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Ernest Maltravers, Book 1

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Ernest Maltravers, Book 1




One morning Ernest rose earlier than his wont, and sauntered carelessly
through the conservatory which adjoined his sitting-room; observing the
plants with placid curiosity (for besides being a little of a botanist,
he had odd visionary notions about the life of plants, and he saw in
them a hundred mysteries which the herbalists do not teach us), when he
heard a low and very musical voice singing at a little distance. He
listened, and recognised, with surprise, words of his own, which he had
lately set to music, and was sufficiently pleased with to sing nightly.

When the song ended, Maltravers stole softly through the conservatory,
and as he opened the door which led into the garden, he saw at the open
window of a little room which was apportioned to Alice, and jutted out
from the building in the fanciful irregularity common to ornamental
cottages, the form of his discarded pupil. She did not observe him, and
it was not till he twice called her by name, that she started from her
thoughtful and melancholy posture.

"Alice," said he, gently, "put on your bonnet, and walk with me in the
garden: you look pale, child; the fresh air will do you good."

Alice coloured and smiled, and in a few moments was by his side.
Maltravers, meanwhile, had gone in and lighted his meerschaum, for it
was his great inspirer whenever his thoughts were perplexed, or he felt
his usual fluency likely to fail him, and such was the case now. With
this faithful ally he awaited Alice in the little walk that circled the
lawn, amidst shrubs and evergreens.

"Alice," said he after a pause; but he stopped short.

Alice looked up at him with grave respect.

"Tush!" said Maltravers; "perhaps the smoke is unpleasant to you. It is
a bad habit of mine."

"No, sir," answered Alice; and she seemed disappointed. Maltravers
paused, and picked up a snowdrop.

"It is pretty," he said; "do you love flowers?"

"Oh, dearly," answered Alice, with some enthusiasm; "I never saw many
till I came here."

"Now then I can go on," thought Maltravers; why, I cannot say, for I do
not see the /sequitur/; but on he went /in medias res/. "Alice, you
sing charmingly."

"Ah! sir, you--you--" she stopped abruptly, and trembled visibly.

"Yes, I overheard you, Alice."

"And you are angry?"

"I!--Heaven forbid! It is a /talent/--but you don't know what that is;
I mean it is an excellent thing to have an ear; and a voice, and a heart
for music; and you have all three."

He paused, for he felt his hand touched; Alice suddenly clasped and
kissed it. Maltravers thrilled through his whole frame; but there was
something in the girl's look that showed she was wholly unaware that she
had committed an unmaidenly or forward action.

"I was so afraid you would be angry," she said, wiping her eyes as she
dropped his hand; "and now I suppose you know all."

"All!"

"Yes; how I listened to you every evening, and lay awake the whole night
with the music ringing in my ears, till I tried to go over it myself;
and so at last I ventured to sing aloud. I like that much better than
learning to read."

All this was delightful to Maltravers: the girl had touched upon one of
his weak points; however, he remained silent. Alice continued:

"And now, sir, I hope you will let me come and sit outside the door
every evening and hear you; I will make no noise--I will be so quiet."

"What, in that cold corridor, these bitter nights?"

"I am used to cold, sir. Father would not let me have a fire when he
was not at home."

"No, Alice, but you shall come into the room while I play, and I will
give you a lesson or two. I am glad you have so good an ear; it may be
a means of your earning your own honest livelihood when you leave me."

"When I--but I never intend to leave you, sir!" said Alice, beginning
fearfully and ending calmly.

Maltravers had recourse to the meerschaum.

Luckily, perhaps, at this time, they were joined by Mr. Simcox, the old
writing-master. Alice went in to prepare her books; but Maltravers laid
his hand upon the preceptor's shoulder.

"You have a quick pupil, I hope, sir?" said he.

"Oh, very, very, Mr. Butler. She comes on famously. She practises a
great deal when I am away, and I do my best."

"And," asked Maltravers, in a grave tone, "have you succeeded in
instilling into the poor child's mind some of those more sacred notions
of which I spoke to you at our first meeting?"

"Why, sir, she was indeed quite a heathen--quite a Mahometan, I may say;
but she is a little better now."

"What have you taught her?"

"That God made her."

"That is a great step."

"And that He loves good girls, and will watch over them."

"Bravo! You beat Plato."

"No, sir, I never beat any one, except little Jack Turner; but he is a
dunce."

"Bah! What else do you teach her?"

"That the devil runs away with bad girls, and--"

"Stop there, Mr. Simcox. Never mind the devil yet a while. Let her
first learn to do good, that God may love her; the rest will follow. I
would rather make people religious through their best feelings than
their worst,--through their gratitude and affections, rather than their
fears and calculations of risk and punishment."

Mr. Simcox stared.

"Does she say her prayers?"

"I have taught her a short one."

"Did she learn it readily?"

"Lord love her, yes! When I told her she ought to pray to God to bless
her benefactor, she would not rest till I had repeated a prayer out of
our Sunday School book, and she got it by heart at once."

"Enough, Mr. Simcox. I will not detain you longer."

Forgetful of his untasted breakfast, Maltravers continued his meerschaum
and his reflections: he did not cease, till he had convinced himself
that he was but doing his duty to Alice, by teaching her to cultivate
the charming talent she evidently possessed, and through which she might
secure her own independence. He fancied that he should thus relieve
himself of a charge and responsibility which often perplexed him. Alice
would leave him, enabled to walk the world in an honest professional
path. It was an excellent idea. "But there is danger," whispered
Conscience. "Ay," answered Philosophy and Pride, those wise dupes that
are always so solemn and always so taken in; "but what is virtue without
trial?"

And now every evening, when the windows were closed, and the hearth
burnt clear, while the winds stormed, and the rain beat without, a lithe
and lovely shape hovered about the student's chamber; and his wild songs
were sung by a voice which Nature had made even sweeter than his own.

Alice's talent for music was indeed surprising; enthusiastic and quick
as he himself was in all he undertook, Maltravers was amazed at her
rapid progress. He soon taught her to play by ear; and Maltravers could
not but notice that her hand, always delicate in shape, had lost the
rude colour and roughness of labour. He thought of that pretty hand
more often than he ought to have done, and guided it over the keys when
it could have found its way very well without him.

On coming to the cottage he had directed the old servant to provide
suitable and proper clothes for Alice; but now that she was admitted "to
sit with the gentleman," the crone had the sense, without waiting for
new orders, to buy the "pretty young woman" garments, still indeed
simple, but of better materials and less rustic fashion; and Alice's
redundant tresses were now carefully arranged into orderly and glossy
curls, and even the texture was no longer the same; and happiness and
health bloomed on her downy cheeks, and smiled from the dewy lips, which
never quite closed over the fresh white teeth, except when she was
sad--but that seemed never, now she was not banished from Maltravers.

To say nothing of the unusual grace and delicacy of Alice's form and
features, there is nearly always something of Nature's own gentility in
very young women (except, indeed, when they get together and fall
a-giggling); it shames us men to see how much sooner they are polished
into conventional shape than our rough, masculine angles. A vulgar boy
requires Heaven knows what assiduity to make three steps--I do not say
like a gentleman, but like a body that has a soul in it; but give the
least advantage of society or tuition to a peasant girl, and a hundred
to one but she will glide into refinement before the boy can make a bow
without upsetting the table. There is sentiment in all women, and
sentiment gives delicacy to thought, and tact to manner. But sentiment
with men is generally acquired, an offspring of the intellectual
quality, not, as with the other sex, of the moral.

In the course of his musical and vocal lessons, Maltravers gently took
the occasion to correct poor Alice's frequent offences against grammar
and accent: and her memory was prodigiously quick and retentive. The
very tones of her voice seemed altered in the ear of Maltravers; and,
somehow or other, the time came when he was no longer sensible of the
difference in their rank.

The old woman-servant, when she had seen how it would be from the first,
and taken a pride in her own prophecy, as she ordered Alice's new
dresses, was a much better philosopher than Maltravers; though he was
already up to his ears in the moonlit abyss of Plato, and had filled a
dozen commonplace books with criticisms on Kant.



CHAPTER VI.

"Young man, I fear thy blood is rosy red,
Thy heart is soft."
D'AGUILAR'S /Fiesco/, Act iii. Sc. 1.

As education does not consist in reading and writing only, so Alice,
while still very backward in those elementary arts, forestalled some of
their maturest results in her intercourse with Maltravers. Before the
inoculation took effect, she caught knowledge in the natural way. For
the refinement of a graceful mind and a happy manner is very contagious.
And Maltravers was encouraged by her quickness in music to attempt such
instruction in other studies as conversation could afford. It is a
better school than parents and masters think for: there was a time when
all information was given orally; and probably the Athenians learned
more from hearing Aristotle than we do from reading him. It was a
delicious revival of Academe--in the walks, or beneath the rustic
porticoes of that little cottage--the romantic philosopher and the
beautiful disciple! And his talk was much like that of a sage of the
early world, with some wistful and earnest savage for a listener: of the
stars and their courses--of beasts, and birds, and fishes, and plants,
and flowers--the wide family of Nature--of the beneficence and power of
God;--of the mystic and spiritual history of Man.

Charmed by her attention and docility, Maltravers at length diverged
from lore into poetry; he would repeat to her the simplest and most
natural passages he could remember in his favourite poets; he would
himself compose verses elaborately adapted to her understanding; she
liked the last the best, and learned them the easiest. Never had young
poet a more gracious inspiration, and never did this inharmonious world
more complacently resolve itself into soft dreams, as if to humour the
novitiate of the victims it must speedily take into its joyless
priesthood. And Alice had now quietly and insensibly carved out her own
avocations--the tenor of her service. The plants in the conservatory
had passed under her care, and no one else was privileged to touch
Maltravers's books, or arrange the sacred litter of a student's
apartment. When he came down in the morning, or returned from his
walks, everything was in order, yet, by a kind of magic, just as he
wished it; the flowers he loved best bloomed, fresh-gathered, on his
table; the very position of the large chair, just in that corner by the
fireplace, whence, on entering the roof, its hospitable arms opened with
the most cordial air of welcome, bespoke the presiding genius of a
woman; and then, precisely as the clock struck eight, Alice entered, so
pretty and smiling, and happy-looking, that it was no wonder the single
hour at first allotted to her extended into three.

Was Alice in love with Maltravers?--she certainly did not exhibit the
symptoms in the ordinary way--she did not grow more reserved, and
agitated, and timid--there was no worm in the bud of her damask check:
nay, though from the first she had been tolerably bold; she was more
free and confidential, more at her ease every day; in fact, she never
for a moment suspected that she ought to be otherwise; she had not the
conventional and sensitive delicacy of girls who, whatever their rank of
life, have been taught that there is a mystery and a peril in love; she
had a vague idea about girls going wrong, but she did not know that love
had anything to do with it; on the contrary, according to her father, it
had connection with money, not love; all that she felt was so natural
and so very sinless. Could she help being so delighted to listen to
him, and so grieved to depart? What thus she felt she expressed, no
less simply and no less guilelessly: candour sometimes completely
blinded and misled him. No, she could not be in love, or she could not
so frankly own that she loved him--it was a sisterly and grateful
sentiment.

"The dear girl--I am rejoiced to think so," said Maltravers to himself;
"I knew there would be no danger."

Was he not in love himself?--The reader must decide.

"Alice," said Maltravers, one evening after a long pause of thought and
abstraction on his side, while she was unconsciously practising her last
lesson on the piano--"Alice,--no, don't turn round--sit where you are,
but listen to me. We cannot live always in this way."

Alice was instantly disobedient--she did turn round, and those great
blue eyes were fixed on his own with such anxiety and alarm, that he had
no resource but to get up and look round for the meerschaum. But Alice,
who divined by an instinct his lightest wish, brought it to him, while
he was yet hunting, amidst the further corners of the room, in places
where it was certain not to be. There it was, already filled with the
fragrant Salonica glittering with the gilt pastile, which, not too
healthfully, adulterates the seductive weed with odours that pacify the
repugnant censure of the fastidious--for Maltravers was an epicurean
even in his worst habits;--there it was, I say, in that pretty hand
which he had to touch as he took it; and while he lit the weed he had
again to blush and shrink beneath those great blue eyes.

"Thank you, Alice," he said; "thank you. Do sit down there--out of the
draught. I am going to open the window, the night is so lovely."

He opened the casement overgrown with creepers, and the moonlight lay
fair and breathless upon the smooth lawn. The calm and holiness of the
night soothed and elevated his thoughts; he had cut himself off from the
eyes of Alice, and he proceeded with a firm, though gentle voice:

"My dear Alice, we cannot always live together in this way; you are now
wise enough to understand me, so listen patiently. A young woman never
wants a fortune so long as she has a good character; she is always poor
and despised without one. Now a good character in this world is lost as
much by imprudence as guilt; and if you were to live with me much
longer, it would be imprudent, and your character would suffer so much
that you would not be able to make your own way in the world; far, then,
from doing you a service, I should have done you a deadly injury, which
I could not atone for: besides, Heaven knows what may happen worse than
imprudence; for, I am very sorry to say," added Maltravers, with great
gravity, "that you are much too pretty and engaging to--to--in short, it
won't do. I must go home; my friends will have a right to complain of
me if I remain thus lost to them many weeks longer. And you, my dear
Alice, are now sufficiently advanced to receive better instruction than
I or Mr. Simcox can give you. I therefore propose to place you in some
respectable family, where you will have more comfort and a higher
station than you have here. You can finish your education, and, instead
of being taught, you will be thus enabled to become a teacher to others.
With your beauty, Alice" (and Maltravers sighed), "and natural talents,
and amiable temper, you have only to act well and prudently to secure at
last a worthy husband and a happy home. Have you heard me, Alice? Such
is the plan I have formed for you."

The young man thought as he spoke, with honest kindness and upright
honour; it was a bitterer sacrifice than perhaps the reader thinks for.
But Maltravers, if he had an impassioned, had not a selfish heart; and
he felt, to use his own expression, more emphatic than eloquent, that
"it would not do" to live any longer alone with this beautiful girl,
like the two children whom the good Fairy kept safe from sin and the
world in the Pavilion of Roses.

But Alice comprehended neither the danger to herself nor the temptations
that Maltravers, if he could not resist, desired to shun. She rose,
pale and trembling--approached Maltravers and laid her hand gently on
his arm.

"I will go away, when and where you wish--the sooner the
better--to-morrow--yes, to-morrow; you are ashamed of poor Alice; and it
has been very silly in me to be so happy." (She struggled with her
emotion for a moment, and went on.) "You know Heaven can hear me, even
when I am away from you, and when I know more I can pray better; and
Heaven will bless you, sir, and make you happy, for I never can pray for
anything else."

With these words she turned away, and walked proudly towards the door.
But when she reached the threshold, she stopped and looked round, as if
to take a last farewell. All the associations and memories of that
beloved spot rushed upon her--she gasped for breath,--tottered,--and
fell to the ground insensible.

Maltravers was already by her side; he lifted her light weight in his
arms; he uttered wild and impassioned exclamations--"Alice, beloved
Alice--forgive me; we will never part!" He chafed her hands in his own,
while her head lay on his bosom, and he kissed again and again those
beautiful eyelids, till they opened slowly upon him, and the tender arms
tightened round him involuntarily.

"Alice," he whispered--"Alice, dear Alice, I love thee." Alas, it was
true: he loved--and forgot all but that love. He was eighteen.



CHAPTER VII.

"How like a younker or a prodigal,
The scarfed bark puts from her native bay!"
/Merchant of Venice/.

WE are apt to connect the voice of Conscience with the stillness of
midnight. But I think we wrong that innocent hour. It is that terrible
"NEXT MORNING," when reason is wide awake, upon which remorse fastens
its fangs. Has a man gambled away his all, or shot his friend in a
duel--has he committed a crime or incurred a laugh--it is the /next
morning/, when the irretrievable Past rises before him like a spectre;
then doth the churchyard of memory yield up its grisly dead--then is the
witching hour when the foul fiend within us can least tempt perhaps, but
most torment. At night we have one thing to hope for, one refuge to fly
to--oblivion and sleep! But at morning, sleep is over, and we are
called upon coldly to review, and re-act, and live again the waking
bitterness of self-reproach. Maltravers rose a penitent and unhappy
man--remorse was new to him, and he felt as if he had committed a
treacherous and fraudulent as well as guilty deed. This poor girl,
she was so innocent, so confiding, so unprotected, even by her own
sense of right. He went down-stairs listless and dispirited. He
longed yet dreaded to encounter Alice. He heard her step in the
conservatory--paused, irresolute, and at length joined her. For the
first time she blushed and trembled, and her eyes shunned his. But when
he kissed her hand in silence, she whispered, "And am I now to leave
you?" And Maltravers answered fervently, "Never!" and then her face
grew so radiant with joy that Maltravers was comforted despite himself.
Alice knew no remorse, though she felt agitated and ashamed; as she had
not comprehended the danger, neither was she aware of the fall. In
fact, she never thought of herself. Her whole soul was with him; she
gave him back in love the spirit she had caught from him in knowledge.

* * * * *

And they strolled together through the garden all that day, and
Maltravers grew reconciled to himself. He had done wrong, it is true;
but then perhaps Alice had already suffered as much as she could in the
world's opinion, by living with him alone, though innocent, so long.
And now she had an everlasting claim to his protection--she should never
know shame or want. And the love that had led to the wrong should, by
fidelity and devotion, take from it the character of sin.

Natural and commonplace sophistries! /L'homme se pique!/ as old
Montaigne said; Man is his own sharper! The conscience is the most
elastic material in the world. To-day you cannot stretch it over a
mole-hill, to-morrow it hides a mountain.

O how happy they were now--that young pair! How the days flew like
dreams! Time went on, winter passed away, and the early spring, with
its flowers and sunshine, was like a mirror to their own youth. Alice
never accompanied Maltravers in his walks abroad, partly because she
feared to meet her father, and partly because Maltravers himself was
fastidiously averse to all publicity. But then they had all that little
world of three acres--lawn and fountain, shrubbery and terrace, to
themselves, and Alice never asked if there was any other world without.
She was now quite a scholar, as Mr. Simcox himself averred. She could
read aloud and fluently to Maltravers, and copied out his poetry in a
small, fluctuating hand, and he had no longer to chase throughout his
vocabulary for short Saxon monosyllables to make the bridge of
intercourse between their ideas. Eros and Psyche are ever united, and
Love opens all the petals of the soul. On one subject alone, Maltravers
was less eloquent than of yore. He had not succeeded as a moralist, and
he thought it hypocritical to preach what he did not practise. But
Alice was gentler and purer, and as far as she knew, sweet fool! better
than ever--she had invented a new prayer for herself; and she prayed as
regularly and as fervently as if she were doing nothing amiss. But the
code of Heaven is gentler than that of earth, and does not declare that
ignorance excuseth not the crime.



CHAPTER VIII.

"Some clouds sweep on as vultures for their prey.

* * * * *

No azure more shall robe the firmament,
Nor spangled stars be glorious."
BYRON, /Heaven and Earth/.

IT was a lovely evening in April, the weather was unusually mild and
serene for the time of year, in the northern districts of our isle, and
the bright drops of a recent shower sparkled upon the buds of the lilac
and laburnum that clustered round the cottage of Maltravers. The little
fountain that played in the centre of a circular basin, on whose clear
surface the broad-leaved water-lily cast its fairy shadow, added to the
fresh green of the lawn;

"And softe as velvet the yonge grass,"

on which the rare and early flowers were closing their heavy lids. That
twilight shower had given a racy and vigorous sweetness to the air which
stole over many a bank of violets, and slightly stirred the golden
ringlets of Alice as she sate by the side of her entranced and silent
lover. They were seated on a rustic bench just without the cottage, and
the open window behind them admitted the view of that happy room--with
its litter of books and musical instruments--eloquent of the POETRY of
HOME.

Maltravers was silent, for his flexile and excitable fancy was conjuring
up a thousand shapes along the transparent air, or upon those shadowy
violet banks. He was not thinking, he was imagining. His genius
reposed dreamily upon the calm, but exquisite sense of his happiness.
Alice was not absolutely in his thoughts, but unconsciously she coloured
them all--if she had left his side, the whole charm would have been
broken. But Alice, who was not a poet or a genius, /was/ thinking, and
thinking only of Maltravers. . . . His image was "the broken mirror"
multiplied in a thousand faithful fragments over everything fair and
soft in that lovely microcosm before her. But they were both alike in
one thing--they were not with the Future, they were sensible of the
Present--the sense of the actual life, the enjoyment of the breathing
time was strong within them. Such is the privilege of the extremes of
our existence--Youth and Age. Middle life is never with to-day, its
home is in to-morrow . . . anxious, and scheming, and desiring, and
wishing this plot ripened, and that hope fulfilled, while every wave of
the forgotten Time brings it nearer and nearer to the end of all things.
Half our life is consumed in longing to be nearer death.

"Alice," said Maltravers, waking at last from his reverie, and drawing
that light, childlike form nearer to him, "you enjoy this hour as much
as I do."

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