"A sweet name, is it not? It accords so well with her simple character--how you would love her!"
As she said this, Evelyn turned to Maltravers with enthusiasm, and again she was startled by his aspect; for again it was haggard, distorted, and convulsed.
"Oh, if you love me," she cried, "do send immediately for advice! And yet; is it illness, Ernest, or is it some grief that you hide from me?"
"It is illness, Evelyn," said Maltravers, rising: and his knees knocked together. "I am not fit even for your companionship,--I will go home."
"And send instantly for advice?"
"Ay; it waits me there already."
"Thank Heaven! and you will write to me one little word--to relieve me?
I am so uneasy!"
"I will write to you."
"This evening?"
"Ay!"
"Now go,--I will not detain you."
He walked slowly to the door, but when he reached it he turned, and catching her anxious gaze, he opened his arms; overpowered with strange fear and affectionate sympathy, she burst into pa.s.sionate tears; and surprised out of the timidity and reserve which had hitherto characterized her pure and meek attachment to him, she fell on his breast, and sobbed aloud. Maltravers raised his hands, and, placing them solemnly on her young head, his lips muttered as if in prayer. He paused, and strained her to his heart; but he shunned that parting kiss, which, hitherto, he had so fondly sought. That embrace was one of agony, and not of rapture; and yet Evelyn dreamed not that he designed it for the last!
Maltravers re-entered the room in which he had left Lord Vargrave, who still awaited his return.
He walked up to Lumley, and held out his hand. "You have saved me from a dreadful crime,--from an everlasting remorse. I thank you!"
Hardened and frigid as his nature was, Lumley was touched; the movement of Maltravers took him by surprise. "It has been a dreadful duty, Ernest," said he, pressing the hand he held; "but to come, too, from _me_,--your rival!"
"Proceed, proceed, I pray you; explain all this--yet explanation! what do I want to know? Evelyn is my daughter,--Alice"s child! For Heaven"s sake, give me hope; say it is not so; say that she is Alice"s child, but not _mine_! Father! father!--and they call it a holy name--it is a horrible one!"
"Compose yourself, my dear friend: recollect what you have escaped! You will recover this shock. Time, travel--"
"Peace, man,--peace! Now then I am calm! When Alice left me she had no child. I knew not that she bore within her the pledge of our ill-omened and erring love. Verily, the sins of my youth have arisen against me; and the curse has come home to roost!"
"I cannot explain to you all details."
"But why not have told me of this? Why not have warned me; why not have said to me, when my heart could have been satisfied by so sweet a tie, "Thou hast a daughter: thou art not desolate"? Why reserve the knowledge of the blessing until it has turned to poison? Fiend that you are! you have waited this hour to gloat over the agony from which a word from you a year, nay, a month ago--a little month ago--might have saved me and her!"
Maltravers, as he spoke, approached Vargrave, with eyes sparkling with fierce pa.s.sion, his hand clenched, his form dilated, the veins on his forehead swelled like cords. Lumley, brave as he was, recoiled.
"I knew not of this secret," said he, deprecatingly, "till a few days before I came hither; and I came hither at once to disclose it to you.
Will you listen to me? I knew that my uncle had married a person much beneath him in rank; but he was guarded and cautious, and I knew no more, except that by a first husband that lady had one daughter,--Evelyn. A chain of accidents suddenly acquainted me with the rest."
Here Vargrave pretty faithfully repeated what he had learned from the brewer at C-----, and from Mr. Onslow; but when he came to the tacit confirmation of all his suspicions received from Mrs. Leslie, he greatly exaggerated and greatly distorted the account. "Judge, then," concluded Lumley, "of the horror with which I heard that you had declared an attachment to Evelyn, and that it was returned. Ill as I was, I hastened hither: you know the rest. Are you satisfied?"
"I will go to Alice! I will learn from her own lips--yet, how can I meet her again? How say to her, "I have taken from thee thy last hope,--I have broken thy child"s heart"?"
"Forgive me, but I should confess to you, that, from all I can learn from Mrs. Leslie, Lady Vargrave has but one prayer, one hope in life,--that she may never again meet with her betrayer. You may, indeed, in her own letter perceive how much she is terrified by the thought of your discovering her. She has, at length, recovered peace of mind and tranquillity of conscience. She shrinks with dread from the prospect of ever again encountering one once so dear, now a.s.sociated in her mind with recollections of guilt and sorrow. More than this, she is sensitively alive to the fear of shame, to the dread of detection.
If ever her daughter were to know her sin, it would be to her as a death-blow. Yet in her nervous state of health, her ever-quick and uncontrollable feelings, if you were to meet her, she would disguise nothing, conceal nothing. The veil would be torn aside: the menials in her own house would tell the tale, and curiosity circulate, and scandal blacken the story of her early errors. No, Maltravers, at least wait awhile before you see her; wait till her mind can be prepared for such an interview, till precautions can be taken, till you yourself are in a calmer state of mind."
Maltravers fixed his piercing eyes on Lumley while he thus spoke, and listened in deep attention.
"It matters not," said he, after a long pause, "whether these be your real reasons for wishing to defer or prevent a meeting between Alice and myself. The affliction that has come upon me bursts with too clear and scorching a blaze of light for me to see any chance of escape or mitigation. Even if Evelyn were the daughter of Alice by another, she would be forever separated from me. The mother and the child! there is a kind of incest even in that thought! But such an alleviation of my anguish is forbidden to my reason. No, poor Alice, I will not disturb the repose thou hast won at last! Thou shalt never have the grief to know that our error has brought upon thy lover so black a doom! All is over! the world never shall find me again. Nothing is left for me but the desert and the grave!"
"Speak not so, Ernest," said Lord Vargrave, soothingly; "a little while, and you will recover this blow: your control over pa.s.sion has, even in youth, inspired me with admiration and surprise; and now, in calmer years, and with such incentives to self-mastery, your triumph will come sooner than you think. Evelyn, too, is so young; she has not known you long; perhaps her love, after all, is that caused by some mystic, but innocent working of nature, and she would rejoice to call you "father."
Happy years are yet in store for you."
Maltravers did not listen to these vain and hollow consolations. With his head drooping on his bosom, his whole form unnerved, the large tears rolling unheeded down his cheeks, he seemed the very picture of a broken-hearted man, whom fate never again could raise from despair. He, who had, for years, so cased himself in pride, on whose very front was engraved the victory over pa.s.sion and misfortune, whose step had trod the earth in the royalty of the conqueror; the veriest slave that crawls bore not a spirit more humbled, fallen, or subdued! He who had looked with haughty eyes on the infirmities of others, who had disdained to serve his race because of their human follies and partial frailties,--_he_, even _he_, the Pharisee of Genius,--had but escaped by a chance, and by the hand of the man he suspected and despised, from a crime at which nature herself recoils,--which all law, social and divine, stigmatizes as inexpiable, which the sternest imagination of the very heathen had invented as the gloomiest catastrophe that can befall the wisdom and the pride of mortals! But one step farther, and the fabulous Oedipus had not been more accursed!
Such thoughts as these, unformed, confused, but strong enough to bow him to the dust, pa.s.sed through the mind of this wretched man. He had been familiar with grief, he had been dull to enjoyment; sad and bitter memories had consumed his manhood: but pride had been left him still; and he had dared in his secret heart to say, "I can defy Fate!" Now the bolt had fallen; Pride was shattered into fragments, Self-abas.e.m.e.nt was his companion, Shame sat upon his prostrate soul. The Future had no hope left in store. Nothing was left for him but to die!
Lord Vargrave gazed at him in real pain, in sincere compa.s.sion; for his nature, wily, deceitful, perfidious though it was, had cruelty only so far as was necessary to the unrelenting execution of his schemes. No pity could swerve him from a purpose; but he had enough of the man within him to feel pity not the less, even for his own victim! At length Maltravers lifted his head, and waved his hand gently to Lord Vargrave.
"All is now explained," said he, in a feeble voice; "our interview is over. I must be alone; I have yet to collect my reason, to commune calmly and deliberately with myself; I have to write to her--to invent, to lie,--I, who believed I could never, never utter, even to an enemy, what was false! And I must not soften the blow to her. I must not utter a word of love,--love, it is incest! I must endeavour brutally to crush out the very affection I created! She must hate me!--oh, _teach_ her to hate me! Blacken my name, traduce my motives,--let her believe them levity or perfidy, what you will. So will she forget me the sooner; so will she the easier bear the sorrow which the father brings upon the child. And _she_ has not sinned! O Heaven, the sin was mine! Let my punishment be a sacrifice that Thou wilt accept for her!"
Lord Vargrave attempted again to console; but this time the words died upon his lips. His arts failed him. Maltravers turned impatiently away and pointed to the door.
"I will see you again," said he, "before I quit Paris; leave your address below."
Vargrave was not, perhaps, unwilling to terminate a scene so painful: he muttered a few incoherent words, and abruptly withdrew. He heard the door locked behind him as he departed. Ernest Maltravers was alone!--what a solitude!
CHAPTER IV.
PITY me not, but lend thy serious hearing To what I shall unfold.--_Hamlet_.
LETTER FROM ERNEST MALTRAVERS TO EVELYN CAMERON.
EVELYN!
All that you have read of faithlessness and perfidy will seem tame to you when compared with that conduct which you are doomed to meet from me. We must part, and for ever. We have seen each other for the last time. It is bootless even to ask the cause. Believe that I am fickle, false, heartless,--that a whim has changed me, if you will. My resolve is unalterable. We meet no more even as friends. I do not ask you either to forgive or to remember me. Look on me as one wholly unworthy even of resentment! Do not think that I write this in madness or in fever or excitement. Judge me not by my seeming illness this morning. I invent no excuse, no extenuation, for my broken faith and perjured vows. Calmly, coldly, and deliberately I write; and thus writing, I renounce your love.
This language is wanton cruelty,--it is fiendish insult,--is it not, Evelyn? Am I not a villain? Are you not grateful for your escape? Do you not look on the past with a shudder at the precipice on which you stood?
I have done with this subject,--I turn to another. We are parted, Evelyn, and forever. Do not fancy,--I repeat, do not fancy that there is any error, any strange infatuation on my mind, that there is any possibility that the sentence can be annulled. It were almost easier to call the dead from the grave than bring us again together, as we were and as we hoped to be. Now that you are convinced of that truth, learn, as soon as you have recovered the first shock of knowing how much wickedness there is on earth,--learn to turn to the future for happier and more suitable ties than those you could have formed with me. You are very young; in youth our first impressions are lively but evanescent,--you will wonder hereafter at having fancied you loved me.
Another and a fairer image will replace mine. This is what I desire and pray for. _As soon as I learn that you love another, that you are wedded to another, I will re-appear in the world; till then, I am a wanderer and an exile. Your hand alone can efface from my brow the brand of Cain!_ When I am gone, Lord Vargrave will probably renew his suit. I would rather you married one of your own years,--one whom you could love fondly, one who would chase away every remembrance of the wretch who now forsakes you. But perhaps I have mistaken Lord Vargrave"s character; perhaps he may be worthier of you than I deemed (_I_ who set up for the censor of other men!); perhaps he may both win and deserve your affection.
Evelyn, farewell! G.o.d, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, will watch over you!
ERNEST MALTRAVERS.