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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lucretia, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lucretia, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7691]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LUCRETIA, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.
+
+Suddenly across the gaze of Percival St. John there flashed a face that
+woke him from his abstraction, as a light awakes the sleeper. It was as
+a recognition of something seen dimly before,--a truth coming out from
+a dream. It was not the mere beauty of that face (and beautiful it
+was) that arrested his eye and made his heart beat more quickly, it was
+rather that nameless and inexplicable sympathy which constitutes love
+at first sight,--a sort of impulse and instinct common to the dullest as
+the quickest, the hardest reason as the liveliest fancy. Plain Cobbett,
+seeing before the cottage-door, at her homeliest of house-work, the
+girl of whom he said, "That girl should be my wife," and Dante, first
+thrilled by the vision of Beatrice,--are alike true types of a common
+experience. Whatever of love sinks the deepest is felt at first sight;
+it streams on us abrupt from the cloud, a lightning flash,--a destiny
+revealed to us face to face.
+
+Now, there was nothing poetical in the place or the circumstance, still
+less in the companionship in which this fair creature startled the
+virgin heart of that careless boy; she was leaning on the arm of a
+stout, rosy-faced matron in a puce-coloured gown, who was flanked on the
+other side by a very small, very spare man, with a very wee face, the
+lower part of which was enveloped in an immense belcher. Besides these
+two incumbrances, the stout lady contrived to carry in her hands an
+umbrella, a basket, and a pair of pattens.
+
+In the midst of the strange, unfamiliar emotion which his eye conveyed
+to his heart, Percival's ear was displeasingly jarred by the loud,
+bluff, hearty voice of the girl's female companion--
+
+"Gracious me! if that is not John Ardworth. Who'd have thought it? Why,
+John,--I say, John!" and lifting her umbrella horizontally, she poked
+aside two city clerks in front of her, wheeled round the little man on
+her left, upon whom the clerks simultaneously bestowed the appellation
+of "feller," and driving him, as being the sharpest and thinnest wedge
+at hand, through a dense knot of some half-a-dozen gapers, while,
+following his involuntary progress, she looked defiance on the
+malcontents, she succeeded in clearing her way to the spot where stood
+the young man she had discovered. The ambitious dreamer, for it was
+he, thus detected and disturbed, looked embarrassed for a moment as the
+stout lady, touching him with the umbrella, said,--
+
+"Well, I declare if this is not too bad! You sent word that you should
+not be able to come out with us to see the 'luminations, and here you
+are as large as life!"
+
+"I did not think, at the moment you wrote to me, that-"
+
+"Oh, stuff!" interrupted the stout woman, with a significant,
+good-humoured shake of her head; "I know what's what. Tell the truth,
+and shame the gentleman who objects to showing his feet. You are a wild
+fellow, John Ardworth, you are! You like looking after the pretty faces,
+you do, you do--ha, ha, ha! very natural! So did you once,--did not you,
+Mr. Mivers, did not you, eh? Men must be men,--they always are men, and
+it's my belief that men they always will be!"
+
+With this sage conjecture into the future, the lady turned to Mr.
+Mivers, who, thus appealed to, extricated with some difficulty his chin
+from the folds of his belcher, and putting up his small face, said, in a
+small voice, "Yes, I was a wild fellow once; but you have tamed me, you
+have, Mrs. M.!"
+
+And therewith the chin sank again into the belcher, and the small voice
+died into a small sigh.
+
+The stout lady glanced benignly at her spouse, and then resuming her
+address, to which Ardworth listened with a half-frown and a half-smile,
+observed encouragingly,--
+
+"Yes, there's nothing like a lawful wife to break a man in, as you
+will find some day. Howsomever, your time's not come for the altar, so
+suppose you give Helen your arm, and come with us."
+
+"Do," said Helen, in a sweet, coaxing voice.
+
+Ardworth bent down his rough, earnest face to Helen's, and an evident
+pleasure relaxed its thoughtful lines. "I cannot resist you," he began,
+and then he paused and frowned. "Pish!" he added, "I was talking folly;
+but what head would not you turn? Resist you I must, for I am on my way
+now to my drudgery. Ask me anything some years hence, when I have time
+to be happy, and then see if I am the bear you now call me."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Mivers, emphatically, "are you coming, or are you not?
+Don't stand there shilly-shally."
+
+"Mrs. Mivers," returned Ardworth, with a kind of sly humour, "I am sure
+you would be very angry with your husband's excellent shopmen if
+that was the way they spoke to your customers. If some unhappy
+dropper-in,--some lady who came to buy a yard or so of Irish,--was
+suddenly dazzled, as I am, by a luxury wholly unforeseen and eagerly
+coveted,--a splendid lace veil, or a ravishing cashmere, or whatever
+else you ladies desiderate,--and while she was balancing between
+prudence and temptation, your foreman exclaimed: `Don't stand
+shilly-shally'--come, I put it to you."
+
+"Stuff!" said Mrs. Mivers.
+
+"Alas! unlike your imaginary customer (I hope so, at least, for the sake
+of your till), prudence gets the better of me; unless," added Ardworth,
+irresolutely, and glancing at Helen,--"unless, indeed, you are not
+sufficiently protected, and--"
+
+"Purtected!" exclaimed Mrs. Mivers, in an indignant tone of
+astonishment, and agitating the formidable umbrella; "as if I was not
+enough, with the help of this here domestic commodity, to purtect a
+dozen such. Purtected, indeed!"
+
+"John is right, Mrs. M.,--business is business," said Mr. Mivers. "Let
+us move on; we stop the way, and those idle lads are listening to us,
+and sniggering."
+
+"Sniggering!" exclaimed the gentle helpmate. "I should like to see
+those who presume for to snigger;" and as she spoke, she threw a look
+of defiance around her. Then, having thus satisfied her resentment,
+she prepared to obey, as no doubt she always did, her lord and master.
+Suddenly, with a practised movement, she wheeled round Mr. Mivers, and
+taking care to protrude before him the sharp point of the umbrella, cut
+her way through the crowd like the scythed car of the Ancient Britons,
+and was soon lost amidst the throng, although her way might be guessed
+by a slight ripple of peculiar agitation along the general stream,
+accompanied by a prolonged murmur of reproach or expostulation which
+gradually died in the distance.
+
+Ardworth gazed after the fair form of Helen with a look of regret; and
+when it vanished, with a slight start and a suppressed sigh he turned
+away, and with the long, steady stride of a strong man, cleared his path
+through the Strand towards the printing-office of a journal on which he
+was responsibly engaged.
+
+But Percival, who had caught much of the conversation that took place so
+near him,--Percival, happy child of idleness and whim,--had no motive
+of labour and occupation to stay the free impulse of his heart, and his
+heart drew him on, with magnetic attraction, in the track of the first
+being that had ever touched the sweet instincts of youth.
+
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Mivers was destined to learn--though perhaps the lesson
+little availed her--that to get smoothly through this world it is
+necessary to be supple as well as strong; and though, up to a certain
+point, man or woman may force the way by poking umbrellas into people's
+ribs and treading mercilessly upon people's toes, yet the endurance of
+ribs and toes has its appointed limits.
+
+Helen, half terrified, also half amused by her companion's robust
+resolution of purpose, had in Mrs. Mivers's general courage and success
+that confidence which the weak repose in the strong; and though whenever
+she turned her eyes from the illuminations, she besought Mrs. Mivers to
+be more gentle, yet, seeing that they had gone safely from St. Paul's
+to St. James's, she had no distinct apprehension of any practically ill
+results from the energies she was unable to mitigate. But now, having
+just gained the end of St. James's Street, Mrs. Mivers at last found her
+match. The crowd here halted, thick and serried, to gaze in peace upon
+the brilliant vista which the shops and clubs of that street presented.
+Coaches and carriages had paused in their line, and immediately before
+Mrs. Mivers stood three very thin, small women, whose dress bespoke them
+to be of the humblest class.
+
+"Make way, there; make way, my good women, make way!" cried Mrs. Mivers,
+equally disdainful of the size and the rank of the obstructing parties.
+
+"Arrah, and what shall we make way for the like of you, you old
+busybody?" said one of the dames, turning round, and presenting a very
+formidable squint to the broad optics of Mrs. Mivers.
+
+Without deigning a reply, Mrs. Mivers had recourse to her usual
+tactics. Umbrella and husband went right between two of the feminine
+obstructives; and to the inconceivable astonishment and horror of the
+assailant, husband and umbrella instantly vanished. The three small
+furies had pounced upon both. They were torn from their natural owner;
+they were hurried away; the stream behind, long fretted at the path so
+abruptly made amidst it, closed in, joyous, with a thousand waves. Mrs.
+Mivers and Helen were borne forward in one way, the umbrella and the
+husband in the other; in the distance a small voice was heard: "Don't
+you! don't! Be quiet! Mrs.--Mrs. M.! Oh, oh, Mrs. M.!" At that last
+repetition of the beloved and familiar initial, uttered in a tone
+of almost superhuman anguish, the conjugal heart of Mrs. Mivers was
+afflicted beyond control.
+
+"Wait here a moment, my dear; I'll just give it them, that's all!" And
+in another moment Mrs. Mivers was heard bustling, scolding, till all
+trace of her whereabout was gone from the eyes of Helen. Thus left
+alone, in exceeding shame and dismay, the poor girl cast a glance
+around. The glance was caught by two young men, whose station, in these
+days when dress is an equivocal designator of rank, could not be guessed
+by their exterior. They might be dandies from the west,--they might be
+clerks from the east.
+
+"By Jove," exclaimed one, "that's a sweet pretty girl!" and, by a sudden
+movement of the crowd, they both found themselves close to Helen.
+
+"Are you alone, my dear?" said a voice rudely familiar. Helen made no
+reply; the tone of the voice frightened her. A gap in the mob showed
+the space towards Cleveland Row, which, leading to no illuminations, was
+vacant and solitary. She instantly made towards this spot; the two men
+followed her, the bolder and elder one occasionally trying to catch hold
+of her arm. At last, as she passed the last house to the left, a house
+then owned by one who, at once far-sighted and impetuous, affable and
+haughty, characterized alike by solid virtues and brilliant faults,
+would, but for hollow friends, have triumphed over countless foes,
+and enjoyed at last that brief day of stormy power for which statesmen
+resign the health of manhood and the hope of age,--as she passed that
+memorable mansion, she suddenly perceived that the space before her had
+no thoroughfare; and, while she paused in dismay, her pursuers blockaded
+her escape.
+
+One of them now fairly seized her hand. "Nay, pretty one, why so cruel?
+But one kiss,--only one!" He endeavoured to pass his arm round her waist
+while he spoke. Helen eluded him, and darted forward, to find her way
+stopped by her persecutor's companion, when, to her astonishment,
+a third person gently pushed aside the form that impeded her path,
+approached, and looking mute defiance at the unchivalric molesters,
+offered her his arm. Helen gave but one timid, hurrying glance to
+her unexpected protector; something in his face, his air, his youth,
+appealed at once to her confidence. Mechanically, and scarce knowing
+what she did, she laid her trembling hand on the arm held out to her.
+
+The two Lotharios looked foolish. One pulled up his shirt-collar, and
+the other turned, with a forced laugh, on his heel. Boy as Percival
+seemed, and little more than boy as he was, there was a dangerous fire
+in his eye, and an expression of spirit and ready courage in his whole
+countenance, which, if it did not awe his tall rivals, made them at
+least unwilling to have a scene and provoke the interference of a
+policeman; one of whom was now seen walking slowly up to the spot. They
+therefore preserved a discomfited silence; and Percival St. John, with
+his heart going ten knots a beat, sailed triumphantly off with his
+prize.
+
+Scarcely knowing whither he went, certainly forgetful of Mr. Mivers, in
+his anxiety to escape at least from the crowd, Percival walked on till
+he found himself with his fair charge under the trees of St. James's
+Park.
+
+Then Helen, recovering herself, paused, and said, alarmed: "But this is
+not my way; I must go back to the street!"
+
+"How foolish I am! That is true," said Percival, looking confused. "I--I
+felt so happy to be with you, feel your hand on my arm, and think
+that we were all by ourselves, that--that---But you have dropped your
+flowers!"
+
+And as a bouquet Helen wore, dislodged somehow or other, fell to the
+ground, both stooped to pick it up, and their hands met. At that touch,
+Percival felt a strange tremble, which perhaps communicated itself (for
+such things are contagious) to his fair companion. Percival had got
+the nosegay, and seemed willing to detain it; for he bent his face
+lingeringly over the flowers. At length he turned his bright, ingenuous
+eyes to Helen, and singling one rose from the rest, said beseechingly:
+"May I keep this? See, it is not so fresh as the others."
+
+"I am sure, sir," said Helen, colouring, and looking down, "I owe you so
+much that I should be glad if a poor flower could repay it."
+
+"A poor flower! You don't know what a prize this is to me!" Percival
+placed the rose reverently in his bosom, and the two moved back slowly,
+as if reluctant both, through the old palace-court into the street.
+
+"Is that lady related to you?" asked Percival, looking another way, and
+dreading the reply,--"not your mother, surely!"
+
+"Oh, no! I have no mother!"
+
+"Forgive me!" said Percival; for the tone of Helen's voice told him that
+he had touched the spring of a household sorrow. "And," he added, with
+a jealousy that he could scarcely restrain from making itself evident
+in his accent, "that gentleman who spoke to you under the Colonnade,--I
+have seen him before, but where I cannot remember. In fact, you have put
+everything but yourself out of my head. Is he related to you?"
+
+"He is my cousin."
+
+"Cousin!" repeated Percival, pouting a little; and again there was
+silence.
+
+"I don't know how it is," said Percival at last, and very gravely, as if
+much perplexed by some abstruse thought, "but I feel as if I had known
+you all my life. I never felt this for any one before."
+
+There was something so irresistibly innocent in the boy's serious,
+wondering tone as he said these words that a smile, in spite of herself,
+broke out amongst the thousand dimples round Helen's charming lips.
+Perhaps the little witch felt a touch of coquetry for the first time.
+
+Percival, who was looking sidelong into her face, saw the smile, and
+said, drawing up his head, and shaking back his jetty curls: "I dare say
+you are laughing at me as a mere boy; but I am older than I look. I
+am sure I am much older than you are. Let me see, you are seventeen, I
+suppose?"
+
+Helen, getting more and more at her ease, nodded playful assent.
+
+"And I am not far from twenty-one. Ah, you may well look surprised, but
+so it is. An hour ago I felt a mere boy; now I shall never feel a boy
+again!"
+
+Once more there was a long pause, and before it was broken, they had
+gained the very spot in which Helen had lost her friend.
+
+"Why, bless us and save us!" exclaimed a voice "loud as a trumpet," but
+not "with a silver sound," "there you are, after all;" and Mrs. Mivers
+(husband and umbrella both regained) planted herself full before them.
+
+"Oh, a pretty fright I have been in! And now to see you coming along as
+cool as if nothing had happened; as if the humbrella had not lost its
+hivory 'andle,--it's quite purvoking. Dear, dear, what we have gone
+through! And who is this young gentleman, pray?"
+
+Helen whispered some hesitating explanation, which Mrs. Mivers did not
+seem to receive as graciously as Percival, poor fellow, had a right to
+expect. She stared him full in the face, and shook her head suspiciously
+when she saw him a little confused by the survey. Then, tucking Helen
+tightly under her arm, she walked back towards the Haymarket, merely
+saying to Percival,--
+
+"Much obligated, and good-night. I have a long journey to take to set
+down this here young lady; and the best thing we can all do is to get
+home as fast as we can, and have a refreshing cup of tea--that's my
+mind, sir. Excuse me!"
+
+Thus abruptly dismissed, poor Percival gazed wistfully on his Helen as
+she was borne along, and was somewhat comforted at seeing her look
+back with (as he thought) a touch of regret in her parting smile. Then
+suddenly it flashed across him how sadly he had wasted his time. Novice
+that he was, he had not even learned the name and address of his new
+acquaintance. At that thought he hurried on through the crowd, but only
+reached the object of his pursuit just in time to see her placed in a
+coach, and to catch a full view of the luxuriant proportions of Mrs.
+Mivers as she followed her into the vehicle.
+
+As the lumbering conveyance (the only coach on the stand) heaved itself
+into motion, Percival's eye fell on the sweeper, who was still
+leaning on his broom, and who, in grateful recognition of the unwonted
+generosity that had repaid his service, touched his ragged hat, and
+smiled drowsily on his young customer. Love sharpens the wit and
+animates the timid; a thought worthy of the most experienced inspired
+Percival St. John; he hurried to the sweeper, laid his hand on his
+patchwork coat, and said breathlessly,--
+
+"You see that coach turning into the square? Follow it,--find out where
+it sets down. There's a sovereign for you; another if you succeed. Call
+and tell me your success. Number ---- Curzon Street! Off, like a shot!"
+
+The sweeper nodded and grinned; it was possibly not his first commission
+of a similar kind. He darted down the street; and Percival, following
+him with equal speed, had the satisfaction to see him, as the coach
+traversed St. James's Square, comfortably seated on the footboard.
+
+Beck, dull clod, knew nothing, cared nothing, felt nothing as to the
+motives or purpose of his employer. Honest love or selfish vice, it was
+the same to him. He saw only the one sovereign which, with astounded
+eyes, he still gazed at on his palm, and the vision of the sovereign
+that was yet to come.
+
+"Scandit aeratas vitiosa naves Cura; nee turmas equitum relinquit."
+
+It was the Selfishness of London, calm and stolid, whether on the track
+of innocence or at the command of guile.
+
+At half-past ten o'clock Percival St. John was seated in his room, and
+the sweeper stood at the threshold. Wealth and penury seemed brought
+into visible contact in the persons of the visitor and the host. The
+dwelling is held by some to give an index to the character of the owner;
+if so, Percival's apartments differed much from those generally favoured
+by young men of rank and fortune. On the one hand, it had none of that
+affectation of superior taste evinced in marqueterie and gilding, or
+the more picturesque discomfort of high-backed chairs and mediaeval
+curiosities which prevails in the daintier abodes of fastidious
+bachelors; nor, on the other hand, had it the sporting character which
+individualizes the ruder juveniles qui gaudent equis, betrayed by
+engravings of racers and celebrated fox-hunts, relieved, perhaps, if
+the Nimrod condescend to a cross of the Lovelace, with portraits of
+figurantes, and ideals of French sentiment entitled, "Le Soir," or "La
+Reveillee," "L'Espoir," or "L'Abandon." But the rooms had a physiognomy
+of their own, from their exquisite neatness and cheerful simplicity.
+The chintz draperies were lively with gay flowers; books filled up the
+niches; here and there were small pictures, chiefly sea-pieces,--well
+chosen, well placed.
+
+There might, indeed, have been something almost effeminate in a certain
+inexpressible purity of taste, and a cleanliness of detail that seemed
+actually brilliant, had not the folding-doors allowed a glimpse of a
+plainer apartment, with fencing-foils and boxing-gloves ranged on the
+wall, and a cricket-bat resting carelessly in the corner. These gave a
+redeeming air of manliness to the rooms; but it was the manliness of a
+boy,--half-girl, if you please, in the purity of thought that pervaded
+one room, all boy in the playful pursuits that were made manifest in the
+other. Simple, however, as this abode really was, poor Beck had never
+been admitted to the sight of anything half so fine. He stood at the
+door for a moment, and stared about him, bewildered and dazzled. But his
+natural torpor to things that concerned him not soon brought to him
+the same stoicism that philosophy gives the strong; and after the first
+surprise, his eye quietly settled on his employer. St. John rose eagerly
+from the sofa, on which he had been contemplating the starlit treetops
+of Chesterfield Gardens,--
+
+"Well, well?" said Percival.
+
+"Hold Brompton," said Beck, with a brevity of word and clearness of
+perception worthy a Spartan.
+
+"Old Brompton?" repeated Percival, thinking the reply the most natural
+in the world.
+
+"In a big 'ous by hisself," continued Beck, "with a 'igh vall in front."
+
+"You would know it again?"
+
+"In course; he's so wery peculiar."
+
+"He,--who?"
+
+"Vy, the 'ous. The young lady got out, and the hold folks driv back. I
+did not go arter them!" and Beck looked sly.
+
+"So! I must find out the name."
+
+"I axed at the public," said Beck, proud of his diplomacy. "They keeps
+a sarvant vot takes half a pint at her meals. The young lady's mabe a
+foriner."
+
+"A foreigner! Then she lives there with her mother?"
+
+"So they s'pose at the public."
+
+"And the name?"
+
+Beck shook his head. "'T is a French 'un, your honour; but the sarvant's
+is Martha."
+
+"You must meet me at Brompton, near the turnpike, tomorrow, and show me
+the house."
+
+"Vy, I's in bizness all day, please your honour."
+
+"In business?"'
+
+"I's the place of the crossing," said Beck, with much dignity; "but
+arter eight I goes vere I likes."
+
+"To-morrow evening, then, at half-past eight, by the turnpike."
+
+Beck pulled his forelock assentingly.
+
+"There's the sovereign I promised you, my poor fellow; much good may
+it do you. Perhaps you have some father or mother whose heart it will
+glad."
+
+"I never had no such thing," replied Beck, turning the coin in his hand.
+
+"Well, don't spend it in drink."
+
+"I never drinks nothing but svipes."
+
+"Then," said Percival, laughingly, "what, my good friend, will you ever
+do with your money?"
+
+Beck put his finger to his nose, sunk his voice into a whisper, and
+replied solemnly: "I 'as a mattris."
+
+"A mistress," said Percival. "Oh, a sweetheart. Well, but if she's a
+good girl, and loves you, she'll not let you spend your money on her."
+
+"I haint such a ninny as that," said Beck, with majestic contempt. "I
+'spises the flat that is done brown by the blowens. I 'as a mattris."
+
+"A mattress! a mattress! Well, what has that to do with the money?"
+
+"Vy, I lines it."
+
+Percival looked puzzled. "Oh," said he, after a thoughtful pause, and in
+a tone of considerable compassion, "I understand: you sew your money in
+your mattress. My poor, poor lad, you can do better than that! There are
+the savings banks."
+
+Beck looked frightened. "I 'opes your honour von't tell no vun. I 'opes
+no vun von't go for to put my tin vere I shall know nothing vatsomever
+about it. Now, I knows vere it is, and I lays on it."
+
+"Do you sleep more soundly when you lie on your treasure?"
+
+"No. It's hodd," said Beck, musingly, "but the more I lines it, the
+vorse I sleeps."
+
+Percival laughed, but there was melancholy in his laughter; something
+in the forlorn, benighted, fatherless, squalid miser went to the core of
+his open, generous heart.
+
+"Do you ever read your Bible," said he, after a pause, "or even the
+newspaper?"
+
+"I does not read nothing; cos vy? I haint been made a scholard, like
+swell Tim, as was lagged for a forgery."
+
+"You go to church on a Sunday?"
+
+"Yes; I 'as a weekly hingagement at the New Road."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"To see arter the gig of a gemman vot comes from 'Igate."
+
+Percival lifted his brilliant eyes, and they were moistened with a
+heavenly dew, on the dull face of his fellow-creature. Beck made a
+scrape, looked round, shambled back to the door, and ran home, through
+the lamp-lit streets of the great mart of the Christian universe, to sew
+the gold in his mattress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. EARLY TRAINING FOR AN UPRIGHT GENTLEMAN.
+
+Percival St. John had been brought up at home under the eye of his
+mother and the care of an excellent man who had been tutor to himself
+and his brothers. The tutor was not much of a classical scholar, for in
+great measure he had educated himself; and he who does so, usually lacks
+the polish and brilliancy of one whose footsteps have been led early
+to the Temple of the Muses. In fact, Captain Greville was a gallant
+soldier, with whom Vernon St. John had been acquainted in his own brief
+military career, and whom circumstances had so reduced in life as to
+compel him to sell his commission and live as he could. He had always
+been known in his regiment as a reading man, and his authority looked up
+to in all the disputes as to history and dates, and literary anecdotes,
+which might occur at the mess-table. Vernon considered him the most
+learned man of his acquaintance; and when, accidentally meeting him in
+London, he learned his fallen fortunes, he congratulated himself on
+a very brilliant idea when he suggested that Captain Greville should
+assist him in the education of his boys and the management of his
+estate. At first, all that Greville modestly undertook, with respect to
+the former, and, indeed, was expected to do, was to prepare the young
+gentlemen for Eton, to which Vernon, with the natural predilection of
+an Eton man, destined his sons. But the sickly constitutions of the
+two elder justified Lady Mary in her opposition to a public school; and
+Percival conceived early so strong an affection for a sailor's life that
+the father's intentions were frustrated. The two elder continued their
+education at home, and Percival, at an earlier age than usual, went to
+sea. The last was fortunate enough to have for his captain one of that
+new race of naval officers who, well educated and accomplished, form a
+notable contrast to the old heroes of Smollett. Percival, however,
+had not been long in the service before the deaths of his two elder
+brothers, preceded by that of his father, made him the head of his
+ancient house, and the sole prop of his mother's earthly hopes. He
+conquered with a generous effort the passion for his noble profession,
+which service had but confirmed, and returned home with his fresh,
+childlike nature uncorrupted, his constitution strengthened, his lively
+and impressionable mind braced by the experience of danger and the
+habits of duty, and quietly resumed his reading under Captain Greville,
+who moved from the Hall to a small house in the village.
+
+Now, the education he had received, from first to last, was less adapted
+prematurely to quicken his intellect and excite his imagination than to
+warm his heart and elevate, while it chastened, his moral qualities; for
+in Lady Mary there was, amidst singular sweetness of temper, a high cast
+of character and thought. She was not what is commonly called clever,
+and her experience of the world was limited, compared to that of most
+women of similar rank who pass their lives in the vast theatre of
+London. But she became superior by a certain single-heartedness which
+made truth so habitual to her that the light in which she lived rendered
+all objects around her clear. One who is always true in the great duties
+of life is nearly always wise. And Vernon, when he had fairly buried his
+faults, had felt a noble shame for the excesses into which they had
+led him. Gradually more and more wedded to his home, he dropped his old
+companions. He set grave guard on his talk (his habits now required
+no guard), lest any of the ancient levity should taint the ears of his
+children. Nothing is more common in parents than their desire that their
+children should escape their faults. We scarcely know ourselves till
+we have children; and then, if we love them duly, we look narrowly into
+failings that become vices, when they serve as examples to the young.
+
+The inborn gentleman, with the native courage and spirit and horror
+of trick and falsehood which belong to that chivalrous abstraction,
+survived almost alone in Vernon St. John; and his boys sprang up in the
+atmosphere of generous sentiments and transparent truth. The tutor was
+in harmony with the parents,--a soldier every inch of him; not a mere
+disciplinarian, yet with a profound sense of duty, and a knowledge that
+duty is to be found in attention to details. In inculcating the habit
+of subordination, so graceful to the young, he knew how to make himself
+beloved, and what is harder still, to be understood. The soul of this
+poor soldier was white and unstained, as the arms of a maiden knight;
+it was full of suppressed but lofty enthusiasm. He had been ill used,
+whether by Fate or the Horse Guards; his career had been a failure; but
+he was as loyal as if his hand held the field-marshal's truncheon, and
+the garter bound his knee. He was above all querulous discontent. From
+him, no less than from his parents, Percival caught, not only a spirit
+of honour worthy the antiqua fides of the poets, but that peculiar
+cleanliness of thought, if the expression may be used, which belongs to
+the ideal of youthful chivalry. In mere booklearning, Percival, as may
+be supposed, was not very extensively read; but his mind, if not largely
+stored, had a certain unity of culture, which gave it stability and
+individualized its operations. Travels, voyages, narratives of heroic
+adventure, biographies of great men, had made the favourite pasture of
+his enthusiasm. To this was added the more stirring, and, perhaps, the
+more genuine order of poets who make you feel and glow, rather than
+doubt and ponder. He knew at least enough of Greek to enjoy old Homer;
+and if he could have come but ill through a college examination into
+Aeschylus and Sophocles, he had dwelt with fresh delight on the rushing
+storm of spears in the "Seven before Thebes," and wept over the heroic
+calamities of Antigone. In science, he was no adept; but his clear
+good sense and quick appreciation of positive truths had led him easily
+through the elementary mathematics, and his somewhat martial spirit had
+made him delight in the old captain's lectures on military tactics. Had
+he remained in the navy, Percival St. John would doubtless have been
+distinguished. His talents fitted him for straightforward, manly action;
+and he had a generous desire of distinction, vague, perhaps, the moment
+he was taken from his profession, and curbed by his diffidence in
+himself and his sense of deficiencies in the ordinary routine of purely
+classical education. Still, he had in him all the elements of a true
+man,--a man to go through life with a firm step and a clear conscience
+and a gallant hope. Such a man may not win fame,--that is an accident;
+but he must occupy no despicable place in the movement of the world.
+
+It was at first intended to send Percival to Oxford; but for some reason
+or other that design was abandoned. Perhaps Lady Mary, over cautious, as
+mothers left alone sometimes are, feared the contagion to which a
+young man of brilliant expectations and no studious turn is necessarily
+exposed in all places of miscellaneous resort. So Percival was sent
+abroad for two years, under the guardianship of Captain Greville. On his
+return, at the age of nineteen, the great world lay before him, and
+he longed ardently to enter. For a year Lady Mary's fears and fond
+anxieties detained him at Laughton; but though his great tenderness for
+his mother withheld Percival from opposing her wishes by his own, this
+interval of inaction affected visibly his health and spirits. Captain
+Greville, a man of the world, saw the cause sooner than Lady Mary, and
+one morning, earlier than usual, he walked up to the Hall.
+
+The captain, with all his deference to the sex, was a plain man enough
+when business was to be done. Like his great commander, he came to the
+point in a few words.
+
+"My dear Lady Mary, our boy must go to London,--we are killing him
+here."
+
+"Mr. Greville!" cried Lady Mary, turning pale and putting aside her
+embroidery,--"killing him?"
+
+"Killing the man in him. I don't mean to alarm you; I dare say his lungs
+are sound enough, and that his heart would bear the stethoscope to the
+satisfaction of the College of Surgeons. But, my dear ma'am, Percival is
+to be a man; it is the man you are killing by keeping him tied to your
+apron-string."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Greville, I am sure you don't wish to wound me, but--"
+
+"I beg ten thousand pardons. I am rough, but truth is rough sometimes."
+
+"It is not for my sake," said the mother, warmly, and with tears in her
+eyes, "that I have wished him to be here. If he is dull, can we not fill
+the house for him?"
+
+"Fill a thimble, my dear Lady Mary. Percival should have a plunge in the
+ocean."
+
+"But he is so young yet,--that horrid London; such
+temptations,--fatherless, too!"
+
+"I have no fear of the result if Percival goes now, while his principles
+are strong and his imagination is not inflamed; but if we keep him here
+much longer against his bent, he will learn to brood and to muse, write
+bad poetry perhaps, and think the world withheld from him a thousand
+times more delightful than it is. This very dread of temptation
+will provoke his curiosity, irritate his fancy, make him imagine the
+temptation must be a very delightful thing. For the first time in my
+life, ma'am, I have caught him sighing over fashionable novels, and
+subscribing to the Southampton Circulating Library. Take my word for it,
+it is time that Percival should begin life, and swim without corks."
+
+Lady Mary had a profound confidence in Greville's judgment and affection
+for Percival, and, like a sensible woman, she was aware of her own
+weakness. She remained silent for a few moments, and then said, with an
+effort,--
+
+"You know how hateful London is to me now,--how unfit I am to return to
+the hollow forms of its society; still, if you think it right, I will
+take a house for the season, and Percival can still be under our eye."
+
+"No, ma'am,--pardon me,--that will be the surest way to make him either
+discontented or hypocritical. A young man of his prospects and temper
+can hardly be expected to chime in with all our sober, old-fashioned
+habits. You will impose on him--if he is to conform to our hours and
+notions and quiet set--a thousand irksome restraints; and what will
+be the consequence? In a year he will be of age, and can throw us
+off altogether, if he pleases. I know the boy; don't seem to distrust
+him,--he may be trusted. You place the true restraint on temptation when
+you say to him: 'We confide to you our dearest treasure,--your honour,
+your morals, your conscience, yourself!'"
+
+"But at least you will go with him, if it must be so," said Lady Mary,
+after a few timid arguments, from which, one by one, she was driven.
+
+"I! What for? To be a jest of the young puppies he must know; to make
+him ashamed of himself and me,--himself as a milksop, and me as a dry
+nurse?"
+
+"But this was not so abroad."
+
+"Abroad, ma'am, I gave him full swing I promise you; and when we went
+abroad he was two years younger."
+
+"But he is a mere child still."
+
+"Child, Lady Mary! At his age I had gone through two sieges. There
+are younger faces than his at a mess-room. Come, come! I know what you
+fear,--he may commit some follies; very likely. He may be taken in,
+and lose some money,--he can afford it, and he will get experience in
+return. Vices he has none. I have seen him,--ay, with the vicious. Send
+him out against the world like a saint of old, with his Bible in his
+hand, and no spot on his robe. Let him see fairly what is, not stay here
+to dream of what is not. And when he's of age, ma'am, we must get him
+an object, a pursuit; start him for the county, and make him serve the
+State. He will understand that business pretty well. Tush! tush! what is
+there to cry at?"
+
+The captain prevailed. We don't say that his advice would have been
+equally judicious for all youths of Percival's age; but he knew well
+the nature to which he confided; he knew well how strong was that young
+heart in its healthful simplicity and instinctive rectitude; and he
+appreciated his manliness not too highly when he felt that all evident
+props and aids would be but irritating tokens of distrust.
+
+And thus, armed only with letters of introduction, his mother's tearful
+admonitions, and Greville's experienced warnings, Percival St. John was
+launched into London life. After the first month or so, Greville came
+up to visit him, do him sundry kind, invisible offices amongst his
+old friends, help him to equip his apartments, and mount his stud; and
+wholly satisfied with the result of his experiment, returned in high
+spirits, with flattering reports, to the anxious mother.
+
+But, indeed, the tone of Percival's letters would have been sufficient
+to allay even maternal anxiety. He did not write, as sons are apt to
+do, short excuses for not writing more at length, unsatisfactory
+compressions of details (exciting worlds of conjecture) into a hurried
+sentence. Frank and overflowing, those delightful epistles gave accounts
+fresh from the first impressions of all he saw and did. There was a
+racy, wholesome gusto in his enjoyment of novelty and independence. His
+balls and his dinners and his cricket at Lord's, his partners and his
+companions, his general gayety, his occasional ennui, furnished ample
+materials to one who felt he was corresponding with another heart, and
+had nothing to fear or to conceal.
+
+But about two months before this portion of our narrative opens with
+the coronation, Lady Mary's favourite sister, who had never married,
+and who, by the death of her parents, was left alone in the worse than
+widowhood of an old maid, had been ordered to Pisa for a complaint
+that betrayed pulmonary symptoms; and Lady Mary, with her usual
+unselfishness, conquered both her aversion to movement and her wish to
+be in reach of her son, to accompany abroad this beloved and solitary
+relative. Captain Greville was pressed into service as their joint
+cavalier. And thus Percival's habitual intercourse with his two
+principal correspondents received a temporary check.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. JOHN ARDWORTH.
+
+At noon the next day Beck, restored to his grandeur, was at the helm of
+his state; Percival was vainly trying to be amused by the talk of two or
+three loungers who did him the honour to smoke a cigar in his rooms; and
+John Ardworth sat in his dingy cell in Gray's Inn, with a pile of law
+books on the table, and the daily newspapers carpeting a footstool of
+Hansard's Debates upon the floor,--no unusual combination of studies
+amongst the poorer and more ardent students of the law, who often owe
+their earliest, nor perhaps their least noble, earnings to employment
+in the empire of the Press. By the power of a mind habituated to labour,
+and backed by a frame of remarkable strength and endurance, Ardworth
+grappled with his arid studies not the less manfully for a night mainly
+spent in a printer's office, and stinted to less than four hours' actual
+sleep. But that sleep was profound and refreshing as a peasant's. The
+nights thus devoted to the Press (he was employed in the sub-editing
+of a daily journal), the mornings to the law, he kept distinct the two
+separate callings with a stern subdivision of labour which in itself
+proved the vigour of his energy and the resolution of his will. Early
+compelled to shift for himself and carve out his own way, he had
+obtained a small fellowship at the small college in which he had passed
+his academic career. Previous to his arrival in London, by contributions
+to political periodicals and a high reputation at that noble debating
+society in Cambridge which has trained some of the most eminent
+of living public men [Amongst those whom the "Union" almost
+contemporaneously prepared for public life, and whose distinction has
+kept the promise of their youth, we may mention the eminent barristers,
+Messrs. Austin and Cockburn; and amongst statesmen, Lord Grey, Mr. C.
+Buller, Mr. Charles Villiers, and Mr. Macaulay. Nor ought we to forget
+those brilliant competitors for the prizes of the University, Dr.
+Kennedy (now head-master of Shrewsbury School) and the late Winthrop M.
+Praed.], he had established a name which was immediately useful to him
+in obtaining employment on the Press. Like most young men of practical
+ability, he was an eager politician. The popular passion of the
+day kindled his enthusiasm and stirred the depths of his soul with
+magnificent, though exaggerated, hopes in the destiny of his race. He
+identified himself with the people; his stout heart beat loud in their
+stormy cause. His compositions, if they wanted that knowledge of men,
+that subtle comprehension of the true state of parties, that
+happy temperance in which the crowning wisdom of statesmen must
+consist,--qualities which experience alone can give,--excited
+considerable attention by their bold eloquence and hardy logic.
+They were suited to the time. But John Ardworth had that solidity of
+understanding which betokens more than talent, and which is the usual
+substratum of genius. He would not depend alone on the precarious and
+often unhonoured toils of polemical literature for that distinction on
+which he had fixed his steadfast heart. Patiently he plodded on through
+the formal drudgeries of his new profession, lighting up dulness by his
+own acute comprehension, weaving complexities into simple system by the
+grasp of an intellect inured to generalize, and learning to love even
+what was most distasteful, by the sense of difficulty overcome, and the
+clearer vision which every step through the mists and up the hill gave
+of the land beyond. Of what the superficial are apt to consider genius,
+John Ardworth had but little. He had some imagination (for a true
+thinker is never without that), but he had a very slight share of fancy.
+He did not flirt with the Muses; on the granite of his mind few flowers
+could spring. His style, rushing and earnest, admitted at times of a
+humour not without delicacy,--though less delicate than forcible and
+deep,--but it was little adorned with wit, and still less with poetry.
+Yet Ardworth had genius, and genius ample and magnificent. There was
+genius in that industrious energy so patient in the conquest of detail,
+so triumphant in the perception of results. There was genius in that
+kindly sympathy with mankind; genius in that stubborn determination to
+succeed; genius in that vivid comprehension of affairs, and the large
+interests of the world; genius fed in the labours of the closet, and
+evinced the instant he was brought into contact with men,--evinced
+in readiness of thought, grasp of memory, even in a rough, imperious
+nature, which showed him born to speak strong truths, and in their name
+to struggle and command.
+
+Rough was this man often in his exterior, though really gentle and
+kind-hearted. John Ardworth had sacrificed to no Graces; he would have
+thrown Lord Chesterfield into a fever. Not that he was ever vulgar,
+for vulgarity implies affectation of refinement; but he talked loud and
+laughed loud if the whim seized him, and rubbed his great hands with a
+boyish heartiness of glee if he discomfited an adversary in argument.
+Or, sometimes, he would sit abstracted and moody, and answer briefly
+and boorishly those who interrupted him. Young men were mostly afraid of
+him, though he wanted but fame to have a set of admiring disciples. Old
+men censured his presumption and recoiled from the novelty of his ideas.
+Women alone liked and appreciated him, as, with their finer insight into
+character, they generally do what is honest and sterling. Some strange
+failings, too, had John Ardworth,--some of the usual vagaries and
+contradictions of clever men. As a system, he was rigidly abstemious.
+For days together he would drink nothing but water, eat nothing but
+bread, or hard biscuit, or a couple of eggs; then, having wound up
+some allotted portion of work, Ardworth would indulge what he called a
+self-saturnalia,--would stride off with old college friends to an inn
+in one of the suburbs, and spend, as he said triumphantly, "a day of
+blessed debauch!" Innocent enough, for the most part, the debauch was,
+consisting in cracking jests, stringing puns, a fish dinner, perhaps,
+and an extra bottle or two of fiery port. Sometimes this jollity,
+which was always loud and uproarious, found its scene in one of the
+cider-cellars or midnight taverns; but Ardworth's labours on the Press
+made that latter dissipation extremely rare. These relaxations were
+always succeeded by a mien more than usually grave, a manner more than
+usually curt and ungracious, an application more than ever rigorous
+and intense. John Ardworth was not a good-tempered man, but he was the
+best-natured man that ever breathed. He was, like all ambitious persons,
+very much occupied with self; and yet it would have been a ludicrous
+misapplication of words to call him selfish. Even the desire of fame
+which absorbed him was but a part of benevolence,--a desire to promote
+justice and to serve his kind.
+
+John Ardworth's shaggy brows were bent over his open volumes when his
+clerk entered noiselessly and placed on his table a letter which the
+twopenny-postman had just delivered. With an impatient shrug of the
+shoulders, Ardworth glanced towards the superscription; but his eye
+became earnest and his interest aroused as he recognized the hand.
+"Again!" he muttered. "What mystery is this? Who can feel such interest
+in my fate?" He broke the seal and read as follows:--
+
+Do you neglect my advice, or have you begun to act upon it? Are you
+contented only with the slow process of mechanical application, or will
+you make a triumphant effort to abridge your apprenticeship and emerge
+at once into fame and power? I repeat that you fritter away your talents
+and your opportunities upon this miserable task-work on a journal. I
+am impatient for you. Come forward yourself, put your force and your
+knowledge into some work of which the world may know the author. Day
+after day I am examining into your destiny, and day after day I believe
+more and more that you are not fated for the tedious drudgery to which
+you doom your youth. I would have you great, but in the senate, not
+a wretched casuist at the Bar. Appear in public as an individual
+authority, not one of that nameless troop of shadows contemned while
+dreaded as the Press. Write for renown. Go into the world, and make
+friends. Soften your rugged bearing. Lift yourself above that herd whom
+you call "the people." What if you are born of the noble class! What if
+your career is as gentleman, not plebeian Want not for money. Use what
+I send you as the young and the well-born should use it; or let it at
+least gain you a respite from toils for bread, and support you in your
+struggle to emancipate yourself from obscurity into fame.
+
+YOUR UNKNOWN FRIEND
+
+A bank-note for 100 pounds dropped from the envelope as Ardworth
+silently replaced the letter on the table.
+
+Thrice before had he received communications in the same handwriting,
+and much to the same effect. Certainly, to a mind of less strength there
+would have been something very unsettling in those vague hints of a
+station higher than he owned, of a future at variance with the toilsome
+lot he had drawn from the urn; but after a single glance over his lone
+position in all its bearings and probable expectations, Ardworth's
+steady sense shook off the slight disturbance such misty vaticinations
+had effected. His mother's family was indeed unknown to him, he was even
+ignorant of her maiden name. But that very obscurity seemed unfavourable
+to much hope from such a quarter. The connections with the rich and
+well-born are seldom left obscure. From his father's family he had not
+one expectation. More had he been moved by exhortation now generally
+repeated, but in a previous letter more precisely detailed; namely, to
+appeal to the reading public in his acknowledged person, and by some
+striking and original work. This idea he had often contemplated and
+revolved; but partly the necessity of keeping pace with the many
+exigencies of the hour had deterred him, and partly also the conviction
+of his sober judgment that a man does himself no good at the Bar even by
+the most brilliant distinction gained in discursive fields. He had the
+natural yearning of the Restless Genius; and the Patient Genius (higher
+power of the two) had suppressed the longing. Still, so far, the
+whispers of his correspondent tempted and aroused. But hitherto he had
+sought to persuade himself that the communications thus strangely forced
+on him arose perhaps from idle motives,--a jest, it might be, of one
+of his old college friends, or at best the vain enthusiasm of some more
+credulous admirer. But the enclosure now sent to him forbade either of
+these suppositions. Who that he knew could afford so costly a jest or
+so extravagant a tribute? He was perplexed, and with his perplexity
+was mixed a kind of fear. Plain, earnest, unromantic in the common
+acceptation of the word, the mystery of this intermeddling with his
+fate, this arrogation of the license to spy, the right to counsel, and
+the privilege to bestow, gave him the uneasiness the bravest men may
+feel at noises in the dark. That day he could apply no more, he could
+not settle back to his Law Reports. He took two or three unquiet
+turns up and down his smoke-dried cell, then locked up the letter and
+enclosure, seized his hat, and strode, with his usual lusty, swinging
+strides, into the open air.
+
+But still the letter haunted him. "And if," he said almost audibly,--"if
+I were the heir to some higher station, why then I might have a heart
+like idle men; and Helen, beloved Helen--" He paused, sighed, shook his
+rough head, shaggy with neglected curls, and added: "As if even then
+I could steal myself into a girl's good graces! Man's esteem I may
+command, though poor; woman's love could I win, though rich? Pooh! pooh!
+every wood does not make a Mercury; and faith, the wood I am made of
+will scarcely cut up into a lover."
+
+Nevertheless, though thus soliloquizing, Ardworth mechanically bent his
+way towards Brompton, and halted, half-ashamed of himself, at the house
+where Helen lodged with her aunt. It was a building that stood apart
+from all the cottages and villas of that charming suburb, half-way down
+a narrow lane, and enclosed by high, melancholy walls, deep set in
+which a small door, with the paint blistered and weather-stained, gave
+unfrequented entrance to the demesne. A woman servant of middle age and
+starched, puritanical appearance answered the loud ring of the bell, and
+Ardworth seemed a privileged visitor, for she asked him no question as,
+with a slight nod and a smileless, stupid expression in a face otherwise
+comely, she led the way across a paved path, much weed-grown, to the
+house. That house itself had somewhat of a stern and sad exterior. It
+was not ancient, yet it looked old from shabbiness and neglect. The
+vine, loosened from the rusty nails, trailed rankly against the wall,
+and fell in crawling branches over the ground. The house had once been
+whitewashed; but the colour, worn off in great patches, distained with
+damp, struggled here and there with the dingy, chipped bricks beneath.
+There was no peculiar want of what is called "tenantable repair;" the
+windows were whole, and doubtless the roof sheltered from the rain. But
+the woodwork that encased the panes was decayed, and houseleek covered
+the tiles. Altogether, there was that forlorn and cheerless aspect about
+the place which chills the visitor, he defines not why. And Ardworth
+steadied his usual careless step, and crept, as if timidly, up the
+creaking stairs.
+
+On entering the drawing-room, it seemed at first deserted; but the eye,
+searching round, perceived something stir in the recess of a huge chair
+set by the fireless hearth. And from amidst a mass of coverings a pale
+face emerged, and a thin hand waved its welcome to the visitor.
+
+Ardworth approached, pressed the hand, and drew a seat near to the
+sufferer's.
+
+"You are better, I hope?" he said cordially, and yet in a tone of more
+respect than was often perceptible in his deep, blunt voice.
+
+"I am always the same," was the quiet answer; "come nearer still. Your
+visits cheer me."
+
+And as these last words were said, Madame Dalibard raised herself from
+her recumbent posture and gazed long upon Ardworth's face of power and
+front of thought. "You overfatigue yourself, my poor kinsman," she said,
+with a certain tenderness; "you look already too old for your young
+years."
+
+"That's no disadvantage at the Bar."
+
+"Is the Bar your means, or your end?"
+
+"My dear Madame Dalibard, it is my profession."
+
+"No, your profession is to rise. John Ardworth," and the low voice
+swelled in its volume, "you are bold, able, and aspiring; for this,
+I love you,--love you almost--almost as a mother. Your fate," she
+continued hurriedly, "interests me; your energies inspire me with
+admiration. Often I sit here for hours, musing over your destiny to be,
+so that at times I may almost say that in your life I live."
+
+Ardworth looked embarrassed, and with an awkward attempt at compliment
+he began, hesitatingly: "I should think too highly of myself if I could
+really believe that you--"
+
+"Tell me," interrupted Madame Dalibard,--"we have had many conversations
+upon grave and subtle matters; we have disputed on the secret mysteries
+of the human mind; we have compared our several experiences of outward
+life and the mechanism of the social world,--tell me, then, and frankly,
+what do you think of me? Do you regard me merely as your sex is apt to
+regard the woman who aspires to equal men,--a thing of borrowed phrases
+and unsound ideas, feeble to guide, and unskilled to teach; or do you
+recognize in this miserable body a mind of force not unworthy yours,
+ruled by an experience larger than your own?"
+
+"I think of you," answered Ardworth, frankly, "as the most remarkable
+woman I have ever met. Yet--do not be angry--I do not like to yield
+to the influence which you gain over me when we meet. It disturbs my
+convictions, it disquiets my reason; I do not settle back to my life so
+easily after your breath has passed over it."
+
+"And yet," said Lucretia, with a solemn sadness in her voice, "that
+influence is but the natural power which cold maturity exercises on
+ardent youth. It is my mournful ad vantage over you that disquiets your
+happy calm. It is my experience that unsettles the fallacies which you
+name 'convictions.' Let this pass. I asked your opinion of me, because
+I wished to place at your service all that knowledge of life which I
+possess. In proportion as you esteem me you will accept or reject my
+counsels."
+
+"I have benefited by them already. It is the tone that you advised me
+to assume that gave me an importance I had not before with that old
+formalist whose paper I serve, and whose prejudices I shock; it is to
+your criticisms that I owe the more practical turn of my writings, and
+the greater hold they have taken on the public."
+
+"Trifles indeed, these," said Madame Dalibard, with a half smile. "Let
+them at least induce you to listen to me if I propose to make your path
+more pleasant, yet your ascent more rapid."
+
+Ardworth knit his brows, and his countenance assumed an expression of
+doubt and curiosity. However, he only replied, with a blunt laugh,--
+
+"You must be wise indeed if you have discovered a royal road to
+distinction.
+
+'Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud
+temple shines afar!'
+
+A more sensible exclamation than poets usually preface with their
+whining 'Ahs' and 'Ohs!'"
+
+"What we are is nothing," pursued Madame Dalibard; "what we seem is
+much."
+
+Ardworth thrust his hands into his pockets and shook his head. The wise
+woman continued, unheeding his dissent from her premises,--
+
+"Everything you are taught to value has a likeness, and it is that
+likeness which the world values. Take a man out of the streets, poor and
+ragged, what will the world do with him? Send him to the workhouse, if
+not to the jail. Ask a great painter to take that man's portrait,--rags,
+squalor, and all,--and kings will bid for the picture. You would thrust
+the man from your doors, you would place the portrait in your palaces.
+It is the same with qualities; the portrait is worth more than the
+truth. What is virtue without character? But a man without virtue may
+thrive on a character! What is genius without success? But how often you
+bow to success without genius! John Ardworth, possess yourself of the
+portraits,--win the character; seize the success."
+
+"Madame," exclaimed Ardworth, rudely, "this is horrible!"
+
+"Horrible it may be," said Madame Dalibard, gently, and feeling,
+perhaps, that she had gone too far; "but it is the world's judgment.
+Seem, then, as well as be. You have virtue, as I believe. Well, wrap
+yourself in it--in your closet. Go into the world, and earn character.
+If you have genius, let it comfort you. Rush into the crowd, and get
+success."
+
+"Stop!" cried Ardworth; "I recognize you. How could I be so blind? It
+is you who have written to me, and in the same strain; you have robbed
+yourself,--you, poor sufferer,--to throw extravagance into these strong
+hands. And why? What am I to you?" An expression of actual fondness
+softened Lucretia's face as she looked up at him and replied: "I will
+tell you hereafter what you are to me. First, I confess that it is I
+whose letters have perplexed, perhaps offended you. The sum that I sent
+I do not miss. I have more,--will ever have more at your command; never
+fear. Yes, I wish you to go into the world, not as a dependant, but as
+an equal to the world's favourites. I wish you to know more of men than
+mere law-books teach you. I wish you to be in men's mouths, create a
+circle that shall talk of young Ardworth; that talk would travel to
+those who can advance your career. The very possession of money in
+certain stages of life gives assurance to the manner, gives attraction
+to the address."
+
+"But," said Ardworth, "all this is very well for some favourite of birth
+and fortune; but for me--Yet speak, and plainly. You throw out hints
+that I am what I know not, but something less dependent on his nerves
+and his brain than is plain John Ardworth. What is it you mean?"
+
+Madame Dalibard bent her face over her breast, and rocking herself in
+her chair, seemed to muse for some moments before she answered.
+
+"When I first came to England, some months ago, I desired naturally to
+learn all the particulars of my family and kindred, from which my long
+residence abroad had estranged me. John Walter Ardworth was related
+to my half-sister; to me he was but a mere connection. However, I knew
+something of his history, yet I did not know that he had a son. Shortly
+before I came to England, I learned that one who passed for his son
+had been brought up by Mr. Fielden, and from Mr. Fielden I have since
+learned all the grounds for that belief from which you take the name of
+Ardworth."
+
+Lucretia paused a moment; and after a glance at the impatient,
+wondering, and eager countenance that bent intent upon her, she resumed:
+
+"Your reputed father was, you are doubtless aware, of reckless and
+extravagant habits. He had been put into the army by my uncle, and
+he entered the profession with the careless buoyancy of his sanguine
+nature. I remember those days,--that day! Well, to return--where
+was I?--Walter Ardworth had the folly to entertain strong notions of
+politics. He dreamed of being a soldier, and yet persuaded himself to
+be a republican. His notions, so hateful in his profession, got wind; he
+disguised nothing, he neglected the portraits of things,--appearances.
+He excited the rancour of his commanding officer; for politics then,
+more even than now, were implacable ministrants to hate. Occasion
+presented itself. During the short Peace of Amiens he had been recalled.
+He had to head a detachment of soldiers against some mob,--in Ireland, I
+believe; he did not fire on the mob, according to orders,--so, at least,
+it was said. John Walter Ardworth was tried by a court-martial, and
+broke! But you know all this, perhaps?"
+
+"My poor father! Only in part; I knew that he had been dismissed the
+army,--I believed unjustly. He was a soldier, and yet he dared to think
+for himself and be humane!"
+
+"But my uncle had left him a legacy; it brought no blessing,--none of
+that old man's gold did. Where are they all now,--Dalibard, Susan, and
+her fair-faced husband,--where? Vernon is in his grave,--but one son of
+many left! Gabriel Varney lives, it is true, and I! But that gold,--yea,
+in our hands there was a curse on it! Walter Ardworth had his legacy.
+His nature was gay; if disgraced in his profession, he found men to pity
+and praise him,--Fools of Party like himself. He lived joyously, drank
+or gamed, or lent or borrowed,--what matters the wherefore? He was in
+debt; he lived at last a wretched, shifting, fugitive life, snatching
+bread where he could, with the bailiffs at his heels. Then, for a short
+time, we met again."
+
+Lucretia's brow grew black as night as her voice dropped at that last
+sentence, and it was with a start that she continued,--
+
+"In the midst of this hunted existence, Walter Ardworth appeared, late
+one night, at Mr. Fielden's with an infant. He seemed--so says Mr.
+Fielden--ill, worn, and haggard. He entered into no explanations with
+respect to the child that accompanied him, and retired at once to rest.
+What follows, Mr. Fielden, at my request, has noted down. Read, and see
+what claim you have to the honourable parentage so vaguely ascribed to
+you."
+
+As she spoke, Madame Dalibard opened a box on her table, drew forth a
+paper in Fielden's writing, and placed it in Ardworth's hand. After some
+preliminary statement of the writer's intimacy with the elder Ardworth,
+and the appearance of the latter at his house, as related by Madame
+Dalibard, etc., the document went on thus:--
+
+The next day, when my poor guest was still in bed, my servant Hannah
+came to advise me that two persons were without, waiting to see me.
+As is my wont, I bade them be shown in. On their entrance (two rough,
+farmer-looking men they were, who I thought might be coming to hire my
+little pasture field), I prayed them to speak low, as a sick gentleman
+was just overhead. Whereupon, and without saying a word further, the two
+strangers made a rush from the room, leaving me dumb with amazement; in
+a few moments I heard voices and a scuffle above. I recovered myself,
+and thinking robbers had entered my peaceful house, I called out
+lustily, when Hannah came in, and we both, taking courage, went
+upstairs, and found that poor Walter was in the hands of these supposed
+robbers, who in truth were but bailiffs. They would not trust him out
+of their sight for a moment. However, he took it more pleasantly than I
+could have supposed possible; prayed me in a whisper to take care of the
+child, and I should soon hear from him again. In less than an hour he
+was gone. Two days afterwards I received from him a hurried letter,
+without address, of which this is a copy:--
+
+DEAR FRIEND,--I slipped from the bailiffs, and here I am in a safe
+little tavern in sight of the sea! Mother Country is a very bad parent
+to me! Mother Brownrigg herself could scarcely be worse. I shall work
+out my passage to some foreign land, and if I can recover my health
+(sea-air is bracing), I don't despair of getting my bread honestly,
+somehow. If ever I can pay my debts, I may return. But, meanwhile, my
+good old tutor, what will you think of me? You to whom my sole return
+for so much pains, taken in vain, is another mouth to feed! And no money
+to pay for the board! Yet you'll not grudge the child a place at your
+table, will you? No, nor kind, saving Mrs. Fielden either,--God bless
+her tender, economical soul! You know quite enough of me to be sure that
+I shall very soon either free you of the boy, or send you something to
+prevent its being an encumbrance. I would say, love and pity the child
+for my sake. But I own I feel---By Jove, I must be off; I hear the first
+signal from the vessel that--
+
+Yours in haste, J. W. A.
+
+Young Ardworth stopped from the lecture, and sighed heavily. There
+seemed to him in this letter worse than a mock gayety,--a certain levity
+and recklessness which jarred on his own high principles. And the want
+of affection for the child thus abandoned was evident,--not one fond
+word. He resumed the statement with a gloomy and disheartened attention.
+
+This was all I heard from my poor, erring Walter for more than three
+years; but I knew, in spite of his follies, that his heart was sound at
+bottom (the son's eyes brightened here, and he kissed the paper), and
+the child was no burden to us; we loved it, not only for Ardworth's
+sake, but for its own, and for charity's and Christ's. Ardworth's second
+letter was as follows:--
+
+En iterum Crispinus! I am still alive, and getting on in the world,--ay,
+and honestly too; I am no longer spending heedlessly; I am saving for my
+debts, and I shall live, I trust, to pay off every farthing. First,
+for my debt to you I send an order, not signed in my name, but equally
+valid, on Messrs. Drummond, for 250 pounds. Repay yourself what the boy
+has cost. Let him be educated to get his own living,--if clever, as a
+scholar or a lawyer; if dull, as a tradesman. Whatever I may gain, he
+will have his own way to make. I ought to tell you the story connected
+with his birth; but it is one of pain and shame, and, on reflection, I
+feel that I have no right to injure him by affixing to his early birth
+an opprobrium of which he himself is guiltless. If ever I return to
+England, you shall know all, and by your counsels I will abide. Love to
+all your happy family. Your grateful FRIEND AND PUPIL. From this letter
+I began to suspect that the poor boy was probably not born in wedlock,
+and that Ardworth's silence arose from his compunction. I conceived it
+best never to mention this suspicion to John himself as he grew up. Why
+should I afflict him by a doubt from which his own father shrank,
+and which might only exist in my own inexperienced and uncharitable
+interpretation of some vague words? When John was fourteen, I received
+from Messrs. Drummond a further sum of 500 pounds, but without any
+line from Ardworth, and only to the effect that Messrs. Drummond were
+directed by a correspondent in Calcutta to pay me the said sum on behalf
+of expenses incurred for the maintenance of the child left to my charge
+by John Walter Ardworth. My young pupil had been two years at the
+University when I received the letter of which this is a copy:--
+
+"How are you? Still well, still happy? Let me hope so! I have not
+written to you, dear old friend, but I have not been forgetful of you;
+I have inquired of you through my correspondents, and have learned, from
+time to time, such accounts as satisfied my grateful affection for you.
+I find that you have given the boy my name. Well, let him bear it,--it
+is nothing to boast of such as it became in my person; but, mind, I do
+not, therefore, acknowledge him as my son. I wish him to think himself
+without parents, without other aid in the career of life than his own
+industry and talent--if talent he has. Let him go through the healthful
+probation of toil; let him search for and find independence. Till he is
+of age, 150 pounds per annum will be paid quarterly to your account for
+him at Messrs. Drummond's. If then, to set him up in any business or
+profession, a sum of money be necessary, name the amount by a line,
+signed A. B., Calcutta, to the care of Messrs. Drummond, and it will
+reach and find me disposed to follow your instructions. But after that
+time all further supply from me will cease. Do not suppose, because I
+send this from India, that I am laden with rupees; all I can hope to
+attain is a competence. That boy is not the only one who has claims
+to share it. Even, therefore, if I had the wish to rear him to the
+extravagant habits that ruined myself, I have not the power. Yes, let
+him lean on his own strength. In the letter you send me, write fully of
+your family, your sons, and write as to a man who can perhaps help them
+in the world, and will be too happy thus in some slight degree to repay
+all he owes you. You would smile approvingly if you saw me now,--a
+steady, money-getting man, but still yours as ever."
+
+"P.S.--Do not let the boy write to me, nor give him this clew to my
+address."
+
+On the receipt of this letter, I wrote fully to Ardworth about the
+excellent promise and conduct of his poor neglected son. I told him
+truly he was a son any father might be proud of, and rebuked, even to
+harshness, Walter's unseemly tone respecting him. One's child is one's
+child, however the father may have wronged the mother. To this letter
+I never received any answer. When John was of age, and had made himself
+independent of want by obtaining a college fellowship, I spoke to him
+about his prospects. I told him that his father, though residing abroad
+and for some reason keeping himself concealed, had munificently paid
+hitherto for his maintenance, and would lay down what might be necessary
+to start him in business, or perhaps place him in the army, but that his
+father might be better pleased if he could show a love of independence,
+and henceforth maintain himself. I knew the boy I spoke to! John
+thought as I did, and I never applied for another donation to the elder
+Ardworth. The allowance ceased; John since then has maintained himself.
+I have heard no more from his father, though I have written often to the
+address he gave me. I begin to fear that he is dead. I once went up to
+town and saw one of the heads of Messrs. Drummond's firm, a very polite
+gentleman, but he could give me no information, except that he obeyed
+instructions from a correspondent at Calcutta,--one Mr. Macfarren.
+Whereon I wrote to Mr. Macfarren, and asked him, as I thought very
+pressingly, to tell me all he knew of poor Ardworth the elder. He
+answered shortly that he knew of no such person at all, and that A. B.
+was a French merchant, settled in Calcutta, who had been dead for above
+two years. I now gave up all hopes of any further intelligence, and was
+more convinced than ever that I had acted rightly in withholding from
+poor John my correspondence with his father. The lad had been curious
+and inquisitive naturally; but when I told him that I thought it my duty
+to his father to be so reserved, he forebore to press me. I have only
+to add, first, that by all the inquiries I could make of the surviving
+members of Walter Ardworth's family, it seemed their full belief that
+he had never been married, and therefore I fear we must conclude that
+he had no legitimate children,--which may account for, though it cannot
+excuse, his neglect; and secondly, with respect to the sums received on
+dear John's account, I put them all by, capital and interest, deducting
+only the expense of his first year at Cambridge (the which I could not
+defray without injuring my own children), and it all stands in his name
+at Messrs. Drummond's, vested in the Three per Cents. That I have not
+told him of this was by my poor dear wife's advice; for she said, very
+sensibly,--and she was a shrewd woman on money matters,--"If he knows he
+has such a large sum all in the lump, who knows but he may grow idle and
+extravagant, and spend it at once, like his father before him? Whereas,
+some time or other he will want to marry, or need money for some
+particular purpose,--then what a blessing it will be!"
+
+However, my dear madam, as you know the world better than I do, you
+can now do as you please, both as to communicating to John all the
+information herein contained as to his parentage, and as to apprising
+him of the large sum of which he is lawfully possessed.
+
+MATTHEW FIELDEN.
+
+P.S.--In justice to poor John Ardworth, and to show that whatever whim
+he may have conceived about his own child, he had still a heart kind
+enough to remember mine, though Heaven knows I said nothing about them
+in my letters, my eldest boy received an offer of an excellent place in
+a West India merchant's house, and has got on to be chief clerk; and my
+second son was presented to a living of 117 pounds a year by a gentleman
+he never heard of. Though I never traced these good acts to Ardworth,
+from whom else could they come?
+
+Ardworth put down the paper without a word; and Lucretia, who had
+watched him while he read, was struck with the self-control he evinced
+when he came to the end of the disclosure. She laid her hand on his and
+said,--
+
+"Courage! you have lost nothing!"
+
+"Nothing!" said Ardworth, with a bitter smile. "A father's love and a
+father's name,--nothing!"
+
+"But," exclaimed Lucretia, "is this man your father? Does a father's
+heart beat in one line of those hard sentences? No, no; it seems to me
+probable,--it seems to me almost certain, that you are--" She stopped,
+and continued, with a calmer accent, "near to my own blood. I am now in
+England, in London, to prosecute the inquiry built upon that hope. If
+so, if so, you shall--" Madame Dalibard again stopped abruptly, and
+there was something terrible in the very exultation of her countenance.
+She drew a long breath, and resumed, with an evident effort at
+self-command, "If so, I have a right to the interest I feel for
+you. Suffer me yet to be silent as to the grounds of my belief,
+and--and--love me a little in the mean while!"
+
+Her voice trembled, as if with rushing tears, at these last words, and
+there was almost an agony in the tone in which they were said, and in
+the gesture of the clasped hands she held out to him.
+
+Much moved (amidst all his mingled emotions at the tale thus made known
+to him) by the manner and voice of the narrator, Ardworth bent down and
+kissed the extended hands. Then he rose abruptly, walked to and fro the
+room, muttering to himself, paused opposite the window, threw it open,
+as for air, and, indeed, fairly gasped for breath. When he turned round,
+however, his face was composed, and folding his arms on his large breast
+with a sudden action, he said aloud, and yet rather to himself than to
+his listener,--
+
+"What matter, after all, by what name men call our fathers? We
+ourselves make our own fate! Bastard or noble, not a jot care I. Give me
+ancestors, I will not disgrace them; raze from my lot even the very name
+of father, and my sons shall have an ancestor in me!"
+
+As he thus spoke, there was a rough grandeur in his hard face and the
+strong ease of his powerful form. And while thus standing and thus
+looking, the door opened, and Varney walked in abruptly.
+
+These two men had met occasionally at Madame Dalibard's, but no intimacy
+had been established between them. Varney was formal and distant to
+Ardworth, and Ardworth felt a repugnance to Varney. With the instinct
+of sound, sterling, weighty natures, he detected at once, and disliked
+heartily, that something of gaudy, false, exaggerated, and hollow which
+pervaded Gabriel Varney's talk and manner,--even the trick of his walk
+and the cut of his dress. And Ardworth wanted that boyish and beautiful
+luxuriance of character which belonged to Percival St. John, easy to
+please and to be pleased, and expanding into the warmth of admiration
+for all talent and all distinction. For art, if not the highest,
+Ardworth cared not a straw; it was nothing to him that Varney painted
+and composed, and ran showily through the jargon of literary babble,
+or toyed with the puzzles of unsatisfying metaphysics. He saw but a
+charlatan, and he had not yet learned from experience what strength
+and what danger lie hid in the boa parading its colours in the sun, and
+shifting, in the sensual sportiveness of its being, from bough to bough.
+
+Varney halted in the middle of the room as his eye rested first on
+Ardworth, and then glanced towards Madame Dalibard. But Ardworth, jarred
+from his revery or resolves by the sound of a voice discordant to his
+ear at all times, especially in the mood which then possessed him,
+scarcely returned Varney's salutation, buttoned his coat over his
+chest, seized his hat, and upsetting two chairs, and very considerably
+disturbing the gravity of a round table, forced his way to Madame
+Dalibard, pressed her hand, and said in a whisper, "I shall see you
+again soon," and vanished.
+
+Varney, smoothing his hair with fingers that shone with rings, slid into
+the seat next Madame Dalibard, which Ardworth had lately occupied, and
+said: "If I were a Clytemnestra, I should dread an Orestes in such a
+son!"
+
+Madame Dalibard shot towards the speaker one of the sidelong, suspicious
+glances which of old had characterized Lucretia, and said,--
+
+"Clytemnestra was happy! The Furies slept to her crime, and haunted but
+the avenger."
+
+"Hist!" said Varney.
+
+The door opened, and Ardworth reappeared.
+
+"I quite forgot what I half came to know. How is Helen? Did she return
+home safe?"
+
+"Safe--yes!"
+
+"Dear girl, I am glad to hear it! Where is she? Not gone to those
+Miverses again? I am no aristocrat, but why should one couple together
+refinement and vulgarity?"
+
+"Mr. Ardworth," said Madame Dalibard, with haughty coldness, "my niece
+is under my care, and you will permit me to judge for myself how to
+discharge the trust. Mr. Mivers is her own relation,--a nearer one than
+you are."
+
+Not at all abashed by the rebuke, Ardworth said carelessly: "Well, I
+shall talk to you again on that subject. Meanwhile, pray give my love to
+her,--Helen, I mean."
+
+Madame Dalibard half rose in her chair, then sank back again, motioning
+with her hand to Ardworth to approach. Varney rose and walked to the
+window, as if sensible that something was about to be said not meant for
+his ear.
+
+When Ardworth was close to her chair, Madame Dalibard grasped his
+hand with a vigour that surprised him, and drawing him nearer still,
+whispered as he bent down,--
+
+"I will give Helen your love, if it is a cousin's, or, if you will, a
+brother's love. Do you intend--do you feel--an other, a warmer love?
+Speak, sir!" and drawing suddenly back, she gazed on his face with
+a stern and menacing expression, her teeth set, and the lips firmly
+pressed together.
+
+Ardworth, though a little startled, and half angry, answered with the
+low, ironical laugh not uncommon to him, "Pish! you ladies are apt to
+think us men much greater fools than we are. A briefless lawyer is
+not very inflammable tinder. Yes, a cousin's love,--quite enough.
+Poor little Helen! time enough to put other notions into her head; and
+then--she will have a sweetheart, gay and handsome like herself!"
+
+"Ay," said Madame Dalibard, with a slight smile, "ay, I am satisfied.
+Come soon."
+
+Ardworth nodded, and hurried down the stairs. As he gained the door, he
+caught sight of Helen at a distance, bending over a flower-bed in the
+neglected garden. He paused, irresolute, a moment. "No," he muttered
+to himself, "no; I am fit company only for myself! A long walk into the
+fields, and then away with these mists round the Past and Future; the
+Present at least is mine!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. THE WEAVERS AND THE WOOF.
+
+"And what," said Varney,--"what, while we are pursuing a fancied clew,
+and seeking to provide first a name, and then a fortune for this young
+lawyer,--what steps have you really taken to meet the danger that
+menaces me,--to secure, if our inquiries fail, an independence for
+yourself? Months have elapsed, and you have still shrunk from advancing
+the great scheme upon which we built, when the daughter of Susan
+Mainwaring was admitted to your hearth."
+
+"Why recall me, in these rare moments when I feel myself human
+still,--why recall me back to the nethermost abyss of revenge and crime?
+Oh, let me be sure that I have still a son! Even if John Ardworth, with
+his gifts and energies, be denied to me, a son, though in rags, I will
+give him wealth!--a son, though ignorant as the merest boor, I will
+pour into his brain my dark wisdom! A son! a son! my heart swells at
+the word. Ah, you sneer! Yes, my heart swells, but not with the mawkish
+fondness of a feeble mother. In a son, I shall live again,--transmigrate
+from this tortured and horrible life of mine; drink back my youth.
+In him I shall rise from my fall,--strong in his power, great in his
+grandeur. It is because I was born a woman,--had woman's poor passions
+and infirm weakness,--that I am what I am. I would transfer myself into
+the soul of man,--man, who has the strength to act, and the privilege to
+rise. Into the bronze of man's nature I would pour the experience which
+has broken, with its fierce elements, the puny vessel of clay. Yes,
+Gabriel, in return for all I have done and sacrificed for you, I ask
+but co-operation in that one hope of my shattered and storm-beat being.
+Bear, forbear, await; risk not that hope by some wretched, peddling
+crime which will bring on us both detection,--some wanton revelry in
+guilt, which is not worth the terror that treads upon its heels."
+
+"You forget," answered Varney, with a kind of submissive
+sullenness,--for whatever had passed between these two persons in
+their secret and fearful intimacy, there was still a power in Lucretia,
+surviving her fall amidst the fiends, that impressed Varney with the
+only respect he felt for man or woman,--"you forget strangely the nature
+of our elaborate and master project when you speak of 'peddling crime,'
+or 'wanton revelry' in guilt! You forget, too, how every hour that we
+waste deepens the peril that surrounds me, and may sweep from your side
+the sole companion that can aid you in your objects,--nay, without whom
+they must wholly fail. Let me speak first of that most urgent danger,
+for your memory seems short and troubled, since you have learned only to
+hope the recovery of your son. If this man Stubmore, in whom the trust
+created by my uncle's will is now vested, once comes to town, once
+begins to bustle about his accursed projects of transferring the money
+from the Bank of England, I tell you again and again that my forgery on
+the bank will be detected, and that transportation will be the smallest
+penalty inflicted. Part of the forgery, as you know, was committed on
+your behalf, to find the moneys necessary for the research for your
+son,--committed on the clear understanding that our project on Helen
+should repay me, should enable me, perhaps undetected, to restore
+the sums illegally abstracted, or, at the worst, to confess to
+Stubmore--whose character I well know--that, oppressed by difficulties,
+I had yielded to temptation, that I had forged his name (as I had forged
+his father's) as an authority to sell the capital from the bank, and
+that now, in replacing the money, I repaid my error and threw myself on
+his indulgence, on his silence. I say that I know enough of the man to
+know that I should be thus cheaply saved, or at the worst, I should have
+but to strengthen his compassion by a bribe to his avarice; but if I
+cannot replace the money, I am lost."
+
+"Well, well," said Lucretia; "the money you shall have, let me but find
+my son, and--"
+
+"Grant me patience!" cried Varney, impetuously. "But what can your son
+do, if found, unless you endow him with the heritage of Laughton? To do
+that, Helen, who comes next to Percival St. John in the course of
+the entail, must cease to live! Have I not aided, am I not aiding you
+hourly, in your grand objects? This evening I shall see a man whom I
+have long lost sight of, but who has acquired in a lawyer's life the
+true scent after evidence: if that evidence exist, it shall be found. I
+have just learned his address. By tomorrow he shall be on the track.
+I have stinted myself to save from the results of the last forgery
+the gold to whet his zeal. For the rest, as I have said, your design
+involves the removal of two lives. Already over the one more difficult
+to slay the shadow creeps and the pall hangs. I have won, as you wished,
+and as was necessary, young St. John's familiar acquaintance; when the
+hour comes, he is in my hands."
+
+Lucretia smiled sternly. "So!" she said, between her ground teeth, "the
+father forbade me the house that was my heritage! I have but to lift
+a finger and breathe a word, and, desolate as I am, I thrust from
+that home the son! The spoiler left me the world,--I leave his son the
+grave!"
+
+"But," said Varney, doggedly pursuing his dreadful object, "why force
+me to repeat that his is not the only life between you and your son's
+inheritance? St. John gone, Helen still remains. And what, if your
+researches fail, are we to lose the rich harvest which Helen will yield
+us,--a harvest you reap with the same sickle which gathers in your
+revenge? Do you no longer see in Helen's face the features of her
+mother? Is the perfidy of William Mainwaring forgotten or forgiven?"
+
+"Gabriel Varney," said Lucretia, in a hollow and tremulous voice, "when
+in that hour in which my whole being was revulsed, and I heard the cord
+snap from the anchor, and saw the demons of the storm gather round my
+bark; when in that hour I stooped calmly down and kissed my rival's
+brow,--I murmured an oath which seemed not inspired by my own soul, but
+by an influence henceforth given to my fate: I vowed that the perfidy
+dealt to me should be repaid; I vowed that the ruin of my own existence
+should fall on the brow which I kissed. I vowed that if shame and
+disgrace were to supply the inheritance I had forfeited, I would not
+stand alone amidst the scorn of the pitiless world. In the vision of my
+agony, I saw, afar, the altar dressed and the bride-chamber prepared;
+and I breathed my curse, strong as prophecy, on the marriage-hearth and
+the marriage-bed. Why dream, then, that I would rescue the loathed child
+of that loathed union from your grasp? But is the time come? Yours may
+be come: is mine?"
+
+Something so awful there was in the look of his accomplice, so intense
+in the hate of her low voice, that Varney, wretch as he was, and
+contemplating at that very hour the foulest and most hideous guilt, drew
+back, appalled.
+
+Madame Dalibard resumed, and in a somewhat softer tone, but softened
+only by the anguish of despair.
+
+"Oh, had it been otherwise, what might I have been! Given over from that
+hour to the very incarnation of plotting crime, none to resist the evil
+impulse of my own maddening heart, the partner, forced on me by fate,
+leading me deeper and deeper into the inextricable hell,--from that
+hour fraud upon fraud, guilt upon guilt, infamy heaped on infamy, till
+I stand a marvel to myself that the thunderbolt falls not, that Nature
+thrusts not from her breast a living outrage on all her laws! Was I not
+justified in the desire of retribution? Every step that I fell, every
+glance that I gave to the gulf below, increased but in me the desire for
+revenge. All my acts had flowed from one fount: should the stream roll
+pollution, and the fount spring pure?"
+
+"You have had your revenge on your rival and her husband."
+
+"I had it, and I passed on!" said Lucretia, with nostrils dilated as
+with haughty triumph; "they were crushed, and I suffered them to live!
+Nay, when, by chance, I heard of William Mainwaring's death, I bowed
+down my head, and I almost think I wept. The old days came back upon
+me. Yes, I wept! But I had not destroyed their love. No, no; there I had
+miserably failed. A pledge of that love lived. I had left their hearth
+barren; Fate sent them a comfort which I had not foreseen. And suddenly
+my hate returned, my wrongs rose again, my vengeance was not sated. The
+love that had destroyed more than my life,--my soul,--rose again and
+cursed me in the face of Helen. The oath which I took when I kissed my
+rival's brow, demanded another prey when I kissed the child of those
+nuptials."
+
+"You are prepared at last, then, to act?" cried Varney, in a tone of
+savage joy.
+
+At that moment, close under the window, rose, sudden and sweet, the
+voice of one singing,--the young voice of Helen. The words were so
+distinct that they came to the ears of the dark-plotting and guilty
+pair. In the song itself there was little to remark or peculiarly
+apposite to the consciences of those who heard; yet in the extreme and
+touching purity of the voice, and in the innocence of the general spirit
+of the words, trite as might be the image they conveyed, there was
+something that contrasted so fearfully their own thoughts and minds that
+they sat silent, looking vacantly into each other's faces, and shrinking
+perhaps to turn their eyes within themselves.
+
+HELEN'S HYMN.
+
+Ye fade, yet still how sweet, ye Flowers! Your scent outlives the bloom!
+So, Father, may my mortal hours Grow sweeter towards the tomb!
+
+In withered leaves a healing cure The simple gleaners find; So may our
+withered hopes endure In virtues left behind!
+
+Oh, not to me be vainly given The lesson ye bestow, Of thoughts that
+rise in sweets to Heaven, And turn to use below.
+
+The song died, but still the listeners remained silent, till at length,
+shaking off the effect, with his laugh of discordant irony, Varney
+said,--
+
+"Sweet innocence, fresh from the nursery! Would it not be sin to suffer
+the world to mar it? You hear the prayer: why not grant it, and let the
+flower 'turn to use below'?"
+
+"Ah, but could it wither first!" muttered Lucretia, with an accent of
+suppressed rage. "Do you think that her--that his--daughter is to me but
+a vulgar life to be sacrificed merely for gold? Imagine away your
+sex, man! Women only know what I--such as I, woman still--feel in the
+presence of the pure! Do you fancy that I should not have held death
+a blessing if death could have found me in youth such as Helen is? Ah,
+could she but live to suffer! Die! Well, since it must be, since my
+son requires the sacrifice, do as you will with the victim that death
+mercifully snatches from my grasp. I could have wished to prolong her
+life, to load it with some fragment of the curse her parents heaped upon
+me,--baffled love, and ruin, and despair! I could have hoped, in this
+division of the spoil, that mine had been the vengeance, if yours the
+gold. You want the life, I the heart,--the heart to torture first; and
+then--why then more willingly than I do now, could I have thrown the
+carcass to the jackal!"
+
+"Listen!" began Varney; when the door opened and Helen herself stood
+unconsciously smiling at the threshold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. THE LAWYER AND THE BODY-SNATCHER.
+
+That same evening Beck, according to appointment, met Percival and
+showed him the dreary-looking house which held the fair stranger who had
+so attracted his youthful fancy. And Percival looked at the high walls
+with the sailor's bold desire for adventure, while confused visions
+reflected from plays, operas, and novels, in which scaling walls with
+rope-ladders and dark-lanterns was represented as the natural vocation
+of a lover, flitted across his brain; and certainly he gave a deep sigh
+as his common-sense plucked him back from such romance. However, having
+now ascertained the house, it would be easy to learn the name of its
+inmates, and to watch or make his opportunity. As slowly and reluctantly
+he walked back to the spot where he had left his cabriolet, he entered
+into some desultory conversation with his strange guide; and the pity
+he had before conceived for Beck increased upon him as he talked and
+listened. This benighted mind, only illumined by a kind of miserable
+astuteness and that "cunning of the belly" which is born of want to
+engender avarice; this joyless temperament; this age in youth; this
+living reproach, rising up from the stones of London against our social
+indifference to the souls which wither and rot under the hard eyes
+of science and the deaf ears of wealth,--had a pathos for his lively
+sympathies and his fresh heart.
+
+"If ever you want a friend, come to me," said St. John, abruptly.
+
+The sweeper stared, and a gleam of diviner nature, a ray of gratitude
+and unselfish devotion, darted through the fog and darkness of his mind.
+He stood, with his hat off, watching the wheels of the cabriolet as it
+bore away the happy child of fortune, and then, shaking his head, as at
+some puzzle that perplexed and defied his comprehension, strode back to
+the town and bent his way homeward.
+
+Between two and three hours after Percival thus parted from the sweeper,
+a man whose dress was little in accordance with the scene in which we
+present him, threaded his way through a foul labyrinth of alleys in the
+worst part of St. Giles's,--a neighbourhood, indeed, carefully shunned
+at dusk by wealthy passengers; for here dwelt not only Penury in its
+grimmest shape, but the desperate and dangerous guilt which is not to
+be lightly encountered in its haunts and domiciles. Here children
+imbibe vice with their mother's milk. Here Prostitution, commencing with
+childhood, grows fierce and sanguinary in the teens, and leagues with
+theft and murder. Here slinks the pickpocket, here emerges the burglar,
+here skulks the felon. Yet all about and all around, here, too, may
+be found virtue in its rarest and noblest form,--virtue outshining
+circumstance and defying temptation; the virtue of utter poverty, which
+groans, and yet sins not. So interwoven are these webs of penury and
+fraud that in one court your life is not safe; but turn to the right
+hand, and in the other, you might sleep safely in that worse than Irish
+shealing, though your pockets were full of gold. Through these haunts
+the ragged and penniless may walk unfearing, for they have nothing to
+dread from the lawless,--more, perhaps, from the law; but the wealthy,
+the respectable, the spruce, the dainty, let them beware the spot,
+unless the policeman is in sight or day is in the skies!
+
+As this passenger, whose appearance, as we have implied, was certainly
+not that of a denizen, turned into one of the alleys, a rough hand
+seized him by the arm, and suddenly a group of girls and tatterdemalions
+issued from a house, in which the lower shutters unclosed showed a light
+burning, and surrounded him with a hoarse whoop.
+
+The passenger whispered a word in the ear of the grim blackguard who had
+seized him, and his arm was instantly released.
+
+"Hist! a pal,--he has the catch," said the blackguard, surlily. The
+group gave way, and by the light of the clear starlit skies, and a
+single lamp hung at the entrance of the alley, gazed upon the stranger.
+But they made no effort to detain him; and as he disappeared in the
+distant shadows, hastened back into the wretched hostlery where they had
+been merry-making. Meanwhile, the stranger gained a narrow court, and
+stopped before a house in one of its angles,--a house taller than the
+rest, so much taller than the rest that it had the effect of a tower;
+you would have supposed it (perhaps rightly) to be the last remains
+of some ancient building of importance, around which, as population
+thickened and fashion changed, the huts below it had insolently sprung
+up. Quaint and massive pilasters, black with the mire and soot of
+centuries, flanked the deep-set door; the windows were heavy with
+mullions and transoms, and strongly barred in the lower floor; but few
+of the panes were whole, and only here and there had any attempt been
+made to keep out the wind and rain by rags, paper, old shoes, old hats,
+and other ingenious contrivances. Beside the door was conveniently
+placed a row of some ten or twelve bell-pulls, appertaining no doubt
+to the various lodgments into which the building was subdivided. The
+stranger did not seem very familiar with the appurtenances of the place.
+He stood in some suspense as to the proper bell to select; but at last,
+guided by a brass plate annexed to one of the pulls, which, though it
+was too dark to decipher the inscription, denoted a claim to superior
+gentility to the rest of that nameless class, he hazarded a tug, which
+brought forth a 'larum loud enough to startle the whole court from its
+stillness.
+
+In a minute or less, the casement in one of the upper stories opened, a
+head peered forth, and one of those voices peculiar to low debauch--raw,
+cracked, and hoarse--called out: "Who waits?"
+
+"Is it you, Grabman?" asked the stranger, dubiously.
+
+"Yes,--Nicholas Grabman, attorney-at-law, sir, at your service; and your
+name?"
+
+"Jason," answered the stranger.
+
+"Ho, there! ho, Beck!" cried the cracked voice to some one within; "go
+down and open the door."
+
+In a few moments the heavy portal swung and creaked and yawned sullenly,
+and a gaunt form, half-undressed, with an inch of a farthing rushlight
+glimmering through a battered lantern in its hand, presented itself to
+Jason. The last eyed the ragged porter sharply.
+
+"Do you live here?"
+
+"Yes," answered Beck, with the cringe habitual to him. "H-up the ladder,
+vith the rats, drat 'em."
+
+"Well, lead on; hold up the lantern. A devil of a dark place this!"
+grumbled Jason, as he nearly stumbled over sundry broken chattels, and
+gained a flight of rude, black, broken stairs, that creaked under his
+tread.
+
+"'St! 'st!" said Beck between his teeth, as the stranger, halting at the
+second floor, demanded, in no gentle tones, whether Mr. Grabman lived in
+the chimney-pots.
+
+"'St! 'st! Don't make such a rumpus, or No. 7 will be at you."
+
+"What do I care for No. 7? And who the devil is No. 7?"
+
+"A body-snatcher!" whispered Beck, with a shudder. "He's a dillicut
+sleeper,--can't abide having his night's rest sp'ilt. And he's the
+houtrageoustest great cretur when he's h-up in his tantrums; it makes
+your 'air stand on ind to 'ear him!"
+
+"I should like very much to hear him, then," said the stranger,
+curiously. And while he spoke, the door of No. 7 opened abruptly. A
+huge head, covered with matted hair, was thrust for a moment through the
+aperture, and two dull eyes, that seemed covered with a film like that
+of the birds which feed on the dead, met the stranger's bold, sparkling
+orbs.
+
+"Hell and fury!" bawled out the voice of this ogre, like a clap of near
+thunder, "if you two keep tramp, tramp, there close at my door, I'll
+make you meat for the surgeons, b---- you!"
+
+"Stop a moment, my civil friend," said the stranger, advancing; "just
+stand where you are: I should like to make a sketch of your head."
+
+That head protruded farther from the door, and with it an enormous
+bulk of chest and shoulder. But the adventurous visitor was not to be
+daunted. He took out, very coolly, a pencil and the back of a letter,
+and began his sketch.
+
+The body-snatcher stared at him an instant in mute astonishment; but
+that operation and the composure of the artist were so new to him that
+they actually inspired him with terror. He slunk back, banged to
+the door; and the stranger, putting up his implements, said, with a
+disdainful laugh, to Beck, who had slunk away into a corner,--
+
+"No. 7 knows well how to take care of No. 1. Lead on, and be quick,
+then!"
+
+As they continued to mount, they heard the body-snatcher growling and
+blaspheming in his den, and the sound made Beck clamber the quicker,
+till at the next landing-place he took breath, threw open a door, and
+Jason, pushing him aside, entered first.
+
+The interior of the room bespoke better circumstances than might have
+been supposed from the approach; the floor was covered with sundry
+scraps of carpet, formerly of different hues and patterns, but mellowed
+by time into one threadbare mass of grease and canvas. There was a good
+fire on the hearth, though the night was warm; there were sundry volumes
+piled round the walls, in the binding peculiar to law books; in a corner
+stood a tall desk, of the fashion used by clerks, perched on tall, slim
+legs, and companioned by a tall, slim stool. On a table before the fire
+were scattered the remains of the nightly meal,--broiled bones, the
+skeleton of a herring; and the steam rose from a tumbler containing a
+liquid colourless as water, but poisonous as gin.
+
+The room was squalid and dirty, and bespoke mean and slovenly habits;
+but it did not bespeak penury and want, it had even an air of filthy
+comfort of its own,--the comfort of the swine in its warm sty. The
+occupant of the chamber was in keeping with the localities. Figure to
+yourself a man of middle height, not thin, but void of all muscular
+flesh,--bloated, puffed, unwholesome. He was dressed in a gray-flannel
+gown and short breeches, the stockings wrinkled and distained, the feet
+in slippers. The stomach was that of a portly man, the legs were those
+of a skeleton; the cheeks full and swollen, like a ploughboy's, but
+livid, bespeckled, of a dull lead-colour, like a patient in the dropsy.
+The head, covered in patches with thin, yellowish hair, gave some
+promise of intellect, for the forehead was high, and appeared still more
+so from partial baldness; the eyes, embedded in fat and wrinkled skin,
+were small and lustreless, but they still had that acute look which
+education and ability communicate to the human orb; the mouth most
+showed the animal,--full-lipped, coarse, and sensual; while behind one
+of two great ears stuck a pen.
+
+You see before you, then, this slatternly figure,--slipshod,
+half-clothed, with a sort of shabby demi-gentility about it, half
+ragamuffin, half clerk; while in strong contrast appeared the new-comer,
+scrupulously neat, new, with bright black-satin stock, coat cut jauntily
+to the waist, varnished boots, kid gloves, and trim mustache.
+
+Behind this sleek and comely personage, on knock-knees, in torn shirt
+open at the throat, with apathetic, listless, unlighted face, stood the
+lean and gawky Beck.
+
+"Set a chair for the gentleman," said the inmate of the chamber to Beck,
+with a dignified wave of the hand.
+
+"How do you do, Mr.--Mr.--humph--Jason? How do you do? Always smart and
+blooming; the world thrives with you."
+
+"The world is a farm that thrives with all who till it properly,
+Grabman," answered Jason, dryly; and with his handkerchief he carefully
+dusted the chair, on which he then daintily deposited his person.
+
+"But who is your Ganymede, your valet, your gentleman-usher?"
+
+"Oh, a lad about town who lodges above and does odd jobs for
+me,--brushes my coat, cleans my shoes, and after his day's work goes an
+errand now and then. Make yourself scarce, Beck! Anatomy, vanish!"
+
+Beck grinned, nodded, pulled hard at a flake of his hair, and closed the
+door.
+
+"One of your brotherhood, that?" asked Jason, carelessly.
+
+"He, oaf? No," said Grabman, with profound contempt in his sickly
+visage. "He works for his bread,--instinct! Turnspits and truffle-dogs
+and some silly men have it! What an age since we met! Shall I mix you a
+tumbler?"
+
+"You know I never drink your vile spirits; though in Champagne and
+Bordeaux I am any man's match."
+
+"And how the devil do you keep old black thoughts out of your mind by
+those washy potations?"
+
+"Old black thoughts--of what?"
+
+"Of black actions, Jason. We have not met since you paid me for
+recommending the nurse who attended your uncle in his last illness."
+
+"Well, poor coward?"
+
+Grabman knit his thin eyebrows and gnawed his blubber lips.
+
+"I am no coward, as you know."
+
+"Not when a thing is to be done, but after it is done. You brave the
+substance, and tremble at the shadow. I dare say you see ugly goblins in
+the dark, Grabman?"
+
+"Ay, ay; but it is no use talking to you. You call yourself Jason
+because of your yellow hair, or your love for the golden fleece; but
+your old comrades call you 'Rattlesnake,' and you have its blood, as its
+venom."
+
+"And its charm, man," added Jason, with a strange smile, that, though
+hypocritical and constrained, had yet a certain softness, and added
+greatly to the comeliness of features which many might call beautiful,
+and all would allow to be regular and symmetrical. "I shall find at
+least ten love-letters on my table when I go home. But enough of these
+fopperies, I am here on business."
+
+"Law, of course; I am your man. Who's the victim?" and a hideous grin
+on Grabman's face contrasted the sleek smile that yet lingered upon his
+visitor's.
+
+"No; something less hazardous, but not less lucrative than our old
+practices. This is a business that may bring you hundreds, thousands;
+that may take you from this hovel to speculate at the West End; that may
+change your gin into Lafitte, and your herring into venison; that may
+lift the broken attorney again upon the wheel,--again to roll down, it
+may be; but that is your affair."
+
+"'Fore Gad, open the case," cried Grabman, eagerly, and shoving aside
+the ignoble relics of his supper, he leaned his elbows on the table and
+his chin on his damp palms, while eyes that positively brightened into
+an expression of greedy and relentless intelligence were fixed upon his
+visitor.
+
+"The case runs thus," said Jason. "Once upon a time there lived, at
+an old house in Hampshire called Laughton, a wealthy baronet named St.
+John. He was a bachelor, his estates at his own disposal. He had two
+nieces and a more distant kinsman. His eldest niece lived with him,--she
+was supposed to be destined for his heiress; circumstances needless
+to relate brought upon this girl her uncle's displeasure,--she was
+dismissed his house. Shortly afterwards he died, leaving to his
+kinsman--a Mr. Vernon--his estates, with remainder to Vernon's issue,
+and in default thereof, first to the issue of the younger niece, next to
+that of the elder and disinherited one. The elder married, and was left
+a widow without children. She married again, and had a son. Her second
+husband, for some reason or other, conceived ill opinions of his wife.
+In his last illness (he did not live long) he resolved to punish the
+wife by robbing the mother. He sent away the son, nor have we been able
+to discover him since. It is that son whom you are to find."
+
+"I see, I see; go on," said Grabman. "This son is now the remainderman.
+How lost? When? What year? What trace?"
+
+"Patience. You will find in this paper the date of the loss and the age
+of the child, then a mere infant. Now for the trace. This husband--did
+I tell you his name? No? Alfred Braddell--had one friend more intimate
+than the rest,--John Walter Ardworth, a cashiered officer, a ruined man,
+pursued by bill-brokers, Jews, and bailiffs. To this man we have lately
+had reason to believe that the child was given. Ardworth, however, was
+shortly afterwards obliged to fly his creditors. We know that he went to
+India; but if residing there, it must have been under some new name, and
+we fear he is now dead. All our inquiries, at least after this man,
+have been fruitless. Before he went abroad, he left with his old tutor a
+child corresponding in age to that of Mrs. Braddell's. In this child she
+thinks she recognizes her son. All that you have to do is to trace his
+identity by good legal evidence. Don't smile in that foolish
+way,--I mean sound, bona fide evidence that will stand the fire of
+cross-examination; you know what that is! You will therefore find
+out,--first, whether Braddell did consign his child to Ardworth, and,
+if so, you must then follow Ardworth, with that child in his keeping,
+to Matthew Fielden's house, whose address you find noted in the paper I
+gave you, together with many other memoranda as to Ardworth's creditors
+and those whom he is likely to have come across."
+
+"John Ardworth, I see!"
+
+"John Walter Ardworth,--commonly called Walter; he, like me, preferred
+to be known only by his second baptismal name. He, because of a
+favourite Radical godfather; I, because Honore is an inconvenient
+Gallicism. And perhaps when Honore Mirabeau (my godfather) went out
+of fashion with the sans-culottes, my father thought Gabriel a safer
+designation. Now I have told you all."
+
+"What is the mother's maiden name?"
+
+"Her maiden name was Clavering; she was married under that of Dalibard,
+her first husband."
+
+"And," said Grabman, looking over the notes in the paper given to him,
+"it is at Liverpool that the husband died, and whence the child was sent
+away?"
+
+"It is so; to Liverpool you will go first. I tell you fairly, the task
+is difficult, for hitherto it has foiled me. I knew but one man who,
+without flattery, could succeed, and therefore I spared no pains to find
+out Nicholas Grabman. You have the true ferret's faculty; you, too, are
+a lawyer, and snuff evidence in every breath. Find us a son,--a legal
+son,--a son to be shown in a court of law, and the moment he steps into
+the lands and the Hall of Laughton, you have five thousand pounds."
+
+"Can I have a bond to that effect?"
+
+"My bond, I fear, is worth no more than my word. Trust to the last; if I
+break it, you know enough of my secrets to hang me!"
+
+"Don't talk of hanging; I hate that subject. But stop. If found, does
+this son succeed? Did this Mr. Vernon leave no heir; this other sister
+continue single, or prove barren?"
+
+"Oh, true! He, Mr. Vernon, who by will took the name of St. John, he
+left issue; but only one son still survives, a minor and unmarried. The
+sister, too, left a daughter; both are poor, sickly creatures,--their
+lives not worth a straw. Never mind them. You find Vincent Braddell,
+and he will not be long out of his property, nor you out of your 5,000
+pounds! You see, under these circumstances a bond might become dangerous
+evidence!"
+
+Grabman emitted a fearful and tremulous chuckle,--a laugh like the laugh
+of a superstitious man when you talk to him of ghosts and churchyards.
+He chuckled, and his hair bristled. But after a pause, in which he
+seemed to wrestle with his own conscience, he said: "Well, well, you are
+a strange man, Jason; you love your joke. I have nothing to do except to
+find out this ultimate remainderman; mind that!"
+
+"Perfectly; nothing like subdivision of labour."
+
+"The search will be expensive."
+
+"There is oil for your wheels," answered Jason, putting a note-book into
+his confidant's hands. "But mind you waste it not. No tricks, no false
+play, with me; you know Jason, or, if you like the name better, you know
+the Rattlesnake!"
+
+"I will account for every penny," said Grabman, eagerly, and clasping
+his hands, while his pale face grew livid.
+
+"I do not doubt it, my quill-driver. Look sharp, start to-morrow. Get
+thyself decent clothes, be sober, cleanly, and respectable. Act as a man
+who sees before him 5,000 pounds. And now, light me downstairs."
+
+With the candle in his hand, Grabman stole down the rugged steps even
+more timorously than Beck had ascended them, and put his finger to his
+mouth as they came in the dread vicinity of No. 7. But Jason, or rather
+Gabriel Varney, with that fearless, reckless bravado of temper which,
+while causing half his guilt, threw at times a false glitter over its
+baseness, piqued by the cowardice of his comrade, gave a lusty kick at
+the closed door, and shouted out: "Old grave-stealer, come out, and let
+me finish your picture. Out, out! I say, out!" Grabman left the candle
+on the steps, and made but three bounds to his own room.
+
+At the third shout of his disturber the resurrection-man threw open his
+door violently and appeared at the gap, the upward flare of the candle
+showing the deep lines ploughed in his hideous face, and the immense
+strength of his gigantic trunk and limbs. Slight, fair, and delicate as
+he was, Varney eyed him deliberately, and trembled not.
+
+"What do you want with me?" said the terrible voice, tremulous with
+rage.
+
+"Only to finish your portrait as Pluto. He was the god of Hell, you
+know."
+
+The next moment the vast hand of the ogre hung like a great cloud over
+Gabriel Varney. This last, ever on his guard, sprang aside, and the
+light gleamed on the steel of a pistol. "Hands off! Or--"
+
+The click of the pistol-cock finished the sentence. The ruffian halted.
+A glare of disappointed fury gave a momentary lustre to his dull eyes.
+"P'r'aps I shall meet you again one o' these days, or nights, and I
+shall know ye in ten thousand."
+
+"Nothing like a bird in the hand, Master Grave-stealer. Where can we
+ever meet again?"
+
+"P'r'aps in the fields, p'r'aps on the road, p'r'aps at the Old Bailey,
+p'r'aps at the gallows, p'r'aps in the convict-ship. I knows what that
+is! I was chained night and day once to a chap jist like you. Didn't I
+break his spurit; didn't I spile his sleep! Ho, ho! you looks a bit less
+varmently howdacious now, my flash cove!"
+
+Varney hitherto had not known one pang of fear, one quicker beat of the
+heart before. But the image presented to his irritable fancy (always
+prone to brood over terrors),--the image of that companion chained to
+him night and day,--suddenly quelled his courage; the image stood before
+him palpably like the Oulos Oneiros,--the Evil Dream of the Greeks.
+
+He breathed loud. The body-stealer's stupid sense saw that he had
+produced the usual effect of terror, which gratified his brutal
+self-esteem; he retreated slowly, inch by inch, to the door, followed by
+Varney's appalled and staring eye, and closed it with such violence that
+the candle was extinguished.
+
+Varney, not daring,--yes, literally not daring,--to call aloud to
+Grabman for another light, crept down the dark stairs with hurried,
+ghostlike steps; and after groping at the door-handle with one hand,
+while the other grasped his pistol with a strain of horror, he succeeded
+at last in winning access to the street, and stood a moment to collect
+himself in the open air,--the damps upon his forehead, and his limbs
+trembling like one who has escaped by a hairbreadth the crash of a
+falling house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE RAPE OF THE MATTRESS.
+
+That Mr. Grabman slept calmly that night is probable enough, for his
+gin-bottle was empty the next morning; and it was with eyes more than
+usually heavy that he dozily followed the movements of Beck, who,
+according to custom, opened the shutters of the little den adjoining his
+sitting-room, brushed his clothes, made his fire, set on the kettle to
+boil, and laid his breakfast things, preparatory to his own departure
+to the duties of the day. Stretching himself, however, and shaking off
+slumber, as the remembrance of the enterprise he had undertaken glanced
+pleasantly across him, Grabman sat up in his bed and said, in a voice
+that, if not maudlin, was affectionate, and if not affectionate, was
+maudlin,--
+
+"Beck, you are a good fellow. You have faults, you are human,--humanism
+est errare; which means that you some times scorch my muffins. But,
+take you all in all, you are a kind creature. Beck, I am going into
+the country for some days. I shall leave my key in the hole in the
+wall,--you know; take care of it when you come in. You were out late
+last night, my poor fellow. Very wrong! Look well to yourself, or who
+knows? You may be clutched by that blackguard resurrection-man, No. 7.
+Well, well, to think of that Jason's foolhardiness! But he's the worse
+devil of the two. Eh! what was I saying? And always give a look into
+my room every night before you go to roost. The place swarms with
+cracksmen, and one can't be too cautious. Lucky dog, you, to have
+nothing to be robbed of!"
+
+Beck winced at that last remark. Grabman did not seem to notice his
+confusion, and proceeded, as he put on his stockings: "And, Beck, you
+are a good fellow, and have served me faithfully; when I come back,
+I will bring you something handsome,--a backey-box or--who knows?--a
+beautiful silver watch. Meanwhile, I think--let me see--yes, I can give
+you this elegant pair of small-clothes. Put out my best,--the black
+ones. And now, Beck, I'll not keep you any longer."
+
+The poor sweep, with many pulls at his forelock, acknowledged the
+munificent donation; and having finished all his preparations, hastened
+first to his room, to examine at leisure, and with great admiration, the
+drab small-clothes. "Room," indeed, we can scarcely style the wretched
+enclosure which Beck called his own. It was at the top of the house,
+under the roof, and hot--oh, so hot--in the summer! It had one small
+begrimed window, through which the light of heaven never came, for the
+parapet, beneath which ran the choked gutter, prevented that; but the
+rain and the wind came in. So sometimes, through four glassless frames,
+came a fugitive tom-cat. As for the rats, they held the place as their
+own. Accustomed to Beck, they cared nothing for him.
+
+They were the Mayors of that Palace; he only le roi faineant. They ran
+over his bed at night; he often felt them on his face, and was convinced
+they would have eaten him, if there had been anything worth eating upon
+his bones; still, perhaps out of precaution rather than charity, he
+generally left them a potato or two, or a crust of bread, to take off
+the edge of their appetites. But Beck was far better off than most who
+occupied the various settlements in that Alsatia,--he had his room to
+himself. That was necessary to his sole luxury,--the inspection of his
+treasury, the safety of his mattress; for it he paid, without grumbling,
+what he thought was a very high rent. To this hole in the roof there was
+no lock,--for a very good reason, there was no door to it. You went up
+a ladder, as you would go into a loft. Now, it had often been matter of
+much intense cogitation to Beck whether or not he should have a door
+to his chamber; and the result of the cogitation was invariably the
+same,--he dared not! What should he want with a door,--a door with a
+lock to it? For one followed as a consequence to the other. Such a novel
+piece of grandeur would be an ostentatious advertisement that he had
+something to guard. He could have no pretence for it on the ground that
+he was intruded on by neighbours; no step but his own was ever caught
+by him ascending that ladder; it led to no other room. All the offices
+required for the lodgment he performed himself. His supposed poverty
+was a better safeguard than doors of iron. Besides this, a door, if
+dangerous, would be superfluous; the moment it was suspected that Beck
+had something worth guarding, that moment all the picklocks and skeleton
+keys in the neighbourhood would be in a jingle. And a cracksman of high
+repute lodged already on the ground-floor. So Beck's treasure, like the
+bird's nest, was deposited as much out of sight as his instinct
+could contrive; and the locks and bolts of civilized men were equally
+dispensed with by bird and Beck.
+
+On a rusty nail the sweep suspended the drab small-clothes, stroked them
+down lovingly, and murmured, "They be 's too good for I; I should
+like to pop 'em! But vould n't that be a shame? Beck, be n't you be a
+hungrateful beast to go for to think of nothin' but the tin, ven your
+'art ought to varm with hemotion? I vill vear 'em ven I vaits on him.
+Ven he sees his own smalls bringing in the muffins, he will say, 'Beck,
+you becomes 'em!'"
+
+Fraught with this noble resolution, the sweep caught up his broom, crept
+down the ladder, and with a furtive glance at the door of the room in
+which the cracksman lived, let himself out and shambled his way to his
+crossing. Grabman, in the mean while, dressed himself with more care
+than usual, shaved his beard from a four days' crop, and while seated at
+his breakfast, read attentively over the notes which Varney had left to
+him, pausing at times to make his own pencil memoranda. He then packed
+up such few articles as so moderate a worshipper of the Graces might
+require, deposited them in an old blue brief-bag, and this done, he
+opened his door, and creeping to the threshold, listened carefully.
+Below, a few sounds might be heard,--here, the wail of a child; there,
+the shrill scold of a woman in that accent above all others adapted
+to scold,--the Irish. Farther down still, the deep bass oath of the
+choleric resurrection-man; but above, all was silent. Only one floor
+intervened between Grabman's apartment and the ladder that led to Beck's
+loft. And the inmates of that room gave no sound of life. Grabman took
+courage, and shuffling off his shoes, ascended the stairs; he passed the
+closed door of the room above; he seized the ladder with a shaking hand;
+he mounted, step after step; he stood in Beck's room.
+
+Now, O Nicholas Grabman! some moralists may be harsh enough to condemn
+thee for what thou art doing,--kneeling yonder in the dim light, by that
+curtainless pallet, with greedy fingers feeling here and there, and a
+placid, self-hugging smile upon thy pale lips. That poor vagabond whom
+thou art about to despoil has served thee well and faithfully, has borne
+with thine ill-humours, thy sarcasms, thy swearings, thy kicks, and
+buffets; often, when in the bestial sleep of drunkenness he has found
+thee stretched helpless on thy floor, with a kindly hand he has moved
+away the sharp fender, too near that knavish head, now bent on his ruin,
+or closed the open window, lest the keen air, that thy breath tainted,
+should visit thee with rheum and fever. Small has been his guerdon for
+uncomplaining sacrifice of the few hours spared to this weary drudge
+from his daily toil,--small, but gratefully received. And if Beck had
+been taught to pray, he would have prayed for thee as for a good man,
+O miserable sinner! And thou art going now, Nicholas Grabman, upon an
+enterprise which promises thee large gains, and thy purse is filled; and
+thou wantest nothing for thy wants or thy swinish luxuries. Why should
+those shaking fingers itch for the poor beggar-man's hoards?
+
+But hadst thou been bound on an errand that would have given thee a
+million, thou wouldst not have left unrifled that secret store which thy
+prying eye had discovered, and thy hungry heart had coveted. No; since
+one night,--fatal, alas! to the owner of loft and treasure, when,
+needing Beck for some service, and fearing to call aloud (for the
+resurrection-man in the floor below thee, whose oaths even now ascend to
+thine ear, sleeps ill, and has threatened to make thee mute forever
+if thou disturbest him in the few nights in which his dismal calling
+suffers him to sleep at all), thou didst creep up the ladder, and didst
+see the unconscious miser at his nightly work, and after the sight didst
+steal down again, smiling,--no; since that night, no schoolboy ever more
+rootedly and ruthlessly set his mind upon nest of linnet than thine was
+set upon the stores in Beck's mattress.
+
+And yet why, O lawyer, should rigid moralists blame thee more than such
+of thy tribe as live, honoured and respectable, upon the frail and the
+poor? Who among them ever left loft or mattress while a rap could be
+wrung from either? Matters it to Astraea whether the spoliation be made
+thus nakedly and briefly, or by all the acknowledged forms in which,
+item on item, six-and-eightpence on six-and-eightpence, the inexorable
+hand closes at length on the last farthing of duped despair? Not--Heaven
+forbid!--that we make thee, foul Nicholas Grabman, a type for all the
+class called attorneys-at-law! Noble hearts, liberal minds, are there
+amongst that brotherhood, we know and have experienced; but a type
+art thou of those whom want and error and need have proved--alas! too
+well--the lawyers of the poor. And even while we write, and even while
+ye read, many a Grabman steals from helpless toil the savings of a life.
+
+Ye poor hoards,--darling delights of your otherwise joyless owner,--how
+easily has his very fondness made ye the prey of the spoiler! How
+gleefully, when the pence swelled into a shilling, have they been
+exchanged into the new bright piece of silver, the newest and brightest
+that could be got; then the shillings into crowns, then the crowns into
+gold,--got slyly and at a distance, and contemplated with what rapture;
+so that at last the total lay manageable and light in its radiant
+compass. And what a total! what a surprise to Grabman! Had it been but
+a sixpence, he would have taken it; but to grasp sovereigns by the
+handful, it was too much for him; and as he rose, he positively laughed,
+from a sense of fun.
+
+But amongst his booty there was found one thing that specially moved
+his mirth: it was a child's coral, with its little bells. Who could have
+given Beck such a bauble, or how Beck could have refrained from turning
+it into money, would have been a fit matter for speculation. But it was
+not that at which Grabman chuckled; he laughed, first because it was
+an emblem of the utter childishness and folly of the creature he was
+leaving penniless, and secondly, because it furnished his ready wit with
+a capital contrivance to shift Beck's indignation from his own shoulders
+to a party more liable to suspicion. He left the coral on the floor
+near the bed, stole down the ladder, reached his own room, took up his
+brief-bag, locked his door, slipped the key in the rat-hole, where the
+trusty, plundered Beck alone could find it, and went boldly downstairs;
+passing successively the doors within which still stormed the
+resurrection-man, still wailed the child, still shrieked the Irish
+shrew, he paused at the ground-floor occupied by Bill the cracksman and
+his long-fingered, slender, quick-eyed imps, trained already to pass
+through broken window-panes, on their precocious progress to the hulks.
+
+The door was open, and gave a pleasant sight of the worthy family
+within. Bill himself, a stout-looking fellow with a florid, jolly
+countenance, and a pipe in his mouth, was sitting at his window, with
+his brawny legs lolling on a table covered with the remains of a very
+tolerable breakfast. Four small Bills were employed in certain sports
+which, no doubt, according to the fashionable mode of education,
+instilled useful lessons under the artful guise of playful amusement.
+Against the wall, at one corner of the room, was affixed a row of bells,
+from which were suspended exceedingly tempting apples by slender
+wires. Two of the boys were engaged in the innocent entertainment of
+extricating the apples without occasioning any alarm from the bells;
+a third was amusing himself at a table, covered with mock rings and
+trinkets, in a way that seemed really surprising; with the end of a
+finger, dipped probably in some glutinous matter, he just touched one
+of the gewgaws, and lo, it vanished!--vanished so magically that
+the quickest eye could scarcely trace whither; sometimes up a cuff,
+sometimes into a shoe,--here, there, anywhere, except back again upon
+the table. The fourth, an urchin apparently about five years old,--he
+might be much younger, judging from his stunted size; somewhat older,
+judging from the vicious acuteness of his face,--on the floor under his
+father's chair, was diving his little hand into the paternal pockets in
+search for a marble sportively hidden in those capacious recesses.
+On the rising geniuses around him Bill the cracksman looked, and his
+father's heart was proud. Pausing at the threshold, Grabman looked in
+and said cheerfully, "Good-day to you; good-day to you all, my little
+dears."
+
+"Ah, Grabman," said Bill, rising, and making a bow,--for Bill valued
+himself much on his politeness,--"come to blow a cloud, eh? Bob," this
+to the eldest born, "manners, sir; wipe your nose, and set a chair for
+the gent."
+
+"Many thanks to you, Bill, but I can't stay now; I have a long journey
+to take. But, bless my soul, how stupid I am! I have forgotten my
+clothes-brush. I knew there was some thing on my mind all the way I was
+coming downstairs. I was saying, 'Grabman, there is something forgotten!
+'"
+
+"I know what that 'ere feelin' is," said Bill, thoughtfully; "I had it
+myself the night afore last; and sure enough, when I got to the ----.
+But that's neither here nor there. Bob, run upstairs and fetch down Mr.
+Grabman's clothes-brush. 'T is the least you can do for a gent who
+saved your father from the fate of them 'ere innocent apples. Your fist,
+Grabman. I have a heart in my buzzom; cut me open, and you will find
+there `Halibi, and Grabman!' Give Bob your key."
+
+"The brush is not in my room," answered Grabman; "it is at the top of
+the house, up the ladder, in Beck's loft,--Beck, the sweeper. The stupid
+dog always keeps it there, and forgot to give it me. Sorry to occasion
+my friend Bob so much trouble."
+
+"Bob has a soul above trouble; his father's heart beats in his buzzom.
+Bob, track the dancers. Up like a lark, and down like a dump."
+
+Bob grinned, made a mow at Mr. Grabman, and scampered up the stairs.
+
+"You never attends our free-and-easy," said Bill; "but we toasts you
+with three times three, and up standing. 'T is a hungrateful world! But
+some men has a heart; and to those who has a heart, Grabman is a trump!"
+
+"I am sure, whenever I can do you a service, you may reckon on me.
+Meanwhile, if you could get that cursed bullying fellow who lives under
+me to be a little more civil, you would oblige me."
+
+"Under you? No. 7? No. 7, is it? Grabman, h-am I a man? Is this a h-arm,
+and this a bunch of fives? I dares do all that does become a man; but
+No. 7 is a body-snatcher! No. 7 has bullied me, and I bore it! No. 7
+might whop me, and this h-arm would let him whop! He lives with graves
+and churchyards and stiff 'uns, that damnable No. 7! Ask some'at else,
+Grabman. I dares not touch No. 7 any more than the ghostesses."
+
+Grabman sneered as he saw that Bill, stout rogue as he was, turned
+pale while he spoke; but at that moment Bob reappeared with the
+clothes-brush, which the ex-attorney thrust into his pocket, and
+shaking Bill by the hand, and patting Bob on the head, he set out on his
+journey.
+
+Bill reseated himself, muttering, "Bully a body-snatcher! Drot that
+Grabman, does he want to get rid of poor Bill?"
+
+Meanwhile Bob exhibited slyly, to his second brother, the sight of
+Beck's stolen coral. The children took care not to show it to their
+father. They were already inspired by the laudable ambition to set up in
+business on their own account.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. PERCIVAL VISITS LUCRETIA.
+
+Having once ascertained the house in which Helen lived, it was no
+difficult matter for St. John to learn the name of the guardian whom
+Beck had supposed to be her mother. No common delight mingled with
+Percival's amaze when in that name he recognized one borne by his own
+kinswoman. Very little indeed of the family history was known to him.
+Neither his father nor his mother ever willingly conversed of the fallen
+heiress,--it was a subject which the children had felt to be proscribed;
+but in the neighbourhood, Percival had of course heard some mention of
+Lucretia as the haughty and accomplished Miss Clavering, who had, to the
+astonishment of all, stooped to a mesalliance with her uncle's French
+librarian. That her loss of the St. John property, the succession of
+Percival's father, were unexpected by the villagers and squires around,
+and perhaps set down to the caprice of Sir Miles, or to an intellect
+impaired by apoplectic attacks, it was not likely that he should have
+heard. The rich have the polish of their education, and the poor that
+instinctive tact, so wonderful amongst the agricultural peasantry, to
+prevent such unmannerly disclosures or unwelcome hints; and both by rich
+and poor, the Vernon St. Johns were too popular and respected for wanton
+allusions to subjects calculated to pain them. All, therefore, that
+Percival knew of his relation was that she had resided from infancy with
+Sir Miles; that after their uncle's death she had married an inferior in
+rank, of the name of Dalibard, and settled abroad; that she was a person
+of peculiar manners, and, he had heard somewhere, of rare gifts. He
+had been unable to learn the name of the young lady staying with Madame
+Dalibard; he had learned only that she went by some other name, and
+was not the daughter of the lady who rented the house. Certainly it was
+possible that this last might not be his kinswoman, after all. The
+name, though strange to English ears, and not common in France, was no
+sufficient warrant for Percival's high spirits at the thought that
+he had now won legitimate and regular access to the house; still, it
+allowed him to call, it furnished a fair excuse for a visit.
+
+How long he was at his toilet that day, poor boy! How sedulously,
+with comb and brush, he sought to smooth into straight precision that
+luxuriant labyrinth of jetty curls, which had never cost him a thought
+before! Gil Blas says that the toilet is a pleasure to the young, though
+a labour to the old; Percival St. John's toilet was no pleasure to him
+that anxious morning.
+
+At last he tore himself, dissatisfied and desperate, from the glass,
+caught his hat and his whip, threw himself on his horse, and rode, at
+first very fast, and at last very slowly, to the old, decayed, shabby,
+neglected house that lay hid, like the poverty of fallen pride, amidst
+the trim villas and smart cottages of fair and flourishing Brompton.
+
+The same servant who had opened the gate to Ardworth appeared to his
+summons, and after eying him for some moments with a listless, stupid
+stare, said: "You'll be after some mistake!" and turned away.
+
+"Stop, stop!" cried Percival, trying to intrude himself through the
+gate; but the servant blocked up the entrance sturdily. "It is no
+mistake at all, my good lady. I have come to see Madame Dalibard, my--my
+relation!"
+
+"Your relation!" and again the woman stared at Percival with a look
+through the dull vacancy of which some distrust was dimly perceptible.
+"Bide a bit there, and give us your name."
+
+Percival gave his card to the servant with his sweetest and most
+persuasive smile. She took it with one hand, and with the other turned
+the key in the gate, leaving Percival outside. It was five minutes
+before she returned; and she then, with the same prim, smileless
+expression of countenance, opened the gate and motioned him to follow.
+
+The kind-hearted boy sighed as he cast a glance at the desolate and
+poverty-stricken appearance of the house, and thought within himself:
+"Ah, pray Heaven she may be my relation; and then I shall have the right
+to find her and that sweet girl a very different home!" The old woman
+threw open the drawing-room door, and Percival was in the presence of
+his deadliest foe! The armchair was turned towards the entrance, and
+from amidst the coverings that hid the form, the remarkable countenance
+of Madame Dalibard emerged, sharp and earnest, directly fronting the
+intruder.
+
+"So," she said slowly, and, as it were, devouring him with her keen,
+steadfast eyes,--"so you are Percival St. John! Welcome! I did not
+know that we should ever meet. I have not sought you, you seek me!
+Strange--yes, strange--that the young and the rich should seek the
+suffering and the poor!"
+
+Surprised and embarrassed by this singular greeting, Percival
+halted abruptly in the middle of the room; and there was something
+inexpressibly winning in his shy, yet graceful confusion. It seemed,
+with silent eloquence, to apologize and to deprecate. And when, in his
+silvery voice, scarcely yet tuned to the fulness of manhood, he said
+feelingly, "Forgive me, madam, but my mother is not in England," the
+excuse evinced such delicacy of idea, so exquisite a sense of high
+breeding, that the calm assurance of worldly ease could not have more
+attested the chivalry of the native gentleman.
+
+"I have nothing to forgive, Mr. St. John," said Lucretia, with a
+softened manner. "Pardon me rather that my infirmities do not allow me
+to rise to receive you. This seat,--here,--next to me. You have a strong
+likeness to your father."
+
+Percival received this last remark as a compliment, and bowed. Then, as
+he lifted his ingenuous brow, he took for the first time a steady view
+of his new-found relation. The peculiarities of Lucretia's countenance
+in youth had naturally deepened with middle age. The contour, always
+too sharp and pronounced, was now strong and bony as a man's; the line
+between the eyebrows was hollowed into a furrow. The eye retained its
+old uneasy, sinister, sidelong glance, or at rare moments (as when
+Percival entered), its searching penetration and assured command; but
+the eyelids themselves, red and injected, as with grief or vigil, gave
+something haggard and wild, whether to glance or gaze. Despite the
+paralysis of the frame, the face, though pale and thin, showed no bodily
+decay. A vigour surpassing the strength of woman might still be seen in
+the play of the bold muscles, the firmness of the contracted lips. What
+physicians call "vitality," and trace at once (if experienced) on the
+physiognomy as the prognostic of long life, undulated restlessly in
+every aspect of the face, every movement of those thin, nervous hands,
+which, contrasting the rest of that motionless form, never seemed to be
+at rest. The teeth were still white and regular, as in youth; and when
+they shone out in speaking, gave a strange, unnatural freshness to a
+face otherwise so worn.
+
+As Percival gazed, and, while gazing, saw those wandering eyes bent
+down, and yet felt they watched him, a thrill almost of fear shot
+through his heart. Nevertheless, so much more impressionable was he to
+charitable and trustful than to suspicious and timid emotions that when
+Madame Dalibard, suddenly looking up and shaking her head gently, said,
+"You see but a sad wreck, young kinsman," all those instincts, which
+Nature itself seemed to dictate for self-preservation, vanished into
+heavenly tenderness and pity.
+
+"Ah!" he said, rising, and pressing one of those deadly hands in both
+his own, while tears rose to his eyes,--"Ah! since you call me kinsman,
+I have all a kinsman's privileges. You must have the best advice, the
+most skilful surgeons. Oh, you will recover; you must not despond."
+
+Lucretia's lips moved uneasily. This kindness took her by surprise.
+She turned desperately away from the human gleam that shot across the
+sevenfold gloom of her soul. "Do not think of me," she said, with a
+forced smile; "it is my peculiarity not to like allusion to myself,
+though this time I provoked it. Speak to me of the old cedar-trees at
+Laughton,--do they stand still? You are the master of Laughton now! It
+is a noble heritage!"
+
+Then St. John, thinking to please her, talked of the old manor-house,
+described the improvements made by his father, spoke gayly of those
+which he himself contemplated; and as he ran on, Lucretia's brow, a
+moment ruffled, grew smooth and smoother, and the gloom settled back
+upon her soul.
+
+All at once she interrupted him. "How did you discover me? Was it
+through Mr. Varney? I bade him not mention me: yet how else could you
+learn?" As she spoke, there was an anxious trouble in her tone, which
+increased while she observed that St. John looked confused.
+
+"Why," he began hesitatingly, and brushing his hat with his hand,
+"why--perhaps you may have heard from the--that is--I think there is
+a young ----. Ah, it is you, it is you! I see you once again!" And
+springing up, he was at the side of Helen, who at that instant had
+entered the room, and now, her eyes downcast, her cheeks blushing, her
+breast gently heaving, heard, but answered not that passionate burst of
+joy.
+
+Startled, Madame Dalibard (her hands firmly grasping the sides of her
+chair) contemplated the two. She had heard nothing, guessed nothing
+of their former meeting. All that had passed before between them was
+unknown to her. Yet there was evidence unmistakable, conclusive: the
+son of her despoiler loved the daughter of her rival; and--if the virgin
+heart speaks by the outward sign--those downcast eyes, those blushing
+cheeks, that heaving breast, told that he did not love in vain!
+
+Before her lurid and murderous gaze, as if to defy her, the two
+inheritors of a revenge unglutted by the grave stood, united
+mysteriously together. Up, from the vast ocean of her hate, rose that
+poor isle of love; there, unconscious of the horror around them, the
+victims found their footing! How beautiful at that hour their youth;
+their very ignorance of their own emotions; their innocent gladness;
+their sweet trouble! The fell gazer drew a long breath of fiendlike
+complacency and glee, and her hands opened wide, and then slowly closed,
+as if she felt them in her grasp.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE ROSE BENEATH THE UPAS.
+
+And from that day Percival had his privileged entry into Madame
+Dalibard's house. The little narrative of the circumstances connected
+with his first meeting with Helen, partly drawn from Percival, partly
+afterwards from Helen (with blushing and faltered excuses from the
+latter for not having mentioned before an incident that might, perhaps
+needlessly, vex or alarm her aunt in so delicate a state of health), was
+received by Lucretia with rare graciousness. The connection, not only
+between herself and Percival, but between Percival and Helen, was
+allowed and even dwelt upon by Madame Dalibard as a natural reason for
+permitting the artless intimacy which immediately sprang up between
+these young persons. She permitted Percival to call daily, to remain for
+hours, to share in their simple meals, to wander alone with Helen in the
+garden, assist her to bind up the ragged flowers, and sit by her in the
+old ivy-grown arbour when their work was done. She affected to look upon
+them both as children, and to leave to them that happy familiarity which
+childhood only sanctions, and compared to which the affection of maturer
+years seems at once coarse and cold.
+
+As they grew more familiar, the differences and similarities in their
+characters came out, and nothing more delightful than the harmony into
+which even the contrasts blended ever invited the guardian angel to
+pause and smile. As flowers in some trained parterre relieve each other,
+now softening, now heightening, each several hue, till all unite in one
+concord of interwoven beauty, so these two blooming natures, brought
+together, seemed, where varying still, to melt and fuse their affluences
+into one wealth of innocence and sweetness. Both had a native buoyancy
+and cheerfulness of spirit, a noble trustfulness in others, a singular
+candour and freshness of mind and feeling. But beneath the gayety of
+Helen there was a soft and holy under-stream of thoughtful melancholy,
+a high and religious sentiment, that vibrated more exquisitely to the
+subtle mysteries of creation, the solemn unison between the bright
+world without and the grave destinies of that world within (which is
+an imperishable soul), than the lighter and more vivid youthfulness of
+Percival had yet conceived. In him lay the germs of the active mortal
+who might win distinction in the bold career we run upon the surface of
+the earth. In her there was that finer and more spiritual essence
+which lifts the poet to the golden atmosphere of dreams, and reveals in
+glimpses to the saint the choral Populace of Heaven. We do not say
+that Helen would ever have found the utterance of the poet, that her
+reveries, undefined and unanalyzed, could have taken the sharp, clear
+form of words; for to the poet practically developed and made manifest
+to the world, many other gifts besides the mere poetic sense are
+needed,--stern study, and logical generalization of scattered truths,
+and patient observation of the characters of men, and the wisdom that
+comes from sorrow and passion, and a sage's experience of things actual,
+embracing the dark secrets of human infirmity and crime. But despite all
+that has been said in disparagement or disbelief of "mute, inglorious
+Miltons," we maintain that there are natures in which the divinest
+element of poetry exists, the purer and more delicate for escaping from
+bodily form and evaporating from the coarser vessels into which the
+poet, so called, must pour the ethereal fluid. There is a certain virtue
+within us, comprehending our subtlest and noblest emotions, which is
+poetry while untold, and grows pale and poor in proportion as we strain
+it into poems. Nay, it may be said of this airy property of our inmost
+being that, more or less, it departs from us according as we give it
+forth into the world, even, as only by the loss of its particles, the
+rose wastes its perfume on the air. So this more spiritual sensibility
+dwelt in Helen as the latent mesmerism in water, as the invisible
+fairy in an enchanted ring. It was an essence or divinity, shrined and
+shrouded in herself, which gave her more intimate and vital union with
+all the influences of the universe, a companion to her loneliness, an
+angel hymning low to her own listening soul. This made her enjoyment of
+Nature, in its merest trifles, exquisite and profound; this gave to her
+tenderness of heart all the delicious and sportive variety love
+borrows from imagination; this lifted her piety above the mere forms of
+conventional religion, and breathed into her prayers the ecstasy of the
+saint.
+
+But Helen was not the less filled with the sweet humanities of her age
+and sex; her very gravity was tinged with rosy light, as a western cloud
+with the sun. She had sportiveness and caprice, and even whim, as the
+butterfly, though the emblem of the soul, still flutters wantonly over
+every wild-flower, and expands its glowing wings on the sides of the
+beaten road. And with a sense of weakness in the common world (growing
+out of her very strength in nobler atmospheres), she leaned the more
+trustfully on the strong arm of her young adorer, not fancying that the
+difference between them arose from superiority in her; but rather as a
+bird, once tamed, flies at the sight of the hawk to the breast of its
+owner, so from each airy flight into the loftier heaven, let but the
+thought of danger daunt her wing, and, as in a more powerful nature, she
+took refuge on that fostering heart.
+
+The love between these children--for so, if not literally in years, in
+their newness to all that steals the freshness and the dew from maturer
+life they may be rightly called--was such as befitted those whose souls
+have not forfeited the Eden. It was more like the love of fairies than
+of human beings. They showed it to each other innocently and frankly;
+yet of love as we of the grosser creation call it, with its impatient
+pains and burning hopes, they never spoke nor dreamed. It was an
+unutterable, ecstatic fondness, a clinging to each other in thought,
+desire, and heart, a joy more than mortal in each other's presence; yet,
+in parting, not that idle and empty sorrow which unfits the weak for
+the homelier demands on time and life, and this because of the wondrous
+trust in themselves and in the future, which made a main part of their
+credulous, happy natures. Neither felt fear nor jealousy, or if jealousy
+came, it was the pretty, childlike jealousies which have no sting,--of
+the bird, if Helen listened to its note too long; of the flower, if
+Percival left Helen's side too quickly to tie up its drooping petals or
+refresh its dusty leaves. Close by the stir of the great city, with all
+its fret and chafe and storm of life, in the desolate garden of that
+sombre house, and under the withering eyes of relentless Crime, revived
+the Arcady of old,--the scene vocal to the reeds of idyllist and
+shepherd; and in the midst of the iron Tragedy, harmlessly and
+unconsciously arose the strain of the Pastoral Music.
+
+It would be a vain effort to describe the state of Lucretia's mind while
+she watched the progress of the affection she had favoured, and gazed on
+the spectacle of the fearless happiness she had promoted. The image of
+a felicity at once so great and so holy wore to her gloomy sight the
+aspect of a mocking Fury. It rose in contrast to her own ghastly and
+crime-stained life; it did not upbraid her conscience with guilt so
+loudly as it scoffed at her intellect for folly. These children, playing
+on the verge of life, how much more of life's true secret did they
+already know than she, with all her vast native powers and wasted realms
+of blackened and charred experience! For what had she studied, and
+schemed, and calculated, and toiled, and sinned? As a conqueror stricken
+unto death would render up all the regions vanquished by his sword for
+one drop of water to his burning lips, how gladly would she have given
+all the knowledge bought with blood and fire, to feel one moment as
+those children felt! Then, from out her silent and grim despair, stood
+forth, fierce and prominent, the great fiend, Revenge.
+
+By a monomania not uncommon to those who have made self the centre of
+being, Lucretia referred to her own sullen history of wrong and passion
+all that bore analogy to it, however distant. She had never been
+enabled, without an intolerable pang of hate and envy, to contemplate
+courtship and love in others. From the rudest shape to the most refined,
+that master-passion in the existence, at least of woman,--reminding her
+of her own brief episode of human tenderness and devotion,--opened every
+wound and wrung every fibre of a heart that, while crime had indurated
+it to most emotions, memory still left morbidly sensitive to one. But
+if tortured by the sight of love in those who had had no connection with
+her fate, who stood apart from her lurid orbit and were gazed upon only
+afar (as a lost soul, from the abyss, sees the gleam of angels' wings
+within some planet it never has explored), how ineffably more fierce
+and intolerable was the wrath that seized her when, in her haunted
+imagination, she saw all Susan's rapture at the vows of Mainwaring
+mantling in Helen's face! All that might have disarmed a heart as hard,
+but less diseased, less preoccupied by revenge, only irritated more the
+consuming hate of that inexorable spirit. Helen's seraphic purity,
+her exquisite, overflowing kindness, ever forgetting self, her airy
+cheerfulness, even her very moods of melancholy, calm and seemingly
+causeless as they were, perpetually galled and blistered that writhing,
+preternatural susceptibility which is formed by the consciousness of
+infamy, the dreary egotism of one cut off from the charities of the
+world, with whom all mirth is sardonic convulsion, all sadness rayless
+and unresigned despair.
+
+Of the two, Percival inspired her with feelings the most akin to
+humanity. For him, despite her bitter memories of his father, she felt
+something of compassion, and shrank from the touch of his frank hand in
+remorse. She had often need to whisper to herself that his life was an
+obstacle to the heritage of the son of whom, as we have seen, she was
+in search, and whom, indeed, she believed she had already found in John
+Ardworth; that it was not in wrath and in vengeance that this victim
+was to be swept into the grave, but as an indispensable sacrifice to a
+cherished object, a determined policy. As, in the studies of her youth,
+she had adopted the Machiavelism of ancient State-craft as a rule
+admissible in private life, so she seemed scarcely to admit as a crime
+that which was but the removal of a barrier between her aim and her
+end. Before she had become personally acquainted with Percival she had
+rejected all occasion to know him. She had suffered Varney to call upon
+him as the old protege of Sir Miles, and to wind into his intimacy,
+meaning to leave to her accomplice, when the hour should arrive, the
+dread task of destruction. This not from cowardice, for Gabriel had once
+rightly described her when he said that if she lived with shadows she
+could quell them, but simply because, more intellectually unsparing
+than constitutionally cruel (save where the old vindictive memories
+thoroughly unsexed her), this was a victim whose pangs she desired not
+to witness, over whose fate it was no luxury to gloat and revel. She
+wished not to see nor to know him living, only to learn that he was no
+more, and that Helen alone stood between Laughton and her son. Now that
+he had himself, as if with predestined feet, crossed her threshold, that
+he, like Helen, had delivered himself into her toils, the hideous guilt,
+before removed from her hands, became haunting, fronted her face to
+face, and filled her with a superstitious awe.
+
+Meanwhile, her outward manner to both her meditated victims, if moody
+and fitful at times, was not such as would have provoked suspicion even
+in less credulous hearts. From the first entry of Helen under her roof
+she had been formal and measured in her welcome,--kept her, as it were,
+aloof, and affected no prodigal superfluity of dissimulation; but she
+had never been positively harsh or unkind in word or in deed, and had
+coldly excused herself for the repulsiveness of her manner.
+
+"I am irritable," she said, "from long suffering, I am unsocial from
+habitual solitude; do not expect from me the fondness and warmth that
+should belong to our relationship. Do not harass yourself with vain
+solicitude for one whom all seeming attention but reminds more painfully
+of infirmity, and who, even thus stricken down, would be independent
+of all cares not bought and paid for. Be satisfied to live here in all
+reasonable liberty, to follow your own habits and caprices uncontrolled.
+Regard me but as a piece of necessary furniture. You can never displease
+me but when you notice that I live and suffer."
+
+If Helen wept bitterly at these hard words when first spoken, it was not
+with anger that her loving heart was so thrown back upon herself. On the
+contrary, she became inspired with a compassion so great that it
+took the character of reverence. She regarded this very coldness as a
+mournful dignity. She felt grateful that one who could thus dispense
+with, should yet have sought her. She had heard her mother say that
+she had been under great obligations to Lucretia; and now, when she
+was forbidden to repay them even by a kiss on those weary eyelids, a
+daughter's hand to that sleepless pillow; when she saw that the barrier
+first imposed was irremovable, that no time diminished the distance
+her aunt set between them, that the least approach to the tenderness of
+service beyond the most casual offices really seemed but to fret those
+excitable nerves, and fever the hand that she ventured timorously to
+clasp,--she retreated into herself with a sad amaze that increased her
+pity and heightened her respect. To her, love seemed so necessary a
+thing in the helplessness of human life, even when blessed with health
+and youth, that this rejection of all love in one so bowed and crippled,
+struck her imagination as something sublime in its dreary grandeur and
+stoic pride of independence. She regarded it as of old a tender
+and pious nun would have regarded the asceticism of some sanctified
+recluse,--as Theresa (had she lived in the same age) might have regarded
+Saint Simeon Stylites existing aloft from human sympathy on the roofless
+summit of his column of stone; and with this feeling she sought to
+inspire Percival. He had the heart to enter into her compassion, but not
+the imagination to sympathize with her reverence. Even the repugnant
+awe that he had first conceived for Madame Dalibard, so bold was he
+by temperament, he had long since cast off; he recognized only the
+moroseness and petulance of an habitual invalid, and shook playfully
+his glossy curls when Helen, with her sweet seriousness, insisted on his
+recognizing more.
+
+To this house few, indeed, were the visitors admitted. The Miverses,
+whom the benevolent officiousness of Mr. Fielden had originally sent
+thither to see their young kinswoman, now and then came to press Helen
+to join some party to the theatre or Vauxhall, or a picnic in Richmond
+Park; but when they found their overtures, which had at first been
+politely accepted by Madame Dalibard, were rejected, they gradually
+ceased their visits, wounded and indignant.
+
+Certain it was that Lucretia had at one time eagerly caught at their
+well-meant civilities to Helen,--now she as abruptly declined them. Why?
+It would be hard to plumb into all the black secrets of that heart. It
+would have been but natural to her, who shrank from dooming Helen to no
+worse calamity than a virgin's grave, to have designed to throw her into
+such uncongenial guidance, amidst all the manifold temptations of the
+corrupt city,--to have suffered her to be seen and to be ensnared by
+those gallants ever on the watch for defenceless beauty; and to contrast
+with their elegance of mien and fatal flatteries the grossness of the
+companions selected for her, and the unloving discomfort of the home
+into which she had been thrown. But now that St. John had appeared,
+that Helen's heart and fancy were steeled alike against more dangerous
+temptation, the object to be obtained from the pressing courtesy of Mrs.
+Mivers existed no more. The vengeance flowed into other channels.
+
+The only other visitors at the house were John Ardworth and Gabriel
+Varney.
+
+Madame Dalibard watched vigilantly the countenance and manner of
+Ardworth when, after presenting him to Percival, she whispered: "I am
+glad you assured me as to your sentiments for Helen. She had found there
+the lover you wished for her,--'gay and handsome as herself.'"
+
+And in the sudden paleness that overspread Ardworth's face, in his
+compressed lips and convulsive start, she read with unspeakable rage the
+untold secret of his heart, till the rage gave way to complacency at the
+thought that the last insult to her wrongs was spared her,--that her son
+(as son she believed he was) could not now, at least, be the successful
+suitor of her loathed sister's loathed child. Her discovery, perhaps,
+confirmed her in her countenance to Percival's progressive wooing, and
+half reconciled her to the pangs it inflicted on herself.
+
+At the first introduction Ardworth had scarcely glanced at Percival. He
+regarded him but as the sleek flutterer in the sunshine of fortune.
+And for the idle, the gay, the fair, the well-dressed and wealthy, the
+sturdy workman of his own rough way felt something of the uncharitable
+disdain which the laborious have-nots too usually entertain for the
+prosperous haves. But the moment the unwelcome intelligence of Madame
+Dalibard was conveyed to him, the smooth-faced boy swelled into dignity
+and importance.
+
+Yet it was not merely as a rival that that strong, manly heart, after
+the first natural agony, regarded Percival. No, he looked upon him less
+with anger than with interest,--as the one in whom Helen's happiness was
+henceforth to be invested. And to Madame Dalibard's astonishment,--for
+this nature was wholly new to her experience,--she saw him, even in
+that first interview, composing his rough face to smiles, smoothing his
+bluff, imperious accents into courtesy, listening patiently, watching
+benignly, and at last thrusting his large hand frankly forth, griping
+Percival's slender fingers in his own; and then, with an indistinct
+chuckle that seemed half laugh and half groan, as if he did not dare to
+trust himself further, he made his wonted unceremonious nod, and strode
+hurriedly from the room.
+
+But he came again and again, almost daily, for about a fortnight.
+Sometimes, without entering the house, he would join the young people in
+the garden, assist them with awkward hands in their playful work on the
+garden, or sit with them in the ivied bower; and warming more and more
+each time he came, talk at last with the cordial frankness of an elder
+brother. There was no disguise in this; he began to love Percival,--what
+would seem more strange to the superficial, to admire him. Genius has a
+quick perception of the moral qualities; genius, which, differing
+thus from mere talent, is more allied to the heart than to the head,
+sympathizes genially with goodness. Ardworth respected that young,
+ingenuous, unpolluted mind; he himself felt better and purer in its
+atmosphere. Much of the affection he cherished for Helen passed thus
+beautifully and nobly into his sentiments for the one whom Helen not
+unworthily preferred. And they grew so fond of him,--as the young and
+gentle ever will grow fond of genius, however rough, once admitted to
+its companionship!
+
+Percival by this time had recalled to his mind where he had first seen
+that strong-featured, dark-browed countenance, and he gayly reminded
+Ardworth of his discourtesy, on the brow of the hill which commanded the
+view of London. That reminiscence made his new friend writhe; for then,
+amidst all his ambitious visions of the future, he had seen Helen in the
+distance,--the reward of every labour, the fairest star in his horizon.
+But he strove stoutly against the regret of the illusion lost; the
+vivendi causae were left him still, and for the nymph that had glided
+from his clasp, he clung at least to the laurel that was left in her
+place. In the folds of his robust fortitude Ardworth thus wrapped his
+secret. Neither of his young playmates suspected it. He would have
+disdained himself if he had so poisoned their pleasure. That he
+suffered when alone, much and bitterly, is not to be denied; but in that
+masculine and complete being, Love took but its legitimate rank amidst
+the passions and cares of man. It soured no existence, it broke no
+heart; the wind swept some blossoms from the bough, and tossed wildly
+the agitated branches from root to summit, but the trunk stood firm.
+
+In some of these visits to Madame Dalibard's, Ardworth renewed with
+her the more private conversation which had so unsettled his past
+convictions as to his birth, and so disturbed the calm, strong currents
+of his mind. He was chiefly anxious to learn what conjectures Madame
+Dalibard had formed as to his parentage, and what ground there was for
+belief that he was near in blood to herself, or that he was born to a
+station less dependent on continuous exertion; but on these points the
+dark sibyl preserved an obstinate silence. She was satisfied with the
+hints she had already thrown out, and absolutely refused to say more
+till better authorized by the inquiries she had set on foot. Artfully
+she turned from these topics of closer and more household interest to
+those on which she had previously insisted, connected with the general
+knowledge of mankind, and the complicated science of practical life.
+To fire his genius, wing his energies, inflame his ambition above that
+slow, laborious drudgery to which he had linked the chances of his
+career, and which her fiery and rapid intellect was wholly unable
+to comprehend--save as a waste of life for uncertain and distant
+objects--became her task. And she saw with delight that Ardworth
+listened to her more assentingly than he had done at first. In truth,
+the pain shut within his heart, the conflict waged keenly between his
+reason and his passion, unfitted him for the time for mere mechanical
+employment, in which his genius could afford him no consolation. Now,
+genius is given to man, not only to enlighten others, but to comfort
+as well as to elevate himself. Thus, in all the sorrows of actual
+existence, the man is doubly inclined to turn to his genius for
+distraction. Harassed in this world of action, he knocks at the gate of
+that world of idea or fancy which he is privileged to enter; he escapes
+from the clay to the spirit. And rarely, till some great grief comes,
+does the man in whom the celestial fire is lodged know all the gift of
+which he is possessed. At last Ardworth's visits ceased abruptly. He
+shut himself up once more in his chambers; but the law books were laid
+aside.
+
+Varney, who generally contrived to call when Ardworth was not there,
+seldom interrupted the lovers in their little paradise of the garden;
+but he took occasion to ripen and cement his intimacy with Percival.
+Sometimes he walked or (if St. John had his cabriolet) drove home and
+dined with him, tete-a-tete, in Curzon Street; and as he made Helen his
+chief subject of conversation, Percival could not but esteem him amongst
+the most agreeable of men. With Helen, when Percival was not there,
+Varney held some secret conferences,--secret even from Percival. Two or
+three times, before the hour in which Percival was accustomed to come,
+they had been out together; and Helen's face looked more cheerful than
+usual on their return. It was not surprising that Gabriel Varney, so
+displeasing to a man like Ardworth, should have won little less favour
+with Helen than with Percival; for, to say nothing of an ease and
+suavity of manner which stole into the confidence of those in whom to
+confide was a natural propensity, his various acquisitions and talents,
+imposing from the surface over which they spread, and the glitter
+which they made, had an inevitable effect upon a mind so susceptible
+as Helen's to admiration for art and respect for knowledge. But what
+chiefly conciliated her to Varney, whom she regarded, moreover, as her
+aunt's most intimate friend, was that she was persuaded he was
+unhappy, and wronged by the world of fortune. Varney had a habit of so
+representing himself,--of dwelling with a bitter eloquence, which
+his natural malignity made forcible, on the injustice of the world to
+superior intellect. He was a great accuser of Fate. It is the illogical
+weakness of some evil natures to lay all their crimes, and the
+consequences of crime, upon Destiny. There was a heat, a vigour, a rush
+of words, and a readiness of strong, if trite, imagery in what Varney
+said that deceived the young into the monstrous error that he was an
+enthusiast,--misanthropical, perhaps, but only so from enthusiasm. How
+could Helen, whose slightest thought, when a star broke forth from the
+cloud, or a bird sung suddenly from the copse, had more of wisdom and
+of poetry than all Varney's gaudy and painted seemings ever could even
+mimic,--how could she be so deceived? Yet so it was. Here stood a man
+whose youth she supposed had been devoted to refined and elevating
+pursuits, gifted, neglected, disappointed, solitary, and unhappy. She
+saw little beyond. You had but to touch her pity to win her interest
+and to excite her trust. Of anything further, even had Percival never
+existed, she could not have dreamed. It was because a secret and
+undefinable repugnance, in the midst of pity, trust, and friendship, put
+Varney altogether out of the light of a possible lover, that all those
+sentiments were so easily kindled. This repugnance arose not from
+the disparity between their years; it was rather that nameless
+uncongeniality which does not forbid friendship, but is irreconcilable
+with love. To do Varney justice, he never offered to reconcile the two.
+Not for love did he secretly confer with Helen; not for love did his
+heart beat against the hand which reposed so carelessly on his murderous
+arm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE RATTLE OF THE SNAKE.
+
+The progress of affection between natures like those of Percival and
+Helen, favoured by free and constant intercourse, was naturally rapid.
+It was scarcely five weeks from the day he had first seen Helen, and he
+already regarded her as his plighted bride. During the earlier days of
+his courtship, Percival, enamoured and absorbed for the first time
+in his life, did not hasten to make his mother the confidante of his
+happiness. He had written but twice; and though he said briefly, in the
+second letter, that he had discovered two relations, both interesting
+and one charming, he had deferred naming them or entering into
+detail. This not alone from that indescribable coyness which all have
+experienced in addressing even those with whom they are most intimate,
+in the early, half-unrevealed, and mystic emotions of first love, but
+because Lady Diary's letters had been so full of her sister's declining
+health, of her own anxieties and fears, that he had shrunk from giving
+her a new subject of anxiety; and a confidence full of hope and joy
+seemed to him unfeeling and unseasonable. He knew how necessarily uneasy
+and restless an avowal that his heart was seriously engaged to one she
+had never seen, would make that tender mother, and that his confession
+would rather add to her cares than produce sympathy with his transports.
+But now, feeling impatient for his mother's assent to the formal
+proposals which had become due to Madame Dalibard and Helen, and taking
+advantage of the letter last received from her, which gave more cheering
+accounts of her sister, and expressed curiosity for further explanation
+as to his half disclosure, he wrote at length, and cleared his breast of
+all its secrets. It was the same day in which he wrote this confession
+and pleaded his cause that we accompany him to the house of his sweet
+mistress, and leave him by her side, in the accustomed garden. Within,
+Madame Dalibard, whose chair was set by the window, bent over certain
+letters, which she took, one by one, from her desk and read slowly,
+lifting her eyes from time to time and glancing towards the young people
+as they walked, hand in hand, round the small demesnes, now hid by the
+fading foliage, now emerging into view. Those letters were the early
+love-epistles of William Mainwaring. She had not recurred to them for
+years. Perhaps she now felt that food necessary to the sustainment of
+her fiendish designs. It was a strange spectacle to see this being, so
+full of vital energy, mobile and restless as a serpent, condemned to
+that helpless decrepitude, chained to the uneasy seat, not as in the
+resigned and passive imbecility of extreme age, but rather as one whom
+in the prime of life the rack has broken, leaving the limbs inert,
+the mind active, the form as one dead, the heart with superabundant
+vigour,--a cripple's impotence and a Titan's will! What, in that dreary
+imprisonment and amidst the silence she habitually preserved, passed
+through the caverns of that breast, one can no more conjecture than
+one can count the blasts that sweep and rage through the hollows of
+impenetrable rock, or the elements that conflict in the bosom of the
+volcano, everlastingly at work. She had read and replaced the letters,
+and leaning her cheek on her hand, was gazing vacantly on the wall, when
+Varney intruded on that dismal solitude.
+
+He closed the door after him with more than usual care; and drawing a
+seat close to Lucretia, said, "Belle-mere, the time has arrived for you
+to act; my part is wellnigh closed."
+
+"Ay," said Lucretia, wearily, "what is the news you bring?"
+
+"First," replied Varney, and as he spoke, he shut the window, as if
+his whisper could possibly be heard without,--"first, all this business
+connected with Helen is at length arranged. You know when, agreeably to
+your permission, I first suggested to her, as it were casually, that you
+were so reduced in fortune that I trembled to regard your future; that
+you had years ago sacrificed nearly half your pecuniary resources to
+maintain her parents,--she of herself reminded me that she was entitled,
+when of age, to a sum far exceeding all her wants, and--"
+
+"That I might be a pensioner on the child of William Mainwaring and
+Susan Mivers," interrupted Lucretia. "I know that, and thank her not.
+Pass on."
+
+"And you know, too, that in the course of my conversation with the girl
+I let out also incidentally that, even so, you were dependent on the
+chances of her life; that if she died (and youth itself is mortal)
+before she was of age, the sum left her by her grandfather would revert
+to her father's family; and so, by hints, I drew her on to ask if there
+was no mode by which, in case of her death, she might insure subsistence
+to you. So that you see the whole scheme was made at her own prompting.
+I did but, as a man of business, suggest the means,--an insurance on her
+life."
+
+"Varney, these details are hateful. I do not doubt that you have done
+all to forestall inquiry and elude risk. The girl has insured her life
+to the amount of her fortune?"
+
+"To that amount only? Pooh! Her death will buy more than that. As no one
+single office will insure for more than 5,000 pounds, and as it was easy
+to persuade her that such offices were liable to failure, and that it
+was usual to insure in several, and for a larger amount than the sum
+desired, I got her to enter herself at three of the principal offices.
+The amount paid to us on her death will be 15,000 pounds. It will be
+paid (and here I have followed the best legal advice) in trust to me for
+your benefit. Hence, therefore, even if our researches fail us, if no
+son of yours can be found, with sufficient evidence to prove, against
+the keen interests and bought advocates of heirs-at-law, the right to
+Laughton, this girl will repay us well, will replace what I have
+taken, at the risk of my neck, perhaps,--certainly at the risk of the
+hulks,--from the capital of my uncle's legacy, will refund what we have
+spent on the inquiry; and the residue will secure to you an independence
+sufficing for your wants almost for life, and to me what will purchase
+with economy," and Varney smiled, "a year or so of a gentleman's idle
+pleasures. Are you satisfied thus far?"
+
+"She will die happy and innocent," muttered Lucretia, with the growl of
+demoniac disappointment.
+
+"Will you wait, then, till my forgery is detected, and I have no power
+to buy the silence of the trustees,--wait till I am in prison, and on
+a trial for life and death? Reflect, every day, every hour, of delay
+is fraught with peril. But if my safety is nothing compared to the
+refinement of your revenge, will you wait till Helen marries Percival
+St. John? You start! But can you suppose that this innocent love-play
+will not pass rapidly to its denouement? It is but yesterday that
+Percival confided to me that he should write this very day to his
+mother, and communicate all his feelings and his hopes; that he waited
+but her assent to propose formally for Helen. Now one of two things must
+happen. Either this mother, haughty and vain as lady-mothers mostly
+are, may refuse consent to her son's marriage with the daughter of
+a disgraced banker and the niece of that Lucretia Dalibard whom her
+husband would not admit beneath his roof--"
+
+"Hold, sir!" exclaimed Lucretia, haughtily; and amidst all the passions
+that darkened her countenance and degraded her soul, some flash of her
+ancestral spirit shot across her brow. But it passed quickly, and she
+added, with fierce composure, "You are right; go on!"
+
+"Either-and pardon me for an insult that comes not from me--either
+this will be the case: Lady Mary St. John will hasten back in alarm
+to London; she exercises extraordinary control over her son; she
+may withdraw him from us altogether, from me as well as you, and the
+occasion now presented to us may be lost (who knows?) forever,--or she
+may be a weak and fond woman; may be detained in Italy by her sister's
+illness; may be anxious that the last lineal descendant of the St. Johns
+should marry betimes, and, moved by her darling's prayers, may consent
+at once to the union. Or a third course, which Percival thinks the most
+probable, and which, though most unwelcome to us of all, I had wellnigh
+forgotten, may be adopted. She may come to England, and in order to
+judge her son's choice with her own eyes, may withdraw Helen from your
+roof to hers. At all events, delays are dangerous,--dangerous, putting
+aside my personal interest, and regarding only your own object,--may
+bring to our acts new and searching eyes; may cut us off from the
+habitual presence either of Percival or Helen, or both; or surround
+them, at the first breath of illness, with prying friends and formidable
+precautions. The birds now are in our hands. Why then open the cage and
+bid them fly, in order to spread the net? This morning all the final
+documents with the Insurance Companies are completed. It remains for me
+but to pay the first quarterly premiums. For that I think I am prepared,
+without drawing further on your hoards or my own scanty resources, which
+Grabman will take care to drain fast enough."
+
+"And Percival St. John?" said Madame Dalibard. "We want no idle
+sacrifices. If my son be not found, we need not that boy's ghost amongst
+those who haunt us."
+
+"Surely not," said Varney; "and for my part, he may be more useful to
+me alive than dead. There is no insurance on his life, and a rich friend
+(credulous greenhorn that he is!) is scarcely of that flock of geese
+which it were wise to slay from the mere hope of a golden egg. Percival
+St. John is your victim, not mine; not till you give the order would I
+lift a finger to harm him."
+
+"Yes, let him live, unless my son be found to me," said Madame Dalibard,
+almost exultingly,--"let him live to forget yon fair-faced fool, leaning
+now, see you, so delightedly on his arm, and fancying eternity in
+the hollow vows of love; let him live to wrong and abandon her by
+forgetfulness, though even in the grave; to laugh at his boyish
+dreams,--to sully her memory in the arms of harlots! Oh, if the dead can
+suffer, let him live, that she may feel beyond the grave his inconstancy
+and his fall. Methinks that that thought will comfort me if Vincent be
+no more, and I stand childless in the world!"
+
+"It is so settled, then," said Varney, ever ready to clinch the business
+that promised gold, and relieve his apprehensions of the detection
+of his fraud. "And now to your noiseless hands, as soon as may be, I
+consign the girl; she has lived long enough!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. LOVE AND INNOCENCE.
+
+During this conference between these execrable and ravening birds of
+night and prey, Helen and her boy-lover were thus conversing in
+the garden; while the autumn sun--for it was in the second week of
+October--broke pleasantly through the yellowing leaves of the tranquil
+shrubs, and the flowers, which should have died with the gone summer,
+still fresh by tender care, despite the lateness of the season, smiled
+gratefully as their light footsteps passed.
+
+"Yes, Helen," said Percival,--"yes, you will love my mother, for she is
+one of those people who seem to attract love, as if it were a property
+belonging to them. Even my dog Beau (you know how fond Beau is of me!)
+always nestles at her feet when we are at home. I own she has pride,
+but it is a pride that never offended any one. You know there are some
+flowers that we call proud. The pride of the flower is not more harmless
+than my mother's. But perhaps pride is not the right word,--it is rather
+the aversion to anything low or mean, the admiration for everything pure
+and high. Ah, how that very pride--if pride it be--will make her love
+you, my Helen!"
+
+"You need not tell me," said Helen, smiling seriously, "that I shall
+love your mother,--I love her already; nay, from the first moment you
+said you had a mother, my heart leaped to her. Your mother,--if ever
+you are really jealous, it must be of her! But that she should love
+me,--that is what I doubt and fear. For if you were my brother,
+Percival, I should be so ambitious for you. A nymph must rise from the
+stream, a sylphid from the rose, before I could allow another to steal
+you from my side. And if I think I should feel this only as your sister,
+what can be precious enough to satisfy a mother?"
+
+"You, and you only," answered Percival, with his blithesome
+laugh,--"you, my sweet Helen, much better than nymph or sylphid, about
+whom, between ourselves, I never cared three straws, even in a poem. How
+pleased you will be with Laughton! Do you know, I was lying awake all
+last night to consider what room you would like best for your own? And
+at last I have decided. Come, listen,--it opens from the music-gallery
+that overhangs the hall. From the window you overlook the southern side
+of the park, and catch a view of the lake beyond. There are two niches
+in the wall,--one for your piano, one for your favourite books. It
+is just large enough to hold four persons with ease,--our mother and
+myself, your aunt, whom by that time we shall have petted into good
+humour; and if we can coax Ardworth there,--the best good fellow that
+ever lived,--I think our party will be complete. By the way, I am uneasy
+about Ardworth, it is so long since we have seen him; I have called
+three times,--nay, five,--but his odd-looking clerk always swears he is
+not at home. Tell me, Helen, now you know him so well,--tell me how I
+can serve him? You know, I am so terribly rich (at least, I shall be
+in a month or two), I can never get through my money, unless my friends
+will help me. And is it not shocking that that noble fellow should be
+so poor, and yet suffer me to call him 'friend,' as if in friendship one
+man should want everything, and the other nothing? Still, I don't know
+how to venture to propose. Come, you understand me, Helen; let us lay
+our wise heads together and make him well off, in spite of himself."
+
+It was in this loose boyish talk of Percival that he had found the way,
+not only to Helen's heart, but to her soul. For in this she (grand,
+undeveloped poetess!) recognized a nobler poetry than we chain to
+rhythm,--the poetry of generous deeds. She yearned to kiss the warm hand
+she held, and drew nearer to his side as she answered: "And sometimes,
+dear, dear Percival, you wonder why I would rather listen to you than to
+all Mr. Varney's bitter eloquence, or even to my dear cousin's aspiring
+ambition. They talk well, but it is of themselves; while you--"
+
+Percival blushed, and checked her.
+
+"Well," she said,--"well, to your question. Alas! you know little of
+my cousin if you think all our arts could decoy him out of his rugged
+independence; and much as I love him, I could not wish it. But do not
+fear for him; he is one of those who are born to succeed, and without
+help."
+
+"How do you know that, pretty prophetess?" said Percival, with the
+superior air of manhood. "I have seen more of the world than you have,
+and I cannot see why Ardworth should succeed, as you call it; or, if
+so, why he should succeed less if he swung his hammock in a better berth
+than that hole in Gray's Inn, and would just let me keep him a cab and
+groom."
+
+Had Percival talked of keeping John Ardworth an elephant and a palaquin,
+Helen could not have been more amused. She clapped her little hands in
+a delight that provoked Percival, and laughed out loud. Then, seeing her
+boy-lover's lip pouted petulantly, and his brow was overcast, she said,
+more seriously,--
+
+"Do you not know what it is to feel convinced of something which you
+cannot explain? Well, I feel this as to my cousin's fame and fortunes.
+Surely, too, you must feel it, you scarce know why, when he speaks of
+that future which seems so dim and so far to me, as of something that
+belonged to him."
+
+"Very true, Helen," said Percival; "he lays it out like the map of his
+estate. One can't laugh when he says so carelessly: 'At such an age I
+shall lead my circuit; at such an age I shall be rich; at such an age
+I shall enter parliament; and beyond that I shall look as yet--no
+farther.' And, poor fellow, then he will be forty-three! And in the mean
+while to suffer such privations!"
+
+"There are no privations to one who lives in the future," said Helen,
+with that noble intuition into lofty natures which at times flashed from
+her childish simplicity, foreshadowing what, if Heaven spare her life,
+her maturer intellect may develop; "for Ardworth there is no such thing
+as poverty. He is as rich in his hopes as we are in--" She stopped
+short, blushed, and continued, with downcast looks: "As well might you
+pity me in these walks, so dreary without you. I do not live in them, I
+live in my thoughts of you."
+
+Her voice trembled with emotion in those last words. She slid from
+Percival's arm, and timidly sat down (and he beside her) on a little
+mound under the single chestnut-tree, that threw its shade over the
+garden.
+
+Both were silent for some moments,--Percival, with grateful ecstasy;
+Helen, with one of those sudden fits of mysterious melancholy to which
+her nature was so subjected.
+
+He was the first to speak. "Helen," he said gravely, "since I have known
+you, I feel as if life were a more solemn thing than I ever regarded it
+before. It seems to me as if a new and more arduous duty were added to
+those for which I was prepared,--a duty, Helen, to become worthy of
+you! Will you smile? No, you will not smile if I say I have had my
+brief moments of ambition. Sometimes as a boy, with Plutarch in my hand,
+stretched idly under the old cedar-trees at Laughton; sometimes as a
+sailor, when, becalmed on the Atlantic, and my ears freshly filled with
+tales of Collingwood and Nelson, I stole from my comrades and leaned
+musingly over the boundless sea. But when this ample heritage passed to
+me, when I had no more my own fortunes to make, my own rank to build up,
+such dreams became less and less frequent. Is it not true that wealth
+makes us contented to be obscure? Yes; I understand, while I speak, why
+poverty itself befriends, not cripples, Ardworth's energies. But since
+I have known you, dearest Helen, those dreams return more vividly than
+ever. He who claims you should be--must be--something nobler than the
+crowd. Helen,"--and he rose by an irresistible and restless impulse,--"I
+shall not be contented till you are as proud of your choice as I of
+mine!"
+
+It seemed, as Percival spoke and looked, as if boyhood were cast from
+him forever. The unusual weight and gravity of his words, to which his
+tone gave even eloquence; the steady flash of his dark eyes; his erect,
+elastic form,--all had the dignity of man. Helen gazed on him silently,
+and with a heart so full that words would not come, and tears overflowed
+instead.
+
+That sight sobered him at once; he knelt down beside her, threw his arms
+around her,--it was his first embrace,--and kissed the tears away.
+
+"How have I distressed you? Why do you weep?"
+
+"Let me weep on, Percival, dear Percival! These tears are like
+prayers,--they speak to Heaven--and of you!"
+
+A step came noiselessly over the grass, and between the lovers and the
+sunlight stood Gabriel Varney.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. SUDDEN CELEBRITY AND PATIENT HOPE.
+
+Percival was unusually gloomy and abstracted in his way to town that
+day, though Varney was his companion, and in the full play of those
+animal spirits which he owed to his unrivalled physical organization and
+the obtuseness of his conscience. Seeing, at length, that his gayety
+did not communicate itself to Percival, he paused, and looked at him
+suspiciously. A falling leaf startles the steed, and a shadow the guilty
+man.
+
+"You are sad, Percival," he said inquiringly. "What has disturbed you?"
+
+"It is nothing,--or, at least, would seem nothing to you," answered
+Percival, with an effort to smile, "for I have heard you laugh at the
+doctrine of presentiments. We sailors are more superstitious."
+
+"What presentiment can you possibly entertain?" asked Varney, more
+anxiously than Percival could have anticipated.
+
+"Presentiments are not so easily defined, Varney. But, in truth, poor
+Helen has infected me. Have you not remarked that, gay as she habitually
+is, some shadow comes over her so suddenly that one cannot trace the
+cause?"
+
+"My dear Percival," said Varney, after a short pause, "what you say does
+not surprise me. It would be false kindness to conceal from you that I
+have heard Madame Dalibard say that her mother was, when about her
+age, threatened with consumptive symptoms; but she lived many years
+afterwards. Nay, nay, rally yourself; Helen's appearance, despite the
+extreme purity of her complexion, is not that of one threatened by the
+terrible malady of our climate. The young are often haunted with the
+idea of early death. As we grow older, that thought is less cherished;
+in youth it is a sort of luxury. To this mournful idea (which you see
+you have remarked as well as I) we must attribute not only Helen's
+occasional melancholy, but a generosity of forethought which I cannot
+deny myself the pleasure of communicating to you, though her delicacy
+would be shocked at my indiscretion. You know how helpless her aunt is.
+Well, Helen, who is entitled, when of age, to a moderate competence, has
+persuaded me to insure her life and accept a trust to hold the moneys
+(if ever unhappily due) for the benefit of my mother-in-law, so that
+Madame Dalibard may not be left destitute if her niece die before she is
+twenty-one. How like Helen, is it not?"
+
+Percival was too overcome to answer.
+
+Varney resumed: "I entreat you not to mention this to Helen; it would
+offend her modesty to have the secret of her good deeds thus betrayed by
+one to whom alone she confided them. I could not resist her entreaties,
+though, entre nous, it cripples me not a little to advance for her the
+necessary sums for the premiums. Apropos, this brings me to a point on
+which I feel, as the vulgar idiom goes, 'very awkward,'--as I always do
+in these confounded money-matters. But you were good enough to ask me
+to paint you a couple of pictures for Laughton. Now, if you could let
+me have some portion of the sum, whatever it be (for I don't price my
+paintings to you), it would very much oblige me."
+
+Percival turned away his face as he wrung Varney's hand, and
+muttered, with a choked voice: "Let me have my share in Helen's divine
+forethought. Good Heavens! she, so young, to look thus beyond the grave,
+always for others--for others!"
+
+Callous as the wretch was, Percival's emotion and his proposal struck
+Varney with a sentiment like compunction. He had designed to appropriate
+the lover's gold as it was now offered; but that Percival himself should
+propose it, blind to the grave to which that gold paved the way, was a
+horror not counted in those to which his fell cupidity and his goading
+apprehensions had familiarized his conscience.
+
+"No," he said, with one of those wayward scruples to which the blackest
+criminals are sometimes susceptible,--"no. I have promised Helen to
+regard this as a loan to her, which she is to repay me when of age. What
+you may advance me is for the pictures. I have a right to do as I please
+with what is bought by my own labour. And the subjects of the pictures,
+what shall they be?"
+
+"For one picture try and recall Helen's aspect and attitude when you
+came to us in the garden, and entitle your subject: 'The Foreboding.'"
+
+"Hem!" said Varney, hesitatingly. "And the other subject?"
+
+"Wait for that till the joy-bells at Laughton have welcomed a bride, and
+then--and then, Varney," added Percival, with something of his natural
+joyous smile, "you must take the expression as you find it. Once under
+my care, and, please Heaven, the one picture shall laughingly upbraid
+the other!"
+
+As this was said, the cabriolet stopped at Percival's door. Varney dined
+with him that day; and if the conversation flagged, it did not revert to
+the subject which had so darkened the bright spirits of the host, and so
+tried the hypocrisy of the guest. When Varney left, which he did as
+soon as the dinner was concluded, Percival silently put a check into
+his hands, to a greater amount than Varney had anticipated even from his
+generosity.
+
+"This is for four pictures, not two," he said, shaking his head; and
+then, with his characteristic conceit, he added: "Well, some years hence
+the world shall not call them overpaid. Adieu, my Medici; a dozen such
+men, and Art would revive in England."
+
+When he was left alone, Percival sat down, and leaning his face on both
+hands, gave way to the gloom which his native manliness and the delicacy
+that belongs to true affection had made him struggle not to indulge in
+the presence of another. Never had he so loved Helen as in that hour;
+never had he so intimately and intensely felt her matchless worth.
+The image of her unselfish, quiet, melancholy consideration for that
+austere, uncaressing, unsympathizing relation, under whose shade her
+young heart must have withered, seemed to him filled with a celestial
+pathos. And he almost hated Varney that the cynic painter could have
+talked of it with that business-like phlegm. The evening deepened; the
+tranquil street grew still; the air seemed close; the solitude oppressed
+him; he rose abruptly, seized his hat, and went forth slowly, and still
+with a heavy heart.
+
+As he entered Piccadilly, on the broad step of that house successively
+inhabited by the Duke of Queensberry and Lord Hertford,--on the step of
+that mansion up which so many footsteps light with wanton pleasure have
+gayly trod, Percival's eye fell upon a wretched, squalid, ragged object,
+doubled up, as it were, in that last despondency which has ceased to
+beg, that has no care to steal, that has no wish to live. Percival
+halted, and touched the outcast.
+
+"What is the matter, my poor fellow? Take care; the policeman will not
+suffer you to rest here. Come, cheer up, I say! There is something to
+find you a better lodging!"
+
+The silver fell unheeded on the stones. The thing of rags did not even
+raise its head, but a low, broken voice muttered,--
+
+"It be too late now; let 'em take me to prison, let 'em send me 'cross
+the sea to Buttany, let 'em hang me, if they please. I be 's good for
+nothin' now,--nothin'!"
+
+Altered as the voice was, it struck Percival as familiar. He looked down
+and caught a view of the drooping face. "Up, man, up!" he said cheerily.
+"See, Providence sends you an old friend in need, to teach you never to
+despair again."
+
+The hearty accent, more than the words, touched and aroused the poor
+creature. He rose mechanically, and a sickly, grateful smile passed over
+his wasted features as he recognized St. John.
+
+"Come! how is this? I have always understood that to keep a crossing was
+a flourishing trade nowadays."
+
+"I 'as no crossin'. I 'as sold her!" groaned Beck. "I be's good for
+nothin' now but to cadge about the streets, and steal, and filch, and
+hang like the rest on us! Thank you kindly, sir," and Beck pulled his
+forelock, "but, please your honour, I vould rather make an ind on it!"
+
+"Pooh, pooh! didn't I tell you when you wanted a friend to come to me?
+Why did you doubt me, foolish fellow? Pick up those shillings; get a
+bed and a supper. Come and see me to-morrow at nine o'clock; you know
+where,--the same house in Curzon Street; you shall tell me then your
+whole story, and it shall go hard but I'll buy you another crossing, or
+get you something just as good."
+
+Poor Beck swayed a moment or two on his slender legs like a drunken
+man, and then, suddenly falling on his knees, he kissed the hem of his
+benefactor's garment, and fairly wept. Those tears relieved him; they
+seemed to wash the drought of despair from his heart.
+
+"Hush, hush! or we shall have a crowd round us. You'll not forget, my
+poor friend, No.---- Curzon Street,--nine to-morrow. Make haste now, and
+get food and rest; you look, indeed, as if you wanted them. Ah, would to
+Heaven all the poverty in this huge city stood here in thy person, and
+we could aid it as easily as I can thee!"
+
+Percival had moved on as he said those last words, and looking back, he
+had the satisfaction to see that Beck was slowly crawling after him,
+and had escaped the grim question of a very portly policeman, who had
+no doubt expressed a natural indignation at the audacity of so ragged a
+skeleton not keeping itself respectably at home in its churchyard.
+
+Entering one of the clubs in St. James's Street, Percival found a small
+knot of politicians in eager conversation respecting a new book which
+had been published but a day or two before, but which had already seized
+the public attention with that strong grasp which constitutes always an
+era in an author's life, sometimes an epoch in a nation's literature.
+The newspapers were full of extracts from the work,--the gossips, of
+conjecture as to the authorship. We need scarcely say that a book which
+makes this kind of sensation must hit some popular feeling of the hour,
+supply some popular want. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, therefore,
+its character is political; it was so in the present instance. It may be
+remembered that that year parliament sat during great part of the month
+of October, that it was the year in which the Reform Bill was rejected
+by the House of Lords, and that public feeling in our time had never
+been so keenly excited. This work appeared during the short interval
+between the rejection of the Bill and the prorogation of parliament
+[Parliament was prorogued October 20th; the bill rejected by the Lords,
+October 8th]. And what made it more remarkable was, that while stamped
+with the passion of the time, there was a weight of calm and stern
+reasoning embodied in its vigorous periods, which gave to the arguments
+of the advocate something of the impartiality of the judge. Unusually
+abstracted and unsocial,--for, despite his youth and that peculiar
+bashfulness before noticed, he was generally alive enough to all that
+passed around him,--Percival paid little attention to the comments that
+circulated round the easy-chairs in his vicinity, till a subordinate in
+the administration, with whom he was slightly acquainted, pushed a small
+volume towards him and said,--"You have seen this, of course, St. John?
+Ten to one you do not guess the author. It is certainly not B----m,
+though the Lord Chancellor has energy enough for anything. R---- says it
+has a touch of S----r."
+
+"Could M----y have written it?" asked a young member of parliament,
+timidly.
+
+"M----y! Very like his matchless style, to be sure! You can have read
+very little of M----y, I should think," said the subordinate, with the
+true sneer of an official and a critic.
+
+The young member could have slunk into a nutshell. Percival, with very
+languid interest, glanced over the volume. But despite his mood, and his
+moderate affection for political writings, the passage he opened upon
+struck and seized him unawares. Though the sneer of the official was
+just, and the style was not comparable to M----y's (whose is?), still,
+the steady rush of strong words, strong with strong thoughts, heaped
+massively together, showed the ease of genius and the gravity of
+thought. The absence of all effeminate glitter, the iron grapple with
+the pith and substance of the argument opposed, seemed familiar to
+Percival. He thought he heard the deep bass of John Ardworth's earnest
+voice when some truth roused his advocacy, or some falsehood provoked
+his wrath. He put down the book, bewildered. Could it be the obscure,
+briefless lawyer in Gray's Inn (that very morning the object of
+his young pity) who was thus lifted into fame? He smiled at his own
+credulity. But he listened with more attention to the enthusiastic
+praises that circled round, and the various guesses which accompanied
+them. Soon, however, his former gloom returned,--the Babel began to
+chafe and weary him. He rose, and went forth again into the air. He
+strolled on without purpose, but mechanically, into the street where he
+had first seen Helen. He paused a few moments under the colonnade which
+faced Beck's old deserted crossing. His pause attracted the notice of
+one of the unhappy beings whom we suffer to pollute our streets and rot
+in our hospitals. She approached and spoke to him,--to him whose heart
+was so full of Helen! He shuddered, and strode on. At length he paused
+before the twin towers of Westminster Abbey, on which the moon rested in
+solemn splendour; and in that space one man only shared his solitude. A
+figure with folded arms leaned against the iron rails near the statue
+of Canning, and his gaze comprehended in one view the walls of the
+Parliament, in which all passions wage their war, and the glorious
+abbey, which gives a Walhalla to the great. The utter stillness of the
+figure, so in unison with the stillness of the scene, had upon Percival
+more effect than would have been produced by the most clamorous crowd.
+He looked round curiously as he passed, and uttered an exclamation as he
+recognized John Ardworth.
+
+"You, Percival!" said Ardworth. "A strange meeting-place at this hour!
+What can bring you hither?"
+
+"Only whim, I fear; and you?" as Percival linked his arm into
+Ardworth's.
+
+"Twenty years hence I will tell you what brought me hither!" answered
+Ardworth, moving slowly back towards Whitehall.
+
+"If we are alive then!"
+
+"We live till our destinies below are fulfilled; till our uses have
+passed from us in this sphere, and rise to benefit another. For the soul
+is as a sun, but with this noble distinction,--the sun is confined
+in its career; day after day it visits the same lands, gilds the same
+planets or rather, as the astronomers hold, stands, the motionless
+centre of moving worlds. But the soul, when it sinks into seeming
+darkness and the deep, rises to new destinies, fresh regions unvisited
+before. What we call Eternity, may be but an endless series of those
+transitions which men call 'deaths,' abandonments of home after home,
+ever to fairer scenes and loftier heights. Age after age, the spirit,
+that glorious Nomad, may shift its tent, fated not to rest in the
+dull Elysium of the Heathen, but carrying with it evermore its
+elements,--Activity and Desire. Why should the soul ever repose? God,
+its Principle, reposes never. While we speak, new worlds are sparkling
+forth, suns are throwing off their nebulae, nebulae are hardening into
+worlds. The Almighty proves his existence by creating. Think you that
+Plato is at rest, and Shakspeare only basking on a sun-cloud? Labour is
+the very essence of spirit, as of divinity; labour is the purgatory of
+the erring; it may become the hell of the wicked, but labour is not less
+the heaven of the good!"
+
+Ardworth spoke with unusual earnestness and passion, and his idea of the
+future was emblematic of his own active nature; for each of us is wisely
+left to shape out, amidst the impenetrable mists, his own ideal of the
+Hereafter. The warrior child of the biting North placed his Hela amid
+snows, and his Himmel in the banquets of victorious war; the son of
+the East, parched by relentless summer,--his hell amidst fire, and his
+elysium by cooling streams; the weary peasant sighs through life for
+rest, and rest awaits his vision beyond the grave; the workman of
+genius,--ever ardent, ever young,--honours toil as the glorious
+development of being, and springs refreshed over the abyss of the grave,
+to follow, from star to star, the progress that seems to him at once
+the supreme felicity and the necessary law. So be it with the fantasy of
+each! Wisdom that is infallible, and love that never sleeps, watch over
+the darkness, and bid darkness be, that we may dream!
+
+"Alas!" said the young listener, "what reproof do you not convey to
+those, like me, who, devoid of the power which gives results to every
+toil, have little left to them in life, but to idle life away. All have
+not the gift to write, or harangue, or speculate, or--"
+
+"Friend," interrupted Ardworth, bluntly, "do not belie yourself. There
+lives not a man on earth--out of a lunatic asylum--who has not in him
+the power to do good. What can writers, haranguers, or speculators do
+more than that? Have you ever entered a cottage, ever travelled in
+a coach, ever talked with a peasant in the field, or loitered with a
+mechanic at the loom, and not found that each of those men had a talent
+you had not, knew some things you knew not? The most useless creature
+that ever yawned at a club, or counted the vermin on his rags under the
+suns of Calabria, has no excuse for want of intellect. What men want is
+not talent, it is purpose,--in other words, not the power to achieve,
+but the will to labour. You, Percival St. John,--you affect to despond,
+lest you should not have your uses; you, with that fresh, warm heart;
+you, with that pure enthusiasm for what is fresh and good; you, who can
+even admire a thing like Varney, because, through the tawdry man, you
+recognize art and skill, even though wasted in spoiling canvas; you, who
+have only to live as you feel, in order to diffuse blessings all around
+you,--fie, foolish boy! you will own your error when I tell you why I
+come from my rooms at Gray's Inn to see the walls in which Hampden, a
+plain country squire like you, shook with plain words the tyranny of
+eight hundred years."
+
+"Ardworth, I will not wait your time to tell me what took you yonder.
+I have penetrated a secret that you, not kindly, kept from me. This
+morning you rose and found yourself famous; this evening you have
+come to gaze upon the scene of the career to which that fame will more
+rapidly conduct you--"
+
+"And upon the tomb which the proudest ambition I can form on earth must
+content itself to win! A poor conclusion, if all ended here!"
+
+"I am right, however," said Percival, with boyish pleasure. "It is you
+whose praises have just filled my ears. You, dear, dear Ardworth! How
+rejoiced I am!"
+
+Ardworth pressed heartily the hand extended to him: "I should have
+trusted you with my secret to-morrow, Percival; as it is, keep it for
+the present. A craving of my nature has been satisfied, a grief has
+found distraction. As for the rest, any child that throws a stone into
+the water with all his force can make a splash; but he would be a fool
+indeed if he supposed that the splash was a sign that he had turned a
+stream."
+
+Here Ardworth ceased abruptly; and Percival, engrossed by a bright idea,
+which had suddenly occurred to him, exclaimed,--
+
+"Ardworth, your desire, your ambition, is to enter parliament; there
+must be a dissolution shortly,--the success of your book will render you
+acceptable to many a popular constituency. All you can want is a sum for
+the necessary expenses. Borrow that sum from me; repay me when you are
+in the Cabinet, or attorney-general. It shall be so!"
+
+A look so bright that even by that dull lamplight the glow of the cheek,
+the brilliancy of the eye were visible, flashed over Ardworth's face. He
+felt at that moment what ambitious man must feel when the object he has
+seen dimly and afar is placed within his grasp; but his reason was proof
+even against that strong temptation.
+
+He passed his arm round the boy's slender waist, and drew him to his
+heart with grateful affection as he replied,--"And what, if now
+in parliament, giving up my career,--with no regular means of
+subsistence,--what could I be but a venal adventurer? Place would
+become so vitally necessary to me that I should feed but a dangerous
+war between my conscience and my wants. In chasing Fame, the shadow, I
+should lose the substance, Independence. Why, that very thought would
+paralyze my tongue. No, no, my generous friend. As labour is the arch
+elevator of man, so patience is the essence of labour. First let me
+build the foundation; I may then calculate the height of my tower. First
+let me be independent of the great; I will then be the champion of
+the lowly. Hold! Tempt me no more; do not lure me to the loss of
+self-esteem. And now, Percival," resumed Ardworth, in the tone of one
+who wishes to plunge into some utterly new current of thought, "let us
+forget for awhile these solemn aspirations, and be frolicsome and
+human. 'Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit.' 'Neque semper arcum tendit
+Apollo.' What say you to a cigar?"
+
+Percival stared. He was not yet familiarized to the eccentric whims of
+his friend.
+
+"Hot negus and a cigar!" repeated Ardworth, while a smile, full of
+drollery, played round the corners of his lips and twinkled in his
+deep-set eyes.
+
+"Are you serious?"
+
+"Not serious; I have been serious enough," and Ardworth sighed, "for
+the last three weeks. Who goes 'to Corinth to be sage,' or to the Cider
+Cellar to be serious?"
+
+"I subscribe, then, to the negus and cigar," said Percival, smiling; and
+he had no cause to repent his compliance as he accompanied Ardworth to
+one of the resorts favoured by that strange person in his rare hours of
+relaxation.
+
+For, seated at his favourite table, which happened, luckily, to be
+vacant, with his head thrown carelessly back, and his negus steaming
+before him, John Ardworth continued to pour forth, till the clock struck
+three, jest upon jest, pun upon pun, broad drollery upon broad drollery,
+without flagging, without intermission, so varied, so copious, so ready,
+so irresistible that Percival was transported out of all his melancholy
+in enjoying, for the first time in his life, the exuberant gayety of a
+grave mind once set free,--all its intellect sparkling into wit, all
+its passion rushing into humour. And this was the man he had pitied,
+supposed to have no sunny side to his life! How much greater had been
+his compassion and his wonder if he could have known all that had
+passed, within the last few weeks, through that gloomy, yet silent
+breast, which, by the very breadth of its mirth, showed what must be the
+depth of its sadness!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. THE LOSS OF THE CROSSING.
+
+Despite the lateness of the hour before he got to rest, Percival
+had already breakfasted, when his valet informed him, with raised,
+supercilious eyebrows, that an uncommon ragged sort of a person insisted
+that he had been told to call. Though Beck had been at the house before,
+and the valet had admitted him, so much thinner, so much more ragged was
+he now, that the trim servant--no close observer of such folk--did
+not recognize him. However, at Percival's order, too well-bred to
+show surprise, he ushered Beck up with much civility; and St. John
+was painfully struck with the ravages a few weeks had made upon the
+sweeper's countenance. The lines were so deeply ploughed, the dry hair
+looked so thin, and was so sown with gray that Beck might have beat all
+Farren's skill in the part of an old man.
+
+The poor sweeper's tale, extricated from its peculiar phraseology, was
+simple enough, and soon told. He had returned home at night to find his
+hoards stolen, and the labour of his life overthrown. How he passed that
+night he did not very well remember. We may well suppose that the little
+reason he possessed was wellnigh bereft from him. No suspicion of the
+exact thief crossed his perturbed mind. Bad as Grabman's character might
+be, he held a respectable position compared with the other lodgers in
+the house. Bill the cracksman, naturally and by vocation, suggested the
+hand that had despoiled him: how hope for redress or extort surrender
+from such a quarter? Mechanically, however, when the hour arrived to
+return to his day's task, he stole down the stairs, and lo, at the very
+door of the house Bill's children were at play, and in the hand of the
+eldest he recognized what he called his "curril."
+
+"Your curril!" interrupted St. John.
+
+"Yes, curril,--vot the little 'uns bite afore they gets their teethin'."
+
+St. John smiled, and supposing that Beck had some time or other been
+puerile enough to purchase such a bauble, nodded to him to continue.
+To seize upon the urchin, and, in spite of kicks, bites, shrieks, or
+scratches, repossess himself of his treasure, was the feat of a moment.
+The brat's clamour drew out the father; and to him Beck (pocketing the
+coral, that its golden bells might not attract the more experienced
+eye and influence the more formidable greediness of the paternal thief)
+loudly, and at first fearlessly, appealed. Him he charged and accused
+and threatened with all vengeance, human and divine. Then, changing his
+tone, he implored, he wept, he knelt. As soon as the startled cracksman
+recovered his astonishment at such audacity, and comprehended the nature
+of the charge against himself and his family, he felt the more indignant
+from a strange and unfamiliar consciousness of innocence. Seizing Beck
+by the nape of the neck, with a dexterous application of hand and foot
+he sent him spinning into the kennel.
+
+"Go to Jericho, mud-scraper!" cried Bill, in a voice of thunder; "and if
+ever thou sayst such a vopper agin,--'sparaging the characters of them
+'ere motherless babes,--I'll seal thee up in a 'tato-sack, and sell thee
+for fiv'pence to No. 7, the great body-snatcher. Take care how I ever
+sets eyes agin on thy h-ugly mug!"
+
+With that Bill clapped to the door, and Beck, frightened out of his
+wits, crawled from the kennel and, bruised and smarting, crept to
+his crossing. But he was unable to discharge his duties that day; his
+ill-fed, miserable frame was too weak for the stroke he had received.
+Long before dusk he sneaked away, and dreading to return to his lodging,
+lest, since nothing now was left worth robbing but his carcass, Bill
+might keep his word and sell that to the body-snatcher, he took refuge
+under the only roof where he felt he could sleep in safety.
+
+And here we must pause to explain. In our first introduction of Beck we
+contented ourselves with implying to the ingenious and practised reader
+that his heart might still be large enough to hold something besides his
+crossing. Now, in one of the small alleys that have their vent in the
+great stream of Fleet Street there dwelt an old widow-woman who eked out
+her existence by charing,--an industrious, drudging creature, whose sole
+occupation, since her husband, the journeyman bricklayer, fell from a
+scaffold, and, breaking his neck, left her happily childless as well as
+penniless, had been scrubbing stone floors and cleaning out dingy houses
+when about to be let,--charing, in a word. And in this vocation had she
+kept body and soul together till a bad rheumatism and old age had put
+an end to her utilities and entitled her to the receipt of two shillings
+weekly from parochial munificence. Between this old woman and Beck there
+was a mysterious tie, so mysterious that he did not well comprehend it
+himself. Sometimes he called her "mammy," sometimes "the h-old crittur."
+But certain it is that to her he was indebted for that name which he
+bore, to the puzzlement of St. Giles's. Becky Carruthers was the name of
+the old woman; but Becky was one of those good creatures who are always
+called by their Christian names, and never rise into the importance of
+the surname and the dignity of "Mistress;" lopping off the last syllable
+of the familiar appellation, the outcast christened himself "Beck."
+
+"And," said St. John, who in the course of question and answer had got
+thus far into the marrow of the sweeper's narrative, "is not this good
+woman really your mother?"
+
+"Mother!" echoed Beck, with disdain; "no, I 'as a gritter mother nor
+she. Sint Poll's is my mother. But the h-old crittur tuk care on me."
+
+"I really don't understand you. St. Paul's is your mother? How?"
+
+Beck shook his head mysteriously, and without answering the question,
+resumed the tale, which we must thus paraphrastically continue to
+deliver.
+
+When he was a little more than six years old, Beck began to earn his own
+livelihood, by running errands, holding horses, scraping together pence
+and halfpence. Betimes, his passion for saving began; at first with a
+good and unselfish motive,--that of surprising "mammy" at the week's
+end. But when "mammy," who then gained enough for herself, patted his
+head and called him "good boy," and bade him save for his own uses,
+and told him what a great thing it would be if he could lay by a pretty
+penny against he was a man, he turned miser on his own account; and the
+miserable luxury grew upon him. At last, by the permission of the police
+inspector, strengthened by that of the owner of the contiguous house,
+he made his great step in life, and succeeded a deceased negro in the
+dignity and emoluments of the memorable crossing. From that hour he felt
+himself fulfilling his proper destiny. But poor Becky, alas! had
+already fallen into the sere and yellow leaf; with her decline, her
+good qualities were impaired. She took to drinking,--not to positive
+intoxication, but to making herself "comfortable;" and, to satisfy her
+craving, Beck, waking betimes one morning, saw her emptying his pockets.
+Then he resolved, quietly and without upbraiding her, to remove to
+a safer lodging. To save had become the imperative necessity of his
+existence. But to do him justice, Beck had a glimmering sense of what
+was due to the "h-old crittur." Every Saturday evening he called at her
+house and deposited with her a certain sum, not large even in proportion
+to his earnings, but which seemed to the poor ignorant miser, who
+grudged every farthing to himself, an enormous deduction from his total,
+and a sum sufficient for every possible want of humankind, even to
+satiety. And now, in returning, despoiled of all save the few pence he
+had collected that day, it is but fair to him to add that not his least
+bitter pang was in the remembrance that this was the only Saturday on
+which, for the first time, the weekly stipend would fail.
+
+But so ill and so wretched did he look when he reached her little room
+that "mammy" forgot all thought of herself; and when he had told his
+tale, so kind was her comforting, so unselfish her sympathy, that his
+heart smote him for his old parsimony, for his hard resentment at her
+single act of peculation. Had not she the right to all he made? But
+remorse and grief alike soon vanished in the fever that now seized him;
+for several days he was insensible; and when he recovered sufficiently
+to be made aware of what was around him, he saw the widow seated beside
+him, within four bare walls. Everything, except the bed he slept on,
+had been sold to support him in his illness. As soon as he could totter
+forth, Beck hastened to his crossing. Alas! it was preoccupied. His
+absence had led to ambitious usurpation. A one-legged, sturdy sailor had
+mounted his throne, and wielded his sceptre. The decorum of the street
+forbade altercation to the contending parties; but the sailor referred
+discussion to a meeting at a flash house in the Rookery that evening.
+There a jury was appointed, and the case opened. By the conventional
+laws that regulate this useful community, Beck was still in his rights;
+his reappearance sufficed to restore his claims, and an appeal to the
+policeman would no doubt re-establish his authority. But Beck was still
+so ill and so feeble that he had a melancholy persuasion that he could
+not suitably perform the duties of his office; and when the sailor, not
+a bad fellow on the whole, offered to pay down on the nail what really
+seemed a very liberal sum for Beck's peaceful surrender of his rights,
+the poor wretch thought of the bare walls at his "mammy's," of the
+long, dreary interval that must elapse, even if able to work, before the
+furniture pawned could be redeemed by the daily profits of his post, and
+with a groan he held out his hand and concluded the bargain.
+
+Creeping home to his "h-old crittur," he threw the purchase money into
+her lap; then, broken-hearted and in despair, he slunk forth again in a
+sort of vague, dreamy hope that the law, which abhors vagabonds, would
+seize and finish him.
+
+When this tale was done, Percival did not neglect the gentle task of
+admonition, which the poor sweeper's softened heart and dull remorse
+made easier. He pointed out, in soft tones, how the avarice he had
+indulged had been perhaps mercifully chastised, and drew no ineloquent
+picture of the vicious miseries of the confirmed miser. Beck listened
+humbly and respectfully; though so little did he understand of mercy and
+Providence and vice that the diviner part of the homily was quite lost
+on him. However, he confessed penitently that "the mattress had made
+him vorse nor a beast to the h-old crittur;" and that "he was cured of
+saving to the end of his days."
+
+"And now," said Percival, "as you really seem not strong enough to
+bear this out-of-door work (the winter coming on, too), what say you to
+entering into my service? I want some help in my stables. The work is
+easy enough, and you are used to horses, you know, in a sort of a way."
+
+Beck hesitated, and looked a moment undecided. At last he said, "Please
+your honour, if I bean't strong enough for the crossin', I 'se afeared
+I'm too h-ailing to sarve you. And voud n't I be vorse nor a wiper to
+take your vages and not vork for 'em h-as I h-ought?"
+
+"Pooh! we'll soon make you strong, my man. Take my advice; don't let
+your head run on the crossing. That kind of industry exposes you to bad
+company and bad thoughts."
+
+"That's vot it is, sir," said Beck, assentingly, laying his dexter
+forefinger on his sinister palm.
+
+"Well! you are in my service, then. Go downstairs now and get your
+breakfast; by and by you shall show me your 'mammy's' house, and we'll
+see what can be done for her."
+
+Beck pressed his hands to his eyes, trying hard not to cry; but it was
+too much for him; and as the valet, who appeared to Percival's summons,
+led him down the stairs, his sobs were heard from attic to basement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. NEWS FROM GRABMAN.
+
+That day, opening thus auspiciously to Beck, was memorable also to other
+and more prominent persons in this history.
+
+Early in the forenoon a parcel was brought to Madame Dalibard which
+contained Ardworth's already famous book, a goodly assortment of
+extracts from the newspapers thereon, and the following letter from the
+young author:--
+
+You will see, by the accompanying packet, that your counsels have had
+weight with me. I have turned aside in my slow, legitimate career. I
+have, as you desired, made "men talk of me." What solid benefit I
+may reap from this I know not. I shall not openly avow the book. Such
+notoriety cannot help meat the Bar. But liberavi animam meam,--excuse
+my pedantry,--I have let my soul free for a moment; I am now catching
+it back to put bit and saddle on again. I will not tell you how you have
+disturbed me, how you have stung me into this premature rush amidst the
+crowd, how, after robbing me of name and father, you have driven me
+to this experiment with my own mind, to see if I was deceived when I
+groaned to myself, "The Public shall give you a name, and Fame shall be
+your mother." I am satisfied with the experiment. I know better now what
+is in me, and I have regained my peace of mind. If in the success of
+this hasty work there be that which will gratify the interest you so
+kindly take in me, deem that success your own; I owe it to you,--to your
+revelations, to your admonitions. I wait patiently your own time for
+further disclosures; till then, the wheel must work on, and the grist
+be ground. Kind and generous friend, till now I would not wound you by
+returning the sum you sent me,--nay, more, I knew I should please you by
+devoting part of it to the risk of giving this essay to the world, and
+so making its good fortune doubly your own work. Now, when the publisher
+smiles, and the shopmen bow, and I am acknowledged to have a bank in my
+brains,--now, you cannot be offended to receive it back. Adieu. When my
+mind is in train again, and I feel my step firm on the old dull road,
+I will come to see you. Till then, yours--by what name? Open the
+Biographical Dictionary at hazard, and send me one. GRAY'S INN.
+
+Not at the noble thoughts and the deep sympathy with mankind that glowed
+through that work, over which Lucretia now tremulously hurried, did she
+feel delight. All that she recognized, or desired to recognize, were
+those evidences of that kind of intellect which wins its way through the
+world, and which, strong and unmistakable, rose up in every page of that
+vigorous logic and commanding style. The book was soon dropped, thus
+read; the newspaper extracts pleased even more.
+
+"This," she said audibly, in the freedom of her solitude, "this is the
+son I asked for,--a son in whom I can rise; in whom I can exchange the
+sense of crushing infamy for the old delicious ecstasy of pride! For
+this son can I do too much? No; in what I may do for him methinks there
+will be no remorse. And he calls his success mine,--mine!" Her nostrils
+dilated, and her front rose erect.
+
+In the midst of this exultation Varney found her; and before he could
+communicate the business which had brought him, he had to listen, which
+he did with the secret, gnawing envy that every other man's success
+occasioned him, to her haughty self-felicitations.
+
+He could not resist saying, with a sneer, when she paused, as if to ask
+his sympathy,--
+
+"All this is very fine, belle-mere; and yet I should hardly have thought
+that coarse-featured, uncouth limb of the law, who seldom moves without
+upsetting a chair, never laughs but the panes rattle in the window,--I
+should hardly have thought him the precise person to gratify your pride,
+or answer the family ideal of a gentleman and a St. John."
+
+"Gabriel," said Lucretia, sternly, "you have a biting tongue, and it
+is folly in me to resent those privileges which our fearful connection
+gives you. But this raillery--"
+
+"Come, come, I was wrong; forgive it!" interrupted Varney, who, dreading
+nothing else, dreaded much the rebuke of his grim stepmother.
+
+"It is forgiven," said Lucretia, coldly, and with a slight wave of her
+hand; then she added, with composure,--
+
+"Long since--even while heiress of Laughton--I parted with mere pride in
+the hollow seemings of distinction. Had I not, should I have stooped to
+William Mainwaring? What I then respected, amidst all the degradations I
+have known, I respect still,--talent, ambition, intellect, and will. Do
+you think I would exchange these in a son of mine for the mere graces
+which a dancing-master can sell him? Fear not. Let us give but wealth
+to that intellect, and the world will see no clumsiness in the movements
+that march to its high places, and hear no discord in the laugh that
+triumphs over fools. But you have some news to communicate, or some
+proposal to suggest."
+
+"I have both," said Varney. "In the first place, I have a letter from
+Grabman!"
+
+Lucretia's eyes sparkled, and she snatched eagerly at the letter her
+son-in-law drew forth.
+
+LIVERPOOL, October, 1831.
+
+JASON,--I think I am on the road to success. Having first possessed
+myself of the fact, commemorated in the parish register, of the birth
+and baptism of Alfred Braddell's son,--for we must proceed regularly in
+these matters,--I next set my wits to work to trace that son's exodus
+from the paternal mansion. I have hunted up an old woman-servant, Jane
+Prior, who lived with the Braddells. She now thrives as a laundress;
+she is a rank Puritan, and starches for the godly. She was at first
+very wary and reserved in her communications; but by siding with her
+prejudices and humours, and by the intercession of the Rev. Mr. Graves
+(of her own persuasion), I have got her to open her lips. It seems that
+these Braddells lived very unhappily; the husband, a pious dissenter,
+had married a lady who turned out of a very different practice and
+belief. Jane Prior pitied her master, and detested her mistress. Some
+circumstances in the conduct of Mrs. Braddell made the husband, who was
+then in his last illness, resolve, from a point of conscience, to save
+his child from what he deemed the contamination of her precepts and
+example. Mrs. Braddell was absent from Liverpool on a visit, which
+was thought very unfeeling by the husband's friends; during this time
+Braddell was visited constantly by a gentleman (Mr. Ardworth), who
+differed from him greatly in some things, and seemed one of the
+carnal, but with whom agreement in politics (for they were both great
+politicians and republicans) seems to have established a link. One
+evening, when Mr. Ardworth was in the house, Jane Prior, who was
+the only maidservant (for they kept but two, and one had been just
+discharged), had been sent out to the apothecary's. On her return, Jane
+Prior, going into the nursery, missed the infant: she thought it was
+with her master; but coming into his room, Mr. Braddell told her to shut
+the door, informed her that he had intrusted the boy to Mr. Ardworth,
+to be brought up in a righteous and pious manner, and implored and
+commanded her to keep this a secret from his wife, whom he was resolved,
+indeed, if he lived, not to receive back into his house. Braddell,
+however, did not survive more than two days this event. On his death,
+Mrs. Braddell returned; but circumstances connected with the symptoms
+of his malady, and a strong impression which haunted himself, and with
+which he had infected Jane Prior, that he had been poisoned, led to a
+posthumous examination of his remains. No trace of poison was, however,
+discovered, and suspicions that had been directed against his wife could
+not be substantiated by law; still, she was regarded in so unfavourable
+a light by all who had known them both, she met with such little
+kindness or sympathy in her widowhood, and had been so openly denounced
+by Jane Prior, that it is not to be wondered at that she left the
+place as soon as possible. The house, indeed, was taken from her; for
+Braddell's affairs were found in such confusion, and his embarrassments
+so great, that everything was seized and sold off,--nothing left for the
+widow nor for the child (if the last were ever discovered.)
+
+As may be supposed, Mrs. Braddell was at first very clamorous for the
+lost child; but Jane Prior kept her promise and withheld all clew to it,
+and Mrs. Braddell was forced to quit the place, in ignorance of what had
+become of it. Since then no one had heard of her; but Jane Prior says
+that she is sure she has come to no good. Now, though much of this may
+be, no doubt, familiar to you, dear Jason, it is right, when I put the
+evidence before you, that you should know and guard against what
+to expect; and in any trial at law to prove the identity of Vincent
+Braddell, Jane Prior must be a principal witness, and will certainly
+not spare poor Mrs. Braddell. For the main point, however,--namely, the
+suspicion of poisoning her husband,--the inquest and verdict may set
+aside all alarm.
+
+My next researches have been directed on the track of Walter Ardworth,
+after leaving Liverpool, which (I find by the books at the inn where he
+lodged and was known) he did in debt to the innkeeper, the very night
+he received the charge of the child. Here, as yet, I am in fault; but I
+have ascertained that a woman, one of the sect, of the name of Joplin,
+living in a village fifteen miles from the town, had the care of some
+infant, to replace her own, which she had lost. I am going to this
+village to-morrow. But I cannot expect much in that quarter, since
+it would seem at variance with your more probable belief that Walter
+Ardworth took the child at once to Mr. Fielden's. However, you see I
+have already gone very far in the evidence,--the birth of the child,
+the delivery of the child to Ardworth. I see a very pretty case already
+before us, and I do not now doubt for a moment of ultimate success.
+Yours, N. GRABMAN.
+
+Lucretia read steadily, and with no change of countenance, to the last
+line of the letter. Then, as she put it down on the table before her,
+she repeated, with a tone of deep exultation: "No doubt of ultimate
+success!"
+
+"You do not fear to brave all which the spite of this woman, Jane Prior,
+may prompt her to say against you?" asked Varney.
+
+Lucretia's brow fell. "It is another torture," she said, "even to own my
+marriage with a low-born hypocrite. But I can endure it for the cause,"
+she added, more haughtily. "Nothing can really hurt me in these obsolete
+aspersions and this vague scandal. The inquest acquitted me, and the
+world will be charitable to the mother of him who has wealth and rank
+and that vigorous genius which, if proved in obscurity, shall command
+opinion in renown."
+
+"You are now, then, disposed at once to proceed to action. For Helen
+all is prepared,--the insurances are settled, the trust for which I hold
+them on your behalf is signed and completed. But for Percival St. John
+I await your directions. Will it be best first to prove your son's
+identity, or when morally satisfied that that proof is forthcoming, to
+remove betimes both the barriers to his inheritance? If we tarry for the
+last, the removal of St. John becomes more suspicious than it does at
+a time when you have no visible interest in his death. Besides, now we
+have the occasion, or can make it, can we tell how long it will last?
+Again, it will seem more natural that the lover should break his heart
+in the first shock of--"
+
+"Ay," interrupted Lucretia, "I would have all thought and contemplation
+of crime at an end when, clasping my boy to my heart, I can say, 'Your
+mother's inheritance is yours.' I would not have a murder before my eyes
+when they should look only on the fair prospects beyond. I would cast
+back all the hideous images of horror into the rear of memory, so that
+hope may for once visit me again undisturbed. No, Gabriel, were I to
+speak forever, you would comprehend not what I grasp at in a son. It
+is at a future! Rolling a stone over the sepulchre of the past, it is
+a resurrection into a fresh world; it is to know again one emotion not
+impure, one scheme not criminal,--it is, in a word, to cease to be as
+myself, to think in another soul, to hear my heart beat in another form.
+All this I covet in a son. And when all this should smile before me
+in his image, shall I be plucked back again into my hell by the
+consciousness that a new crime is to be done? No; wade quickly through
+the passage of blood, that we may dry our garments and breathe the air
+upon the bank where sun shines and flowers bloom!"
+
+"So be it, then," said Varney. "Before the week is out, I must be under
+the same roof as St. John. Before the week is out, why not all meet in
+the old halls of Laughton?"
+
+"Ay, in the halls of Laughton. On the hearth of our ancestors the deeds
+done for our descendants look less dark."
+
+"And first, to prepare the way, Helen should sicken in these fogs of
+London, and want change of air."
+
+"Place before me that desk. I will read William Mainwaring's letters
+again and again, till from every shadow in the past a voice comes forth,
+'The child of your rival, your betrayer, your undoer, stands between the
+daylight and your son!'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. VARIETIES.
+
+Leaving the guilty pair to concert their schemes and indulge their
+atrocious hopes, we accompany Percival to the hovel occupied by Becky
+Carruthers.
+
+On following Beck into the room she rented, Percival was greatly
+surprised to find, seated comfortably on the only chair to be seen,
+no less a person than the worthy Mrs. Mivers. This good lady in her
+spinster days had earned her own bread by hard work. She had captivated
+Mr. Mivers when but a simple housemaid in the service of one of his
+relations. And while this humble condition in her earlier life
+may account for much in her language and manners which is nowadays
+inconsonant with the breeding and education that characterize the
+wives of opulent tradesmen, so perhaps the remembrance of it made her
+unusually susceptible to the duties of charity. For there is no class of
+society more prone to pity and relieve the poor than females in domestic
+service; and this virtue Mrs. Mivers had not laid aside, as many do, as
+soon as she was in a condition to practise it with effect. Mrs. Mivers
+blushed scarlet on being detected in her visit of kindness, and hastened
+to excuse herself by the information that she belonged to a society of
+ladies for "The Bettering the Condition of the Poor," and that having
+just been informed of Mrs. Becky's destitute state, she had looked in to
+recommend her--a ventilator!
+
+"It is quite shocking to see how little the poor attends to the proper
+wentilating their houses. No wonder there's so much typus about!" said
+Mrs. Mivers. "And for one-and-sixpence we can introduce a stream of
+h-air that goes up the chimbly, and carries away all that it finds!".
+
+"I 'umbly thank you, marm," said the poor bundle of rags that went by
+the name of "Becky," as with some difficulty she contrived to stand in
+the presence of the benevolent visitor; "but I am much afeard that the
+h-air will make the rheumatiz very rumpatious!"
+
+"On the contrary, on the contrary," said Mrs. Mivers, triumphantly; and
+she proceeded philosophically to explain that all the fevers, aches,
+pains, and physical ills that harass the poor arise from the want of
+an air-trap in the chimney and a perforated network in the window-pane.
+Becky listened patiently; for Mrs. Mivers was only a philosopher in
+her talk, and she had proved herself anything but a philosopher in her
+actions, by the spontaneous present of five shillings, and the promise
+of a basket of victuals and some good wine to keep the cold wind she
+invited to the apartment out of the stomach.
+
+Percival imitated the silence of Becky, whose spirit was so bowed down
+by an existence of drudgery that not even the sight of her foster-son
+could draw her attention from the respect due to a superior.
+
+"And is this poor cranky-looking cretur your son, Mrs. Becky?" said the
+visitor, struck at last by the appearance of the ex-sweeper as he stood
+at the threshold, hat in hand.
+
+"No, indeed, marm," answered Becky; "I often says, says I: 'Child, you
+be the son of Sint Poll's.'"
+
+Beck smiled proudly.
+
+"It was agin the grit church, marm ---- But it's a long story. My poor
+good man had not a long been dead,--as good a man as hever lived, marm,"
+and Becky dropped a courtesy; "he fell off a scaffold, and pitched right
+on his 'ead, or I should not have come on the parish, marm,--and that's
+the truth on it!"
+
+"Very well, I shall call and hear all about it; a sad case, I dare say.
+You see, your husband should have subscribed to our Loan Society, and
+then they'd have found him a 'andsome coffin, and given three pounds to
+his widder. But the poor are so benighted in these parts. I'm sure, sir,
+I can't guess what brought you here; but that's no business of mine.
+And how are all at Old Brompton?" Here Mrs. Mivers bridled indignantly.
+"There was a time when Miss Mainwaring was very glad to come and chat
+with Mr. M. and myself; but now 'rum has riz,' as the saying is,--not
+but what I dare say it's not her fault, poor thing! That stiff aunt of
+hers,--she need not look so high; pride and poverty, forsooth!"
+
+While delivering these conciliatory sentences, Mrs. Mivers had gathered
+up her gown, and was evidently in the bustle of departure. As she now
+nodded to Becky, Percival stepped up, and, with his irresistible smile,
+offered her his arm. Much surprised and much flattered, Mrs. Mivers
+accepted it. As she did so, he gently detained her while he said to
+Becky,--"My good friend, I have brought you the poor lad to whom you
+have been a mother, to tell you that good deeds find their reward sooner
+or later. As for him, make yourself easy; he will inform you of the new
+step he has taken, and for you, good, kind-hearted creature, thank the
+boy you brought up if your old age shall be made easy and cheerful. Now,
+Beck, silly lad, go and tell all to your nurse! Take care of this step,
+Mrs. Mivers."
+
+As soon as he was in the street, Percival, who, if amused at the
+ventilator, had seen the five shillings gleam on Becky's palm, and felt
+that he had found under the puce-coloured gown a good woman's heart to
+understand him, gave Mrs. Mivers a short sketch of poor Becky's history
+and misfortunes, and so contrived to interest her in behalf of the nurse
+that she willingly promised to become Percival's almoner, to execute
+his commission, to improve the interior of Becky's abode, and distribute
+weekly the liberal stipend he proposed to settle on the old widow. They
+had grown, indeed, quite friendly and intimate by the time he reached
+the smart plate-glazed mahogany-coloured facade within which the
+flourishing business of Mr. Mivers was carried on; and when, knocking at
+the private door, promptly opened by a lemon-coloured page, she invited
+him upstairs, it so chanced that the conversation had slid off to Helen,
+and Percival was sufficiently interested to bow assent and to enter.
+
+Though all the way up the stairs Mrs. Mivers, turning back at every
+other step, did her best to impress upon her young visitor's mind the
+important fact that they kept their household establishment at their
+"willer," and that their apartments in Fleet Street were only a
+"conwenience," the store set by the worthy housewife upon her goods
+and chattels was sufficiently visible in the drugget that threaded its
+narrow way up the gay Brussels stair-carpet, and in certain layers
+of paper which protected from the profanation of immediate touch
+the mahogany hand-rail. And nothing could exceed the fostering care
+exhibited in the drawing-room, when the door thrown open admitted a
+view of its damask moreen curtains, pinned back from such impertinent
+sunbeams as could force their way through the foggy air of the east into
+the windows, and the ells of yellow muslin that guarded the frames, at
+least, of a collection of coloured prints and two kit-kat portraitures
+of Mr. Mivers and his lady from the perambulations of the flies.
+
+But Percival's view of this interior was somewhat impeded by his portly
+guide, who, uttering a little exclamation of surprise, stood motionless
+on the threshold as she perceived Mr. Mivers seated by the hearth in
+close conference with a gentleman whom she had never seen before. At
+that hour it was so rare an event in the life of Mr. Mivers to be found
+in the drawing-room, and that he should have an acquaintance unknown to
+his helpmate was a circumstance so much rarer still, that Mrs. Mivers
+may well be forgiven for keeping St. John standing at the door till she
+had recovered her amaze.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Mivers rose in some confusion, and was apparently about to
+introduce his guest, when that gentleman coughed, and pinched the
+host's arm significantly. Mr. Mivers coughed also, and stammered out: "A
+gentleman, Mrs. M.,--a friend; stay with us a day or two. Much honoured,
+hum!"
+
+Mrs. Mivers stared and courtesied, and stared again. But there was an
+open, good-humoured smile in the face of the visitor, as he advanced and
+took her hand, that attracted a heart very easily conciliated. Seeing
+that that was no moment for further explanation, she plumped herself
+into a seat and said,--
+
+"But bless us and save us, I am keeping you standing, Mr. St. John!"
+
+"St. John!" repeated the visitor, with a vehemence that startled Mrs.
+Mivers. "Your name is St. John, sir,--related to the St. Johns of
+Laughton?"
+
+"Yes, indeed," answered Percival, with his shy, arch smile. "Laughton at
+present has no worthier owner than myself."
+
+The gentleman made two strides to Percival and shook him heartily by the
+hand.
+
+"This is pleasant indeed!" he exclaimed. "You must excuse my freedom;
+but I knew well poor old Sir Miles, and my heart warms at the sight of
+his representative."
+
+Percival glanced at his new acquaintance, and on the whole was
+prepossessed in his favour. He seemed somewhere on the sunnier side of
+fifty, with that superb yellow bronze of complexion which betokens long
+residence under Eastern skies. Deep wrinkles near the eyes, and a dark
+circle round them, spoke of cares and fatigue, and perhaps dissipation.
+But he had evidently a vigour of constitution that had borne him
+passably through all; his frame was wiry and nervous; his eye bright
+and full of life; and there was that abrupt, unsteady, mercurial
+restlessness in his movements and manner which usually accompanies the
+man whose sanguine temperament prompts him to concede to the impulse,
+and who is blessed or cursed with a superabundance of energy, according
+as circumstance may favour or judgment correct that equivocal gift of
+constitution.
+
+Percival said something appropriate in reply to so much cordiality
+paid to the account of the Sir Miles whom he had never seen, and seated
+himself, colouring slightly under the influence of the fixed, pleased,
+and earnest look still bent upon him.
+
+Searching for something else to say, Percival asked Mrs. Mivers if she
+had lately seen John Ardworth.
+
+The guest, who had just reseated himself, turned his chair round at that
+question with such vivacity that Mrs. Mivers heard it crack. Her chairs
+were not meant for such usage. A shade fell over her rosy countenance as
+she replied,--
+
+"No, indeed (please, sir, them chairs is brittle)! No, he is like Madame
+at Brompton, and seldom condescends to favour us now. It was but last
+Sunday we asked him to dinner. I am sure he need not turn up his nose at
+our roast beef and pudding!"
+
+Here Mr. Mivers was taken with a violent fit of coughing, which drew off
+his wife's attention. She was afraid he had taken cold.
+
+The stranger took out a large snuff-box, inhaled a long pinch of snuff,
+and said to St. John,--
+
+"This Mr. John Ardworth, a pert enough jackanapes, I suppose,--a limb of
+the law, eh?"
+
+"Sir," said Percival, gravely, "John Ardworth is my particular friend.
+It is clear that you know very little of him."
+
+"That's true," said the stranger,--"'pon my life, that's very true.
+But I suppose he's like all lawyers,--cunning and tricky, conceited and
+supercilious, full of prejudice and cant, and a red-hot Tory into the
+bargain. I know them, sir; I know them!"
+
+"Well," answered St. John, half gayly, half angrily, "your general
+experience serves you very little here; for Ardworth is exactly the
+opposite of all you have described."
+
+"Even in politics?"
+
+"Why, I fear he is half a Radical,--certainly more than a Whig,"
+answered St. John, rather mournfully; for his own theories were all the
+other way, notwithstanding his unpatriotic forgetfulness of them in his
+offer to assist Ardworth's entrance into parliament.
+
+"I am very glad to hear it," cried the stranger, again taking snuff.
+"And this Madame at Brompton--perhaps I know her a little better than
+I do young Mr. Ardworth--Mrs. Brad--I mean Madame Dalibard!" and the
+stranger glanced at Mr. Mivers, who was slowly recovering from some
+vigorous slaps on the back administered to him by his wife as a
+counter-irritant to the cough. "Is it true that she has lost the use of
+her limbs?"
+
+Percival shook his head.
+
+"And takes care of poor Helen Mainwaring the orphan? Well, well, that
+looks amiable enough. I must see; I must see!"
+
+"Who shall I say inquired after her, when I see Madame Dalibard?" asked
+Percival, with some curiosity.
+
+"Who? Oh, Mr. Tomkins. She will not recollect him, though,"--and the
+stranger laughed, and Mr. Mivers laughed too; and Mrs. Mivers, who,
+indeed, always laughed when other people laughed, laughed also. So
+Percival thought he ought to laugh for the sake of good company, and all
+laughed together as he arose and took leave.
+
+He had not, however, got far from the house, on his way to his
+cabriolet, which he had left by Temple Bar, when, somewhat to his
+surprise, he found Mr. Tomkins at his elbow.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. St. John, but I have only just returned to
+England, and on such occasions a man is apt to seem curious. This young
+lawyer ---- You see the elder Ardworth, a good-for-nothing scamp, was
+a sort of friend of mine,--not exactly friend, indeed, for, by Jove, I
+think he was a worse friend to me than he was to anybody else; still
+I had a foolish interest for him, and should be glad to hear something
+more about any one bearing his name than I can coax out of that droll
+little linen draper. You are really intimate with young Ardworth, eh?"
+
+"Intimate! poor fellow, he will not let any one be that; he works too
+hard to be social. But I love him sincerely, and I admire him beyond
+measure."
+
+"The dog has industry, then;--that's good. And does he make debts, like
+that rascal, Ardworth senior?"
+
+"Really, sir, I must say this tone with respect to Mr. Ardworth's
+father--"
+
+"What the devil, sir! Do you take the father's part as well as the
+son's?"
+
+"I don't know anything about Mr. Ardworth senior," said Percival,
+pouting; "but I do know that my friend would not allow any one to speak
+ill of his father in his presence; and I beg you, sir, to consider that
+whatever would offend him must offend me."
+
+"Gad's my life! He's the luckiest young rogue to have such a friend.
+Sir, I wish you a very good-day."
+
+Mr. Tomkins took off his hat, bowed, and passing St. John with a rapid
+step, was soon lost to his eye amongst the crowd hurrying westward.
+
+But our business being now rather with him than Percival, we leave
+the latter to mount his cabriolet, and we proceed with Mr. Mivers's
+mercurial guest on his eccentric way through the throng. There was
+an odd mixture of thoughtful abstraction and quick observation in the
+soliloquy in which this gentleman indulged, as he walked briskly on.
+
+"A pretty young spark that St. John! A look of his father, but
+handsomer, and less affected. I like him. Fine shop that, very! London
+wonderfully improved. A hookah in that window,--God bless me!--a real
+hookah! This is all very good news about that poor boy, very. After all,
+he is not to blame if his mother was such a damnable--I must contrive to
+see and judge of him myself as soon as possible. Can't trust to others;
+too sharp for that. What an ugly dog that is, looking after me! It is
+certainly a bailiff. Hang it, what do I care for bailiffs? Hem, hem!"
+And the gentleman thrust his hands into his pockets, and laughed, as the
+jingle of coin reached his ear through the din without. "Well, I must
+make haste to decide; for really there is a very troublesome piece of
+business before me. Plague take her, what can have become of the woman?
+I shall have to hunt out a sharp lawyer. But John's a lawyer himself.
+No, attorneys, I suppose, are the men. Gad! they were sharp enough when
+they had to hunt me. What's that great bill on the wall about? 'Down
+with the Lords!' Pooh, pooh! Master John Bull, you love lords a great
+deal too much for that. A prettyish girl! English women are very
+good-looking, certainly. That Lucretia, what shall I do, if ---- Ah,
+time enough to think of her when I have got over that mighty stiff if!"
+
+In such cogitations and mental remarks our traveller whiled away the
+time till he found himself in Piccadilly. There, a publisher's shop (and
+he had that keen eye for shops which betrays the stranger in London),
+with its new publications exposed at the window, attracted his notice.
+Conspicuous amongst the rest was the open title-page of a book, at the
+foot of which was placed a placard with the enticing words, "FOURTH
+EDITION; JUST OUT," in red capitals. The title of the work struck his
+irritable, curious fancy; he walked into the shop, asked for the volume,
+and while looking over the contents with muttered ejaculations, "Good!
+capital! Why, this reminds one of Horne Tooke! What's the price? Very
+dear; must have it though,--must. Ha, ha! home-thrust there!"--while
+thus turning over the leaves, and rending them asunder with his
+forefinger, regardless of the paper cutter extended to him by the
+shopman, a gentleman, pushing by him, asked if the publisher was at
+home; and as the shopman, bowing very low, answered "Yes," the new-comer
+darted into a little recess behind the shop. Mr. Tomkins, who had looked
+up very angrily on being jostled so unceremoniously, started and changed
+colour when he saw the face of the offender. "Saints in heaven!" he
+murmured almost audibly, "what a look of that woman; and yet--no--it is
+gone!"
+
+"Who is that gentleman?" he asked abruptly, as he paid for his book.
+
+The shopman smiled, but answered, "I don't know, sir."
+
+"That's a lie! You would never bow so low to a man you did not know!"
+
+The shopman smiled again. "Why, sir, there are many who come to this
+house who don't wish us to know them."
+
+"Ah, I understand; you are political publishers,--afraid of libels, I
+dare say. Always the same thing in this cursed country; and then they
+tell us we are 'free!' So I suppose that gentleman has written something
+William Pitt does not like. But William Pitt--ha--he's dead! Very true,
+so he is! Sir, this little book seems most excellent; but in my time, a
+man would have been sent to Newgate for printing it." While thus running
+on, Mr. Tomkins had edged himself pretty close to the recess within
+which the last-comer had disappeared; and there, seated on a high stool,
+he contrived to read and to talk at the same time, but his eye and his
+ear were both turned every instant towards the recess.
+
+The shopman, little suspecting that in so very eccentric, garrulous
+a person he was permitting a spy to encroach upon the secrets of the
+house, continued to make up sundry parcels of the new publication which
+had so enchanted his customer, while he expatiated on the prodigious
+sensation the book had created, and while the customer himself had
+already caught enough of the low conversation within the recess to be
+aware that the author of the book was the very person who had so roused
+his curiosity.
+
+Not till that gentleman, followed to the door by the polite publisher,
+had quitted the shop, did Mr. Tomkins put this volume in his pocket,
+and, with a familiar nod at the shopman, take himself off.
+
+He was scarcely in the street when he saw Percival St. John leaning out
+of his cabriolet and conversing with the author he had discovered.
+He halted a moment irresolute; but the young man, in whom our reader
+recognizes John Ardworth, declining St. John's invitation to accompany
+him to Brompton, resumed his way through the throng; the cabriolet drove
+on; and Mr. Tomkins, though with a graver mien and a steadier step,
+continued his desultory rambles. Meanwhile, John Ardworth strode
+gloomily back to his lonely chamber.
+
+There, throwing himself on the well-worn chair before the crowded desk,
+he buried his face in his hands, and for some minutes he felt all that
+profound despondency peculiar to those who have won fame, to add to the
+dark volume of experience the conviction of fame's nothingness. For some
+minutes he felt an illiberal and ungrateful envy of St. John, so fair,
+so light-hearted, so favoured by fortune, so rich in friends,--in a
+mother's love, and in Helen's half-plighted troth. And he, from his very
+birth, cut off from the social ties of blood; no mother's kiss to reward
+the toils or gladden the sports of childhood; no father's cheering word
+up the steep hill of man! And Helen, for whose sake he had so often,
+when his heart grew weary, nerved himself again to labour, saying, "Let
+me be rich, let me be great, and then I will dare to tell Helen that I
+love her!"--Helen smiling upon another, unconscious of his pangs! What
+could fame bestow in compensation? What matter that strangers praised,
+and the babble of the world's running stream lingered its brief moment
+round the pebble in its way. In the bitterness of his mood, he was
+unjust to his rival. All that exquisite but half-concealed treasure
+of imagination and thought which lay beneath the surface of Helen's
+childlike smile he believed that he alone--he, soul of power and son of
+genius--was worthy to discover and to prize. In the pride not unfrequent
+with that kingliest of all aristocracies, the Chiefs of Intellect, he
+forgot the grandeur which invests the attributes of the heart; forgot
+that, in the lists of love, the heart is at least the equal of the mind.
+In the reaction that follows great excitement, Ardworth had morbidly
+felt, that day, his utter solitude,--felt it in the streets through
+which he had passed; in the home to which he had returned; the burning
+tears, shed for the first time since childhood, forced themselves
+through his clasped fingers. At length he rose, with a strong effort
+at self-mastery, some contempt of his weakness, and much remorse at his
+ungrateful envy. He gathered together the soiled manuscript and dingy
+proofs of his book, and thrust them through the grimy bars of his grate;
+then, opening his desk, he drew out a small packet, with tremulous
+fingers unfolding paper after paper, and gazed, with eyes still
+moistened, on the relics kept till then in the devotion of the only
+sentiment inspired by Eros that had ever, perhaps, softened his iron
+nature. These were two notes from Helen, some violets she had once given
+him, and a little purse she had knitted for him (with a playful prophecy
+of future fortunes) when he had last left the vicarage. Nor blame him,
+ye who, with more habitual romance of temper, and richer fertility of
+imagination, can reconcile the tenderest memories with the sternest
+duties, if he, with all his strength, felt that the associations
+connected with those tokens would but enervate his resolves and embitter
+his resignation. You can guess not the extent of the sacrifice, the
+bitterness of the pang, when, averting his head, he dropped those relics
+on the hearth. The evidence of the desultory ambition, the tokens of the
+visionary love,--the same flame leaped up to devour both! It was as the
+funeral pyre of his youth!
+
+"So," he said to himself, "let all that can divert me from the true ends
+of my life consume! Labour, take back your son."
+
+An hour afterwards, and his clerk, returning home, found Ardworth
+employed as calmly as usual on his Law Reports.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. THE INVITATION TO LAUGHTON.
+
+That day, when he called at Brompton, Percival reported to Madame
+Dalibard his interview with the eccentric Mr. Tomkins. Lucretia seemed
+chafed and disconcerted by the inquiries with which that gentleman had
+honoured her, and as soon as Percival had gone, she sent for Varney. He
+did not come till late; she repeated to him what St. John had said of
+the stranger. Varney participated in her uneasy alarm. The name, indeed,
+was unknown to them, nor could they conjecture the bearer of so ordinary
+a patronymic; but there had been secrets enough in Lucretia's life
+to render her apprehensive of encountering those who had known her in
+earlier years; and Varney feared lest any rumour reported to St. John
+might create his mistrust, or lessen the hold obtained upon a victim
+heretofore so unsuspicious. They both agreed in the expediency of
+withdrawing themselves and St. John as soon as possible from London, and
+frustrating Percival's chance of closer intercourse with the stranger,
+who had evidently aroused his curiosity.
+
+The next day Helen was much indisposed; and the symptoms grew so grave
+towards the evening that Madame Dalibard expressed alarm, and willingly
+suffered Percival (who had only been permitted to see Helen for a few
+minutes, when her lassitude was so extreme that she was obliged to
+retire to her room) to go in search of a physician. He returned with one
+of the most eminent of the faculty. On the way to Brompton, in reply
+to the questions of Dr. ----, Percival spoke of the dejection to which
+Helen was occasionally subject, and this circumstance confirmed Dr.
+----, after he had seen his patient, in his view of the case. In
+addition to some feverish and inflammatory symptoms which he trusted his
+prescriptions would speedily remove, he found great nervous debility,
+and willingly fell in with the casual suggestion of Varney, who was
+present, that a change of air would greatly improve Miss Mainwaring's
+general health, as soon as the temporary acute attack had subsided. He
+did not regard the present complaint very seriously, and reassured
+poor Percival by his cheerful mien and sanguine predictions. Percival
+remained at the house the whole day, and had the satisfaction, before
+he left, of hearing that the remedies had already abated the fever, and
+that Helen had fallen into a profound sleep. Walking back to town with
+Varney, the last said hesitatingly,--
+
+"You were saying to me the other day that you feared you should have to
+go for a few days both to Vernon Grange and to Laughton, as your steward
+wished to point out to you some extensive alterations in the management
+of your woods to commence this autumn. As you were so soon coming of
+age, Lady Mary desired that her directions should yield to your own.
+Now, since Helen is recommended change of air, why not invite Madame
+Dalibard to visit you at one of these places? I would suggest Laughton.
+My poor mother-in-law I know longs to revisit the scenes of her youth,
+and you could not compliment or conciliate her more than by such an
+invitation."
+
+"Oh," said Percival, joyfully, "it would realize the fondest dream of my
+heart to see Helen under the old roof-tree of Laughton; but as my mother
+is abroad, and there is therefore no lady to receive them, perhaps--"
+
+"Why," interrupted Varney, "Madame Dalibard herself is almost the very
+person whom les bienseances might induce you to select to do the honours
+of your house in Lady Mary's absence, not only as kinswoman to yourself,
+but as the nearest surviving relative of Sir Miles,--the most immediate
+descendant of the St. Johns; her mature years and decorum of life, her
+joint kindred to Helen and yourself, surely remove every appearance of
+impropriety."
+
+"If she thinks so, certainly; I am no accurate judge of such
+formalities. You could not oblige me more, Varney, than in pre-obtaining
+her consent to the proposal. Helen at Laughton! Oh, blissful thought!"
+
+"And in what air would she be so likely to revive?" said Varney; but his
+voice was thick and husky.
+
+The ideas thus presented to him almost banished anxiety from Percival's
+breast. In a thousand delightful shapes they haunted him during the
+sleepless night; and when, the next morning, he found that Helen was
+surprisingly better, he pressed his invitation upon Madame Dalibard with
+a warmth that made her cheek yet more pale, and the hand, which the boy
+grasped as he pleaded, as cold as the dead. But she briefly consented,
+and Percival, allowed a brief interview with Helen, had the rapture
+to see her smile in a delight as childlike as his own at the news he
+communicated, and listen with swimming eye when he dwelt on the walks
+they should take together amidst haunts to become henceforth dear to her
+as to himself. Fairyland dawned before them.
+
+The visit of the physician justified Percival's heightened spirits. All
+the acuter symptoms had vanished already. He sanctioned his patient's
+departure from town as soon as Madame Dalibard's convenience would
+permit, and recommended only a course of restorative medicines to
+strengthen the nervous system, which was to commence with the following
+morning, and be persisted in for some weeks. He dwelt much on the effect
+to be derived from taking these medicines the first thing in the day, as
+soon as Helen woke. Varney and Madame Dalibard exchanged a rapid glance.
+Charmed with the success that in this instance had attended the skill
+of the great physician, Percival, in his usual zealous benevolence, now
+eagerly pressed upon Madame Dalibard the wisdom of consulting Dr.
+---- for her own malady; and the doctor, putting on his spectacles and
+drawing his chair nearer to the frowning cripple, began to question her
+of her state. But Madame Dalibard abruptly and discourteously put a stop
+to all interrogatories: she had already exhausted all remedies art could
+suggest; she had become reconciled to her deplorable infirmity, and lost
+all faith in physicians. Some day or other she might try the baths at
+Egra, but till then she must be permitted to suffer undisturbed.
+
+The doctor, by no means wishing to undertake a case of chronic
+paralysis, rose smilingly, and with a liberal confession that the German
+baths were sometimes extremely efficacious in such complaints, pressed
+Percival's outstretched hand, then slipped his own into his pocket, and
+bowed his way out of the room.
+
+Relieved from all apprehension, Percival very good-humouredly received
+the hint of Madame Dalibard that the excitement through which she had
+gone for the last twenty-four hours rendered her unfit for his society,
+and went home to write to Laughton and prepare all things for the
+reception of his guests. Varney accompanied him. Percival found Beck
+in the hall, already much altered, and embellished, by a new suit of
+livery. The ex-sweeper stared hard at Varney, who, without recognizing,
+in so smart a shape, the squalid tatterdemalion who had lighted him up
+the stairs to Mr. Grabman's apartments, passed him by into Percival's
+little study, on the ground-floor.
+
+"Well, Beck," said Percival, ever mindful of others, and attributing his
+groom's astonished gaze at Varney to his admiration of that gentleman's
+showy exterior, "I shall send you down to the country to-morrow with two
+of the horses; so you may have to-day to yourself to take leave of
+your nurse. I flatter myself you will find her rooms a little more
+comfortable than they were yesterday."
+
+Beck heard with a bursting heart; and his master, giving him a cheering
+tap on the shoulder, left him to find his way into the streets and to
+Becky's abode.
+
+He found, indeed, that the last had already undergone the magic
+transformation which is ever at the command of godlike wealth. Mrs.
+Mivers, who was naturally prompt and active, had had pleasure in
+executing Percival's commission. Early in the morning, floors had been
+scrubbed, the windows cleaned, the ventilator fixed; then followed
+porters with chairs and tables, and a wonderful Dutch clock, and new
+bedding, and a bright piece of carpet; and then came two servants
+belonging to Mrs. Mivers to arrange the chattels; and finally, when all
+was nearly completed, the Avatar of Mrs. Mivers herself, to give the
+last finish with her own mittened hands and in her own housewifely
+apron.
+
+The good lady was still employed in ranging a set of teacups on the
+shelves of the dresser when Beck entered; and his old nurse, in the
+overflow of her gratitude, hobbled up to her foundling and threw her
+arms round his neck.
+
+"That's right!" said Mrs. Mivers, good-humouredly, turning round, and
+wiping the tear from her eye. "You ought to make much of him, poor
+lad,--he has turned out a godsend indeed; and, upon my word, he looks
+very respectable in his new clothes. But what is this,--a child's
+coral?" as, opening a drawer in the dresser, she discovered Beck's
+treasure. "Dear me, it is a very handsome one; why, these bells
+look like gold!" and suspicion of her protege's honesty for a moment
+contracted her thoughtful brow. "However on earth did you come by this,
+Mrs. Becky?"
+
+"Sure and sartin," answered Becky, dropping her mutilated courtesy, "I
+be's glad it be found now, instead of sum days afore, or I might have
+been vicked enough to let it go with the rest to the pop-shop; and I'm
+sure the times out of mind ven that 'ere boy was a h-urchin that I've
+risted the timtashung and said, 'No, Becky Carruthers, that maun't go to
+my h-uncle's!'"
+
+"And why not, my good woman?"
+
+"Lor' love you, marm, if that curril could speak, who knows vot it might
+say,--eh, lad, who knows? You sees, marm, my good man had not a long
+been dead; I could not a get no vork no vays. 'Becky Carruthers,' says
+I, 'you must go out in the streets a begging!' I niver thought I
+should a come to that. But my poor husband, you sees, marm, fell from a
+scaffol',--as good a man as hever--"
+
+"Yes, yes, you told me all that before," said Mrs. Mivers, growing
+impatient, and already diverted from her interest in the coral by a
+new cargo, all bright from the tinman, which, indeed, no less
+instantaneously, absorbed the admiration both of Beck and his nurse.
+And what with the inspection of these articles, and the comments each
+provoked, the coral rested in peace on the dresser till Mrs. Mivers,
+when just about to renew her inquiries, was startled by the sound of the
+Dutch clock striking four,--a voice which reminded her of the lapse of
+time and her own dinner-hour. So, with many promises to call again and
+have a good chat with her humble friend, she took her departure, amidst
+the blessings of Becky, and the less noisy, but not less grateful,
+salutations of Beck.
+
+Very happy was the evening these poor creatures passed together over
+their first cup of tea from the new bright copper kettle and the almost
+forgotten luxury of crumpets, in which their altered circumstances
+permitted them without extravagance to indulge. In the course of
+conversation Beck communicated how much he had been astonished by
+recognizing the visitor of Grabman, the provoker of the irritable
+grave-stealer, in the familiar companion of his master; and when Becky
+told him how often, in the domestic experience her vocation of charing
+had accumulated, she had heard of the ruin brought on rich young men by
+gamblers and sharpers, Beck promised to himself to keep a sharp eye on
+Grabman's showy acquaintance. "For master is but a babe, like," said he,
+majestically; "and I'd be cut into mincemeat afore I'd let an 'air on
+his 'ead come to 'arm, if so be's h-as 'ow I could perwent it."
+
+We need not say that his nurse confirmed him in these good resolutions.
+
+"And now," said Beck, when the time came for parting, "you'll keep from
+the gin-shop, old 'oman, and not shame the young master?"
+
+"Sartin sure," answered Becky; "it is only ven vun is down in the vorld
+that vun goes to the Ticker-shop. Now, h-indeed,"--and she looked round
+very proudly,--"I 'as a 'spectable stashion, and I vould n't go for to
+lower it, and let 'em say that Becky Carruthers does not know how to
+conduct herself. The curril will be safe enuff now; but p'r'aps you had
+best take it yourself, lad."
+
+"Vot should I do vith it? I've had enuff of the 'sponsibility. Put it up
+in a 'ankerchiff, and p'r'aps ven master gets married, and 'as a babby
+vots teethin', he vil say, 'Thank ye, Beck, for your curril.' Vould not
+that make us proud, mammy?"
+
+Chuckling heartily at that vision, Beck kissed his nurse, and trying
+hard to keep himself upright, and do credit to the dignity of his cloth,
+returned to his new room over the stables.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII. THE WAKING OF THE SERPENT.
+
+And how, O Poet of the sad belief, and eloquence "like ebony, at once
+dark and splendid [It was said of Tertullian that 'his style was like
+ebony, dark and splendid']," how couldst thou, august Lucretius, deem it
+but sweet to behold from the steep the strife of the great sea, or,
+safe from the peril, gaze on the wrath of the battle, or, serene in the
+temples of the wise, look afar on the wanderings of human error? Is it
+so sweet to survey the ills from which thou art delivered? Shall not
+the strong law of SYMPATHY find thee out, and thy heart rebuke thy
+philosophy? Not sweet, indeed, can be man's shelter in self when he says
+to the storm, "I have no bark on the sea;" or to the gods of the battle,
+"I have no son in the slaughter;" when he smiles unmoved upon Woe, and
+murmurs, "Weep on, for these eyes know no tears;" when, unappalled, he
+beholdeth the black deeds of crime, and cries to his conscience, "Thou
+art calm." Yet solemn is the sight to him who lives in all life,--seeks
+for Nature in the storm, and Providence in the battle; loses self in the
+woe; probes his heart in the crime; and owns no philosophy that sets him
+free from the fetters of man. Not in vain do we scan all the contrasts
+in the large framework of civilized earth if we note "when the dust
+groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together." Range, O
+Art, through all space, clasp together in extremes, shake idle wealth
+from its lethargy, and bid States look in hovels where the teacher is
+dumb, and Reason unweeded runs to rot! Bid haughty Intellect pause in
+its triumph, and doubt if intellect alone can deliver the soul from its
+tempters! Only that lives uncorrupt which preserves in all seasons the
+human affections in which the breath of God breathes and is. Go forth
+to the world, O Art, go forth to the innocent, the guilty, the wise, and
+the dull; go forth as the still voice of Fate! Speak of the insecurity
+even of goodness below; carry on the rapt vision of suffering Virtue
+through "the doors of the shadows of death;" show the dim revelation
+symbolled forth in the Tragedy of old,--how incomplete is man's destiny,
+how undeveloped is the justice divine, if Antigone sleep eternally in
+the ribs of the rock, and Oedipus vanish forever in the Grove of the
+Furies. Here below, "the waters are hid with a stone, and the face
+of the deep is frozen;" but above liveth He "who can bind the sweet
+influence of the Pleiades, and loose the bands of Orion." Go with Fate
+over the bridge, and she vanishes in the land beyond the gulf! Behold
+where the Eternal demands Eternity for the progress of His creatures and
+the vindication of His justice!
+
+It was past midnight, and Lucretia sat alone in her dreary room; her
+head buried on her bosom, her eyes fixed on the ground, her hands
+resting on her knees,--it was an image of inanimate prostration and
+decrepitude that might have moved compassion to its depth. The door
+opened, and Martha entered, to assist Madame Dalibard, as usual, to
+retire to rest. Her mistress slowly raised her eyes at the noise of the
+opening door, and those eyes took their searching, penetrating
+acuteness as they fixed upon the florid nor uncomely countenance of the
+waiting-woman.
+
+In her starched cap, her sober-coloured stuff gown, in her prim,
+quiet manner and a certain sanctified demureness of aspect, there was
+something in the first appearance of this woman that impressed you with
+the notion of respectability, and inspired confidence in those steady
+good qualities which we seek in a trusty servant. But more closely
+examined, an habitual observer might have found much to qualify, perhaps
+to disturb, his first prepossessions. The exceeding lowness of the
+forehead, over which that stiff, harsh hair was so puritanically
+parted; the severe hardness of those thin, small lips, so pursed up
+and constrained; even a certain dull cruelty in those light, cold blue
+eyes,--might have caused an uneasy sentiment, almost approaching to
+fear. The fat grocer's spoilt child instinctively recoiled from her
+when she entered the shop to make her household purchases; the old,
+gray-whiskered terrier dog at the public-house slunk into the tap when
+she crossed the threshold.
+
+Madame Dalibard silently suffered herself to be wheeled into the
+adjoining bedroom, and the process of disrobing was nearly completed
+before she said abruptly,--
+
+"So you attended Mr. Varney's uncle in his last illness. Did he suffer
+much?"
+
+"He was a poor creature at best," answered Martha; "but he gave me a
+deal of trouble afore he went. He was a scranny corpse when I strecked
+him out."
+
+Madame Dalibard shrank from the hands at that moment employed upon
+herself, and said,--
+
+"It was not, then, the first corpse you have laid out for the grave?"
+
+"Not by many."
+
+"And did any of those you so prepared die of the same complaint?"
+
+"I can't say, I'm sure," returned Martha. "I never inquires how folks
+die; my bizness was to nurse 'em till all was over, and then to sit up.
+As they say in my country, 'Riving Pike wears a hood when the weather
+bodes ill.'" [If Riving Pike do wear a hood, The day, be sure, will
+ne'er be good. A Lancashire Distich.]
+
+"And when you sat up with Mr. Varney's uncle, did you feel no fear in
+the dead of the night,--that corpse before you, no fear?"
+
+"Young Mr. Varney said I should come to no harm. Oh, he's a clever man!
+What should I fear, ma'am?" answered Martha, with a horrid simplicity.
+
+"You have belonged to a very religious sect, I think I have heard you
+say,--a sect not unfamiliar to me; a sect to which great crime is very
+rarely known?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, some of 'em be tame enough, but others be weel [whirlpool]
+deep!"
+
+"You do not believe what they taught you?"
+
+"I did when I was young and silly."
+
+"And what disturbed your belief?"
+
+"Ma'am, the man what taught me, and my mother afore me, was the first I
+ever kep' company with," answered Martha, without a change in her florid
+hue, which seemed fixed in her cheek, as the red in an autumn leaf.
+"After he had ruined me, as the girls say, he told me as how it was all
+sham!"
+
+"You loved him, then?"
+
+"The man was well enough, ma'am, and he behaved handsome and got me a
+husband. I've known better days."
+
+"You sleep well at night?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, thank you; I loves my bed."
+
+"I have done with you," said Madame Dalibard, stifling a groan, as
+now, placed in her bed, she turned to the wall. Martha extinguished the
+candle, leaving it on the table by the bed, with a book and a box of
+matches, for Madame Dalibard was a bad sleeper, and often read in the
+night. She then drew the curtains and went her way.
+
+It might be an hour after Martha had retired to rest that a hand was
+stretched from the bed, that the candle was lighted, and Lucretia
+Dalibard rose; with a sudden movement she threw aside the coverings, and
+stood in her long night-gear on the floor. Yes, the helpless, paralyzed
+cripple rose, was on her feet,--tall, elastic, erect! It was as a
+resuscitation from the grave. Never was change more startling than that
+simple action effected,--not in the form alone, but the whole character
+of the face. The solitary light streamed upward on a countenance on
+every line of which spoke sinister power and strong resolve. If you
+had ever seen her before in her false, crippled state, prostrate and
+helpless, and could have seen her then,--those eyes, if haggard still,
+now full of life and vigour; that frame, if spare, towering aloft in
+commanding stature, perfect in its proportions as a Grecian image of
+Nemesis,--your amaze would have merged into terror, so preternatural did
+the transformation appear, so did aspect and bearing contradict the very
+character of her sex, uniting the two elements most formidable in man or
+in fiend,--wickedness and power.
+
+She stood a moment motionless, breathing loud, as if it were a joy to
+breathe free from restraint; and then, lifting the light, and gliding to
+the adjoining room, she unlocked a bureau in the corner, and bent over a
+small casket, which she opened with a secret spring.
+
+Reader, cast back your eye to that passage in this history when Lucretia
+Clavering took down the volume from the niche in the tapestried chamber
+at Laughton, and numbered, in thought, the hours left to her uncle's
+life. Look back on the ungrateful thought; behold how it has swelled
+and ripened into the guilty deed! There, in that box, Death guards his
+treasure crypt. There, all the science of Hades numbers its murderous
+inventions. As she searched for the ingredients her design had
+pre-selected, something heavier than those small packets she deranged
+fell to the bottom of the box with a low and hollow sound. She started
+at the noise, and then smiled, in scorn of her momentary fear, as she
+took up the ring that had occasioned the sound,--a ring plain and solid,
+like those used as signets in the Middle Ages, with a large dull opal
+in the centre. What secret could that bauble have in common with
+its ghastly companions in Death's crypt? This had been found amongst
+Olivier's papers; a note in that precious manuscript, which had given
+to the hands of his successors the keys of the grave, had discovered
+the mystery of its uses. By the pressure of the hand, at the touch of a
+concealed spring, a barbed point flew forth steeped in venom more deadly
+than the Indian extracts from the bag of the cobar de capello,--a venom
+to which no antidote is known, which no test can detect. It corrupts the
+whole mass of the blood; it mounts in frenzy and fire to the brain; it
+rends the soul from the body in spasm and convulsion. But examine the
+dead, and how divine the effect of the cause! How go back to the records
+of the Borgias, and amidst all the scepticisms of times in which,
+happily, such arts are unknown, unsuspected, learn from the hero of
+Machiavel how a clasp of the hand can get rid of a foe! Easier and more
+natural to point to the living puncture in the skin, and the swollen
+flesh round it, and dilate on the danger a rusty nail--nay, a pin--can
+engender when the humours are peccant and the blood is impure! The
+fabrication of that bauble, the discovery of Borgia's device, was the
+masterpiece in the science of Dalibard,--a curious and philosophical
+triumph of research, hitherto unused by its inventor and his heirs; for
+that casket is rich in the choice of more gentle materials: but the use
+yet may come. As she gazed on the ring, there was a complacent and proud
+expression on Lucretia's face.
+
+"Dumb token of Caesar Borgia," she murmured,--"him of the wisest head
+and the boldest hand that ever grasped at empire, whom Machiavel, the
+virtuous, rightly praised as the model of accomplished ambition! Why
+should I falter in the paths which he trod with his royal step, only
+because my goal is not a throne? Every circle is as complete in itself,
+whether rounding a globule or a star. Why groan in the belief that
+the mind defiles itself by the darkness through which it glides on its
+object, or the mire through which it ascends to the hill? Murderer as
+he was, poisoner, and fratricide, did blood clog his intellect, or crime
+impoverish the luxury of his genius? Was his verse less melodious [It
+is well known that Caesar Borgia was both a munificent patron and
+an exquisite appreciator of art; well known also are his powers of
+persuasion but the general reader may not, perhaps, be acquainted with
+the fact that this terrible criminal was also a poet], or his love of
+art less intense, or his eloquence less persuasive, because he sought to
+remove every barrier, revenge every wrong, crush every foe?"
+
+In the wondrous corruption to which her mind had descended, thus
+murmured Lucretia. Intellect had been so long made her sole god that
+the very monster of history was lifted to her reverence by his ruthless
+intellect alone,--lifted in that mood of feverish excitement when
+conscience, often less silenced, lay crushed, under the load of the deed
+to come, into an example and a guide.
+
+Though at times, when looking back, oppressed by the blackest despair,
+no remorse of the past ever weakened those nerves when the Hour called
+up its demon, and the Will ruled the rest of the human being as a
+machine.
+
+She replaced the ring, she reclosed the casket, relocked its depository;
+then passed again into the adjoining chamber.
+
+A few minutes afterwards, and the dim light that stole from the heavens
+(in which the moon was partially overcast) through the casement on
+the staircase rested on a shapeless figure robed in black from head to
+foot,--a figure so obscure and undefinable in outline, so suited to the
+gloom in its hue, so stealthy and rapid in its movements, that had you
+started from sleep and seen it on your floor, you would perforce have
+deemed that your fancy had befooled you!
+
+Thus darkly, through the darkness, went the Poisoner to her prey.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. RETROSPECT.
+
+We have now arrived at that stage in this history when it is necessary
+to look back on the interval in Lucretia's life,--between the death of
+Dalibard, and her reintroduction in the second portion of our tale.
+
+One day, without previous notice or warning, Lucretia arrived at William
+Mainwaring's house; she was in the deep weeds of widowhood, and that
+garb of mourning sufficed to add Susan's tenderest commiseration to the
+warmth of her affectionate welcome. Lucretia appeared to have forgiven
+the past, and to have conquered its more painful recollections; she was
+gentle to Susan, though she rather suffered than returned her caresses;
+she was open and frank to William. Both felt inexpressibly grateful for
+her visit, the forgiveness it betokened, and the confidence it implied.
+At this time no condition could be more promising and prosperous than
+that of the young banker. From the first the most active partner in the
+bank, he had now virtually almost monopolized the business. The senior
+partner was old and infirm; the second had a bucolic turn, and was much
+taken up by the care of a large farm he had recently purchased; so that
+Mainwaring, more and more trusted and honoured, became the sole managing
+administrator of the firm. Business throve in his able hands; and with
+patient and steady perseverance there was little doubt but that, before
+middle age was attained, his competence would have swelled into a
+fortune sufficient to justify him in realizing the secret dream of his
+heart,--the parliamentary representation of the town, in which he had
+already secured the affection and esteem of the inhabitants.
+
+It was not long before Lucretia detected the ambition William's industry
+but partially concealed; it was not long before, with the ascendency
+natural to her will and her talents, she began to exercise considerable,
+though unconscious, influence over a man in whom a thousand good
+qualities and some great talents were unhappily accompanied by infirm
+purpose and weak resolutions. The ordinary conversation of Lucretia
+unsettled his mind and inflamed his vanity,--a conversation able,
+aspiring, full both of knowledge drawn from books and of that experience
+of public men which her residence in Paris (whereon, with its new and
+greater Charlemagne, the eyes of the world were turned) had added to
+her acquisitions in the lore of human life. Nothing more disturbs a mind
+like William Mainwaring's than that species of eloquence which rebukes
+its patience in the present by inflaming all its hopes in the future.
+Lucretia had none of the charming babble of women, none of that tender
+interest in household details, in the minutiae of domestic life, which
+relaxes the intellect while softening the heart. Hard and vigorous, her
+sentences came forth in eternal appeal to the reason, or address to the
+sterner passions in which love has no share. Beside this strong thinker,
+poor Susan's sweet talk seemed frivolous and inane. Her soft hold upon
+Mainwaring loosened. He ceased to consult her upon business; he began to
+repine that the partner of his lot could have little sympathy with his
+dreams. More often and more bitterly now did his discontented glance, in
+his way homeward, rove to the rooftops of the rural member for the town;
+more eagerly did he read the parliamentary debates; more heavily did he
+sigh at the thought of eloquence denied a vent, and ambition delayed in
+its career.
+
+When arrived at this state of mind, Lucretia's conversation took a more
+worldly, a more practical turn. Her knowledge of the speculators of
+Paris instructed her pictures of bold ingenuity creating sudden
+wealth; she spoke of fortunes made in a day,--of parvenus bursting into
+millionnaires; of wealth as the necessary instrument of ambition, as the
+arch ruler of the civilized world. Never once, be it observed, in these
+temptations, did Lucretia address herself to the heart; the ordinary
+channels of vulgar seduction were disdained by her. She would not have
+stooped so low as Mainwaring's love, could she have commanded or allured
+it; she was willing to leave to Susan the husband reft from her own
+passionate youth, but leave him with the brand on his brow and the worm
+at his heart,--a scoff and a wreck.
+
+At this time there was in that market-town one of those adventurous,
+speculative men, who are the more dangerous impostors because imposed
+upon by their own sanguine chimeras, who have a plausibility in their
+calculations, an earnestness in their arguments, which account for
+the dupes they daily make in our most sober and wary of civilized
+communities. Unscrupulous in their means, yet really honest in the
+belief that their objects can be attained, they are at once the rogues
+and fanatics of Mammon. This person was held to have been fortunate
+in some adroit speculations in the corn trade, and he was brought too
+frequently into business with Mainwaring not to be a frequent visitor
+at the house. In him Lucretia saw the very instrument of her design. She
+led him on to talk of business as a game, of money as a realizer of cent
+per cent; she drew him into details, she praised him, she admired. In
+his presence she seemed only to hear him; in his absence, musingly, she
+started from silence to exclaim on the acuteness of his genius and the
+accuracy of his figures. Soon the tempter at Mainwaring's heart gave
+signification to these praises, soon this adventurer became his most
+intimate friend. Scarcely knowing why, never ascribing the change to her
+sister, poor Susan wept, amazed at Mainwaring's transformation. No care
+now for the new books from London, or the roses in the garden; the music
+on the instrument was unheeded. Books, roses, music,--what are those
+trifles to a man thinking upon cent per cent? Mainwaring's very
+countenance altered; it lost its frank, affectionate beauty: sullen,
+abstracted, morose, it showed that some great care was at the core.
+Then Lucretia herself began grievingly to notice the change to Susan;
+gradually she altered her tone with regard to the speculator, and hinted
+vague fears, and urged Susan's remonstrance and warning. As she had
+anticipated, warning and remonstrance came in vain to the man who,
+comparing Lucretia's mental power to Susan's, had learned to despise the
+unlearned, timid sense of the latter.
+
+It is unnecessary to trace this change in Mainwaring step by step, or
+to measure the time which sufficed to dazzle his reason and blind his
+honour. In the midst of schemes and hopes which the lust of gold now
+pervaded came a thunderbolt. An anonymous letter to the head partner
+of the bank provoked suspicions that led to minute examination of the
+accounts. It seemed that sums had been irregularly advanced (upon
+bills drawn by men of straw) to the speculator by Mainwaring; and the
+destination of these sums could be traced to gambling operations in
+trade in which Mainwaring had a private interest and partnership. So
+great, as we have said, had been the confidence placed in William's
+abilities and honour that the facilities afforded him in the disposal of
+the joint stock far exceeded those usually granted to the partner of a
+firm, and the breach of trust appeared the more flagrant from the extent
+of the confidence misplaced. Meanwhile, William Mainwaring, though
+as yet unconscious of the proceedings of his partners, was gnawed by
+anxiety and remorse, not unmixed with hope. He depended upon the result
+of a bold speculation in the purchase of shares in a Canal Company,
+a bill for which was then before parliament, with (as he was led
+to believe) a certainty of success. The sums he had, on his own
+responsibility, abstracted from the joint account were devoted to this
+adventure. But, to do him justice, he never dreamed of appropriating the
+profits anticipated to himself. Though knowing that the bills on which
+the moneys had been advanced were merely nominal deposits, he had
+confidently calculated on the certainty of success for the speculations
+to which the proceeds so obtained were devoted, and he looked forward
+to the moment when he might avow what he had done, and justify it by
+doubling the capital withdrawn. But to his inconceivable horror, the
+bill of the Canal Company was rejected in the Lords; the shares bought
+at a premium went down to zero; and to add to his perplexity, the
+speculator abruptly disappeared from the town. In this crisis he was
+summoned to meet his indignant associates.
+
+The evidence against him was morally damning, if not legally conclusive.
+The unhappy man heard all in the silence of despair. Crushed and
+bewildered, he attempted no defence. He asked but an hour to sum up the
+losses of the bank and his own; they amounted within a few hundreds to
+the 10,000 pounds he had brought to the firm, and which, in the absence
+of marriage-settlements, was entirely at his own disposal. This sum he
+at once resigned to his associates, on condition that they should defray
+from it his personal liabilities. The money thus repaid, his partners
+naturally relinquished all further inquiry. They were moved by pity for
+one so gifted and so fallen,--they even offered him a subordinate
+but lucrative situation in the firm in which he had been partner;
+but Mainwaring wanted the patience and resolution to work back the
+redemption of his name,--perhaps, ultimately, of his fortunes. In the
+fatal anguish of his shame and despair, he fled from the town; his
+flight confirmed forever the rumours against him,--rumours worse than
+the reality. It was long before he even admitted Susan to the knowledge
+of the obscure refuge he had sought; there, at length, she joined him.
+Meanwhile, what did Lucretia? She sold nearly half of her own fortune,
+constituted principally of the moiety of her portion which, at
+Dalibard's death, had passed to herself as survivor, and partly of the
+share in her deceased husband's effects which the French law awarded to
+her, and with the proceeds of this sum she purchased an annuity for her
+victims. Was this strange generosity the act of mercy, the result
+of repentance? No; it was one of the not least subtle and delicious
+refinements of her revenge. To know him who had rejected her, the rival
+who had supplanted, the miserable pensioners of her bounty, was dear to
+her haughty and disdainful hate. The lust of power, ever stronger in her
+than avarice, more than reconciled her to the sacrifice of gold. Yes,
+here she, the despised, the degraded, had power still; her wrath had
+ruined the fortunes of her victim, blasted the repute, embittered and
+desolated evermore the future,--now her contemptuous charity fed the
+wretched lives that she spared in scorn. She had no small difficulty,
+it is true, in persuading Susan to accept this sacrifice, and she did
+so only by sustaining her sister's belief that the past could yet be
+retrieved, that Mainwaring's energies could yet rebuild their fortunes,
+and that as the annuity was at any time redeemable, the aid therefore
+was only temporary. With this understanding, Susan, overwhelmed with
+gratitude, weeping and broken-hearted, departed to join the choice of
+her youth. As the men deputed by the auctioneer to arrange and ticket
+the furniture for sale entered the desolate house, Lucretia then, with
+the step of a conqueror, passed from the threshold.
+
+"Ah!" she murmured, as she paused, and gazed on the walls, "ah, they
+were happy when I first entered those doors,--happy in each other's
+tranquil love; happier still when they deemed I had forgiven the wrong
+and abjured the past! How honoured was then their home! How knew I then,
+for the first time, what the home of love can be! And who had destroyed
+for me, upon all the earth, a home like theirs? They on whom that home
+smiled with its serene and taunting peace! I--I, the guest! I--I, the
+abandoned, the betrayed,--what dark memories were on my soul, what a
+hell boiled within my bosom! Well might those memories take each a voice
+to accuse them; well, from that hell, might rise the Alecto! Their lives
+were in my power, my fatal dowry at my command,--rapid death, or slow,
+consuming torture; but to have seen each cheer the other to the grave,
+lighting every downward step with the eyes of love,--vengeance so
+urged would have fallen only on myself! Ha! deceiver, didst thou plume
+thyself, forsooth, on spotless reputation? Didst thou stand, me by thy
+side, amongst thy perjured household gods and talk of honour? Thy home,
+it is reft from thee; thy reputation, it is a scoff; thine honour, it
+is a ghost that shall haunt thee! Thy love, can it linger yet? Shall the
+soft eyes of thy wife not burn into thy heart, and shame turn love into
+loathing? Wrecks of my vengeance, minions of my bounty, I did well to
+let ye live; I shake the dust from my feet on your threshold. Live on,
+homeless, hopeless, and childless! The curse is fulfilled!"
+
+From that hour Lucretia never paused from her career to inquire further
+of her victims; she never entered into communication with either. They
+knew not her address nor her fate, nor she theirs. As she had reckoned,
+Mainwaring made no effort to recover himself from his fall. All the
+high objects that had lured his ambition were gone from him evermore.
+No place in the State, no authority in the senate, awaits in England the
+man with a blighted name. For the lesser objects of life he had no heart
+and no care. They lived in obscurity in a small village in Cornwall till
+the Peace allowed them to remove to France; the rest of their fate is
+known.
+
+Meanwhile, Lucretia removed to one of those smaller Londons, resorts
+of pleasure and idleness, with which rich England abounds, and in which
+widows of limited income can make poverty seem less plebeian. And now,
+to all those passions that had hitherto raged within her, a dismal
+apathy succeeded. It was the great calm in her sea of life. The winds
+fell, and the sails drooped. Her vengeance satisfied, that which she had
+made so preternaturally the main object of existence, once fulfilled,
+left her in youth objectless.
+
+She strove at first to take pleasure in the society of the place; but
+its frivolities and pettiness of purpose soon wearied that masculine
+and grasping mind, already made insensible to the often healthful, often
+innocent, excitement of trifles, by the terrible ordeal it had passed.
+Can the touch of the hand, scorched by the burning iron, feel pleasure
+in the softness of silk, or the light down of the cygnet's plume? She
+next sought such relief as study could afford; and her natural bent of
+thought, and her desire to vindicate her deeds to herself, plunged
+her into the fathomless abyss of metaphysical inquiry with the hope
+to confirm into positive assurance her earlier scepticism,--with the
+atheist's hope to annihilate the soul, and banish the presiding God.
+But no voice that could satisfy her reason came from those dreary deeps;
+contradiction on contradiction met her in the maze. Only when, wearied
+with book-lore, she turned her eyes to the visible Nature, and beheld
+everywhere harmony, order, system, contrivance, art, did she start with
+the amaze and awe of instinctive conviction, and the natural religion
+revolted from her cheerless ethics. Then came one of those sudden
+reactions common with strong passions and exploring minds, but more
+common with women, however manlike, than with men. Had she lived in
+Italy then, she had become a nun; for in this woman, unlike Varney and
+Dalibard, the conscience could never be utterly silenced. In her choice
+of evil, she found only torture to her spirit in all the respites
+afforded to the occupations it indulged. When employed upon ill, remorse
+gave way to the zest of scheming; when the ill was done, remorse came
+with the repose.
+
+It was in this peculiar period of her life that Lucretia, turning
+everywhere, and desperately, for escape from the past, became acquainted
+with some members of one of the most rigid of the sects of Dissent. At
+first she permitted herself to know and commune with these persons
+from a kind of contemptuous curiosity; she desired to encourage, in
+contemplating them, her experience of the follies of human nature: but
+in that crisis of her mind, in those struggles of her reason, whatever
+showed that which she most yearned to discover,--namely, earnest
+faith, rooted and genuine conviction, whether of annihilation or
+of immortality, a philosophy that might reconcile her to crime by
+destroying the providence of good, or a creed that could hold out the
+hope of redeeming the past and exorcising sin by the mystery of a Divine
+sacrifice,--had over her a power which she had not imagined or divined.
+Gradually the intense convictions of her new associates disturbed and
+infected her. Their affirmations that as we are born in wrath, so sin
+is our second nature, our mysterious heritage, seemed, to her
+understanding, willing to be blinded, to imply excuses for her past
+misdeeds. Their assurances that the worst sinner may become the most
+earnest saint; that through but one act of the will, resolute faith,
+all redemption is to be found,--these affirmations and these assurances,
+which have so often restored the guilty and remodelled the human heart,
+made a salutary, if brief, impression upon her. Nor were the lives of
+these Dissenters (for the most part austerely moral), nor the peace
+and self-complacency which they evidently found in the satisfaction of
+conscience and fulfilment of duty, without an influence over her that
+for a while both chastened and soothed.
+
+Hopeful of such a convert, the good teachers strove hard to confirm the
+seeds springing up from the granite and amidst the weeds; and amongst
+them came one man more eloquent, more seductive, than the rest,--Alfred
+Braddell. This person, a trader at Liverpool, was one of those strange
+living paradoxes that can rarely be found out of a commercial community.
+He himself had been a convert to the sect, and like most converts,
+he pushed his enthusiasm into the bigotry of the zealot; he saw no
+salvation out of the pale into which he had entered. But though his
+belief was sincere, it did not genially operate on his practical life;
+with the most scrupulous attention to forms, he had the worldliness and
+cunning of the carnal. He had abjured the vices of the softer senses,
+but not that which so seldom wars on the decorums of outer life. He was
+essentially a money-maker,--close, acute, keen, overreaching. Good works
+with him were indeed as nothing,--faith the all in all. He was one of
+the elect, and could not fall. Still, in this man there was all
+the intensity which often characterizes a mind in proportion to the
+narrowness of its compass; that intensity gave fire to his gloomy
+eloquence, and strength to his obstinate will. He saw Lucretia, and his
+zeal for her conversion soon expanded into love for her person; yet
+that love was secondary to his covetousness. Though ostensibly in a
+flourishing business, he was greatly distressed for money to carry on
+operations which swelled beyond the reach of his capital; his fingers
+itched for the sum which Lucretia had still at her disposal. But the
+seeming sincerity of the man, the persuasion of his goodness, his
+reputation for sanctity, deceived her; she believed herself honestly
+and ardently beloved, and by one who could guide her back, if not to
+happiness, at least to repose. She herself loved him not,--she could
+love no more. But it seemed to her a luxury to find some one she could
+trust, she could honour. If you had probed into the recesses of her mind
+at that time, you would have found that no religious belief was there
+settled,--only the desperate wish to believe; only the disturbance of
+all previous infidelity; only a restless, gnawing desire to escape from
+memory, to emerge from the gulf. In this troubled, impatient disorder
+of mind and feeling, she hurried into a second marriage as fatal as the
+first.
+
+For a while she bore patiently all the privations of that ascetic
+household, assisted in all those external formalities, centred all her
+intellect within that iron range of existence. But no grace descended
+on her soul,--no warm ray unlocked the ice of the well. Then, gradually
+becoming aware of the niggardly meanness, of the harsh, uncharitable
+judgments, of the decorous frauds that, with unconscious hypocrisy, her
+husband concealed beneath the robes of sanctity, a weary disgust stole
+over her,--it stole, it deepened, it increased; it became intolerable
+when she discovered that Braddell had knowingly deceived her as to
+his worldly substance. In that mood in which she had rushed into these
+ominous nuptials, she had had no thought for vulgar advantages; had
+Braddell been a beggar, she had married him as rashly. But he, with
+the inability to comprehend a nature like hers,--dim not more to her
+terrible vices than to the sinister grandeur which made their ordinary
+atmosphere,--had descended cunningly to address the avarice he thought
+as potent in others as himself, to enlarge on the worldly prosperity
+with which Providence had blessed him; and now she saw that her dowry
+alone had saved the crippled trader from the bankrupt list. With this
+revolting discovery, with the scorn it produced, vanished all Lucretia's
+unstable visions of reform. She saw this man a saint amongst his
+tribe, and would not believe in the virtues of his brethren, great and
+unquestionable as they might have been proved to a more dispassionate
+and humbler inquirer. The imposture she detected she deemed universal
+in the circle in which she dwelt; and Satan once more smiled upon the
+subject he regained. Lucretia became a mother; but their child formed no
+endearing tie between the ill-assorted pair,--it rather embittered their
+discord. Dimly even then, as she bent over the cradle, that vision,
+which now, in the old house at Brompton, haunted her dreams and beckoned
+her over seas of blood into the fancied future, was foreshadowed in the
+face of her infant son. To be born again in that birth, to live only
+in that life, to aspire as man may aspire, in that future man whom she
+would train to knowledge and lead to power,--these were the feelings
+with which that sombre mother gazed upon her babe. The idea that the
+low-born, grovelling father had the sole right over that son's destiny,
+had the authority to cabin his mind in the walls of form, bind him down
+to the sordid apprenticeship, debased, not dignified, by the solemn
+mien, roused her indignant wrath; she sickened when Braddell touched her
+child. All her pride of intellect, that had never slept, all her pride
+of birth, long dormant, woke up to protect the heir of her ambition, the
+descendant of her race, from the defilement of the father's nurture.
+Not long after her confinement, she formed a plan for escape; she
+disappeared from the house with her child. Taking refuge in a cottage,
+living on the sale of the few jewels she possessed, she was for some
+weeks almost happy. But Braddell, less grieved by the loss than shocked
+by the scandal, was indefatigable in his researches,--he discovered her
+retreat. The scene between them was terrible. There was no resisting the
+power which all civilized laws give to the rights of husband and father.
+Before this man, whom she scorned so unutterably, Lucretia was impotent.
+Then all the boiling passions long suppressed beneath that command of
+temper which she owed both to habitual simulation and intense disdain,
+rushed forth. Then she appalled the impostor with her indignant
+denunciations of his hypocrisy, his meanness, and his guile. Then,
+throwing off the mask she had worn, she hurled her anathema on his sect,
+on his faith, with the same breath that smote his conscience and left it
+wordless. She shocked all the notions he sincerely entertained, and he
+stood awed by accusations from a blasphemer whom he dared not rebuke.
+His rage broke at length from his awe. Stung, maddened by the scorn of
+himself, his blood fired into juster indignation by her scoff at his
+creed, he lost all self-possession and struck her to the ground. In the
+midst of shame and dread at disclosure of his violence, which succeeded
+the act so provoked, he was not less relieved than amazed when Lucretia,
+rising slowly, laid her hand gently on his arm and said, "Repent not, it
+is passed; fear not, I will be silent! Come, you are the stronger,--you
+prevail. I will follow my child to your home."
+
+In this unexpected submission in one so imperious, Braddell's imperfect
+comprehension of character saw but fear, and his stupidity exulted in
+his triumph. Lucretia returned with him. A few days afterwards Braddell
+became ill; the illness increased,--slow, gradual, wearying. It broke
+his spirit with his health; and then the steadfast imperiousness of
+Lucretia's stern will ruled and subjugated him. He cowered beneath her
+haughty, searching gaze, he shivered at her sidelong, malignant glance;
+but with this fear came necessarily hate, and this hate, sometimes
+sufficing to vanquish the fear, spitefully evinced itself in thwarting
+her legitimate control over her infant. He would have it (though he
+had little real love for children) constantly with him, and affected to
+contradict all her own orders to the servants, in the sphere in which
+mothers arrogate most the right. Only on these occasions sometimes would
+Lucretia lose her grim self-control, and threaten that her child yet
+should be emancipated from his hands, should yet be taught the scorn for
+hypocrites which he had taught herself. These words sank deep, not only
+in the resentment, but in the conscience, of the husband. Meanwhile,
+Lucretia scrupled not to evince her disdain of Braddell by markedly
+abstaining from all the ceremonies she had before so rigidly observed.
+The sect grew scandalized. Braddell did not abstain from making known
+his causes of complaint. The haughty, imperious woman was condemned in
+the community, and hated in the household.
+
+It was at this time that Walter Ardworth, who was then striving to eke
+out his means by political lectures (which in the earlier part of the
+century found ready audience) in our great towns, came to Liverpool.
+Braddell and Ardworth had been schoolfellows, and even at school embryo
+politicians of congenial notions; and the conversion of the former to
+one of the sects which had grown out of the old creeds, that, under
+Cromwell, had broken the sceptre of the son of Belial and established
+the Commonwealth of Saints, had only strengthened the republican tenets
+of the sour fanatic. Ardworth called on Braddell, and was startled to
+find in his schoolfellow's wife the niece of his benefactor, Sir Miles
+St. John. Now, Lucretia had never divulged her true parentage to her
+husband. In a union so much beneath her birth, she had desired to
+conceal from all her connections the fall of the once-honoured heiress.
+She had descended, in search of peace, to obscurity; but her pride
+revolted from the thought that her low-born husband might boast of her
+connections and parade her descent to his level. Fortunately, as she
+thought, she received Ardworth before he was admitted to her husband,
+who now, growing feebler and feebler, usually kept his room. She stooped
+to beseech Ardworth not to reveal her secret; and he, comprehending her
+pride, as a man well-born himself, and pitying her pain, readily gave
+his promise. At the first interview, Braddell evinced no pleasure in the
+sight of his old schoolfellow. It was natural enough that one so precise
+should be somewhat revolted by one so careless of all form. But when
+Lucretia imprudently evinced satisfaction at his surly remarks on his
+visitor; when he perceived that it would please her that he should not
+cultivate the acquaintance offered him,--he was moved, by the spirit of
+contradiction, and the spiteful delight even in frivolous annoyance, to
+conciliate and court the intimacy he had at first disdained: and then,
+by degrees, sympathy in political matters and old recollections of
+sportive, careless boyhood cemented the intimacy into a more familiar
+bond than the sectarian had contracted really with any of his late
+associates.
+
+Lucretia regarded this growing friendship with great uneasiness; the
+uneasiness increased to alarm when one day, in the presence of Ardworth,
+Braddell, writhing with a sudden spasm, said: "I cannot account for
+these strange seizures; I think verily I am poisoned!" and his dull eye
+rested on Lucretia's pallid brow. She was unusually thoughtful for some
+days after this remark; and one morning she informed her husband that
+she had received the intelligence that a relation, from whom she
+had pecuniary expectations, was dangerously ill, and requested his
+permission to visit this sick kinsman, who dwelt in a distant county.
+Braddell's eyes brightened at the thought of her absence; with little
+further questioning he consented; and Lucretia, sure perhaps that the
+barb was in the side of her victim, and reckoning, it may be, on greater
+freedom from suspicion if her husband died in her absence, left the
+house. It was, indeed, to the neighbourhood of her kindred that she
+went. In a private conversation with Ardworth, when questioning him of
+his news of the present possessor of Laughton, he had informed her that
+he had heard accidentally that Vernon's two sons (Percival was not then
+born) were sickly; and she went into Hampshire secretly and unknown, to
+see what were really the chances that her son might yet become the lord
+of her lost inheritance.
+
+During this absence, Braddell, now gloomily aware that his days were
+numbered, resolved to put into practice the idea long contemplated,
+and even less favoured by his spite than justified by the genuine
+convictions of his conscience. Whatever his faults, sincere at least in
+his religious belief, he might well look with dread to the prospect of
+the training and education his son would receive from the hands of a
+mother who had blasphemed his sect and openly proclaimed her infidelity.
+By will, it is true, he might create a trust, and appoint guardians to
+his child. But to have lived under the same roof with his wife,--nay, to
+have carried her back to that roof when she had left it,--afforded tacit
+evidence that whatever the disagreement between them, her conduct could
+hardly have merited her exclusion from the privileges of a mother.
+The guardianship might therefore avail little to frustrate Lucretia's
+indirect contamination, if not her positive control. Besides, where
+guardians are appointed, money must be left; and Braddell knew that
+at his death his assets would be found insufficient for his debts. Who
+would be guardian to a penniless infant? He resolved, therefore, to send
+his child from his roof to some place where, if reared humbly, it might
+at least be brought up in the right faith,--some place which might defy
+the search and be beyond the perversion of the unbelieving mother. He
+looked round, and discovered no instrument for his purpose that seemed
+so ready as Walter Ardworth; for by this time he had thoroughly excited
+the pity and touched the heart of that good-natured, easy man. His
+representations of the misconduct of Lucretia were the more implicitly
+believed by one who had always been secretly prepossessed against her;
+who, admitted to household intimacy, was an eye-witness to her hard
+indifference to her husband's sufferings; who saw in her very request
+not to betray her gentle birth, the shame she felt in her election; who
+regarded with indignation her unfeeling desertion of Braddell in his
+last moments, and who, besides all this, had some private misfortunes of
+his own which made him the more ready listener to themes on the faults
+of women; and had already, by mutual confidences, opened the hearts of
+the two ancient schoolfellows to each other's complaints and wrongs. The
+only other confidant in the refuge selected for the child was a member
+of the same community as Braddell, who kindly undertook to search for a
+pious, godly woman, who, upon such pecuniary considerations as Braddell,
+by robbing his creditors, could afford to bestow, would permanently
+offer to the poor infant a mother's home and a mother's care. When this
+woman was found, Braddell confided his child to Ardworth, with such
+a sum as he could scrape together for its future maintenance. And to
+Ardworth, rather than to his fellow-sectarian, this double trust was
+given, because the latter feared scandal and misrepresentation if
+he should be ostensibly mixed up in so equivocal a charge. Poor
+and embarrassed as Walter Ardworth was, Braddell did not for once
+misinterpret character when he placed the money in his hands; and this
+because the characters we have known in transparent boyhood we have
+known forever. Ardworth was reckless, and his whole life had been
+wrecked, his whole nature materially degraded, by the want of common
+thrift and prudence. His own money slipped through his fingers and left
+him surrounded by creditors, whom, rigidly speaking, he thus defrauded;
+but direct dishonesty was as wholly out of the chapter of his vices
+as if he had been a man of the strictest principles and the steadiest
+honour.
+
+The child was gone, the father died, Lucretia returned, as we have seen
+in Grabman's letter, to the house of death, to meet suspicion, and cold
+looks, and menial accusations, and an inquest on the dead; but through
+all this the reft tigress mourned her stolen whelp. As soon as all
+evidence against her was proved legally groundless, and she had leave to
+depart, she searched blindly and frantically for her lost child; but in
+vain. The utter and penniless destitution in which she was left by her
+husband's decease did not suffice to terminate her maddening chase. On
+foot she wandered from village to village, and begged her way wherever a
+false clew misled her steps.
+
+At last, in reluctant despair, she resigned the pursuit, and found
+herself one day in the midst of the streets of London, half-famished
+and in rags; and before her suddenly, now grown into vigorous
+youth,--blooming, sleek, and seemingly prosperous,--stood Gabriel
+Varney. By her voice, as she approached and spoke, he recognized his
+stepmother; and after a short pause of hesitation, he led her to his
+home. It is not our purpose (for it is not necessary to those passages
+of their lives from which we have selected the thread of our tale)
+to follow these two, thus united, through their general career of
+spoliation and crime. Birds of prey, they searched in human follies
+and human errors for their food: sometimes severed, sometimes together,
+their interests remained one. Varney profited by the mightier and
+subtler genius of evil to which he had leashed himself; for, caring
+little for luxuries, and dead to the softer senses, she abandoned to him
+readily the larger share of their plunder. Under a variety of names and
+disguises, through a succession of frauds, some vast and some mean, but
+chiefly on the Continent, they had pursued their course, eluding all
+danger and baffling all law.
+
+Between three and four years before this period, Varney's uncle, the
+painter, by one of those unexpected caprices of fortune which sometimes
+find heirs to a millionnaire at the weaver's loom or the labourer's
+plough, had suddenly, by the death of a very distant kinsman whom he had
+never seen, come into possession of a small estate, which he sold for
+6,000 pounds. Retiring from all his profession, he lived as comfortably
+as his shattered constitution permitted upon the interest of this sum;
+and he wrote to his nephew, then at Paris, to communicate the good news
+and offer the hospitality of his hearth. Varney hastened to London.
+Shortly afterwards a nurse, recommended as an experienced, useful person
+in her profession, by Nicholas Grabman, who in many a tortuous scheme
+had been Gabriel's confederate, was installed in the poor painter's
+house. From that time his infirmities increased. He died, as his doctor
+said, "by abstaining from the stimulants to which his constitution had
+been so long accustomed;" and Gabriel Varney was summoned to the reading
+of the will. To his inconceivable disappointment, instead of bequeathing
+to his nephew the free disposal of his 6,000 pounds, that sum was
+assigned to trustees for the benefit of Gabriel and his children yet
+unborn,--"An inducement," said the poor testator, tenderly, "for the boy
+to marry and reform!" So that the nephew could only enjoy the interest,
+and had no control over the capital. The interest of 6,000 pounds
+invested in the Bank of England was flocci nauci to the voluptuous
+spendthrift, Gabriel Varney.
+
+Now, these trustees were selected from the painter's earlier and more
+respectable associates, who had dropped him, it is true, in his days of
+beggary and disrepute, but whom the fortune that made him respectable
+had again conciliated. One of these trustees had lately retired to pass
+the remainder of his days at Boulogne; the other was a hypochondriacal
+valetudinarian,--neither of them, in short, a man of business. Gabriel
+was left to draw out the interest of the money as it became periodically
+due at the Bank of England. In a few months the trustee settled at
+Boulogne died; the trust, of course, lapsed to Mr. Stubmore, the
+valetudinarian survivor. Soon pinched by extravagances, and emboldened
+by the character and helpless state of the surviving trustee, Varney
+forged Mr. Stubmore's signature to an order on the bank to sell out
+such portion of the capital as his wants required. The impunity of one
+offence begot courage for others, till the whole was well-nigh expended.
+Upon these sums Varney had lived very pleasantly, and he saw with a deep
+sigh the approaching failure of so facile a resource.
+
+In one of the melancholy moods engendered by this reflection, Varney
+happened to be in the very town in France in which the Mainwarings,
+in their later years, had taken refuge, and from which Helen had been
+removed to the roof of Mr. Fielden. By accident he heard the name, and,
+his curiosity leading to further inquiries, learned that Helen was made
+an heiress by the will of her grandfather. With this knowledge came
+a thought of the most treacherous, the most miscreant, and the vilest
+crime that even he yet had perpetrated; so black was it that for a while
+he absolutely struggled against it. But in guilt there seems ever a
+Necessity that urges on, step after step, to the last consummation.
+Varney received a letter to inform him that the last surviving trustee
+was no more, that the trust was therefore now centred in his son and
+heir, that that gentleman was at present very busy in settling his own
+affairs and examining into a very mismanaged property in Devonshire
+which had devolved upon him, but that he hoped in a few months to
+discharge, more efficiently than his father had done, the duties of
+trustee, and that some more profitable investment than the Bank of
+England would probably occur.
+
+This new trustee was known personally to Varney,--a contemporary of his
+own, and in earlier youth a pupil to his uncle. But, since then, he had
+made way in life, and retired from the profession of art. This younger
+Stubmore he knew to be a bustling, officious man of business, somewhat
+greedy and covetous, but withal somewhat weak of purpose, good-natured
+in the main, and with a little lukewarm kindness for Gabriel, as
+a quondam fellow-pupil. That Stubmore would discover the fraud was
+evident; that he would declare it, for his own sake, was evident also;
+that the bank would prosecute, that Varney would be convicted, was no
+less surely to be apprehended. There was only one chance left to the
+forger: if he could get into his hands, and in time, before Stubmore's
+bustling interference, a sum sufficient to replace what had been
+fraudulently taken, he might easily manage, he thought, to prevent
+the forgery ever becoming known. Nay, if Stubmore, roused into strict
+personal investigation by the new power of attorney which a new
+investment in the bank would render necessary, should ascertain what had
+occurred, his liabilities being now indemnified, and the money replaced,
+Varney thought he could confidently rely on his ci-devant fellow-pupil's
+assent to wink at the forgery and hush up the matter. But this was
+his only chance. How was the money to be gained? He thought of Helen's
+fortune, and the last scruple gave way to the imminence of his peril and
+the urgency of his fears.
+
+With this decision, he repaired to Lucretia, whose concurrence was
+necessary to his designs. Long habits of crime had now deepened still
+more the dark and stern colour of that dread woman's sombre nature.
+But through all that had ground the humanity from her soul, one human
+sentiment, fearfully tainted and adulterated as it was, still struggled
+for life,--the memory of the mother. It was by this, her least criminal
+emotion, that Varney led her to the worst of her crimes. He offered to
+sell out the remainder of the trust-money by a fresh act of forgery, to
+devote such proceeds to the search for her lost Vincent; he revived
+the hopes she had long since gloomily relinquished, till she began to
+conceive the discovery easy and certain. He then brought before her the
+prospect of that son's succession to Laughton: but two lives now between
+him and those broad lands,--those two lives associated with just cause
+of revenge. Two lives! Lucretia till then did not know that Susan had
+left a child, that a pledge of those nuptials, to which she imputed all
+her infamy, existed to revive a jealousy never extinguished, appeal to
+the hate that had grown out of her love. More readily than Varney had
+anticipated, and with fierce exultation, she fell into his horrible
+schemes.
+
+Thus had she returned to England and claimed the guardianship of her
+niece. Varney engaged a dull house in the suburb, and looking out for a
+servant not likely to upset and betray, found the nurse who had watched
+over his uncle's last illness; but Lucretia, according to her invariable
+practice, rejected all menial accomplices, reposed no confidence in
+the tools of her black deeds. Feigning an infirmity that would mock all
+suspicion of the hand that mixed the draught, and the step that stole to
+the slumber, she defied the justice of earth, and stood alone under the
+omniscience of Heaven.
+
+Various considerations had delayed the execution of the atrocious deed
+so coldly contemplated. Lucretia herself drew back, perhaps more daunted
+by conscience than she herself was distinctly aware, and disguising
+her scruples in those yet fouler refinements of hoped revenge which her
+conversations with Varney have betrayed to the reader. The failure of
+the earlier researches for the lost Vincent, the suspended activity
+of Stubmore, left the more impatient murderer leisure to make the
+acquaintance of St. John, steal into the confidence of Helen, and render
+the insurances on the life of the latter less open to suspicion than if
+effected immediately on her entrance into that shamble-house, and before
+she could be supposed to form that affection for her aunt which made
+probable so tender a forethought. These causes of delay now vanished,
+the Parcae closed the abrupt woof, and lifted the impending shears.
+
+Lucretia had long since dropped the name of Braddell. She shrank from
+proclaiming those second spousals, sullied by the degradation to which
+they had exposed her, and the suspicions implied in the inquest on her
+husband, until the hour for acknowledging her son should arrive. She
+resumed, therefore, the name of Dalibard, and by that we will continue
+to call her. Nor was Varney uninfluential in dissuading her from
+proclaiming her second marriage till occasion necessitated. If the son
+were discovered, and proofs of his birth in the keeping of himself
+and his accomplice, his avarice naturally suggested the expediency of
+wringing from that son some pledge of adequate reward on succession to
+an inheritance which they alone could secure to him; out of this fancied
+fund not only Grabman, but his employer, was to be paid. The concealment
+of the identity between Mrs. Braddell and Madame Dalibard might
+facilitate such an arrangement. This idea Varney locked as yet in his
+own breast. He did not dare to speak to Lucretia of the bargain he
+ultimately meditated with her son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX. MR. GRABMAN'S ADVENTURES.
+
+The lackeys in their dress liveries stood at the porch of Laughton as
+the postilions drove rapidly along the road, sweeping through venerable
+groves, tinged with the hues of autumn, up to that stately pile. From
+the window of the large, cumbrous vehicle which Percival, mindful of
+Madame Dalibard's infirmity, had hired for her special accommodation,
+Lucretia looked keenly. On the slope of the hill grouped the deer, and
+below, where the lake gleamed, the swan rested on the wave. Farther on
+to the left, gaunt and stag-headed, rose, living still, from the depth
+of the glen, Guy's memorable oak. Coming now in sight, though at a
+distance, the gray church-tower emerged from the surrounding masses of
+solemn foliage. Suddenly the road curves round, and straight before her
+(the rooks cawing above the turrets, the sun reflected from the vanes)
+Lucretia gazes on the halls of Laughton. And didst thou not, O Guy's
+oak, murmur warning from thine oracular hollows? And thou who sleepest
+below the church-tower, didst thou not turn, Miles St. John, in thy
+grave, when, with such tender care, the young lord of Laughton bore that
+silent guest across his threshold, and with credulous, moistened eyes,
+welcomed Treason and Murder to his hearth?
+
+There, at the porch, paused Helen, gazing with the rapt eye of the
+poetess on the broad landscape, checkered by the vast shadows cast
+from the setting sun. There, too, by her side lingered Varney, with an
+artist's eye for the stately scene, till a thought, not of art, changed
+the face of the earth, and the view without mirrored back the Golgotha
+of his soul.
+
+Leave them thus; we must hurry on.
+
+One day a traveller stopped his gig at a public-house in a village
+in Lancashire. He chucked the rein to the hostler, and in reply to a
+question what oats should be given to the horse, said, "Hay and water;
+the beast is on job." Then sauntering to the bar, he called for a glass
+of raw brandy for himself; and while the host drew the spirit forth from
+the tap, he asked carelessly if some years ago a woman of the name of
+Joplin had not resided in the village.
+
+"It is strange," said the host, musingly. "What is strange?"
+
+"Why, we have just had a gent asking the same question. I have only
+been here nine year come December; but my old hostler was born in the
+village, and never left it. So the gent had in the hostler, and he is
+now gone into the village to pick up what else he can learn."
+
+This intelligence seemed to surprise and displease the traveller.
+
+"What the deuce!" he muttered; "does Jason mistrust me? Has he set
+another dog on the scent? Humph!" He drained off his brandy, and sallied
+forth to confer with the hostler.
+
+"Well, my friend," said Mr. Grabman,--for the traveller was no other
+than that worthy,--"well, so you remember Mrs. Joplin more than twenty
+years ago, eh?"
+
+"Yees, I guess; more than twenty years since she left the pleck
+[Lancashire and Yorkshire synonym for place]."
+
+"Ah, she seems to have been a restless body. She had a child with her?"
+
+"Yees, I moind that."
+
+"And I dare say you heard her say the child was not her own,--that she
+was paid well for it, eh?"
+
+"Noa; my missus did not loike me to chaffer much with neighbour Joplin,
+for she was but a bad 'un,--pretty fease, too. She lived agin the wogh
+[Anglice, wall] yonder, where you see that gent coming out."
+
+"Oho! that is the gent who was asking after Mrs. Joplin?"
+
+"Yes; and he giv' me half-a-croon!" said the clever hostler, holding out
+his hand.
+
+Mr. Grabman, too thoughtful, too jealous of his rival, to take the hint
+at that moment, darted off, as fast as his thin legs could carry him,
+towards the unwelcome interferer in his own business.
+
+Approaching the gentleman,--a tall, powerful-looking young man,--he
+somewhat softened his tone, and mechanically touched his hat as he
+said,--
+
+"What, sir, are you, too, in search of Mrs. Joplin?"
+
+"Sir, I am," answered the young man, eying Grabman deliberately; "and
+you, I suppose, are the person I have found before me on the same
+search,--first at Liverpool; next at C----, about fifteen miles from
+that town; thirdly, at I----; and now we meet here. You have had the
+start of me. What have you learned?"
+
+Mr. Grabman smiled. "Softly, sir, softly. May I first ask--since open
+questioning seems the order of the day--whether I have the honour to
+address a brother practitioner,--one of the law, sir, one of the law?"
+
+"I am one of the law."
+
+Mr. Grabman bowed and scowled.
+
+"And may I make bold to ask the name of your client?"
+
+"Certainly you may ask. Every man has a right to ask what he pleases, in
+a civil way."
+
+"But you'll not answer? Deep! Oh, I understand! Very good. But I am deep
+too, sir. You know Mr. Varney, I suppose?"
+
+The gentleman looked surprised. His bushy brows met over his steady,
+sagacious eyes; but after a moment's pause the expression of his face
+cleared up.
+
+"It is as I thought," he said, half to himself. "Who else could have
+had an interest in similar inquiries?--Sir," he added, with a quick and
+decided tone, "you are doubtless employed by Mr. Varney on behalf of
+Madame Dalibard and in search of evidence connected with the loss of
+an unhappy infant. I am on the same quest, and for the same end. The
+interests of your client are mine. Two heads are better than one; let us
+unite our ingenuity and endeavours."
+
+"And share the pec, I suppose?" said Grabman, dryly, buttoning up his
+pockets.
+
+"Whatever fee you may expect you will have, anyhow, whether I assist you
+or not. I expect no fee, for mine is a personal interest, which I serve
+gratuitously; but I can undertake to promise you, on my own part, more
+than the ordinary professional reward for your co-operation."
+
+"Well, sir," said Grabman, mollified, "you speak very much like a
+gentleman. My feelings were hurt at first, I own. I am hasty, but I can
+listen to reason. Will you walk back with me to the house you have just
+left? And suppose we then turn in and have a chop together, and compare
+notes."
+
+"Willingly," answered the tall stranger, and the two inquisitors
+amicably joined company. The result of their inquiries was not, however,
+very satisfactory. No one knew whither Mrs. Joplin had gone, though all
+agreed it was in company with a man of bad character and vagrant habits;
+all agreed, too, in the vague recollection of the child, and some
+remembered that it was dressed in clothes finer than would have been
+natural to an infant legally and filially appertaining to Mrs. Joplin.
+One old woman remembered that on her reproaching Mrs. Joplin for some
+act of great cruelty to the poor babe, she replied that it was not her
+flesh and blood, and that if she had not expected more than she had got,
+she would never have undertaken the charge. On comparing the information
+gleaned at the previous places of their research, they found an entire
+agreement as to the character personally borne by Mrs. Joplin. At the
+village to which their inquiry had been first directed, she was known as
+a respectable, precise young woman, one of a small congregation of rigid
+Dissenters. She had married a member of the sect, and borne him a child,
+which died two weeks after birth. She was then seen nursing another
+infant, though how she came by it none knew. Shortly after this,
+her husband, a journeyman carpenter of good repute, died; but to the
+surprise of the neighbours, Mrs. Joplin continued to live as comfortably
+as before, and seemed not to miss the wages of her husband,--nay, she
+rather now, as if before kept back by the prudence of the deceased,
+launched into a less thrifty mode of life, and a gayety of dress at
+variance both with the mourning her recent loss should have imposed, and
+the austere tenets of her sect. This indecorum excited angry curiosity,
+and drew down stern remonstrance. Mrs. Joplin, in apparent disgust at
+this intermeddling with her affairs, withdrew from the village to a
+small town, about twenty miles distant, and there set up a shop. But her
+moral lapse became now confirmed; her life was notoriously abandoned,
+and her house the resort of all the reprobates of the place. Whether her
+means began to be exhausted, or the scandal she provoked attracted the
+notice of the magistrates and imposed a check on her course, was not
+very certain, but she sold off her goods suddenly, and was next tracked
+to the village in which Mr. Grabman met his new coadjutor; and there,
+though her conduct was less flagrant, and her expenses less reckless,
+she made but a very unfavourable impression, which was confirmed by her
+flight with an itinerant hawker of the lowest possible character. Seated
+over their port wine, the two gentlemen compared their experiences,
+and consulted on the best mode of remending the broken thread of their
+research; when Mr. Grabman said coolly, "But, after all, I think it most
+likely that we are not on the right scent. This bantling may not be the
+one we search for."
+
+"Be not misled by that doubt. To arrive at the evidence we desire, we
+must still track this wretched woman."
+
+"You are certain of that?"
+
+"Certain."
+
+"Hem! Did you ever hear of a Mr. Walter Ardworth?"
+
+"Yes, what of him?"
+
+"Why, he can best tell us where to look for the child."
+
+"I am sure he would counsel as I do."
+
+"You know him, then?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"What, he lives still?"
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Can you bring me across him?"
+
+"If necessary."
+
+"And that young man, who goes by his name, brought up by Mr. Fielden?"
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"Is he not the son of Mr. Braddell?"
+
+The stranger was silent, and, shading his face with his hand, seemed
+buried in thought. He then rose, took up his candle, and said quietly,--
+
+"Sir, I wish you good-evening. I have letters to write in my own room. I
+will consider by to-morrow, if you stay till then, whether we can really
+aid each other further, or whether we should pursue our researches
+separately." With these words he closed the door; and Mr. Grabman
+remained baffled and bewildered.
+
+However, he too had a letter to write; so, calling for pen, ink, and
+paper, and a pint of brandy, he indited his complaints and his news to
+Varney.
+
+"Jason, (he began) are you playing me false? Have you set another man on
+the track with a view to bilk me of my promised fee? Explain, or I throw
+up the business."
+
+Herewith, Mr. Grabman gave a minute description of the stranger, and
+related pretty accurately what had passed between that gentleman and
+himself. He then added the progress of his own inquiries, and renewed,
+as peremptorily as he dared, his demand for candour and plain dealing.
+Now, it so happened that in stumbling upstairs to bed, Mr. Grabman
+passed the room in which his mysterious fellow-seeker was lodged, and
+as is the usage in hotels, a pair of boots stood outside the door, to
+be cleaned betimes in the morning. Though somewhat drunk, Grabman still
+preserved the rays of his habitual astuteness. A clever and a natural
+idea shot across his brain, illuminating the fumes of the brandy; he
+stooped, and while one hand on the wall steadied his footing, with the
+other he fished up a boot, and peering within, saw legibly written:
+"John Ardworth, Esq., Gray's Inn." At that sight he felt what a
+philosopher feels at the sudden elucidation of a troublesome problem.
+Downstairs again tottered Grabman, re-opened his letter, and wrote,--
+
+"P.S.--I have wronged you, Jason, by my suspicions; never
+mind,--jubilate! This interloper who made me so jealous, who think you
+it is? Why, young Ardworth himself,--that is, the lad who goes by such
+name. Now, is it not clear? Of course no one else has such interest
+in learning his birth as the lost child himself,--here he is! If old
+Ardworth lives (as he says), old Ardworth has set him to work on his own
+business. But then, that Fielden,--rather a puzzler that! Yet--no. Now I
+understand,--old Ardworth gave the boy to Mrs. Joplin, and took it away
+from her again when he went to the parson's. Now, certainly, it may
+be quite necessary to prove,--first, that the boy he took from Mr.
+Braddell's he gave to Mrs. Joplin; secondly, that the boy he left with
+Mr. Fielden was the same that he took again from that woman: therefore,
+the necessity of finding out Mother Joplin, an essential witness. Q. E.
+D., Master Jason!"
+
+It was not till the sun had been some hours risen that Mr. Grabman
+imitated that luminary's example. When he did so, he found, somewhat to
+his chagrin, that John Ardworth had long been gone. In fact, whatever
+the motive that had led the latter on the search, he had succeeded in
+gleaning from Grabman all that that person could communicate, and their
+interview had inspired him with such disgust of the attorney, and so
+small an opinion of the value of his co-operation (in which last
+belief, perhaps, he was mistaken), that he had resolved to continue his
+inquiries alone, and had already, in his early morning's walk through
+the village, ascertained that the man with whom Mrs. Joplin had quitted
+the place had some time after been sentenced to six months' imprisonment
+in the county jail. Possibly the prison authorities might know something
+to lead to his discovery, and through him the news of his paramour might
+be gained.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX. MORE OF MRS. JOPLIN.
+
+One day, at the hour of noon, the court boasting the tall residence of
+Mr. Grabman was startled from the quiet usually reigning there at broad
+daylight by the appearance of two men, evidently no inhabitants of the
+place. The squalid, ill-favoured denizens lounging before the doors
+stared hard, and at the fuller view of one of the men, most of them
+retreated hastily within. Then, in those houses, you might have heard
+a murmur of consternation and alarm. The ferret was in the burrow,--a
+Bow-Street officer in the court! The two men paused, looked round,
+and stopping before the dingy towerlike house, selected the bell which
+appealed to the inmates of the ground-floor, to the left. At that
+summons Bill the cracksman imprudently presented a full view of his
+countenance through his barred window; he drew it back with astonishing
+celerity, but not in time to escape the eye of the Bow-Street runner.
+
+"Open the door, Bill,--there's nothing to fear; I have no summons
+against you, 'pon honour. You know I never deceive. Why should I? Open
+the door, I say."
+
+No answer.
+
+The officer tapped with his cane at the foul window.
+
+"Bill, there's a gentleman who comes to you for information, and he will
+pay for it handsomely."
+
+Bill again appeared at the casement, and peeped forth very cautiously
+through the bars.
+
+"Bless my vitals, Mr. R----, and it is you, is it? What were you saying
+about paying handsomely?"
+
+"That your evidence is wanted,--not against a pal, man. It will hurt no
+one, and put at least five guineas in your pocket."
+
+"Ten guineas," said the Bow-Street officer's companion. "You be's a man
+of honour, Mr. R----!" said Bill, emphatically; "and I scorns to doubt
+you, so here goes."
+
+With that he withdrew from the window, and in another minute or so the
+door was opened, and Bill, with a superb bow, asked his visitors into
+his room.
+
+In the interval, leisure had been given to the cracksman to remove all
+trace of the wonted educational employment of his hopeful children. The
+urchins were seated on the floor playing at push-pin; and the Bow-Street
+officer benignly patted a pair of curly heads as he passed them, drew
+a chair to the table, and wiping his forehead, sat down, quite at home.
+Bill then deliberately seated himself, and unbuttoning his waistcoat,
+permitted the butt-ends of a brace of pistols to be seen by his guests.
+Mr. R----'s companion seemed very unmoved by this significant action.
+He bent one inquiring, steady look on the cracksman, which, as Bill
+afterwards said, went through him "like a gimlet through a penny," and
+taking out a purse, through the network of which the sovereigns gleamed
+pleasantly, placed it on the table and said,--
+
+"This purse is yours if you will tell me what has become of a woman
+named Joplin, with whom you left the village of ----, in Lancashire, in
+the year 18--."
+
+"And," put in Mr. R----, "the gentleman wants to know, with no view of
+harming the woman. It will be to her own advantage to inform us where
+she is."
+
+"'Pon honour again?" said Bill.
+
+"'Pon honour!"
+
+"Well, then, I has a heart in my buzzom, and if so be I can do a good
+turn to the 'oman wot I has loved and kep' company with, why not?"
+
+"Why not, indeed?" said Mr. R----. "And as we want to learn, not only
+what has become of Mrs. Joplin, but what she did with the child she
+carried off from ----, begin at the beginning and tell us all you know."
+
+Bill mused. "How much is there in the pus?"
+
+"Eighteen sovereigns."
+
+"Make it twenty--you nod--twenty then? A bargain! Now I'll go on right
+ahead. You see as how, some months arter we--that is, Peggy Joplin and
+self--left ----, I was put in quod in Lancaster jail; so I lost sight of
+the blowen. When I got out and came to Lunnun, it was a matter of seven
+year afore, all of a sudding, I came bang up agin her,--at the corner
+of Common Garden. 'Why, Bill!' says she. 'Why, Peggy!' says I; and we
+bussed each other like winky. 'Shall us come together agin?' says she.
+'Why, no,' says I; 'I has a wife wots a good 'un, and gets her bread by
+setting up as a widder with seven small childern. By the by, Peg, what's
+a come of your brat?' for as you says, sir, Peg had a child put out to
+her to nurse. Lor', how she cuffed it! 'The brat!' says she, laughing
+like mad, 'oh, I got rid o' that when you were in jail, Bill.' 'As how?'
+says I. 'Why, there was a woman begging agin St. Poll's churchyard; so I
+purtended to see a friend at a distance: "'Old the babby a moment," says
+I, puffing and panting, "while I ketches my friend yonder." So she 'olds
+the brat, and I never sees it agin; and there's an ind of the bother!'
+'But won't they ever ax for the child,--them as giv' it you?' 'Oh, no,'
+says Peg, 'they left it too long for that, and all the tin was agone;
+and one mouth is hard enough to feed in these days,--let by other folks'
+bantlings.' 'Well,' says I, 'where do you hang out? I'll pop in, in
+a friendly way.' So she tells me,--som'ere in Lambeth,--I forgets
+hexactly; and many's the good piece of work we ha' done togither."
+
+"And where is she now?" asked Mr. R----'s companion.
+
+"I doesn't know purcisely, but I can com' at her. You see, when my poor
+wife died, four year com' Chris'mas, and left me with as fine a famuly,
+though I says it, as h-old King Georgy himself walked afore, with his
+gold-'eaded cane, on the terris at Vindsor,--all heights and all h-ages
+to the babby in arms (for the little 'un there warn't above a year old,
+and had been a brought up upon spoon-meat, with a dash o' blueruin to
+make him slim and ginteel); as for the bigger 'uns wot you don't see,
+they be doin' well in forin parts, Mr. R----!"
+
+Mr. R. smiled significantly.
+
+Bill resumed. "Where was I? Oh, when my wife died, I wanted sum 'un to
+take care of the childern, so I takes Peg into the 'ous. But Lor'! how
+she larrupped 'em,--she has a cruel heart, has n't she, Bob? Bob is a
+'cute child, Mr. R----. Just as I was a thinking of turning her out neck
+an' crop, a gemman what lodges aloft, wot be a laryer, and wot had just
+saved my nick, Mr. R----, by proving a h-alibi, said, 'That's a
+tidy body, your Peg!' (for you see he was often a wisiting here, an'
+h-indeed, sin' then, he has taken our third floor, No. 9); 'I've been
+a speakin' to her, and I find she has been a nuss to the sick. I has
+a frind wots a h-uncle that's ill: can you spare her, Bill, to attind
+him?' That I can,' says I; 'anything to obleedge.' So Peg packs off, bag
+and baggidge."
+
+"And what was the sick gentleman's name?" asked Mr. R----'s companion.
+
+"It was one Mr. Warney,--a painter, wot lived at Clap'am. Since thin
+I've lost sight of Peg; for we had 'igh words about the childern, and
+she was a spiteful 'oman. But you can larn where she be at Mr. Warney's,
+if so be he's still above ground."
+
+"And did this woman still go by the name of Joplin?"
+
+Bill grinned: "She warn't such a spooney as that,--that name was in your
+black books too much, Mr. R----, for a 'spectable nuss for sick bodies;
+no, she was then called Martha Skeggs, what was her own mother's name
+afore marriage. Anything more, gemman?"
+
+"I am satisfied," said the younger visitor, rising; "there is the purse,
+and Mr. R---- will bring you ten sovereigns in addition. Good-day to
+you."
+
+Bill, with superabundant bows and flourishes, showed his visitors out,
+and then, in high glee, he began to romp with his children; and the
+whole family circle was in a state of uproarious enjoyment when the door
+flew open, and in entered Grabman, his brief-bag in hand, dust-soiled
+and unshaven.
+
+"Aha, neighbour! your servant, your servant; just come back! Always so
+merry; for the life of me, I couldn't help looking in! Dear me, Bill,
+why, you're in luck!" and Mr. Grabman pointed to a pile of sovereigns
+which Bill had emptied from the purse to count over and weigh on the tip
+of his forefinger.
+
+"Yes," said Bill, sweeping the gold into his corduroy pocket; "and who
+do you think brought me these shiners? Why, who but old Peggy, the 'oman
+wot you put out at Clapham."
+
+"Well, never mind Peggy, now, Bill; I want to ask you what you have done
+with Margaret Joplin, whom, sly seducer that you are, you carried off
+from--"
+
+"Why, man, Peggy be Joplin, and Joplin be Peggy! And it's for that piece
+of noos that I got all them pretty new picters of his Majesty Bill,--my
+namesake, God bliss 'im!"
+
+"D--n," exclaimed Grabman, aghast; "the young chap's spoiling my game
+again!" And seizing up his brief-bag, he darted out of the house, in the
+hope to arrive at least at Clapham before his competitors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI. BECK'S DISCOVERY.
+
+Under the cedar-trees at Laughton sat that accursed and abhorrent
+being who sat there, young, impassioned, hopeful, as Lucretia
+Clavering,--under the old cedar-trees, which, save that their vast
+branches cast an imperceptibly broader shade over the mossy sward, the
+irrevocable winters had left the same. Where, through the nether boughs
+the autumn sunbeams came aslant, the windows, enriched by many a haughty
+scutcheon, shone brightly against the western rays. From the flower-beds
+in the quaint garden near at hand, the fresh yet tranquil air wafted
+faint perfumes from the lingering heliotrope and fading rose. The
+peacock perched dozily on the heavy balustrade; the blithe robin hopped
+busily along the sun-track on the lawn; in the distance the tinkling
+bells of the flock, the plaining low of some wandering heifer, while
+breaking the silence, seemed still to blend with the repose. All images
+around lent themselves to complete that picture of stately calm which is
+the character of those old mansion-houses, which owner after owner has
+loved and heeded, leaving to them the graces of antiquity, guarding them
+from the desolation of decay.
+
+Alone sat Lucretia under the cedar-trees, and her heart made dismal
+contrast to the noble tranquillity that breathed around. From whatever
+softening or repentant emotions which the scene of her youth might first
+have awakened; from whatever of less unholy anguish which memory might
+have caused when she first, once more, sat under those remembered
+boughs, and, as a voice from a former world, some faint whisper of
+youthful love sighed across the waste and ashes of her devastated
+soul,--from all such rekindled humanities in the past she had now, with
+gloomy power, wrenched herself away. Crime such as hers admits not long
+the sentiment that softens remorse of gentler error. If there wakes one
+moment from the past the warning and melancholy ghost, soon from that
+abyss rises the Fury with the lifted scourge, and hunts on the frantic
+footsteps towards the future. In the future, the haggard intellect of
+crime must live, must involve itself mechanically in webs and meshes,
+and lose past and present in the welcome atmosphere of darkness.
+
+Thus while Lucretia sat, and her eyes rested upon the halls of her
+youth, her mind overleaped the gulf that yet yawned between her and
+the object on which she was bent. Already, in fancy, that home was hers
+again, its present possessor swept away, the interloping race of Vernon
+ending in one of those abrupt lines familiar to genealogists, which
+branch out busily from the main tree, as if all pith and sap were
+monopolized by them, continue for a single generation, and then shrink
+into a printer's bracket with the formal laconism, "Died without
+issue." Back, then, in the pedigree would turn the eye of some curious
+descendant, and see the race continue in the posterity of Lucretia
+Clavering.
+
+With all her ineffable vices, mere cupidity had not, as we have often
+seen, been a main characteristic of this fearful woman; and in her
+design to endow, by the most determined guilt, her son with the heritage
+of her ancestors, she had hitherto looked but little to mere mercenary
+advantages for herself: but now, in the sight of that venerable and
+broad domain, a covetousness, absolute in itself, broke forth. Could
+she have gained it for her own use rather than her son's, she would have
+felt a greater zest in her ruthless purpose. She looked upon the scene
+as a deposed monarch upon his usurped realm,--it was her right. The
+early sense of possession in that inheritance returned to her.
+
+Reluctantly would she even yield her claims to her child. Here, too,
+in this atmosphere she tasted once more what had long been lost
+to her,--the luxury of that dignified respect which surrounds the
+well-born. Here she ceased to be the suspected adventuress, the
+friendless outcast, the needy wrestler with hostile fortune, the
+skulking enemy of the law. She rose at once, and without effort, to
+her original state,--the honoured daughter of an illustrious house.
+The homeliest welcome that greeted her from some aged but unforgotten
+villager, the salutation of homage, the bated breath of humble
+reverence,--even trifles like these were dear to her, and made her the
+more resolute to retain them. In her calm, relentless onward vision she
+saw herself enshrined in those halls, ruling in the delegated authority
+of her son, safe evermore from prying suspicion and degrading need and
+miserable guilt for miserable objects. Here, but one great crime, and
+she resumed the majesty of her youth! While thus dwelling on the future,
+her eye did not even turn from those sunlit towers to the forms below,
+and more immediately inviting its survey. On the very spot where, at
+the opening of this tale, sat Sir Miles St. John sharing his attention
+between his dogs and his guest, sat now Helen Mainwaring; against the
+balustrade where had lounged Charles Vernon, leaned Percival St. John;
+and in the same place where he had stationed himself that eventful
+evening, to distort, in his malignant sketch, the features of his
+father, Gabriel Varney, with almost the same smile of irony upon his
+lips, was engaged in transferring to his canvas a more faithful likeness
+of the heir's intended bride. Helen's countenance, indeed, exhibited
+comparatively but little of the ravages which the pernicious aliment,
+administered so noiselessly, made upon the frame. The girl's eye, it is
+true, had sunk, and there was a languid heaviness in its look; but
+the contour of the cheek was so naturally rounded, and the features so
+delicately fine, that the fall of the muscles was less evident; and the
+bright, warm hue of the complexion, and the pearly sparkle of the
+teeth, still gave a fallacious freshness to the aspect. But as yet the
+poisoners had forborne those ingredients which invade the springs of
+life, resorting only to such as undermine the health and prepare the way
+to unsuspected graves. Out of the infernal variety of the materials at
+their command, they had selected a mixture which works by sustaining
+perpetual fever; which gives little pain, little suffering, beyond that
+of lassitude and thirst; which wastes like consumption, and yet puzzles
+the physician, by betraying few or none of its ordinary symptoms. But
+the disorder as yet was not incurable,--its progress would gradually
+cease with the discontinuance of the venom.
+
+Although October was far advanced, the day was as mild and warm as
+August. But Percival, who had been watching Helen's countenance with
+the anxiety of love and fear, now proposed that the sitting should be
+adjourned. The sun was declining, and it was certainly no longer safe
+for Helen to be exposed to the air without exercise. He proposed that
+they should walk through the garden, and Helen, rising cheerfully,
+placed her hand on his arm. But she had scarcely descended the steps of
+the terrace when she stopped short and breathed hard and painfully. The
+spasm was soon over, and walking slowly on, they passed Lucretia with a
+brief word or two, and were soon out of sight amongst the cedars.
+
+"Lean more on my arm, Helen," said Percival. "How strange it is that the
+change of air has done so little for you, and our country doctor still
+less! I should feel miserable indeed if Simmons, whom my mother always
+considered very clever, did not assure me that there was no ground for
+alarm,--that these symptoms were only nervous. Cheer up, Helen; sweet
+love, cheer up!"
+
+Helen raised her face and strove to smile; but the tears stood in her
+eyes. "It would be hard to die now, Percival!" she said falteringly.
+
+"To die--oh, Helen! No; we must not stay here longer,--the air is
+certainly too keen for you. Perhaps your aunt will go to Italy. Why
+not all go there, and seek my mother? And she will nurse you, Helen,
+and--and--" He could not trust his voice farther.
+
+Helen pressed his arm tenderly. "Forgive me, dear Percival, it is but at
+moments that I feel so despondent; now, again, it is past. Ah, I so
+long to see your mother! When shall you hear from her? Are you not
+too sanguine? Do you really feel sure she will consent to so lowly a
+choice?"
+
+"Never doubt her affection, her appreciation of you," answered Percival,
+gladly, and hoping that Helen's natural anxiety might be the latent
+cause of her dejected spirits; "often, when talking of the future, under
+these very cedars, my mother has said: 'You have no cause to marry for
+ambition,--marry only for your happiness.' She never had a daughter: in
+return for all her love, I shall give her that blessing."
+
+Thus talking, the lovers rambled on till the sun set, and then,
+returning to the house, they found that Varney and Madame Dalibard
+had preceded them. That evening Helen's spirits rose to their natural
+buoyancy, and Percival's heart was once more set at ease by her silvery
+laugh.
+
+When, at their usual early hour, the rest of the family retired to
+sleep, Percival remained in the drawing-room to write again, and at
+length, to Lady Mary and Captain Greville. While thus engaged, his valet
+entered to say that Beck, who had been out since the early morning, in
+search of a horse that had strayed from one of the pastures, had just
+returned with the animal, who had wandered nearly as far as Southampton.
+
+"I am glad to hear it," said Percival, abstractedly, and continuing his
+letter.
+
+The valet still lingered. Percival looked up in surprise. "If you
+please, sir, you said you particularly wished to see Beck when he came
+back."
+
+"I--oh, true! Tell him to wait; I will speak to him by and by. You need
+not sit up for me; let Beck attend to the bell."
+
+The valet withdrew. Percival continued his letter, and filled page
+after page and sheet after sheet; and when at length the letters, not
+containing a tithe of what he wished to convey, were brought to a close,
+he fell into a revery that lasted till the candles burned low, and the
+clock from the turret tolled one. Starting up in surprise at the lapse
+of time, Percival then, for the first time, remembered Beck, and rang
+the bell.
+
+The ci-devant sweeper, in his smart livery, appeared at the door.
+
+"Beck, my poor fellow, I am ashamed to have kept you waiting so long;
+but I received a letter this morning which relates to you. Let me
+see,--I left it in my study upstairs. Ah, you'll never find the way;
+follow me,--I have some questions to put to you."
+
+"Nothin' agin my carakter, I hopes, your honour," said Beck, timidly.
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+"Noos of the mattris, then?" exclaimed Beck, joyfully.
+
+"Nor that either," answered Percival, laughing, as he lighted the
+chamber candlestick, and, followed by Beck, ascended the grand staircase
+to a small room which, as it adjoined his sleeping apartment, he had
+habitually used as his morning writing-room and study.
+
+Percival had, indeed, received that day a letter which had occasioned
+him much surprise; it was from John Ardworth, and ran thus:--
+
+MY DEAR PERCIVAL,--It seems that you have taken into your service
+a young man known only by the name of Beck. Is he now with you at
+Laughton? If so, pray retain him, and suffer him to be in readiness to
+come to me at a day's notice if wanted, though it is probable enough
+that I may rather come to you. At present, strange as it may seem to
+you, I am detained in London by business connected with that important
+personage. Will you ask him carelessly, as it were, in the mean while;
+the following questions:--
+
+First, how did he become possessed of a certain child's coral which he
+left at the house of one Becky Carruthers, in Cole's Building?
+
+Secondly, is he aware of any mark on his arm,--if so, will he describe
+it?
+
+Thirdly, how long has he known the said Becky Carruthers?
+
+Fourthly, does he believe her to be honest and truthful?
+
+Take a memorandum of his answers, and send it to me. I am pretty
+well aware of what they are likely to be; but I desire you to put the
+questions, that I may judge if there be any discrepancy between his
+statement and that of Mrs. Carruthers. I have much to tell you, and am
+eager to receive your kind congratulations upon an event that has given
+me more happiness than the fugitive success of my little book. Tenderest
+regards to Helen; and hoping soon to see you, Ever affectionately yours.
+
+P.S.--Say not a word of the contents of this letter to Madame Dalibard,
+Helen, or to any one except Beck. Caution him to the same discretion. If
+you can't trust to his silence, send him to town.
+
+When the post brought this letter, Beck was already gone on his errand,
+and after puzzling himself with vague conjectures, Percival's mind had
+been naturally too absorbed with his anxieties for Helen to recur much
+to the subject.
+
+Now, refreshing his memory with the contents of the letter, he drew pen
+and ink before him, put the questions seriatim, noted down the answers
+as desired, and smiling at Beck's frightened curiosity to know who could
+possibly care about such matters, and feeling confident (from that very
+fright) of his discretion, dismissed the groom to his repose.
+
+Beck had never been in that part of the house before; and when he got
+into the corridor he became bewildered, and knew not which turn to take,
+the right or the left. He had no candle with him; but the moon came
+clear through a high and wide skylight: the light, however, gave him no
+guide. While pausing, much perplexed, and not sure that he should even
+know again the door of the room he had just quitted, if venturing to
+apply to his young master for a clew through such a labyrinth, he was
+inexpressibly startled and appalled by a sudden apparition. A door
+at one end of the corridor opened noiselessly, and a figure, at first
+scarcely distinguishable, for it was robed from head to foot in a black,
+shapeless garb, scarcely giving even the outline of the human form,
+stole forth. Beck rubbed his eyes and crept mechanically close within
+the recess of one of the doors that communicated with the passage. The
+figure advanced a few steps towards him; and what words can describe
+his astonishment when he beheld thus erect, and in full possession of
+physical power and motion, the palsied cripple whose chair he had often
+seen wheeled into the garden, and whose unhappy state was the common
+topic of comment in the servants' hall! Yes, the moon from above shone
+full upon that face which never, once seen, could be forgotten. And it
+seemed more than mortally stern and pale, contrasted with the sable
+of the strange garb, and beheld by that mournful light. Had a ghost,
+indeed, risen from the dead, it could scarcely have appalled him more.
+Madame Dalibard did not see the involuntary spy; for the recess in which
+he had crept was on that side of the wall on which the moon's shadow
+was cast. With a quick step she turned into another room, opposite
+that which she had quitted, the door of which stood ajar, and vanished
+noiselessly as she had appeared.
+
+Taught suspicion by his earlier acquaintance with the "night-side" of
+human nature, Beck had good cause for it here. This detection of an
+imposture most familiar to his experience,--that of a pretended cripple;
+the hour of the night; the evil expression on the face of the deceitful
+guest; Madame Dalibard's familiar intimacy and near connection with
+Varney,--Varney, the visitor to Grabman, who received no visitors but
+those who desire, not to go to law, but to escape from its penalties;
+Varney, who had dared to brave the resurrection man in his den, and who
+seemed so fearlessly at home in abodes where nought but poverty could
+protect the honest; Varney now, with that strange woman, an inmate of a
+house in which the master was so young, so inexperienced, so liable to
+be duped by his own generous nature,--all these ideas, vaguely combined,
+inspired Beck with as vague a terror. Surely something, he knew not
+what, was about to be perpetrated against his benefactor,--some scheme
+of villany which it was his duty to detect. He breathed hard, formed
+his resolves, and stealing on tiptoe, followed the shadowy form of the
+poisoner through the half-opened doorway. The shutters of the room of
+which he thus crossed the threshold were not closed,--the moon shone
+in bright and still. He kept his body behind the door, peeping in with
+straining, fearful stare. He saw Madame Dalibard standing beside a
+bed round which the curtains were closed,--standing for a moment or so
+motionless, and as if in the act of listening, with one hand on a
+table beside the bed. He then saw her take from the folds of her dress
+something white and glittering, and pour from it what appeared to him
+but a drop or two, cautiously, slowly, into a phial on the table, from
+which she withdrew the stopper; that done, she left the phial where she
+had found it, again paused a moment, and turned towards the door. Beck
+retreated hastily to his former hiding-place, and gained it in time.
+Again the shadowy form passed him, and again the white face in the white
+moonlight froze his blood with its fell and horrible expression. He
+remained cowering and shrinking against the wall for some time, striving
+to collect his wits, and considering what he should do. His first
+thought was to go at once and inform St. John of what he had witnessed.
+But the poor have a proverbial dread of deposing aught against a
+superior. Madame Dalibard would deny his tale, the guest would be
+believed against the menial,--he would be but dismissed with ignominy.
+At that idea, he left his hiding-place, and crept along the corridor,
+in the hope of finding some passage at the end which might lead to the
+offices. But when he arrived at the other extremity, he was only met
+by great folding-doors, which evidently communicated with the state
+apartments; he must retrace his steps. He did so; and when he came to
+the door which Madame Dalibard had entered, and which still stood ajar,
+he had recovered some courage, and with courage, curiosity seized him.
+For what purpose could the strange woman seek that room at night thus
+feloniously? What could she have poured, and with such stealthy caution,
+into the phial? Naturally and suddenly the idea of poison flashed across
+him. Tales of such crime (as, indeed, of all crime) had necessarily
+often thrilled the ear of the vagrant fellow-lodger with burglars and
+outlaws. But poison to whom? Could it be meant for his benefactor? Could
+St. John sleep in that room? Why not? The woman had sought the chamber
+before her young host had retired to rest, and mingled her potion with
+some medicinal draught. All fear vanished before the notion of danger
+to his employer. He stole at once through the doorway, and noiselessly
+approached the table on which yet lay the phial. His hand closed on it
+firmly. He resolved to carry it away, and consider next morning what
+next to do. At all events, it might contain some proof to back his tale
+and justify his suspicions. When he came once more into the corridor, he
+made a quick rush onwards, and luckily arrived at the staircase. There
+the blood-red stains reflected on the stone floors from the blazoned
+casements daunted him little less than the sight at which his hair still
+bristled. He scarcely drew breath till he had got into his own little
+crib, in the wing set apart for the stable-men, when, at length, he
+fell into broken and agitated sleep,--the visions of all that had
+successively disturbed him waking, united confusedly, as in one picture
+of gloom and terror. He thought that he was in his old loft in St.
+Giles's, that the Gravestealer was wrestling with Varney for his body,
+while he himself, lying powerless on his pallet, fancied he should be
+safe as long as he could retain, as a talisman, his child's coral, which
+he clasped to his heart. Suddenly, in that black, shapeless garb, in
+which he had beheld her, Madame Dalibard bent over him with her stern,
+colourless face, and wrenched from him his charm. Then, ceasing his
+struggle with his horrible antagonist, Varney laughed aloud, and the
+Gravestealer seized him in his deadly arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII. THE TAPESTRY CHAMBER.
+
+When Beck woke the next morning, and gradually recalled all that had
+so startled and appalled him the previous night, the grateful creature
+felt, less by the process of reason than by a brute instinct, that in
+the mysterious resuscitation and nocturnal wanderings of the pretended
+paralytic, some danger menaced his master; he became anxious to learn
+whether it was really St. John's room Madame Dalibard stealthily
+visited. A bright idea struck him; and in the course of the day, at
+an hour when the family were out of doors, he contrived to coax the
+good-natured valet, who had taken him under his special protection, to
+show him over the house. He had heard the other servants say there was
+such a power of fine things that a peep into the rooms was as good as
+a show, and the valet felt pride in being cicerone even to Beck. After
+having stared sufficiently at the banquet-hall and the drawing-room, the
+armour, the busts, and the pictures, and listened, open-mouthed, to his
+guide's critical observations, Beck was led up the great stairs into
+the old family picture-gallery, and into Sir Miles's ancient room at the
+end, which had been left undisturbed, with the bed still in the
+angle; on returning thence, Beck found himself in the corridor which
+communicated with the principal bedrooms, in which he had lost himself
+the night before.
+
+"And vot room be that vith the littul vite 'ead h-over the door?" asked
+Beck, pointing to the chamber from which Madame Dalibard had emerged.
+
+"That white head, Master Beck, is Floorer the goddess; but a heathen
+like you knows nothing about goddesses. Floorer has a half-moon in her
+hair, you see, which shows that the idolatrous Turks worship her; for
+the Turkish flag is a half-moon, as I have seen at Constantinople. I
+have travelled, Beck."
+
+"And vot room be it? Is it the master's?" persisted Beck.
+
+"No, the pretty young lady, Miss Mainwaring, has it at present. There is
+nothing to see in it. But that one opposite," and the valet advanced
+to the door through which Madame Dalibard had disappeared,--"that is
+curious; and as Madame is out, we may just take a peep." He opened
+the door gently, and Beck looked in. "This, which is called the
+turret-chamber, was Madame's when she was a girl, I have heard old Bessy
+say; so Master pops her there now. For my part, I'd rather sleep in your
+little crib than have those great gruff-looking figures staring at me
+by the firelight, and shaking their heads with every wind on a winter's
+night." And the valet took a pinch of snuff as he drew Beck's attention
+to the faded tapestry on the walls. As they spoke, the draught between
+the door and the window caused the gloomy arras to wave with a life-like
+motion; and to those more superstitious than romantic, the chamber had
+certainly no inviting aspect.
+
+"I never sees these old tapestry rooms," said the valet, "without
+thinking of the story of the lady who, coming from a ball and taking off
+her jewels, happened to look up, and saw an eye in one of the figures
+which she felt sure was no peeper in worsted."
+
+"Vot vos it, then?" asked Beck, timidly lifting up the hangings, and
+noticing that there was a considerable space between them and the wall,
+which was filled up in part by closets and wardrobes set into the walls,
+with intervals more than deep enough for the hiding-place of a man.
+
+"Why," answered the valet, "it was a thief. He had come for the jewels;
+but the lady had the presence of mind to say aloud, as if to herself,
+that she had forgotten something, slipped out of the room, locked the
+door, called up the servants, and the thief--who was no less a person
+than the under-butler--was nabbed."
+
+"And the French 'oman sleeps 'ere?" said Beck, musingly.
+
+"French 'oman! Master Beck, nothing's so vulgar as these nicknames in
+a first-rate situation. It is all very well when one lives with
+skinflints, but with such a master as our'n, respect's the go. Besides,
+Madame is not a French 'oman; she is one of the family,--and as old a
+family it is, too, as e'er a lord's in the three kingdoms. But come,
+your curiosity is satisfied now, and you must trot back to your horses."
+
+As Beck returned to the stables, his mind yet more misgave him as to the
+criminal designs of his master's visitor. It was from Helen's room that
+the false cripple had walked, and the ill health of the poor young lady
+was a general subject of compassionate comment. But Madame Dalibard was
+Helen's relation: from what motive could she harbour an evil thought
+against her own niece? But still, if those drops were poured into the
+healing draught for good, why so secretly? Once more he revolved the
+idea of speaking to St. John: an accident dissuaded him from this
+intention,--the only proof to back his tale was the mysterious phial he
+had carried away; but unluckily, forgetting that it was in his pocket,
+at a time when he flung off his coat to groom one of the horses, the
+bottle struck against the corn-bin and broke; all the contents were
+spilt. This incident made him suspend his intention, and wait till he
+could obtain some fresh evidence of evil intentions. The day passed
+without any other noticeable occurrence. The doctor called, found Helen
+somewhat better, and ascribed it to his medicines, especially to the
+effect of his tonic draught the first thing in the morning. Helen
+smiled. "Nay, Doctor," said she, "this morning, at least, it was
+forgotten. I did not find it by my bedside. Don't tell my aunt; she
+would be so angry." The doctor looked rather discomposed.
+
+"Well," said he, soon recovering his good humour, "since you are
+certainly better to-day without the draught, discontinue it also
+to-morrow. I will make an alteration for the day after." So that
+night Madame Dalibard visited in vain her niece's chamber: Helen had a
+reprieve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII. THE SHADES ON THE DIAL
+
+
+The following morning was indeed eventful to the family at Laughton; and
+as if conscious of what it brought forth, it rose dreary and sunless.
+One heavy mist covered all the landscape, and a raw, drizzling rain fell
+pattering through the yellow leaves.
+
+Madame Dalibard, pleading her infirmities, rarely left her room before
+noon, and Varney professed himself very irregular in his hours of
+rising; the breakfast, therefore, afforded no social assembly to the
+family, but each took that meal in the solitude of his or her own
+chamber. Percival, in whom all habits partook of the healthfulness and
+simplicity of his character, rose habitually early, and that day, in
+spite of the weather, walked forth betimes to meet the person charged
+with the letters from the post. He had done so for the last three or
+four days, impatient to hear from his mother, and calculating that it
+was full time to receive the expected answer to his confession and his
+prayer. He met the messenger at the bottom of the park, not far from
+Guy's Oak. This day he was not disappointed. The letter-bag contained
+three letters for himself,--two with the foreign postmark, the third in
+Ardworth's hand. It contained also a letter for Madame Dalibard, and two
+for Varney.
+
+Leaving the messenger to take these last to the Hall, Percival, with his
+own prizes, plunged into the hollow of the glen before him, and, seating
+himself at the foot of Guy's Oak, through the vast branches of which the
+rain scarcely came, and only in single, mournful drops, he opened first
+the letter in his mother's hand, and read as follows:--
+
+MY DEAR, DEAR SON,--How can I express to you the alarm your letter has
+given to me! So these, then, are the new relations you have discovered!
+I fondly imagined that you were alluding to some of my own family, and
+conjecturing who, amongst my many cousins, could have so captivated
+your attention. These the new relations,--Lucretia Dalibard, Helen
+Mainwaring! Percival, do you not know ---- No, you cannot know that
+Helen Mainwaring is the daughter of a disgraced man, of one who (more
+than suspected of fraud in the bank in which he was a partner) left his
+country, condemned even by his own father. If you doubt this, you have
+but to inquire at ----, not ten miles from Laughton, where the elder
+Mainwaring resided. Ask there what became of William Mainwaring. And
+Lucretia, you do not know that the dying prayer of her uncle, Sir Miles
+St. John, was that she might never enter the house he bequeathed to
+your father. Not till after my poor Charles's death did I know the exact
+cause for Sir Miles's displeasure, though confident it was just; but
+then amongst his papers I found the ungrateful letter which betrayed
+thoughts so dark and passions so unwomanly that I blushed for my sex
+to read it. Could it be possible that that poor old man's prayers were
+unheeded, that that treacherous step could ever cross your threshold,
+that that cruel eye, which read with such barbarous joy the ravages of
+death on a benefactor's face, could rest on the hearth by which your
+frank, truthful countenance has so often smiled away my tears, I should
+feel indeed as if a thunder-cloud hung over the roof. No, if you marry
+the niece, the aunt must be banished from your house. Good heavens! and
+it is the daughter of William Mainwaring, the niece and ward of Lucretia
+Dalibard, to whom you have given your faithful affection, whom you
+single from the world as your wife! Oh, my son,--my beloved, my sole
+surviving child,--do not think that I blame you, that my heart does
+not bleed while I write thus; but I implore you on my knees to pause at
+least, to suspend this intercourse till I myself can reach England. And
+what then? Why, then, Percival, I promise, on my part, that I will see
+your Helen with unprejudiced eyes, that I will put away from me, as
+far as possible, all visions of disappointed pride,--the remembrance of
+faults not her own,--and if she be as you say and think, I will take her
+to my heart and call her 'Daughter.' Are you satisfied? If so, come to
+me,--come at once, and take comfort from your mother's lip. How I long
+to be with you while you read this; how I tremble at the pain I so
+rudely give you! But my poor sister still chains me here, I dare not
+leave her, lest I should lose her last sigh. Come then, come; we will
+console each other.
+
+Your fond (how fond!) and sorrowing mother,
+
+MARY ST. JOHN. SORRENTO, October 3, 1831.
+
+P.S.--You see by this address that we have left Pisa for this place,
+recommended by our physician; hence an unhappy delay of some days in my
+reply. Ah, Percival, how sleepless will be my pillow till I hear from
+you!
+
+Long, very long, was it before St. John, mute and overwhelmed with the
+sudden shock of his anguish, opened his other letters. The first was
+from Captain Greville.
+
+What trap have you fallen into, foolish boy? That you would get into
+some silly scrape or another, was natural enough. But a scrape for life,
+sir,--that is serious! But--God bless you for your candour, my Percival;
+you have written to us in time--you are old-fashioned enough to think
+that a mother's consent is necessary to a young man's union; and you
+have left it in our power to save you yet. It is not every boyish fancy
+that proves to be true love. But enough of this preaching; I shall
+do better than write scolding letters,--I shall come and scold you in
+person. My servant is at this very moment packing my portmanteau, the
+laquais-de-place is gone to Naples for my passport. Almost as soon as
+you receive this I shall be with you; and if I am a day or two later
+than the mail, be patient: do not commit yourself further. Break your
+heart if you please, but don't implicate your honour. I shall come at
+once to Curzon Street. Adieu! H. GREVILLE.
+
+Ardworth's letter was shorter than the others,--fortunately so, for
+otherwise it had been unread:--
+
+If I do not come to you myself the day after you receive this, dear
+Percival,--which, indeed, is most probable,--I shall send you my proxy,
+in one whom, for my sake, I know that you will kindly welcome. He will
+undertake my task, and clear up all the mysteries with which, I trust,
+my correspondence has thoroughly bewildered your lively imagination.
+Yours ever, JOHN ARDWORTH. GRAY'S INN.
+
+Little indeed did Percival's imagination busy itself with the mysteries
+of Ardworth's correspondence. His mind scarcely took in the sense of the
+words over which his eye mechanically wandered.
+
+And the letter which narrated the visit of Madame Dalibard to the
+house thus solemnly interdicted to her step was on its way to his
+mother,--nay, by this time would almost have reached her! Greville was
+on the road,--nay, as his tutor's letter had been forwarded from London,
+might perhaps be in Curzon Street that day. How desirable to see him
+before he could reach Laughton, to prepare him for Madame Dalibard's
+visit, for Helen's illness, explain the position in which he was
+involved, and conciliate the old soldier's rough, kind heart to his love
+and his distress.
+
+He did not dread the meeting with Greville,--he yearned for it. He
+needed an adviser, a confidant, a friend. To dismiss abruptly his guests
+from his house,--impossible; to abandon Helen because of her father's
+crime or her aunt's fault (whatever that last might be, and no clear
+detail of it was given),--that never entered his thoughts! Pure and
+unsullied, the starry face of Helen shone the holier for the cloud
+around it. An inexpressible and chivalrous compassion mingled with his
+love and confirmed his faith. She, poor child, to suffer for the deeds
+of others,--no. What availed his power as man, and dignity as gentleman,
+if they could not wrap in their own shelter the one by whom such shelter
+was now doubly needed? Thus, amidst all his emotions, firm and resolved
+at least on one point, and beginning already to recover the hope of his
+sanguine nature, from his reliance on his mother's love, on the promises
+that softened her disclosures and warnings, and on his conviction
+that Helen had only to be seen for every scruple to give way, Percival
+wandered back towards the house, and coming abruptly on the terrace, he
+encountered Varney, who was leaning motionless against the balustrades,
+with an open letter in his hand. Varney was deadly pale, and there was
+the trace of some recent and gloomy agitation in the relaxed muscles
+of his cheeks, usually so firmly rounded. But Percival did not heed his
+appearance as he took him gravely by the arm, and leading him into the
+garden, said, after a painful pause,--
+
+"Varney, I am about to ask you two questions, which your close
+connection with Madame Dalibard may enable you to answer, but in which,
+from obvious motives, I must demand the strictest confidence. You will
+not hint to her or to Helen what I am about to say?"
+
+Varney stared uneasily on Percival's serious countenance, and gave the
+promise required.
+
+"First, then, for what offence was Madame Dalibard expelled her uncle's
+house,--this house of Laughton?
+
+"Secondly, what is the crime with which Mr. Mainwaring, Helen's father,
+is charged?"
+
+"With regard to the first," said Varney, recovering his composure, "I
+thought I had already told you that Sir Miles was a proud man, and that
+in consequence of discovering a girlish flirtation between his niece
+Lucretia (now Madame Dalibard) and Mainwaring, who afterwards jilted her
+for Helen's mother, he altered his will; 'expelled her his house' is too
+harsh a phrase. This is all I know. With regard to the second question,
+no crime was ever brought home to William Mainwaring; he was suspected
+of dealing improperly with the funds of the bank, and he repaid the
+alleged deficit by the sacrifice of all he possessed."
+
+"This is the truth?" exclaimed Percival, joyfully.
+
+"The plain truth, I believe; but why these questions at this moment? Ah,
+you too, I see, have had letters,--I understand. Lady Mary gives these
+reasons for withholding her consent."
+
+"Her consent is not withheld," answered Percival; "but shall I own it?
+Remember, I have your promise not to wound and offend Madame Dalibard by
+the disclosure: my mother does refer to the subjects I have alluded to,
+and Captain Greville, my old friend and tutor, is on his way to England;
+perhaps to-morrow he may arrive at Laughton."
+
+"Ha!" said Varney, startled, "to-morrow! And what sort of a man is this
+Captain Greville?"
+
+"The best man possible for such a case as mine,--kind-hearted, yet
+cool, sagacious; the finest observer, the quickest judge of
+character,--nothing escapes him. Oh, one interview will suffice to show
+him all Helen's innocent and matchless excellence."
+
+"To-morrow! this man comes to-morrow!"
+
+"All that I fear is,--for he is rather rough and blunt in his
+manner,--all that I fear is his first surprise, and, dare I say
+displeasure, at seeing this poor Madame Dalibard, whose faults, I fear,
+were graver than you suppose, at the house from which her uncle--to
+whom, indeed, I owe this inheritance--"
+
+"I see, I see!" interrupted Varney, quickly. "And Madame Dalibard is the
+most susceptible of women,--so well-born and so poor, so gifted and so
+helpless; it is natural. Can you not write, and put off this Captain
+Greville for a few days,--until, indeed, I can find some excuse for
+terminating our visit?"
+
+"But my letter may be hardly in time to reach him; he may be in town
+to-day."
+
+"Go then to town at once; you can be back late at night, or at least
+to-morrow. Anything better than wounding the pride of a woman on whom,
+after all, you must depend for free and open intercourse with Helen."
+
+"That is exactly what I thought of; but what excuse--"
+
+"Excuse,--a thousand! Every man coming of age into such a property has
+business with his lawyers. Or why not say simply that you want to meet
+a friend of yours who has just left your mother in Italy? In short, any
+excuse suffices, and none can be offensive."
+
+"I will order my carriage instantly."
+
+"Right!" exclaimed Varney; and his eye followed the receding form of
+Percival with a mixture of fierce exultation and anxious fear. Then,
+turning towards the window of the turret-chamber in which Madame
+Dalibard reposed, and seeing it still closed, he muttered an impatient
+oath; but even while he did so, the shutters were slowly opened, and a
+footman, stepping from the porch, approached Varney with a message that
+Madame Dalibard would see him in five minutes, if he would then have the
+goodness to ascend to her room.
+
+Before that time was well expired, Varney was in the chamber. Madame
+Dalibard was up and in her chair; and the unwonted joy which her
+countenance evinced was in strong contrast with the sombre shade upon
+her son-in-law's brow, and the nervous quiver of his lip.
+
+"Gabriel," she said, as he drew near to her, "my son is found!"
+
+"I know it," he answered petulantly. "You! From whom?"
+
+"From Grabman."
+
+"And I from a still better authority,--from Walter Ardworth himself. He
+lives; he will restore my child!" She extended a letter while she spoke.
+He, in return, gave her, not that still crumpled in his hand, but one
+which he drew from his breast. These letters severally occupied both,
+begun and finished almost in the same moment.
+
+That from Grabman ran thus:--
+
+DEAR JASON,--Toss up your hat and cry 'hip, hip!' At last, from person
+to person, I have tracked the lost Vincent Braddell. He lives still! We
+can maintain his identity in any court of law. Scarce in time for the
+post, I have not a moment for further particulars. I shall employ the
+next two days in reducing all the evidence to a regular digest, which I
+will despatch to you. Meanwhile, prepare, as soon as may be, to put
+me in possession of my fee,--5000 pounds; and my expedition merits
+something more. Yours, NICHOLAS GRABMAN.
+
+The letter from Ardworth was no less positive:--
+
+MADAM,--In obedience to the commands of a dying friend, I took charge
+of his infant and concealed its existence from his mother,--yourself.
+On returning to England, I need not say that I was not unmindful of my
+trust. Your son lives; and after mature reflection I have resolved to
+restore him to your arms. In this I have been decided by what I have
+heard, from one whom I can trust, of your altered habits, your decorous
+life, your melancholy infirmities, and the generous protection you have
+given to the orphan of my poor cousin Susan, my old friend Mainwaring.
+Alfred Braddell himself, if it be permitted to him to look down and read
+my motives, will pardon me, I venture to feel assured, this departure
+from his injunctions. Whatever the faults which displeased him, they
+have been amply chastised. And your son, grown to man, can no longer be
+endangered by example, in tending the couch, or soothing the repentance
+of his mother.
+
+These words are severe; but you will pardon them in him who gives you
+back your child. I shall venture to wait on you in person, with such
+proofs as may satisfy you as to the identity of your son. I count on
+arriving at Laughton to-morrow. Meanwhile, I simply sign myself by
+a name in which you will recognize the kinsman to one branch of your
+family, and the friend of your dead husband. J. WALTER ARDWORTH.
+
+CRAVEN HOTEL, October, 1831.
+
+"Well, and are you not rejoiced?" said Lucretia, gazing surprised on
+Varney's sullen and unsympathizing face.
+
+"No! because time presses; because, even while discovering your son,
+you may fail in securing his heritage; because, in the midst of your
+triumph, I see Newgate opening to myself. Look you, I too have had my
+news,--less pleasing than yours. This Stubmore (curse him!) writes me
+word that he shall certainly be in town next month at farthest, and that
+he meditates, immediately on his arrival, transferring the legacy from
+the Bank of England to an excellent mortgage of which he has heard. Were
+it not for this scheme of ours, nothing would be left for me but flight
+and exile."
+
+"A month,--that is a long time. Do you think, now that my son is found,
+and that son like John Ardworth (for there can be no doubt that my
+surmise was right), with genius to make station the pedestal to
+the power I dreamed of in my youth, but which my sex forbade me to
+attain,--do you think I will keep him a month from his inheritance?
+Before the month is out, you shall replace what you have taken, and
+buy your trustee's silence, if need be, either from the sums you have
+insured, or from the rents of Laughton."
+
+"Lucretia," said Varney, whose fresh colours had grown livid, "what is
+to be done must be done at once. Percival St. John has heard from his
+mother. Attend." And Varney rapidly related the questions St. John had
+put to him, the dreaded arrival of Captain Greville, the danger of
+so keen an observer, the necessity, at all events, of abridging their
+visit, the urgency of hastening the catastrophe to its close.
+
+Lucretia listened in ominous and steadfast silence.
+
+"But," she said at last, "you have persuaded St. John to give this man
+the meeting in London,--to put off his visit for the time. St. John will
+return to us to-morrow. Well, and if he finds his Helen is no more! Two
+nights ago I, for the first time, mingled in the morning draught that
+which has no antidote and no cure. This night two drops more, and St.
+John will return to find that Death is in the house before him. And
+then for himself,--the sole remaining barrier between my son and this
+inheritance,--for himself, why, grief sometimes kills suddenly; and
+there be drugs whose effect simulates the death-stroke of grief."
+
+"Yet, yet, this rapidity, if necessary, is perilous. Nothing in Helen's
+state forbodes sudden death by natural means. The strangeness of two
+deaths, both so young; Greville in England, if not here,--hastening down
+to examine, to inquire. With such prepossessions against you, there must
+be an inquest."
+
+"Well, and what can be discovered? It was I who shrank before,--it is
+I who now urge despatch. I feel as in my proper home in these halls. I
+would not leave them again but to my grave. I stand on the hearth of my
+youth; I fight for my rights and my son's! Perish those who oppose me!"
+
+A fell energy and power were in the aspect of the murderess as she thus
+spoke; and while her determination awed the inferior villany of Varney,
+it served somewhat to mitigate his fears.
+
+As in more detail they began to arrange their execrable plans, Percival,
+while the horses were being harnessed to take him to the nearest
+post-town, sought Helen, and found her in the little chamber which
+he had described and appropriated as her own, when his fond fancy had
+sketched the fair outline of the future.
+
+This room had been originally fitted up for the private devotions of the
+Roman Catholic wife of an ancestor in the reign of Charles II; and in
+a recess, half veiled by a curtain, there still stood that holy symbol
+which, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, no one sincerely penetrated
+with the solemn pathos of sacred history can behold unmoved,--the Cross
+of the Divine Agony. Before this holy symbol Helen stood in earnest
+reverence. She did not kneel (for the forms of the religion in which
+she had been reared were opposed to that posture of worship before the
+graven image), but you could see in that countenance, eloquent at once
+with the enthusiasm and the meekness of piety, that the soul was filled
+with the memories and the hopes which, age after age, have consoled the
+sufferer and inspired the martyr. The soul knelt to the idea, if the
+knee bowed not to the image, embracing the tender grandeur of the
+sacrifice and the vast inheritance opened to faith in the redemption.
+
+The young man held his breath while he gazed. He was moved, and he was
+awed. Slowly Helen turned towards him, and, smiling sweetly, held out
+to him her hand. They seated themselves in silence in the depth of the
+overhanging casement; and the mournful character of the scene without,
+where dimly, through the misty rains, gloomed the dark foliage of the
+cedars, made them insensibly draw closer to each other in the instinct
+of love when the world frowns around it. Percival wanted the courage to
+say that he had come to take farewell, though but for a day, and Helen
+spoke first.
+
+"I cannot guess why it is, Percival, but I am startled at the change I
+feel in myself--no, not in health, dear Percival; I mean in mind--during
+the last few months,--since, indeed, we have known each other. I
+remember so well the morning in which my aunt's letter arrived at the
+dear vicarage. We were returning from the village fair, and my good
+guardian was smiling at my notions of the world. I was then so giddy
+and light and thoughtless, everything presented itself to me in such
+gay colours, I scarcely believed in sorrow. And now I feel as if I were
+awakened to a truer sense of nature,--of the ends of our being here; I
+seem to know that life is a grave and solemn thing. Yet I am not less
+happy, Percival. No, I think rather that I knew not true happiness till
+I knew you. I have read somewhere that the slave is gay in his holiday
+from toil; if you free him, if you educate him, the gayety vanishes,
+and he cares no more for the dance under the palm-tree. But is he less
+happy? So it is with me!"
+
+"My sweet Helen, I would rather have one gay smile of old, the arch,
+careless laugh which came so naturally from those rosy lips, than hear
+you talk of happiness with that quiver in your voice,--those tears in
+your eyes."
+
+"Yet gayety," said Helen, thoughtfully, and in the strain of her pure,
+truthful poetry of soul, "is only the light impression of the present
+moment,--the play of the mere spirits; and happiness seems a forethought
+of the future, spreading on, far and broad, over all time and space."
+
+"And you live, then, in the future at last; you have no misgivings now,
+my Helen? Well, that comforts me. Say it, Helen,--say the future will be
+ours!"
+
+"It will, it will,--forever and forever," said Helen, earnestly; and her
+eyes involuntarily rested on the Cross.
+
+In his younger spirit and less imaginative nature Percival did not
+comprehend the depth of sadness implied in Helen's answer; taking it
+literally, he felt as if a load were lifted from his heart, and kissing
+with rapture the hand he held, he exclaimed: "Yes, this shall soon, oh,
+soon be mine! I fear nothing while you hope. You cannot guess how those
+words have cheered me; for I am leaving you, though but for a few hours,
+and I shall repeat those words, for they will ring in my ear, in my
+heart, till we meet again."
+
+"Leaving me!" said Helen, turning pale, and her clasp on his hand
+tightening. Poor child, she felt mysteriously a sentiment of protection
+in his presence.
+
+"But at most for a day. My old tutor, of whom we have so often
+conversed, is on his way to England,--perhaps even now in London. He has
+some wrong impressions against your aunt; his manner is blunt and rough.
+It is necessary that I should see him before he comes hither,--you know
+how susceptible is your aunt's pride,--just to prepare him for meeting
+her. You understand?"
+
+"What impressions against my aunt? Does he even know her?" asked Helen.
+And if such a sentiment as suspicion could cross that candid innocence
+of mind, that sentiment towards this stern relation whose arms had never
+embraced her, whose lips had never spoken of the past, whose history was
+as a sealed volume, disturbed and disquieted her.
+
+"It is because he has never known her that he does her wrong. Some old
+story of her indiscretion as a girl, of her uncle's displeasure,--what
+matters now?" said Percival, shrinking sensitively from one disclosure
+that might wound Helen in her kinswoman. "Meanwhile, dearest, you will
+be prudent,--you will avoid this damp air, and keep quietly at home, and
+amuse yourself, sweet fancier of the future, in planning how to improve
+these old halls when they and their unworthy master are your own. God
+bless you, God guard you, Helen!"
+
+He rose, and with that loyal chivalry of love which felt respect the
+more for the careless guardianship to which his Helen was intrusted, he
+refrained from that parting kiss which their pure courtship warranted,
+for which his lip yearned. But as he lingered, an irresistible impulse
+moved Helen's heart. Mechanically she opened her arms, and her head sank
+upon his shoulder. In that embrace they remained some moments silent,
+and an angel might unreprovingly have heard their hearts beat through
+the stillness.
+
+At length Percival tore himself from those arms which relaxed their
+imploring hold reluctantly; she heard his hurried step descend the
+stairs, and in a moment more the roll of the wheels in the court
+without; a dreary sense, as of some utter desertion, some everlasting
+bereavement, chilled and appalled her. She stood motionless, as if
+turned to stone, on the floor; suddenly the touch of something warm on
+her hand, a plaining whine, awoke her attention; Percival's favourite
+dog missed his master, and had slunk for refuge to her. The dread
+sentiment of loneliness vanished in that humble companionship; and
+seating herself on the ground, she took the dog in her arms, and bending
+over it, wept in silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV. MURDER, TOWARDS HIS DESIGN, MOVES LIKE A GHOST.
+
+The reader will doubtless have observed the consummate art with which
+the poisoner had hitherto advanced upon her prey. The design conceived
+from afar, and executed with elaborate stealth, defied every chance of
+detection against which the ingenuity of practised villany could guard.
+Grant even that the deadly drugs should betray the nature of the death
+they inflicted, that by some unconjectured secret in the science of
+chemistry the presence of those vegetable compounds which had hitherto
+baffled every known and positive test in the posthumous examination of
+the most experienced surgeons, should be clearly ascertained, not
+one suspicion seemed likely to fall upon the ministrant of death. The
+medicines were never brought to Madame Dalibard, were never given by her
+hand; nothing ever tasted by the victim could be tracked to her aunt.
+The helpless condition of the cripple, which Lucretia had assumed,
+forbade all notion even of her power of movement. Only in the dead of
+night when, as she believed, every human eye that could watch her was
+sealed in sleep, and then in those dark habiliments which (even as might
+sometimes happen, if the victim herself were awake) a chance ray of
+light struggling through chink or shutter could scarcely distinguish
+from the general gloom, did she steal to the chamber and infuse the
+colourless and tasteless liquid [The celebrated acqua di Tufania
+(Tufania water) was wholly without taste or colour] in the morning
+draught, meant to bring strength and healing. Grant that the draught was
+untouched, that it was examined by the surgeon, that the fell admixture
+could be detected, suspicion would wander anywhere rather than to that
+crippled and helpless kinswoman who could not rise from her bed without
+aid.
+
+But now this patience was to be abandoned, the folds of the serpent were
+to coil in one fell clasp upon its prey.
+
+Fiend as Lucretia had become, and hardened as were all her resolves
+by the discovery of her son, and her impatience to endow him with her
+forfeited inheritance, she yet shrank from the face of Helen that day;
+on the excuse of illness, she kept her room, and admitted only
+Varney, who stole in from time to time, with creeping step and haggard
+countenance, to sustain her courage or his own. And every time he
+entered, he found Lucretia sitting with Walter Ardworth's open letter in
+her hand, and turning with a preternatural excitement that seemed
+almost like aberration of mind, from the grim and horrid topic which
+he invited, to thoughts of wealth and power and triumph and exulting
+prophecies of the fame her son should achieve. He looked but on the
+blackness of the gulf, and shuddered; her vision overleaped it, and
+smiled on the misty palaces her fancy built beyond.
+
+Late in the evening, before she retired to rest, Helen knocked gently at
+her aunt's door. A voice, quick and startled, bade her enter; she came
+in, with her sweet, caressing look, and took Lucretia's hand, which
+struggled from the clasp. Bending over that haggard brow, she said
+simply, yet to Lucretia's ear the voice seemed that of command, "Let
+me kiss you this night!" and her lips pressed that brow. The murderess
+shuddered, and closed her eyes; when she opened them, the angel visitor
+was gone.
+
+Night deepened and deepened into those hours from the first of which
+we number the morn, though night still is at her full. Moonbeam and
+starbeam came through the casements shyly and fairylike as on that
+night when the murderess was young and crimeless, in deed, if not in
+thought,--that night when, in the book of Leechcraft, she meted out the
+hours in which the life of her benefactor might still interpose between
+her passion and its end. Along the stairs, through the hall, marched the
+armies of light, noiseless and still and clear as the judgments of
+God amidst the darkness and shadow of mortal destinies. In one chamber
+alone, the folds, curtained close, forbade all but a single ray; that
+ray came direct as the stream from a lantern; as the beam reflected back
+from an eye,--as an eye it seemed watchful and steadfast through the
+dark; it shot along the floor,--it fell at the foot of the bed.
+
+Suddenly, in the exceeding hush, there was a strange and ghastly
+sound,--it was the howl of a dog! Helen started from her sleep.
+Percival's dog had followed her into her room; it had coiled itself,
+grateful for the kindness, at the foot of the bed. Now it was on the
+pillow, she felt its heart beat against her hand,--it was trembling; its
+hairs bristled up, and the howl changed into a shrill bark of terror and
+wrath. Alarmed, she looked round; quickly between her and that ray
+from the crevice a shapeless darkness passed, and was gone, so
+undistinguishable, so without outline, that it had no likeness of any
+living form; like a cloud, like a thought, like an omen, it came in
+gloom, and it vanished.
+
+Helen was seized with a superstitious terror; the dog continued to
+tremble and growl low. All once more was still; the dog sighed itself
+to rest. The stillness, the solitude, the glimmer of the moon,--all
+contributed yet more to appall the enfeebled nerves of the listening,
+shrinking girl. At length she buried her face under the clothes, and
+towards daybreak fell into a broken, feverish sleep, haunted with
+threatening dreams.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV. THE MESSENGER SPEEDS.
+
+Towards the afternoon of the following day, an elderly gentleman was
+seated in the coffee-room of an hotel at Southampton, engaged in writing
+a letter, while the waiter in attendance was employed on the wires
+that fettered the petulant spirit contained in a bottle of Schweppe's
+soda-water. There was something in the aspect of the old gentleman, and
+in the very tone of his voice, that inspired respect, and the waiter had
+cleared the other tables of their latest newspapers to place before
+him. He had only just arrived by the packet from Havre, and even the
+newspapers had not been to him that primary attraction they generally
+constitute to the Englishman returning to his bustling native land,
+which, somewhat to his surprise, has contrived to go on tolerably well
+during his absence.
+
+We use our privilege of looking over his shoulder while he writes:--
+
+Here I am, then, dear Lady Mary, at Southampton, and within an easy
+drive of the old Hall. A file of Galignani's journals, which I found on
+the road between Marseilles and Paris, informed me, under the head of
+"fashionable movements," that Percival St. John, Esquire, was gone to
+his seat at Laughton. According to my customary tactics of marching at
+once to the seat of action, I therefore made direct for Havre, instead
+of crossing from Calais, and I suppose I shall find our young gentleman
+engaged in the slaughter of hares and partridges. You see it is a good
+sign that he can leave London. Keep up your spirits, my dear friend. If
+Perce has been really duped and taken in,--as all you mothers are so apt
+to fancy,--rely upon an old soldier to defeat the enemy and expose
+the ruse. But if, after all, the girl is such as he describes and
+believes,--innocent, artless, and worthy his affection,--oh, then I
+range myself, with your own good heart, upon his side. Never will I
+run the risk of unsettling a man's whole character for life by wantonly
+interfering with his affections. But there we are agreed.
+
+In a few hours I shall be with our dear boy, and his whole heart
+will come out clear and candid as when it beat under his midshipman's
+true-blue. In a day or two I shall make him take me to town, to
+introduce me to the whole nest of them. Then I shall report progress.
+Adieu, till then! Kind regards to your poor sister. I think we shall
+have a mild winter. Not one warning twinge as yet of the old rheumatism.
+Ever your devoted old friend and preux chevalier,
+
+H. GREVILLE.
+
+The captain had completed his letter, sipped his soda-water, and was
+affixing to his communication his seal, when he heard the rattle of a
+post-chaise without. Fancying it was the one he had ordered, he went
+to the open window which looked on the street; but the chaise contained
+travellers, only halting to change horses. Somewhat to his surprise,
+and a little to his chagrin,--for the captain did not count on finding
+company at the Hall,--he heard one of the travellers in the chaise ask
+the distance to Laughton. The countenance of the questioner was
+not familiar to him. But leaving the worthy captain to question the
+landlord, without any satisfactory information, and to hasten the chaise
+for himself, we accompany the travellers on their way to Laughton. There
+were but two,--the proper complement of a post-chaise,--and they were
+both of the ruder sex. The elder of the two was a man of middle age, but
+whom the wear and tear of active life had evidently advanced towards the
+state called elderly. But there was still abundant life in his quick,
+dark eye; and that mercurial youthfulness of character which in some
+happy constitutions seems to defy years and sorrow, evinced itself in
+a rapid play of countenance and as much gesticulation as the narrow
+confines of the vehicle and the position of a traveller will permit. The
+younger man, far more grave in aspect and quiet in manner, leaned back
+in the corner with folded arms, and listened with respectful attention
+to his companion.
+
+"Certainly, Dr. Johnson is right,--great happiness in an English
+post-chaise properly driven; more exhilarating than a palanquin. 'Post
+equitem sedet atra cura,'--true only of such scrubby hacks as old Horace
+could have known. Black Care does not sit behind English posters, eh,
+my boy?" As he spoke this, the gentleman had twice let down the glass of
+the vehicle, and twice put it up again.
+
+"Yet," he resumed, without noticing the brief, good-humoured reply of
+his companion,--"yet this is an anxious business enough that we are
+about. I don't feel quite easy in my conscience. Poor Braddell's
+injunctions were very strict, and I disobey them. It is on your
+responsibility, John!"
+
+"I take it without hesitation. All the motives for so stern a severance
+must have ceased, and is it not a sufficient punishment to find in that
+hoped-for son a--"
+
+"Poor woman!" interrupted the elder gentleman, in whom we begin to
+recognize the soi-disant Mr. Tomkins; "true, indeed, too true. How well
+I remember the impression Lucretia Clavering first produced on me; and
+to think of her now as a miserable cripple! By Jove, you are right, sir!
+Drive on, post-boy, quick, quick!"
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+The elder gentleman abruptly put his hand upon his companion's arm.
+
+"What consummate acuteness; what patient research you have shown! What
+could I have done in this business without you? How often had that
+garrulous Mrs. Mivers bored me with Becky Carruthers, and the coral, and
+St. Paul's, and not a suspicion came across me,--a word was sufficient
+for you. And then to track this unfeeling old Joplin from place to
+place till you find her absolutely a servant under the very roof of Mrs.
+Braddell herself! Wonderful! Ah, boy, you will be an honour to the law
+and to your country. And what a hard-hearted rascal you must think me to
+have deserted you so long."
+
+"My dear father," said John Ardworth, tenderly, "your love now
+recompenses me for all. And ought I not rather to rejoice not to have
+known the tale of a mother's shame until I could half forget it on a
+father's breast?"
+
+"John," said the elder Ardworth, with a choking voice, "I ought to wear
+sackcloth all my life for having given you such a mother. When I think
+what I have suffered from the habit of carelessness in those confounded
+money-matters ('irritamenta malorum,' indeed!), I have only one
+consolation,--that my patient, noble son is free from my vice. You would
+not believe what a well-principled, honourable fellow I was at your age;
+and yet, how truly I said to my poor friend William Mainwaring one
+day at Laughton (I remember it now) 'Trust me with anything else but
+half-a-guinea!' Why, sir, it was that fault that threw me into low
+company,--that brought me in contact with my innkeeper's daughter at
+Limerick. I fell in love, and I married (for, with all my faults, I was
+never a seducer, John). I did not own my marriage; why should I?--my
+relatives had cut me already. You were born, and, hunted poor devil as
+I was, I forgot all by your cradle. Then, in the midst of my troubles,
+that ungrateful woman deserted me; then I was led to believe that it was
+not my own son whom I had kissed and blessed. Ah, but for that thought
+should I have left you as I did? And even in infancy, you had the
+features only of your mother. Then, when the death of the adulteress
+set me free, and years afterwards, in India, I married again and had
+new ties, my heart grew still harder to you. I excused myself by knowing
+that at least you were cared for, and trained to good by a better
+guide than I. But when, by so strange a hazard, the very priest who
+had confessed your mother on her deathbed (she was a Catholic) came
+to India, and (for he had known me at Limerick) recognized my altered
+person, and obeying his penitent's last injunctions, assured me that you
+were my son,--oh, John, then, believe me, I hastened back to England
+on the wings of remorse! Love you, boy! I have left at Madras three
+children, young and fair, by a woman now in heaven, who never wronged
+me, and, by my soul, John Ardworth, you are dearer to me than all!"
+
+The father's head drooped on his son's breast as he spoke; then, dashing
+away his tears, he resumed,--
+
+"Ah, why would not Braddell permit me, as I proposed, to find for his
+son the same guardianship as that to which I intrusted my own? But his
+bigotry besotted him; a clergyman of the High Church,--that was worse
+than an atheist. I had no choice left to me but the roof of that
+she-hypocrite. Yet I ought to have come to England when I heard of
+the child's loss, braved duns and all; but I was money-making,
+money-making,--retribution for money-wasting; and--well, it's no use
+repenting! And--and there is the lodge, the park, the old trees! Poor
+Sir Miles!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI. THE SPY FLIES.
+
+Meanwhile at Laughton there was confusion and alarm. Helen had found
+herself more than usually unwell in the morning; towards noon, the maid
+who attended her informed Madame Dalibard that she was afraid the poor
+young lady had much fever, and inquired if the doctor should be sent
+for. Madame Dalibard seemed surprised at the intelligence, and directed
+her chair to be wheeled into her niece's room, in order herself to judge
+of Helen's state. The maid, sure that the doctor would be summoned,
+hastened to the stables, and seeing Beck, instructed him to saddle one
+of the horses and to await further orders. Beck kept her a few moments
+talking while he saddled his horse, and then followed her into the
+house, observing that it would save time if he were close at hand.
+
+"That is quite true," said the maid, "and you may as well wait in the
+corridor. Madame may wish to speak to you herself, and give you her own
+message or note to the doctor."
+
+Beck, full of gloomy suspicions, gladly obeyed, and while the maid
+entered the sick-chamber, stood anxiously without. Presently Varney
+passed him, and knocked at Helen's door; the maid half-opened it.
+
+"How is Miss Mainwaring?" said he, eagerly.
+
+"I fear she is worse, sir; but Madame Dalibard does not think there is
+any danger."
+
+"No danger! I am glad; but pray ask Madame Dalibard to let me see her
+for a few moments in her own room. If she come out, I will wheel her
+chair to it. Whether there is danger or not, we had better send for
+other advice than this country doctor, who has perhaps mistaken the
+case; tell her I am very uneasy, and beg her to join me immediately."
+
+"I think you are quite right, sir," said the maid, closing the door.
+
+Varney then, turning round for the first time, noticed Beck, and said
+roughly,--
+
+"What do you do here? Wait below till you are sent for."
+
+Beck pulled his forelock, and retreated back, not in the direction of
+the principal staircase, but towards that used by the servants, and
+which his researches into the topography of the mansion had now made
+known to him. To gain these back stairs he had to pass Lucretia's room;
+the door stood ajar; Varney's face was turned from him. Beck breathed
+hard, looked round, then crept within, and in a moment was behind the
+folds of the tapestry.
+
+Soon the chair in which sat Madame Dalibard was drawn by Varney himself
+into the room.
+
+Shutting the door with care, and turning the key, Gabriel said, with
+low, suppressed passion,--
+
+"Well; your mind seems wandering,--speak!"
+
+"It is strange," said Lucretia, in hollow tones, "can Nature turn
+accomplice, and befriend us here?"
+
+"Nature! did you not last night administer the--"
+
+"No," interrupted Lucretia. "No; she came into the room, she kissed
+me here,--on the brow that even then was meditating murder. The kiss
+burned; it burns still,--it eats into the brain like remorse. But I did
+not yield; I read again her false father's protestation of love; I read
+again the letter announcing the discovery of my son, and remorse lay
+still. I went forth as before, I stole into her chamber, I had the fatal
+crystal in my hand--"
+
+"Well, well!"
+
+"And suddenly there came the fearful howl of a dog, and the dog's fierce
+eyes glared on me. I paused, I trembled; Helen started, woke, called
+aloud. I turned and fled. The poison was not given."
+
+Varney ground his teeth. "But this illness! Ha! the effect, perhaps, of
+the drops administered two nights ago."
+
+"No; this illness has no symptoms like those the poison should
+bequeath,--it is but natural fever, a shock on the nerves; she told me
+she had been wakened by the dog's howl, and seen a dark form, like a
+thing from the grave, creeping along the floor. But she is really ill;
+send for the physician; there is nothing in her illness to betray the
+hand of man. Be it as it may,--that kiss still burns; I will stir in
+this no more. Do what you will yourself!"
+
+"Fool, fool!" exclaimed Varney, almost rudely grasping her arm.
+"Remember how much we have yet to prepare for, how much to do,--and the
+time so short! Percival's return,--perhaps this Greville's arrival. Give
+me the drugs; I will mix them for her in the potion the physician sends.
+And when Percival returns,--his Helen dead or dying,--I will attend on
+him! Silent still? Recall your son! Soon you will clasp him in your arms
+as a beggar, or as the lord of Laughton!"
+
+Lucretia shuddered, but did not rise; she drew forth a ring of keys from
+her bosom, and pointed towards a secretary. Varney snatched the keys,
+unlocked the secretary, seized the fatal casket, and sat down quietly
+before it.
+
+When the dire selections were made, and secreted about his person,
+Varney rose, approached the fire, and blew the wood embers to a blaze.
+
+"And now," he said, with his icy irony of smile, "we may dismiss
+these useful instruments,--perhaps forever. Though Walter Ardworth, in
+restoring your son, leaves us dependent on that son's filial affection,
+and I may have, therefore, little to hope for from the succession, to
+secure which I have risked and am again to risk my life, I yet trust to
+that influence which you never fail to obtain over others. I take it for
+granted that when these halls are Vincent Braddell's, we shall have
+no need of gold, nor of these pale alchemies. Perish, then, the mute
+witnesses of our acts, the elements we have bowed to our will! No poison
+shall be found in our hoards! Fire, consume your consuming children!"
+
+As he spoke, he threw upon the hearth the contents of the casket,
+and set his heel upon the logs. A bluish flame shot up, breaking into
+countless sparks, and then died.
+
+Lucretia watched him without speaking.
+
+In coming back towards the table, Varney felt something hard beneath
+his tread; he stooped, and picked up the ring which has before been
+described as amongst the ghastly treasures of the casket, and which had
+rolled on the floor almost to Lucretia's feet, as he had emptied the
+contents on the hearth.
+
+"This, at least, need tell no tales," said he; "a pity to destroy so
+rare a piece of workmanship,--one, too, which we never can replace!"
+
+"Ay," said Lucretia, abstractedly; "and if detection comes, it may
+secure a refuge from the gibbet. Give me the ring."
+
+"A refuge more terrible than the detection," said Varney,--"beware of
+such a thought," as Lucretia, taking it from his hand, placed the ring
+on her finger.
+
+"And now I leave you for a while to recollect yourself,--to compose your
+countenance and your thoughts. I will send for the physician."
+
+Lucretia, with her eyes fixed on the floor, did not heed him, and he
+withdrew.
+
+So motionless was her attitude, so still her very breathing, that the
+unseen witness behind the tapestry, who, while struck with horror at
+what he had overheard (the general purport of which it was impossible
+that he could misunderstand), was parched with impatience to escape to
+rescue his beloved master from his impending fate, and warn him of the
+fate hovering nearer still over Helen, ventured to creep along the wall
+to the threshold, to peer forth from the arras, and seeing her eyes
+still downcast, to emerge, and place his hand on the door. At that very
+moment Lucretia looked up, and saw him gliding from the tapestry; their
+eyes met: his were fascinated as the bird's by the snake's. At the
+sight, all her craft, her intellect, returned. With a glance, she
+comprehended the terrible danger that awaited her. Before he was aware
+of her movement, she was at his side; her hand on his own, her voice in
+his ear.
+
+"Stir not a step, utter not a sound, or you are--"
+
+Beck did not suffer her to proceed. With the violence rather of fear
+than of courage, he struck her to the ground; but she clung to him
+still, and though rendered for the moment speechless by the suddenness
+of the blow, her eyes took an expression of unspeakable cruelty and
+fierceness. He struggled with all his might to shake her off; as he did
+so, she placed feebly her other hand upon the wrist of the lifted arm
+that had smitten her, and he felt a sharp pain, as if the nails had
+fastened into the flesh. This but exasperated him to new efforts. He
+extricated himself from her grasp, which relaxed as her lips writhed
+into a smile of scorn and triumph, and, spurning her while she lay
+before the threshold, he opened the door, sprang forward, and escaped.
+No thought had he of tarrying in that House of Pelops, those human
+shambles, of denouncing Murder in its lair; to fly to reach his master,
+warn, and shield him,--that was the sole thought which crossed his
+confused, bewildered brain.
+
+It might be from four to five minutes that Lucretia, half-stunned,
+half-senseless, lay upon those floors,--for besides the violence of her
+fall, the shock of the struggle upon nerves weakened by the agony
+of apprehension, occasioned by the imminent and unforeseen chance of
+detection, paralyzed her wondrous vigour of mind and frame,--when Varney
+entered.
+
+"They tell me she sleeps," he said, in hoarse, muttered accents, before
+he saw the prostrate form at his very feet. But Varney's step, Varney's
+voice, had awakened Lucretia's reason to consciousness and the sense
+of peril. Rising, though with effort, she related hurriedly what had
+passed.
+
+"Fly, fly!" she gasped, as she concluded. "Fly, to detain, to secrete,
+this man somewhere for the next few hours. Silence him but till then;
+I have done the rest!" and her finger pointed to the fatal ring. Varney
+waited for no further words; he hurried out, and made at once to the
+stables: his shrewdness conjectured that Beck would carry his tale
+elsewhere. The groom was already gone (his fellows said) without a word,
+but towards the lodge that led to the Southampton road. Varney ordered
+the swiftest horse the stables held to be saddled, and said, as he
+sprang on his back,--
+
+"I, too, must go towards Southampton. The poor young lady! I must
+prepare your master,--he is on his road back to us;" and the last word
+was scarce out of his lips as the sparks flew from the flints under the
+horse's hoofs, and he spurred from the yard.
+
+As he rode at full speed through the park, the villain's mind sped more
+rapidly than the animal he bestrode,--sped from fear to hope, hope
+to assurance. Grant that the spy lived to tell his tale,--incoherent,
+improbable as the tale would be,--who would believe it? How easy to
+meet tale by tale! The man must own that he was secreted behind the
+tapestry,--wherefore but to rob? Detected by Madame Dalibard, he had
+coined this wretched fable. And the spy, too, could not live through the
+day; he bore Death with him as he rode, he fed its force by his speed,
+and the effects of the venom itself would be those of frenzy. Tush! his
+tale, at best, would seem but the ravings of delirium. Still, it was
+well to track him where he went,--delay him, if possible; and Varney's
+spurs plunged deep and deeper into the bleeding flanks: on desperately
+scoured the horse. He passed the lodge; he was on the road; a chaise and
+pair dashed by him; he heard not a voice exclaim "Varney!" he saw not
+the wondering face of John Ardworth; bending over the tossing mane, he
+was deaf, he was blind, to all without and around. A milestone glides
+by, another, and a third. Ha! his eyes can see now. The object of his
+chase is before him,--he views distinctly, on the brow of yon hill, the
+horse and the rider, spurring fast, like himself. They descend the
+hill, horse and horseman, and are snatched from his sight. Up the steep
+strains the pursuer. He is at the summit. He sees the fugitive before
+him, almost within hearing. Beck has slackened his steed; he seems
+swaying to and fro in the saddle. Ho, ho! the barbed ring begins to work
+in his veins. Varney looks round,--not another soul is in sight; a deep
+wood skirts the road. Place and time seem to favour; Beck has reined in
+his horse,--he bends low over the saddle, as if about to fall. Varney
+utters a half-suppressed cry of triumph, shakes his reins, and spurs
+on, when suddenly--by the curve of the road, hid before--another chaise
+comes in sight, close where Beck had wearily halted.
+
+The chaise stops; Varney pulls in, and draws aside to the hedgerow. Some
+one within the vehicle is speaking to the fugitive! May it not be
+St. John himself? To his rage and his terror, he sees Beck painfully
+dismount from his horse, sees him totter to the door of the chaise, sees
+a servant leap from the box and help him up the step, sees him enter. It
+must be Percival on his return,--Percival, to whom he tells that story
+of horror! Varney's brute-like courage forsook him; his heart was
+appalled. In one of those panics so common with that boldness which
+is but animal, his sole thought became that of escape. He turned his
+horse's head to the fence, forced his way desperately through the
+barrier, made into the wood, and sat there, cowering and listening, till
+in another minute he heard the wheels rattle on, and the horses gallop
+hard down the hill towards the park.
+
+The autumn wind swept through the trees, it shook the branches of the
+lofty ash that overhung the Accursed One. What observer of Nature knows
+not that peculiar sound which the ash gives forth in the blast? Not
+the solemn groan of the oak, not the hollow murmur of the beech, but
+a shrill wail, a shriek as of a human voice in sharp anguish. Varney
+shuddered, as if he had heard the death-cry of his intended victim.
+Through briers and thickets, torn by the thorns, bruised by the boughs,
+he plunged deeper and deeper into the wood, gained at length the main
+path cut through it, found himself in a lane, and rode on, careless
+whither, till he had reached a small town, about ten miles from
+Laughton, where he resolved to wait till his nerves had recovered their
+tone, and he could more calmly calculate the chances of safety.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII. LUCRETIA REGAINS HER SON.
+
+It seemed as if now, when danger became most imminent and present, that
+that very danger served to restore to Lucretia Dalibard her faculties,
+which during the earlier day had been steeped in a kind of dreary
+stupor. The absolute necessity of playing out her execrable part with
+all suitable and consistent hypocrisy, braced her into iron. But the
+disguise she assumed was a supernatural effort, it stretched to cracking
+every fibre of the brain; it seemed almost to herself as if, her object
+once gained, either life or consciousness could hold out no more.
+
+A chaise stopped at the porch; two gentlemen descended. The elder paused
+irresolutely, and at length, taking out a card, inscribed "Mr. Walter
+Ardworth," said, "If Madame Dalibard can be spoken to for a moment, will
+you give her this card?"
+
+The footman hesitatingly stared at the card, and then invited the
+gentleman into the hall while he took up the message. Not long had the
+visitor to wait, pacing the dark oak floors and gazing on the faded
+banners, before the servant reappeared: Madame Dalibard would see him.
+He followed his guide up the stairs, while his young companion turned
+from the hall, and seated himself musingly on one of the benches on the
+deserted terrace.
+
+Grasping the arms of her chair with both hands, her eyes fixed eagerly
+on his face, Lucretia Dalibard awaited the welcome visitor.
+
+Prepared as he had been for change, Walter was startled by the ghastly
+alteration in Lucretia's features, increased as it was at that moment by
+all the emotions which raged within. He sank into the chair placed for
+him opposite Lucretia, and clearing his throat, said falteringly,--
+
+"I grieve indeed, Madame, that my visit, intended to bring but joy,
+should chance thus inopportunely. The servant informed me as we came up
+the stairs that your niece was ill; and I sympathize with your natural
+anxiety,--Susan's only child, too; poor Susan!"
+
+"Sir," said Lucretia, impatiently, "these moments are precious. Sir,
+sir, my son,--my son!" and her eyes glanced to the door. "You have
+brought with you a companion,--does he wait without? My son!"
+
+"Madame, give me a moment's patience. I will be brief, and compress what
+in other moments might be a long narrative into a few sentences."
+
+Rapidly then Walter Ardworth passed over the details, unnecessary now to
+repeat to the reader,--the injunctions of Braddell, the delivery of the
+child to the woman selected by his fellow-sectarian (who, it seemed, by
+John Ardworth's recent inquiries, was afterwards expelled the community,
+and who, there was reason to believe, had been the first seducer of the
+woman thus recommended). No clew to the child's parentage had been given
+to the woman with the sum intrusted for his maintenance, which sum had
+perhaps been the main cause of her reckless progress to infamy and ruin.
+The narrator passed lightly over the neglect and cruelty of the
+nurse, to her abandonment of the child when the money was exhausted.
+Fortunately she had overlooked the coral round its neck. By that coral,
+and by the initials V. B., which Ardworth had had the precaution to have
+burned into the child's wrist, the lost son had been discovered; the
+nurse herself (found in the person of Martha Skeggs, Lucretia's own
+servant) had been confronted with the woman to whom she gave the child,
+and recognized at once. Nor had it been difficult to obtain from her the
+confession which completed the evidence.
+
+"In this discovery," concluded Ardworth, "the person I employed met your
+own agent, and the last links in the chain they traced together. But to
+that person--to his zeal and intelligence--you owe the happiness I
+trust to give you. He sympathized with me the more that he knew you
+personally, felt for your sorrows, and had a lingering belief that you
+supposed him to be the child you yearned for. Madame, thank my son for
+the restoration of your own!"
+
+Without sound, Lucretia had listened to these details, though her
+countenance changed fearfully as the narrator proceeded. But now she
+groaned aloud and in agony.
+
+"Nay, Madame," said Ardworth, feelingly, and in some surprise, "surely
+the discovery of your son should create gladder emotions! Though,
+indeed, you will be prepared to find that the poor youth so reared wants
+education and refinement, I have heard enough to convince me that his
+dispositions are good and his heart grateful. Judge of this yourself; he
+is in these walls, he is--"
+
+"Abandoned by a harlot,--reared by a beggar! My son!" interrupted
+Lucretia, in broken sentences. "Well, sir, have you discharged your
+task! Well have you replaced a mother!" Before Ardworth could reply,
+loud and rapid steps were heard in the corridor, and a voice, cracked,
+indistinct, but vehement. The door was thrown open, and, half-supported
+by Captain Greville, half dragging him along, his features convulsed,
+whether by pain or passion, the spy upon Lucretia's secrets, the
+denouncer of her crime, tottered to the threshold. Pointing to where she
+sat with his long, lean arm, Beck exclaimed, "Seize her! I 'cuse her,
+face to face, of the murder of her niece,--of--of I told you, sir--I
+told you--"
+
+"Madame," said Captain Greville, "you stand charged by this witness
+with the most terrible of human crimes. I judge you not. Your niece,
+I rejoice to bear, yet lives. Pray God that her death be not traced
+to those kindred hands!" Turning her eyes from one to the other with a
+wandering stare, Lucretia Dalibard remained silent. But there was still
+scorn on her lip, and defiance on her brow. At last she said slowly, and
+to Ardworth,--
+
+"Where is my son? You say he is within these walls. Call him forth to
+protect his mother! Give me at least my son,--my son!"
+
+Her last words were drowned by a fresh burst of fury from her denouncer.
+In all the coarsest invective his education could supply, in all
+the hideous vulgarities of his untutored dialect, in that uncurbed
+licentiousness of tone, look, and manner which passion, once aroused,
+gives to the dregs and scum of the populace, Beck poured forth his
+frightful charges, his frantic execrations. In vain Captain Greville
+strove to check him; in vain Walter Ardworth sought to draw him from
+the room. But while the poor wretch--maddening not more with the
+consciousness of the crime than with the excitement of the poison in
+his blood--thus raved and stormed, a terrible suspicion crossed Walter
+Ardworth; mechanically,--as his grasp was on the accuser's arm,--he
+bared the sleeve, and on the wrist were the dark-blue letters burned
+into the skin and bearing witness to his identity with the lost Vincent
+Braddell.
+
+"Hold, hold!" he exclaimed then; "hold, unhappy man!--it is your mother
+whom you denounce!"
+
+Lucretia sprang up erect; her eyes seemed starting from her head. She
+caught at the arm pointed towards her in wrath and menace, and there,
+amidst those letters that proclaimed her son, was the small puncture,
+surrounded by a livid circle, that announced her victim. In the same
+instant she discovered her child in the man who was calling down upon
+her head the hatred of Earth and the justice of Heaven, and knew herself
+his murderess!
+
+She dropped the arm, and sank back on the chair; and whether the poison
+had now reached to the vitals, or whether so unwonted a passion in so
+frail a frame sufficed for the death-stroke, Beck himself, with a low,
+suffocated cry, slid from the hand of Ardworth, and tottering a step
+or so, the blood gushed from his mouth over Lucretia's robe; his head
+drooped an instant, and, falling, rested first upon her lap, then struck
+heavily upon the floor. The two men bent over him and raised him in
+their arms; his eyes opened and closed, his throat rattled, and as he
+fell back into their arms a corpse, a laugh rose close at hand,--it rang
+through the walls, it was heard near and afar, above and below; not an
+ear in that house that heard it not. In that laugh fled forever, till
+the Judgment-day, from the blackened ruins of her lost soul, the reason
+of the murderess-mother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LOTS VANISH WITHIN THE URN.
+
+Varney's self-commune restored to him his constitutional audacity. He
+returned to Laughton towards the evening, and held a long conference
+with Greville. Fortunately for him, perhaps, and happily for all, Helen
+had lost all more dangerous symptoms; and the physician, who was in
+the house, saw in her state nothing not easily to be accounted for by
+natural causes. Percival had arrived, had seen Helen,--no wonder she
+was better! Both from him and from Helen, Madame Dalibard's fearful
+condition was for the present concealed. Ardworth's story, and the fact
+of Beck's identity with Vincent Braddell, were also reserved for a later
+occasion. The tale which Beck had poured into the ear of Greville (when,
+recognizing the St. John livery, the captain stopped his chaise to
+inquire if Percival were at the Hall, and when thrilled by the hideous
+import of his broken reply, that gentleman had caused him to enter the
+vehicle to explain himself further), Varney, with his wonted art and
+address, contrived to strip of all probable semblance. Evidently the
+poor lad had been already delirious; his story must be deemed the
+nightmare of his disordered reason. Varney insisted upon surgical
+examination as to the cause of his death. The membranes of the
+brain were found surcharged with blood, as in cases of great mental
+excitement; the slight puncture in the wrist, ascribed to the prick of
+a rusty nail, provoked no suspicion. If some doubts remained still in
+Greville's acute mind, he was not eager to express, still less to
+act upon them. Helen was declared to be out of danger; Percival was
+safe,--why affix by minute inquiry into the alleged guilt of Madame
+Dalibard (already so awfully affected by the death of her son and by the
+loss of her reason) so foul a stain on the honoured family of St. John?
+But Greville was naturally anxious to free the house as soon as possible
+both of Varney and that ominous Lucretia, whose sojourn under its roof
+seemed accursed. He therefore readily assented when Varney proposed, as
+his obvious and personal duty, to take charge of his mother-in-law, and
+remove her to London for immediate advice.
+
+At the dead of the black-clouded night, no moon and no stars, the son
+of Olivier Dalibard bore away the form of the once-formidable
+Lucretia,--the form, for the mind was gone; that teeming, restless,
+and fertile intellect, which had carried along the projects with the
+preterhuman energies of the fiend, was hurled into night and chaos.
+Manacled and bound, for at times her paroxysms were terrible, and all
+partook of the destructive and murderous character which her faculties,
+when present, had betrayed, she was placed in the vehicle by the
+shrinking side of her accomplice.
+
+Long before he arrived in London, Varney had got rid of his fearful
+companion. His chaise had stopped at the iron gates of a large building
+somewhat out of the main road, and the doors of the madhouse closed on
+Lucretia Dalibard.
+
+Varney then hastened to Dover, with intention of flight into France; he
+was just about to step into the vessel, when he was tapped rudely on the
+shoulder, and a determined voice said, "Mr. Gabriel Varney, you are my
+prisoner!"
+
+"For what? Some paltry debt?" said Varney, haughtily.
+
+"For forgery on the Bank of England!"
+
+Varney's hand plunged into his vest. The officer seized it in time, and
+wrested the blade from his grasp. Once arrested for an offence it
+was impossible to disprove, although the very smallest of which his
+conscience might charge him, Varney sank into the blackest despair.
+Though he had often boasted, not only to others, but to his own vain
+breast, of the easy courage with which, when life ceased to yield
+enjoyment, he could dismiss it by the act of his own will; though he had
+possessed himself of Lucretia's murderous ring, and death, if fearful,
+was therefore at his command,--self-destruction was the last thought
+that occurred to him; that morbid excitability of fancy which, whether
+in his art or in his deeds, had led him to strange delight in horror,
+now served but to haunt him with the images of death in those ghastliest
+shapes familiar to them who look only into the bottom of the charnel,
+and see but the rat and the worm and the loathsome agencies of
+corruption. It was not the despair of conscience that seized him, it was
+the abject clinging to life; not the remorse of the soul,--that still
+slept within him, too noble an agency for one so debased,--but the
+gross physical terror. As the fear of the tiger, once aroused, is more
+paralyzing than that of the deer, proportioned to the savageness of a
+disposition to which fear is a novelty, so the very boldness of Varney,
+coming only from the perfection of the nervous organization, and
+unsupported by one moral sentiment, once struck down, was corrupted into
+the vilest cowardice. With his audacity, his shrewdness forsook him.
+Advised by his lawyer to plead guilty, he obeyed, and the sentence of
+transportation for life gave him at first a feeling of reprieve; but
+when his imagination began to picture, in the darkness of his cell,
+all the true tortures of that penalty,--not so much, perhaps, to the
+uneducated peasant-felon, inured to toil, and familiarized with
+coarse companionship, as to one pampered like himself by all soft and
+half-womanly indulgences,--the shaven hair, the convict's dress, the
+rigorous privation, the drudging toil, the exile, seemed as grim as the
+grave. In the dotage of faculties smitten into drivelling, he wrote to
+the Home Office, offering to disclose secrets connected with crimes that
+had hitherto escaped or baffled justice, on condition that his sentence
+might be repealed, or mitigated into the gentler forms of ordinary
+transportation. No answer was returned to him, but his letter provoked
+research. Circumstances connected with his uncle's death, and with
+various other dark passages in his life, sealed against him all hope of
+a more merciful sentence; and when some acquaintances, whom his art
+had made for him, and who, while grieving for his crime, saw in it
+some excuses (ignorant of his feller deeds), sought to intercede in his
+behalf, the reply of the Home Office was obvious: "He is a fortunate
+man to have been tried and condemned for his least offence." Not one
+indulgence that could distinguish him from the most execrable ruffian
+condemned to the same sentence was conceded.
+
+The idea of the gibbet lost all its horror. Here was a gibbet for every
+hour. No hope,--no escape. Already that Future Doom which comprehends
+the "Forever" opened upon him black and fathomless. The hour-glass was
+broken up, the hand of the timepiece was arrested. The Beyond stretched
+before him without limit, without goal,--on into Annihilation or into
+Hell.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE TO PART THE SECOND.
+
+Stand, O Man! upon the hill-top in the stillness of the evening hour,
+and gaze, not with joyous, but with contented eyes, upon the beautiful
+world around thee. See where the mists, soft and dim, rise over the
+green meadows, through which the rivulet steals its way. See where,
+broadest and stillest, the wave expands to the full smile of the setting
+sun, and the willow that trembles on the breeze, and the oak that stands
+firm in the storm, are reflected back, peaceful both, from the clear
+glass of the tides. See where, begirt by the gold of the harvests, and
+backed by the pomp of a thousand groves, the roofs of the town bask,
+noiseless, in the calm glow of the sky. Not a sound from those abodes
+floats in discord to thine ear; only from the church-tower, soaring high
+above the rest, perhaps faintly heard through the stillness, swells the
+note of the holy bell. Along the mead low skims the swallow,--on the
+wave the silver circlet, breaking into spray, shows the sport of the
+fish. See the Earth, how serene, though all eloquent of activity and
+life! See the Heavens, how benign, though dark clouds, by yon mountain,
+blend the purple with the gold! Gaze contented, for Good is around
+thee,--not joyous, for Evil is the shadow of Good! Let thy soul pierce
+through the veil of the senses, and thy sight plunge deeper than the
+surface which gives delight to thine eye. Below the glass of that river,
+the pike darts on his prey; the circle in the wave, the soft plash
+amongst the reeds, are but signs of Destroyer and Victim. In the ivy
+round the oak by the margin, the owl hungers for the night, which shall
+give its beak and its talons living food for its young; and the spray
+of the willow trembles with the wing of the redbreast, whose bright eye
+sees the worm on the sod. Canst thou count too, O Man! all the cares,
+all the sins, that those noiseless rooftops conceal? With every curl of
+that smoke to the sky, a human thought soars as dark, a human hope melts
+as briefly. And the bell from the church-tower, that to thy ear gives
+but music, perhaps knolls for the dead. The swallow but chases the
+moth, and the cloud, that deepens the glory of the heaven and the sweet
+shadows on the earth, nurses but the thunder that shall rend the grove,
+and the storm that shall devastate the harvests. Not with fear, not with
+doubt, recognize, O Mortal, the presence of Evil in the world. [Not,
+indeed, that the evil here narrated is the ordinary evil of the
+world,--the lesson it inculcates would be lost if so construed,--but
+that the mystery of evil, whatever its degree, only increases the
+necessity of faith in the vindication of the contrivance which requires
+infinity for its range, and eternity for its consummation. It is in the
+existence of evil that man finds his duties, and his soul its progress.]
+Hush thy heart in the humbleness of awe, that its mirror may reflect as
+serenely the shadow as the light. Vainly, for its moral, dost thou gaze
+on the landscape, if thy soul puts no check on the dull delight of the
+senses. Two wings only raise thee to the summit of Truth, where the
+Cherub shall comfort the sorrow, where the Seraph shall enlighten
+the joy. Dark as ebon spreads the one wing, white as snow gleams the
+other,--mournful as thy reason when it descends into the deep; exulting
+as thy faith when it springs to the day-star.
+
+Beck sleeps in the churchyard of Laughton. He had lived to frustrate
+the monstrous design intended to benefit himself, and to become the
+instrument, while the victim, of the dread Eumenides. That done, his
+life passed with the crimes that had gathered around, out of the sight
+of mortals. Helen slowly regained her health in the atmosphere of love
+and happiness; and Lady Mary soon learned to forget the fault of the
+father in the virtues of the child. Married to Percival, Helen fulfilled
+the destinies of woman's genius, in calling forth into action man's
+earnest duties. She breathed into Percival's warm, beneficent heart her
+own more steadfast and divine intelligence. Like him she grew ambitious,
+by her he became distinguished. While I write, fair children play under
+the cedars of Laughton. And the husband tells the daughters to resemble
+their mother; and the wife's highest praise to the boys is: "You have
+spoken truth, or done good, like your father."
+
+John Ardworth has not paused in his career, nor belied the promise
+of his youth. Though the elder Ardworth, partly by his own exertions,
+partly by his second marriage with the daughter of the French merchant
+(through whose agency he had corresponded with Fielden), had realized a
+moderate fortune, it but sufficed for his own wants and for the children
+of his later nuptials, upon whom the bulk of it was settled. Hence,
+happily perhaps for himself and others, the easy circumstances of his
+father allowed to John Ardworth no exemption from labour. His success in
+the single episode from active life to literature did not intoxicate
+or mislead him. He knew that his real element was not in the field of
+letters, but in the world of men. Not undervaluing the noble destinies
+of the author, he felt that those destinies, if realized to the utmost,
+demanded powers other than his own, and that man is only true to his
+genius when the genius is at home in his career. He would not renounce
+for a brief celebrity distant and solid fame. He continued for a few
+years in patience and privation and confident self-reliance to drudge
+on, till the occupation for the intellect fed by restraint, and the
+learning accumulated by study, came and found the whole man developed
+and prepared. Then he rose rapidly from step to step; then, still
+retaining his high enthusiasm, he enlarged his sphere of action from
+the cold practice of law into those vast social improvements which law,
+rightly regarded, should lead and vivify and create. Then, and long
+before the twenty years he had imposed on his probation had expired, he
+gazed again upon the senate and the abbey, and saw the doors of the one
+open to his resolute tread, and anticipated the glorious sepulchre which
+heart and brain should win him in the other. John Ardworth has never
+married. When Percival rebukes him for his celibacy, his lip quivers
+slightly, and he applies himself with more dogged earnestness to his
+studies or his career. But he never complains that his lot is lonely or
+his affections void. For him who aspires, and for him who loves, life
+may lead through the thorns, but it never stops in the desert.
+
+On the minor personages involved in this history, there is little need
+to dwell. Mr. Fielden, thanks to St. John, has obtained a much better
+living in the rectory of Laughton, but has found new sources of pleasant
+trouble for himself in seeking to drill into the mind of Percival's
+eldest son the elements of Euclid, and the principles of Latin syntax.
+
+We may feel satisfied that the Miverses will go on much the same while
+trade enriches without refining, and while, nevertheless, right feelings
+in the common paths of duty may unite charitable emotions with graceless
+language.
+
+We may rest assured that the poor widow who had reared the lost son of
+Lucretia received from the bounty of Percival all that could comfort her
+for his death.
+
+We have no need to track the dull crimes of Martha, or the quick,
+cunning vices of Grabman, to their inevitable goals, in the hospital or
+the prison, the dunghill or the gibbet.
+
+Of the elder Ardworth our parting notice may be less brief. We first saw
+him in sanguine and generous youth, with higher principles and clearer
+insight into honour than William Mainwaring. We have seen him next
+a spendthrift and a fugitive, his principles debased and his honour
+dimmed. He presents to us no uncommon example of the corruption
+engendered by that vulgar self-indulgence which mortgages the morrow
+for the pleasures of to-day. No Deity presides where Prudence is absent.
+Man, a world in himself, requires for the development of his faculties
+patience, and for the balance of his actions, order. Even where he
+had deemed himself most oppressively made the martyr,--namely, in the
+profession of mere political opinions,--Walter Ardworth had but followed
+out into theory the restless, uncalculating impatience which had brought
+adversity on his manhood, and, despite his constitutional cheerfulness,
+shadowed his age with remorse. The death of the child committed to his
+charge long (perhaps to the last) embittered his pride in the son whom,
+without merit of his own, Providence had spared to a brighter fate. But
+for the faults which had banished him his country, and the habits which
+had seared his sense of duty, could that child have been so abandoned,
+and have so perished?
+
+It remains only to cast our glance over the punishments which befell
+the sensual villany of Varney, the intellectual corruption of his fell
+stepmother.
+
+These two persons had made a very trade of those crimes to which man's
+law awards death. They had said in their hearts that they would dare
+the crime, but elude the penalty. By wonderful subtlety, craft, and
+dexterity, which reduced guilt to a science, Providence seemed, as in
+disdain of the vulgar instruments of common retribution, to concede to
+them that which they had schemed for,--escape from the rope and gibbet.
+Varney, saved from detection of his darker and more inexpiable crimes,
+punished only for the least one, retained what had seemed to him the
+master boon,--life. Safer still from the law, no mortal eye had plumbed
+the profound night of Lucretia's awful guilt. Murderess of husband and
+son, the blinded law bade her go unscathed, unsuspected. Direct, as from
+heaven, without a cloud, fell the thunderbolt. Is the life they have
+saved worth the prizing? Doth the chalice, unspilt on the ground, not
+return to the hand? Is the sudden pang of the hangman more fearful than
+the doom which they breathe and bear? Look, and judge.
+
+Behold that dark ship on the waters! Its burdens are not of Ormus and
+Tyre. No goodly merchandise doth it waft over the wave, no blessing
+cleaves to its sails; freighted with terror and with guilt, with remorse
+and despair, or, more ghastly than either, the sullen apathy of souls
+hardened into stone, it carries the dregs and offal of the old world
+to populate the new. On a bench in that ship sit side by side two men,
+companions assigned to each other. Pale, abject, cowering, all the
+bravery rent from his garb, all the gay insolence vanished from his
+brow,--can that hollow-eyed, haggard wretch be the same man whose senses
+opened on every joy, whose nerves mocked at every peril? But beside him,
+with a grin of vile glee on his features, all muscle and brawn in the
+form, all malice, at once spiteful and dull, in the heavy eye, sits his
+fit comrade, the Gravestealer! At the first glance each had recognized
+each, and the prophecy and the vision rushed back upon the daintier
+convict. If he seek to escape from him, the Gravestealer claims him as
+a prey; he threatens him with his eye as a slave; he kicks him with his
+hoof as they sit, and laughs at the writhings of the pain. Carry on your
+gaze from the ship, hear the cry from the masthead, see the land arise
+from the waste,--a land without hope. At first, despite the rigour of
+the Home Office, the education and intelligence of Varney have their
+price,--the sole crime for which he is convicted is not of the
+darkest. He escapes from that hideous comrade; he can teach as
+a schoolmaster,--let his brain work, not his hands. But the most
+irredeemable of convicts are ever those of nurture and birth and culture
+better than the ruffian rest. You may enlighten the clod, but the meteor
+still must feed on the marsh; and the pride and the vanity work where
+the crime itself seems to lose its occasion. Ever avid, ever grasping,
+he falls, step by step, in the foul sink, and the colony sees in Gabriel
+Varney its most pestilent rogue. Arch-convict amidst convicts, doubly
+lost amongst the damned, they banish him to the sternest of the penal
+settlements; they send him forth with the vilest to break stones upon
+the roads. Shrivelled and bowed and old prematurely, see that sharp face
+peering forth amongst that gang, scarcely human, see him cringe to the
+lash of the scornful overseer, see the pairs chained together, night
+and day! Ho, ho! his comrade hath found him again,--the Artist and the
+Gravestealer leashed together! Conceive that fancy so nurtured by habit,
+those tastes, so womanized by indulgence,--the one suggesting the very
+horrors that are not; the other revolting at all toil as a torture.
+
+But intellect, not all gone, though hourly dying heavily down to the
+level of the brute, yet schemes for delivery and escape. Let the plot
+ripen, and the heart bound; break his chain, set him free, send him
+forth to the wilderness. Hark, the whoop of the wild men! See those
+things that ape our species dance and gibber round the famishing, hunted
+wretch. Hark, how he shrieks at the torture! How they tear and they
+pinch and they burn and they rend him! They, too, spare his life,--it
+is charmed. A Caliban amidst Calibans, they heap him with their burdens,
+and feed him on their offal. Let him live; he loved life for himself; he
+has cheated the gibbet,--LET HIM LIVE! Let him watch, let him once more
+escape; all naked and mangled, let him wander back to the huts of his
+gang. Lo, where he kneels, the foul tears streaming down, and cries
+aloud: "I have broken all your laws, I will tell you all my crimes; I
+ask but one sentence,--hang me up; let me die!" And from the gang groan
+many voices: "Hang us up; let us die!" The overseer turns on his heel,
+and Gabriel Varney again is chained to the laughing Gravestealer.
+
+You enter those gates so jealously guarded, you pass, with a quick beat
+of the heart, by those groups on the lawn, though they are harmless;
+you follow your guide through those passages; where the open doors will
+permit, you see the emperor brandish his sceptre of straw, hear the
+speculator counting his millions, sigh where the maiden sits smiling the
+return of her shipwrecked lover, or gravely shake the head and hurry on
+where the fanatic raves his Apocalypse, and reigns in judgment on the
+world; you pass by strong gates into corridors gloomier and more remote.
+Nearer and nearer you hear the yell and the oath and blaspheming curse;
+you are in the heart of the madhouse, where they chain those at once
+cureless and dangerous,--who have but sense enough left them to smite
+and to throttle and to murder. Your guide opens that door, massive as a
+wall; you see (as we, who narrate, have seen her) Lucretia Dalibard,--a
+grisly, squalid, ferocious mockery of a human being, more appalling
+and more fallen than Dante ever fabled in his spectres, than Swift ever
+scoffed in his Yahoos! Only, where all other feature seems to have lost
+its stamp of humanity, still burns with unquenchable fever the red,
+devouring eye. That eye never seems to sleep, or in sleep, the lid never
+closes over it. As you shrink from its light, it seems to you as if the
+mind, that had lost coherence and harmony, still retained latent and
+incommunicable consciousness as its curse. For days, for weeks, that
+awful maniac will preserve obstinate, unbroken silence; but as the eye
+never closes, so the hands never rest,--they open and grasp, as if at
+some palpable object on which they close, vicelike, as a bird's talons
+on its prey; sometimes they wander over that brow, where the furrows
+seem torn as the thunder scars, as if to wipe from it a stain, or charm
+from it a pang; sometimes they gather up the hem of that sordid robe,
+and seem, for hours together, striving to rub from it a soil. Then, out
+from prolonged silence, without cause or warning, will ring, peal after
+peal (till the frame, exhausted with the effort sinks senseless into
+stupor), the frightful laugh. But speech, intelligible and coherent,
+those lips rarely yield. There are times, indeed, when the attendants
+are persuaded that her mind in part returns to her; and those times
+experience has taught them to watch with peculiar caution. The crisis
+evinces itself by a change in the manner,--by a quick apprehension of
+all that is said; by a straining, anxious look at the dismal walls; by
+a soft, fawning docility; by murmured complaints of the chains that
+fetter; and (though, as we have said, but very rarely) by prayers, that
+seem rational, for greater ease and freedom.
+
+In the earlier time of her dread captivity, perhaps when it was believed
+at the asylum that she was a patient of condition, with friends who
+cared for her state, and would liberally reward her cure, they in those
+moments relaxed her confinement, and sought the gentler remedies their
+art employs; but then invariably, and, it was said, with a cunning that
+surpassed all the proverbial astuteness of the mad, she turned this
+indulgence to the most deadly uses,--she crept to the pallet of some
+adjacent sufferer weaker than herself, and the shrieks that brought the
+attendants into the cell scarcely saved the intended victim from her
+hands. It seemed, in those imperfectly lucid intervals, as if the reason
+only returned to guide her to destroy,--only to animate the broken
+mechanism into the beast of prey.
+
+Years have now passed since her entrance within those walls. He who
+placed her there never had returned. He had given a false name,--no clew
+to him was obtained; the gold he had left was but the quarter's pay.
+When Varney had been first apprehended, Percival requested the younger
+Ardworth to seek the forger in prison, and to question him as to Madame
+Dalibard; but Varney was then so apprehensive that, even if still
+insane, her very ravings might betray his share in her crimes, or still
+more, if she recovered, that the remembrance of her son's murder would
+awaken the repentance and the confession of crushed despair, that the
+wretch had judged it wiser to say that his accomplice was no more,--that
+her insanity had already terminated in death. The place of her
+confinement thus continued a secret locked in his own breast. Egotist
+to the last, she was henceforth dead to him,--why not to the world?
+Thus the partner of her crimes had cut off her sole resource, in the
+compassion of her unconscious kindred; thus the gates of the living
+world were shut to her evermore. Still, in a kind of compassion, or as
+an object of experiment,--as a subject to be dealt with unscrupulously
+in that living dissection-hall,--her grim jailers did not grudge her
+an asylum. But, year after year, the attendance was more slovenly,
+the treatment more harsh; and strange to say, while the features were
+scarcely recognizable, while the form underwent all the change which
+the shape suffers when mind deserts it, that prodigious vitality which
+belonged to the temperament still survived. No signs of decay are yet
+visible. Death, as if spurning the carcass, stands inexorably afar off.
+Baffler of man's law, thou, too, hast escaped with life! Not for thee
+is the sentence, "Blood for blood!" Thou livest, thou mayst pass
+the extremest boundaries of age. Live on, to wipe the blood from thy
+robe,--LIVE ON!
+
+Not for the coarse object of creating an idle terror, not for the
+shock upon the nerves and the thrill of the grosser interest which the
+narrative of crime creates, has this book been compiled from the
+facts and materials afforded to the author. When the great German poet
+describes, in not the least noble of his lyrics, the sudden apparition
+of some "Monster Fate" in the circles of careless Joy, he assigns to him
+who teaches the world, through parable or song, the right to invoke the
+spectre. It is well to be awakened at times from the easy commonplace
+that surrounds our habitual life; to cast broad and steady and patient
+light on the darker secrets of the heart,--on the vaults and caverns of
+the social state over which we build the market-place and the palace. We
+recover from the dread and the awe and the half-incredulous wonder, to
+set closer watch upon our inner and hidden selves. In him who cultivates
+only the reason, and suffers the heart and the spirit to lie waste and
+dead, who schemes and constructs, and revolves round the axle of self,
+unwarmed by the affections, unpoised by the attraction of right, lies
+the germ Fate might ripen into the guilt of Olivier Dalibard. Let him
+who but lives through the senses, spreads the wings of the fancy in
+the gaudy glare of enjoyment corrupted, avid to seize, and impatient
+to toil, whose faculties are curbed but to the range of physical
+perception, whose very courage is but the strength of the nerves, who
+develops but the animal as he stifles the man,--let him gaze on the
+villany of Varney, and startle to see some magnified shadow of himself
+thrown dimly on the glass! Let those who, with powers to command and
+passions to wing the powers, would sweep without scruple from the aim to
+the end, who, trampling beneath their footprint of iron the humanities
+that bloom up in their path, would march to success with the proud
+stride of the destroyer, hear, in the laugh of yon maniac murderess, the
+glee of the fiend they have wooed to their own souls! Guard well, O Heir
+of Eternity, the portal of sin,--the thought! From the thought to the
+deed, the subtler thy brain and the bolder thy courage, the briefer
+and straighter is the way. Read these pages in disdain of
+self-commune,--they shall revolt thee, not instruct; read them, looking
+steadfastly within,--and how humble soever the art of the narrator, the
+facts he narrates, like all history, shall teach by example. Every human
+act, good or ill, is an angel to guide or to warn; and the deeds of the
+worst have messages from Heaven to the listening hearts of the best.
+Amidst the glens in the Apennine, in the lone wastes of Calabria, the
+sign of the cross marks the spot where a deed of violence has been done;
+on all that pass by the road, the symbol has varying effect: sometimes
+it startles the conscience, sometimes it invokes the devotion; the
+robber drops the blade, the priest counts the rosary. So is it with the
+record of crime; and in the witness of Guilt, Man is thrilled with the
+whisper of Religion.
+
+Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, The fatal shadows that walk by
+us still. FLETCHER.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Lucretia, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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