Ernest Maltravers, Book 4
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Ernest Maltravers, Book 4
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BOOK IV.
"Strange is the land that holds thee,--and thy couch
is widow'd of the loved one."
EURIP. /Med./ 442
Translation by R. G.
CHAPTER I.
"I, alas!
Have lived but on this earth a few sad years;
And so my lot was ordered, that a father
First turned the moments of awakening life
To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope."
"/Cenci/."
FROM accompanying Maltravers along the noiseless progress of mental
education, we are now called awhile to cast our glances back at the
ruder and harsher ordeal which Alice Darvil was ordained to pass. Along
her path poetry shed no flowers, nor were her lonely steps towards the
distant shrine at which her pilgrimage found its rest lighted by the
mystic lamp of science, or guided by the thousand stars which are never
dim in the heavens for those favoured eyes from which genius and fancy
have removed many of the films of clay. Not along the aerial and
exalted ways that wind far above the homes and business of common
men--the solitary Alps of Spiritual Philosophy--wandered the desolate
steps of the child of poverty and sorrow. On the beaten and rugged
highways of common life, with a weary heart, and with bleeding feet, she
went her melancholy course. But the goal which is the great secret of
life, the /summum arcanum/ of all philosophy, whether the Practical or
the Ideal, was, perhaps, no less attainable for that humble girl than
for the elastic step and aspiring heart of him who thirsted after the
Great, and almost believed in the Impossible.
We return to that dismal night in which Alice was torn from the roof of
her lover. It was long before she recovered her consciousness of what
had passed, and gained a full perception of the fearful revolution which
had taken place in her destinies. It was then a grey and dreary morning
twilight; and the rude but covered vehicle which bore her was rolling
along the deep ruts of an unfrequented road, winding among the
uninclosed and mountainous wastes that, in England, usually betoken the
neighbourhood of the sea. With a shudder Alice looked round: Walters,
her father's accomplice, lay extended at her feet, and his heavy
breathing showed that he was fast asleep. Darvil himself was urging on
the jaded and sorry horse, and his broad back was turned towards Alice;
the rain, from which, in his position, he was but ill protected by the
awning, dripped dismally from his slouched hat; and now, as he turned
round, and his sinister and gloomy gaze rested upon the face of Alice,
his bad countenance, rendered more haggard by the cold raw light of the
cheerless dawn, completed the hideous picture of unveiled and ruffianly
wretchedness.
"Ho, ho! Alley, so you are come to your senses," said he, with a kind of
joyless grin. "I am glad of it, for I can have no fainting fine ladies
with me. You have had a long holiday, Alley; you must now learn once
more to work for your poor father. Ah, you have been d----d sly; but
never mind the past--I forgive it. You must not run away again without
my leave; if you are fond of sweethearts, I won't balk you--but your old
father must go shares, Alley."
Alice could hear no more: she covered her face with the cloak that had
been thrown about her, and though she did not faint, her senses seemed
to be locked and paralysed. By and by Walters woke, and the two men,
heedless of her presence, conversed upon their plans. By degrees she
recovered sufficient self-possession to listen, in the instinctive hope
that some plan of escape might be suggested to her. But from what she
could gather of the incoherent and various projects they discussed, one
after another--disputing upon each with frightful oaths and scarce
intelligible slang, she could only learn that it was resolved at all
events to leave the district in which they were--but whither seemed yet
all undecided. The cart halted at last at a miserable-looking hut,
which the signpost announced to be an inn that afforded good
accommodation to travellers; to which announcement was annexed the
following epigrammatic distich:
"Old Tom, he is the best of gin;
Drink him once, and you'll drink him /agin/!"
The hovel stood so remote from all other habitations, and the waste
around was so bare of trees, and even shrubs, that Alice saw with
despair that all hope of flight in such a place would be indeed a
chimera. But to make assurance doubly sure, Darvil himself, lifting her
from the cart, conducted her up a broken and unlighted staircase, into a
sort of loft rather than a room, and, rudely pushing her in, turned the
key upon her, and descended. The weather was cold, the livid damps hung
upon the distained walls, and there was neither fire nor hearth; but
thinly clad as she was--her cloak and shawl her principal covering--she
did not feel the cold, for her heart was more chilly than the airs of
heaven. At noon an old woman brought her some food, which, consisting
of fish and poached game, was better than might have been expected in
such a place, and what would have been deemed a feast under her father's
roof. With an inviting leer, the crone pointed to a pewter measure of
raw spirits that accompanied the viands, and assured her, in a cracked
and maudlin voice, that "'Old Tom' was a kinder friend than any of the
young fellers!" This intrusion ended, Alice was again left alone till
dusk, when Darvil entered with a bundle of clothes, such as are worn by
the peasants of that primitive district of England.
"There, Alley," said he, "put on this warm toggery; finery won't do now.
We must leave no scent in the track; the hounds are after us, my little
blowen. Here's a nice stuff gown for you, and a red cloak that would
frighten a turkey-cock. As to the other cloak and shawl, don't be
afraid; they sha'n't go to the pop-shop, but we'll take care of them
against we get to some large town where there are young fellows with
blunt in their pockets; for you seem to have already found out that your
face is your fortune, Alley. Come, make haste, we must be starting. I
shall come up for you in ten minutes. Pish! don't be faint hearted;
here, take 'Old Tom'--take it, I say. What, you won't? Well, here's to
your health, and a better taste to you!"
And now, as the door once more closed upon Darvil, tears for the first
time came to the relief of Alice. It was a woman's weakness that
procured for her that woman's luxury. Those garments--they were
Ernest's gift--Ernest's taste; they were like the last relic of that
delicious life which now seemed to have fled for ever. All traces of
that life--of him, the loving, the protecting, the adored; all trace of
herself, as she had been re-created by love, was to be lost to her for
ever. It was (as she had read somewhere, in the little elementary
volumes that bounded her historic lore) like that last fatal ceremony in
which those condemned for life to the mines of Siberia are clothed with
the slave's livery, their past name and record eternally blotted out,
and thrust into the vast wastes, from which even the mercy of despotism,
should it ever re-awaken, cannot recall them; for all evidence of
them--all individuality--all mark to distinguish them from the universal
herd, is expunged from the world's calendar. She was still sobbing in
vehement and unrestrained passion, when Darvil re-entered. "What, not
dressed yet?" he exclaimed, in a voice of impatient rage; "hark ye,
this won't do. If in two minutes you are not ready, I'll send up John
Walters to help you; and he is a rough hand, I can tell you."
This threat recalled Alice, to herself. "I will do as you wish," said
she meekly.
"Well, then, be quick," said Darvil; "they are now putting the horse to.
And mark me, girl, your father is running away from the gallows, and
that thought does not make a man stand upon scruples. If you once
attempt to give me the slip, or do or say anything that can bring the
bulkies upon us--by the devil in hell!--if, indeed, there be hell or
devil--my knife shall become better acquainted with that throat--so look
to it!"
And this was the father--this the condition--of her whose ear had for
months drunk no other sound than the whispers of flattering love--the
murmurs of Passion from the lips of Poetry.
They continued their journey till midnight; they then arrived at an inn,
little different from the last; but here Alice was no longer consigned
to solitude. In a long room, reeking with smoke, sat from twenty to
thirty ruffians before a table on which mugs and vessels of strong
potations were formidably interspersed with sabres and pistols. They
received Walters and Darvil with a shout of welcome, and would have
crowded somewhat unceremoniously round Alice, if her father, whose
well-known desperate and brutal ferocity made him a man to be respected
in such an assembly, had not said, sternly, "Hands off, messmates, and
make way by the fire for my little girl--she is meat for your masters."
So saying, he pushed Alice down into a huge chair in the chimney-nook,
and, seating himself near her, at the end of the table, hastened to turn
the conversation.
"Well, Captain," said he, addressing a small thin man at the head of the
table, "I and Walters have fairly cut and run--the land has a bad air
for us, and we now want the sea-breeze to cure the rope fever. So,
knowing this was your night, we have crowded sail, and here we are. You
must give the girl there a lift, though I know you don't like such
lumber, and we'll run ashore as soon as we can."
"She seems a quiet little body," replied the captain; "and we would do
more than that to oblige an old friend like you. In half an hour
Oliver* puts on his nightcap, and we must then be off."
* The moon.
"The sooner the better."
The men now appeared to forget the presence of Alice, who sat faint with
fatigue and exhaustion, for she had been too sick at heart to touch the
food brought to her at their previous halting-place, gazing abstractedly
upon the fire. Her father, before their departure, made her swallow
some morsels of sea-biscuit, though each seemed to choke her; and then,
wrapped in a thick boat-cloak, she was placed in a small well-built
cutter; and as the sea-winds whistled round her, the present cold and
the past fatigues lulled her miserable heart into the arms of the
charitable Sleep.
CHAPTER II.
"You are once more a free woman;
Here I discharge your bonds."
/The Custom of the Country/.
AND many were thy trials, poor child; many that, were this book to
germinate into volumes more numerous than monk ever composed upon the
lives of saint or martyr (though a hundred volumes contained the record
of two years only in the life of St. Anthony), it would be impossible to
describe! We may talk of the fidelity of books, but no man ever wrote
even his own biography without being compelled to omit at least
nine-tenths of the most important materials. What are three--what six
volumes? We live six volumes in a day! Thought, emotion, joy, sorrow,
hope, fear, how prolix would they be if they might each tell their
hourly tale! But man's life itself is a brief epitome of that which is
infinite and everlasting; and his most accurate confessions are a
miserable abridgment of a hurried and confused compendium!
It was about three months, or more, from the night in which Alice wept
herself to sleep amongst those wild companions, when she contrived to
escape from her father's vigilant eye. They were then on the coast of
Ireland. Darvil had separated himself from Walters--from his seafaring
companions: he had run through the greater part of the money his crimes
had got together; he began seriously to attempt putting into execution
his horrible design of depending for support upon the sale of his
daughter. Now Alice might have been moulded into sinful purposes before
she knew Maltravers; but from that hour her very error made her
virtuous--she had comprehended, the moment she loved, what was meant by
female honour; and by a sudden revelation, she had purchased modesty,
delicacy of thought and soul, in the sacrifice of herself. Much of our
morality (prudent and right upon system) with respect to the first false
step of women, leads us, as we all know, into barbarous errors as to
individual exceptions. Where, from pure and confiding love, that first
false step has been taken, many a woman has been saved in after life
from a thousand temptations. The poor unfortunates who crowd our
streets and theatres have rarely, in the first instances, been corrupted
by love; but by poverty, and the contagion of circumstance and example.
It is a miserable cant phrase to call them the victims of seduction;
they have been the victims of hunger, of vanity, of curiosity, of evil
/female/ counsels; but the seduction of love hardly ever conducts to a
/life/ of vice. If a woman has once really loved, the beloved object
makes an impenetrable barrier between her and other men; their advances
terrify and revolt--she would rather die than be unfaithful even to a
memory. Though man love the sex, woman loves only the individual; and
the more she loves him, the more cold she is to the species. For the
passion of woman is in the sentiment--the fancy--the heart. It rarely
has much to do with the coarse images with which boys and old men--the
inexperienced and the worn-out--connect it.
But Alice, though her blood ran cold at her terrible father's language,
saw in his very design the prospect of escape. In an hour of
drunkenness he thrust her from the house, and stationed himself to watch
her--it was in the city of Cork. She formed her resolution
instantly--turned up a narrow street, and fled at full speed. Darvil
endeavoured in vain to keep pace with her--his eyes dizzy, his steps
reeling with intoxication. She heard his last curse dying from a
distance on the air, and her fear winged her steps: she paused at last,
and found herself on the outskirts of the town. She paused, overcome,
and deadly faint; and then, for the first time, she felt that a strange
and new life was stirring within her own. She had long since known that
she bore in her womb the unborn offspring of Maltravers, and that
knowledge had made her struggle and live on. But now, the embryo had
quickened into being--it moved--it appealed to her, a--thing unseen,
unknown; but still it was a living creature appealing to a mother! Oh,
the thrill, half of ineffable tenderness, half of mysterious terror, at
that moment!--What a new chapter in the life of a woman did it not
announce:--Now, then, she must be watchful over herself--must guard
against fatigue--must wrestle with despair. Solemn was the trust
committed to her--the life of another--the child of the Adored. It was
a summer night--she sat on a rude stone, the city on one side, with its
lights and lamps;--the whitened fields beyond, with the moon and the
stars above; and /above/ she raised her streaming eyes, and she thought
that God, the Protector, smiled upon her from the face of the sweet
skies. So, after a pause and a silent prayer, she rose and resumed her
way. When she was wearied she crept into a shed in a farmyard, and
slept, for the first time for weeks, the calm sleep of security and
hope.
CHAPTER III.
"How like a prodigal doth she return,
With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails."
/Merchant of Venice/.
"/Mer./ What are these?
/Uncle./ The tenants."
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.--/Wit without Money/.
IT was just two years from the night in which Alice had been torn from
the cottage: and at that time Maltravers was wandering amongst the ruins
of ancient Egypt, when, upon the very lawn where Alice and her lover had
so often loitered hand in hand, a gay party of children and young people
were assembled. The cottage had been purchased by an opulent and
retired manufacturer. He had raised the low thatched roof another story
high--and blue slate had replaced the thatch--and the pretty verandahs
overgrown with creepers had been taken down because Mrs. Hobbs thought
they gave the rooms a dull look; and the little rustic doorway had been
replaced by four Ionic pillars in stucco; and a new dining-room,
twenty-two feet by eighteen, had been built out at one wing, and a new
drawing-room had been built over the new dining-room. And the poor
little cottage looked quite grand and villa-like. The fountain had been
taken away, because it made the house damp; and there was such a broad
carriage-drive from the gate to the house! The gate was no longer the
modest green wooden gate, ever ajar with its easy latch; but a tall,
cast-iron, well-locked gate, between two pillars to match the porch.
And on one of the gates was a brass plate, on which was graven, "Hobbs'
Lodge--Ring the bell." The lesser Hobbses and the bigger Hobbses were
all on the lawn--many of them fresh from school--for it was the
half-holiday of a Saturday afternoon. There was mirth, and noise, and
shouting and whooping, and the respectable old couple looked calmly on;
Hobbs the father smoking his pipe (alas, it was not the dear
meerschaum); Hobbs the mother talking to her eldest daughter (a fine
young woman, three months married, for love, to a poor man), upon the
proper number of days that a leg of mutton (weight ten pounds) should be
made to last. "Always, my dear, have large joints, they are much the
most saving. Let me see--what a noise the boys do make! No, my love,
the ball's not here."
"Mamma, it is under your petticoats."
"La, child, how naughty you are!"
"Holla, you sir! it's my turn to go in now. Biddy, wait,--girls have no
innings--girls only fag out."
"Bob, you cheat."
"Pa, Ned says I cheat."
"Very likely, my dear, you are to be a lawyer."
"Where was I, my dear?" resumed Mrs. Hobbs, resettling herself, and
readjusting the invaded petticoats. "Oh, about the leg of mutton!--yes,
large joints are the best--the second day a nice hash, with dumplings;
the third, broil the bone--your husband is sure to like broiled
bones!--and then keep the scraps for Saturday's pie;--you know, my dear,
your father and I were worse off than you when we began. But now we
have everything that is handsome about us--nothing like management.
Saturday pies are very nice things, and then you start clear with your
joint on Sunday. A good wife like you should never neglect the
Saturday's pie!"
"Yes," said the bride, mournfully; "but Mr. Tiddy does not like pies."
"Not like pies! that very odd--Mr. Hobbs likes pies--perhaps you don't
have the crust made thick eno'. How somever, you can make it up to him
with a pudding. A wife should always study her husband's tastes--what
is a man's home without love? Still a husband ought not to be
aggravating, and dislike pie on a Saturday!"
"Holla! I say, ma, do you see that 'ere gipsy? I shall go and have my
fortune told."
"And I--and I!"
"Lor, if there ben't a tramper!" cried Mr. Hobbs, rising indignantly;
"what can the parish be about?"
The object of these latter remarks, filial and paternal, was a young
woman in a worn, threadbare cloak, with her face pressed to the openwork
of the gate, and looking wistfully--oh, how wistfully!--within. The
children eagerly ran up to her, but they involuntarily slackened their
steps when they drew near, for she was evidently not what they had taken
her for. No gipsy hues darkened the pale, thin, delicate cheek--no
gipsy leer lurked in those large blue and streaming eyes--no gipsy
effrontery bronzed that candid and childish brow. As she thus pressed
her countenance with convulsive eagerness against the cold bars, the
young people caught the contagion of inexpressible and half-fearful
sadness--they approached almost respectfully--"Do you want anything
here?" said the eldest and boldest of the boys.
"I--I--surely this is Dale Cottage?"
"It was Dale Cottage, it is Hobbs' Lodge now; can't you read?" said the
heir of the Hobbs's honours, losing, in contempt at the girl's
ignorance, his first impression of sympathy.
"And--and--Mr. Butler, is he gone too?"
Poor child! she spoke as if the cottage was gone, not improved; the
Ionic portico had no charm for her!
"Butler!--no such person lives here. Pa, do you know where Mr. Butler
lives?"
Pa was now moving up to the place of conference the slow artillery of
his fair round belly and portly calves. "Butler, no--I know nothing of
such a name--no Mr. Butler lives here. Go along with you--ain't you
ashamed to beg?"
"No Mr. Butler!" said the girl, gasping for breath, and clinging to the
gate for support. "Are you sure, sir?"
"Sure, yes!--what do you want with him?"
"Oh, papa, she looks faint!" said one of the /girls/ deprecatingly--"do
let her have something to eat; I'm sure she's hungry."
Mr. Hobbs looked angry; he had often been taken in, and no rich man
likes beggars. Generally speaking, the rich man is in the right. But
then Mr. Hobbs turned to the suspected tramper's sorrowful face and then
to his fair pretty child--and his good angel whispered something to Mr.
Hobbs's heart--and he said, after a pause, "Heaven forbid that we should
not feel for a poor fellow-creature not so well to do as ourselves.
Come in, my lass, and have a morsel to eat."
The girl did not seem to hear him, and he repeated the invitation,
approaching to unlock the gate.
"No, sir," said she, then; "no, I thank you. I could not come in now.
I could not eat here. But tell me, sir, I implore you, can you not even
guess where I may find Mr. Butler?"
"Butler!" said Mrs. Hobbs, whom curiosity had now drawn to the spot. "I
remember that was the name of the gentleman who hired the place, and was
robbed."
"Robbed!" said Mr. Hobbs, falling back and relocking the gate--"and the
new tea-pot just come home," he muttered inly. "Come, be off, child--be
off; we know nothing of your Mr. Butlers."
The young woman looked wildly in his face, cast a hurried glance over
the altered spot, and then, with a kind of shiver, as if the wind had
smitten her delicate form too rudely, she drew her cloak more closely
round her shoulders, and without saying another word, moved away. The
party looked after her as, with trembling steps, she passed down the
road, and all felt that pang of shame which is common to the human heart
at the sight of a distress it has not sought to soothe. But this
feeling vanished at once from the breast of Mrs. and Mr. Hobbs, when
they saw the girl stop where a turn of the road brought the gate before
her eyes; and for the first time, they perceived, what the worn cloak
had hitherto concealed, that the poor young thing bore an infant in her
arms. She halted, she gazed fondly back. Even at that instant the
despair of her eyes was visible; and then, as she pressed her lips to
the infant's brow, they heard a convulsive sob--they saw her turn away,
and she was gone!
"Well, I declare!" said Mrs. Hobbs.
"News for the parish," said Mr. Hobbs; "and she so young too!--what a
shame!"
"The girls about here are very bad nowadays, Jenny," said the mother to
the bride.
"I see now why she wanted Mr. Butler," quoth Hobbs, with a knowing
wink--"the slut has come to swear!"
And it was for this that Alice had supported her strength--her
courage-during the sharp pangs of childbirth; during a severe and
crushing illness, which for months after her confinement had stretched
her upon a peasant's bed (the object of the rude but kindly charity of
an Irish shealing)--for this, day after day, she had whispered to
herself, "I shall get well, and I will beg my way to the cottage, and
find him there still, and put my little one into his arms, and all will
be bright again;"--for this, as soon as she could walk without aid, had
she set out on foot from the distant land; for this, almost with a dog's
instinct (for she knew not what way to turn--what county the cottage was
placed in; she only knew the name of the neighbouring town; and that,
populous as it was, sounded strange to the ears of those she asked; and
she had often and often been directed wrong),--for this, I say, almost
with a dog's faithful instinct, had she, in cold and heat, in hunger and
in thirst, tracked to her old master's home her desolate and lonely way!
And thrice had she over-fatigued herself--and thrice again been indebted
to humble pity for a bed whereon to lay a feverish and broken frame.
And once, too, her baby--her darling, her life of life, had been
ill--had been near unto death, and she could not stir till the infant
(it was a girl) was well again, and could smile in her face and crow.
And thus many, many months had elapsed, since the day she set out on her
pilgrimage, to that on which she found its goal. But never, save when
the child was ill, had she desponded or abated heart and hope. She
should see him again, and he would kiss her child. And now--no--I
cannot paint the might of that stunning blow! She knew not, she dreamed
not, of the kind precautions Maltravers had taken; and he had not
sufficiently calculated on her thorough ignorance of the world. How
could she divine that the magistrate, not a mile distant from her, could
have told her all she sought to know? Could she but have met the
gardener--or the old woman-servant--all would have been well! These
last, indeed, she had the forethought to ask for. But the woman was
dead, and the gardener had taken a strange service in some distant
county. And so died her last gleam of hope. If one person who
remembered the search of Maltravers had but met and recognised her! But
she had been seen by so few--and now the bright, fresh girl was so sadly
altered! Her race was not yet run, and many a sharp wind upon the
mournful seas had the bark to brave before its haven was found at last.