Ernest Maltravers, Book 9
E >>
Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Ernest Maltravers, Book 9
This eBook was produced by Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com
and David Widger, widger@cecomet.net
BOOK IX.
I go, the bride of Acheron.--SOPH. /Antig./
These things are in the Future.--/Ib./ 1333.
CHAPTER I.
* * * "There the action lies
In its true nature * * * *
* * * What then? What rests?
Try what repentance can!"--/Hamlet/.
"I doubt he will be dead or ere I come."--/King John/.
IT was a fine afternoon in December, when Lumley Ferrers turned from
Lord Saxingham's door. The knockers were muffled--the windows on the
third story were partially closed. There was sickness in that house.
Lumley's face was unusually grave; it was even sad. "So young--so
beautiful," he muttered. "If ever I loved woman, I do believe I loved
her:--that love must be my excuse. . . . I repent of what I have
done--but I could not foresee that a mere lover's stratagem was to end
in such effects--the metaphysician was very right when he said, 'We only
sympathise with feelings we know ourselves.' A little disappointment in
love could not have hurt me much--it is d----d odd it should hurt her
so. I am altogether out of luck: old Templeton--I beg his pardon, Lord
Vargrave--(by-the-by, he gets heartier every day--what a constitution he
has!) seems cross with me. He did not like the idea that I should marry
Lady Florence--and when I thought that vision might have been realised,
hinted that I was disappointing some expectations he had formed; I can't
make out what he means. Then, too, the government have offered that
place to Maltravers instead of to me. In fact, my star is not in the
ascendant. Poor Florence, though,--I would really give a great deal to
know her restored to health!--I have done a villainous thing, but I
thought it only a clever one. However, regret is a fool's passion. By
Jupiter!--talking of fools, here comes Cesarini."
Wan, haggard, almost spectral, his hat over his brows, his dress
neglected, his air reckless and fierce, Cesarini crossed the way, and
thus accosted Lumley:
"We have murdered her, Ferrers; and her ghost will haunt us to our dying
day!"
"Talk prose; you know I am no poet. What do you mean?"
"She is worse to-day," groaned Cesarini, in a hollow voice. "I wander
like a lost spirit round the house; I question all who come from it.
Tell me--oh, tell me, is there hope?"
"I do, indeed, trust so," replied Ferrers, fervently. "The illness has
only of late assumed an alarming appearance. At first it was merely a
severe cold, caught by imprudent exposure one rainy night. Now they
fear it has settled on the lungs; but if we could get her abroad, all
might be well."
"You think so, honestly?"
"I do. Courage, my friend; do not reproach yourself; it has nothing to
do with us. She was taken ill of a cold, not of a letter, man!"
"No, no; I judge her heart by my own. Oh, that I could recall the past!
Look at me; I am the wreck of what I was; day and night the recollection
of my falsehood haunts me with remorse."
"Pshaw!--we will go to Italy together, and in your beautiful land love
will replace love."
"I am half resolved, Ferrers."
"Ha!--to do what?"
"To write--to reveal all to her."
The hardy complexion of Ferrers grew livid; his brow became dark with a
terrible expression.
"Do so, and fall the next day by my hand; my aim in slighter quarrel
never erred."
"Do you dare to threaten me?"
"Do you dare to betray me? Betray one who, if he sinned, sinned on your
account--in your cause; who would have secured to you the loveliest
bride, and the most princely dower in England; and whose only offence
against you is that he cannot command life and health?"
"Forgive me," said the Italian, with great emotion,--"forgive me, and do
not misunderstand; I would not have betrayed /you/--there is honour
among villains. I would have confessed only my own crime; I would never
have revealed yours--why should I?--it is unnecessary."
"Are you in earnest--are you sincere?"
"By my soul!"
"Then, indeed, you are worthy of my friendship. You will assume the
whole forgery--an ugly word, but it avoids circumlocution--to be your
own?"
"I will."
Ferrers paused a moment, and then stopped suddenly short.
"You will swear this!"
"By all that is holy."
"Then mark me, Cesarini; if to-morrow Lady Florence be worse, I will
throw no obstacle in the way of your confession, should you resolve to
make it; I will even use that influence which you leave me, to palliate
your offence, to win your pardon. And yet to resign your hopes--to
surrender one so loved to the arms of one so hated--it is
magnanimous--it is noble--it is above my standard! Do as you will."
Cesarini was about to reply, when a servant on horseback abruptly turned
the corner, almost at full speed. He pulled in--his eye fell upon
Lumley--he dismounted.
"Oh, Mr. Ferrers," said the man breathlessly, "I have been to your
house; they told me I might find you at Lord Saxingham's--I was just
going there--"
"Well, well, what is the matter?"
"My poor master, sir--my lord, I mean--"
"What of him?"
"Had a fit, sir--the doctors are with him--my mistress--for my lord
can't speak--sent me express for you."
"Lend me your horse--there, just lengthen the stirrups."
While the groom was engaged at the saddle, Ferrers turned to Cesarini.
"Do nothing rashly," said he; "I would say, if I might, nothing at all,
without consulting me; but mind, I rely, at all events, on your
promise--your oath."
"You may," said Cesarini, gloomily.
"Farewell, then," said Lumley, as he mounted; and in a few moments he
was out of sight.
CHAPTER II.
"O world, thou wast the forest to this hart,
* * * * *
Dost thou here lie?"--/Julius Caesar/.
AS Lumley leapt from his horse at his uncle's door, the disorder and
bustle of those demesnes, in which the severe eye of the master usually
preserved a repose and silence as complete as if the affairs of life
were carried on by clockwork, struck upon him sensibly. Upon the trim
lawn the old women employed in cleaning and weeding the walks were all
assembled in a cluster, shaking their heads ominously in concert, and
carrying on their comments in a confused whisper. In the hall, the
housemaid (and it was the first housemaid whom Lumley had ever seen in
that house, so invisibly were the wheels of the domestic machine carried
on) was leaning on her broom, "swallowing with open mouth a footman's
news." It was as if, with the first slackening of the rigid rein, human
nature broke loose from the conventual stillness in which it had ever
paced its peaceful path in that formal mansion.
"How is he?"
"My lord is better, sir; he has spoken, I believe."
At this moment a young face, swollen and red with weeping, looked down
from the stairs; and presently Evelyn rushed breathlessly into the hall.
"Oh, come up--come up--cousin Lumley; he cannot, cannot die in your
presence; you always seem so full of life! He cannot die; you do not
think he will die? Oh, take me with you, they won't let me go to him!"
"Hush, my dear little girl, hush; follow me lightly--that is right."
Lumley reached the door, tapped gently--entered; and the child also
stole in unobserved or at least unprevented. Lumley drew aside the
curtains; the new lord was lying on his bed, with his head propped by
pillows, his eyes wide open, with a glassy, but not insensible stare,
and his countenance fearfully changed.
Lady Vargrave was kneeling on the other side of the bed, one hand
clasped in her husband's, the other bathing his temples, and her tears
falling, without sob or sound, fast and copiously down her pale fair
cheeks.
Two doctors were conferring in the recess of the window; an apothecary
was mixing drugs at a table; and two of the oldest female servants of
the house were standing near the physicians, trying to overhear what was
said.
"My dear, dear uncle, how are you?" asked Lumley.
"Ah, you are come, then," said the dying man, in a feeble yet distinct
voice; "that is well--I have much to say to you."
"But not now--not now--you are not strong enough," said the wife,
imploringly.
The doctors moved to the bedside. Lord Vargrave waved his hand, and
raised his head.
"Gentlemen," said he, "I feel as if death were hastening upon me; I have
much need, while my senses remain, to confer with my nephew. Is the
present a fitting time?--if I delay, are you sure that I shall have
another?"
The doctors looked at each other.
"My lord," said one, "it may perhaps settle and relieve your mind to
converse with your nephew; afterwards you may more easily compose
yourself to sleep."
"Take this cordial, then," said the other doctor.
The sick man obeyed. One of the physicians approached Lumley, and
beckoned him aside.
"Shall we send for his lordship's lawyer?" whispered the leech.
"I am his heir-at-law," thought Lumley. "Why, /no/, my dear sir--no, I
think not, unless he expresses a desire to see him; doubtless my poor
uncle has already settled his worldly affairs. What is his state?"
The doctor shook his head. "I will speak to you, sir, after you have
left his lordship."
"What is the matter there?" cried the patient, sharply and querulously.
"Clear the room--I would be alone with my nephew."
The doctors disappeared; the old women reluctantly followed; when,
suddenly, the little Evelyn sprang forward and threw herself on the
breast of the dying man, sobbing as if her heart would break.
"My poor child!--my sweet child--my own, own darling!" gasped out Lord
Vargrave, folding his weak arms round her; "bless you--bless you! and
God will bless you. My wife," he added, with a voice far more tender
than Lumley had ever before heard him address to Lady Vargrave, "if
these be the last words I utter to you, let them express all the
gratitude I feel for you, for duties never more piously discharged: you
did not love me, it is true; and in health and pride that knowledge
often made me unjust to you. I have been severe--you have had much to
bear--forgive me."
"Oh! do not talk thus; you have been nobler, kinder than my deserts.
How much I owe you--how little I have done in return!"
"I cannot bear this; leave me, my dear, leave me. I may live yet--I
hope I may--I do not want to die. The cup may pass from me.
Go--go--and you, my child."
"Ah, let /me/ stay."
Lord Vargrave kissed the little creature, as she clung to his neck, with
passionate affection, and then, placing her in her mother's arms, fell
back exhausted on his pillow. Lumley, with handkerchief to his eyes,
opened the door to Lady Vargrave, who sobbed bitterly, and carefully
closing it, resumed his station by his uncle.
When Lumley Ferrers left the room, his countenance was gloomy and
excited rather than sad. He hurried to the room which he usually
occupied, and remained there for some hours while his uncle slept--a
long and sound sleep. But the mother and the stepchild (now restored to
the sick-room) did not desert their watch.
It wanted about an hour to midnight, when the senior physician sought
the nephew.
"Your uncle asks for you, Mr. Ferrers; and I think it right to say that
his last moments approach. We have done all that can be done."
"Is he fully aware of his danger?"
"He is; and has spent the last two hours in prayer--it is a Christian's
death-bed, sir."
"Humph!" said Ferrers, as he followed the physician. The room was
darkened--a single lamp, carefully shaded, burned on a table, on which
lay the Book of Life in Death: and with awe and grief on their faces,
the mother and the child were kneeling beside the bed.
"Come here, Lumley," faltered forth the fast-dying man.
"There are none here but you three--nearest and dearest to me?--That is
well. Lumley, then, you know all--my wife, he knows all. My child,
give your hand to your cousin--so you are now plighted. When you grow
up, Evelyn, you will know that it is my last wish and prayer that you
should be the wife of Lumley Ferrers. In giving you this angel, Lumley,
I atone to you for all seeming injustice. And to you, my child, I
secure the rank and honours to which I have painfully climbed, and which
I am forbidden to enjoy. Be kind to her, Lumley--you have a good and
frank heart--let it be her shelter--she has never known a harsh word.
God bless you all, and God forgive me--pray for me. Lumley, to-morrow
you will be Lord Vargrave, and by and by" (here a ghastly, but exultant
smile flitted over the speaker's countenance), "you will be my
Lady--Lady Vargrave. Lady--so--so--Lady Var--"
The words died on his trembling lips; he turned round, and, though he
continued to breathe for more than an hour, Lord Vargrave never uttered
another syllable.
CHAPTER III.
"Hopes and fears
Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down--on what?--a fathomless abyss."--YOUNG.
"Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu!"
/Much Ado about Nothing/.
THE wound which Maltravers had received was peculiarly severe and
rankling. It is true that he had never been what is called violently in
love with Florence Lascelles; but from the moment in which he had been
charmed and surprised into the character of a declared suitor, it was
consonant with his scrupulous and loyal nature to view only the bright
side of Florence's gifts and qualities, and to seek to enamour his
grateful fancy with her beauty, her genius, and her tenderness for
himself. He had thus forced and formed his thoughts and hopes to centre
all in one object; and Florence and the Future had grown words which
conveyed the same meaning to his mind. Perhaps he felt more bitterly
her sudden and stunning accusations, couched as they were in language so
unqualified, because they fell upon his pride rather than his affection,
and were not softened away by the thousand excuses and remembrances
which a passionate love would have invented and recalled. It was a
deep, concentrated sense of injury and insult, that hardened and soured
his whole nature--wounded vanity, wounded pride, and wounded honour.
And the blow, too, came upon him at a time when he was most dissatisfied
with all other prospects. He was disgusted with the littleness of the
agents and springs of political life--he had formed a weary contempt for
the barrenness of literary reputation. At thirty years of age he had
necessarily outlived the sanguine elasticity of early youth, and he had
already broken up many of those later toys in business and ambition
which afford the rattle and the hobby-borse to our maturer manhood.
Always asking for something too refined and too exalted for human life,
every new proof of unworthiness in men and things saddened or revolted a
mind still too fastidious for that quiet contentment with the world as
it is, which we must all learn before we can make our philosophy
practical and our genius as fertile of the harvest as it may be prodigal
of the blossom. Haughty, solitary, and unsocial, the ordinary resources
of mortified and disappointed men were not for Ernest Maltravers.
Rigidly secluded in his country retirement, he consumed the days in
moody wanderings; and in the evenings he turned to books with a spirit
disdainful and fatigued. So much had he already learned, that books
taught him little that he did not already know. And the biographies of
authors, those ghost-like beings who seem to have had no life but in the
shadow of their own haunting and imperishable thoughts, dimmed the
inspiration he might have caught from their pages. Those slaves of the
Lamp, those Silkworms of the Closet, how little had they enjoyed, how
little had they lived! Condemned to a mysterious fate by the wholesale
destinies of the world, they seemed born but to toil and to spin
thoughts for the common crowd--and, their task performed in drudgery and
in darkness, to die when no further service could be wrung from their
exhaustion. Names had they been in life, and as names they lived for
ever, in life as in death, airy and unsubstantial phantoms. It pleased
Maltravers at this time to turn a curious eye towards the obscure and
half-extinct philosophies of the ancient world. He compared the Stoics
with the Epicureans--those Epicureans who had given their own version to
the simple and abstemious utilitarianism of their master. He asked
which was the wiser, to sharpen pain or to deaden pleasure--to bear all
or to enjoy all; and, by a natural reaction which often happens to us in
life, this man, hitherto so earnest, active-spirited, and resolved on
great things, began to yearn for the drowsy pleasures of indolence. The
garden grew more tempting than the porch. He seriously revolved the old
alternative of the Grecian demi-god--might it not be wiser to abandon
the grave pursuits to which he had been addicted, to dethrone the august
but severe ideal in his heart, to cultivate the light loves and
voluptuous trifles of the herd, and to plant the brief space of youth
yet left to him with the myrtle and the rose? As water flows over
water, so new schemes rolled upon new--sweeping away every momentary
impression, and leaving the surface facile equally to receive and to
forget. Such is the common state with men of imagination in those
crises of life, when some great revolution of designs and hopes
unsettles elements too susceptible of every changing wind. And thus the
weak are destroyed, while the strong relapse, after terrible but unknown
convulsions, into that solemn harmony and order from which destiny and
God draw their uses to mankind.
It was from this irresolute contest between antagonist principles that
Maltravers was aroused by the following letter from Florence Lascelles:
"For three days and three sleepless nights I have debated with myself
whether or not I ought to address you. Oh, Ernest, were I what I was,
in health, in pride, I might fear that, generous as you are, you would
misconstrue my appeal; but that is now impossible. Our union never can
take place, and my hopes bound themselves to one sweet and melancholy
hope, that you will remove from my last hours the cold and dark shadow
of your resentment. We have both been cruelly deceived and betrayed.
Three days ago I discovered the perfidy that has been practised against
us. And then, ah! then, with all the weak human anguish of discovering
it too late (/your curse is fulfilled/, Ernest!), I had at least one
moment of proud, of exquisite rapture. Ernest Maltravers, the hero of
my dreams, stood pure and lofty as of old--a thing it was not unworthy
to love, to mourn, to die for. A letter in your handwriting had been
shown to me, garbled and altered, as it seems--but I detected not the
imposture--it was yourself, yourself alone, brought in false and
horrible witness against yourself! And could you think that any other
evidence, the words, the oaths of others, would have convicted you in my
eyes? There you wronged me. But I deserved it--I had bound myself to
secrecy--the seal is taken from my lips in order to be set upon my tomb.
Ernest, beloved Ernest--beloved till the last breath is extinct--till
the last throb of this heart is stilled--write me one word of comfort
and of pardon. You will believe what I have imperfectly written, for
you ever trusted my faith, if you have blamed my faults. I am now
comparatively happy--a word from you will, make me blest. And Fate has,
perhaps, been more merciful to both, than in our shortsighted and
querulous human vision, we might, perhaps, believe; for now that the
frame is brought low--and in the solitude of my chamber I can duly and
humbly commune with mine own heart, I see the aspect of those faults
which I once mistook for virtues--and feel that, had we been united, I,
loving you ever, might not have constituted your happiness, and so have
known the misery of losing your affection. May He who formed you for
glorious and yet all unaccomplished purposes strengthen you, when these
eyes can no longer sparkle at your triumphs, or weep at your lightest
sorrow. You will go on in your broad and luminous career:--a few years,
and my remembrance will have left but the vestige of a dream behind.
But, but--I can write no more. God bless you!"
CHAPTER IV.
"Oh, stop this headlong current of your goodness;
It comes too fast upon a feeble soul."
DRYDEN: /Sebastian and Doras/.
THE smooth physician had paid his evening visit; Lord Saxingham had gone
to a cabinet dinner, for Life must ever walk side by side with Death:
and Lady Florence Lascelles was alone. It was a room adjoining her
sleeping-apartment--a room in which, in the palmy days of the brilliant
and wayward heiress, she had loved to display her fanciful and peculiar
taste. There had she been accustomed to muse, to write, to study--there
had she first been dazzled by the novel glow of Ernest's undiurnal and
stately thoughts--there had she first conceived the romance of girlhood,
which had led her to confer with him, unknown--there had she first
confessed to herself that fancy had begotten love--there had she gone
through love's short and exhausting process of lone emotion;--the doubt,
the hope, the ecstasy; the reverse, the terror; the inanimate
despondency, the agonised despair! And there now, sadly and patiently,
she awaited the gradual march of inevitable decay. And books and
pictures, and musical instruments, and marble busts, half shadowed by
classic draperies--and all the delicate elegancies of womanly
refinement--still invested the chamber with a grace as cheerful as if
youth and beauty were to be the occupants for ever--and the dark and
noisome vault were not the only lasting residence for the things of
clay.
Florence Lascelles was dying; but not indeed wholly of that common, if
mystic malady, a broken heart. Her health, always delicate, because
always preyed upon by a nervous, irritable, and feverish spirit, had
been gradually and invisibly undermined, even before Ernest confessed
his love. In the singular lustre of those large-pupilled eyes--in the
luxuriant transparency of that glorious bloom,--the experienced might
long since have traced the seeds which cradled death. In the night when
her restless and maddened heart so imprudently drove her forth to
forestall the communication of Lumley (whom she had sent to Maltravers,
she scarce knew for what object, or with what hope), in that night she
was already in a high state of fever. The rain and the chill struck the
growing disease within--her excitement gave it food and fire--delirium
succeeded; and in that most fearful and fatal of all medical errors,
which robs the frame, when it most needs strength, of the very principle
of life, they had bled her into a temporary calm, and into permanent and
incurable weakness. Consumption seized its victim. The physicians who
attended her were the most renowned in London, and Lord Saxingham was
firmly persuaded that there was no danger. It was not in his nature to
think that death would take so great a liberty with Lady Florence
Lascelles, when there were so many poor people in the world whom there
would be no impropriety in removing from it. But Florence knew her
danger, and her high spirit did not quail before it. Yet, when
Cesarini, stung beyond endurance by the horrors of his remorse, wrote
and confessed all his own share of the fatal treason, though, faithful
to his promise, he concealed that of his accomplice,--then, ah then, she
did indeed repine at her doom, and long to look once more with the eyes
of love and joy upon the face of the beautiful world. But the illness
of the body usually brings out a latent power and philosophy of the
soul, which health never knows; and God has mercifully ordained it as
the customary lot of nature, that in proportion as we decline into the
grave, the sloping path is made smooth and easy to our feet; and every
day, as the films of clay are removed from our eyes, Death loses the
false aspect of the spectre, and we fall at last into its arms as a
wearied child upon the bosom of its mother.
It was with a heavy heart that Lady Florence listened to the monotonous
clicking of the clock that announced the departure of moments few, yet
not precious, still spared to her. Her face buried in her hands, she
bent over the small table beside her sofa, and indulged her melancholy
thoughts. Bowed was the haughty crest, unnerved the elastic shape that
had once seemed born for majesty and command--no friends were near, for
Florence had never made friends. Solitary had been her youth, and
solitary were her dying hours.
As she thus sat and mused, a sound of carriage wheels in the street
below slightly shook the room--it ceased--the carriage stopped at the
door. Florence looked up. "No, no, it cannot be," she muttered; yet,
while she spoke, a faint flush passed over her sunken and faded cheek,
and the bosom heaved beneath the robe, "a world too wide for its shrunk"
proportions. There was a silence, which to her seemed interminable, and
she turned away with a deep sigh, and a chill sinking of the heart.