Book: Night and Morning, Volume 3

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Night and Morning, Volume 3




"It seems to me a little strange," said Mr. Gawtrey, raising his voice so
as to be heard by the party, "that a coiner so dexterous as Monsieur
Giraumont should not be known to any of us except our friend Birnie."

"Not at all," replied Giraumont; "I worked only with Bouchard and two
others since sent to the galleys. We were but a small fraternity--
everything has its commencement."

"_C'est juste: buvez, donc, cher ami_!"

The wine circulated. Gawtrey began again:

"You have had a bad accident, seemingly, Monsieur Giraumont. How did you
lose your eye?"

"In a scuffle with the _gens d' armes_ the night Bouchard was taken and I
escaped. Such misfortunes are on the cards."

"C'est juste: buvez, donc, Monsieur Giraumont!"

Again there was a pause, and again Gawtrey's deep voice was heard.

"You wear a wig, I think, Monsieur Giraumont? To judge by your eyelashes
your own hair has been a handsomer colour."

"We seek disguise, not beauty, my host; and the police have sharp eyes."

"_C'est juste: buvez, donc-vieux Renard_! When did we two meet last?"

"Never, that I know of."

"_Ce n'est pas vrai! buvez, donc, MONSIEUR FAVART_!"

At the sound of that name the company started in dismay and confusion,
and the police officer, forgetting himself for the moment, sprang from
his seat, and put his right hand into his blouse.

"Ho, there!--treason!" cried Gawtrey, in a voice of thunder; and he
caught the unhappy man by the throat. It was the work of a moment.
Morton, where he sat, beheld a struggle--he heard a death-cry. He saw
the huge form of the master-coiner rising above all the rest, as
cutlasses gleamed and eyes sparkled round. He saw the quivering and
powerless frame of the unhappy guest raised aloft in those mighty arms,
and presently it was hurled along the table-bottles crashing--the board
shaking beneath its weight--and lay before the very eyes of Morton, a
distorted and lifeless mass. At the same instant Gawtrey sprang upon the
table, his black frown singling out from the group the ashen, cadaverous
face of the shrinking traitor. Birnie had darted from the table--he was
half-way towards the sliding door--his face, turned over his shoulder,
met the eyes of the chief.

"Devil!" shouted Gawtrey, in his terrible voice, which the echoes of the
vault gave back from side to side. "Did I not give thee up my soul that
thou mightest not compass my death? Hark ye! thus die my slavery and all
our secrets!" The explosion of his pistol half swallowed up the last
word, and with a single groan the traitor fell on the floor, pierced
through the brain--then there was a dead and grim hush as the smoke
rolled slowly along the roof of the dreary vault.

Morton sank back on his seat, and covered his face with his hands. The
last seal on the fate of THE MAN OF CRIME was set; the last wave in the
terrible and mysterious tide of his destiny had dashed on his soul to the
shore whence there is no return. Vain, now and henceforth, the humour,
the sentiment, the kindly impulse, the social instincts which had
invested that stalwart shape with dangerous fascination, which had
implied the hope of ultimate repentance, of redemption even in this
world. The HOUR and the CIRCUMSTANCE had seized their prey; and the
self-defence, which a lawless career rendered a necessity, left the
eternal die of blood upon his doom!

"Friends, I have saved you," said Gawtrey, slowly gazing on the corpse of
his second victim, while he turned the pistol to his belt. "I have not
quailed before this man's eye" (and he spurned the clay of the officer as
he spoke with a revengeful scorn) "without treasuring up its aspect in my
heart of hearts. I knew him when he entered--knew him through his
disguise--yet, faith, it was a clever one! Turn up his face and gaze on
him now; he will never terrify us again, unless there be truth in ghosts!"

Murmuring and tremulous the coiners scrambled on the table and examined
the dead man. From this task Gawtrey interrupted them, for his quick eye
detected, with the pistols under the policeman's blouse, a whistle of
metal of curious construction, and he conjectured at once that danger was
at hand.

"I have saved you, I say, but only for the hour. This deed cannot sleep.
See, he had help within call! The police knew where to look for their
comrade--we are dispersed. Each for himself. Quick, divide the spoils!
_Sauve qui peat_!"

Then Morton heard where he sat, his hands still clasped before his face,
a confused hubbub of voices, the jingle of money, the scrambling of feet,
the creaking of doors. All was silent!

A strong grasp drew his hands from his eyes.

"Your first scene of life against life," said Gawtrey's voice, which
seemed fearfully changed to the ear that beard it. "Bah! what would you
think of a battle? Come to our eyrie: the carcasses are gone."

Morton looked fearfully round the vault. He and Gawtrey were alone. His
eyes sought the places where the dead had lain--they were removed--no
vestige of the deeds, not even a drop of blood.

"Come, take up your cutlass, come!" repeated the voice of the chief, as
with his dim lantern--now the sole light of the vault--he stood in the
shadow of the doorway.

Morton rose, took up the weapon mechanically, and followed that terrible
guide, mute and unconscious, as a Soul follows a Dream through the House
of Sleep!




CHAPTER X.

"Sleep no more!"--_Macbeth_

After winding through gloomy and labyrinthine passages, which conducted
to a different range of cellars from those entered by the unfortunate
Favart, Gawtrey emerged at the foot of a flight of stairs, which, dark,
narrow, and in many places broken, had been probably appropriated to
servants of the house in its days of palmier glory. By these steps the
pair regained their attic. Gawtrey placed the lantern on the table and
seated himself in silence. Morton, who had recovered his self-possession
and formed his resolution, gazed on him for some moments, equally
taciturn. At length he spoke:

"Gawtrey!"

"I bade you not call me by that name," said the coiner; for we need
scarcely say that in his new trade he had assumed a new appellation.

"It is the least guilty one by which I have known you," returned Morton,
firmly. "It is for the last time I call you by it! I demanded to see by
what means one to whom I had entrusted my fate supported himself. I have
seen," continued the young man, still firmly, but with a livid cheek and
lip, "and the tie between us is rent for ever. Interrupt me not! it is
not for me to blame you. I have eaten of your bread and drunk of your
cup. Confiding in you too blindly, and believing that you were at least
free from those dark and terrible crimes for which there is no expiation
--at least in this life--my conscience seared by distress, my very soul
made dormant by despair, I surrendered myself to one leading a career
equivocal, suspicious, dishonourable perhaps, but still not, as I
believed, of atrocity and bloodshed. I wake at the brink of the abyss--
my mother's hand beckons to me from the grave; I think I hear her voice
while I address you--I recede while it is yet time--we part, and for
ever!"

Gawtrey, whose stormy passion was still deep upon his soul, had listened
hitherto in sullen and dogged silence, with a gloomy frown on his knitted
brow; he now rose with an oath--

"Part! that I may let loose on the world a new traitor! Part! when you
have seen me fresh from an act that, once whispered, gives me to the
guillotine! Part--never! at least alive!"

"I have said it," said Morton, folding his arms calmly; I say it to your
face, though I might part from you in secret. Frown not on me, man of
blood! I am fearless as yourself! In another minute I am gone."

"Ah! is it so?" said Gawtrey; and glancing round the room, which
contained two doors, the one concealed by the draperies of a bed,
communicating with the stairs by which they had entered, the other with
the landing of the principal and common flight: he turned to the former,
within his reach, which he locked, and put the key into his pocket, and
then, throwing across the latter a heavy swing bar, which fell into its
socket with a harsh noise,--before the threshold he placed his vast bulk,
and burst into his loud, fierce laugh: "Ho! ho! Slave and fool, once
mine, you were mine body and soul for ever!"

"Tempter, I defy you! stand back!" And, firm and dauntless, Morton laid
his hand on the giant's vest.

Gawtrey seemed more astonished than enraged. He looked hard at his
daring associate, on whose lip the down was yet scarcely dark.

"Boy," said he, "off! do not rouse the devil in me again! I could crush
you with a hug."

"My soul supports my body, and I am armed," said Morton, laying hand on
his cutlass. "But you dare not harm me, nor I you; bloodstained as you
are, you gave me shelter and bread; but accuse me not that I will save my
soul while it is yet time!--Shall my mother have blessed me in vain upon
her death-bed?"

Gawtrey drew back, and Morton, by a sudden impulse, grasped his hand.

"Oh! hear me-hear me!" he cried, with great emotion. "Abandon this
horrible career; you have been decoyed and betrayed to it by one who can
deceive or terrify you no more! Abandon it, and I will never desert you.
For her sake--for your Fanny's sake--pause, like me, before the gulf
swallow us. Let us fly!--far to the New World--to any land where our
thews and sinews, our stout hands and hearts, can find an honest mart.
Men, desperate as we are, have yet risen by honest means. Take her, your
orphan, with us. We will work for her, both of us. Gawtrey! hear me.
It is not my voice that speaks to you--it is your good angel's!"

Gawtrey fell back against the wall, and his chest heaved.

"Morton," he said, with choked and tremulous accent, "go now; leave me to
my fate! I have sinned against you--shamefully sinned. It seemed to me
so sweet to have a friend; in your youth and character of mind there was
so much about which the tough strings of my heart wound themselves, that
I could not bear to lose you--to suffer you to know me for what I was.
I blinded--I deceived you as to my past deeds; that was base in me: but I
swore to my own heart to keep you unexposed to every danger, and free
from every vice that darkened my own path. I kept that oath till this
night, when, seeing that you began to recoil from me, and dreading that
you should desert me, I thought to bind you to me for ever by implicating
you in this fellowship of crime. I am punished, and justly. Go, I
repeat--leave me to the fate that strides nearer and nearer to me day by
day. You are a boy still--I am no longer young. Habit is a second
nature. Still--still I could repent--I could begin life again. But
repose!--to look back--to remember--to be haunted night and day with
deeds that shall meet me bodily and face to face on the last day--"

"Add not to the spectres! Come--fly this night--this hour!"

Gawtrey paused, irresolute and wavering, when at that moment he heard
steps on the stairs below. He started--as starts the boar caught in his
lair--and listened, pale and breathless.

"Hush!--they are on us!--they come!" as he whispered, the key from
without turned in the wards--the door shook. "Soft! the bar preserves us
both--this way." And the coiner crept to the door of the private stairs.
He unlocked and opened it cautiously. A man sprang through the aperture:

"Yield!--you are my prisoner!"

"Never!" cried Gawtrey, hurling back the intruder, and clapping to the
door, though other and stout men were pressing against it with all their
power.

"Ho! ho! Who shall open the tiger's cage?"

At both doors now were heard the sound of voices. "Open in the king's
name, or expect no mercy!"

"Hist!" said Gawtrey. "One way yet--the window--the rope."

Morton opened the casement--Gawtrey uncoiled the rope. The dawn was
breaking; it was light in the streets, but all seemed quiet without. The
doors reeled and shook beneath the pressure of the pursuers. Gawtrey
flung the rope across the street to the opposite parapet; after two or
three efforts, the grappling-hook caught firm hold--the perilous path was
made.

"On!--quick!--loiter not!" whispered Gawtrey; "you are active--it seems
more dangerous than it is--cling with both hands-shut your eyes. When on
the other side--you see the window of Birnie's room,--enter it--descend
the stairs--let yourself out, and you are safe."

"Go first," said Morton, in the same tone: "I will not leave you now: you
will be longer getting across than I shall. I will keep guard till you
are over."

"Hark! hark!--are you mad? You keep guard! what is your strength to
mine? Twenty men shall not move that door, while my weight is against
it. Quick, or you destroy us both! Besides, you will hold the rope for
me, it may not be strong enough for my bulk in itself. Stay!--stay one
moment. If you escape, and I fall--Fanny--my father, he will take care
of her,--you remember--thanks! Forgive me all! Go; that's right!"

With a firm impulse, Morton threw himself on the dreadful bridge; it
swung and crackled at his weight. Shifting his grasp rapidly--holding
his breath--with set teeth-with closed eyes--he moved on--he gained the
parapet--he stood safe on the opposite side. And now, straining his eyes
across, he saw through the open casement into the chamber he had just
quitted. Gawtrey was still standing against the door to the principal
staircase, for that of the two was the weaker and the more assailed.
Presently the explosion of a fire-arm was heard; they had shot through
the panel. Gawtrey seemed wounded, for he staggered forward, and uttered
a fierce cry; a moment more, and he gained the window--he seized the
rope--he hung over the tremendous depth! Morton knelt by the parapet,
holding the grappling-hook in its place, with convulsive grasp, and
fixing his eyes, bloodshot with fear and suspense, on the huge bulk that
clung for life to that slender cord!

"Le voiles! Le voiles!" cried a voice from the opposite side. Morton
raised his gaze from Gawtrey; the casement was darkened by the forms of
his pursuers--they had burst into the room--an officer sprang upon the
parapet, and Gawtrey, now aware of his danger, opened his eyes, and as he
moved on, glared upon the foe. The policeman deliberately raised his
pistol--Gawtrey arrested himself--from a wound in his side the blood
trickled slowly and darkly down, drop by drop, upon the stones below;
even the officers of law shuddered as they eyed him--his hair bristling
--his cheek white--his lips drawn convulsively from his teeth, and his
eyes glaring from beneath the frown of agony and menace in which yet
spoke the indomitable power and fierceness of the man. His look, so
fixed--so intense--so stern, awed the policeman; his hand trembled as he
fired, and the ball struck the parapet an inch below the spot where
Morton knelt. An indistinct, wild, gurgling sound-half-laugh, half-yell
of scorn and glee, broke from Gawtrey's lips. He swung himself on--near
--near--nearer--a yard from the parapet.

"You are saved!" cried Morton; when at the moment a volley burst from
the fatal casement--the smoke rolled over both the fugitives--a groan, or
rather howl, of rage, and despair, and agony, appalled even the hardest
on whose ear it came. Morton sprang to his feet and looked below. He
saw on the rugged stones far down, a dark, formless, motionless mass--the
strong man of passion and levity--the giant who had played with life and
soul, as an infant with the baubles that it prizes and breaks--was what
the Caesar and the leper alike are, when the clay is without God's
breath--what glory, genius, power, and beauty, would be for ever and for
ever, if there were no God!

"There is another!" cried the voice of one of the pursuers. "Fire!"

"Poor Gawtrey!" muttered Philip. "I will fulfil your last wish;" and
scarcely conscious of the bullet that whistled by him, he disappeared
behind the parapet.




CHAPTER XI.

"Gently moved
By the soft wind of whispering silks."--DECKER.

The reader may remember that while Monsieur Favart and Mr. Birnie were
holding commune in the lane, the sounds of festivity were heard from a
house in the adjoining street. To that house we are now summoned.

At Paris, the gaieties of balls, or soirees, are, I believe, very rare in
that period of the year in which they are most frequent in London. The
entertainment now given was in honour of a christening; the lady who gave
it, a relation of the new-born.

Madame de Merville was a young widow; even before her marriage she had
been distinguished in literature; she had written poems of more than
common excellence; and being handsome, of good family, and large fortune,
her talents made her an object of more interest than they might otherwise
have done. Her poetry showed great sensibility and tenderness. If
poetry be any index to the heart, you would have thought her one to love
truly and deeply. Nevertheless, since she married--as girls in France
do--not to please herself, but her parents, she made a _mariage de
convenance_. Monsieur de Merville was a sober, sensible man, past middle
age. Not being fond of poetry, and by no means coveting a professional
author for his wife, he had during their union, which lasted four years,
discouraged his wife's liaison with Apollo. But her mind, active and
ardent, did not the less prey upon itself. At the age of four-and-twenty
she became a widow, with an income large even in England for a single
woman, and at Paris constituting no ordinary fortune. Madame de
Merville, however, though a person of elegant taste, was neither
ostentatious nor selfish; she had no children, and she lived quietly in
apartments, handsome, indeed, but not more than adequate to the small
establishment which--where, as on the Continent, the costly convenience
of an entire house is not usually incurred--sufficed for her retinue.
She devoted at least half her income, which was entirely at her own
disposal, partly to the aid of her own relations, who were not rich, and
partly to the encouragement of the literature she cultivated. Although
she shrank from the ordeal of publication, her poems and sketches of
romance were read to her own friends, and possessed an eloquence seldom
accompanied with so much modesty. Thus, her reputation, though not blown
about the winds, was high in her own circle, and her position in fashion
and in fortune made her looked up to by her relations as the head of her
family; they regarded her as _femme superieure_, and her advice with them
was equivalent to a command. Eugenie de Merville was a strange mixture
of qualities at once feminine and masculine. On the one hand, she had a
strong will, independent views, some contempt for the world, and followed
her own inclinations without servility to the opinion of others; on the
other hand, she was susceptible, romantic, of a sweet, affectionate, kind
disposition. Her visit to M. Love, however indiscreet, was not less in
accordance with her character than her charity to the mechanic's wife;
masculine and careless where an eccentric thing was to be done--curiosity
satisfied, or some object in female diplomacy achieved--womanly,
delicate, and gentle, the instant her benevolence was appealed to or her
heart touched. She had now been three years a widow, and was
consequently at the age of twenty-seven. Despite the tenderness of her
poetry and her character, her reputation was unblemished. She had never
been in love. People who are much occupied do not fall in love easily;
besides, Madame de Merville was refining, exacting, and wished to find
heroes where she only met handsome dandies or ugly authors. Moreover,
Eugenie was both a vain and a proud person--vain of her celebrity and
proud of her birth. She was one whose goodness of heart made her always
active in promoting the happiness of others. She was not only generous
and charitable, but willing to serve people by good offices as well as
money. Everybody loved her. The new-born infant, to whose addition to
the Christian community the fete of this night was dedicated, was the
pledge of a union which Madame de Merville had managed to effect between
two young persons, first cousins to each other, and related to herself.
There had been scruples of parents to remove--money matters to adjust--
Eugenie had smoothed all. The husband and wife, still lovers, looked up
to her as the author, under Heaven, of their happiness.

The gala of that night had been, therefore, of a nature more than usually
pleasurable, and the mirth did not sound hollow, but wrung from the
heart. Yet, as Eugenie from time to time contemplated the young people,
whose eyes ever sought each other--so fair, so tender, and so joyous as
they seemed--a melancholy shadow darkened her brow, and she sighed
involuntarily. Once the young wife, Madame d'Anville, approaching her
timidly, said:

"Ah! my sweet cousin, when shall we see you as happy as ourselves? There
is such happiness," she added, innocently, and with a blush, "in being a
mother!--that little life all one's own--it is something to think of
every hour!"

"Perhaps," said Eugenie, smiling, and seeking to turn the conversation
from a subject that touched too nearly upon feelings and thoughts her
pride did not wish to reveal--"perhaps it is you, then, who have made our
cousin, poor Monsieur de Vaudemont, so determined to marry? Pray, be
more cautious with him. How difficult I have found it to prevent his
bringing into our family some one to make us all ridiculous!"

"True," said Madame d'Anville, laughing. "But then, the Vicomte is so
poor, and in debt. He would fall in love, not with the demoiselle, but
the dower. _A propos_ of that, how cleverly you took advantage of his
boastful confession to break off his liaisons with that _bureau de
mariage_."

"Yes; I congratulate myself on that manoeuvre. Unpleasant as it was to
go to such a place (for, of course, I could not send for Monsieur Love
here), it would have been still more unpleasant to have received such a
Madame de Vaudemont as our cousin would have presented to us. Only
think--he was the rival of an _epicier_! I heard that there was some
curious _denouement_ to the farce of that establishment; but I could
never get from Vaudemont the particulars. He was ashamed of them, I
fancy."

"What droll professions there are in Paris!" said Madame d'Anville. "As
if people could not marry without going to an office for a spouse as we
go for a servant! And so the establishment is broken up? And you never
again saw that dark, wild-looking boy who so struck your fancy that you
have taken him as the original for the Murillo sketch of the youth in
that charming tale you read to us the other evening? Ah! cousin, I think
you were a little taken with him. The _bureau de mariage_ had its
allurements for you as well as for our poor cousin!" The young mother
said this laughingly and carelessly.

"Pooh!" returned Madame de Merville, laughing also; but a slight blush
broke over her natural paleness. "But a propos of the Vicomte. You know
how cruelly he has behaved to that poor boy of his by his English wife--
never seen him since he was an infant--kept him at some school in
England; and all because his vanity does not like the world to know that
he has a son of nineteen! Well, I have induced him to recall this poor
youth."

"Indeed! and how?"

"Why," said Eugenie, with a smile, "he wanted a loan, poor man, and I
could therefore impose conditions by way of interest. But I also managed
to conciliate him to the proposition, by representing that, if the young
man were good-looking, he might, himself, with our connections, &c., form
an advantageous marriage; and that in such a case, if the father treated
him now justly and kindly, he would naturally partake with the father
whatever benefits the marriage might confer."

"Ah! you are an excellent diplomatist, Eugenie; and you turn people's
heads by always acting from your heart. Hush! here comes the Vicomte"

"A delightful ball," said Monsieur de Vaudemont, approaching the hostess.
"Pray, has that young lady yonder, in the pink dress, any fortune? She
is pretty--eh? You observe she is looking at me--I mean at us!"

"My dear cousin, what a compliment you pay to marriage! You have had two
wives, and you are ever on the _qui vive_ for a third!"

"What would you have me do?--we cannot resist the overtures of your
bewitching sex. Hum--what fortune has she?"

"Not a _sou_; besides, she is engaged."

"Oh! now I look at her, she is not pretty--not at all. I made a mistake.
I did not mean her; I meant the young lady in blue."

"Worse and worse--she is married already. Shall I present you?"

"Ah, Monsieur de Vaudemont," said Madame d'Anville; "have you found out a
new bureau de mariage?"

The Vicomte pretended not to hear that question. But, turning to
Eugenie, took her aside, and said, with an air in which he endeavoured to
throw a great deal of sorrow, "You know, my dear cousin, that, to oblige
you, I consented to send for my son, though, as I always said, it is very
unpleasant for a man like me, in the prime of life, to hawk about a great
boy of nineteen or twenty. People soon say, 'Old Vaudemont and younq
Vaudemont.' However, a father's feelings are never appealed to in vain."
(Here the Vicomte put his handkerchief to his eyes, and after a pause,
continued,)--"I sent for him--I even went to your old _bonne_, Madame
Dufour, to make a bargain for her lodgings, and this day--guess my grief
--I received a letter sealed with black. My son is dead!--a sudden
fever--it is shocking!"

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