Book: Night and Morning, Volume 4

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THE WORKS

OF

EDWARD BULWER LYTTON

(LORD LYTTON)


NIGHT AND MORNING

Book IV




CHAPTER I.

"O that sweet gleam of sunshine on the lake!"
WILSON'S _City of the Plague_

If, reader, you have ever looked through a solar microscope at the
monsters in a drop of water, perhaps you have wondered to yourself how
things so terrible have been hitherto unknown to you--you have felt a
loathing at the limpid element you hitherto deemed so pure--you have half
fancied that you would cease to be a water-drinker; yet, the next day you
have forgotten the grim life that started before you, with its countless
shapes, in that teeming globule; and, if so tempted by your thirst, you
have not shrunk from the lying crystal, although myriads of the horrible
Unseen are mangling, devouring, gorging each other in the liquid you so
tranquilly imbibe; so is it with that ancestral and master element called
Life. Lapped in your sleek comforts, and lolling on the sofa of your
patent conscience--when, perhaps for the first time, you look through the
glass of science upon one ghastly globule in the waters that heave
around, that fill up, with their succulence, the pores of earth, that
moisten every atom subject to your eyes or handled by your touch--you are
startled and dismayed; you say, mentally, "Can such things be? I never
dreamed of this before! I thought what was invisible to me was non-
existent in itself--I will remember this dread experiment." The next day
the experiment is forgotten.--The Chemist may purify the Globule--can
Science make pure the World?

Turn we now to the pleasant surface, seen in the whole, broad and fair to
the common eye. Who would judge well of God's great designs, if he could
look on no drop pendent from the rose-tree, or sparkling in the sun,
without the help of his solar microscope?

It is ten years after the night on which William Gawtrey perished:--I
transport you, reader, to the fairest scenes in England,--scenes
consecrated by the only true pastoral poetry we have known to
Contemplation and Repose.

Autumn had begun to tinge the foliage on the banks of Winandermere. It
had been a summer of unusual warmth and beauty; and if that year you had
visited the English lakes, you might, from time to time, amidst the
groups of happy idlers you encountered, have singled out two persons for
interest, or, perhaps, for envy. Two who might have seemed to you in
peculiar harmony with those serene and soft retreats, both young--both
beautiful. Lovers you would have guessed them to be; but such lovers as
Fletcher might have placed under the care of his "Holy Shepherdess"--
forms that might have reclined by

"The virtuous well, about whose flowery banks
The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds
By the pale moonshine."

For in the love of those persons there seemed a purity and innocence that
suited well their youth and the character of their beauty. Perhaps,
indeed, on the girl's side, love sprung rather from those affections
which the spring of life throws upward to the surface, as the spring of
earth does its flowers, than from that concentrated and deep absorption
of self in self, which alone promises endurance and devotion, and of
which first love, or rather the first fancy, is often less susceptible
than that which grows out of the more thoughtful fondness of maturer
years. Yet he, the lover, was of so rare and singular a beauty, that he
might well seem calculated to awake, to the utmost, the love which wins
the heart through the eyes.

But to begin at the beginning. A lady of fashion had, in the autumn
previous to the year in which our narrative re-opens, taken, with her
daughter, a girl then of about eighteen, the tour of the English lakes.
Charmed by the beauty of Winandermere, and finding one of the most
commodious villas on its banks to be let, they had remained there all the
winter. In the early spring a severe illness had seized the elder lady,
and finding herself, as she slowly recovered, unfit for the gaieties of a
London season, nor unwilling, perhaps,--for she had been a beauty in her
day--to postpone for another year the debut of her daughter, she had
continued her sojourn, with short intervals of absence, for a whole year.
Her husband, a busy man of the world, with occupation in London, and fine
estates in the country, joined them only occasionally, glad to escape the
still beauty of landscapes which brought him no rental, and therefore
afforded no charm to his eye.

In the first month of their arrival at Winandermere, the mother and
daughter had made an eventful acquaintance in the following manner.

One evening, as they were walking on their lawn, which sloped to the
lake, they heard the sound of a flute, played with a skill so exquisite
as to draw them, surprised and spellbound, to the banks. The musician
was a young man, in a boat, which he had moored beneath the trees of
their demesne. He was alone, or, rather, he had one companion, in a
large Newfoundland dog, that sat watchful at the helm of the boat, and
appeared to enjoy the music as much as his master. As the ladies
approached the spot, the dog growled, and the young man ceased, though
without seeing the fair causes of his companion's displeasure. The sun,
then setting, shone full on his countenance as he looked round; and that
countenance was one that might have haunted the nymphs of Delos; the face
of Apollo, not as the hero, but the shepherd--not of the bow, but of the
lute--not the Python-slayer, but the young dreamer by shady places--he
whom the sculptor has portrayed leaning idly against the tree--the boy-
god whose home is yet on earth, and to whom the Oracle and the Spheres
are still unknown.

At that moment the dog leaped from the boat, and the elder lady uttered a
faint cry of alarm, which, directing the attention of the musician,
brought him also ashore. He called off his dog, and apologised, with a
not ungraceful mixture of diffidence and ease, for his intrusion. He was
not aware the place was inhabited--it was a favourite haunt of his--he
lived near. The elder lady was pleased with his address, and struck with
his appearance. There was, indeed, in his manner that indefinable charm,
which is more attractive than mere personal appearance, and which can
never be imitated or acquired. They parted, however, without
establishing any formal acquaintance. A few days after, they met at
dinner at a neighbouring house, and were introduced by name. That of the
young man seemed strange to the ladies; not so theirs to him. He turned
pale when he heard it, and remained silent and aloof the rest of the
evening. They met again and often; and for some weeks--nay, even for
months--he appeared to avoid, as much as possible, the acquaintance so
auspiciously begun; but, by little and little, the beauty of the younger
lady seemed to gain ground on his diffidence or repugnance. Excursions
among the neighbouring mountains threw them together, and at last he
fairly surrendered himself to the charm he had at first determined to
resist.

This young man lived on the opposite side of the lake, in a quiet
household, of which he was the idol. His life had been one of almost
monastic purity and repose; his tastes were accomplished, his character
seemed soft and gentle; but beneath that calm exterior, flashes of
passion--the nature of the poet, ardent and sensitive--would break forth
at times. He had scarcely ever, since his earliest childhood, quitted
those retreats; he knew nothing of the world, except in books--books of
poetry and romance. Those with whom he lived--his relations, an old
bachelor, and the cold bachelor's sisters, old maids--seemed equally
innocent and inexperienced. It was a family whom the rich respected and
the poor loved--inoffensive, charitable, and well off. To whatever their
easy fortune might be, he appeared the heir. The name of this young man
was Charles Spencer; the ladies were Mrs. Beaufort, and Camilla her
daughter.

Mrs. Beaufort, though a shrewd woman, did not at first perceive any
danger in the growing intimacy between Camilla and the younger Spencer.
Her daughter was not her favourite--not the object of her one thought or
ambition. Her whole heart and soul were wrapped in her son Arthur, who
lived principally abroad. Clever enough to be considered capable, when
he pleased, of achieving distinction, good-looking enough to be thought
handsome by all who were on the _qui vive_ for an advantageous match,
good-natured enough to be popular with the society in which he lived,
scattering to and fro money without limit,--Arthur Beaufort, at the age
of thirty, had established one of those brilliant and evanescent
reputations, which, for a few years, reward the ambition of the fine
gentleman. It was precisely the reputation that the mother could
appreciate, and which even the more saving father secretly admired,
while, ever respectable in phrase, Mr. Robert Beaufort seemed openly to
regret it. This son was, I say, everything to them; they cared little,
in comparison, for their daughter. How could a daughter keep up the
proud name of Beaufort? However well she might marry, it was another
house, not theirs, which her graces and beauty would adorn. Moreover,
the better she might marry the greater her dowry would naturally be,--the
dowry, to go out of the family! And Arthur, poor fellow! was so
extravagant, that really he would want every sixpence. Such was the
reasoning of the father. The mother reasoned less upon the matter. Mrs.
Beaufort, faded and meagre, in blonde and cashmere, was jealous of the
charms of her daughter; and she herself, growing sentimental and
lachrymose as she advanced in life, as silly women often do, had
convinced herself that Camilla was a girl of no feeling.

Miss Beaufort was, indeed, of a character singularly calm and placid; it
was the character that charms men in proportion, perhaps, to their own
strength and passion. She had been rigidly brought up--her affections
had been very early chilled and subdued; they moved, therefore, now, with
ease, in the serene path of her duties. She held her parents, especially
her father, in reverential fear, and never dreamed of the possibility of
resisting one of their wishes, much less their commands. Pious, kind,
gentle, of a fine and never-ruffled temper, Camilla, an admirable
daughter, was likely to make no less admirable a wife; you might depend
on her principles, if ever you could doubt her affection. Few girls were
more calculated to inspire love. You would scarcely wonder at any folly,
any madness, which even a wise man might commit for her sake. This did
not depend on her beauty alone, though she was extremely lovely rather
than handsome, and of that style of loveliness which is universally
fascinating: the figure, especially as to the arms, throat, and bust, was
exquisite; the mouth dimpled; the teeth dazzling; the eyes of that velvet
softness which to look on is to love. But her charm was in a certain
prettiness of manner, an exceeding innocence, mixed with the most
captivating, because unconscious, coquetry. With all this, there was a
freshness, a joy, a virgin and bewitching candour in her voice, her
laugh--you might almost say in her very movements. Such was Camilla
Beaufort at that age. Such she seemed to others. To her parents she was
only a great girl rather in the way. To Mrs. Beaufort a rival, to Mr.
Beaufort an encumbrance on the property.




CHAPTER II.

* * * "The moon
Saddening the solemn night, yet with that sadness
Mingling the breath of undisturbed Peace."
WILSON: _City of the Plague_

* * * "Tell me his fate.
Say that he lives, or say that he is dead
But tell me--tell me!
* * * * * *
I see him not--some cloud envelopes him."--Ibid.

One day (nearly a year after their first introduction) as with a party of
friends Camilla and Charles Spencer were riding through those wild and
romantic scenes which lie between the sunny Winandermere and the dark and
sullen Wastwater, their conversation fell on topics more personal than it
had hitherto done, for as yet, if they felt love, they had never spoken
of it.

The narrowness of the path allowed only two to ride abreast, and the two
to whom I confine my description were the last of the little band.

"How I wish Arthur were here!" said Camilla; "I am sure you would like
him."

"Are you? He lives much in the world--the world of which I know nothing.
Are we then characters to suit each other?"

"He is the kindest--the best of human beings!" said Camilla, rather
evasively, but with more warmth than usually dwelt in her soft and low
voice.

"Is he so kind?" returned Spencer, musingly. "Well, it may be so. And
who would not be kind to you? Ah! it is a beautiful connexion that of
brother and sister--I never had a sister!"

"Have you then a brother?" asked Camilla, in some surprise, and turning
her ingenuous eyes full on her companion.

Spencer's colour rose--rose to his temples: his voice trembled as he
answered, "No;--no brother!" then, speaking in a rapid and hurried tone,
he continued, "My life has been a strange and lonely one. I am an
orphan. I have mixed with few of my own age: my boyhood and youth have
been spent in these scenes; my education such as Nature and books could
bestow, with scarcely any guide or tutor save my guardian--the dear old
man! Thus the world, the stir of cities, ambition, enterprise,--all seem
to me as things belonging to a distant land to which I shall never
wander. Yet I have had my dreams, Miss Beaufort; dreams of which these
solitudes still form a part--but solitudes not unshared. And lately I
have thought that those dreams might be prophetic. And you--do you love
the world?"

"I, like you, have scarcely tried it," said Camilla, with a sweet laugh.
"but I love the country better,--oh! far better than what little I have
seen of towns. But for you," she continued with a charming hesitation,
"a man is so different from us,--for you to shrink from the world--you,
so young and with talents too--nay, it is true!--it seems to me strange."

"It may be so, but I cannot tell you what feelings of dread--what vague
forebodings of terror seize me if I carry my thoughts beyond these
retreats. Perhaps my good guardian--"

"Your uncle?" interrupted Camilla.

"Ay, my uncle--may have contributed to engender feelings, as you say,
strange at my age; but still--"

"Still what!"

"My earlier childhood," continued Spencer, breathing hard and turning
pale, "was not spent in the happy home I have now; it was passed in a
premature ordeal of suffering and pain. Its recollections have left a
dark shadow on my mind, and under that shadow lies every thought that
points towards the troublous and labouring career of other men. But," he
resumed after a pause, and in a deep, earnest, almost solemn voice,--"
but after all, is this cowardice or wisdom? I find no monotony--no
tedium in this quiet life. Is there not a certain morality--a certain
religion in the spirit of a secluded and country existence? In it we do
not know the evil passions which ambition and strife are said to arouse.
I never feel jealous or envious of other men; I never know what it is to
hate; my boat, my horse, our garden, music, books, and, if I may dare to
say so, the solemn gladness that comes from the hopes of another life,--
these fill up every hour with thoughts and pursuits, peaceful, happy, and
without a cloud, till of late, when--when--"

"When what?" said Camilla, innocently.

"When I have longed, but did not dare to ask another, if to share such a
lot would content her!"

He bent, as he spoke, his soft blue eyes full upon the blushing face of
her whom he addressed, and Camilla half smiled and half sighed:

"Our companions are far before us," said she, turning away her face, "and
see, the road is now smooth." She quickened her horse's pace as she said
this; and Spencer, too new to women to interpret favourably her evasion
of his words and looks, fell into a profound silence which lasted during
the rest of their excursion.

As towards the decline of day he bent his solitary way home, emotions and
passions to which his life had hitherto been a stranger, and which, alas!
he had vainly imagined a life so tranquil would everlastingly restrain,
swelled his heart.

"She does not love me," he muttered, half aloud; "she will leave me, and
what then will all the beauty of the landscape seem in my eyes? And how
dare I look up to her? Even if her cold, vain mother--her father, the
man, they say, of forms and scruples, were to consent, would they not
question closely of my true birth and origin? And if the one blot were
overlooked, is there no other? His early habits and vices, his?--a
brother's--his unknown career terminating at any day, perhaps, in shame,
in crime, in exposure, in the gibbet,--will they overlook this?" As he
spoke, he groaned aloud, and, as if impatient to escape himself, spurred
on his horse and rested not till he reached the belt of trim and sober
evergreens that surrounded his hitherto happy home.

Leaving his horse to find its way to the stables, the young man passed
through rooms, which he found deserted, to the lawn on the other side,
which sloped to the smooth waters of the lake.

Here, seated under the one large tree that formed the pride of the lawn,
over which it cast its shadow broad and far, he perceived his guardian
poring idly over an oft-read book, one of those books of which literary
dreamers are apt to grow fanatically fond--books by the old English
writers, full of phrases and conceits half quaint and half sublime,
interspersed with praises of the country, imbued with a poetical rather
than orthodox religion, and adorned with a strange mixture of monastic
learning and aphorisms collected from the weary experience of actual
life.

To the left, by a greenhouse, built between the house and the lake, might
be seen the white dress and lean form of the eldest spinster sister, to
whom the care of the flowers--for she had been early crossed in love--was
consigned; at a little distance from her, the other two were seated at
work, and conversing in whispers, not to disturb their studious brother,
no doubt upon the nephew, who was their all in all. It was the calmest
hour of eve, and the quiet of the several forms, their simple and
harmless occupations--if occupations they might be called--the breathless
foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house,
unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the
comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and
catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,--all made a picture of that
complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and
sometimes saddens us, according as we are in the temper to woo CONTENT.

The young man glided to his guardian and touched his shoulder,--"Sir, may
I speak to you?--Hush! they need not see us now! it is only you I would
speak with."

The elder Spencer rose; and, with his book still in his hand, moved side
by side with his nephew under the shadow of the tree and towards a walk
to the right, which led for a short distance along the margin of the
lake, backed by the interlaced boughs of a thick copse.

"Sir!" said the young man, speaking first, and with a visible effort,
"your cautions have been in vain! I love this girl--this daughter of the
haughty Beauforts! I love her--better than life I love her!"

"My poor boy," said the uncle tenderly, and with a simple fondness
passing his arm over the speaker's shoulder, "do not think I can chide
you--I know what it is to love in vain!"

"In vain!--but why in vain?" exclaimed the younger Spencer, with a
vehemence that had in it something of both agony and fierceness. "She
may love me--she shall love me!" and almost for the first time in his
life, the proud consciousness of his rare gifts of person spoke in his
kindled eye and dilated stature. "Do they not say that Nature has been
favourable to me?--What rival have I here?--Is she not young?--And
(sinking his voice till it almost breathed like music) is not love
contagious?"

"I do not doubt that she may love you--who would not?--but--but--the
parents, will they ever consent?" "Nay!" answered the lover, as with
that inconsistency common to passion, he now argued stubbornly against
those fears in another to which he had just before yielded in himself,--
"Nay!--after all, am I not of their own blood?--Do I not come from the
elder branch?--Was I not reared in equal luxury and with higher hopes?--
And my mother--my poor mother--did she not to the last maintain our
birthright--her own honour?--Has not accident or law unjustly stripped us
of our true station?--Is it not for us to forgive spoliation?--Am I not,
in fact, the person who descends, who forgets the wrongs of the dead--the
heritage of the living?"

The young man had never yet assumed this tone--had never yet shown that
he looked back to the history connected with his birth with the feelings
of resentment and the remembrance of wrong. It was a tone contrary to
his habitual calm and contentment--it struck forcibly on his listener--
and the elder Spencer was silent for some moments before he replied, "If
you feel thus (and it is natural), you have yet stronger reason to
struggle against this unhappy affection."

"I have been conscious of that, sir," replied the young man, mournfully.
"I have struggled!--and I say again it is in vain! I turn, then, to face
the obstacles! My birth--let us suppose that the Beauforts overlook it.
Did you not tell me that Mr. Beaufort wrote to inform you of the abrupt
and intemperate visit of my brother--of his determination never to
forgive it? I think I remember something of this years ago."

"It is true!" said the guardian; "and the conduct of that brother is, in
fact, the true cause why you never ought to reassume your proper name!--
never to divulge it, even to the family with whom you connect yourself by
marriage; but, above all, to the Beauforts, who for that cause, if that
cause alone, would reject your suit."

The young man groaned--placed one hand before his eyes, and with the
other grasped his guardian's arm convulsively, as if to check him from
proceeding farther; but the good man, not divining his meaning, and
absorbed in his subject, went on, irritating the wound he had touched.

"Reflect!--your brother in boyhood--in the dying hours of his mother,
scarcely saved from the crime of a thief, flying from a friendly pursuit
with a notorious reprobate; afterwards implicated in some discreditable
transaction about a horse, rejecting all--every hand that could save him,
clinging by choice to the lowest companions and the meanest-habits,
disappearing from the country, and last seen, ten years ago--the beard
not yet on his chin--with that same reprobate of whom I have spoken, in
Paris; a day or so only before his companion, a coiner--a murderer--fell
by the hands of the police! You remember that when, in your seventeenth
year, you evinced some desire to retake your name--nay, even to re-find
that guilty brother--I placed before you, as a, sad, and terrible duty,
the newspaper that contained the particulars of the death and the former
adventures of that wretched accomplice, the notorious Gawtrey. And,--
telling you that Mr. Beaufort had long since written to inform me that
his own son and Lord Lilburne had seen your brother in company with the
miscreant just before his fate--nay, was, in all probability, the very
youth described in the account as found in his chamber and escaping the
pursuit--I asked you if you would now venture to leave that disguise--
that shelter under which you would for ever be safe from the opprobrium
of the world--from the shame that, sooner or later, your brother must
bring upon your name!"

"It is true--it is true!" said the pretended nephew, in a tone of great
anguish, and with trembling lips which the blood had forsaken. "Horrible
to look either to his past or his future! But--but--we have heard of him
no more--no one ever has learned his fate. Perhaps--perhaps" (and he
seemed to breathe more freely)--"my brother is no more!"

And poor Catherine--and poor Philip---had it come to this? Did the one
brother feel a sentiment of release, of joy, in conjecturing the death--
perhaps the death of violence and shame--of his fellow-orphan? Mr.
Spencer shook his head doubtingly, but made no reply. The young man
sighed heavily, and strode on for several paces in advance of his
protector, then, turning back, he laid his hand on his shoulder.

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