Book: My Novel, Volume 11.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 11.




"Do not be angry; and, after all, I cannot ask you to betray any
confidence which a friend may have placed in you. I know what you men
of high honour are to each other, even in sin. No, no, I beg pardon;
I leave all in your hands. I shall hear from you then?"

"Or if not, why, then, believe that all search is hopeless. My friend!
if you mean Lord L'Estrange, he is innocent. I--I--I--[the voice
faltered]--am convinced of it."

The curate sighed, but made no answer. "Oh, ye men of the world!"
thought he. He gave the address which the member for Lansmere had asked
for, and went his way, and never heard again from Audley Egerton. He was
convinced that the man who had showed such deep feeling had failed in his
appeal to Harley's conscience, or had judged it best to leave Nora's name
in peace, and her child to her own relations and the care of Heaven.

Harley L'Estrange, scarcely yet recovered, hastened to join our armies on
the Continent, and seek the Death which, like its half-brother, rarely
comes when we call it.

As soon as Harley was gone, Egerton went to the village to which Mr. Dale
had directed him, to seek for Nora's child. But here he was led into a
mistake which materially affected the tenor of his own life, and
Leonard's future destinies. Mrs. Fairfield had been naturally ordered by
her mother to take another name in the village to which she had gone with
the two infants, so that her connection with the Avenel family might not
be traced, to the provocation of inquiry and gossip. The grief and
excitement through which she had gone dried the source of nutriment in
her breast. She put Nora's child out to nurse at the house of a small
farmer, at a little distance from the village, and moved from her first
lodging to be nearer to the infant. Her own child was so sickly and
ailing, that she could not bear to intrust it to the care of an other.
She tried to bring it up by hand; and the poor child soon pined away and
died. She and Mark could not endure the sight of their baby's grave;
they hastened to return to Hazeldean, and took Leonard with them. From
that time Leonard passed for the son they had lost.

When Egerton arrived at the village, and inquired for the person whose
address had been given to him, he was referred to the cottage in which
she had last lodged, and was told that she had been gone some days,--the
day after her child was buried. Her child buried! Egerton stayed to
inquire no more; thus he heard nothing of the infant that had been put
out to nurse. He walked slowly into the churchyard, and stood for some
minutes gazing on the small new mound; then, pressing his hand on the
heart to which all emotion had been forbidden, he re-entered his chaise
and returned to London. The sole reason for acknowledging his marriage
seemed to him now removed. Nora's name had escaped reproach. Even had
his painful position with regard to Harley not constrained him to
preserve his secret, there was every motive to the world's wise and
haughty son not to acknowledge a derogatory and foolish marriage, now
that none lived whom concealment could wrong.

Audley mechanically resumed his former life,--sought to resettle his
thoughts on the grand objects of ambitious men. His poverty still
pressed on him; his pecuniary debt to Harley stung and galled his
peculiar sense of honour. He saw no way to clear his estates, to repay
his friend, but by some rich alliance. Dead to love, he faced this
prospect first with repugnance, then with apathetic indifference. Levy,
of whose treachery towards himself and Nora he was unaware, still held
over him the power that the money-lender never loses over the man that
has owed, owes, or may owe again. Levy was ever urging him to propose,
to the rich Miss Leslie; Lady Lansmere, willing to atone, as she thought,
for his domestic loss, urged the same; Harley, influenced by his mother,
wrote from the Continent to the same effect.

"Manage it as you will," at last said Egerton to Levy, "so that I am not
a wife's pensioner."

"Propose for me, if you will," he said to Lady Lansmere,--"I cannot woo,
--I cannot talk of love."

Somehow or other the marriage, with all its rich advantages to the ruined
gentleman, was thus made up. And Egerton, as we have seen, was the
polite and dignified husband before the world,--married to a woman who
adored him. It is the common fate of men like him to be loved too well!

On her death-bed his heart was touched by his wife's melancholy
reproach,--"Nothing I could do has ever made you love me!"

"It is true," answered Audley, with tears in his voice and eyes; "Nature
gave me but a small fund of what women like you call 'love,' and I
lavished it all away." And he then told her, though with reserve, some
portion of his former history; and that soothed her; for when she saw
that he had loved, and could grieve, she caught a glimpse of the human
heart she had not seen before. She died, forgiving him, and blessing.

Audley's spirits were much affected by this new loss. He inly resolved
never to marry again. He had a vague thought at first of retrenching his
expenditure, and making young Randal Leslie his heir. But when he first
saw the clever Eton boy, his feelings did not warm to him, though his
intellect appreciated Randal's quick, keen talents. He contented himself
with resolving to push the boy,--to do what was merely just to the
distant kinsman of his late wife. Always careless and lavish in money
matters, generous and princely, not from the delight of serving others,
but from a grand seigneur's sentiment of what was due to himself and his
station, Audley had a mournful excuse for the lordly waste of the large
fortune at his control. The morbid functions of the heart had become
organic disease. True, he might live many years, and die at last of some
other complaint in the course of nature; but the progress of the disease
would quicken with all emotional excitement; he might die suddenly--any
day--in the very prime, and, seemingly, in the full vigour, of his life.
And the only physician in whom he confided what he wished to keep
concealed from the world (for ambitious men would fain be thought
immortal) told him frankly that it was improbable that, with the wear and
tear of political strife and action, he could advance far into middle
age. Therefore, no son of his succeeding--his nearest relations all
wealthy--Egerton resigned himself to his constitutional disdain of money;
he could look into no affairs, provided the balance in his banker's hands
were such as became the munificent commoner. All else he left to his
steward and to Levy. Levy grew rapidly rich,--very, very rich,--and the
steward thrived.

The usurer continued to possess a determined hold over the imperious
great man. He knew Audley's secret; he could reveal that secret to
Harley. And the one soft and tender side of the statesman's nature--the
sole part of him not dipped in the ninefold Styx of practical prosaic
life, which renders man so invulnerable to affection--was his remorseful
love for the school friend whom he still deceived.

Here then you have the key to the locked chambers of Audley Egerton's
character, the fortified castle of his mind. The envied minister, the
joyless man; the oracle on the economies of an empire, the prodigal in a
usurer's hands; the august, high-crested gentleman, to whom princes would
refer for the casuistry of honour, the culprit trembling lest the friend
he best loved on earth should detect his lie! Wrap thyself in the decent
veil that the Arts or the Graces weave for thee, O Human Nature! It is
only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold without
shame and offence!




CHAPTER XIX.

Of the narrative just placed before the reader, it is clear that Leonard
could gather only desultory fragments. He could but see that his ill-
fated mother had been united to a man she had loved with surpassing
tenderness; had been led to suspect that the marriage was fraudulent; had
gone abroad in despair; returned repentant and hopeful; had gleaned some
intelligence that her lover was about to be married to another, and there
the manuscript closed with the blisters left on the page by agonizing
tears. The mournful end of Nora, her lonely return to die under the roof
of her parents,--this he had learned before from the narrative of Dr.
Morgan.

But even the name of her supposed husband was not revealed. Of him
Leonard could form no conjecture, except that he was evidently of higher
rank than Nora. Harley L'Estrange seemed clearly indicated in the early
boy-lover. If so, Harley must know all that was left dark to Leonard,
and to him Leonard resolved to confide the manuscripts. With this
resolution he left the cottage, resolving to return and attend the
funeral obsequies of his departed friend. Mrs. Goodyer willingly
permitted him to take away the papers she had lent to him, and added to
them the packet which had been addressed to Mrs. Bertram from the
Continent.

Musing in anxious gloom over the record he had read, Leonard entered
London on foot, and bent his way towards Harley's hotel; when, just as he
had crossed into Bond Street, a gentleman in company with Baron Levy, and
who seemed, by the flush on his brow and the sullen tone of his voice, to
have had rather an irritating colloquy with the fashionable usurer,
suddenly caught sight of Leonard, and, abruptly quitting Levy, seized the
young man by the arm.

"Excuse me, sir," said the gentleman, looking hard into Leonard's face,
"but unless these sharp eyes of mine are mistaken, which they seldom are,
I see a nephew whom, perhaps, I behaved to rather too harshly, but who
still has no right to forget Richard Avenel."

"My dear uncle," exclaimed Leonard, "this is indeed a joyful surprise; at
a time, too, when I needed joy! No; I have never forgotten your
kindness, and always regretted our estrangement."

"That is well said; give us your fist again. Let me look at you--quite
the gentleman, I declare--still so good-looking too. We Avenels always
were a handsome family.

"Good-by, Baron Levy. Need not wait for me; I am not going to run away.
I shall see you again."

"But," whispered Levy, who had followed Avenel across the street, and
eyed Leonard with a quick, curious, searching glance--"but it must be as
I say with regard to the borough; or (to be plain) you must cash the
bills on the day they are due."

"Very well, sir, very well. So you think to put the screw upon me, as if
I were a poor little householder. I understand,--my money or my
borough?"

"Exactly so," said the baron, with a soft smile.

"You shall hear from me." (Aside, as Levy strolled away)--"D---d
tarnation rascal!"

Dick Avenel then linked his arm in his nephew's, and strove for some
minutes to forget his own troubles, in the indulgence of that curiosity
in the affairs of another, which was natural to him, and in this instance
increased by the real affection which he had felt for Leonard. But still
his curiosity remained unsatisfied; for long before Leonard could
overcome his habitual reluctance to speak of his success in literature,
Dick's mind wandered back to his rival at Screwstown, and the curse of
"over-competition,"--to the bills which Levy had discounted, in order to
enable Dick to meet the crushing force of a capitalist larger than
himself, and the "tarnation rascal" who now wished to obtain two seats at
Lansmere, one for Randal Leslie, one for a rich Nabob whom Levy had just
caught as a client, and Dick, though willing to aid Leslie, had a mind to
the other seat for himself. Therefore Dick soon broke in upon the
hesitating confessions of Leonard, with exclamations far from pertinent
to the subject, and rather for the sake of venting his own griefs and
resentment than with any idea that the sympathy or advice of his nephew
could serve him.

"Well, well," said Dick, "another time for your history. I see you have
thrived, and that is enough for the present. Very odd; but just now I
can only think of myself. I'm in a regular fix, sir. Screwstown is not
the respectable Screwstown that you remember it--all demoralized and
turned topsy-turvy by a demoniacal monster capitalist, with steam-engines
that might bring the falls of Niagara into your back parlour, sir! And
as if that was not enough to destroy and drive into almighty shivers a
decent fair-play Britisher like myself, I hear he is just in treaty for
some patent infernal invention that will make his engines do twice as
much work with half as many hands! That's the way those unfeeling
ruffians increase our poor-rates! But I 'll get up a riot against him,
I will! Don't talk to me of the law! What the devil is the good of the
law if it don't protect a man's industry,--a liberal man, too, like me!"
Here Dick burst into a storm of vituperation against the rotten old
country in general, and Mr. Dyce, the monster capitalist of Screwstown,
in particular.

Leonard started; for Dick now named, in that monster capitalist, the very
person who was in treaty for Leonard's own mechanical improvement on the
steam-engine.

"Stop, uncle, stop! Why, then, if this man were to buy the contrivance
you speak of, it would injure you?"

"Injure me, sir! I should be a bankrupt,--that is, if it succeeded; but
I dare say it is all a humbug."

"No, it will succeed,--I 'll answer for that!"

"You! You have seen it?"

"Why, I invented it!"

Dick hastily withdrew his arm from Leonard's.

"Serpent's tooth!" he said falteringly, "so it is you, whom I warmed at
my hearth, who are to ruin Richard Avenel?"

"No; but to save him! Come into the City and look at my model. If you
like it, the patent shall be yours!"

"Cab, cab, cab," cried Dick Avenel, stopping a "Ransom; "jump in,
Leonard,-jump in. I'll buy your patent,--that is, if it be worth a
straw; and as for payment--"

"Payment! Don't talk of that!"

"Well, I won't," said Dick, mildly; "for 't is not the topic of
conversation I should choose myself, just at present. And as for that
black-whiskered alligator, the baron, let me first get out of those
rambustious, unchristian, filbert-shaped claws of his, and then--but jump
in! jump in! and tell the man where to drive!"

A very brief inspection of Leonard's invention sufficed to show Richard
Avenel how invaluable it would be to him. Armed with a patent, of which
the certain effects in the increase of power and diminution of labour
were obvious to any practical man, Avenel felt that he should have no
difficulty in obtaining such advances of money as he required, whether to
alter his engines, meet the bills discounted by Levy, or carry on the war
with the monster capitalist. It might be necessary to admit into
partnership some other monster capitalist--What then? Any partner better
than Levy. A bright idea struck him.

"If I can just terrify and whop that infernal intruder on my own ground
for a few months, he may offer, himself, to enter into partnership,--make
the two concerns a joint-stock friendly combination, and then we shall
flog the world."

His gratitude to Leonard became so lively that Dick offered to bring his
nephew in for Lansmere instead of himself; and when Leonard declined the
offer, exclaimed, "Well, then, any friend of yours; I'm all for reform
against those high and mighty right honourable borough-mongers; and what
with loans and mortgages on the small householders, and a long course of
'Free and Easies' with the independent freemen, I carry one--seat
certain, perhaps both seats of the town of Lansmere, in my breeches
pocket." Dick then, appointing an interview with Leonard at his
lawyer's, to settle the transfer of the invention, upon terms which he
declared "should be honourable to both parties," hurried off, to search
amongst his friends in the City for some monster capitalist, who alight
be induced to extricate him from the jaws of Levy and the engines of his
rival at Screwstown. "Mullins is the man, if I can but catch him," said
Dick. "You have heard of Mullins?---a wonderful great man; you should
see his nails; he never cuts them! Three millions, at least, he has
scraped together with those nails of his, sir. And in this rotten old
country, a man must have nails a yard long to fight with a devil like
Levy! Good-by, good-by,--Goon-by, MY DEAR, nephew!"




CHAPTER XX.

Harley L'Estrange was seated alone in his apartments. He had just put
down a volume of some favourite classic author, and he was resting his
hand firmly clenched upon the book. Ever since Harley's return to
England, there had been a perceptible change in the expression of his
countenance, even in the very bearing and attitudes of his elastic
youthful figure. But this change had been more marked since that last
interview with Helen which has been recorded. There was a compressed,
resolute firmness in the lips, a decided character in the brow. To the
indolent, careless grace of his movements had succeeded a certain
indescribable energy, as quiet and self-collected as that which
distinguished the determined air of Audley Egerton himself. In fact, if
you could have looked into his heart, you would have seen that Harley
was, for the first time, making a strong effort over his passions and his
humours; that the whole man was nerving himself to a sense of duty.
"No," he muttered,--"no! I will think only of Helen; I will think only
of real life! And what (were I not engaged to another) would that dark-
eyed Italian girl be to me?--What a mere fool's fancy is this! I love
again,--I, who through all the fair spring of my life have clung with
such faith to a memory and a grave! Come, come, come, Harley L'Estrange,
act thy part as man amongst men, at last! Accept regard; dream no more
of passion. Abandon false ideals. Thou art no poet--why deem that life
itself can be a poem?"

The door opened, and the Austrian prince, whom Harley had interested in
the cause of Violante's father, entered, with the familiar step of a
friend.

"Have you discovered those documents yet?" said the prince. "I must now
return to Vienna within a few days; and unless you can arm me with some
tangible proof of Peschiera's ancient treachery, or some more
unanswerable excuse for his noble kinsman, I fear that there is no other
hope for the exile's recall to his country than what lies in the hateful
option of giving his daughter to his perfidious foe."

"Alas!" said Harley, "as yet all researches have been in vain; and I know
not what other steps to take, without arousing Peschiera's vigilance, and
setting his crafty brains at work to counteract us. My poor friend,
then, must rest contented with exile. To give Violante to the count were
dishonour. But I shall soon be married; soon have a home, not quite
unworthy of their due rank, to offer both to father and to child."

"Would the future Lady L'Estrange feel no jealousy of a guest so fair as
you tell me this young signorina is? And would you be in no danger
yourself, my poor friend?"

"Pooh!" said Harley, colouring. "My fair guest would have two fathers;
that is all. Pray do not jest on a thing so grave as honour."

Again the door opened, and Leonard appeared.

"Welcome," cried Harley, pleased to be no longer alone under the prince's
penetrating eye,--"welcome. This is the noble friend who shares our
interest for Riccabocca, and who could serve him so well, if we could but
discover the document of which I have spoken to you."

"It is here," said Leonard, simply; "may it be all that you require!"

Harley eagerly grasped at the packet, which had been sent from Italy to
the supposed Mrs. Bertram, and, leaning his face on his hand, rapidly
hurried through the contents.

"Hurrah!" he cried at last, with his face lighted up, and a boyish toss
of his right hand. "Look, look, Prince, here are Peschiera's own letters
to his kinsman's wife; his avowal of what he calls his 'patriotic
designs;' his entreaties to her to induce her husband to share them.
Look, look, how he wields his influence over the woman he had once wooed;
look how artfully he combats her objections; see how reluctant our friend
was to stir, till wife and kinsman both united to urge him!"

"It is enough,-quite enough," exclaimed the prince, looking at the
passages in Peschiera's letters which Harley pointed out to him.

"No, it is not enough," shouted Harley, as he continued to read the
letters with his rapid sparkling eyes. "More still! O villain, doubly
damned! Here, after our friend's flight, here is Peschiera's avowal of
guilty passion; here, he swears that he had intrigued to ruin his
benefactor, in order to pollute the home that had sheltered him. Ah, see
how she answers! thank Heaven her own eyes were opened at last, and she
scorned him before she died! She was innocent! I said so. Violante's
mother was pure. Poor lady, this moves me! Has your emperor the heart
of a man?"

"I know enough of our emperor," answered the prince, warmly, "to know
that, the moment these papers reach him, Peschiera is ruined, and your
friend is restored to his honours. You will live to see the daughter, to
whom you would have given a child's place at your hearth, the wealthiest
heiress of Italy,--the bride of some noble lover, with rank only below
the supremacy of kings!"

"Ah," said Harley, in a sharp accent, and turning very pale,--"ah, I
shall not see her that! I shall never visit Italy again!--never see her
more,--never, after she has once quitted this climate of cold iron cares
and formal duties! never, never!" He turned his head for a moment, and
then came with quick step to Leonard. "But you, O happy poet! No Ideal
can ever be lost to you. You are independent of real life. Would that I
were a poet!" He smiled sadly.

"You would not say so, perhaps, my dear Lord," answered Leonard, with
equal sadness, "if you knew how little what you call 'the Ideal' replaces
to a poet the loss of one affection in the genial human world.
Independent of real life! Alas! no. And I have here the confessions of
a true poet-soul, which I will entreat you to read at leisure; and when
you have read, say if you would still be a poet!"

He took forth Nora's manuscripts as he spoke.

"Place them yonder, in my escritoire, Leonard; I will read them later."

"Do so, and with heed; for to me there is much here that involves my own
life,--much that is still a mystery, and which I think you can unravel!"

"I!" exclaimed Harley; and he was moving towards the escritoire, in a
drawer of which Leonard had carefully deposited the papers, when once
more, but this time violently, the door was thrown open, and Giacomo
rushed into the room, accompanied by Lady Lansmere.

"Oh, my Lord, my Lord!" cried Giacomo, in Italian, "the signorina! the
signorina! Violante!"

"What of her? Mother, Mother! what of her? Speak, speak!"

"She has gone,--left our house!"

"Left! No, no!" cried Giacomo. "She must have been deceived or forced
away. The count! the count! Oh, my good Lord, save her, as you once
saved her father!"

"Hold!" cried Harley. "Give me your arm, Mother. A second such blow in
life is beyond the strength of man,--at least it is beyond mine. So, so!
I am better now! Thank you, Mother. Stand back, all of you! give me
air. So the count has triumphed, and Violante has fled with him!
Explain all,--I can bear it!"

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