Book: Lucretia, Volume 3.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Lucretia, Volume 3.



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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
be 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:--

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