"Often, Venetia; it was a mystery."
"I have penetrated it," replied Venetia in a solemn tone; "and never have I known what happiness is since."
"Yes, yes!" said Lord Cadurcis, very pale, and in a whisper.
"Plantagenet, I have a father."
Lord Cadurcis started, and for an instant his arm quitted Venetia"s.
At length he said in a gloomy voice, "I know it."
"Know it!" exclaimed Venetia with astonishment. "Who could have told you the secret?"
"It is no secret," replied Cadurcis; "would that it were!"
"Would that it were! How strange you speak, how strange you look, Plantagenet! If it be no secret that I have a father, why this concealment then? I know that I am not the child of shame!" she added, after a moment"s pause, with an air of pride. A tear stole down the cheek of Cadurcis.
"Plantagenet! dear, good Plantagenet! my brother! my own brother! see, I kneel to you; Venetia kneels to you! your own Venetia! Venetia that you love! Oh! if you knew the load that is on my spirit bearing me down to a grave which I would almost welcome, you would speak to me; you would tell me all. I have sighed for this; I have longed for this; I have prayed for this. To meet some one who would speak to me of my father; who had heard of him, who knew him; has been for years the only thought of my being, the only object for which I existed. And now, here comes Plantagenet, my brother! my own brother! and he knows all, and he will tell me; yes, that he will; he will tell his Venetia all, all!"
"Is there not your mother?" said Lord Cadurcis, in a broken tone.
"Forbidden, utterly forbidden. If I speak, they tell me her heart will break; and therefore mine is breaking."
"Have you no friend?"
"Are not you my friend?"
"Doctor Masham?"
"I have applied to him; he tells me that he lives, and then he shakes his head."
"You never saw your father; think not of him."
"Not think of him!" exclaimed Venetia, with extraordinary energy. "Of what else? For what do I live but to think of him? What object have I in life but to see him? I have seen him, once."
"Ah!"
"I know his form by heart, and yet it was but a shade. Oh, what a shade! what a glorious, what an immortal shade! If G.o.ds were upon earth they would be like my father!"
"His deeds, at least, are not G.o.dlike," observed Lord Cadurcis dryly, and with some bitterness.
"I deny it!" said Venetia, her eyes sparkling with fire, her form dilated with enthusiasm, and involuntarily withdrawing her arm from her companion. Lord Cadurcis looked exceedingly astonished.
"You deny it!" he exclaimed. "And what should you know about it?"
"Nature whispers to me that nothing but what is grand and n.o.ble could be breathed by those lips, or fulfilled by that form."
"I am glad you have not read his works," said Lord Cadurcis, with increased bitterness. "As for his conduct, your mother is a living evidence of his honour, his generosity, and his virtue."
"My mother!" said Venetia, in a softened voice; "and yet he loved my mother!"
"She was his victim, as a thousand others may have been."
"She is his wife!" replied Venetia, with some anxiety.
"Yes, a deserted wife; is that preferable to being a cherished mistress? More honourable, but scarcely less humiliating."
"She must have misunderstood him," said Venetia. "I have perused the secret vows of his pa.s.sion. I have read his praises of her beauty.
I have pored over the music of his emotions when he first became a father; yes, he has gazed on me, even though but for a moment, with love! Over me he has breathed forth the hallowed blessing of a parent!
That transcendent form has pressed his lips to mine, and held me with fondness to his heart! And shall I credit aught to his dishonour? Is there a being in existence who can persuade me he is heartless or abandoned? No! I love him! I adore him! I am devoted to him with all the energies of my being! I live only on the memory that he lives, and, were he to die, I should pray to my G.o.d that I might join him without delay in a world where it cannot be justice to separate a child from a father."
And this was Venetia! the fair, the serene Venetia! the young, the inexperienced Venetia! pausing, as it were, on the parting threshold of girlhood, whom, but a few hours since, he had fancied could scarcely have proved a pa.s.sion; who appeared to him barely to comprehend the meaning of his advances; for whose calmness or whose coldness he had consoled himself by the flattering conviction of her unknowing innocence. Before him stood a beautiful and inspired Moenad, her eye flashing supernatural fire, her form elevated above her accustomed stature, defiance on her swelling brow, and pa.s.sion on her quivering lip!
Gentle and sensitive as Cadurcis ever appeared to those he loved, there was in his soul a deep and unfathomed well of pa.s.sions that had been never stirred, and a bitter and mocking spirit in his brain, of which he was himself unconscious. He had repaired this hopeful morn to Cherbury to receive, as he believed, the plighted faith of a simple and affectionate, perhaps grateful, girl. That her unsophisticated and untutored spirit might not receive the advances of his heart with an equal and corresponding ardour, he was prepared. It pleased him that he should watch the gradual development of this bud of sweet affections, waiting, with proud anxiety, her fragrant and her full-blown love. But now it appeared that her coldness or her indifference might be ascribed to any other cause than the one to which he had attributed it, the innocence of an inexperienced mind.
This girl was no stranger to powerful pa.s.sions; she could love, and love with fervency, with devotion, with enthusiasm. This child of joy was a woman of deep and thoughtful sorrows, brooding in solitude over high resolves and pa.s.sionate aspirations. Why were not the emotions of such a tumultuous soul excited by himself? To him she was calm and imperturbable; she called him brother, she treated him as a child. But a picture, a fantastic shade, could raise in her a tempestuous swell of sentiment that transformed her whole mind, and changed the colour of all her hopes and thoughts. Deeply prejudiced against her father, Cadurcis now hated him, and with a fell and ferocious earnestness that few bosoms but his could prove. Pale with rage, he ground his teeth and watched her with a glance of sarcastic aversion.
"You led me here to listen to a communication which interested me," he at length said. "Have I heard it?"
His altered tone, the air of haughtiness which he a.s.sumed, were not lost upon Venetia. She endeavoured to collect herself, but she hesitated to reply.
"I repeat my inquiry," said Cadurcis. "Have you brought me here only to inform me that you have a father, and that you adore him, or his picture?"
"I led you here," replied Venetia, in a subdued tone, and looking on the ground, "to thank you for your love, and to confess to you that I love another."
"Love another!" exclaimed Cadurcis, in a tone of derision. Simpleton!
The best thing your mother can do is to lock you up in the chamber with the picture that has produced such marvellous effects."
"I am no simpleton, Plantagenet," rejoined Venetia, quietly, "but one who is acting as she thinks right; and not only as her mind, but as her heart prompts her."
They had stopped in the earlier part of this conversation on a little plot of turf surrounded by shrubs; Cadurcis walked up and down this area with angry steps, occasionally glancing at Venetia with a look of mortification and displeasure.
"I tell you, Venetia," he at length said, "that you are a little fool.
What do you mean by saying that you cannot marry me because you love another? Is not that other, by your own account, your father? Love him as much as you like. Is that to prevent you from loving your husband also?"
"Plantagenet, you are rude, and unnecessarily so," said Venetia. "I repeat to you again, and for the last time, that all my heart is my father"s. It would be wicked in me to marry you, because I cannot love you as a husband should be loved. I can never love you as I love my father. However, it is useless to talk upon this subject. I have not even the power of marrying you if I wished, for I have dedicated myself to my father in the name of G.o.d; and I have offered a vow, to be registered in heaven, that thenceforth I would exist only for the purpose of being restored to his heart."
"I congratulate you on your parent, Miss Herbert."
"I feel that I ought to be proud of him, though, alas I can only feel it. But, whatever your opinion may be of my father, I beg you to remember that you are speaking to his child."
"I shall state my opinion respecting your father, madam, with the most perfect unreserve, wherever and whenever I choose; quite convinced that, however you esteem that opinion, it will not be widely different from the real sentiments of the only parent whom you ought to respect, and whom you are bound to obey."
"And I can tell you, sir, that whatever your opinion is on any subject it will never influence mine. If, indeed, I were the mistress of my own destiny, which I am not, it would have been equally out of my power to have acted as you have so singularly proposed. I do not wish to marry, and marry I never will; but were it in my power, or in accordance with my wish, to unite my fate for ever with another"s, it should at least be with one to whom I could look up with reverence, and even with admiration. He should be at least a man, and a great man; one with whose name the world rung; perhaps, like my father, a genius and a poet."
"A genius and a poet!" exclaimed Lord Cadurcis, in a fury, stamping with pa.s.sion; "are these fit terms to use when speaking of the most abandoned profligate of his age? A man whose name is synonymous with infamy, and which no one dares to breathe in civilised life; whose very blood is pollution, as you will some day feel; who has violated every tie, and derided every principle, by which society is maintained; whose life is a living ill.u.s.tration of his own shameless doctrines; who is, at the same time, a traitor to his king and an apostate from his G.o.d!"
Curiosity, overpowering even indignation, had permitted Venetia to listen even to this tirade. Pale as her companion, but with a glance of withering scorn, she exclaimed, "Pa.s.sionate and ill-mannered boy!
words cannot express the disgust and the contempt with which you inspire me." She spoke and she disappeared. Cadurcis was neither able nor desirous to arrest her flight. He remained rooted to the ground, muttering to himself the word "boy!" Suddenly raising his arm and looking up to the sky, he exclaimed, "The illusion is vanished!
Farewell, Cherbury! farewell, Cadurcis! a wider theatre awaits me! I have been too long the slave of soft affections! I root them out of my heart for ever!" and, fitting the action to the phrase, it seemed that he hurled upon the earth all the tender emotions of his soul. "Woman!
henceforth you shall be my sport! I have now no feeling but for myself. When she spoke I might have been a boy; I am a boy no longer.