Book: My Novel, Volume 11.

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







CHAPTER XVI.

Nora Avenel had fled from the boyish love of Harley L'Estrange,
recommended by Lady Lansmere to a valetudinarian relative of her own,
Lady Jane Horton, as companion. But Lady Lansmere could not believe it
possible that the lowborn girl could long sustain her generous pride,
and reject the ardent suit of one who could offer to her the prospective
coronet of a countess. She continually urged upon Lady Jane the
necessity of marrying Nora to some one of rank less disproportioned to
her own, and empowered that lady to assure any such wooer of a dowry far
beyond Nora's station. Lady Jane looked around, and saw in the outskirts
of her limited social ring a young solicitor, a peer's natural son, who
was on terms of more than business-like intimacy with the fashionable
clients whose distresses made the origin of his wealth. The young man
was handsome, well-dressed, and bland. Lady Jane invited him to her
house; and, seeing him struck with the rare loveliness of Nora, whispered
the hint of the dower. The fashionable solicitor, who afterwards ripened
into Baron Levy, did not need that hint; for, though then poor, he relied
on himself for fortune, and, unlike Randal, he had warm blood in his
veins. But Lady Jane's suggestions made him sanguine of success; and
when he formally proposed, and was as formally refused, his self-love was
bitterly wounded. Vanity in Levy was a powerful passion; and with the
vain, hatred is strong, revenge is rankling. Levy retired, concealing
his rage; nor did he himself know how vindictive that rage, when it
cooled into malignancy, could become, until the arch-fiend OPPORTUNITY
prompted its indulgence and suggested its design.

Lady Jane was at first very angry with Nora for the rejection of a suitor
whom she had presented as eligible. But the pathetic grace of this
wonderful girl had crept into her heart, and softened it even against
family prejudice; and she gradually owned to herself that Nora was worthy
of some one better than Mr. Levy.

Now, Harley had ever believed that Nora returned his love, and that
nothing but her own sense of gratitude to his parents, her own instincts
of delicacy, made her deaf to his prayers. To do him justice, wild and
headstrong as he then was, his suit would have ceased at once had he
really deemed it persecution. Nor was his error unnatural; for his
conversation, till it had revealed his own heart, could not fail to have
dazzled and delighted the child of genius; and her frank eyes would have
shown the delight. How, at his age, could he see the distinction between
the Poetess and the Woman? The poetess was charmed with rare promise in
a soul of which the very errors were the extravagances of richness and
beauty. But the woman--no! the woman required some nature not yet
undeveloped, and all at turbulent, if brilliant, strife with its own
noble elements, but a nature formed and full-grown. Harley was a boy,
and Nora was one of those women who must find or fancy an Ideal that
commands and almost awes them into love.

Harley discovered, not without difficulty, Nora's new residence. He
presented himself at Lady Jane's, and she, with grave rebuke, forbade him
the house. He found it impossible to obtain an interview with Nora. He
wrote, but he felt sure that his letters never reached her, since they
were unanswered. His young heart swelled with rage. He dropped threats,
which alarmed all the fears of Lady Lansmere, and even the prudent
apprehensions of his friend, Audley Egerton. At the request of the
mother, and equally at the wish of the son, Audley consented to visit at
Lady Jane's, and make acquaintance with Nora.

"I have such confidence in you," said Lady Lansmere, "that if you once
know the girl, your advice will be sure to have weight with her. You
will show her how wicked it would be to let Harley break our hearts and
degrade his station."

"I have such confidence in you," said young Harley, "that if you once
know my Nora, you will no longer side with my mother. You will recognize
the nobility which nature only can create, you will own that Nora is
worthy a rank more lofty than mine; and my mother so believes in your
wisdom, that, if you plead in my cause, you will convince even her."

Audley listened to both with his intelligent, half-incredulous smile; and
wholly of the same opinion as Lady Lansmere, and sincerely anxious to
save Harley from an indiscretion that his own notions led him to regard
as fatal, he resolved to examine this boasted pearl, and to find out its
flaws. Audley Egerton was then in the prime of his earnest, resolute,
ambitious youth. The stateliness of his natural manners had then a
suavity and polish which, even in later and busier life, it never wholly
lost; since, in spite of the briefer words and the colder looks by which
care and power mark the official man, the minister had ever enjoyed that
personal popularity which the indefinable, external something, that wins
and pleases, can alone confer. But he had even then, as ever, that
felicitous reserve which Rochefoucauld has called the "mystery of the
body,"--that thin yet guardian veil which reveals but the strong outlines
of character, and excites so much of interest by provoking so much of
conjecture. To the man who is born with this reserve, which is wholly
distinct from shyness, the world gives credit for qualities and talents
beyond those that it perceives; and such characters are attractive to
others in proportion as these last are gifted with the imagination which
loves to divine the unknown.

At the first interview, the impression which this man produced upon Nora
Avenel was profound and strange. She had heard of him before as the one.
whom Harley most loved and looked up to; and she recognized at once in
his mien, his aspect, his words, the very tone of his deep tranquil
voice, the power to which woman, whatever her intellect, never attains;
and to which, therefore, she imputes a nobility not always genuine,--
namely, the power of deliberate purpose and self-collected, serene
ambition. The effect that Nora produced on Egerton was not less sudden.
He was startled by a beauty of face and form that belonged to that rarest
order, which we never behold but once or twice in our lives.

He was yet more amazed to discover that the aristocracy of mind could
bestow a grace that no aristocracy of birth could surpass. He was
prepared for a simple, blushing village girl, and involuntarily he bowed
low his proud front at the first sight of that delicate bloom, and that
exquisite gentleness which is woman's surest passport to the respect of
man. Neither in the first, nor the second, nor the third interview, nor,
indeed, till after many interviews, could he summon up courage to
commence his mission, and allude to Harley. And when he did so at last
his words faltered. But Nora's words were clear to him. He saw that
Harley was not loved; and a joy, which he felt as guilty, darted through
his whole frame. From that interview Audley returned home greatly
agitated, and at war with himself. Often, in the course of this story,
has it been hinted that, under all Egerton's external coldness and
measured self-control, lay a nature capable of strong and stubborn
passions. Those passions broke forth then. He felt that love had
already entered into the heart, which the trust of his friend should
have sufficed to guard.

"I will go there no more," said he, abruptly, to Harley.

"But why?"

"The girl does not love you. Cease then to think of her."

Harley disbelieved him, and grew indignant. But Audley had every worldly
motive to assist his sense of honour. He was poor, though with the
reputation of wealth, deeply involved in debt, resolved to rise in life,
tenacious of his position in the world's esteem. Against a host of
counteracting influences, love fought single-handed. Audley's was a
strong nature; but, alas! in strong natures, if resistance to temptation
is of granite, so the passions that they admit are of fire.

Trite is the remark that the destinies of our lives often date from the
impulses of unguarded moments. It was so with this man, to an ordinary
eye so cautious and so deliberate. Harley one day came to him in great
grief; he had heard that Nora was ill: he implored Andley to go once more
and ascertain. Audley went. Lady Jane Horton, who was suffering under a
disease which not long afterwards proved fatal, was too ill to receive
him. He was shown into the room set apart as Nora's. While waiting for
her entrance, he turned mechanically over the leaves of an album, which
Nora, suddenly summoned away to attend Lady Jane, had left behind her on
the table. He saw the sketch of his own features; he read words
inscribed below it,--words of such artless tenderness, and such unhoping
sorrow, words written by one who had been accustomed to regard her genius
as her sole confidant, under Heaven; to pour out to it, as the solitary
poet-heart is impelled to do, thoughts, feelings, the confession of
mystic sighs, which it would never breathe to a living ear, and, save at
such moments, scarcely acknowledge to itself. Audley saw that he was
beloved, and the revelation, with a sudden light, consumed all the
barriers between himself and his own love. And at that moment Nora
entered. She saw him bending over the book. She uttered a cry, sprang
forward, and then sank down, covering her face with her hands. But
Audley was at her feet. He forgot his friend, his trust; he forgot
ambition, he forgot the world. It was his own cause that he pleaded,--
his own love that burst forth from his lips. And when the two that day
parted, they were betrothed each to each. Alas for them, and alas for
Harley! And now this man, who had hitherto valued himself as the very
type of gentleman, whom all his young contemporaries had so regarded and
so revered, had to press the hand of a confiding friend, and bid adieu to
truth. He had to amuse, to delay, to mislead his boy-rival,--to say that
he was already subduing Nora's hesitating doubts, and that with a little
time, she could be induced to consent to forget Harley's rank, and his
parent's pride, and become his wife. And Harley believed in Egerton,
without one suspicion on the mirror of his loyal soul.

Meanwhile, Audley, impatient of his own position,--impatient, as strong
minds ever are, to hasten what they have once resolved, to terminate a
suspense that every interview with Harley tortured alike by jealousy and
shame, to pass out of the reach of scruples, and to say to himself,
"Right--or wrong, there is no looking back; the deed is done,"--Audley,
thus hurried on by the impetus of his own power of will, pressed for
speedy and secret nuptials,--secret, till his fortunes, then wavering,
were more assured, his career fairly commenced. This was not his
strongest motive, though it was one. He shrank from the discovery of his
wrong to his friend, desired to delay the self-humiliation of such
announcement, until, as he persuaded himself, Harley's boyish passion was
over, had yielded to the new allurements that would naturally beset his
way. Stifling his conscience, Audley sought to convince himself that the
day would soon come when Harley could hear with indifference that Nora
Avenel was another's. "The dream of an hour, at his age," murmured the
elder friend; "but at mine the passion of a life!" He did not speak of
these latter motives for concealment to Nora. He felt that to own the
extent of his treason to a friend would lower him in her eyes. He spoke
therefore but slightingly of Harley, treated the boy's suit as a thing
past and gone. He dwelt only on reasons that compelled self-sacrifice on
his side or hers. She did not hesitate which to choose. And so, where
Nora loved, so submissively did she believe in the superiority of the
lover, that she would not pause to hear a murmur from her own loftier
nature, or question the propriety of what he deemed wise and good.

Abandoning prudence in this arch affair of life, Audley still preserved
his customary caution in minor details. And this indeed was
characteristic of him throughout all his career, heedless in large
things, wary in small. He would not trust Lady Jane Horton with his
secret, still less Lady Lansmere. He simply represented to the former
that Nora was no longer safe from Harley's determined pursuit under Lady
Jane's roof, and that she had better elude the boy's knowledge of her
movements, and go quietly away for a while, to lodge with some connection
of her own.

And so, with Lady Jane's acquiescence, Nora went first to the house
of a very distant kinswoman of her mother's, and afterwards to one that
Egerton took as their bridal home, under the name of Bertram. He
arranged all that might render their marriage most free from the chance
of premature discovery. But it so happened on the very morning of their
bridal, that one of the witnesses he selected (a confidential servant of
his own) was seized with apoplexy. Considering, in haste, where to find
a substitute, Egerton thought of Levy, his own private solicitor, his own
fashionable money-lender, a man with whom he was then as intimate as a
fine gentleman is with the lawyer of his own age, who knows all his
affairs, and has helped, from pure friendship, to make them as bad as
they are! Levy was thus suddenly summoned. Egerton, who was in great
haste, did not at first communicate to him the name of the intended
bride; but he said enough of the imprudence of the marriage, and his
reasons for secrecy, to bring on himself the strongest remonstrances; for
Levy had always reckoned on Egerton's making a wealthy marriage,--leaving
to Egerton the wife, and hoping to appropriate to himself the wealth, all
in the natural course of business. Egerton did not listen to him, but
hurried him on towards the place at which the ceremony was to be
performed; and Levy actually saw the bride before he had learned her
name. The usurer masked his raging emotions, and fulfilled his part in
the rites. His smile, when he congratulated the bride, might have shot
cold into her heart; but her eyes were cast on the earth, seeing there
but a shadow from heaven, and her heart was blindly sheltering itself in
the bosom to which it was given evermore. She did not perceive the smile
of hate that barbed the words of joy. Nora never thought it necessary
later to tell Egerton that Levy had been a refused suitor. Indeed, with
the exquisite tact of love, she saw that such a confidence, the idea of
such a rival, would have wounded the pride of her high-bred, well-born
husband.

And now, while Harley L'Estrange, frantic with the news that Nora had
left Lady Jane's roof, and purposely misled into wrong directions, was
seeking to trace her refuge in vain, now Egerton, in an assumed name, in
a remote quarter, far from the clubs, in which his word was oracular, far
from the pursuits, whether of pastime or toil, that had hitherto
engrossed his active mind, gave himself up, with wonder at his own
surrender, to the only vision of fairyland that ever weighs down the
watchful eyelids of hard ambition. The world for a while shut out, he
missed it not. He knew not of it. He looked into two loving eyes that
haunted him ever after, through a stern and arid existence, and said
murmuringly, "Why, this, then, is real happiness!" Often, often, in the
solitude of other years, to repeat to himself the same words, save that
for is, he then murmured was! And Nora, with her grand, full heart, all
her luxuriant wealth of fancy and of thought, child of light and of song,
did she then never discover that there was something comparatively narrow
and sterile in the nature to which she had linked her fate? Not there
could ever be sympathy in feelings, brilliant and shifting as the tints
of the rainbow. When Audley pressed her heart to his own, could he
comprehend one finer throb of its beating? Was all the iron of his mind
worth one grain of the gold she had cast away in Harley's love?

Did Nora already discover this? Surely no. Genius feels no want, no
repining, while the heart is contented. Genius in her paused and
slumbered: it had been as the ministrant of solitude: it was needed no
more. If a woman loves deeply some one below her own grade in the mental
and spiritual orders, how often we see that she unconsciously quits her
own rank, comes meekly down to the level of the beloved, is afraid lest
he should deem her the superior,--she who would not even be the equal.
Nora knew no more that she had genius; she only knew that she had love.

And so here, the journal which Leonard was reading changed its tone,
sinking into that quiet happiness which is but quiet because it is so
deep. This interlude in the life of a man like Audley Egerton could
never have been long; many circumstances conspired to abridge it. His
affairs were in great disorder; they were all under Levy's management.
Demands that had before slumbered, or been mildly urged, grew menacing
and clamorous. Harley, too, returned to London from his futile
researches, and looked out for Audley. Audley was forced to leave his
secret Eden, and reappear in the common world; and thenceforward it was
only by stealth that he came to his bridal home,--a visitor, no more the
inmate. But more loud and fierce grew the demands of his creditors, now
when Egerton had most need of all which respectability and position and
belief of pecuniary independence can do to raise the man who has
encumbered his arms, and crippled his steps towards fortune. He was
threatened with writs, with prison. Levy said "that to borrow more would
be but larger ruin," shrugged his shoulders, and even recommended a
voluntary retreat to the King's Bench. "No place so good for frightening
one's creditors into compounding their claims; but why," added Levy, with
covert sneer, "why not go to young L'Estrange, a boy made to be borrowed
from!"

Levy, who had known from Lady Jane of Harley's pursuit of Nora, had
learned already how to avenge himself on Egerton. Audley could not apply
to the friend he had betrayed. And as to other friends, no man in town
had a greater number. And no man in town knew better that he should lose
them all if he were once known to be in want of their money. Mortified,
harassed, tortured, shunning Harley, yet ever sought by him, fearful of
each knock at his door, Audley Egerton escaped to the mortgaged remnant
of his paternal estate, on which there was a gloomy manor-house, long
uninhabited, and there applied a mind, afterwards renowned for its quick
comprehension of business, to the investigation of his affairs, with a
view to save some wreck from the flood that swelled momently around him.

And now--to condense as much as possible a record that runs darkly on
into pain and sorrow--now Levy began to practise his vindictive arts; and
the arts gradually prevailed. On pretence of assisting Egerton in the
arrangement of his affairs, which he secretly contrived, however, still
more to complicate, he came down frequently to Egerton Hall for a few
hours, arriving by the mail, and watching the effect which Nora's almost
daily letters produced on the bridegroom, irritated by the practical
cares of life. He was thus constantly at hand to instil into the mind of
the ambitious man a regret for the imprudence of hasty passion, or to
embitter the remorse which Audley felt for his treachery to L'Estrange.
Thus ever bringing before the mind of the harassed debtor images at war
with love, and with the poetry of life, he disattuned it (so to speak)
for the reception of Nora's letters, all musical as they were with such
thoughts as the most delicate fancy inspires to the most earnest love.
Egerton was one of those men who never confide their affairs frankly to
women. Nora, when she thus wrote, was wholly in the dark as to the
extent of his stern prosaic distress. And so--and so--Levy always near--
type of the prose of life in its most cynic form--so by degrees all that
redundant affluence of affection, with its gushes of grief for his
absence, prayers for his return, sweet reproach if a post failed to bring
back an answer to the woman's yearning sighs,--all this grew, to the
sensible, positive man of real life, like sickly romantic exaggeration.
The bright arrows shot too high into heaven to hit the mark set so near
to the earth. Ah, common fate of all superior natures! What treasure,
and how wildly wasted! "By-the-by," said Levy, one morning, as he was
about to take leave of Audley and return to town,--"by-the-by, I shall be
this evening in the neighbourhood of Mrs. Egerton."

EGERTON.--"Say Mrs. Bertram!"

LEVY.--"Ay; will she not be in want of some pecuniary supplies?"

EGERTON. "My wife!--Not yet. I must first be wholly ruined before she
can want; and if I were so, do you think I should not be by her side?"

LEVY.--"I beg pardon, my dear fellow; your pride of gentleman is so
susceptible that it is hard for a lawyer not to wound it unawares. Your
wife, then, does not know the exact state of your affairs?"

EGERTON.--"Of course not. Who would confide to a woman things in which
she could do nothing, except to tease one the more?"

LEVY.--"True, and a poetess too! I have prevented your finishing your
answer to Mrs. Bertram's last letter. Can I take it--it may save a day's
delay--that is, if you do not object to my calling on her this evening."

EGERTON (sitting down to his unfinished letter).--"Object! no."

LEVY (looking at his watch).--"Be quick, or I shall lose the coach."

EGEPTON (sealing the letter).--"There. And I should be obliged to you if
you would call; and without alarming her as to my circumstances, you can
just say that you know I am much harassed about important affairs at
present, and so soothe the effects of my very short answers--"

LEVY.--"To those doubly-crossed, very long letters,--I will."

"Poor Nora," said Egerton, sighing, "she will think this answer brief and
churlish enough. Explain my excuses kindly, so that they will serve for
the future. I really have no time and no heart for sentiment. The
little I ever had is well-nigh worried out of me. Still I love her
fondly and deeply."

LEVY.--"You must have done so. I never thought it in you to sacrifice
the world to a woman."

EGERTON.--"Nor I either; but," added the strong man, conscious of that
power which rules the world infinitely more than knowledge, conscious of
tranquil courage, "but I have not sacrificed the world yet. This right
arm shall bear up her and myself too."

LEVY.--"Well said! but in the mean while, for heaven's sake, don't
attempt to go to London, nor to leave this place; for, in that case,
I know you will be arrested, and then adieu to all hopes of parliament,
--of a career."

Audley's haughty countenance darkened; as the dog, in his bravest mode,
turns dismayed from the stone plucked from the mire, so, when Ambition
rears itself to defy mankind, whisper "disgrace and a jail,"--and, lo,
crestfallen, it slinks away! That evening Levy called on Nora, and
ingratiating himself into her favour by praise of Egerton, with indirect
humble apologetic allusions to his own former presumption, he prepared
the way to renewed visits; she was so lonely, and she so loved to see one
who was fresh from seeing Audley, one who would talk to her of him! By
degrees the friendly respectful visitor thus stole into her confidence;
and then, with all his panegyrics on Audley's superior powers and gifts,
he began to dwell upon the young husband's worldly aspirations, and care
for his career; dwell on them so as vaguely to alarm Nora,--to imply
that, dear as she was, she was still but second to Ambition. His way
thus prepared, he next began to insinuate his respectful pity at her
equivocal position, dropped hints of gossip and slander, feared that the
marriage might be owned too late to preserve reputation. And then what
would be the feelings of the proud Egerton if his wife were excluded from
that world whose opinion he so prized? Insensibly thus he led her on to
express (though timidly) her own fear, her own natural desire, in her
letters to Audley. When could the marriage be proclaimed? Proclaimed!
Audley felt that to proclaim such a marriage at such a moment would be to
fling away his last cast for fame and fortune. And Harley, too,--Harley
still so uncured of his frantic love! Levy was sure to be at hand when
letters like these arrived.

And now Levy went further still in his determination to alienate these
two hearts. He contrived, by means of his various agents, to circulate
through Nora's neighbourhood the very slanders at which he had hinted.
He contrived that she should be insulted when she went abroad, outraged
at home by the sneers of her own servant, and tremble with shame at her
own shadow upon her abandoned bridal hearth.

Just in the midst of this intolerable anguish, Levy reappeared. His
crowning hour was ripe. He intimated his knowledge of the humiliations
Nora had undergone, expressed his deep compassion, offered to intercede
with Egerton "to do her justice." He used ambiguous phrases, that
shocked her ear and tortured her heart, and thus provoked her on to
demand him to explain; and then, throwing her into a wild state of
indefinite alarm, in which he obtained her solemn promise not to divulge
to Audley what he was about to communicate, he said, with villanous
hypocrisy of reluctant shame, "that her marriage was not strictly legal;
that the forms required by the law had not been complied with, that
Audley, unintentionally or purposely, had left himself free to disown the
rite and desert the bride." While Nora stood stunned and speechless at a
falsehood which, with lawyer-like show, he contrived to make truth-like
to her inexperience, he hurried rapidly on, to re-awake on her mind the
impression of Audley's pride, ambition, and respect for worldly position.
"These are your obstacles," said he; "but I think I may induce him to
repair the wrong, and right you at last." Righted at last--oh, infamy!

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.