Lucretia

"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 cas.e.m.e.nts. 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 cas.e.m.e.nts, blazoned with heraldry, moved the rays, creepingly, fearfully. On the armour in the hall cl.u.s.tered 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 a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sed 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 cas.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sed 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 cas.e.m.e.nt, and looked forth. All was serene,--breathless trees and gleaming sculpture and whitened sward, girdled by the ma.s.s 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 a.r.s.enal 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 cas.e.m.e.nt, "that I am baffled here where my fortunes seemed most a.s.sured? 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 princ.i.p.al 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 s.p.a.ce 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 friends.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sed 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, "G.o.d 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.