Book: Lucretia, Volume 4.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Lucretia, Volume 4.



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PART THE SECOND.

PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND.

The century has advanced. The rush of the deluge has ebbed back; the old
landmarks have reappeared; the dynasties Napoleon willed into life have
crumbled to the dust; the plough has passed over Waterloo; autumn after
autumn the harvests have glittered on that grave of an empire. Through
the immense ocean of universal change we look back on the single track
which our frail boat has cut through the waste. As a star shines
impartially over the measureless expanse, though it seems to gild but one
broken line into each eye, so, as our memory gazes on the past, the light
spreads not over all the breadth of the waste where nations have battled
and argosies gone down,--it falls narrow and confined along the single
course we have taken; we lean over the small raft on which we float, and
see the sparkles but reflected from the waves that it divides.

On the terrace at Laughton but one step paces slowly. The bride clings
not now to the bridegroom's arm. Though pale and worn, it is still the
same gentle face; but the blush of woman's love has gone from it
evermore.

Charles Vernon (to call him still by the name in which he is best known
to us) sleeps in the vault of the St. Johns. He had lived longer than he
himself had expected, than his physician had hoped,--lived, cheerful and
happy, amidst quiet pursuits and innocent excitements. Three sons had
blessed his hearth, to mourn over his grave. But the two elder were
delicate and sickly. They did not long survive him, and died within a
few months of each other. The third seemed formed of a different mould
and constitution from his brethren. To him descended the ancient
heritage of Laughton, and he promised to enjoy it long.

It is Vernon's widow who walks alone in the stately terrace; sad still,
for she loved well the choice of her youth, and she misses yet the
children in the grave. From the date of Vernon's death, she wore
mourning without and within; and the sorrows that came later broke more
the bruised reed,--sad still, but resigned. One son survives, and earth
yet has the troubled hopes and the holy fears of affection. Though that
son be afar, in sport or in earnest, in pleasure or in toil, working out
his destiny as man, still that step is less solitary than it seems. When
does the son's image not walk beside the mother? Though she lives in
seclusion, though the gay world tempts no more, the gay world is yet
linked to her thoughts. From the distance she hears its murmurs in
music. Her fancy still mingles with the crowd, and follows on, to her
eye, outshining all the rest. Never vain in herself, she is vain now of
another; and the small triumphs of the young and well-born seem trophies
of renown to the eyes so tenderly deceived.

In the old-fashioned market-town still the business goes on, still the
doors of the bank open and close every moment on the great day of the
week; but the names over the threshold are partially changed. The junior
partner is busy no more at the desk; not wholly forgotten, if his name
still is spoken, it is not with thankfulness and praise. A something
rests on the name,--that something which dims and attaints; not proven,
not certain, but suspected and dubious. The head shakes, the voice
whispers; and the attorney now lives in the solid red house at the verge
of the town.

In the vicarage, Time, the old scythe-bearer, has not paused from his
work. Still employed on Greek texts, little changed, save that his hair
is gray and that some lines in his kindly face tell of sorrows as of
years, the vicar sits in his parlour; but the children no longer, blithe-
voiced and rose-cheeked, dart through the rustling espaliers. Those
children, grave men or staid matrons (save one whom Death chose, and
therefore now of all best beloved!) are at their posts in the world. The
young ones are flown from the nest, and, with anxious wings, here and
there, search food in their turn for their young. But the blithe voice
and rose-cheek of the child make not that loss which the hearth misses
the most. From childhood to manhood, and from manhood to departure, the
natural changes are gradual and prepared. The absence most missed is
that household life which presided, which kept things in order, and must
be coaxed if a chair were displaced. That providence in trifles, that
clasp of small links, that dear, bustling agency,--now pleased, now
complaining,--dear alike in each change of its humour; that active life
which has no self of its own; like the mind of a poet, though its prose
be the humblest, transferring self into others, with its right to be
cross, and its charter to scold; for the motive is clear,--it takes what
it loves too anxiously to heart. The door of the parlour is open, the
garden-path still passes before the threshold; but no step now has full
right to halt at the door and interrupt the grave thought on Greek texts;
no small talk on details and wise sayings chimes in with the wrath of
"Medea." The Prudent Genius is gone from the household; and perhaps as
the good scholar now wearily pauses, and looks out on the silent garden,
he would have given with joy all that Athens produced, from Aeschylus to
Plato, to hear again from the old familiar lips the lament on torn
jackets, or the statistical economy of eggs.

But see, though the wife is no more, though the children have departed,
the vicar's home is not utterly desolate. See, along the same walk on
which William soothed Susan's fears and won her consent,--see, what fairy
advances? Is it Susan returned to youth? How like! Yet look again, and
how unlike! The same, the pure, candid regard; the same, the clear,
limpid blue of the eye; the same, that fair hue of the hair,--light, but
not auburn; more subdued, more harmonious than that equivocal colour
which too nearly approaches to red. But how much more blooming and
joyous than Susan's is that exquisite face in which all Hebe smiles
forth; how much airier the tread, light with health; how much rounder, if
slighter still, the wave of that undulating form! She smiles, her lips
move, she is conversing with herself; she cannot be all silent, even when
alone, for the sunny gladness of her nature must have vent like a bird's.
But do not fancy that that gladness speaks the levity which comes from
the absence of thought; it is rather from the depth of thought that it
springs, as from the depth of a sea comes its music. See, while she
pauses and listens, with her finger half-raised to her lip, as amidst
that careless jubilee of birds she hears a note more grave and
sustained,--the nightingale singing by day (as sometimes, though rarely,
he is heard,--perhaps because he misses his mate; perhaps because he sees
from his bower the creeping form of some foe to his race),--see, as she
listens now to that plaintive, low-chanted warble, how quickly the smile
is sobered, how the shade, soft and pensive, steals over the brow. It is
but the mystic sympathy with Nature that bestows the smile or the shade.
In that heart lightly moved beats the fine sense of the poet. It is the
exquisite sensibility of the nerves that sends its blithe play to those
spirits, and from the clearness of the atmosphere comes, warm and
ethereal, the ray of that light.

And does the roof of the pastor give shelter to Helen Mainwaring's youth?
Has Death taken from her the natural protectors? Those forms which we
saw so full of youth and youth's heart in that very spot, has the grave
closed on them yet? Yet! How few attain to the age of the Psalmist!
Twenty-seven years have passed since that date: how often, in those
years, have the dark doors opened for the young as for the old! William
Mainwaring died first, careworn and shamebowed; the blot on his name had
cankered into his heart. Susan's life, always precarious, had struggled
on, while he lived, by the strong power of affection and will; she would
not die, for who then could console him? But at his death the power gave
way. She lingered, but lingered dyingly, for three years; and then, for
the first time since William's death, she smiled: that smile remained on
the lips of the corpse. They had had many trials, that young couple whom
we left so prosperous and happy. Not till many years after their
marriage had one sweet consoler been born to them. In the season of
poverty and shame and grief it came; and there was no pride on
Mainwaring's brow when they placed his first-born in his arms. By her
will, the widow consigned Helen to the joint guardianship of Mr. Fielden
and her sister; but the latter was abroad, her address unknown, so the
vicar for two years had had sole charge of the orphan. She was not
unprovided for. The sum that Susan brought to her husband had been long
since gone, it is true,--lost in the calamity which had wrecked William
Mainwaring's name and blighted his prospects; but Helen's grandfather,
the landagent, had died some time subsequent to that event, and, indeed,
just before William's death. He had never forgiven his son the stain on
his name,--never assisted, never even seen him since that fatal day; but
he left to Helen a sum of about 8,000 pounds; for she, at least, was
innocent. In Mr. Fielden's eyes, Helen was therefore an heiress. And
who amongst his small range of acquaintance was good enough for her?--not
only so richly portioned, but so lovely,--accomplished, too; for her
parents had of late years lived chiefly in France, and languages there
are easily learned, and masters cheap. Mr. Fielden knew but one, whom
Providence had also consigned to his charge,--the supposed son of his old
pupil Ardworth; but though a tender affection existed between the two
young persons, it seemed too like that of brother and sister to afford
much ground for Mr. Fielden's anxiety or hope.

From his window the vicar observed the still attitude of the young orphan
for a few moments; then he pushed aside his books, rose, and approached
her. At the sound of his tread she woke from her revery and bounded
lightly towards him.

"Ah, you would not see me before!" she said, in a voice in which there
was the slightest possible foreign accent, which betrayed the country in
which her childhood had been passed; "I peeped in twice at the window. I
wanted you so much to walk to the village. But you will come now, will
you not?" added the girl, coaxingly, as she looked up at him under the
shade of her straw hat.

"And what do you want in the village, my pretty Helen?"

"Why, you know it is fair day, and you promised Bessie that you would buy
her a fairing,--to say nothing of me."

"Very true, and I ought to look in; it will help to keep the poor people
from drinking. A clergyman should mix with his parishioners in their
holidays. We must not associate our office only with grief and sickness
and preaching. We will go. And what fairing are you to have?"

"Oh, something very brilliant, I promise you! I have formed grand
notions of a fair. I am sure it must be like the bazaars we read of last
night in that charming 'Tour in the East.'"

The vicar smiled, half benignly, half anxiously. "My dear child, it is
so like you to suppose a village fair must be an Eastern bazaar. If you
always thus judge of things by your fancy, how this sober world will
deceive you, poor Helen!"

"It is not my fault; ne me grondez pas, mechant," answered Helen, hanging
her head. "But come, sir, allow, at least, that if I let my romance, as
you call it, run away with me now and then, I can still content myself
with the reality. What, you shake your head still? Don't you remember
the sparrow?"

"Ha! ha! yes,--the sparrow that the pedlar sold you for a goldfinch; and
you were so proud of your purchase, and wondered so much why you could
not coax the goldfinch to sing, till at last the paint wore away, and it
was only a poor little sparrow!"

"Go on! Confess: did I fret then? Was I not as pleased with my dear
sparrow as I should have been with the prettiest goldfinch that ever
sang? Does not the sparrow follow me about and nestle on my shoulder,
dear little thing? And I was right after all; for if I had not fancied
it a goldfinch, I should not have bought it, perhaps. But now I would
not change it for a goldfinch,--no, not even for that nightingale I heard
just now. So let me still fancy the poor fair a bazaar; it is a double
pleasure, first to fancy the bazaar, and then to be surprised at the
fair."

"You argue well," said the vicar, as they now entered the village; "I
really think, in spite of all your turn for poetry and Goldsmith and
Cowper, that you would take as kindly to mathematics as your cousin John
Ardworth, poor lad!

"Not if mathematics have made him so grave, and so churlish, I was going
to say; but that word does him wrong, dear cousin, so kind and so rough!"

"It is not mathematics that are to blame if he is grave and absorbed,"
said the vicar, with a sigh; "it is the two cares that gnaw most,--
poverty and ambition."

"Nay, do not sigh; it must be such a pleasure to feel, as he does, that
one must triumph at last!"

"Umph! John must have nearly reached London by this time," said Mr.
Fielden, "for he is a stout walker, and this is the third day since he
left us. Well, now that he is about fairly to be called to the Bar, I
hope that his fever will cool, and he will settle calmly to work. I have
felt great pain for him during this last visit."

"Pain! But why?"

"My dear, do you remember what I read to you both from Sir William Temple
the night before John left us?"

Helen put her hand to her brow, and with a readiness which showed a
memory equally quick and retentive, replied, "Yes; was it not to this
effect? I am not sure of the exact words: 'To have something we have
not, and be something we are not, is the root of all evil.'"

"Well remembered, my darling!"

"Ah, but," said Helen, archly, "I remember too what my cousin replied:
'If Sir William Temple had practised his theory, he would not have been
ambassador at the Hague, or--"

"Pshaw! the boy's always ready enough with his answers," interrupted Mr.
Fielden, rather petulantly. "There's the fair, my dear,--more in your
way, I see, than Sir William Temple's philosophy."

And Helen was right; the fair was no Eastern bazaar, but how delighted
that young, impressionable mind was, notwithstanding,--delighted with the
swings and the roundabouts, the shows, the booths, even down to the gilt
gingerbread kings and queens! All minds genuinely poetical are
peculiarly susceptible to movement,--that is, to the excitement of
numbers. If the movement is sincerely joyous, as in the mirth of a
village holiday, such a nature shares insensibly in the joy; but if the
movement is a false and spurious gayety, as in a state ball, where the
impassive face and languid step are out of harmony with the evident
object of the scene, then the nature we speak of feels chilled and
dejected. Hence it really is that the more delicate and ideal order of
minds soon grow inexpressibly weary of the hack routine of what are
called fashionable pleasures. Hence the same person most alive to a
dance on the green, would be without enjoyment at Almack's. It was not
because one scene is a village green, and the other a room in King
Street, nor is it because the actors in the one are of the humble, in the
others of the noble class; but simply because the enjoyment in the first
is visible and hearty, because in the other it is a listless and
melancholy pretence. Helen fancied it was the swings and the booths that
gave her that innocent exhilaration,--it was not so; it was the
unconscious sympathy with the crowd around her. When the poetical nature
quits its own dreams for the actual world, it enters and transfuses
itself into the hearts and humours of others. The two wings of that
spirit which we call Genius are revery and sympathy. But poor little
Helen had no idea that she had genius. Whether chasing the butterfly or
talking fond fancies to her birds, or whether with earnest, musing eyes
watching the stars come forth, and the dark pine-trees gleam into silver;
whether with airy daydreams and credulous wonder poring over the magic
tales of Mirglip or Aladdin, or whether spellbound to awe by the solemn
woes of Lear, or following the blind great bard into "the heaven of
heavens, an earthly guest, to draw empyreal air,"--she obeyed but the
honest and varying impulse in each change of her pliant mood, and would
have ascribed with genuine humility to the vagaries of childhood that
prompt gathering of pleasure, that quick-shifting sport of the fancy by
which Nature binds to itself, in chains undulating as melody, the lively
senses of genius.

While Helen, leaning on the vicar's arm, thus surrendered herself to the
innocent excitement of the moment, the vicar himself smiled and nodded to
his parishioners, or paused to exchange a friendly word or two with the
youngest or the eldest loiterers (those two extremes of mortality which
the Church so tenderly unites) whom the scene drew to its tempting
vortex, when a rough-haired lad, with a leather bag strapped across his
waist, turned from one of the gingerbread booths, and touching his hat,
said, "Please you, sir, I was a coming to your house with a letter."

The vicar's correspondence was confined and rare, despite his distant
children, for letters but a few years ago were costly luxuries to persons
of narrow income, and therefore the juvenile letter-carrier who plied
between the post-town and the village failed to excite in his breast that
indignation for being an hour or more behind his time which would have
animated one to whom the post brings the usual event of the day. He took
the letter from the boy's hand, and paid for it with a thrifty sigh as he
glanced at a handwriting unfamiliar to him,--perhaps from some clergyman
poorer than himself. However, that was not the place to read letters, so
he put the epistle into his pocket, until Helen, who watched his
countenance to see when he grew tired of the scene, kindly proposed to
return home. As they gained a stile half-way, Mr. Fielden remembered his
letter, took it forth, and put on his spectacles. Helen stooped over the
bank to gather violets; the vicar seated himself on the stile. As he
again looked at the address, the handwriting, before unfamiliar, seemed
to grow indistinctly on his recollection. That bold, firm hand--thin and
fine as woman's, but large and regular as man's--was too peculiar to be
forgotten. He uttered a brief exclamation of surprise and recognition,
and hastily broke the seal. The contents ran thus:--

DEAR SIR,--So many years have passed since any communication has taken
place between us that the name of Lucretia Dalibard will seem more
strange to you than that of Lucretia Clavering. I have recently returned
to England after long residence abroad. I perceive by my deceased
sister's will that she has confided her only daughter to my guardianship,
conjointly with yourself. I am anxious to participate in that tender
charge. I am alone in the world,--an habitual sufferer; afflicted with a
partial paralysis that deprives me of the use of my limbs. In such
circumstances, it is the more natural that I should turn to the only
relative left me. My journey to England has so exhausted my strength,
and all movement is so painful, that I must request you to excuse me for
not coming in person for my niece. Your benevolence, however, will, I am
sure, prompt you to afford me the comfort of her society, and as soon as
you can, contrive some suitable arrangement for her journey. Begging you
to express to Helen, in my name, the assurance of such a welcome as is
due from me to my sister's child, and waiting with great anxiety your
reply, I am, dear Sir, Your very faithful servant,
LUCRETIA DALIBARD.

P. S. I can scarcely venture to ask you to bring Helen yourself to town,
but I should be glad if other inducements to take the journey afforded me
the pleasure of seeing you once again. I am anxious, in addition to such
details of my late sister as you may be enabled to give me, to learn
something of the history of her connection with Mr. Ardworth, in whom I
felt much interested years ago, and who, I am recently informed, left an
infant, his supposed son, under your care. So long absent from England,
how much have I to learn, and how little the mere gravestones tell us of
the dead!

While the vicar is absorbed in this letter, equally unwelcome and
unexpected; while, unconscious as the daughter of Ceres, gathering
flowers when the Hell King drew near, of the change that awaited her and
the grim presence that approached on her fate, Helen bends still over the
bank odorous with shrinking violets,--we turn where the new generation
equally invites our gaze, and make our first acquaintance with two
persons connected with the progress of our tale.

The britzska stopped. The servant, who had been gradually accumulating
present dust and future rheumatisms on the "bad eminence" of a rumble-
tumble, exposed to the nipping airs of an English sky, leaped to the
ground and opened the carriage-door.

"This is the best place for the view, sir,--a little to the right."

Percival St. John threw aside his book (a volume of Voyages), whistled to
a spaniel dozing by his side, and descended lightly. Light was the step
of the young man, and merry was the bark of the dog, as it chased from
the road the startled sparrow, rising high into the clear air,--
favourites of Nature both, man and dog. You had but to glance at
Percival St. John to know at once that he was of the race that toils not;
the assured step spoke confidence in the world's fair smile. No care for
the morrow dimmed the bold eye and the radiant bloom.

About the middle height,--his slight figure, yet undeveloped, seemed not
to have attained to its full growth,--the darkening down only just shaded
a cheek somewhat sunburned, though naturally fair, round which locks
black as jet played sportively in the fresh air; about him altogether
there was the inexpressible charm of happy youth. He scarcely looked
sixteen, though above four years older; but for his firm though careless
step, and the open fearlessness of his frank eye, you might have almost
taken him for a girl in men's clothes,--not from effeminacy of feature,
but from the sparkling bloom of his youth, and from his unmistakable
newness to the cares and sins of man. A more delightful vision of
ingenuous boyhood opening into life under happy auspices never inspired
with pleased yet melancholy interest the eye of half-envious, half-
pitying age.

"And that," mused Percival St. John,--"that is London! Oh for the Diable
Boiteux to unroof me those distant houses, and show me the pleasures that
lurk within! Ah, what long letters I shall have to write home! How the
dear old captain will laugh over them, and how my dear good mother will
put down her work and sigh! Home!--um, I miss it already. How strange
and grim, after all, the huge city seems!"

His glove fell to the ground, and his spaniel mumbled it into shreds.
The young man laughed, and throwing himself on the grass, played gayly
with the dog.

"Fie, Beau, sir, fie! gloves are indigestible. Restrain your appetite,
and we'll lunch together at the Clarendon."

At this moment there arrived at the same patch of greensward a pedestrian
some years older than Percival St. John,--a tall, muscular, raw-boned,
dust-covered, travel-stained pedestrian; one of your pedestrians in good
earnest,--no amateur in neat gambroon manufactured by Inkson, who leaves
his carriage behind him and walks on with his fishing-rod by choice, but
a sturdy wanderer, with thick shoes and strapless trousers, a threadbare
coat and a knapsack at his back. Yet, withal, the young man had the air
of a gentleman,--not gentleman as the word is understood in St. James's,
the gentleman of the noble and idle class, but the gentleman as the title
is accorded, by courtesy, to all to whom both education and the habit of
mixing with educated persons gives a claim to the distinction and imparts
an air of refinement. The new-comer was strongly built, at once lean and
large,--far more strongly built than Percival St. John, but without his
look of cheerful and comely health. His complexion had not the florid
hues that should have accompanied that strength of body; it was pale,
though not sickly; the expression grave, the lines deep, the face
strongly marked. By his side trotted painfully a wiry, yellowish,
footsore Scotch terrier. Beau sprang from his master's caress, cocked
his handsome head on one side, and suspended in silent halt his right
fore-paw. Percival cast over his left shoulder a careless glance at the
intruder. The last heeded neither Beau nor Percival. He slipped his
knapsack to the ground, and the Scotch terrier sank upon it, and curled
himself up into a ball. The wayfarer folded his arms tightly upon his
breast, heaved a short, unquiet sigh, and cast over the giant city, from
under deep-pent, lowering brows, a look so earnest, so searching, so full
of inexpressible, dogged, determined power, that Percival, roused out of
his gay indifference, rose and regarded him with curious interest.

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