Book: Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II
But the other was a beautiful girl of about eighteen, in the now almost
antiquated dress of forty years ago. The features were delicate, but the
colours somewhat faded, and there was something mournful in the
expression. A silk curtain, drawn on one side, seemed to denote how
carefully it was prized by the possessor.
Evelyn turned for explanation to her cicerone.
"This is the second time I have seen that picture," said Caroline; "for
it is only by great entreaty and as a mysterious favour that the old
housekeeper draws aside the veil. Some touch of sentiment in Maltravers
makes him regard it as sacred. It is the picture of his mother before
she married; she died in giving him birth."
Evelyn sighed; how well she understood the sentiment which seemed to
Caroline so eccentric! The countenance fascinated her; the eye seemed to
follow her as she turned.
"As a proper pendant to this picture," said Caroline, "he ought to have
dismissed the effigies of yon warlike gentleman, and replaced it by one
of poor Lady Florence Lascelles, for whose loss he is said to have
quitted his country: but, perhaps, it was the loss of her fortune."
"How can you say so?--fie!" cried Evelyn, with a burst of generous
indignation.
"Ah, my dear, you heiresses have a fellow-feeling with each other!
Nevertheless, clever men are less sentimental than we deem them. Heigho!
this quiet room gives me the spleen, I fancy."
"Dearest Evy," whispered Cecilia, "I think you have a look of that pretty
picture, only you are much prettier. Do take off your bonnet; your hair
just falls down like hers."
Evelyn shook her head gravely; but the spoiled child hastily untied the
ribbons and snatched away the hat, and Evelyn's sunny ringlets fell down
in beautiful disorder. There was no resemblance between Evelyn and the
portrait, except in the colour of the hair, and the careless fashion it
now by chance assumed. Yet Evelyn was pleased to think that a likeness
did exist, though Caroline declared it was a most unflattering
compliment.
"I don't wonder," said the latter, changing the theme,--"I don't wonder
Mr. Maltravers lives so little in this 'Castle Dull;' yet it might be
much improved. French windows and plate-glass, for instance; and if
those lumbering bookshelves and horrid old chimney-pieces were removed
and the ceiling painted white and gold like that in my uncle's saloon,
and a rich, lively paper, instead of the tapestry, it would really make a
very fine ballroom."
"Let us have a dance here now," cried Cecilia. "Come, stand up, Sophy;"
and the children began to practise a waltz step, tumbling over each
other, and laughing in full glee.
"Hush, hush!" said Evelyn, softly. She had never before checked the
children's mirth, and she could not tell why she did so now.
"I suppose the old butler has been entertaining the bailiff here," said
Caroline, pointing to the remains of the fire.
"And is this the room he chiefly inhabited,--the room that you say they
show as his?"
"No; that tapestry door to the right leads into a little study where he
wrote." So saying, Caroline tried to open the door, but it was locked
from within. She then opened the other door, which showed a long
wainscoted passage, hung with rusty pikes, and a few breastplates of the
time of the Parliamentary Wars. "This leads to the main body of the
House," said Caroline, "from which the room we are now in and the little
study are completely detached, having, as you know, been the chapel in
popish times. I have heard that Sir Kenelm Digby, an ancestral
connection of the present owner, first converted them into their present
use, and, in return, built the village church on the other side of the
park."
Sir Kenelm Digby, the old cavalier philosopher!---a new name of interest
to consecrate the place! Evelyn could have lingered all day in the room;
and perhaps as an excuse for a longer sojourn, hastened to the piano--it
was open--she ran her fairy fingers over the keys, and the sound from the
untuned and neglected instrument thrilled wild and spiritlike through the
melancholy chamber.
"Oh, do sing us something, Evy," cried Cecilia, running up to, and
drawing a chair to, the instrument.
"Do, Evelyn," said Caroline, languidly; "it will serve to bring one of
the servants to us, and save us a journey to the offices."
It was just what Evelyn wished. Some verses, which her mother especially
loved, verses written by Maltravers upon returning after absence to his
own home, had rushed into her mind as she had touched the keys. They
were appropriate to the place, and had been beautifully set to music. So
the children hushed themselves, and nestled at her feet; and after a
little prelude, keeping the accompaniment under, that the spoiled
instrument might not mar the sweet words and sweeter voice, she began the
song.
Meanwhile in the adjoining room, the little study which Caroline had
spoken of, sat the owner of the house! He had returned suddenly and
unexpectedly the previous night. The old steward was in attendance at
the moment, full of apologies, congratulations, and gossip; and
Maltravers, grown a stern and haughty man, was already impatiently
turning away, when he heard the sudden sound of the children's laughter
and loud voices in the room beyond. Maltravers frowned.
"What impertinence is this?" said he in a tone that, though very calm,
made the steward quake in his shoes.
"I don't know, really, your honour; there be so many grand folks come to
see the house in the fine weather, that--"
"And you permit your master's house to be a raree-show? You do well,
sir."
"If your honour were more amongst us, there might be more discipline
like," said the steward, stoutly; "but no one in my time has cared so
little for the old place as those it belongs to."
"Fewer words with me, sir," said Maltravers, haughtily; "and now go and
inform those people that I am returned, and wish for no guests but those
I invite myself."
"Sir!"
"Do you not hear me? Say that if it so please them, these old ruins are
my property, and are not to be jobbed out to the insolence of public
curiosity. Go, sir."
"But--I beg pardon, your honour--if they be great folks?"
"Great folks!--great! Ay, there it is. Why, if they be great folks,
they have great houses of their own, Mr. Justis."
The steward stared. "Perhaps, your honour," he put in, deprecatingly,
"they be Mr. Merton's family: they come very often when the London
gentlemen are with them."
"Merton!--oh, the cringing parson. Harkye! one word more with me, sir,
and you quit my service to-morrow."
Mr. Justis lifted his eyes and hands to heaven; but there was something
in his master's voice and look which checked reply, and he turned slowly
to the door--when a voice of such heavenly sweetness was heard without
that it arrested his own step and made the stern Maltravers start in his
seat. He held up his hand to the steward to delay his errand, and
listened, charmed and spell-bound. His own words came on his ear,--words
long unfamiliar to him, and at first but imperfectly remembered; words
connected with the early and virgin years of poetry and aspiration; words
that were as the ghosts of thoughts now far too gentle for his altered
soul. He bowed down his head, and the dark shade left his brow.
The song ceased. Maltravers moved with a sigh, and his eyes rested on
the form of the steward with his hand on the door.
"Shall I give your honour's message?" said Mr. Justis, gravely.
"No; take care for the future; leave me now."
Mr. Justis made one leg, and then, well pleased, took to both.
"Well," thought he, as he departed, "how foreign parts do spoil a
gentleman! so mild as he was once! I must botch up the accounts, I
see,--the squire has grown sharp."
As Evelyn concluded her song, she--whose charm in singing was that she
sang from the heart--was so touched by the melancholy music of the air
and words, that her voice faltered, and the last line died inaudibly on
her lips.
The children sprang up and kissed her.
"Oh," cried Cecilia, "there is the beautiful peacock!" And there,
indeed, on the steps without--perhaps attracted by the music--stood the
picturesque bird. The children ran out to greet their old favourite, who
was extremely tame; and presently Cecilia returned.
"Oh, Carry! do see what beautiful horses are coming up the park!"
Caroline, who was a good rider, and fond of horses, and whose curiosity
was always aroused by things connected with show and station, suffered
the little girl to draw her into the garden. Two grooms, each mounted on
a horse of the pure Arabian breed, and each leading another, swathed and
bandaged, were riding slowly up the road; and Caroline was so attracted
by the novel appearance of the animals in a place so deserted that she
followed the children towards them, to learn who could possibly be their
enviable owner. Evelyn, forgotten for the moment, remained alone. She
was pleased at being so, and once more turned to the picture which had so
attracted her before. The mild eyes fixed on her, with an expression
that recalled to her mind her own mother.
"And," thought she, as she gazed, "this fair creature did not live to
know the fame of her son, to rejoice in his success, or to soothe his
grief. And he, that son, a disappointed and solitary exile in distant
lands, while strangers stand within his deserted hall!"
The images she had conjured up moved and absorbed her; and she continued
to stand before the picture, gazing upward with moistened eyes. It was a
beautiful vision as she thus stood, with her delicate bloom, her
luxuriant hair (for the hat was not yet replaced), her elastic form, so
full of youth and health and hope,--the living form beside the faded
canvas of the dead, once youthful, tender, lovely as herself! Evelyn
turned away with a sigh; the sigh was re-echoed yet more deeply. She
started: the door that led to the study was opened, and in the aperture
was the figure of a man in the prime of life. His hair, still luxuriant
as in his earliest youth, though darkened by the suns of the East, curled
over a forehead of majestic expanse. The high and proud features, that
well became a stature above the ordinary standard; the pale but bronzed
complexion; the large eyes of deepest blue, shaded by dark brows and
lashes; and more than all, that expression at once of passion and repose
which characterizes the old Italian portraits, and seems to denote the
inscrutable power that experience imparts to intellect, constituted an
_ensemble_ which, if not faultlessly handsome, was eminently striking,
and formed at once to interest and command. It was a face, once seen,
never to be forgotten; it was a face that had long, half unconsciously,
haunted Evelyn's young dreams; it was a face she had seen before, though,
then younger and milder and fairer, it wore a different aspect.
Evelyn stood rooted to the spot, feeling herself blush to her very
temples,--an enchanting picture of bashful confusion and innocent alarm.
"Do not let me regret my return," said the stranger, approaching after a
short pause, and with much gentleness in his voice and smile; "and think
that the owner is doomed to scare away the fair spirits that haunted the
spot in his absence."
"The owner!" repeated Evelyn, almost inaudibly, and in increased
embarrassment; "are you then the--the--"
"Yes," courteously interrupted the stranger, seeing her confusion, "my
name is Maltravers; and I am to blame for not having informed you of my
sudden return, or for now trespassing on your presence. But you see my
excuse;" and he pointed to the instrument. "You have the magic that
draws even the serpent from his hole. But you are not alone?"
"Oh, no! no, indeed! Miss Merton is with me. I know not where she is
gone. I will seek her."
"Miss Merton! You are not then one of that family?"
"No, only a guest. I will find her; she must apologize for us. We were
not aware that you were here,--indeed we were not."
"That is a cruel excuse," said Maltravers, smiling at her eagerness: and
the smile and the look reminded her yet more forcibly of the time when he
had carried her in his arms and soothed her suffering and praised her
courage and pressed the kiss almost of a lover on her hand. At that
thought she blushed yet more deeply, and yet more eagerly turned to
escape.
Maltravers did not seek to detain her, but silently followed her steps.
She had scarcely gained the window, before little Cecilia scampered in,
crying,--
"Only think! Mr. Maltravers has come back, and brought such beautiful
horses!"
Cecilia stopped abruptly, as she caught sight of the stranger; and the
next moment Caroline herself appeared. Her worldly experience and quick
sense saw immediately what had chanced; and she hastened to apologize to
Maltravers, and congratulate him on his return, with an ease that
astonished poor Evelyn, and by no means seemed appreciated by Maltravers
himself. He replied with brief and haughty courtesy.
"My father," continued Caroline, "will be so glad to hear you are come
back. He will hasten to pay you his respects, and apologize for his
truants. But I have not formally introduced you to my fellow-offender.
My dear, let me present to you one whom Fame has already made known to
you; Mr. Maltravers, Miss Cameron, step-daughter," she added in a lower
voice, "to the late Lord Vargrave."
At the first part of this introduction Maltravers frowned; at the last he
forgot all displeasure.
"Is it possible? I _thought_ I had seen you before, but in a dream. Ah,
then we are not quite strangers!"
Evelyn's eye met his, and though she coloured and strove to look grave, a
half smile brought out the dimples that played round her arch lips.
"But you do not remember me?" added Maltravers.
"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Evelyn, with a sudden impulse; and then checked
herself.
Caroline came to her friend's relief.
"What is this? You surprise me; where did you ever see Mr. Maltravers
before?"
"I can answer that question, Miss Merton. When Miss Cameron was but a
child, as high as my little friend here, an accident on the road procured
me her acquaintance; and the sweetness and fortitude she then displayed
left an impression on me not worn out even to this day. And thus we meet
again," added Maltravers, in a muttered voice, as to himself. "How
strange a thing life is!"
"Well," said Miss Merton, "we must intrude on you no more,--you have so
much to do. I am so sorry Sir John is not down to welcome you; but I
hope we shall be good neighbours. _Au revoir_!"
And, fancying herself most charming, Caroline bowed, smiled, and walked
off with her train. Maltravers paused irresolute. If Evelyn had looked
back, he would have accompanied them home; but Evelyn did not look
back,--and he stayed.
Miss Merton rallied her young friend unmercifully, as they walked
homeward, and she extracted a very brief and imperfect history of the
adventure that had formed the first acquaintance, and of the interview by
which it had been renewed. But Evelyn did not heed her; and the moment
they arrived at the rectory, she hastened to shut herself in her room,
and write the account of her adventure to her mother. How often, in her
girlish reveries, had she thought of that incident, that stranger! And
now, by such a chance, and after so many years, to meet the Unknown by
his own hearth! and that Unknown to be Maltravers! It was as if a dream
had come true. While she was yet musing--and the letter not yet
begun--she heard the sound of joy-bells in the distance. At once she
divined the cause; it was the welcome of the wanderer to his solitary
home!
CHAPTER IV.
MAIS en connaissant votre condition naturelle, usez des moyens
qui lui sont propres, et ne pretendez pas regner par une autre
voie que par celle qui vous fait roi.*--PASCAL.
* "But in understanding your natural condition, use the means
which are proper to it; and pretend not to govern by any other
way than by that which constitutes you governor."
IN the heart as in the ocean, the great tides ebb and flow. The waves
which had once urged on the spirit of Ernest Maltravers to the rocks and
shoals of active life had long since receded back upon the calm depths,
and left the strand bare. With a melancholy and disappointed mind, he
had quitted the land of his birth; and new scenes, strange and wild, had
risen before his wandering gaze. Wearied with civilization, and sated
with many of the triumphs for which civilized men drudge and toil, and
disquiet themselves in vain, he had plunged amongst hordes, scarce
redeemed from primeval barbarism. The adventures through which he had
passed, and in which life itself could only be preserved by wary
vigilance and ready energies, had forced him, for a while, from the
indulgence of morbid contemplations. His heart, indeed, had been left
inactive; but his intellect and his physical powers had been kept in
hourly exercise. He returned to the world of his equals with a mind
laden with the treasures of a various and vast experience, and with much
of the same gloomy moral as that which, on emerging from the Catacombs,
assured the restless speculations of Rasselas of the vanity of human life
and the folly of moral aspirations.
Ernest Maltravers, never a faultless or completed character, falling
short in practice of his own capacities, moral and intellectual, from his
very desire to overpass the limits of the Great and Good, was seemingly
as far as heretofore from the grand secret of life. It was not so in
reality; his mind had acquired what before it wanted,--_hardness_; and we
are nearer to true virtue and true happiness when we demand too little
from men than when we exact too much.
Nevertheless, partly from the strange life that had thrown him amongst
men whom safety itself made it necessary to command despotically, partly
from the habit of power and disdain of the world, his nature was
incrusted with a stern imperiousness of manner, often approaching to the
harsh and morose, though beneath it lurked generosity and benevolence.
Many of his younger feelings, more amiable and complex, had settled into
one predominant quality, which more or less had always characterized
him,--Pride! Self-esteem made inactive, and Ambition made discontented,
usually engender haughtiness. In Maltravers this quality, which,
properly controlled and duly softened, is the essence and life of honour,
was carried to a vice. He was perfectly conscious of its excess, but he
cherished it as a virtue. Pride had served to console him in sorrow, and
therefore it was a friend; it had supported him when disgusted with
fraud, or in resistance to violence, and therefore it was a champion and
a fortress. It was a pride of a peculiar sort: it attached itself to no
one point in especial,--not to talent, knowledge, mental gifts, still
less to the vulgar commonplaces of birth and fortune; it rather resulted
from a supreme and wholesale contempt of all other men, and all their
objects,--of ambition, of glory, of the hard business of life. His
favourite virtue was fortitude; it was on this that he now mainly valued
himself. He was proud of his struggles against others, prouder still of
conquests over his own passions. He looked upon FATE as the arch enemy
against whose attacks we should ever prepare. He fancied that against
fate he had thoroughly schooled himself. In the arrogance of his heart
he said, "I can defy the future." He believed in the boast of the vain
old sage,--"I am a world to myself!" In the wild career through which
his later manhood had passed, it is true that he had not carried his
philosophy into a rejection of the ordinary world. The shock occasioned
by the death of Florence yielded gradually to time and change; and he had
passed from the deserts of Africa and the East to the brilliant cities of
Europe. But neither his heart nor his reason had ever again been
enslaved by his passions. Never again had he known the softness of
affection. Had he done so, the ice had been thawed, and the fountain had
flowed once more into the great deeps. He had returned to England,--he
scarce knew wherefore, or with what intent, certainly not with any idea
of entering again upon the occupations of active life; it was, perhaps,
only the weariness of foreign scenes and unfamiliar tongues, and the
vague, unsettled desire of change, that brought him back to the
fatherland. But he did not allow so unphilosophical a cause to himself:
and, what was strange, he would not allow one much more amiable, and
which was, perhaps, the truer cause,--the increasing age and infirmities
of his old guardian, Cleveland, who prayed him affectionately to return.
Maltravers did not like to believe that his heart was still so kind.
Singular form of pride! No, he rather sought to persuade himself that he
intended to sell Burleigh, to arrange his affairs finally, and then quit
forever his native land. To prove to himself that this was the case, he
had intended at Dover to hurry at once to Burleigh, and merely write to
Cleveland that he was returned to England. But his heart would not
suffer him to enjoy this cruel luxury of self-mortification, and his
horses' heads were turned to Richmond when within a stage of London. He
had spent two days with the good old man, and those two days had so
warmed and softened his feelings that he was quite appalled at his own
dereliction from fixed principles! However, he went before Cleveland had
time to discover that he was changed; and the old man had promised to
visit him shortly.
This, then, was the state of Ernest Maltravers at the age of
thirty-six,--an age in which frame and mind are in their fullest
perfection; an age in which men begin most keenly to feel that they are
citizens. With all his energies braced and strengthened; with his mind
stored with profusest gifts; in the vigour of a constitution to which a
hardy life had imparted a second and fresher youth; so trained by stern
experience as to redeem with an easy effort all the deficiencies and
faults which had once resulted from too sensitive an imagination and too
high a standard for human actions; formed to render to his race the most
brilliant and durable service, and to secure to himself the happiness
which results from sobered fancy, a generous heart, and an approving
conscience,--here was Ernest Maltravers, backed, too, by the appliances
and gifts of birth and fortune, perversely shutting up genius, life, and
soul in their own thorny leaves, and refusing to serve the fools and
rascals who were formed from the same clay, and gifted by the same God.
Morbid and morose philosophy, begot by a proud spirit on a lonely heart!
CHAPTER V.
LET such amongst us as are willing to be children again, if it be
only for an hour, resign ourselves to the sweet enchantment that
steals upon the spirit when it indulges in the memory of early
and innocent enjoyment.
D. L. RICHARDSON.
AT dinner, Caroline's lively recital of their adventures was received
with much interest, not only by the Merton family, but by some of the
neighbouring gentry who shared the rector's hospitality. The sudden
return of any proprietor to his old hereditary seat after a prolonged
absence makes some sensation in a provincial neighbourhood. In this
case, where the proprietor was still young, unmarried, celebrated, and
handsome, the sensation was of course proportionably increased. Caroline
and Evelyn were beset by questions, to which the former alone gave any
distinct reply. Caroline's account was, on the whole, gracious and
favourable, and seemed complimentary to all but Evelyn, who thought that
Caroline was a very indifferent portrait-painter.
It seldom happens that a man is a prophet in his own neighbourhood; but
Maltravers had been so little in the county, and in his former visit his
life had been so secluded, that he was regarded as a stranger. He had
neither outshone the establishments nor interfered with the sporting of
his fellow-squires; and on the whole, they made just allowance for his
habits of distant reserve. Time, and his retirement from the busy scene,
long enough to cause him to be missed, not long enough for new favourites
to supply his place, had greatly served to mellow and consolidate his
reputation, and his country was proud to claim him. Thus (though
Maltravers would not have believed it had an angel told him) he was not
spoken ill of behind his back: a thousand little anecdotes of his
personal habits, of his generosity, independence of spirit, and
eccentricity were told. Evelyn listened in rapt delight to all; she had
never passed so pleasant an evening; and she smiled almost gratefully on
the rector, who was a man that always followed the stream, when he said
with benign affability, "We must really show our distinguished neighbour
every attention,--we must be indulgent to his little oddities. His
politics are not mine, to be sure; but a man who has a stake in the
country has a right to his own opinion, that was always my maxim,--thank
Heaven, I am a very moderate man. We must draw him amongst us; it will
be our own fault, I am sure, if he is not quite domesticated at the
rectory."