first thoughts.” So she went back, and Gabriel (suspicious

perhaps) crept after her.

As she replaced the document, he pointed to the manuscript which had

tempted her. “I have seen that before; how I longed for it! If anything

ever happens to him, I claim that as my legacy.”

Their hands met as he said this, and grasped each other convulsively;

Lucretia relocked the secretary, and when she gained the next room,

she tottered to a chair. Her strong nerves gave way for the moment; she

uttered no cry, but by the whiteness of her face, Gabriel saw that she

was senseless,--senseless for a minute or so; scarcely more. But the

return to consciousness with a clenched hand, and a brow of defiance,

and a stare of mingled desperation and dismay, seemed rather the awaking

from some frightful dream of violence and struggle than the slow,

languid recovery from the faintness of a swoon. Yes, henceforth, to

sleep was to couch by a serpent,--to breathe was to listen for the

avalanche! Thou who didst trifle so wantonly with Treason, now gravely

front the grim comrade thou hast won; thou scheming desecrator of the

Household Gods, now learn, to the last page of dark knowledge, what the

hearth is without them!

Gabriel was strangely moved as he beheld that proud and solitary

despair. An instinct of nature had hitherto checked him from actively

aiding Lucretia in that struggle with his father which could but end

in the destruction of one or the other. He had contented himself with

forewarnings, with hints, with indirect suggestions; but now all his

sympathy was so strongly roused on her behalf that the last faint

scruple of filial conscience vanished into the abyss of blood over which

stood that lonely Titaness. He drew near, and clasping her hand, said,

in a quick and broken voice,--

“Listen! You know where to find proof of my fa--that is, of Dalibard’s

treason to the conspirators, you know the name of the man he dreads as

an avenger, and you know that he waits but the proof to strike; but

you do not know where to find that man, if his revenge is wanting for

yourself. The police have not hunted him out: how can you? Accident has

made me acquainted with one of his haunts. Give me a single promise, and

I will put you at least upon that clew,--weak, perhaps, but as yet the

sole one to be followed. Promise me that, only in defence of your own

life, not for mere jealousy, you will avail yourself of the knowledge,

and you shall know all I do!”

“Do you think,” said Lucretia, in a calm, cold voice, “that it is for

jealousy, which is love, that I would murder all hope, all peace? For we

have here”--and she smote her breast--“here, if not elsewhere, a heaven

and a hell! Son, I will not harm your father, except in self-defence.

But tell me nothing that may make the son a party in the father’s doom.”

“The father slew the mother,” muttered Gabriel, between his clenched

teeth; “and to me, you have wellnigh supplied her place. Strike, if need

be, in her name! If you are driven to want the arm of Pierre Guillot,

seek news of him at the Cafe Dufour, Rue S----, Boulevard du Temple. Be

calm now; I hear your husband’s step.”

A few days more, and Gabriel is gone! Wife and husband are alone with

each other. Lucretia has refused to depart. Then that mute coma of

horror, that suspense of two foes in the conflict of death; for

the subtle, prying eye of Olivier Dalibard sees that he himself is

suspected,--further he shuns from sifting! Glance fastens on glance, and

then hurries smilingly away. From the cup grins a skeleton, at the board

warns a spectre. But how kind still the words, and how gentle the tone;

and they lie down side by side in the marriage-bed,--brain plotting

against brain, heart loathing heart. It is a duel of life and death

between those sworn through life and beyond death at the altar. But it

is carried on with all the forms and courtesies of duel in the age of

chivalry. No conjugal wrangling, no slip of the tongue; the oil is on

the surface of the wave,--the monsters in the hell of the abyss war

invisibly below. At length, a dull torpor creeps over the woman; she

feels the taint in her veins,--the slow victory is begun. What mattered

all her vigilance and caution? Vainly glide from the fangs of the

serpent,--his very breath suffices to destroy! Pure seems the draught

and wholesome the viand,--that master of the science of murder needs

not the means of the bungler! Then, keen and strong from the creeping

lethargy started the fierce instinct of self and the ruthless impulse of

revenge. Not too late yet to escape; for those subtle banes, that are to

defy all detection, work but slowly to their end.

One evening a woman, closely mantled, stood at watch by the angle of a

wall. The light came dim and muffled from the window of a cafe hard at

hand; the reflection slept amidst the shadows on the dark pavement, and

save a solitary lamp swung at distance in the vista over the centre of

the narrow street, no ray broke the gloom. The night was clouded and

starless, the wind moaned in gusts, and the rain fell heavily; but the

gloom and the loneliness did not appall the eye, and the wind did not

chill the heart, and the rain fell unheeded on the head of the woman at

her post. At times she paused in her slow, sentry-like pace to and fro,

to look through the window of the cafe, and her gaze fell always on

one figure seated apart from the rest. At length her pulse beat more

quickly, and the patient lips smiled sternly. The figure had risen

to depart. A man came out and walked quickly up the street; the woman

approached, and when the man was under the single lamp swung aloft, he

felt his arm touched: the woman was at his side, and looking steadily

into his face--

“You are Pierre Guillot, the Breton, the friend of George Cadoudal. Will

you be his avenger?”

The Chouan’s first impulse had been to place his hand in his vest, and

something shone bright in the lamp-light, clasped in those iron fingers.

The voice and the manner reassured him, and he answered readily,--

“I am he whom you seek, and I only live to avenge.”

“Read, then, and act,” answered the woman, as she placed a paper in his

hands.

At Laughton the babe is on the breast of the fair mother, and the

father sits beside the bed; and mother and father dispute almost angrily

whether mother or father those soft, rounded features of slumbering

infancy resemble most. At the red house, near the market-town, there is

a hospitable bustle. William is home earlier than usual. Within the last

hour, Susan has been thrice into every room. Husband and wife are

now watching at the window. The good Fieldens, with a coach full of

children, are expected, every moment, on a week’s visit at least.

In the cafe in the Boulevard du Temple sit Pierre Guillot, the Chouan,

and another of the old band of brigands whom George Cadoudal had

mustered in Paris. There is an expression of content on Guillot’s

countenance,--it seems more open than usual, and there is a complacent

smile on his lips. He is whispering low to his friend in the intervals

of eating,--an employment pursued with the hearty gusto of a hungry man.

But his friend does not seem to sympathize with the cheerful feelings

of his comrade; he is pale, and there is terror on his face; and you may

see that the journal in his hand trembles like a leaf.

In the gardens of the Tuileries some score or so of gossips group

together.

“And no news of the murderer?” asked one.

“No; but the man who had been friend to Robespierre must have made

secret enemies enough.”

“Ce pauvre Dalibard! He was not mixed up with the Terrorists,

nevertheless.”

“Ah, but the more deadly for that, perhaps; a sly man was Olivier

Dalibard!”

“What’s the matter?” said an employee, lounging up to the group. “Are

you talking of Olivier Dalibard? It is but the other day he had Marsan’s

appointment. He is now to have Pleyel’s. I heard it two days ago; a

capital thing! Peste! il ira loin. We shall have him a senator soon.”

“Speak for yourself,” quoth a ci-devant abbe, with a laugh; “I should be

sorry to see him again soon, wherever he be.”

“Plait-il? I don’t understand you!”

“Don’t you know that Olivier Dalibard is murdered, found stabbed,--in

his own house, too!”

“Ciel! Pray tell me all you know. His place, then, is vacant!”

“Why, it seems that Dalibard, who had been brought up to medicine, was

still fond of chemical experiments. He hired a room at the top of the

house for such scientific amusements. He was accustomed to spend part

of his nights there. They found him at morning bathed in his blood, with

three ghastly wounds in his side, and his fingers cut to the bone. He

had struggled hard with the knife that butchered him.”

“In his own house!” said a lawyer. “Some servant or spendthrift heir.”

“He has no heir but young Bellanger, who will be riche a millions, and

is now but a schoolboy at Lyons. No; it seems that the window was left

open, and that it communicates with the rooftops. There the murderer had

entered, and by that way escaped; for they found the leads of the gutter

dabbled with blood. The next house was uninhabited,--easy enough to get

in there, and lie perdu till night.”

“Hum!” said the lawyer. “But the assassin could only have learned

Dalibard’s habits from some one in the house. Was the deceased married?”

“Oh, yes,--to an Englishwoman.”

“She had lovers, perhaps?”

“Pooh, lovers! The happiest couple ever known; you should have seen them

together! I dined there last week.”

“It is strange,” said the lawyer.

“And he was getting on so well,” muttered a hungry-looking man.

“And his place is vacant!” repeated the employee, as he quitted the

crowd abstractedly.

In the house of Olivier Dalibard sits Lucretia alone, and in her own

usual morning-room. The officer appointed to such tasks by the

French law has performed his visit, and made his notes, and expressed

condolence with the widow, and promised justice and retribution, and

placed his seal on the locks till the representatives of the heir-at-law

shall arrive; and the heir-at-law is the very boy who had succeeded

so unexpectedly to the wealth of Jean Bellanger the contractor! But

Lucretia has obtained beforehand all she wishes to save from the rest.

An open box is on the floor, into which her hand drops noiselessly a

volume in manuscript. On the forefinger of that hand is a ring, larger

and more massive than those usually worn by women,--by Lucretia never

worn before. Why should that ring have been selected with such care from

the dead man’s hoards? Why so precious the dull opal in that cumbrous

setting? From the hand the volume drops without sound into the box, as

those whom the secrets of the volume instruct you to destroy may drop

without noise into the grave. The trace of some illness, recent and

deep, nor conquered yet, has ploughed lines in that young countenance,

and dimmed the light of those searching eyes. Yet courage! the poison

is arrested, the poisoner is no more. Minds like thine, stern woman, are

cased in coffers of steel, and the rust as yet has gnawed no deeper than

the surface. So over that face, stamped with bodily suffering, plays a

calm smile of triumph. The schemer has baffled the schemer! Turn now

to the right, pass by that narrow corridor: you are in the

marriage-chamber; the windows are closed; tall tapers burn at the foot

of the bed. Now go back to that narrow corridor. Disregarded, thrown

aside, are a cloth and a besom: the cloth is wet still; but here and

there the red stains are dry, and clotted as with bloody glue; and the

hairs of the besom start up, torn and ragged, as if the bristles had

a sense of some horror, as if things inanimate still partook of men’s

dread at men’s deeds. If you passed through the corridor and saw in

the shadow of the wall that homeliest of instruments cast away and

forgotten, you would smile at the slatternly housework. But if you knew

that a corpse had been borne down those stairs to the left,--borne along

those floors to that marriage-bed,--with the blood oozing and gushing

and plashing below as the bearers passed with their burden, then

straight that dead thing would take the awe of the dead being; it told

its own tale of violence and murder; it had dabbled in the gore of the

violated clay; it had become an evidence of the crime. No wonder that

its hairs bristled up, sharp and ragged, in the shadow of the wall.

The first part of the tragedy ends; let fall the curtain. When next it

rises, years will have passed away, graves uncounted will have wrought

fresh hollows in our merry sepulchre,--sweet earth! Take a sand from

the shore, take a drop from the ocean,--less than sand-grain and drop in

man’s planet one Death and one Crime! On the map, trace all oceans,

and search out every shore,--more than seas, more than lands, in God’s

balance shall weigh one Death and one Crime!

PART THE SECOND.

PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND.

The century has advanced. The rush of the deluge has ebbed back; the old

landmarks have reappeared; the dynasties Napoleon willed into life have

crumbled to the dust; the plough has passed over Waterloo; autumn after

autumn the harvests have glittered on that grave of an empire. Through

the immense ocean of universal change we look back on the single

track which our frail boat has cut through the waste. As a star shines

impartially over the measureless expanse, though it seems to gild but

one broken line into each eye, so, as our memory gazes on the past, the

light spreads not over all the breadth of the waste where nations have

battled and argosies gone down,--it falls narrow and confined along the

single course we have taken; we lean over the small raft on which

we float, and see the sparkles but reflected from the waves that it

divides.

On the terrace at Laughton but one step paces slowly. The bride clings

not now to the bridegroom’s arm. Though pale and worn, it is still

the same gentle face; but the blush of woman’s love has gone from it

evermore.

Charles Vernon (to call him still by the name in which he is best known

to us) sleeps in the vault of the St. Johns. He had lived longer than he

himself had expected, than his physician had hoped,--lived, cheerful and

happy, amidst quiet pursuits and innocent excitements. Three sons had

blessed his hearth, to mourn over his grave. But the two elder were

delicate and sickly. They did not long survive him, and died within a

few months of each other. The third seemed formed of a different

mould and constitution from his brethren. To him descended the ancient

heritage of Laughton, and he promised to enjoy it long.

It is Vernon’s widow who walks alone in the stately terrace; sad still,

for she loved well the choice of her youth, and she misses yet the

children in the grave. From the date of Vernon’s death, she wore

mourning without and within; and the sorrows that came later broke more

the bruised reed,--sad still, but resigned. One son survives, and earth

yet has the troubled hopes and the holy fears of affection. Though that

son be afar, in sport or in earnest, in pleasure or in toil, working out

his destiny as man, still that step is less solitary than it seems. When

does the son’s image not walk beside the mother? Though she lives in

seclusion, though the gay world tempts no more, the gay world is yet

linked to her thoughts. From the distance she hears its murmurs in

music. Her fancy still mingles with the crowd, and follows on, to her

eye, outshining all the rest. Never vain in herself, she is vain now of

another; and the small triumphs of the young and well-born seem trophies

of renown to the eyes so tenderly deceived.

In the old-fashioned market-town still the business goes on, still the

doors of the bank open and close every moment on the great day of the

week; but the names over the threshold are partially changed. The junior

partner is busy no more at the desk; not wholly forgotten, if his name

still is spoken, it is not with thankfulness and praise. A something

rests on the name,--that something which dims and attaints; not proven,

not certain, but suspected and dubious. The head shakes, the voice

whispers; and the attorney now lives in the solid red house at the verge

of the town.

In the vicarage, Time, the old scythe-bearer, has not paused from his

work. Still employed on Greek texts, little changed, save that his hair

is gray and that some lines in his kindly face tell of sorrows as

of years, the vicar sits in his parlour; but the children no longer,

blithe-voiced and rose-cheeked, dart through the rustling espaliers.

Those children, grave men or staid matrons (save one whom Death chose,

and therefore now of all best beloved!) are at their posts in the world.

The young ones are flown from the nest, and, with anxious wings, here

and there, search food in their turn for their young. But the blithe

voice and rose-cheek of the child make not that loss which the hearth

misses the most. From childhood to manhood, and from manhood to

departure, the natural changes are gradual and prepared. The absence

most missed is that household life which presided, which kept things in

order, and must be coaxed if a chair were displaced. That providence

in trifles, that clasp of small links, that dear, bustling agency,--now

pleased, now complaining,--dear alike in each change of its humour;

that active life which has no self of its own; like the mind of a poet,

though its prose be the humblest, transferring self into others, with

its right to be cross, and its charter to scold; for the motive is

clear,--it takes what it loves too anxiously to heart. The door of the

parlour is open, the garden-path still passes before the threshold; but

no step now has full right to halt at the door and interrupt the grave

thought on Greek texts; no small talk on details and wise sayings

chimes in with the wrath of “Medea.” The Prudent Genius is gone from the

household; and perhaps as the good scholar now wearily pauses, and looks

out on the silent garden, he would have given with joy all that Athens

produced, from Aeschylus to Plato, to hear again from the old familiar

lips the lament on torn jackets, or the statistical economy of eggs.

But see, though the wife is no more, though the children have departed,

the vicar’s home is not utterly desolate. See, along the same walk on

which William soothed Susan’s fears and won her consent,--see, what

fairy advances? Is it Susan returned to youth? How like! Yet look again,

and how unlike! The same, the pure, candid regard; the same, the clear,

limpid blue of the eye; the same, that fair hue of the hair,--light,

but not auburn; more subdued, more harmonious than that equivocal colour

which too nearly approaches to red. But how much more blooming and

joyous than Susan’s is that exquisite face in which all Hebe smiles

forth; how much airier the tread, light with health; how much rounder,

if slighter still, the wave of that undulating form! She smiles, her

lips move, she is conversing with herself; she cannot be all silent,

even when alone, for the sunny gladness of her nature must have vent

like a bird’s. But do not fancy that that gladness speaks the levity

which comes from the absence of thought; it is rather from the depth

of thought that it springs, as from the depth of a sea comes its music.

See, while she pauses and listens, with her finger half-raised to her

lip, as amidst that careless jubilee of birds she hears a note more

grave and sustained,--the nightingale singing by day (as sometimes,

though rarely, he is heard,--perhaps because he misses his mate; perhaps

because he sees from his bower the creeping form of some foe to his

race),--see, as she listens now to that plaintive, low-chanted warble,

how quickly the smile is sobered, how the shade, soft and pensive,

steals over the brow. It is but the mystic sympathy with Nature that

bestows the smile or the shade. In that heart lightly moved beats the

fine sense of the poet. It is the exquisite sensibility of the nerves

that sends its blithe play to those spirits, and from the clearness of

the atmosphere comes, warm and ethereal, the ray of that light.

And does the roof of the pastor give shelter to Helen Mainwaring’s

youth? Has Death taken from her the natural protectors? Those forms

which we saw so full of youth and youth’s heart in that very spot, has

the grave closed on them yet? Yet! How few attain to the age of the

Psalmist! Twenty-seven years have passed since that date: how often, in

those years, have the dark doors opened for the young as for the old!

William Mainwaring died first, careworn and shamebowed; the blot on his

name had cankered into his heart. Susan’s life, always precarious, had

struggled on, while he lived, by the strong power of affection and will;

she would not die, for who then could console him? But at his death the

power gave way. She lingered, but lingered dyingly, for three years; and

then, for the first time since William’s death, she smiled: that smile

remained on the lips of the corpse. They had had many trials, that young

couple whom we left so prosperous and happy. Not till many years after

their marriage had one sweet consoler been born to them. In the season

of poverty and shame and grief it came; and there was no pride on

Mainwaring’s brow when they placed his first-born in his arms. By her

will, the widow consigned Helen to the joint guardianship of Mr. Fielden

and her sister; but the latter was abroad, her address unknown, so

the vicar for two years had had sole charge of the orphan. She was not

unprovided for. The sum that Susan brought to her husband had been long

since gone, it is true,--lost in the calamity which had wrecked William

Mainwaring’s name and blighted his prospects; but Helen’s grandfather,

the landagent, had died some time subsequent to that event, and, indeed,

just before William’s death. He had never forgiven his son the stain on

his name,--never assisted, never even seen him since that fatal day;

but he left to Helen a sum of about 8,000 pounds; for she, at least, was

innocent. In Mr. Fielden’s eyes, Helen was therefore an heiress. And who

amongst his small range of acquaintance was good enough for her?--not

only so richly portioned, but so lovely,--accomplished, too; for her

parents had of late years lived chiefly in France, and languages there

are easily learned, and masters cheap. Mr. Fielden knew but one, whom

Providence had also consigned to his charge,--the supposed son of his

old pupil Ardworth; but though a tender affection existed between the

two young persons, it seemed too like that of brother and sister to

afford much ground for Mr. Fielden’s anxiety or hope.

From his window the vicar observed the still attitude of the young

orphan for a few moments; then he pushed aside his books, rose, and

approached her. At the sound of his tread she woke from her revery and

bounded lightly towards him.

“Ah, you would not see me before!” she said, in a voice in which there

was the slightest possible foreign accent, which betrayed the country in

which her childhood had been passed; “I peeped in twice at the window.

I wanted you so much to walk to the village. But you will come now, will

you not?” added the girl, coaxingly, as she looked up at him under the

shade of her straw hat.

“And what do you want in the village, my pretty Helen?”

“Why, you know it is fair day, and you promised Bessie that you would

buy her a fairing,--to say nothing of me.”

“Very true, and I ought to look in; it will help to keep the poor people

from drinking. A clergyman should mix with his parishioners in their

holidays. We must not associate our office only with grief and sickness

and preaching. We will go. And what fairing are you to have?”

“Oh, something very brilliant, I promise you! I have formed grand

notions of a fair. I am sure it must be like the bazaars we read of last

night in that charming ‘Tour in the East.’”

The vicar smiled, half benignly, half anxiously. “My dear child, it is

so like you to suppose a village fair must be an Eastern bazaar. If you

always thus judge of things by your fancy, how this sober world will

deceive you, poor Helen!”

“It is not my fault; ne me grondez pas, mechant,” answered Helen,

hanging her head. “But come, sir, allow, at least, that if I let my

romance, as you call it, run away with me now and then, I can still

content myself with the reality. What, you shake your head still? Don’t

you remember the sparrow?”

“Ha! ha! yes,--the sparrow that the pedlar sold you for a goldfinch; and

you were so proud of your purchase, and wondered so much why you could

not coax the goldfinch to sing, till at last the paint wore away, and it

was only a poor little sparrow!”

“Go on! Confess: did I fret then? Was I not as pleased with my dear

sparrow as I should have been with the prettiest goldfinch that ever

sang? Does not the sparrow follow me about and nestle on my shoulder,

dear little thing? And I was right after all; for if I had not fancied

it a goldfinch, I should not have bought it, perhaps. But now I would

not change it for a goldfinch,--no, not even for that nightingale I

heard just now. So let me still fancy the poor fair a bazaar; it is a

double pleasure, first to fancy the bazaar, and then to be surprised at

the fair.”

“You argue well,” said the vicar, as they now entered the village; “I

really think, in spite of all your turn for poetry and Goldsmith and

Cowper, that you would take as kindly to mathematics as your cousin John

Ardworth, poor lad!

“Not if mathematics have made him so grave, and so churlish, I was

going to say; but that word does him wrong, dear cousin, so kind and so

rough!”

“It is not mathematics that are to blame if he is grave and

absorbed,” said the vicar, with a sigh; “it is the two cares that gnaw

most,--poverty and ambition.”

“Nay, do not sigh; it must be such a pleasure to feel, as he does, that

one must triumph at last!”

“Umph! John must have nearly reached London by this time,” said Mr.

Fielden, “for he is a stout walker, and this is the third day since he

left us. Well, now that he is about fairly to be called to the Bar, I

hope that his fever will cool, and he will settle calmly to work. I have

felt great pain for him during this last visit.”

“Pain! But why?”

“My dear, do you remember what I read to you both from Sir William

Temple the night before John left us?”

Helen put her hand to her brow, and with a readiness which showed a

memory equally quick and retentive, replied, “Yes; was it not to this

effect? I am not sure of the exact words: ‘To have something we have

not, and be something we are not, is the root of all evil.’”

“Well remembered, my darling!”

“Ah, but,” said Helen, archly, “I remember too what my cousin replied:

‘If Sir William Temple had practised his theory, he would not have been

ambassador at the Hague, or--”

“Pshaw! the boy’s always ready enough with his answers,” interrupted Mr.

Fielden, rather petulantly. “There’s the fair, my dear,--more in your

way, I see, than Sir William Temple’s philosophy.”

And Helen was right; the fair was no Eastern bazaar, but how delighted

that young, impressionable mind was, notwithstanding,--delighted with

the swings and the roundabouts, the shows, the booths, even down to

the gilt gingerbread kings and queens! All minds genuinely poetical

are peculiarly susceptible to movement,--that is, to the excitement

of numbers. If the movement is sincerely joyous, as in the mirth of a

village holiday, such a nature shares insensibly in the joy; but if the

movement is a false and spurious gayety, as in a state ball, where the

impassive face and languid step are out of harmony with the evident

object of the scene, then the nature we speak of feels chilled and

dejected. Hence it really is that the more delicate and ideal order

of minds soon grow inexpressibly weary of the hack routine of what are

called fashionable pleasures. Hence the same person most alive to a

dance on the green, would be without enjoyment at Almack’s. It was

not because one scene is a village green, and the other a room in King

Street, nor is it because the actors in the one are of the humble, in

the others of the noble class; but simply because the enjoyment in the

first is visible and hearty, because in the other it is a listless and

melancholy pretence. Helen fancied it was the swings and the booths

that gave her that innocent exhilaration,--it was not so; it was the

unconscious sympathy with the crowd around her. When the poetical nature

quits its own dreams for the actual world, it enters and transfuses

itself into the hearts and humours of others. The two wings of that

spirit which we call Genius are revery and sympathy. But poor little

Helen had no idea that she had genius. Whether chasing the butterfly or

talking fond fancies to her birds, or whether with earnest, musing

eyes watching the stars come forth, and the dark pine-trees gleam into

silver; whether with airy daydreams and credulous wonder poring over the

magic tales of Mirglip or Aladdin, or whether spellbound to awe by the

solemn woes of Lear, or following the blind great bard into “the heaven

of heavens, an earthly guest, to draw empyreal air,”--she obeyed but the

honest and varying impulse in each change of her pliant mood, and would

have ascribed with genuine humility to the vagaries of childhood that

prompt gathering of pleasure, that quick-shifting sport of the fancy by

which Nature binds to itself, in chains undulating as melody, the lively

senses of genius.

While Helen, leaning on the vicar’s arm, thus surrendered herself to the

innocent excitement of the moment, the vicar himself smiled and nodded

to his parishioners, or paused to exchange a friendly word or two with

the youngest or the eldest loiterers (those two extremes of mortality

which the Church so tenderly unites) whom the scene drew to its tempting

vortex, when a rough-haired lad, with a leather bag strapped across his

waist, turned from one of the gingerbread booths, and touching his hat,

said, “Please you, sir, I was a coming to your house with a letter.”

The vicar’s correspondence was confined and rare, despite his distant

children, for letters but a few years ago were costly luxuries to

persons of narrow income, and therefore the juvenile letter-carrier

who plied between the post-town and the village failed to excite in his

breast that indignation for being an hour or more behind his time which

would have animated one to whom the post brings the usual event of the

day. He took the letter from the boy’s hand, and paid for it with a

thrifty sigh as he glanced at a handwriting unfamiliar to him,--perhaps

from some clergyman poorer than himself. However, that was not the place

to read letters, so he put the epistle into his pocket, until Helen, who

watched his countenance to see when he grew tired of the scene, kindly

proposed to return home. As they gained a stile half-way, Mr. Fielden

remembered his letter, took it forth, and put on his spectacles. Helen

stooped over the bank to gather violets; the vicar seated himself on

the stile. As he again looked at the address, the handwriting, before

unfamiliar, seemed to grow indistinctly on his recollection. That bold,

firm hand--thin and fine as woman’s, but large and regular as man’s--was

too peculiar to be forgotten. He uttered a brief exclamation of surprise

and recognition, and hastily broke the seal. The contents ran thus:--

DEAR SIR,--So many years have passed since any communication has taken

place between us that the name of Lucretia Dalibard will seem more

strange to you than that of Lucretia Clavering. I have recently returned

to England after long residence abroad. I perceive by my deceased

sister’s will that she has confided her only daughter to my

guardianship, conjointly with yourself. I am anxious to participate

in that tender charge. I am alone in the world,--an habitual sufferer;

afflicted with a partial paralysis that deprives me of the use of my

limbs. In such circumstances, it is the more natural that I should turn

to the only relative left me. My journey to England has so exhausted

my strength, and all movement is so painful, that I must request you

to excuse me for not coming in person for my niece. Your benevolence,

however, will, I am sure, prompt you to afford me the comfort of her

society, and as soon as you can, contrive some suitable arrangement for

her journey. Begging you to express to Helen, in my name, the assurance

of such a welcome as is due from me to my sister’s child, and waiting

with great anxiety your reply, I am, dear Sir, Your very faithful

servant, LUCRETIA DALIBARD.

P. S. I can scarcely venture to ask you to bring Helen yourself to town,

but I should be glad if other inducements to take the journey afforded

me the pleasure of seeing you once again. I am anxious, in addition

to such details of my late sister as you may be enabled to give me, to

learn something of the history of her connection with Mr. Ardworth, in

whom I felt much interested years ago, and who, I am recently informed,

left an infant, his supposed son, under your care. So long absent from

England, how much have I to learn, and how little the mere gravestones

tell us of the dead!

While the vicar is absorbed in this letter, equally unwelcome and

unexpected; while, unconscious as the daughter of Ceres, gathering

flowers when the Hell King drew near, of the change that awaited her and

the grim presence that approached on her fate, Helen bends still

over the bank odorous with shrinking violets,--we turn where the new

generation equally invites our gaze, and make our first acquaintance

with two persons connected with the progress of our tale.

The britzska stopped. The servant, who had been gradually accumulating

present dust and future rheumatisms on the “bad eminence” of a

rumble-tumble, exposed to the nipping airs of an English sky, leaped to

the ground and opened the carriage-door.

“This is the best place for the view, sir,--a little to the right.”

Percival St. John threw aside his book (a volume of Voyages), whistled

to a spaniel dozing by his side, and descended lightly. Light was the

step of the young man, and merry was the bark of the dog, as it

chased from the road the startled sparrow, rising high into the clear

air,--favourites of Nature both, man and dog. You had but to glance at

Percival St. John to know at once that he was of the race that toils

not; the assured step spoke confidence in the world’s fair smile. No

care for the morrow dimmed the bold eye and the radiant bloom.

About the middle height,--his slight figure, yet undeveloped, seemed

not to have attained to its full growth,--the darkening down only just

shaded a cheek somewhat sunburned, though naturally fair, round which

locks black as jet played sportively in the fresh air; about him

altogether there was the inexpressible charm of happy youth. He scarcely

looked sixteen, though above four years older; but for his firm though

careless step, and the open fearlessness of his frank eye, you might

have almost taken him for a girl in men’s clothes,--not from effeminacy

of feature, but from the sparkling bloom of his youth, and from his

unmistakable newness to the cares and sins of man. A more delightful

vision of ingenuous boyhood opening into life under happy auspices never

inspired with pleased yet melancholy interest the eye of half-envious,

half-pitying age.

“And that,” mused Percival St. John,--“that is London! Oh for the Diable

Boiteux to unroof me those distant houses, and show me the pleasures

that lurk within! Ah, what long letters I shall have to write home! How

the dear old captain will laugh over them, and how my dear good mother

will put down her work and sigh! Home!--um, I miss it already. How

strange and grim, after all, the huge city seems!”

His glove fell to the ground, and his spaniel mumbled it into shreds.

The young man laughed, and throwing himself on the grass, played gayly

with the dog.

“Fie, Beau, sir, fie! gloves are indigestible. Restrain your appetite,

and we’ll lunch together at the Clarendon.”

At this moment there arrived at the same patch of greensward a

pedestrian some years older than Percival St. John,--a tall, muscular,

raw-boned, dust-covered, travel-stained pedestrian; one of your

pedestrians in good earnest,--no amateur in neat gambroon manufactured

by Inkson, who leaves his carriage behind him and walks on with his

fishing-rod by choice, but a sturdy wanderer, with thick shoes and

strapless trousers, a threadbare coat and a knapsack at his back. Yet,

withal, the young man had the air of a gentleman,--not gentleman as the

word is understood in St. James’s, the gentleman of the noble and idle

class, but the gentleman as the title is accorded, by courtesy, to all

to whom both education and the habit of mixing with educated persons

gives a claim to the distinction and imparts an air of refinement. The

new-comer was strongly built, at once lean and large,--far more strongly

built than Percival St. John, but without his look of cheerful and

comely health. His complexion had not the florid hues that should have

accompanied that strength of body; it was pale, though not sickly; the

expression grave, the lines deep, the face strongly marked. By his

side trotted painfully a wiry, yellowish, footsore Scotch terrier. Beau

sprang from his master’s caress, cocked his handsome head on one side,

and suspended in silent halt his right fore-paw. Percival cast over his

left shoulder a careless glance at the intruder. The last heeded neither

Beau nor Percival. He slipped his knapsack to the ground, and the Scotch

terrier sank upon it, and curled himself up into a ball. The wayfarer

folded his arms tightly upon his breast, heaved a short, unquiet sigh,

and cast over the giant city, from under deep-pent, lowering brows,

a look so earnest, so searching, so full of inexpressible, dogged,

determined power, that Percival, roused out of his gay indifference,

rose and regarded him with curious interest.

In the mean while Beau had very leisurely approached the bilious-looking

terrier; and after walking three times round him, with a stare and a

small sniff of superb impertinence, halted with great composure, and

lifting his hind leg--O Beau, Beau, Beau! your historian blushes for

your breeding, and, like Sterne’s recording angel, drops a tear upon the

stain which washes it from the register--but not, alas, from the back

of the bilious terrier! The space around was wide, Beau; you had all the

world to choose: why select so specially for insult the single spot

on which reposed the wornout and unoffending? O dainty Beau! O dainty

world! Own the truth, both of ye. There is something irresistibly

provocative of insult in the back of a shabby-looking dog! The poor

terrier, used to affronts, raised its heavy eyelids, and shot the gleam

of just indignation from its dark eyes. But it neither stirred nor

growled, and Beau, extremely pleased with his achievement, wagged his

tail in triumph and returned to his master,--perhaps, in parliamentary

phrase, to “report proceedings and ask leave to sit again.”

“I wonder,” soliloquized Percival St. John, “what that poor fellow is

thinking of? Perhaps he is poor; indeed, no doubt of it, now I look

again. And I so rich! I should like to--Hem! let’s see what he’s made

of.”

Herewith Percival approached, and with all a boy’s half-bashful,

half-saucy frankness, said: “A fine prospect, sir.” The pedestrian

started, and threw a rapid glance over the brilliant figure that

accosted him. Percival St. John was not to be abashed by stern looks;

but that glance might have abashed many a more experienced man. The

glance of a squire upon a corn-law missionary, of a Crockford dandy upon

a Regent Street tiger, could not have been more disdainful.

“Tush!” said the pedestrian, rudely, and turned upon his heel.

Percival coloured, and--shall we own it?--was boy enough to double his

fist. Little would he have been deterred by the brawn of those great

arms and the girth of that Herculean chest, if he had been quite sure

that it was a proper thing to resent pugilistically so discourteous a

monosyllable. The “tush!” stuck greatly in his throat. But the man, now

removed to the farther verge of the hill, looked so tranquil and so lost

in thought that the short-lived anger died.

“And after all, if I were as poor as he looks, I dare say I should be

just as proud,” muttered Percival. “However, it’s his own fault if he

goes to London on foot, when I might at least have given him a lift.

Come, Beau, sir.”

With his face still a little flushed, and his hat unconsciously cocked

fiercely on one side, Percival sauntered back to his britzska.

As in a whirl of dust the light carriage was borne by the four posters

down the hill, the pedestrian turned for an instant from the view before

to the cloud behind, and muttered: “Ay, a fine prospect for the rich,--a

noble field for the poor!” The tone in which those words were said told

volumes; there spoke the pride, the hope, the energy, the ambition which

make youth laborious, manhood prosperous, age renowned.

The stranger then threw himself on the sward, and continued his silent

and intent contemplation till the clouds grew red in the west. When,

then, he rose, his eye was bright, his mien erect, and a smile, playing

round his firm, full lips, stole the moody sternness from his hard

face. Throwing his knapsack once more on his back, John Ardworth went

resolutely on to the great vortex.

CHAPTER I. THE CORONATION.

The 8th of September, 1831, was a holiday in London. William the Fourth

received the crown of his ancestors in that mighty church in which the

most impressive monitors to human pomp are the monuments of the dead.

The dust of conquerors and statesmen, of the wise heads and the bold

hands that had guarded the thrones of departed kings, slept around; and

the great men of the Modern time were assembled in homage to the monarch

to whom the prowess and the liberty of generations had bequeathed an

empire in which the sun never sets. In the Abbey--thinking little of the

past, caring little for the future--the immense audience gazed eagerly

on the pageant that occurs but once in that division of history,--the

lifetime of a king. The assemblage was brilliant and imposing. The

galleries sparkled with the gems of women who still upheld the celebrity

for form and feature which, from the remotest times, has been awarded to

the great English race. Below, in their robes and coronets, were men

who neither in the senate nor the field have shamed their fathers.

Conspicuous amongst all for grandeur of mien and stature towered the

brothers of the king; while, commanding yet more the universal gaze,

were seen, here the eagle features of the old hero of Waterloo, and

there the majestic brow of the haughty statesman who was leading the

people (while the last of the Bourbons, whom Waterloo had restored to

the Tuileries, had left the orb and purple to the kindred house so fatal

to his name) through a stormy and perilous transition to a bloodless

revolution and a new charter.

Tier upon tier, in the division set apart for them, the members of the

Lower House moved and murmured above the pageant; and the coronation of

the new sovereign was connected in their minds with the great measure

which, still undecided, made at that time a link between the People

and the King, and arrayed against both, if not, indeed, the real

Aristocracy, at least the Chamber recognized by the Constitution as

its representative. Without the space was one dense mass. Houses,

from balcony to balcony, window to window, were filled as some immense

theatre. Up, through the long thoroughfare to Whitehall, the eye saw

that audience,--A PEOPLE; and the gaze was bounded at the spot where

Charles the First had passed from the banquet-house to the scaffold.

The ceremony was over, the procession had swept slowly by, the last

huzza had died away; and after staring a while upon Orator Hunt, who

had clambered up the iron palisade near Westminster Hall, to exhibit his

goodly person in his court attire, the serried crowds, hurrying from

the shower which then unseasonably descended, broke into large masses or

lengthening columns.

In that part of London which may be said to form a boundary between

its old and its new world, by which, on the one hand, you pass to

Westminster, or through that gorge of the Strand which leads along

endless rows of shops that have grown up on the sites of the

ancient halls of the Salisburys and the Exeters, the Buckinghams and

Southamptons; to the heart of the City built around the primeval palace

of the “Tower;” while, on the other hand, you pass into the new city of

aristocracy and letters, of art and fashion, embracing the whilom chase

of Marylebone, and the once sedge-grown waters of Pimlico,--by this

ignoble boundary (the crossing from the Opera House, at the bottom of

the Haymarket, to the commencement of Charing Cross) stood a person

whose discontented countenance was in singular contrast with the general

gayety and animation of the day. This person, O gentle reader, this

sour, querulous, discontented person, was a king, too, in his own walk!

None might dispute it. He feared no rebel; he was harassed by no reform;

he ruled without ministers. Tools he had; but when worn out, he replaced

them without a pension or a sigh. He lived by taxes, but they were

voluntary; and his Civil List was supplied without demand for the

redress of grievances. This person, nevertheless, not deposed, was

suspended from his empire for the day. He was pushed aside; he was

forgotten. He was not distinct from the crowd. Like Titus, he had lost

a day,--his vocation was gone. This person was the Sweeper of the

Crossing!

He was a character. He was young, in the fairest prime of youth; but it

was the face of an old man on young shoulders. His hair was long,

thin, and prematurely streaked with gray; his face was pale and deeply

furrowed; his eyes were hollow, and their stare gleamed, cold and

stolid, under his bent and shaggy brows. The figure was at once fragile

and ungainly, and the narrow shoulders curved in a perpetual stoop.

It was a person, once noticed, that you would easily remember, and

associate with some undefined, painful impression. The manner was

humble, but not meek; the voice was whining, but without pathos. There

was a meagre, passionless dulness about the aspect, though at times

it quickened into a kind of avid acuteness. No one knew by what human

parentage this personage came into the world. He had been reared by

the charity of a stranger, crept through childhood and misery and

rags mysteriously; and suddenly succeeded an old defunct negro in

the profitable crossing whereat he is now standing. All education was

unknown to him, so was all love. In those festive haunts at St. Giles’s

where he who would see “life in London” may often discover the boy who

has held his horse in the morning dancing merrily with his chosen damsel

at night, our sweeper’s character was austere as Charles the Twelfth’s.

And the poor creature had his good qualities. He was sensitively alive

to kindness,--little enough had been shown him to make the luxury the

more prized from its rarity! Though fond of money, he would part with it

(we do not say cheerfully, but part with it still),--not to mere want,

indeed (for he had been too pinched and starved himself, and had grown

too obtuse to pinching and to starving for the sensitiveness that

prompts to charity), but to any of his companions who had done him a

good service, or who had even warmed his dull heart by a friendly smile.

He was honest, too,--honest to the backbone. You might have trusted

him with gold untold. Through the heavy clod which man’s care had not

moulded, nor books enlightened, nor the priest’s solemn lore informed,

still natural rays from the great parent source of Deity struggled,

fitful and dim. He had no lawful name; none knew if sponsors had ever

stood security for his sins at the sacred fount. But he had christened

himself by the strange, unchristian like name of “Beck.” There he was,

then, seemingly without origin, parentage, or kindred tie,--a lonesome,

squalid, bloodless thing, which the great monster, London, seemed

to have spawned forth of its own self; one of its sickly, miserable,

rickety offspring, whom it puts out at nurse to Penury, at school to

Starvation, and, finally, and literally, gives them stones for bread,

with the option of the gallows or the dunghill when the desperate

offspring calls on the giant mother for return and home.

And this creature did love something,--loved, perhaps, some

fellow-being; of that hereafter, when we dive into the secrets of his

privacy. Meanwhile, openly and frankly, he loved his crossing; he was

proud of his crossing; he was grateful to his crossing. God help thee,

son of the street, why not? He had in it a double affection,--that of

serving and being served. He kept the crossing, if the crossing kept

him. He smiled at times to himself when he saw it lie fair and brilliant

amidst the mire around; it bestowed on him a sense of property! What

a man may feel for a fine estate in a ring fence, Beck felt for that

isthmus of the kennel which was subject to his broom. The coronation had

made one rebellious spirit when it swept the sweeper from his crossing.

He stood, then, half under the colonnade of the Opera House as the crowd

now rapidly grew thinner and more scattered: and when the last carriage

of a long string of vehicles had passed by, he muttered audibly,--

“It’ll take a deal of pains to make she right agin!”

“So you be’s ‘ere to-day, Beck!” said a ragamuffin boy, who, pushing and

scrambling through his betters, now halted, and wiped his forehead as he

looked at the sweeper. “Vy, ve are all out pleasuring. Vy von’t you come

with ve? Lots of fun!”

The sweeper scowled at the urchin, and made no answer, but began

sedulously to apply himself to the crossing.

“Vy, there isn’t another sweep in the streets, Beck. His Majesty King

Bill’s currynation makes all on us so ‘appy!”

“It has made she unkimmon dirty!” returned Beck, pointing to the dingy

crossing, scarce distinguished from the rest of the road.

The ragamuffin laughed.

“But ve be’s goin’ to ‘ave Reform now, Beck. The peopul’s to have their

rights and libties, hand the luds is to be put down, hand beefsteaks is

to be a penny a pound, and--”

“What good will that do to she?”

“Vy, man, ve shall take turn about, and sum vun helse will sveep

the crossings, and ve shall ride in sum vun helse’s coach and four,

p’r’aps,--cos vy? ve shall hall be hequals!”

“Hequals! I tells you vot, if you keeps jawing there, atween me and she,

I shall vop you, Joe,--cos vy? I be’s the biggest!” was the answer of

Beck the sweeper to Joe the ragamuffin.

The jovial Joe laughed aloud, snapped his fingers, threw up his ragged

cap with a shout for King Bill, and set off scampering and whooping to

join those festivities which Beck had so churlishly disdained.

Time crept on; evening began to close in, and Beck was still at his

crossing, when a young gentleman on horseback, who, after seeing the

procession, had stolen away for a quiet ride in the suburbs, reined in

close by the crossing, and looking round, as for some one to hold his

horse, could discover no loiterer worthy that honour except the solitary

Beck. So young was the rider that he seemed still a boy. On his smooth

countenance all that most prepossesses in early youth left its witching

stamp. A smile, at once gay and sweet, played on his lips. There was a

charm, even in a certain impatient petulance, in his quick eye and the

slight contraction of his delicate brows. Almaviva might well have been

jealous of such a page. He was the beau-ideal of Cherubino. He held up

his whip, with an arch sign, to the sweeper. “Follow, my man,” he said,

in a tone the very command of which sounded gentle, so blithe was

the movement of the lips, and so silvery the easy accent; and without

waiting, he cantered carelessly down Pall Mall.

The sweeper cast a rueful glance at his melancholy domain. But he

had gained but little that day, and the offer was too tempting to be

rejected. He heaved a sigh, shouldered his broom, and murmuring to

himself that he would give her a last brush before he retired for the

night, he put his long limbs into that swinging, shambling trot which

characterizes the motion of those professional jackals who, having once

caught sight of a groomless rider, fairly hunt him down, and appear when

he least expects it, the instant he dismounts. The young rider lightly

swung himself from his sleek, high-bred gray at the door of one of the

clubs in St. James’s Street, patted his horse’s neck, chucked the rein

to the sweeper, and sauntered into the house, whistling musically,--if

not from want of thought, certainly from want of care.

As he entered the club, two or three men, young indeed, but much older,

to appearance at least, than himself, who were dining together at the

same table, nodded to him their friendly greeting.

“Ah, Perce,” said one, “we have only just sat down; here is a seat for

you.”

The boy blushed shyly as he accepted the proposal, and the young men

made room for him at the table, with a smiling alacrity which showed

that his shyness was no hindrance to his popularity.

“Who,” said an elderly dandy, dining apart with one of his

contemporaries,--“who is that lad? One ought not to admit such mere boys

into the club.”

“He is the only surviving son of an old friend of ours,” answered the

other, dropping his eyeglass,--“young Percival St. John.”

“St. John! What! Vernon St. John’s son?”

“Yes.”

“He has not his father’s good air. These young fellows have a tone, a

something,--a want of self-possession, eh?”

“Very true. The fact is, that Percival was meant for the navy, and even

served as a mid for a year or so. He was a younger son, then,--third,

I think. The two elder ones died, and Master Percival walked into the

inheritance. I don’t think he is quite of age yet.”

“Of age! he does not look seventeen.”

“Oh, he is more than that; I remember him in his jacket at Laughton. A

fine property!”

“Ay, I don’t wonder those fellows are so civil to him. This claret is

corked! Everything is so bad at this d----d club,--no wonder, when a

troop of boys are let in! Enough to spoil any club; don’t know Larose

from Lafitte! Waiter!”

Meanwhile, the talk round the table at which sat Percival St. John was

animated, lively, and various,--the talk common with young idlers; of

horses, and steeplechases, and opera-dancers, and reigning beauties,

and good-humoured jests at each other. In all this babble there was a

freshness about Percival St. John’s conversation which showed that, as

yet, for him life had the zest of novelty. He was more at home about

horses and steeplechases than about opera-dancers and beauties and the

small scandals of town. Talk on these latter topics did not seem to

interest him, on the contrary, almost to pain. Shy and modest as a girl,

he coloured or looked aside when his more hardened friends boasted of

assignations and love-affairs. Spirited, gay, and manly enough in all

really manly points, the virgin bloom of innocence was yet visible in

his frank, charming manner; and often, out of respect for his delicacy,

some hearty son of pleasure stopped short in his narrative, or lost

the point of his anecdote. And yet so lovable was Percival in his good

humour, his naivete, his joyous entrance into innocent joy, that his

companions were scarcely conscious of the gene and restraint he

imposed on them. Those merry, dark eyes and that flashing smile

were conviviality of themselves. They brought with them a contagious

cheerfulness which compensated for the want of corruption.

Night had set in. St. John’s companions had departed to their several

haunts, and Percival himself stood on the steps of the club, resolving

that he would join the crowds that swept through the streets to gaze

on the illuminations, when he perceived Beck (still at the rein of his

dozing horse), whom he had quite forgotten till that moment. Laughing at

his own want of memory, Percival put some silver into Beck’s hand,--more

silver than Beck had ever before received for similar service,--and

said,--

“Well, my man, I suppose I can trust you to take my horse to his

stables,--No.----, the Mews, behind Curzon Street. Poor fellow, he wants

his supper,--and you, too, I suppose!”

Beck smiled a pale, hungry smile, and pulled his forelock politely.

“I can take the ‘oss werry safely, your ‘onor.”

“Take him, then, and good evening; but don’t get on, for your life.”

“Oh, no, sir; I never gets on,--‘t aint in my ways.”

And Beck slowly led the horse through the crowd, till he vanished from

Percival’s eyes.

Just then a man passing through the street paused as he saw the young

gentleman on the steps of the club, and said gayly, “Ah! how do you do?

Pretty faces in plenty out to-night. Which way are you going?”

“That is more than I can tell you, Mr. Varney. I was just thinking which

turn to take,--the right or the left.”

“Then let me be your guide;” and Varney offered his arm.

Percival accepted the courtesy, and the two walked on towards

Piccadilly. Many a kind glance from the milliners--and maid-servants

whom the illuminations drew abroad, roved, somewhat impartially, towards

St. John and his companion; but they dwelt longer on the last, for there

at least they were sure of a return. Varney, if not in his first youth,

was still in the prime of life, and Time had dealt with him so leniently

that he retained all the personal advantages of youth itself. His

complexion still was clear; and as only his upper lip, decorated with

a slight silken and well-trimmed mustache, was unshaven, the contour

of the face added to the juvenility of his appearance by the rounded

symmetry it betrayed. His hair escaped from his hat in fair unchanged

luxuriance. And the nervous figure, agile as a panther’s, though

broad-shouldered and deep-chested, denoted all the slightness and

elasticity of twenty-five, combined with the muscular power of forty.

His dress was rather fantastic,--too showy for the good taste which is

habitual to the English gentleman,--and there was a peculiarity in his

gait, almost approaching to a strut, which bespoke a desire of effect,

a consciousness of personal advantages, equally opposed to the mien

and manner of Percival’s usual companions; yet withal, even the most

fastidious would have hesitated to apply to Gabriel Varney the epithet

of “vulgar.” Many turned to look again, but it was not to remark the

dress or the slight swagger; an expression of reckless, sinister power

in the countenance, something of vigour and determination even in that

very walk, foppish as it would have been in most, made you sink all

observation of the mere externals, in a sentiment of curiosity towards

the man himself. He seemed a somebody,--not a somebody of conventional

rank, but a somebody of personal individuality; an artist, perhaps a

poet, or a soldier in some foreign service, but certainly a man whose

name you would expect to have heard of. Amongst the common mob of

passengers he stood out in marked and distinct relief.

“I feel at home in a crowd,” said Varney. “Do you understand me?”

“I think so,” answered Percival. “If ever I could become distinguished,

I, too, should feel at home in a crowd.”

“You have ambition, then; you mean to become distinguished?” asked

Varney, with a sharp, searching look.

There was a deeper and steadier flash than usual from Percival’s dark

eyes, and a manlier glow over his cheek, at Varney’s question. But he

was slow in answering; and when he did so, his manner had all its wonted

mixture of graceful bashfulness and gay candour.

“Our rise does not always depend on ourselves. We are not all born

great, nor do we all have ‘greatness thrust on us.’”

“One can be what one likes, with your fortune,” said Varney; and there

was a growl of envy in his voice.

“What, be a painter like you! Ha, ha!”

“Faith,” said Varney, “at least, if you could paint at all, you would

have what I have not,--praise and fame.”

Percival pressed kindly on Varney’s arm. “Courage! you will get justice

some day.”

Varney shook his head. “Bah! there is no such thing as justice; all are

underrated or overrated. Can you name one man who you think is estimated

by the public at his precise value? As for present popularity, it

depends on two qualities, each singly, or both united,--cowardice and

charlatanism; that is, servile compliance with the taste and opinion of

the moment, or a quack’s spasmodic efforts at originality. But why bore

you on such matters? There are things more attractive round us. A good

ankle that, eh? Why, pardon me, it is strange, but you don’t seem to

care much for women?”

“Oh, yes, I do,” said Percival, with a sly demureness. “I am very fond

of--my mother!”

“Very proper and filial,” said Varney, laughing; “and does your love for

the sex stop there?”

“Well, and in truth I fancy so,--pretty nearly. You know my grandmother

is not alive! But that is something really worth looking at!” And

Percival pointed, almost with a child’s delight, at an illumination more

brilliant than the rest.

“I suppose, when you come of age, you will have all the cedars at

Laughton hung with coloured lamps. Ah, you must ask me there some day; I

should so like to see the old place again.”

“You never saw it, I think you say, in my poor father’s time?”

“Never.”

“Yet you knew him.”

“But slightly.”

“And you never saw my mother?”

“No; but she seems to have such influence over you that I am sure she

must be a very superior person,--rather proud, I suppose.”

“Proud, no,--that is, not exactly proud, for she is very meek and very

affable. But yet--”

“‘But yet--’ You hesitate: she would not like you to be seen, perhaps,

walking in Piccadilly with Gabriel Varney, the natural son of old Sir

Miles’s librarian,--Gabriel Varney the painter; Gabriel Varney the

adventurer!”

“As long as Gabriel Varney is a man without stain on his character and

honour, my mother would only be pleased that I should know an able and

accomplished person, whatever his origin or parentage. But my mother

would be sad if she knew me intimate with a Bourbon or a Raphael, the

first in rank or the first in genius, if either prince or artist had

lost, or even sullied, his scutcheon of gentleman. In a word, she is

most sensitive as to honour and conscience; all else she disregards.”

“Hem!” Varney stooped down, as if examining the polish of his boot,

while he continued carelessly: “Impossible to walk the streets and keep

one’s boots out of the mire. Well--and you agree with your mother?”

“It would be strange if I did not. When I was scarcely four years old,

my poor father used to lead me through the long picture-gallery at

Laughton and say: ‘Walk through life as if those brave gentlemen looked

down on you.’ And,” added St. John, with his ingenuous smile, “my mother

would put in her word,--‘And those unstained women too, my Percival.’”

There was something noble and touching in the boy’s low accents as

he said this; it gave the key to his unusual modesty and his frank,

healthful innocence of character.

The devil in Varney’s lip sneered mockingly.

“My young friend, you have never loved yet. Do you think you ever

shall?”

“I have dreamed that I could love one day. But I can wait.”

Varney was about to reply, when he was accosted abruptly by three men

of that exaggerated style of dress and manner which is implied by the

vulgar appellation of “Tigrish.” Each of the three men had a cigar in

his mouth, each seemed flushed with wine. One wore long brass spurs and

immense mustaches; another was distinguished by an enormous surface of

black satin cravat, across which meandered a Pactolus of gold chain;

a third had his coat laced and braided a la Polonaise, and pinched and

padded a la Russe, with trousers shaped to the calf of a sinewy leg, and

a glass screwed into his right eye.

“Ah, Gabriel! ah, Varney! ah, prince of good fellows, well met! You sup

with us to-night at little Celeste’s; we were just going in search of

you.”

“Who’s your friend,--one of us?” whispered a second. And the third

screwed his arm tight and lovingly into Varney’s.

Gabriel, despite his habitual assurance, looked abashed foz a moment,

and would have extricated himself from cordialities not at that moment

welcome; but he saw that his friends were too far gone in their cups

to be easily shaken off, and he felt relieved when Percival, after a

dissatisfied glance at the three, said quietly: “I must detain you no

longer; I shall soon look in at your studio;” and without waiting for an

answer, slid off, and was lost among the crowd.

Varney walked on with his new-found friends, unheeding for some moments

their loose remarks and familiar banter. At length he shook off his

abstraction, and surrendering himself to the coarse humours of his

companions, soon eclipsed them all by the gusto of his slang and the

mocking profligacy of his sentiments; for here he no longer played a

part, or suppressed his grosser instincts. That uncurbed dominion of the

senses, to which his very boyhood had abandoned itself, found a willing

slave in the man. Even the talents themselves that he displayed came

from the cultivation of the sensual. His eye, studying externals, made

him a painter,--his ear, quick and practised, a musician. His wild,

prodigal fancy rioted on every excitement, and brought him in a vast

harvest of experience in knowledge of the frailties and the vices on

which it indulged its vagrant experiments. Men who over-cultivate the

art that connects itself with the senses, with little counterpoise from

the reason and pure intellect, are apt to be dissipated and irregular

in their lives. This is frequently noticeable in the biographies of

musicians, singers, and painters; less so in poets, because he who deals

with words, not signs and tones, must perpetually compare his senses

with the pure images of which the senses only see the appearances,--in a

word, he must employ his intellect, and his self-education must be large

and comprehensive. But with most real genius, however fed merely by the

senses,--most really great painters, singers, and musicians, however

easily led astray into temptation,--the richness of the soil throws

up abundant good qualities to countervail or redeem the evil; they are

usually compassionate, generous, sympathizing. That Varney had not such

beauties of soul and temperament it is unnecessary to add,--principally,

it is true, because of his nurture, education, parental example, the

utter corruption in which his childhood and youth had passed; partly

because he had no real genius,---it was a false apparition of the divine

spirit, reflected from the exquisite perfection of his frame (which

rendered all his senses so vigorous and acute) and his riotous fancy and

his fitful energy, which was capable at times of great application, but

not of definite purpose or earnest study. All about him was flashy

and hollow. He had not the natural subtlety and depth of mind that had

characterized his terrible father. The graft of the opera-dancer was

visible on the stock of the scholar; wholly without the habits of method

and order, without the patience, without the mathematical calculating

brain of Dalibard, he played wantonly with the horrible and loathsome

wickedness of which Olivier had made dark and solemn study. Extravagant

and lavish, he spent money as fast as he gained it; he threw away all

chances of eminence and career. In the midst of the direst plots of

his villany or the most energetic pursuit of his art, the poorest

excitement, the veriest bauble would draw him aside. His heart was with

Falri in the sty, his fancy with Aladdin in the palace. To make a show

was his darling object; he loved to create effect by his person, his

talk, his dress, as well as by his talents. Living from hand to mouth,

crimes through which it is not our intention to follow him had at times

made him rich to-day, for vices to make him poor again to-morrow.

What he called “luck,” or “his star,” had favoured him,--he was not

hanged!--he lived; and as the greater part of his unscrupulous career

had been conducted in foreign lands and under other names, in his own

name and in his own country, though something scarcely to be defined,

but equivocal and provocative of suspicion, made him displeasing to

the prudent, and vaguely alarmed the experience of the sober, still,

no positive accusation was attached to the general integrity of his

character, and the mere dissipation of his habits was naturally little

known out of his familiar circle. Hence he had the most presumptuous

confidence in himself,--a confidence native to his courage, and

confirmed by his experience. His conscience was so utterly obtuse that

he might almost be said to present the phenomenon of a man without

conscience at all. Unlike Conrad, he did not “know himself a villain;”

all that he knew of himself was that he was a remarkably clever fellow,

without prejudice or superstition. That, with all his gifts, he had

not succeeded better in life, he ascribed carelessly to the surpassing

wisdom of his philosophy. He could have done better if he had enjoyed

himself less; but was not enjoyment the be-all and end-all of this

little life? More often, indeed, in the moods of his bitter envy, he

would lay the fault upon the world. How great he could have been, if he

had been rich and high-born! Oh, he was made to spend, not to save,--to

command, not to fawn! He was not formed to plod through the dull

mediocrities of fortune; he must toss up for the All or the Nothing! It

was no control over himself that made Varney now turn his thoughts from

certain grave designs on Percival St. John to the brutal debauchery of

his three companions,--rather, he then yielded most to his natural

self. And when the morning star rose over the night he passed with low

profligates and venal nymphs; when over the fragments on the board and

emptied bottles and drunken riot dawn gleamed and saw him in all the

pride of his magnificent organization and the cynicism of his measured

vice, fair, fresh, and blooming amidst those maudlin eyes and flushed

cheeks and reeling figures, laughing hideously over the spectacle he had

provoked, and kicking aside, with a devil’s scorn, the prostrate form of

the favoured partner whose head had rested on his bosom, as alone with

a steady step, he passed the threshold and walked into the fresh,

healthful air,--Gabriel Varney enjoyed the fell triumph of his hell-born

vanity, and revelled in his sentiment of superiority and power.

Meanwhile, on quitting Varney young Percival strolled on as the whim

directed him. Turning down the Haymarket, he gained the colonnade of

the Opera House. The crowd there was so dense that his footsteps were

arrested, and he leaned against one of the columns in admiration of the

various galaxies in view. In front blazed the rival stars of the United

Service Club and the Athenaeum; to the left, the quaint and peculiar

device which lighted up Northumberland House; to the right, the anchors,

cannons, and bombs which typified ingeniously the martial attributes of

the Ordnance Office.

At that moment there were three persons connected with this narrative

within a few feet of each other, distinguished from the multitude by the

feelings with which each regarded the scene, and felt the jostle of the

crowd. Percival St. John, in whom the harmless sense of pleasure was

yet vivid and unsatiated, caught from the assemblage only that physical

hilarity which heightened his own spirits. If in a character as yet so

undeveloped, to which the large passions and stern ends of life were

as yet unknown, stirred some deeper and more musing thoughts and

speculations, giving gravity to the habitual smile on his rosy lip, and

steadying the play of his sparkling eyes, he would have been at a loss

himself to explain the dim sentiment and the vague desire.

Screened by another column from the pressure of the mob, with his arms

folded on his breast, a man some few years older in point of

time,--many years older in point of character,--gazed (with thoughts how

turbulent,--with ambition how profound!) upon the dense and dark masses

that covered space and street far as the eye could reach. He, indeed,

could not have said, with Varney, that he was “at home in a crowd.” For

a crowd did not fill him with the sense of his own individual being

and importance, but grappled him to its mighty breast with the thousand

tissues of a common destiny. Who shall explain and disentangle those

high and restless and interwoven emotions with which intellectual

ambition, honourable and ardent, gazes upon that solemn thing with

which, in which, for which it lives and labours,--the Human Multitude?

To that abstracted, solitary man, the illumination, the festivity, the

curiosity, the holiday, were nothing, or but as fleeting phantoms and

vain seemings. In his heart’s eye he saw before him but the PEOPLE, the

shadow of an everlasting audience,--audience at once and judge.

And literally touching him as he stood, the ragged sweeper, who had

returned in vain to devote a last care to his beloved charge, stood

arrested with the rest, gazing joylessly on the blazing lamps, dead as

the stones he heeded, to the young vivacity of the one man, the solemn

visions of the other. So, O London, amidst the universal holiday to

monarch and to mob, in those three souls lived the three elements which,

duly mingled and administered, make thy vice and thy virtue, thy glory

and thy shame, thy labour and thy luxury; pervading the palace and the

street, the hospital and the prison,--enjoyment, which is pleasure;

energy, which is action; torpor, which is want!