Book: Lucretia, Volume 4.

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




Rough was this man often in his exterior, though really gentle and kind-
hearted. John Ardworth had sacrificed to no Graces; he would have thrown
Lord Chesterfield into a fever. Not that he was ever vulgar, for
vulgarity implies affectation of refinement; but he talked loud and
laughed loud if the whim seized him, and rubbed his great hands with a
boyish heartiness of glee if he discomfited an adversary in argument.
Or, sometimes, he would sit abstracted and moody, and answer briefly and
boorishly those who interrupted him. Young men were mostly afraid of
him, though he wanted but fame to have a set of admiring disciples. Old
men censured his presumption and recoiled from the novelty of his ideas.
Women alone liked and appreciated him, as, with their finer insight into
character, they generally do what is honest and sterling. Some strange
failings, too, had John Ardworth,--some of the usual vagaries and
contradictions of clever men. As a system, he was rigidly abstemious.
For days together he would drink nothing but water, eat nothing but
bread, or hard biscuit, or a couple of eggs; then, having wound up some
allotted portion of work, Ardworth would indulge what he called a self-
saturnalia,--would stride off with old college friends to an inn in one
of the suburbs, and spend, as he said triumphantly, "a day of blessed
debauch!" Innocent enough, for the most part, the debauch was,
consisting in cracking jests, stringing puns, a fish dinner, perhaps, and
an extra bottle or two of fiery port. Sometimes this jollity, which was
always loud and uproarious, found its scene in one of the cider-cellars
or midnight taverns; but Ardworth's labours on the Press made that latter
dissipation extremely rare. These relaxations were always succeeded by a
mien more than usually grave, a manner more than usually curt and
ungracious, an application more than ever rigorous and intense. John
Ardworth was not a good-tempered man, but he was the best-natured man
that ever breathed. He was, like all ambitious persons, very much
occupied with self; and yet it would have been a ludicrous misapplication
of words to call him selfish. Even the desire of fame which absorbed him
was but a part of benevolence,--a desire to promote justice and to serve
his kind.

John Ardworth's shaggy brows were bent over his open volumes when his
clerk entered noiselessly and placed on his table a letter which the
twopenny-postman had just delivered. With an impatient shrug of the
shoulders, Ardworth glanced towards the superscription; but his eye
became earnest and his interest aroused as he recognized the hand.
"Again!" he muttered. "What mystery is this? Who can feel such interest
in my fate?" He broke the seal and read as follows:--

Do you neglect my advice, or have you begun to act upon it? Are you
contented only with the slow process of mechanical application, or will
you make a triumphant effort to abridge your apprenticeship and emerge at
once into fame and power? I repeat that you fritter away your talents
and your opportunities upon this miserable task-work on a journal. I am
impatient for you. Come forward yourself, put your force and your
knowledge into some work of which the world may know the author. Day
after day I am examining into your destiny, and day after day I believe
more and more that you are not fated for the tedious drudgery to which
you doom your youth. I would have you great, but in the senate, not a
wretched casuist at the Bar. Appear in public as an individual
authority, not one of that nameless troop of shadows contemned while
dreaded as the Press. Write for renown. Go into the world, and make
friends. Soften your rugged bearing. Lift yourself above that herd whom
you call "the people." What if you are born of the noble class! What if
your career is as gentleman, not plebeian Want not for money. Use what I
send you as the young and the well-born should use it; or let it at least
gain you a respite from toils for bread, and support you in your struggle
to emancipate yourself from obscurity into fame.
YOUR UNKNOWN FRIEND

A bank-note for 100 pounds dropped from the envelope as Ardworth silently
replaced the letter on the table.

Thrice before had he received communications in the same handwriting, and
much to the same effect. Certainly, to a mind of less strength there
would have been something very unsettling in those vague hints of a
station higher than he owned, of a future at variance with the toilsome
lot he had drawn from the urn; but after a single glance over his lone
position in all its bearings and probable expectations, Ardworth's steady
sense shook off the slight disturbance such misty vaticinations had
effected. His mother's family was indeed unknown to him, he was even
ignorant of her maiden name. But that very obscurity seemed unfavourable
to much hope from such a quarter. The connections with the rich and
well-born are seldom left obscure. From his father's family he had not
one expectation. More had he been moved by exhortation now generally
repeated, but in a previous letter more precisely detailed; namely, to
appeal to the reading public in his acknowledged person, and by some
striking and original work. This idea he had often contemplated and
revolved; but partly the necessity of keeping pace with the many
exigencies of the hour had deterred him, and partly also the conviction
of his sober judgment that a man does himself no good at the Bar even by
the most brilliant distinction gained in discursive fields. He had the
natural yearning of the Restless Genius; and the Patient Genius (higher
power of the two) had suppressed the longing. Still, so far, the
whispers of his correspondent tempted and aroused. But hitherto he had
sought to persuade himself that the communications thus strangely forced
on him arose perhaps from idle motives,--a jest, it might be, of one of
his old college friends, or at best the vain enthusiasm of some more
credulous admirer. But the enclosure now sent to him forbade either of
these suppositions. Who that he knew could afford so costly a jest or so
extravagant a tribute? He was perplexed, and with his perplexity was
mixed a kind of fear. Plain, earnest, unromantic in the common
acceptation of the word, the mystery of this intermeddling with his fate,
this arrogation of the license to spy, the right to counsel, and the
privilege to bestow, gave him the uneasiness the bravest men may feel at
noises in the dark. That day he could apply no more, he could not settle
back to his Law Reports. He took two or three unquiet turns up and down
his smoke-dried cell, then locked up the letter and enclosure, seized his
hat, and strode, with his usual lusty, swinging strides, into the open
air.

But still the letter haunted him. "And if," he said almost audibly,--"if
I were the heir to some higher station, why then I might have a heart
like idle men; and Helen, beloved Helen--" He paused, sighed, shook his
rough head, shaggy with neglected curls, and added: "As if even then I
could steal myself into a girl's good graces! Man's esteem I may
command, though poor; woman's love could I win, though rich? Pooh! pooh!
every wood does not make a Mercury; and faith, the wood I am made of will
scarcely cut up into a lover."

Nevertheless, though thus soliloquizing, Ardworth mechanically bent his
way towards Brompton, and halted, half-ashamed of himself, at the house
where Helen lodged with her aunt. It was a building that stood apart
from all the cottages and villas of that charming suburb, half-way down a
narrow lane, and enclosed by high, melancholy walls, deep set in which a
small door, with the paint blistered and weather-stained, gave
unfrequented entrance to the demesne. A woman servant of middle age and
starched, puritanical appearance answered the loud ring of the bell, and
Ardworth seemed a privileged visitor, for she asked him no question as,
with a slight nod and a smileless, stupid expression in a face otherwise
comely, she led the way across a paved path, much weed-grown, to the
house. That house itself had somewhat of a stern and sad exterior. It
was not ancient, yet it looked old from shabbiness and neglect. The
vine, loosened from the rusty nails, trailed rankly against the wall, and
fell in crawling branches over the ground. The house had once been
whitewashed; but the colour, worn off in great patches, distained with
damp, struggled here and there with the dingy, chipped bricks beneath.
There was no peculiar want of what is called "tenantable repair;" the
windows were whole, and doubtless the roof sheltered from the rain. But
the woodwork that encased the panes was decayed, and houseleek covered
the tiles. Altogether, there was that forlorn and cheerless aspect about
the place which chills the visitor, he defines not why. And Ardworth
steadied his usual careless step, and crept, as if timidly, up the
creaking stairs.

On entering the drawing-room, it seemed at first deserted; but the eye,
searching round, perceived something stir in the recess of a huge chair
set by the fireless hearth. And from amidst a mass of coverings a pale
face emerged, and a thin hand waved its welcome to the visitor.

Ardworth approached, pressed the hand, and drew a seat near to the
sufferer's.

"You are better, I hope?" he said cordially, and yet in a tone of more
respect than was often perceptible in his deep, blunt voice.

"I am always the same," was the quiet answer; "come nearer still. Your
visits cheer me."

And as these last words were said, Madame Dalibard raised herself from
her recumbent posture and gazed long upon Ardworth's face of power and
front of thought. "You overfatigue yourself, my poor kinsman," she said,
with a certain tenderness; "you look already too old for your young
years."

"That's no disadvantage at the Bar."

"Is the Bar your means, or your end?"

"My dear Madame Dalibard, it is my profession."

"No, your profession is to rise. John Ardworth," and the low voice
swelled in its volume, "you are bold, able, and aspiring; for this, I
love you,--love you almost--almost as a mother. Your fate," she
continued hurriedly, "interests me; your energies inspire me with
admiration. Often I sit here for hours, musing over your destiny to be,
so that at times I may almost say that in your life I live."

Ardworth looked embarrassed, and with an awkward attempt at compliment he
began, hesitatingly: "I should think too highly of myself if I could
really believe that you--"

"Tell me," interrupted Madame Dalibard,--"we have had many conversations
upon grave and subtle matters; we have disputed on the secret mysteries
of the human mind; we have compared our several experiences of outward
life and the mechanism of the social world,--tell me, then, and frankly,
what do you think of me? Do you regard me merely as your sex is apt to
regard the woman who aspires to equal men,--a thing of borrowed phrases
and unsound ideas, feeble to guide, and unskilled to teach; or do you
recognize in this miserable body a mind of force not unworthy yours,
ruled by an experience larger than your own?"

"I think of you," answered Ardworth, frankly, "as the most remarkable
woman I have ever met. Yet--do not be angry--I do not like to yield to
the influence which you gain over me when we meet. It disturbs my
convictions, it disquiets my reason; I do not settle back to my life so
easily after your breath has passed over it."

"And yet," said Lucretia, with a solemn sadness in her voice, "that
influence is but the natural power which cold maturity exercises on
ardent youth. It is my mournful ad vantage over you that disquiets your
happy calm. It is my experience that unsettles the fallacies which you
name 'convictions.' Let this pass. I asked your opinion of me, because
I wished to place at your service all that knowledge of life which I
possess. In proportion as you esteem me you will accept or reject my
counsels."

"I have benefited by them already. It is the tone that you advised me to
assume that gave me an importance I had not before with that old
formalist whose paper I serve, and whose prejudices I shock; it is to
your criticisms that I owe the more practical turn of my writings, and
the greater hold they have taken on the public."

"Trifles indeed, these," said Madame Dalibard, with a half smile. "Let
them at least induce you to listen to me if I propose to make your path
more pleasant, yet your ascent more rapid."

Ardworth knit his brows, and his countenance assumed an expression of
doubt and curiosity. However, he only replied, with a blunt laugh,--

"You must be wise indeed if you have discovered a royal road to
distinction.

'Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where
Fame's proud temple shines afar!'

A more sensible exclamation than poets usually preface with their whining
'Ahs' and 'Ohs!'"

"What we are is nothing," pursued Madame Dalibard; "what we seem is
much."

Ardworth thrust his hands into his pockets and shook his head. The wise
woman continued, unheeding his dissent from her premises,--

"Everything you are taught to value has a likeness, and it is that
likeness which the world values. Take a man out of the streets, poor and
ragged, what will the world do with him? Send him to the workhouse, if
not to the jail. Ask a great painter to take that man's portrait,--rags,
squalor, and all,--and kings will bid for the picture. You would thrust
the man from your doors, you would place the portrait in your palaces.
It is the same with qualities; the portrait is worth more than the truth.
What is virtue without character? But a man without virtue may thrive on
a character! What is genius without success? But how often you bow to
success without genius! John Ardworth, possess yourself of the
portraits,--win the character; seize the success."

"Madame," exclaimed Ardworth, rudely, "this is horrible!"

"Horrible it may be," said Madame Dalibard, gently, and feeling, perhaps,
that she had gone too far; "but it is the world's judgment. Seem, then,
as well as be. You have virtue, as I believe. Well, wrap yourself in
it--in your closet. Go into the world, and earn character. If you have
genius, let it comfort you. Rush into the crowd, and get success."

"Stop!" cried Ardworth; "I recognize you. How could I be so blind? It
is you who have written to me, and in the same strain; you have robbed
yourself,--you, poor sufferer,--to throw extravagance into these strong
hands. And why? What am I to you?" An expression of actual fondness
softened Lucretia's face as she looked up at him and replied: "I will
tell you hereafter what you are to me. First, I confess that it is I
whose letters have perplexed, perhaps offended you. The sum that I sent
I do not miss. I have more,--will ever have more at your command; never
fear. Yes, I wish you to go into the world, not as a dependant, but as
an equal to the world's favourites. I wish you to know more of men than
mere law-books teach you. I wish you to be in men's mouths, create a
circle that shall talk of young Ardworth; that talk would travel to those
who can advance your career. The very possession of money in certain
stages of life gives assurance to the manner, gives attraction to the
address."

"But," said Ardworth, "all this is very well for some favourite of birth
and fortune; but for me--Yet speak, and plainly. You throw out hints
that I am what I know not, but something less dependent on his nerves and
his brain than is plain John Ardworth. What is it you mean?"

Madame Dalibard bent her face over her breast, and rocking herself in her
chair, seemed to muse for some moments before she answered.

"When I first came to England, some months ago, I desired naturally to
learn all the particulars of my family and kindred, from which my long
residence abroad had estranged me. John Walter Ardworth was related to
my half-sister; to me he was but a mere connection. However, I knew
something of his history, yet I did not know that he had a son. Shortly
before I came to England, I learned that one who passed for his son had
been brought up by Mr. Fielden, and from Mr. Fielden I have since learned
all the grounds for that belief from which you take the name of
Ardworth."

Lucretia paused a moment; and after a glance at the impatient, wondering,
and eager countenance that bent intent upon her, she resumed:

"Your reputed father was, you are doubtless aware, of reckless and
extravagant habits. He had been put into the army by my uncle, and he
entered the profession with the careless buoyancy of his sanguine nature.
I remember those days,--that day! Well, to return--where was I?--Walter
Ardworth had the folly to entertain strong notions of politics. He
dreamed of being a soldier, and yet persuaded himself to be a republican.
His notions, so hateful in his profession, got wind; he disguised
nothing, he neglected the portraits of things,--appearances. He excited
the rancour of his commanding officer; for politics then, more even than
now, were implacable ministrants to hate. Occasion presented itself.
During the short Peace of Amiens he had been recalled. He had to head a
detachment of soldiers against some mob,--in Ireland, I believe; he did
not fire on the mob, according to orders,--so, at least, it was said.
John Walter Ardworth was tried by a court-martial, and broke! But you
know all this, perhaps?"

"My poor father! Only in part; I knew that he had been dismissed the
army,--I believed unjustly. He was a soldier, and yet he dared to think
for himself and be humane!"

"But my uncle had left him a legacy; it brought no blessing,--none of
that old man's gold did. Where are they all now,--Dalibard, Susan, and
her fair-faced husband,--where? Vernon is in his grave,--but one son of
many left! Gabriel Varney lives, it is true, and I! But that gold,--
yea, in our hands there was a curse on it! Walter Ardworth had his
legacy. His nature was gay; if disgraced in his profession, he found men
to pity and praise him,--Fools of Party like himself. He lived joyously,
drank or gamed, or lent or borrowed,--what matters the wherefore? He was
in debt; he lived at last a wretched, shifting, fugitive life, snatching
bread where he could, with the bailiffs at his heels. Then, for a short
time, we met again."

Lucretia's brow grew black as night as her voice dropped at that last
sentence, and it was with a start that she continued,--

"In the midst of this hunted existence, Walter Ardworth appeared, late
one night, at Mr. Fielden's with an infant. He seemed--so says Mr.
Fielden--ill, worn, and haggard. He entered into no explanations with
respect to the child that accompanied him, and retired at once to rest.
What follows, Mr. Fielden, at my request, has noted down. Read, and see
what claim you have to the honourable parentage so vaguely ascribed to
you."

As she spoke, Madame Dalibard opened a box on her table, drew forth a
paper in Fielden's writing, and placed it in Ardworth's hand. After some
preliminary statement of the writer's intimacy with the elder Ardworth,
and the appearance of the latter at his house, as related by Madame
Dalibard, etc., the document went on thus:--

The next day, when my poor guest was still in bed, my servant Hannah came
to advise me that two persons were without, waiting to see me. As is my
wont, I bade them be shown in. On their entrance (two rough, farmer-
looking men they were, who I thought might be coming to hire my little
pasture field), I prayed them to speak low, as a sick gentleman was just
overhead. Whereupon, and without saying a word further, the two
strangers made a rush from the room, leaving me dumb with amazement; in a
few moments I heard voices and a scuffle above. I recovered myself, and
thinking robbers had entered my peaceful house, I called out lustily,
when Hannah came in, and we both, taking courage, went upstairs, and
found that poor Walter was in the hands of these supposed robbers, who
in truth were but bailiffs. They would not trust him out of their sight
for a moment. However, he took it more pleasantly than I could have
supposed possible; prayed me in a whisper to take care of the child, and
I should soon hear from him again. In less than an hour he was gone.
Two days afterwards I received from him a hurried letter, without
address, of which this is a copy:--

DEAR FRIEND,--I slipped from the bailiffs, and here I am in a safe little
tavern in sight of the sea! Mother Country is a very bad parent to me!
Mother Brownrigg herself could scarcely be worse. I shall work out my
passage to some foreign land, and if I can recover my health (sea-air is
bracing), I don't despair of getting my bread honestly, somehow. If ever
I can pay my debts, I may return. But, meanwhile, my good old tutor,
what will you think of me? You to whom my sole return for so much pains,
taken in vain, is another mouth to feed! And no money to pay for the
board! Yet you'll not grudge the child a place at your table, will you?
No, nor kind, saving Mrs. Fielden either,--God bless her tender,
economical soul! You know quite enough of me to be sure that I shall
very soon either free you of the boy, or send you something to prevent
its being an encumbrance. I would say, love and pity the child for my
sake. But I own I feel---By Jove, I must be off; I hear the first signal
from the vessel that-- Yours in haste,
J. W. A.

Young Ardworth stopped from the lecture, and sighed heavily. There
seemed to him in this letter worse than a mock gayety,--a certain levity
and recklessness which jarred on his own high principles. And the want
of affection for the child thus abandoned was evident,--not one fond
word. He resumed the statement with a gloomy and disheartened attention.

This was all I heard from my poor, erring Walter for more than three
years; but I knew, in spite of his follies, that his heart was sound at
bottom (the son's eyes brightened here, and he kissed the paper), and the
child was no burden to us; we loved it, not only for Ardworth's sake, but
for its own, and for charity's and Christ's. Ardworth's second letter
was as follows:--

En iterum Crispinus! I am still alive, and getting on in the world,--ay,
and honestly too; I am no longer spending heedlessly; I am saving for my
debts, and I shall live, I trust, to pay off every farthing. First, for
my debt to you I send an order, not signed in my name, but equally valid,
on Messrs. Drummond, for 250 pounds. Repay yourself what the boy has
cost. Let him be educated to get his own living,--if clever, as a
scholar or a lawyer; if dull, as a tradesman. Whatever I may gain, he
will have his own way to make. I ought to tell you the story connected
with his birth; but it is one of pain and shame, and, on reflection, I
feel that I have no right to injure him by affixing to his early birth an
opprobrium of which he himself is guiltless. If ever I return to
England, you shall know all, and by your counsels I will abide. Love to
all your happy family. Your grateful
FRIEND AND PUPIL.

From this letter I began to suspect that the poor boy was probably not
born in wedlock, and that Ardworth's silence arose from his compunction.
I conceived it best never to mention this suspicion to John himself as he
grew up. Why should I afflict him by a doubt from which his own father
shrank, and which might only exist in my own inexperienced and
uncharitable interpretation of some vague words? When John was fourteen,
I received from Messrs. Drummond a further sum of 500 pounds, but without
any line from Ardworth, and only to the effect that Messrs. Drummond were
directed by a correspondent in Calcutta to pay me the said sum on behalf
of expenses incurred for the maintenance of the child left to my charge
by John Walter Ardworth. My young pupil had been two years at the
University when I received the letter of which this is a copy:--

"How are you? Still well, still happy? Let me hope so! I have not
written to you, dear old friend, but I have not been forgetful of you; I
have inquired of you through my correspondents, and have learned, from
time to time, such accounts as satisfied my grateful affection for you.
I find that you have given the boy my name. Well, let him bear it,--it
is nothing to boast of such as it became in my person; but, mind, I do
not, therefore, acknowledge him as my son. I wish him to think himself
without parents, without other aid in the career of life than his own
industry and talent--if talent he has. Let him go through the healthful
probation of toil; let him search for and find independence. Till he is
of age, 150 pounds per annum will be paid quarterly to your account for
him at Messrs. Drummond's. If then, to set him up in any business or
profession, a sum of money be necessary, name the amount by a line,
signed A. B., Calcutta, to the care of Messrs. Drummond, and it will
reach and find me disposed to follow your instructions. But after that
time all further supply from me will cease. Do not suppose, because I
send this from India, that I am laden with rupees; all I can hope to
attain is a competence. That boy is not the only one who has claims to
share it. Even, therefore, if I had the wish to rear him to the
extravagant habits that ruined myself, I have not the power. Yes, let
him lean on his own strength. In the letter you send me, write fully of
your family, your sons, and write as to a man who can perhaps help them
in the world, and will be too happy thus in some slight degree to repay
all he owes you. You would smile approvingly if you saw me now,--a
steady, money-getting man, but still yours as ever."

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