← catalogue

Lucretia — Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton · English · Gutenberg #7691 · 966,657 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lucretia — Complete
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Lucretia — Complete

Author: Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton


        
Release date: November 24, 2004 [eBook #7691]
                Most recently updated: August 28, 2016

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7691

Credits: Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LUCRETIA — COMPLETE ***




Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger





LUCRETIA

By Edward Bulwer Lytton




PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1853.

“Lucretia; or, The Children of Night,” was begun simultaneously with
“The Caxtons: a Family Picture.” The two fictions were intended as
pendants; both serving, amongst other collateral aims and objects, to
show the influence of home education, of early circumstance and example,
upon after character and conduct. “Lucretia” was completed and published
before “The Caxtons.” The moral design of the first was misunderstood
and assailed; that of the last was generally acknowledged and approved:
the moral design in both was nevertheless precisely the same. But in
one it was sought through the darker side of human nature; in the other
through the more sunny and cheerful: one shows the evil, the other the
salutary influences, of early circumstance and training. Necessarily,
therefore, the first resorts to the tragic elements of awe and
distress,--the second to the comic elements of humour and agreeable
emotion. These differences serve to explain the different reception that
awaited the two, and may teach us how little the real conception of an
author is known, and how little it is cared for; we judge, not by the
purpose he conceives, but according as the impressions he effects are
pleasurable or painful. But while I cannot acquiesce in much of the
hostile criticism this fiction produced at its first appearance, I
readily allow that as a mere question of art the story might have been
improved in itself, and rendered more acceptable to the reader, by
diminishing the gloom of the catastrophe. In this edition I have
endeavoured to do so; and the victim whose fate in the former cast
of the work most revolted the reader, as a violation of the trite but
amiable law of Poetical Justice, is saved from the hands of the Children
of Night. Perhaps, whatever the faults of this work, it equals most of
its companions in the sustainment of interest, and in that coincidence
between the gradual development of motive or passion, and the sequences
of external events constituting plot, which mainly distinguish the
physical awe of tragedy from the coarse horrors of melodrama. I trust at
least that I shall now find few readers who will not readily acknowledge
that the delineation of crime has only been employed for the grave
and impressive purpose which brings it within the due province of the
poet,--as an element of terror and a warning to the heart.

LONDON, December 7.




PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

It is somewhere about four years since I appeared before the public as
the writer of a fiction, which I then intimated would probably be my
last; but bad habits are stronger than good intentions. When Fabricio,
in his hospital, resolved upon abjuring the vocation of the Poet, he
was, in truth, recommencing his desperate career by a Farewell to the
Muses,--I need not apply the allusion.

I must own, however, that there had long been a desire in my mind to
trace, in some work or other, the strange and secret ways through which
that Arch-ruler of Civilization, familiarly called “Money,” insinuates
itself into our thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions; affecting
those who undervalue as those who overestimate its importance; ruining
virtues in the spendthrift no less than engendering vices in the miser.
But when I half implied my farewell to the character of a novelist,
I had imagined that this conception might be best worked out upon
the stage. After some unpublished and imperfect attempts towards so
realizing my design, I found either that the subject was too wide for
the limits of the Drama, or that I wanted that faculty of concentration
which alone enables the dramatist to compress multiform varieties into
a very limited compass. With this design, I desired to unite some
exhibition of what seems to me a principal vice in the hot and emulous
chase for happiness or fame, fortune or knowledge, which is almost
synonymous with the cant phrase of “the March of Intellect,” in that
crisis of society to which we have arrived. The vice I allude to is
Impatience. That eager desire to press forward, not so much to conquer
obstacles as to elude them; that gambling with the solemn destinies
of life, seeking ever to set success upon the chance of a die; that
hastening from the wish conceived to the end accomplished; that thirst
after quick returns to ingenious toil, and breathless spurrings along
short cuts to the goal, which we see everywhere around us, from the
Mechanics’ Institute to the Stock Market,--beginning in education with
the primers of infancy, deluging us with “Philosophies for the Million”
 and “Sciences made Easy;” characterizing the books of our writers,
the speeches of our statesmen, no less than the dealings of our
speculators,--seem, I confess, to me to constitute a very diseased and
very general symptom of the times. I hold that the greatest friend to
man is labour; that knowledge without toil, if possible, were worthless;
that toil in pursuit of knowledge is the best knowledge we can attain;
that the continuous effort for fame is nobler than fame itself; that it
is not wealth suddenly acquired which is deserving of homage, but
the virtues which a man exercises in the slow pursuit of wealth,--the
abilities so called forth, the self-denials so imposed; in a word, that
Labour and Patience are the true schoolmasters on earth. While occupied
with these ideas and this belief, whether right or wrong, and slowly
convinced that it was only in that species of composition with which I
was most familiar that I could work out some portion of the plan that
I began to contemplate, I became acquainted with the histories of two
criminals existing in our own age,--so remarkable, whether from the
extent and darkness of the guilt committed, whether from the glittering
accomplishments and lively temper of the one, the profound knowledge and
intellectual capacities of the other, that the examination and analysis
of characters so perverted became a study full of intense, if gloomy,
interest.

In these persons there appear to have been as few redeemable points as
can be found in Human Nature, so far as such points may be traced in the
kindly instincts and generous passions which do sometimes accompany
the perpetration of great crimes, and, without excusing the individual,
vindicate the species. Yet, on the other hand, their sanguinary
wickedness was not the dull ferocity of brutes; it was accompanied with
instruction and culture,--nay, it seemed to me, on studying their lives
and pondering over their own letters, that through their cultivation
itself we could arrive at the secret of the ruthless and atrocious
pre-eminence in evil these Children of Night had attained; that here
the monster vanished into the mortal, and the phenomena that seemed
aberrations from Nature were explained.

I could not resist the temptation of reducing to a tale the materials
which had so engrossed my interest and tasked my inquiries. And in
this attempt, various incidental opportunities have occurred, if not of
completely carrying out, still of incidentally illustrating, my earlier
design,--of showing the influence of Mammon upon our most secret selves,
of reproving the impatience which is engendered by a civilization that,
with much of the good, brings all the evils of competition, and of
tracing throughout, all the influences of early household life upon our
subsequent conduct and career. In such incidental bearings the moral
may doubtless be more obvious than in the delineation of the darker and
rarer crime which forms the staple of my narrative. For in extraordinary
guilt we are slow to recognize ordinary warnings,--we say to the
peaceful conscience, “This concerns thee not!” whereas at each instance
of familiar fault and commonplace error we own a direct and sensible
admonition. Yet in the portraiture of gigantic crime, poets have rightly
found their sphere and fulfilled their destiny of teachers. Those
terrible truths which appall us in the guilt of Macbeth or the villany
of Iago, have their moral uses not less than the popular infirmities of
Tom Jones, or the every-day hypocrisy of Blifil. Incredible as it may
seem, the crimes herein related took place within the last seventeen
years. There has been no exaggeration as to their extent, no great
departure from their details; the means employed, even that which seems
most far-fetched,--the instrument of the poisoned ring,--have their
foundation in literal facts. Nor have I much altered the social position
of the criminals, nor in the least overrated their attainments and
intelligence. In those more salient essentials which will most, perhaps,
provoke the Reader’s incredulous wonder, I narrate a history, not invent
a fiction [These criminals were not, however, in actual life, as in
the novel, intimates and accomplices. Their crimes were of similar
character, effected by similar agencies, and committed at dates which
embrace their several careers of guilt within the same period; but I
have no authority to suppose that the one was known to the other.]. All
that Romance which our own time affords is not more the romance than the
philosophy of the time. Tragedy never quits the world,--it surrounds us
everywhere. We have but to look, wakeful and vigilant, abroad, and
from the age of Pelops to that of Borgia, the same crimes, though under
different garbs, will stalk on our paths. Each age comprehends in itself
specimens of every virtue and every vice which has ever inspired our
love or moved our horror.

LONDON, November 1, 1846.




CONTENTS

PART THE FIRST

PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST

CHAPTER I A Family Group II Lucretia III Conferences IV Guy’s Oak V
Household Treason VI The Will VII The Engagement VIII The Discovery IX A
Soul without Hope X The Reconciliation between Father and Son

EPILOGUE TO PART THE FIRST

PART THE SECOND

PROLOGUE TO PART THE SECOND

I The Coronation II Love at First Sight III Early Training for an
Upright Gentleman IV John Ardworth V The Weavers and the Woof VI The
Lawyer and the Body-snatcher VII The Rape of the Mattress VIII Percival
visits Lucretia IX The Rose beneath the Upas X The Rattle of the Snake
XI Love and Innocence XII Sudden Celebrity and Patient Hope XIII
The Loss of the Crossing XIV News from Grabman XV Varieties XVI The
Invitation to Laughton XVII The Waking of the Serpent XVIII Retrospect
XIX Mr. Grabman’s Adventures XX More of Mrs. Joplin XXI Beck’s Discovery
XXII The Tapestry Chamber XXIII The Shades on the Dial XXIV Murder,
towards his Design, moves like a Ghost XXV The Messenger speeds XXVI The
Spy flies XXVII Lucretia regains her Son XXVIII The Lots vanish within
the Urn

EPILOGUE TO PART THE SECOND




PART THE FIRST.




PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.

In an apartment at Paris, one morning during the Reign of Terror, a man,
whose age might be somewhat under thirty, sat before a table covered
with papers, arranged and labelled with the methodical precision of a
mind fond of order and habituated to business. Behind him rose a tall
bookcase surmounted with a bust of Robespierre, and the shelves were
filled chiefly with works of a scientific character, amongst which the
greater number were on chemistry and medicine. There were to be seen
also many rare books on alchemy, the great Italian historians, some
English philosophical treatises, and a few manuscripts in Arabic. The
absence from this collection of the stormy literature of the day seemed
to denote that the owner was a quiet student, living apart from the
strife and passions of the Revolution. This supposition was, however,
disproved by certain papers on the table, which were formally and
laconically labelled “Reports on Lyons,” and by packets of letters in
the handwritings of Robespierre and Couthon. At one of the windows a
young boy was earnestly engaged in some occupation which appeared to
excite the curiosity of the person just described; for this last, after
examining the child’s movements for a few moments with a silent scrutiny
that betrayed but little of the half-complacent, half-melancholy
affection with which busy man is apt to regard childhood, rose
noiselessly from his seat, approached the boy, and looked over his
shoulder unobserved. In a crevice of the wood by the window, a huge
black spider had formed his web; the child had just discovered another
spider, and placed it in the meshes: he was watching the result of his
operations. The intrusive spider stood motionless in the midst of the
web, as if fascinated. The rightful possessor was also quiescent; but
a very fine ear might have caught a low, humming sound, which probably
augured no hospitable intentions to the invader. Anon, the stranger
insect seemed suddenly to awake from its amaze; it evinced alarm, and
turned to fly; the huge spider darted forward; the boy uttered a chuckle
of delight. The man’s pale lip curled into a sinister sneer, and
he glided back to his seat. There, leaning his face on his hand, he
continued to contemplate the child. That child might have furnished to
an artist a fitting subject for fair and blooming infancy. His light
hair, tinged deeply, it is true, with red, hung in sleek and glittering
abundance down his neck and shoulders. His features, seen in profile,
were delicately and almost femininely proportioned; health glowed on
his cheek, and his form, slight though it was, gave promise of singular
activity and vigour. His dress was fantastic, and betrayed the taste of
some fondly foolish mother; but the fine linen, trimmed with lace, was
rumpled and stained, the velvet jacket unbrushed, the shoes soiled with
dust,--slight tokens these of neglect, but serving to show that the
foolish fondness which had invented the dress had not of late presided
over the toilet.

“Child,” said the man, first in French; and observing that the boy
heeded him not,--“child,” he repeated in English, which he spoke well,
though with a foreign accent, “child!”

The boy turned quickly.

“Has the great spider devoured the small one?”

“No, sir,” said the boy, colouring; “the small one has had the best of
it.”

The tone and heightened complexion of the child seemed to give meaning
to his words,--at least, so the man thought, for a slight frown passed
over his high, thoughtful brow.

“Spiders, then,” he said, after a short pause, “are different from men;
with us, the small do not get the better of the great. Hum! do you still
miss your mother?”

“Oh, yes!” and the boy advanced eagerly to the table.

“Well, you will see her once again.”

“When?”

The man looked towards a clock on the mantelpiece,--“Before that clock
strikes. Now, go back to your spiders.” The child looked irresolute and
disinclined to obey; but a stern and terrible expression gathered slowly
over the man’s face, and the boy, growing pale as he remarked it, crept
back to the window.

The father--for such was the relation the owner of the room bore to
the child--drew paper and ink towards him, and wrote for some minutes
rapidly. Then starting up, he glanced at the clock, took his hat and
cloak, which lay on a chair beside, drew up the collar of the mantle
till it almost concealed his countenance, and said, “Now, boy, come
with me; I have promised to show you an execution: I am going to keep my
promise. Come!”

The boy clapped his hands with joy; and you might see then, child as
he was, that those fair features were capable of a cruel and ferocious
expression. The character of the whole face changed. He caught up his
gay cap and plume, and followed his father into the streets.

Silently the two took their way towards the Barriere du Trone. At a
distance they saw the crowd growing thick and dense as throng after
throng hurried past them, and the dreadful guillotine rose high in the
light blue air. As they came into the skirts of the mob, the father, for
the first time, took his child’s hand. “I must get you a good place for
the show,” he said, with a quiet smile.

There was something in the grave, staid, courteous, yet haughty bearing
of the man that made the crowd give way as he passed. They got near the
dismal scene, and obtained entrance into a wagon already crowded with
eager spectators.

And now they heard at a distance the harsh and lumbering roll of the
tumbril that bore the victims, and the tramp of the horses which guarded
the procession of death. The boy’s whole attention was absorbed in
expectation of the spectacle, and his ear was perhaps less accustomed
to French, though born and reared in France, than to the language of
his mother’s lips,--and she was English; thus he did not hear or heed
certain observations of the bystanders, which made his father’s pale
cheek grow paler.

“What is the batch to-day?” quoth a butcher in the wagon. “Scarce worth
the baking,--only two; but one, they say, is an aristocrat,--a ci-devant
marquis,” answered a carpenter. “Ah, a marquis! Bon! And the other?”

“Only a dancer, but a pretty one, it is true; I could pity her, but
she is English.” And as he pronounced the last word, with a tone of
inexpressible contempt, the butcher spat, as if in nausea.

“Mort diable! a spy of Pitt’s, no doubt. What did they discover?”

A man, better dressed than the rest, turned round with a smile, and
answered: “Nothing worse than a lover, I believe; but that lover was a
proscrit. The ci-devant marquis was caught disguised in her apartment.
She betrayed for him a good, easy friend of the people who had long
loved her, and revenge is sweet.”

The man whom we have accompanied, nervously twitched up the collar of
his cloak, and his compressed lips told that he felt the anguish of the
laugh that circled round him.

“They are coming! There they are!” cried the boy, in ecstatic
excitement.

“That’s the way to bring up citizens,” said the butcher, patting the
child’s shoulder, and opening a still better view for him at the edge of
the wagon.

The crowd now abruptly gave way. The tumbril was in sight. A man, young
and handsome, standing erect and with folded arms in the fatal vehicle,
looked along the mob with an eye of careless scorn. Though he wore the
dress of a workman, the most unpractised glance could detect, in his
mien and bearing, one of the hated noblesse, whose characteristics came
out even more forcibly at the hour of death. On the lip was that
smile of gay and insolent levity, on the brow that gallant if reckless
contempt of physical danger, which had signalized the hero-coxcombs
of the old regime. Even the rude dress was worn with a certain air
of foppery, and the bright hair was carefully adjusted, as if for the
holiday of the headsman. As the eyes of the young noble wandered over
the fierce faces of that horrible assembly, while a roar of hideous
triumph answered the look, in which for the last time the gentilhomme
spoke his scorn of the canaille, the child’s father lowered the collar
of his cloak, and slowly raised his hat from his brow. The eye of the
marquis rested upon the countenance thus abruptly shown to him, and
which suddenly became individualized amongst the crowd,--that eye
instantly lost its calm contempt. A shudder passed visibly over his
frame, and his cheek grew blanched with terror. The mob saw the change,
but not the cause, and loud and louder rose their triumphant yell. The
sound recalled the pride of the young noble; he started, lifted his
crest erect, and sought again to meet the look which had appalled him.
But he could no longer single it out among the crowd. Hat and cloak once
more hid the face of the foe, and crowds of eager heads intercepted
the view. The young marquis’s lips muttered; he bent down, and then the
crowd caught sight of his companion, who was being lifted up from
the bottom of the tumbril, where she had flung herself in horror and
despair. The crowd grew still in a moment as the pale face of one,
familiar to most of them, turned wildly from place to place in the
dreadful scene, vainly and madly through its silence imploring life and
pity. How often had the sight of that face, not then pale and haggard,
but wreathed with rosy smiles, sufficed to draw down the applause of the
crowded theatre; how, then, had those breasts, now fevered by the thirst
of blood, held hearts spellbound by the airy movements of that exquisite
form writhing now in no stage-mime agony! Plaything of the city, minion
to the light amusement of the hour, frail child of Cytherea and the
Graces, what relentless fate has conducted thee to the shambles?
Butterfly of the summer, why should a nation rise to break thee upon
the wheel? A sense of the mockery of such an execution, of the horrible
burlesque that would sacrifice to the necessities of a mighty people so
slight an offering, made itself felt among the crowd. There was a low
murmur of shame and indignation. The dangerous sympathy of the mob was
perceived by the officer in attendance. Hastily he made the sign to
the headsman, and as he did so, a child’s cry was heard in the English
tongue,--“Mother! Mother!” The father’s hand grasped the child’s arm
with an iron pressure; the crowd swam before the boy’s eyes; the air
seemed to stifle him, and become blood-red; only through the hum and
the tramp and the roll of the drums he heard a low voice hiss in his ear
“Learn how they perish who betray me!”

As the father said these words, again his face was bare, and the woman,
whose ear amidst the dull insanity of fear had caught the cry of her
child’s voice, saw that face, and fell back insensible in the arms of
the headsman.




CHAPTER I. A FAMILY GROUP.

One July evening, at the commencement of the present century, several
persons were somewhat picturesquely grouped along an old-fashioned
terrace which skirted the garden-side of a manor-house that had
considerable pretensions to baronial dignity. The architecture was of
the most enriched and elaborate style belonging to the reign of James
the First: the porch, opening on the terrace, with its mullion window
above, was encased with pilasters and reliefs at once ornamental
and massive; and the large square tower in which it was placed was
surmounted by a stone falcon, whose talons griped fiercely a scutcheon
blazoned with the five-pointed stars which heralds recognize as the arms
of St. John. On either side this tower extended long wings, the dark
brickwork of which was relieved with noble stone casements and carved
pediments; the high roof was partially concealed by a balustrade
perforated not inelegantly into arabesque designs; and what
architects call “the sky line” was broken with imposing effect by tall
chimney-shafts of various form and fashion. These wings terminated in
angular towers similar to the centre, though kept duly subordinate to
it both in size and decoration, and crowned with stone cupolas. A low
balustrade, of later date than that which adorned the roof, relieved by
vases and statues, bordered the terrace, from which a double flight of
steps descended to a smooth lawn, intersected by broad gravel-walks,
shadowed by vast and stately cedars, and gently and gradually mingling
with the wilder scenery of the park, from which it was only divided by a
ha-ha.

Upon the terrace, and under cover of a temporary awning, sat the owner,
Sir Miles St. John of Laughton, a comely old man, dressed with
faithful precision to the costume which he had been taught to consider
appropriate to his rank of gentleman, and which was not yet wholly
obsolete and eccentric. His hair, still thick and luxuriant, was
carefully powdered, and collected into a club behind; his nether man
attired in gray breeches and pearl-coloured silk stockings; his vest
of silk, opening wide at the breast, and showing a profusion of frill,
slightly sprinkled with the pulvilio of his favourite Martinique; his
three-cornered hat, placed on a stool at his side, with a gold-headed
crutch-cane (hat made rather to be carried in the hand than worn on the
head), the diamond in his shirt-breast, the diamond on his finger, the
ruffles at his wrist,--all bespoke the gallant who had chatted with
Lord Chesterfield and supped with Mrs. Clive. On a table before him
were placed two or three decanters of wine, the fruits of the season, an
enamelled snuff-box in which was set the portrait of a female (perhaps
the Chloe or Phyllis of his early love-ditties), a lighted taper, a
small china jar containing tobacco, and three or four pipes of homely
clay,--for cherry-sticks and meerschaums were not then in fashion, and
Sir Miles St. John, once a gay and sparkling beau, now a popular country
gentleman, great at county meetings and sheep-shearing festivals, had
taken to smoking, as in harmony with his bucolic transformation. An old
setter lay dozing at his feet; a small spaniel--old, too--was sauntering
lazily in the immediate neighbourhood, looking gravely out for such
stray bits of biscuit as had been thrown forth to provoke him to
exercise, and which hitherto had escaped his attention. Half seated,
half reclined on the balustrade, apart from the baronet, but within
reach of his conversation, lolled a man in the prime of life, with an
air of unmistakable and sovereign elegance and distinction. Mr. Vernon
was a guest from London; and the London man,--the man of clubs and
dinners and routs, of noon loungings through Bond Street, and nights
spent with the Prince of Wales,--seemed stamped not more upon the
careful carelessness of his dress, and upon the worn expression of his
delicate features, than upon the listless ennui, which, characterizing
both his face and attitude, appeared to take pity on himself for having
been entrapped into the country.

Yet we should convey an erroneous impression of Mr. Vernon if we
designed, by the words “listless ennui,” to depict the slumberous
insipidity of more modern affectation; it was not the ennui of a man
to whom ennui is habitual, it was rather the indolent prostration that
fills up the intervals of excitement. At that day the word blast was
unknown; men had not enough sentiment for satiety. There was a kind of
Bacchanalian fury in the life led by those leaders of fashion, among
whom Mr. Vernon was not the least distinguished; it was a day of deep
drinking, of high play, of jovial, reckless dissipation, of
strong appetite for fun and riot, of four-in-hand coachmanship, of
prize-fighting, of a strange sort of barbarous manliness that strained
every nerve of the constitution,--a race of life in which three fourths
of the competitors died half-way in the hippodrome. What is now the
Dandy was then the Buck; and something of the Buck, though subdued by
a chaster taste than fell to the ordinary members of his class, was
apparent in Mr. Vernon’s costume as well as air. Intricate folds of
muslin, arranged in prodigious bows and ends, formed the cravat, which
Brummell had not yet arisen to reform; his hat, of a very peculiar
shape, low at the crown and broad at the brim, was worn with an air of
devil-me-care defiance; his watch-chain, garnished with a profusion of
rings and seals, hung low from his white waistcoat; and the adaptation
of his nankeen inexpressibles to his well-shaped limbs was a masterpiece
of art. His whole dress and air was not what could properly be called
foppish, it was rather what at that time was called “rakish.” Few could
so closely approach vulgarity without being vulgar: of that privileged
few, Mr. Vernon was one of the elect.

Farther on, and near the steps descending into the garden, stood a man
in an attitude of profound abstraction, his arms folded, his eyes bent
on the ground, his brows slightly contracted; his dress was a plain
black surtout, and pantaloons of the same colour. Something both in the
fashion of the dress, and still more in the face of the man, bespoke the
foreigner.

Sir Miles St. John was an accomplished person for that time of day. He
had made the grand tour; he had bought pictures and statues; he spoke
and wrote well in the modern languages; and being rich, hospitable,
social, and not averse from the reputation of a patron, he had opened
his house freely to the host of emigrants whom the French Revolution had
driven to our coasts. Olivier Dalibard, a man of considerable learning
and rare scientific attainments, had been tutor in the house of the
Marquis de G----, a French nobleman known many years before to the old
baronet. The marquis and his family had been among the first emigres at
the outbreak of the Revolution. The tutor had remained behind; for at
that time no danger appeared to threaten those who pretended to no other
aristocracy than that of letters. Contrary, as he said, with repentant
modesty, to his own inclinations, he had been compelled, not only for
his own safety, but for that of his friends, to take some part in the
subsequent events of the Revolution,--a part far from sincere, though
so well had he simulated the patriot that he had won the personal
favour and protection of Robespierre; nor till the fall of that virtuous
exterminator had he withdrawn from the game of politics and effected
in disguise his escape to England. As, whether from kindly or other
motives, he had employed the power of his position in the esteem of
Robespierre to save certain noble heads from the guillotine,--amongst
others, the two brothers of the Marquis de G----, he was received with
grateful welcome by his former patrons, who readily pardoned his career
of Jacobinism from their belief in his excuses and their obligations to
the services which that very career had enabled him to render to their
kindred. Olivier Dalibard had accompanied the marquis and his family in
one of the frequent visits they paid to Laughton; and when the marquis
finally quitted England, and fixed his refuge at Vienna, with some
connections of his wife’s, he felt a lively satisfaction at the thought
of leaving his friend honourably, if unambitiously, provided for as
secretary and librarian to Sir Miles St. John. In fact, the scholar,
who possessed considerable powers of fascination, had won no less favour
with the English baronet than he had with the French dictator. He played
well both at chess and backgammon; he was an extraordinary accountant;
he had a variety of information upon all points that rendered him more
convenient than any cyclopaedia in Sir Miles’s library; and as he spoke
both English and Italian with a correctness and fluency extremely rare
in a Frenchman, he was of considerable service in teaching languages
to, as well as directing the general literary education of, Sir Miles’s
favourite niece, whom we shall take an early opportunity to describe at
length.

Nevertheless, there had been one serious obstacle to Dalibard’s
acceptance of the appointment offered to him by Sir Miles. Dalibard had
under his charge a young orphan boy of some ten or twelve years old,--a
boy whom Sir Miles was not long in suspecting to be the scholar’s son.
This child had come from France with Dalibard, and while the marquis’s
family were in London, remained under the eye and care of his guardian
or father, whichever was the true connection between the two. But this
superintendence became impossible if Dalibard settled in Hampshire with
Sir Miles St. John, and the boy remained in London; nor, though the
generous old gentleman offered to pay for the child’s schooling, would
Dalibard consent to part with him. At last the matter was arranged: the
boy was invited to Laughton on a visit, and was so lively, yet so well
mannered, that he became a favourite, and was now fairly quartered
in the house with his reputed father; and not to make an unnecessary
mystery of this connection, such was in truth the relationship between
Olivier Dalibard and Honore Gabriel Varney,--a name significant of the
double and illegitimate origin: a French father, an English mother.
Dropping, however, the purely French appellation of Honore, he went
familiarly by that of Gabriel. Half-way down the steps stood the lad,
pencil and tablet in hand, sketching. Let us look over his shoulder: it
is his father’s likeness,--a countenance in itself not very remarkable
at the first glance, for the features were small; but when examined,
it was one that most persons, women especially, would have pronounced
handsome, and to which none could deny the higher praise of thought
and intellect. A native of Provence, with some Italian blood in his
veins,--for his grandfather, a merchant of Marseilles, had married into
a Florentine family settled at Leghorn,--the dark complexion common
with those in the South had been subdued, probably by the habits of the
student, into a bronze and steadfast paleness which seemed almost fair
by the contrast of the dark hair which he wore unpowdered, and the
still darker brows which hung thick and prominent over clear gray eyes.
Compared with the features, the skull was disproportionally large, both
behind and before; and a physiognomist would have drawn conclusions more
favourable to the power than the tenderness of the Provencal’s character
from the compact closeness of the lips and the breadth and massiveness
of the iron jaw. But the son’s sketch exaggerated every feature, and
gave to the expression a malignant and terrible irony not now, at least,
apparent in the quiet and meditative aspect. Gabriel himself, as he
stood, would have been a more tempting study to many an artist. It is
true that he was small for his years; but his frame had a vigour in
its light proportions which came from a premature and almost adolescent
symmetry of shape and muscular development. The countenance, however,
had much of effeminate beauty: the long hair reached the shoulders, but
did not curl,--straight, fine, and glossy as a girl’s, and in colour
of the pale auburn, tinged with red, which rarely alters in hue as
childhood matures to man; the complexion was dazzlingly clear and fair.
Nevertheless, there was something so hard in the lip, so bold, though
not open, in the brow, that the girlishness of complexion, and even of
outline, could not leave, on the whole, an impression of effeminacy. All
the hereditary keenness and intelligence were stamped upon his face at
that moment; but the expression had also a large share of the very irony
and malice which he had conveyed to his caricature. The drawing itself
was wonderfully vigorous and distinct; showing great artistic promise,
and done with the rapidity and ease which betrayed practice. Suddenly
his father turned, and with as sudden a quickness the boy concealed his
tablet in his vest; and the sinister expression of his face smoothed
into a timorous smile as his eye encountered Dalibard’s. The father
beckoned to the boy, who approached with alacrity. “Gabriel,” whispered
the Frenchman, in his own tongue, “where are they at this moment?”

The boy pointed silently towards one of the cedars. Dalibard mused an
instant, and then, slowly descending the steps, took his noiseless way
over the smooth turf towards the tree. Its boughs drooped low and spread
wide; and not till he was within a few paces of the spot could his eye
perceive two forms seated on a bench under the dark green canopy. He
then paused and contemplated them.

The one was a young man whose simple dress and subdued air strongly
contrasted the artificial graces and the modish languor of Mr. Vernon;
but though wholly without that nameless distinction which sometimes
characterizes those conscious of pure race and habituated to the
atmosphere of courts, he had at least Nature’s stamp of aristocracy in
a form eminently noble, and features of manly, but surpassing beauty,
which were not rendered less engaging by an expression of modest
timidity. He seemed to be listening with thoughtful respect to his
companion, a young female by his side, who was speaking to him with an
earnestness visible in her gestures and her animated countenance. And
though there was much to notice in the various persons scattered
over the scene, not one, perhaps,--not the graceful Vernon, not the
thoughtful scholar, nor his fair-haired, hard-lipped son, not even
the handsome listener she addressed,--no, not one there would so have
arrested the eye, whether of a physiognomist or a casual observer, as
that young girl, Sir Miles St. John’s favourite niece and presumptive
heiress.

But as at that moment the expression of her face differed from that
habitual to it, we defer its description.

“Do not,” such were her words to her companion,--“do not alarm yourself
by exaggerating the difficulties; do not even contemplate them: those be
my care. Mainwaring, when I loved you; when, seeing that your diffidence
or your pride forbade you to be the first to speak, I overstepped the
modesty or the dissimulation of my sex; when I said, ‘Forget that I am
the reputed heiress of Laughton, see in me but the faults and merits of
the human being, of the wild unregulated girl, see in me but Lucretia
Clavering’” (here her cheeks blushed, and her voice sank into a lower
and more tremulous whisper) “‘and love her if you can!’--when I went
thus far, do not think I had not measured all the difficulties in the
way of our union, and felt that I could surmount them.”

“But,” answered Mainwaring, hesitatingly, “can you conceive it
possible that your uncle ever will consent? Is not pride--the pride
of family--almost the leading attribute of his character? Did he not
discard your mother--his own sister--from his house and heart for no
other offence but a second marriage which he deemed beneath her? Has he
ever even consented to see, much less to receive, your half-sister, the
child of that marriage? Is not his very affection for you interwoven
with his pride in you, with his belief in your ambition? Has he not
summoned your cousin, Mr. Vernon, for the obvious purpose of favouring
a suit which he considers worthy of you, and which, if successful, will
unite the two branches of his ancient house? How is it possible that he
can ever hear without a scorn and indignation which would be fatal
to your fortunes that your heart has presumed to choose, in William
Mainwaring, a man without ancestry or career?”

“Not without career,” interrupted Lucretia, proudly. “Do you think if
you were master of Laughton that your career would not be more brilliant
than that of yon indolent, luxurious coxcomb? Do you think that I could
have been poor-hearted enough to love you if I had not recognized in
you energies and talents that correspond with my own ambition? For I am
ambitious, as you know, and therefore my mind, as well as my heart, went
with my love for you.”

“Ah, Lucretia, but can Sir Miles St. John see my future rise in my
present obscurity?”

“I do not say that he can, or will; but if you love me, we can wait. Do
not fear the rivalry of Mr. Vernon. I shall know how to free myself from
so tame a peril. We can wait,--my uncle is old; his habits preclude the
chance of a much longer life; he has already had severe attacks. We
are young, dear Mainwaring: what is a year or two to those who hope?”
 Mainwaring’s face fell, and a displeasing chill passed through his
veins. Could this young creature, her uncle’s petted and trusted
darling, she who should be the soother of his infirmities, the prop
of his age, the sincerest mourner at his grave, weigh coldly thus the
chances of his death, and point at once to the altar and the tomb?

He was saved from the embarrassment of reply by Dalibard’s approach.

“More than half an hour absent,” said the scholar, in his own language,
with a smile; and drawing out his watch, he placed it before their
eyes. “Do you not think that all will miss you? Do you suppose, Miss
Clavering, that your uncle has not ere this asked for his fair niece?
Come, and forestall him.” He offered his arm to Lucretia as he spoke.
She hesitated a moment, and then, turning to Mainwaring, held out her
hand. He pressed it, though scarcely with a lover’s warmth; and as she
walked back to the terrace with Dalibard, the young man struck slowly
into the opposite direction, and passing by a gate over a foot-bridge
that led from the ha-ha into the park, bent his way towards a lake which
gleamed below at some distance, half-concealed by groves of venerable
trees rich with the prodigal boughs of summer. Meanwhile, as they
passed towards the house, Dalibard, still using his native tongue, thus
accosted his pupil:--

“You must pardon me if I think more of your interests than you do; and
pardon me no less if I encroach on your secrets and alarm your pride.
This young man,--can you be guilty of the folly of more than a passing
caprice for his society, of more than the amusement of playing with his
vanity? Even if that be all, beware of entangling yourself in your own
meshes.”

“You do in truth offend me,” said Lucretia, with calm haughtiness, “and
you have not the right thus to speak to me.”

“Not the right,” repeated the Provencal, mournfully, “not the right!
Then, indeed, I am mistaken in my pupil. Do you consider that I would
have lowered my pride to remain here as a dependent; that, conscious of
attainments, and perhaps of abilities, that should win their way, even
in exile, to distinction, I would have frittered away my life in
these rustic shades,--if I had not formed in you a deep and absorbing
interest? In that interest I ground my right to warn and counsel you. I
saw, or fancied I saw, in you a mind congenial to my own; a mind above
the frivolities of your sex,--a mind, in short, with the grasp and
energy of a man’s. You were then but a child, you are scarcely yet a
woman; yet have I not given to your intellect the strong food on which
the statesmen of Florence fed their pupil-princes, or the noble Jesuits
the noble men who were destined to extend the secret empire of the
imperishable Loyola?”

“You gave me the taste for a knowledge rare in my sex, I own,” answered
Lucretia, with a slight tone of regret in her voice: “and in the
knowledge you have communicated I felt a charm that at times seems to
me to be only fatal. You have confounded in my mind evil and good, or
rather, you have left both good and evil as dead ashes, as the dust and
cinder of a crucible. You have made intellect the only conscience. Of
late, I wish that my tutor had been a village priest!”

“Of late, since you have listened to the pastorals of that meek
Corydon!”

“Dare you despise him? And for what? That he is good and honest?”

“I despise him, not because he is good and honest, but because he is
of the common herd of men, without aim or character. And it is for this
youth that you will sacrifice your fortunes, your ambition, the station
you were born to fill and have been reared to improve,--this youth in
whom there is nothing but the lap-dog’s merit, sleekness and beauty! Ay,
frown,--the frown betrays you; you love him!”

“And if I do?” said Lucretia, raising her tall form to its utmost
height, and haughtily facing her inquisitor,--“and, if I do, what then?
Is he unworthy of me? Converse with him, and you will find that the
noble form conceals as high a spirit. He wants but wealth: I can give it
to him. If his temper is gentle, I can prompt and guide it to fame and
power. He at least has education and eloquence and mind. What has Mr.
Vernon?”

“Mr. Vernon? I did not speak of him!”

Lucretia gazed hard upon the Provencal’s countenance,--gazed with that
unpitying air of triumph with which a woman who detects a power over
the heart she does not desire to conquer exults in defeating the reasons
that heart appears to her to prompt. “No,” she said in a calm voice, to
which the venom of secret irony gave stinging significance,--“no, you
spoke not of Mr. Vernon; you thought that if I looked round, if I looked
nearer, I might have a fairer choice.”

“You are cruel, you are unjust,” said Dalibard, falteringly. “If I
once presumed for a moment, have I repeated my offence? But,” he added
hurriedly, “in me,--much as you appear to despise me,--in me, at
least, you would have risked none of the dangers that beset you if you
seriously set your heart on Mainwaring.”

“You think my uncle would be proud to give my hand to M. Olivier
Dalibard?”

“I think and I know,” answered the Provencal, gravely, and disregarding
the taunt, “that if you had deigned to render me--poor exile that
I am!--the most enviable of men, you had still been the heiress of
Laughton.”

“So you have said and urged,” said Lucretia, with evident curiosity
in her voice; “yet how, and by what art,--wise and subtle as you
are,--could you have won my uncle’s consent?”

“That is my secret,” returned Dalibard, gloomily; “and since the madness
I indulged is forever over; since I have so schooled my heart that
nothing, despite your sarcasm, save an affectionate interest which I may
call paternal rests there,--let us pass from this painful subject. Oh,
my dear pupil, be warned in time; know love for what it really is, in
the dark and complicated history of actual life,--a brief enchantment,
not to be disdained, but not to be considered the all-in all. Look round
the world; contemplate all those who have married from passion: ten
years afterwards, whither has the passion flown? With a few, indeed,
where there is community of object and character, new excitements, new
aims and hopes, spring up; and having first taken root in passion, the
passion continues to shoot out in their fresh stems and fibres. But
deceive yourself not; there is no such community between you and
Mainwaring. What you call his goodness, you will learn hereafter to
despise as feeble; and what in reality is your mental power he soon, too
soon, will shudder at as unwomanly and hateful.”

“Hold!” cried Lucretia, tremulously. “Hold! and if he does, I shall owe
his hate to you,--to your lessons; to your deadly influence!”

“Lucretia, no; the seeds were in you. Can cultivation force from the
soil that which it is against the nature of the soil to bear?”

“I will pluck out the weeds! I will transform myself!”

“Child, I defy you!” said the scholar, with a smile that gave to his
face the expression his son had conveyed to it. “I have warned you, and
my task is done.” With that he bowed, and leaving her, was soon by the
side of Sir Miles St. John; and the baronet and his librarian, a few
moments after, entered the house and sat down to chess.

But during the dialogues we have sketched, we must not suppose that Sir
Miles himself had been so wholly absorbed in the sensual gratification
bestowed upon Europe by the immortal Raleigh as to neglect his guest and
kinsman.

“And so, Charley Vernon, it is not the fashion to smoke in Lunnon.” Thus
Sir Miles pronounced the word, according to the Euphuism of his youth,
and which, even at that day, still lingered in courtly jargon.

“No, sir. However, to console us, we have most other vices in full
force.”

“I don’t doubt it; they say the prince’s set exhaust life pretty
quickly.”

“It certainly requires the fortune of an earl and the constitution of a
prize-fighter to live with him.”

“Yet methinks, Master Charley, you have neither the one nor the other.”

“And therefore I see before me, and at no very great distance, the Bench
and--a consumption!” answered Vernon, suppressing a slight yawn.

“‘T is a pity, for you had a fine estate, properly managed; and in spite
of your faults, you have the heart of a true gentleman. Come, come!” and
the old man spoke with tenderness, “you are young enough yet to reform.
A prudent marriage and a good wife will save both your health and your
acres.”

“If you think so highly of marriage, my dear Sir Miles, it is a wonder
you did not add to your precepts the value of your example.”

“Jackanapes! I had not your infirmities: I never was a spendthrift, and
I have a constitution of iron!” There was a pause. “Charles,” continued
Sir Miles, musingly, “there is many an earl with a less fortune than the
conjoined estates of Vernon Grange and Laughton Hall. You must already
have understood me: it is my intention to leave my estates to Lucretia;
it is my wish, nevertheless, to think you will not be the worse for my
will. Frankly, if you can like my niece, win her; settle here while I
live, put the Grange to nurse, and recruit yourself by fresh air and
field-sports. Zounds, Charles, I love you, and that’s the truth! Give me
your hand!”

“And a grateful heart with it, sir,” said Vernon, warmly, evidently
affected, as he started from his indolent position and took the hand
extended to him. “Believe me, I do not covet your wealth, nor do I envy
my cousin anything so much as the first place in your regard.”

“Prettily said, my boy, and I don’t suspect you of insincerity. What
think you, then, of my plan?”

Mr. Vernon seemed embarrassed; but recovering himself with his usual
ease, he replied archly: “Perhaps, sir, it will be of little use to know
what I think of your plan; my fair cousin may have upset it already.”

“Ha, sir! let me look at you. So, so! you are not jesting. What the
deuce do you mean? ‘Gad, man, speak out!”

“Do you not think that Mr. Monderling--Mandolin--what’s his name,
eh?--do you not think that he is a very handsome young fellow?” said Mr.
Vernon, drawing out his snuffbox and offering it to his kinsman.

“Damn your snuff,” quoth Sir Miles, in great choler, as he rejected the
proffered courtesy with a vehemence that sent half the contents of the
box upon the joint eyes and noses of the two canine favourites dozing
at his feet. The setter started up in an agony; the spaniel wheezed and
sniffled and ran off, stopping every moment to take his head between his
paws. The old gentleman continued without heeding the sufferings of his
dumb friends,--a symptom of rare discomposure on his part.

“Do you mean to insinuate, Mr. Vernon, that my niece--my elder niece,
Lucretia Clavering--condescends to notice the looks, good or bad, of
Mr. Mainwaring? ‘Sdeath, sir, he is the son of a land-agent! Sir, he is
intended for trade! Sir, his highest ambition is to be partner in some
fifth-rate mercantile house!”

“My dear Sir Miles,” replied Mr. Vernon, as he continued to brush away,
with his scented handkerchief, such portions of the prince’s mixture as
his nankeen inexpressibles had diverted from the sensual organs of Dash
and Ponto--“my dear Sir Miles, ca n’empeche pas le sentiment!”

“Empeche the fiddlestick! You don’t know Lucretia. There are many girls,
indeed, who might not be trusted near any handsome flute-playing spark,
with black eyes and white teeth; but Lucretia is not one of those; she
has spirit and ambition that would never stoop to a mesalliance; she has
the mind and will of a queen,--old Queen Bess, I believe.”

“That is saying much for her talent, sir; but if so, Heaven help her
intended! I am duly grateful for the blessings you propose me!”

Despite his anger, the old gentleman could not help smiling.

“Why, to confess the truth, she is hard to manage; but we men of the
world know how to govern women, I hope,--much more how to break in a
girl scarce out of her teens. As for this fancy of yours, it is sheer
folly: Lucretia knows my mind. She has seen her mother’s fate; she has
seen her sister an exile from my house. Why? For no fault of hers, poor
thing, but because she is the child of disgrace, and the mother’s sin is
visited on her daughter’s head. I am a good-natured man, I fancy, as
men go; but I am old-fashioned enough to care for my race. If Lucretia
demeaned herself to love, to encourage, that lad, why, I would strike
her from my will, and put your name where I have placed hers.”

“Sir,” said Vernon, gravely, and throwing aside all affectation of
manner, “this becomes serious; and I have no right even to whisper a
doubt by which it now seems I might benefit. I think it imprudent, if
you wish Miss Clavering to regard me impartially as a suitor to her
hand, to throw her, at her age, in the way of a man far superior to
myself, and to most men, in personal advantages,--a man more of her own
years, well educated, well mannered, with no evidence of his inferior
birth in his appearance or his breeding. I have not the least ground for
supposing that he has made the slightest impression on Miss Clavering,
and if he has, it would be, perhaps, but a girl’s innocent and
thoughtless fancy, easily shaken off by time and worldly reflection; but
pardon me if I say bluntly that should that be so, you would be wholly
unjustified in punishing, even in blaming, her,--it is yourself you must
blame for your own carelessness and that forgetful blindness to human
nature and youthful emotions which, I must say, is the less pardonable
in one who has known the world so intimately.”

“Charles Vernon,” said the old baronet, “give me your hand again! I was
right, at least, when I said you had the heart of a true gentleman. Drop
this subject for the present. Who has just left Lucretia yonder?”

“Your protege, the Frenchman.”

“Ah, he, at least, is not blind; go and join Lucretia!”

Vernon bowed, emptied the remains of the Madeira into a tumbler, drank
the contents at a draught, and sauntered towards Lucretia; but she,
perceiving his approach, crossed abruptly into one of the alleys that
led to the other side of the house, and he was either too indifferent or
too well-bred to force upon her the companionship which she so evidently
shunned. He threw himself at length upon one of the benches on the lawn,
and leaning his head upon his hand, fell into reflections which, had he
spoken, would have shaped themselves somewhat thus into words:--

“If I must take that girl as the price of this fair heritage, shall I
gain or lose? I grant that she has the finest neck and shoulders I ever
saw out of marble; but far from being in love with her, she gives me a
feeling like fear and aversion. Add to this that she has evidently no
kinder sentiment for me than I for her; and if she once had a heart,
that young gentleman has long since coaxed it away. Pleasant auspices,
these, for matrimony to a poor invalid who wishes at least to decline
and to die in peace! Moreover, if I were rich enough to marry as I
pleased; if I were what, perhaps, I ought to be, heir to Laughton,--why,
there is a certain sweet Mary in the world, whose eyes are softer than
Lucretia Clavering’s. But that is a dream! On the other hand, if I do
not win this girl, and my poor kinsman give her all, or nearly all, his
possessions, Vernon Grange goes to the usurers, and the king will find
a lodging for myself. What does it matter? I cannot live above two or
three years at the most, and can only hope, therefore, that dear stout
old Sir Miles may outlive me. At thirty-three I have worn out fortune
and life; little pleasure could Laughton give me,--brief pain the Bench.
‘Fore Gad, the philosophy of the thing is on the whole against sour
looks and the noose!” Thus deciding in the progress of his revery, he
smiled, and changed his position. The sun had set, the twilight was
over, the moon rose in splendour from amidst a thick copse of mingled
beech and oak; the beams fell full on the face of the muser, and the
face seemed yet paler and the exhaustion of premature decay yet more
evident, by that still and melancholy light: all ruins gain dignity by
the moon. This was a ruin nobler than that which painters place on their
canvas,--the ruin, not of stone and brick, but of humanity and spirit;
the wreck of man prematurely old, not stricken by great sorrow, not
bowed by great toil, but fretted and mined away by small pleasures and
poor excitements,--small and poor, but daily, hourly, momently at their
gnome-like work. Something of the gravity and the true lesson of the
hour and scene, perhaps, forced itself upon a mind little given to
sentiment, for Vernon rose languidly and muttered,--

“My poor mother hoped better things from me. It is well, after all, that
it is broken off with Mary. Why should there be any one to weep for me?
I can the better die smiling, as I have lived.”

Meanwhile, as it is necessary we should follow each of the principal
characters we have introduced through the course of an evening more
or less eventful in the destiny of all, we return to Mainwaring and
accompany him to the lake at the bottom of the park, which he reached as
its smooth surface glistened in the last beams of the sun. He saw, as he
neared the water, the fish sporting in the pellucid tide; the dragonfly
darted and hovered in the air; the tedded grass beneath his feet gave
forth the fragrance of crushed thyme and clover; the swan paused, as
if slumbering on the wave; the linnet and finch sang still from the
neighbouring copses; and the heavy bees were winging their way home with
a drowsy murmur. All around were images of that unspeakable peace which
Nature whispers to those attuned to her music; all fitted to lull, but
not to deject, the spirit,--images dear to the holiday of the world-worn
man, to the contemplation of serene and retired age, to the boyhood of
poets, to the youth of lovers. But Mainwaring’s step was heavy, and his
brow clouded, and Nature that evening was dumb to him. At the margin of
the lake stood a solitary angler who now, his evening’s task done,
was employed in leisurely disjointing his rod and whistling with much
sweetness an air from one of Izaak Walton’s songs. Mainwaring reached
the angler and laid his hand on his shoulder.

“What sport, Ardworth?”

“A few large roach with the fly, and one pike with a gudgeon,--a noble
fellow! Look at him! He was lying under the reeds yonder; I saw his
green back, and teased him into biting. A heavenly evening! I wonder you
did not follow my example, and escape from a set where neither you nor I
can feel very much at home, to this green banquet of Nature, in which at
least no man sits below the salt-cellar. The birds are an older family
than the St. Johns, but they don’t throw their pedigree in our teeth,
Mainwaring.”

“Nay, nay, my good friend, you wrong old Sir Miles; proud he is, no
doubt, but neither you nor I have had to complain of his insolence.”

“Of his insolence, certainly not; of his condescension, yes! Hang it,
William, it is his very politeness that galls me. Don’t you observe that
with Vernon, or Lord A----, or Lord B----, or Mr. C----, he is easy and
off-hand; calls them by their names, pats them on the shoulder, rates
them, and swears at them if they vex him. But with you and me and his
French parasite, it is all stately decorum and punctilious courtesy:
‘Mr. Mainwaring, I am delighted to see you;’ ‘Mr. Ardworth, as you are
so near, dare I ask you to ring the bell?’ ‘Monsieur Dalibard, with the
utmost deference, I venture to disagree with you.’ However, don’t let
my foolish susceptibility ruffle your pride. And you, too, have a worthy
object in view, which might well detain you from roach and jack-fish.
Have you stolen your interview with the superb Lucretia?”

“Yes, stolen, as you say; and, like all thieves not thoroughly hardened,
I am ashamed of my gains.”

“Sit down, my boy,--this is a bank in ten thousand; there, that old root
to lean your elbow on, this soft moss for your cushion: sit down and
confess. You have something on your mind that preys on you; we are old
college friends,--out with it!”

“There is no resisting you, Ardworth,” said Mainwaring, smiling, and
drawn from his reserve and his gloom by the frank good-humour of his
companion. “I should like, I own, to make a clean breast of it; and
perhaps I may profit by your advice. You know, in the first place, that
after I left college, my father, seeing me indisposed for the Church, to
which he had always destined me in his own heart, and for which, indeed,
he had gone out of his way to maintain me at the University, gave me the
choice of his own business as a surveyor and land-agent, or of entering
into the mercantile profession. I chose the latter, and went to
Southampton, where we have a relation in business, to be initiated
into the elementary mysteries. There I became acquainted with a good
clergyman and his wife, and in that house I passed a great part of my
time.”

“With the hope, I trust, on better consideration, of gratifying your
father’s ambition and learning how to starve with gentility on a cure.”

“Not much of that, I fear.”

“Then the clergyman had a daughter?”

“You are nearer the mark now,” said Mainwaring, colouring,--“though it
was not his daughter. A young lady lived in his family, not even
related to him; she was placed there with a certain allowance by a rich
relation. In a word, I admired, perhaps I loved, this young person; but
she was without an independence, and I not yet provided even with
the substitute of money,--a profession. I fancied (do not laugh at my
vanity) that my feelings might be returned. I was in alarm for her as
well as myself; I sounded the clergyman as to the chance of obtaining
the consent of her rich relation, and was informed that he thought it
hopeless. I felt I had no right to invite her to poverty and ruin, and
still less to entangle further (if I had chanced to touch at all) her
affection. I made an excuse to my father to leave the town, and returned
home.”

“Prudent and honourable enough, so far; unlike me,--I should have run
off with the girl, if she loved me, and old Plutus, the rascal, might
have done his worst against Cupid. But I interrupt you.”

“I came back when the county was greatly agitated,--public meetings,
speeches, mobs; a sharp election going on. My father had always taken
keen interest in politics; he was of the same party as Sir Miles,
who, you know, is red-hot upon politics. I was easily led--partly by
ambition, partly by the effect of example, partly by the hope to give a
new turn to my thoughts--to make an appearance in public.”

“And a devilish creditable one too! Why, man, your speeches have been
quoted with rapture by the London papers. Horribly aristocratic and
Pittish, it is true,--I think differently; but every man to his taste.
Well--”

“My attempts, such as they were, procured me the favour of Sir Miles. He
had long been acquainted with my father, who had helped him in his own
elections years ago. He seemed cordially delighted to patronize the son;
he invited me to visit him at Laughton, and hinted to my father that I
was formed for something better than a counting-house: my poor father
was intoxicated. In a word, here I am; here, often for days, almost
weeks, together, have I been a guest, always welcomed.”

“You pause. This is the primordium,--now comes the confession, eh?”

“Why, one half the confession is over. It was my most unmerited
fortune to attract the notice of Miss Clavering. Do not fancy me so
self-conceited as to imagine that I should ever have presumed so high,
but for--”

“But for encouragement,--I understand! Well, she is a magnificent
creature, in her way, and I do not wonder that she drove the poor little
girl at Southampton out of your thoughts.”

“Ah! but there is the sore,--I am not sure that she has done so.
Ardworth, I may trust you?”

“With everything but half-a-guinea. I would not promise to be rock
against so great a temptation!” and Ardworth turned his empty pockets
inside out.

“Tush! be serious, or I go.”

“Serious! With pockets like these, the devil’s in it if I am not
serious. Perge, precor.”

“Ardworth, then,” said Mainwaring, with great emotion, “I confide to you
the secret trouble of my heart. This girl at Southampton is Lucretia’s
sister,--her half-sister; the rich relation on whose allowance she lives
is Sir Miles St. John.”

“Whew! my own poor dear little cousin, by the father’s side! Mainwaring,
I trust you have not deceived me; you have not amused yourself with
breaking Susan’s heart? For a heart, and an honest, simple, English
girl’s heart she has.”

“Heaven forbid! I tell you I have never even declared my love; and if
love it were, I trust it is over. But when Sir Miles was first kind to
me, first invited me, I own I had the hope to win his esteem; and since
he had always made so strong and cruel a distinction between Lucretia
and Susan, I thought it not impossible that he might consent at last to
my union with the niece he had refused to receive and acknowledge. But
even while the hope was in me, I was drawn on, I was entangled, I was
spell-bound, I know not how or why; but, to close my confidence, while
still doubtful whether my own heart is free from the remembrance of the
one sister, I am pledged to the other.”

Ardworth looked down gravely and remained silent. He was a joyous,
careless, reckless youth, with unsteady character and pursuits, and
with something of vague poetry, much of unaccommodating pride about his
nature,--one of those youths little likely to do what is called well in
the world; not persevering enough for an independent career, too blunt
and honest for a servile one. But it was in the very disposition of such
a person to judge somewhat harshly of Mainwaring’s disclosure, and not
easily to comprehend what, after all, was very natural,--how a young
man, new to life, timid by character, and of an extreme susceptibility
to the fear of giving pain, had, in the surprise, the gratitude, the
emotion, of an avowed attachment from a girl far above him in worldly
position, been forced, by receiving, to seem, at least, to return her
affection. And, indeed, though not wholly insensible to the brilliant
prospects opened to him in such a connection, yet, to do him justice,
Mainwaring would have been equally entangled by a similar avowal from
a girl more his equal in the world. It was rather from an amiability
bordering upon weakness, than from any more degrading moral
imperfections, that he had been betrayed into a position which neither
contented his heart nor satisfied his conscience.

With far less ability than his friend, Ardworth had more force and
steadiness in his nature, and was wholly free from that morbid delicacy
of temperament to which susceptible and shy persons owe much of their
errors and misfortunes. He said, therefore, after a long pause: “My
good fellow, to be plain with you, I cannot say that your confession
has improved you in my estimation; but that is perhaps because of the
bluntness of my understanding. I could quite comprehend your forgetting
Susan (and, after all, I am left in doubt as to the extent of her
conquest over you) for the very different charms of her sister. On the
other hand, I could still better understand that, having once fancied
Susan, you could not be commanded into love for Lucretia. But I do
not comprehend your feeling love for one, and making love to the
other,--which is the long and short of the business.”

“That is not exactly the true statement,” answered Mainwaring, with
a powerful effort at composure. “There are moments when, listening to
Lucretia, when, charmed by that softness which, contrasting the rest of
her character, she exhibits to none but me, struck by her great mental
powers, proud of an unsought triumph over such a being, I feel as if
I could love none but her; then suddenly her mood changes,--she utters
sentiments that chill and revolt me; the very beauty seems vanished from
her face. I recall with a sigh the simple sweetness of Susan, and I feel
as if I deceived both my mistress and myself. Perhaps, however, all
the circumstances of this connection tend to increase my doubts. It is
humiliating to me to know that I woo clandestinely and upon sufferance;
that I am stealing, as it were, into a fortune; that I am eating Sir
Miles’s bread, and yet counting upon his death; and this shame in myself
may make me unconsciously unjust to Lucretia. But it is useless to
reprove me for what is past; and though I at first imagined you could
advise me for the future, I now see, too clearly, that no advice could
avail.”

“I grant that too; for all you require is to make up your mind to be
fairly off with the old love, or fairly on with the new. However, now
you have stated your case thus frankly, if you permit me, I will take
advantage of the strange chance of finding myself here, and watch,
ponder, and counsel, if I can. This Lucretia, I own it, puzzles and
perplexes me; but though no Oedipus, I will not take fright at the
sphinx. I suppose now it is time to return. They expect some of the
neighbours to drink tea, and I must doff my fishing-jacket. Come!”

As they strolled towards the house, Ardworth broke a silence which had
lasted for some moments.

“And how is that dear good Fielden? I ought to have guessed him at once,
when you spoke of your clergyman and his young charge; but I did not
know he was at Southampton.”

“He has exchanged his living for a year, on account of his wife’s
health, and rather, I think also, with the wish to bring poor Susan
nearer to Laughton, in the chance of her uncle seeing her. But you are,
then, acquainted with Fielden?”

“Acquainted!--my best friend. He was my tutor, and prepared me for Caius
College. I owe him, not only the little learning I have, but the little
good that is left in me. I owe to him apparently, also, whatever chance
of bettering my prospects may arise from my visit to Laughton.”

“Notwithstanding our intimacy, we have, like most young men not related,
spoken so little of our family matters that I do not now understand how
you are cousin to Susan, nor what, to my surprise and delight, brought
you hither three days ago.”

“Faith, my story is easier to explain than your own, William. Here
goes!”

But as Ardworth’s recital partially involves references to family
matters not yet sufficiently known to the reader, we must be pardoned if
we assume to ourselves his task of narrator, and necessarily enlarge on
his details.

The branch of the illustrious family of St. John represented by Sir
Miles, diverged from the parent stem of the Lords of Bletshoe. With them
it placed at the summit of its pedigree the name of William de St. John,
the Conqueror’s favourite and trusted warrior, and Oliva de Filgiers.
With them it blazoned the latter alliance, which gave to Sir Oliver St.
John the lands of Bletshoe by the hand of Margaret Beauchamp (by her
second marriage with the Duke of Somerset), grandmother to Henry VII. In
the following generation, the younger son of a younger son had founded,
partly by offices of state, partly by marriage with a wealthy heiress, a
house of his own; and in the reign of James the First, the St. Johns of
Laughton ranked amongst the chief gentlemen of Hampshire. From that
time till the accession of George III the family, though it remained
untitled, had added to its consequence by intermarriages of considerable
dignity,--chosen, indeed, with a disregard for money uncommon amongst
the English aristocracy; so that the estate was but little enlarged
since the reign of James, though profiting, of course, by improved
cultivation and the different value of money. On the other hand, perhaps
there were scarcely ten families in the country who could boast of a
similar directness of descent on all sides from the proudest and noblest
aristocracy of the soil; and Sir Miles St. John, by blood, was, almost
at the distance of eight centuries, as pure a Norman as his ancestral
William. His grandfather, nevertheless, had deviated from the usual
disinterested practice of the family, and had married an heiress who
brought the quarterings of Vernon to the crowded escutcheon, and with
these quarterings an estate of some 4,000 pounds a year popularly known
by the name of Vernon Grange. This rare occurrence did not add to the
domestic happiness of the contracting parties, nor did it lead to the
ultimate increase of the Laughton possessions. Two sons were born. To
the elder was destined the father’s inheritance,--to the younger the
maternal property. One house is not large enough for two heirs. Nothing
could exceed the pride of the father as a St. John, except the pride of
the mother as a Vernon. Jealousies between the two sons began early
and rankled deep; nor was there peace at Laughton till the younger had
carried away from its rental the lands of Vernon Grange; and the
elder remained just where his predecessors stood in point of
possessions,--sole lord of Laughton sole. The elder son, Sir Miles’s
father, had been, indeed, so chafed by the rivalry with his brother that
in disgust he had run away and thrown himself, at the age of fourteen,
into the navy. By accident or by merit he rose high in that profession,
acquired name and fame, and lost an eye and an arm,--for which he was
gazetted, at the same time, an admiral and a baronet.

Thus mutilated and dignified, Sir George St. John retired from
the profession; and finding himself unmarried, and haunted by the
apprehension that if he died childless, Laughton would pass to his
brother’s heirs, he resolved upon consigning his remains to the nuptial
couch, previous to the surer peace of the family vault. At the age
of fifty-nine, the grim veteran succeeded in finding a young lady of
unblemished descent and much marked with the small-pox, who consented to
accept the only hand which Sir George had to offer. From this marriage
sprang a numerous family; but all died in early childhood, frightened
to death, said the neighbours, by their tender parents (considered the
ugliest couple in the county), except one boy (the present Sir Miles)
and one daughter, many years younger, destined to become Lucretia’s
mother. Sir Miles came early into his property; and although the
softening advance of civilization, with the liberal effects of travel
and a long residence in cities, took from him that provincial austerity
of pride which is only seen in stanch perfection amongst the lords of a
village, he was yet little less susceptible to the duties of maintaining
his lineage pure as its representation had descended to him than the
most superb of his predecessors. But owing, it was said, to an early
disappointment, he led, during youth and manhood, a roving and desultory
life, and so put off from year to year the grand experiment matrimonial,
until he arrived at old age, with the philosophical determination
to select from the other branches of his house the successor to the
heritage of St. John. In thus arrogating to himself a right to neglect
his proper duties as head of a family, he found his excuse in adopting
his niece Lucretia. His sister had chosen for her first husband a friend
and neighbour of his own, a younger son, of unexceptionable birth and
of very agreeable manners in society. But this gentleman contrived to
render her life so miserable that, though he died fifteen months after
their marriage, his widow could scarcely be expected to mourn long for
him. A year after Mr. Clavering’s death, Mrs. Clavering married again,
under the mistaken notion that she had the right to choose for herself.
She married Dr. Mivers, the provincial physician who had attended her
husband in his last illness,--a gentleman by education, manners, and
profession, but unhappily the son of a silk-mercer. Sir Miles never
forgave this connection. By her first marriage, Sir Miles’s sister had
one daughter, Lucretia; by her second marriage, another daughter, named
Susan. She survived somewhat more than a year the birth of the latter.
On her death, Sir Miles formally (through his agent) applied to Dr.
Mivers for his eldest niece, Lucretia Clavering, and the physician
did not think himself justified in withholding from her the probable
advantages of a transfer from his own roof to that of her wealthy uncle.
He himself had been no worldly gainer by his connection; his practice
had suffered materially from the sympathy which was felt by the
county families for the supposed wrongs of Sir Miles St. John, who was
personally not only popular, but esteemed, nor less so on account of his
pride,--too dignified to refer even to his domestic annoyances, except
to his most familiar associates; to them, indeed, Sir Miles had said,
briefly, that he considered a physician who abused his entrance into
a noble family by stealing into its alliance was a character in whose
punishment all society had an interest. The words were repeated; they
were thought just. Those who ventured to suggest that Mrs. Clavering, as
a widow, was a free agent, were regarded with suspicion. It was the
time when French principles were just beginning to be held in horror,
especially in the provinces, and when everything that encroached
upon the rights and prejudices of the high born was called “a French
principle.” Dr. Mivers was as much scouted as if he had been a
sans-culotte. Obliged to quit the county, he settled at a distance;
but he had a career to commence again; his wife’s death enfeebled his
spirits and damped his exertions. He did little more than earn a bare
subsistence, and died at last, when his only daughter was fourteen,
poor and embarrassed On his death-bed he wrote a letter to Sir Miles
reminding him that, after all, Susan was his sister’s child, gently
vindicating himself from the unmerited charge of treachery, which had
blasted his fortunes and left his orphan penniless, and closing with a
touching yet a manly appeal to the sole relative left to befriend her.
The clergyman who had attended him in his dying moments took charge of
this letter; he brought it in person to Laughton, and delivered it to
Sir Miles. Whatever his errors, the old baronet was no common man. He
was not vindictive, though he could not be called forgiving. He had
considered his conduct to his sister a duty owed to his name and
ancestors; she had placed herself and her youngest child out of the pale
of his family. He would not receive as his niece the grand-daughter of
a silk-mercer. The relationship was extinct, as, in certain countries,
nobility is forfeited by a union with an inferior class. But, niece or
not, here was a claim to humanity and benevolence, and never yet had
appeal been made by suffering to his heart and purse in vain.

He bowed his head over the letter as his eye came to the last line, and
remained silent so long that the clergyman at last, moved and hopeful,
approached and took his hand. It was the impulse of a good man and a
good priest. Sir Miles looked up in surprise; but the calm, pitying face
bent on him repelled all return of pride.

“Sir,” he said tremulously, and he pressed the hand that grasped his
own, “I thank you. I am not fit at this moment to decide what to do;
to-morrow you shall know. And the man died poor,--not in want, not in
want?”

“Comfort yourself, worthy sir; he had at the last all that sickness
and death require, except one assurance, which I ventured to whisper
to him,--I trust not too rashly,--that his daughter would not be left
unprotected. And I pray you to reflect, my dear sir, that--”

Sir Miles did not wait for the conclusion of the sentence; he rose
abruptly, and left the room. Mr. Fielden (so the good priest was named)
felt confident of the success of his mission; but to win it the more
support, he sought Lucretia. She was then seventeen: it is an age when
the heart is peculiarly open to the household ties,--to the memory of
a mother, to the sweet name of sister. He sought this girl, he told his
tale, and pleaded the sister’s cause. Lucretia heard in silence: neither
eye nor lip betrayed emotion; but her colour went and came. This was the
only sign that she was moved: moved, but how? Fielden’s experience in
the human heart could not guess. When he had done, she went quietly to
her desk (it was in her own room that the conference took place), she
unlocked it with a deliberate hand, she took from it a pocketbook and a
case of jewels which Sir Miles had given her on her last birthday. “Let
my sister have these; while I live she shall not want!”

“My dear young lady, it is not these things that she asks from you,--it
is your affection, your sisterly heart, your intercession with her
natural protector; these, in her name, I ask for,--‘non gemmis, neque
purpura venale, nec auro!’”

Lucretia then, still without apparent emotion, raised to the good man’s
face deep, penetrating, but unrevealing eyes, and said slowly,--

“Is my sister like my mother, who, they say, was handsome?”

Much startled by this question, Fielden answered: “I never saw your
mother, my dear; but your sister gives promise of more than common
comeliness.”

Lucretia’s brows grew slightly compressed. “And her education has been,
of course, neglected?”

“Certainly, in some points,--mathematics, for instance, and theology;
but she knows what ladies generally know,--French and Italian, and such
like. Dr. Mivers was not unlearned in the polite letters. Oh, trust me,
my dear young lady, she will not disgrace your family; she will justify
your uncle’s favour. Plead for her!” And the good man clasped his hands.

Lucretia’s eyes fell musingly on the ground; but she resumed, after a
short pause,--

“What does my uncle himself say?”

“Only that he will decide to-morrow.”

“I will see him;” and Lucretia left the room as for that object.
But when she had gained the stairs, she paused at the large embayed
casement, which formed a niche in the landing-place, and gazed over the
broad domains beyond; a stern smile settled, then, upon her lips,--the
smile seemed to say, “In this inheritance I will have no rival.”

Lucretia’s influence with Sir Miles was great, but here it was not
needed. Before she saw him he had decided on his course. Her precocious
and apparently intuitive knowledge of character detected at a glance
the safety with which she might intercede. She did so, and was chid into
silence.

The next morning, Sir Miles took the priest’s arm and walked with him
into the gardens.

“Mr. Fielden,” he said, with the air of a man who has chosen his course,
and deprecates all attempt to make him swerve from it, “if I followed my
own selfish wishes, I should take home this poor child. Stay, sir, and
hear me,--I am no hypocrite, and I speak honestly. I like young faces; I
have no family of my own. I love Lucretia, and I am proud of her; but a
girl brought up in adversity might be a better nurse and a more docile
companion,--let that pass. I have reflected, and I feel that I cannot
set to Lucretia--set to children unborn--the example of indifference
to a name degraded and a race adulterated; you may call this pride
or prejudice,--I view it differently. There are duties due from an
individual, duties due from a nation, duties due from a family; as my
ancestors thought, so think I. They left me the charge of their name, as
the fief-rent by which I hold their lands. ‘Sdeath, sir!--Pardon me the
expletive; I was about to say that if I am now a childless old man, it
is because I have myself known temptation and resisted. I loved, and
denied myself what I believed my best chance of happiness, because the
object of my attachment was not my equal. That was a bitter struggle,--I
triumphed, and I rejoice at it, though the result was to leave all
thoughts of wedlock elsewhere odious and repugnant. These principles of
action have made a part of my creed as gentleman, if not as Christian.
Now to the point. I beseech you to find a fitting and reputable home
for Miss--Miss Mivers,” the lip slightly curled as the name was said;
“I shall provide suitably for her maintenance. When she marries, I will
dower her, provided only and always that her choice fall upon one who
will not still further degrade her lineage on her mother’s side,--in a
word, if she select a gentleman. Mr. Fielden, on this subject I have no
more to say.”

In vain the good clergyman, whose very conscience, as well as reason,
was shocked by the deliberate and argumentative manner with which
the baronet had treated the abandonment of his sister’s child as an
absolutely moral, almost religious, duty,--in vain he exerted himself
to repel such sophisms and put the matter in its true light. It was easy
for him to move Sir Miles’s heart,--that was ever gentle; that was
moved already: but the crotchet in his head was impregnable. The
more touchingly he painted poor Susan’s unfriended youth, her sweet
character, and promising virtues, the more Sir Miles St. John considered
himself a martyr to his principles, and the more obstinate in the
martyrdom he became. “Poor thing! poor child!” he said often, and
brushed a tear from his eyes; “a thousand pities! Well, well, I hope she
will be happy! Mind, money shall never stand in the way if she have a
suitable offer!”

This was all the worthy clergyman, after an hour’s eloquence, could
extract from him. Out of breath and out of patience, he gave in at last;
and the baronet, still holding his reluctant arm, led him back towards
the house. After a prolonged pause, Sir Miles said abruptly: “I have
been thinking that I may have unwittingly injured this man,--this
Mivers,--while I deemed only that he injured me. As to reparation to
his daughter, that is settled; and after all, though I do not publicly
acknowledge her, she is half my own niece.”

“Half?”

“Half,--the father’s side doesn’t count, of course; and, rigidly
speaking, the relationship is perhaps forfeited on the other. However,
that half of it I grant. Zooks, sir, I say I grant it! I beg you ten
thousand pardons for my vehemence. To return,--perhaps I can show at
least that I bear no malice to this poor doctor. He has relations of his
own,--silk mercers; trade has reverses. How are they off?”

Perfectly perplexed by this very contradictory and paradoxical, yet, to
one better acquainted with Sir Miles, very characteristic, benevolence,
Fielden was some time before he answered. “Those members of Dr. Mivers’s
family who are in trade are sufficiently prosperous; they have paid his
debts,--they, Sir Miles, will receive his daughter.”

“By no means!” cried Sir Miles, quickly; then, recovering himself, he
added, “or, if you think that advisable, of course all interference on
my part is withdrawn.”

“Festina lente!--not so quick, Sir Miles. I do not yet say that it
is advisable,--not because they are silk-mercers, the which, I humbly
conceive, is no sin to exclude them from gratitude for their proffered
kindness, but because Susan, poor child, having been brought up in
different habits, may feel a little strange, at least at first, with--”

“Strange, yes; I should hope so!” interrupted Sir Miles, taking snuff
with much energy. “And, by the way, I am thinking that it would be well
if you and Mrs. Fielden--you are married, sir? That is right; clergymen
all marry!--if you and Mrs. Fielden would take charge of her yourselves,
it would be a great comfort to me to think her so well placed. We
differ, sir, but I respect you. Think of this. Well, then, the doctor
has left no relations that I can aid in any way?”

“Strange man!” muttered Fielden. “Yes; I must not let one poor youth
lose the opportunity offered by your--your--”

“Never mind what; proceed. One poor youth,--in the shop, of course?”

“No; and by his father’s side (since you so esteem such vanities) of an
ancient family,--a sister of Dr. Mivers married Captain Ardworth.”

“Ardworth,--a goodish name; Ardworth of Yorkshire?”

“Yes, of that family. It was, of course, an imprudent marriage,
contracted while he was only an ensign. His family did not reject him,
Sir Miles.”

“Sir, Ardworth is a good squire’s family, but the name is Saxon; there
is no difference in race between the head of the Ardworths, if he were
a duke, and my gardener, John Hodge,--Saxon and Saxon, both. His family
did not reject him; go on.”

“But he was a younger son in a large family; both himself and his wife
have known all the distresses common, they tell me, to the poverty of
a soldier who has no resource but his pay. They have a son. Dr. Mivers,
though so poor himself, took this boy, for he loved his sister dearly,
and meant to bring him up to his own profession. Death frustrated this
intention. The boy is high-spirited and deserving.”

“Let his education be completed; send him to the University; and I will
see that he is put into some career of which his father’s family would
approve. You need not mention to any one my intentions in this respect,
not even to the lad. And now, Mr. Fielden, I have done my duty,--at
least, I think so. The longer you honour my house, the more I shall be
pleased and grateful; but this topic, allow me most respectfully to say,
needs and bears no further comment. Have you seen the last news from the
army?”

“The army! Oh, fie, Sir Miles, I must speak one word more. May not my
poor Susan have at least the comfort to embrace her sister?”

Sir Miles paused a moment, and struck his crutch-stick thrice firmly on
the ground.

“I see no great objection to that; but by the address of this letter,
the poor girl is too far from Laughton to send Lucretia to her.”

“I can obviate that objection, Sir Miles. It is my wish to continue
to Susan her present home amongst my own children. My wife loves her
dearly; and had you consented to give her the shelter of your own roof,
I am sure I should not have seen a smile in the house for a month after.
If you permit this plan, as indeed you honoured me by suggesting it, I
can pass through Southampton on my way to my own living in Devonshire,
and Miss Clavering can visit her sister there.”

“Let it be so,” said Sir Miles, briefly; and so the conversation closed.

Some weeks afterwards, Lucretia went in her uncle’s carriage, with four
post-horses, with her maid and her footman,--went in the state and pomp
of heiress to Laughton,--to the small lodging-house in which the kind
pastor crowded his children and his young guest. She stayed there some
days. She did not weep when she embraced Susan, she did not weep when
she took leave of her; but she showed no want of actual kindness, though
the kindness was formal and stately. On her return, Sir Miles forbore to
question; but he looked as if he expected, and would willingly permit,
her to speak on what might naturally be uppermost at her heart.
Lucretia, however, remained silent, till at last the baronet, colouring,
as if ashamed of his curiosity, said,--

“Is your sister like your mother?”

“You forget, sir, I can have no recollection of my mother.”

“Your mother had a strong family likeness to myself.”

“She is not like you; they say she is like Dr. Mivers.”

“Oh!” said the baronet, and he asked no more.

The sisters did not meet again; a few letters passed between them, but
the correspondence gradually ceased.

Young Ardworth went to college, prepared by Mr. Fielden, who was no
ordinary scholar, and an accurate and profound mathematician,--a more
important requisite than classical learning in a tutor for Cambridge.
But Ardworth was idle, and perhaps even dissipated. He took a common
degree, and made some debts, which were paid by Sir Miles without a
murmur. A few letters then passed between the baronet and the clergyman
as to Ardworth’s future destiny; the latter owned that his pupil was not
persevering enough for the Bar, nor steady enough for the Church. These
were no great faults in Sir Miles’s eyes. He resolved, after an effort,
to judge himself of the capacities of the young man, and so came the
invitation to Laughton. Ardworth was greatly surprised when Fielden
communicated to him this invitation, for hitherto he had not conceived
the slightest suspicion of his benefactor; he had rather, and naturally,
supposed that some relation of his father’s had paid for his maintenance
at the University, and he knew enough of the family history to look upon
Sir Miles as the proudest of men. How was it, then, that he, who would
not receive the daughter of Dr. Mivers, his own niece, would invite the
nephew of Dr. Mivers, who was no relation to him? However, his curiosity
was excited, and Fielden was urgent that he should go; to Laughton,
therefore, had he gone.

We have now brought down to the opening of our narrative the general
records of the family it concerns; we have reserved our account of the
rearing and the character of the personage most important, perhaps, in
the development of its events,--Lucretia Clavering,--in order to place
singly before the reader the portrait of her dark, misguided, and
ill-boding youth.




CHAPTER II. LUCRETIA.

When Lucretia first came to the house of Sir Miles St. John she was
an infant about four years old. The baronet then lived principally
in London, with occasional visits rather to the Continent or a
watering-place than to his own family mansion. He did not pay any minute
attention to his little ward, satisfied that her nurse was sedulous, and
her nursery airy and commodious. When, at the age of seven, she began
to interest him, and he himself, approaching old age, began seriously
to consider whether he should select her as his heiress, for hitherto
he had not formed any decided or definite notions on the matter, he was
startled by a temper so vehement, so self-willed and sternly imperious,
so obstinately bent upon attaining its object, so indifferently
contemptuous of warning, reproof, coaxing, or punishment, that her
governess honestly came to him in despair.

The management of this unmanageable child interested Sir Miles. It
caused him to think of Lucretia seriously; it caused him to have her
much in his society, and always in his thoughts. The result was, that by
amusing and occupying him, she forced a stronger hold on his affections
than she might have done had she been more like the ordinary run of
commonplace children. Of all dogs, there is no dog that so attaches a
master as a dog that snarls at everybody else,--that no other hand can
venture to pat with impunity; of all horses, there is none which so
flatters the rider, from Alexander downwards, as a horse that nobody
else can ride. Extend this principle to the human species, and you may
understand why Lucretia became so dear to Sir Miles St. John,--she got
at his heart through his vanity. For though, at times, her brow darkened
and her eye flashed even at his remonstrance, she was yet no sooner
in his society than she made a marked distinction between him and the
subordinates who had hitherto sought to control her. Was this affection?
He thought so. Alas! what parent can trace the workings of a child’s
mind,--springs moved by an idle word from a nurse; a whispered
conference between hirelings. Was it possible that Lucretia had not
often been menaced, as the direst evil that could befall her, with her
uncle’s displeasure; that long before she could be sensible of mere
worldly loss or profit, she was not impressed with a vague sense of Sir
Miles’s power over her fate,--nay, when trampling, in childish wrath and
scorn, upon some menial’s irritable feelings, was it possible that she
had not been told that, but for Sir Miles, she would be little better
than a servant herself? Be this as it may, all weakness is prone to
dissimulate; and rare and happy is the child whose feelings are as pure
and transparent as the fond parent deems them. There is something
in children, too, which seems like an instinctive deference to the
aristocratic appearances which sway the world. Sir Miles’s stately
person, his imposing dress, the respect with which he was surrounded,
all tended to beget notions of superiority and power, to which it was no
shame to succumb, as it was to Miss Black, the governess, whom the
maids answered pertly, or Martha, the nurse, whom Miss Black snubbed if
Lucretia tore her frock.

Sir Miles’s affection once won, his penetration not, perhaps, blinded
to her more evident faults, but his self-love soothed towards regarding
them leniently, there was much in Lucretia’s external gifts which
justified the predilection of the haughty man. As a child she was
beautiful, and, perhaps from her very imperfections of temper, her
beauty had that air of distinction which the love of command is apt to
confer. If Sir Miles was with his friends when Lucretia swept into the
room, he was pleased to hear them call her their little “princess,” and
was pleased yet more at a certain dignified tranquillity with which she
received their caresses or their toys, and which he regarded as the
sign of a superior mind; nor was it long, indeed, before what we call “a
superior mind” developed itself in the young Lucretia. All children are
quick till they are set methodically to study; but Lucretia’s quickness
defied even that numbing ordeal, by which half of us are rendered
dunces. Rapidity and precision in all the tasks set to her, in the
comprehension of all the explanations given to her questions, evinced
singular powers of readiness and reasoning.

As she grew older, she became more reserved and thoughtful. Seeing but
few children of her own age, and mixing intimately with none, her mind
was debarred from the usual objects which distract the vivacity, the
restless and wondrous observation, of childhood. She came in and out
of Sir Miles’s library of a morning, or his drawing-room of an evening,
till her hour for rest, with unquestioned and sometimes unnoticed
freedom; she listened to the conversation around her, and formed her own
conclusions unchecked. It has a great influence upon a child, whether
for good or for evil, to mix early and habitually with those grown
up,--for good to the mere intellect always; the evil depends upon the
character and discretion of those the child sees and hears. “Reverence
the greatest is due to the children,” exclaims the wisest of the Romans
[Cicero. The sentiment is borrowed by Juvenal.],--that is to say, that
we must revere the candour and inexperience and innocence of their
minds.

Now, Sir Miles’s habitual associates were persons of the
world,--well-bred and decorous, indeed, before children, as the best of
the old school were, avoiding all anecdotes; all allusions, for which
the prudent matron would send her girls out of the room; but with that
reserve speaking of the world as the world goes: if talking of young
A----, calculating carelessly what he would have when old A----, his
father, died; naturally giving to wealth and station and ability their
fixed importance in life; not over-apt to single out for eulogium some
quiet goodness; rather inclined to speak with irony of pretensions to
virtue; rarely speaking but with respect of the worldly seemings which
rule mankind. All these had their inevitable effect upon that keen,
quick, yet moody and reflective intellect.

Sir Miles removed at last to Laughton. He gave up London,--why, he
acknowledged not to himself; but it was because he had outlived his age.
Most of his old set were gone; new hours, new habits, had stolen in.
He had ceased to be of importance as a marrying man, as a personage
of fashion; his health was impaired; he shrank from the fatigues of a
contested election; he resigned his seat in parliament for his native
county; and once settled at Laughton, the life there soothed and
flattered him,--there all his former claims to distinction were still
fresh. He amused himself by collecting, in his old halls and chambers,
his statues and pictures, and felt that, without fatigue or trouble, he
was a greater man at Laughton in his old age than he had been in London
during his youth.

Lucretia was then thirteen. Three years afterwards, Olivier Dalibard
was established in the house; and from that time a great change became
noticeable in her. The irregular vehemence of her temper gradually
subsided, and was replaced by an habitual self-command which rendered
the rare deviations from it more effective and imposing. Her pride
changed its character wholly and permanently; no word, no look of scorn
to the low-born and the poor escaped her. The masculine studies which
her erudite tutor opened to a grasping and inquisitive mind, elevated
her very errors above the petty distinctions of class. She imbibed
earnestly what Dalibard assumed or felt,--the more dangerous pride of
the fallen angel,--and set up the intellect as a deity. All belonging
to the mere study of mind charmed and enchained her; but active and
practical in her very reveries, if she brooded, it was to scheme, to
plot, to weave, web, and mesh, and to smile in haughty triumph at
her own ingenuity and daring. The first lesson of mere worldly wisdom
teaches us to command temper; it was worldly wisdom that made the once
impetuous girl calm, tranquil, and serene. Sir Miles was pleased by
a change that removed from Lucretia’s outward character its chief
blot,--perhaps, as his frame declined, he sighed sometimes to think
that with so much majesty there appeared but little tenderness; he took,
however, the merits with the faults, and was content upon the whole.

If the Provencal had taken more than common pains with his young pupil,
the pains were not solely disinterested. In plunging her mind amidst
that profound corruption which belongs only to intellect cultivated
in scorn of good and in suppression of heart, he had his own views to
serve. He watched the age when the passions ripen, and he grasped at
the fruit which his training sought to mature. In the human heart ill
regulated there is a dark desire for the forbidden. This Lucretia felt;
this her studies cherished, and her thoughts brooded over. She detected,
with the quickness of her sex, the preceptor’s stealthy aim. She
started not at the danger. Proud of her mastery over herself, she rather
triumphed in luring on into weakness this master-intelligence which had
lighted up her own,--to see her slave in her teacher; to despise or to
pity him whom she had first contemplated with awe. And with this mere
pride of the understanding might be connected that of the sex; she had
attained the years when woman is curious to know and to sound her power.
To inflame Dalibard’s cupidity or ambition was easy; but to touch his
heart,--that marble heart!--this had its dignity and its charm. Strange
to say, she succeeded; the passion, as well as interests, of this
dangerous and able man became enlisted in his hopes. And now the game
played between them had a terror in its suspense; for if Dalibard
penetrated not into the recesses of his pupil’s complicated nature, she
was far from having yet sounded the hell that lay, black and devouring,
beneath his own. Not through her affections,--those he scarce hoped
for,--but through her inexperience, her vanity, her passions, he
contemplated the path to his victory over her soul and her fate. And so
resolute, so wily, so unscrupulous was this person, who had played upon
all the subtlest keys and chords in the scale of turbulent life, that,
despite the lofty smile with which Lucretia at length heard and repelled
his suit, he had no fear of the ultimate issue, when all his projects
were traversed, all his mines and stratagems abruptly brought to a
close, by an event which he had wholly unforeseen,--the appearance of
a rival; the ardent and almost purifying love, which, escaping a while
from all the demons he had evoked, she had, with a girl’s frank heart
and impulse, conceived for Mainwaring. And here, indeed, was the great
crisis in Lucretia’s life and destiny. So interwoven with her nature had
become the hard calculations of the understanding; so habitual to her
now was the zest for scheming, which revels in the play and vivacity of
intrigue and plot, and which Shakspeare has perhaps intended chiefly to
depict in the villany of Iago,--that it is probable Lucretia could never
become a character thoroughly amiable and honest. But with a happy and
well-placed love, her ambition might have had legitimate vents; her
restless energies, the woman’s natural field in sympathies for another.
The heart, once opened, softens by use; gradually and unconsciously
the interchange of affection, the companionship with an upright and
ingenuous mind (for virtue is not only beautiful, it is contagious),
might have had their redeeming and hallowing influence. Happier, indeed,
had it been, if her choice had fallen upon a more commanding and lofty
nature! But perhaps it was the very meekness and susceptibility of
Mainwaring’s temper, relieved from feebleness by his talents, which,
once in play, were undeniably great, that pleased her by contrast with
her own hardness of spirit and despotism of will.

That Sir Miles should have been blind to the position of the lovers is
less disparaging to his penetration than it may appear; for the very
imprudence with which Lucretia abandoned herself to the society of
Mainwaring during his visits at Laughton took a resemblance to candour.
Sir Miles knew his niece to be more than commonly clever and well
informed; that she, like him, should feel that the conversation of a
superior young man was a relief to the ordinary babble of their country
neighbours, was natural enough; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, had
crossed his mind and rendered him more touched than he liked to own by
Vernon’s remarks, it had vanished upon perceiving that Lucretia never
seemed a shade more pensive in Mainwaring’s absence. The listlessness
and the melancholy which are apt to accompany love, especially where
unpropitiously placed, were not visible on the surface of this strong
nature. In truth, once assured that Mainwaring returned her affection,
Lucretia reposed on the future with a calm and resolute confidence; and
her customary dissimulation closed like an unruffled sea over all the
undercurrents that met and played below. Still, Sir Miles’s attention
once, however slightly, aroused to the recollection that Lucretia was
at the age when woman naturally meditates upon love and marriage, had
suggested, afresh and more vividly, a project which had before been
indistinctly conceived,--namely, the union of the divided branches of
his house, by the marriage of the last male of the Vernons with the
heiress of the St. Johns. Sir Miles had seen much of Vernon himself at
various intervals; he had been present at his christening, though he had
refused to be his godfather, for fear of raising undue expectations; he
had visited and munificently “tipped” him at Eton; he had accompanied
him to his quarters when he joined the prince’s regiment; he had come
often in contact with him when, at the death of his father, Vernon
retired from the army and blazed in the front ranks of metropolitan
fashion; he had given him counsel and had even lent him money. Vernon’s
spendthrift habits and dissipated if not dissolute life had certainly
confirmed the old baronet in his intentions to trust the lands of
Laughton to the lesser risk which property incurs in the hands of
a female, if tightly settled on her, than in the more colossal and
multiform luxuries of an expensive man; and to do him justice, during
the flush of Vernon’s riotous career he had shrunk from the thought of
confiding the happiness of his niece to so unstable a partner. But of
late, whether from his impaired health or his broken fortunes, Vernon’s
follies had been less glaring. He had now arrived at the mature age of
thirty-three, when wild oats may reasonably be sown. The composed and
steadfast character of Lucretia might serve to guide and direct him; and
Sir Miles was one of those who hold the doctrine that a reformed rake
makes the best husband. Add to this, there was nothing in Vernon’s
reputation--once allowing that his thirst for pleasure was slaked--which
could excite serious apprehensions. Through all his difficulties, he had
maintained his honour unblemished; a thousand traits of amiability and
kindness of heart made him popular and beloved. He was nobody’s enemy
but his own. His very distresses--the prospect of his ruin, if left
unassisted by Sir Miles’s testamentary dispositions--were arguments
in his favour. And, after all, though Lucretia was a nearer relation,
Vernon was in truth the direct male heir, and according to the usual
prejudices of family, therefore, the fitter representative of the
ancient line. With these feelings and views, he had invited Vernon to
his house, and we have seen already that his favourable impressions had
been confirmed by the visit.

And here we must say that Vernon himself had been brought up in boyhood
and youth to regard himself the presumptive inheritor of Laughton. It
had been, from time immemorial, the custom of the St. Johns to pass by
the claims of females in the settlement of the entails; from male to
male the estate had gone, furnishing warriors to the army, and senators
to the State. And if when Lucretia first came to Sir Miles’s house the
bright prospect seemed somewhat obscure, still the mesalliance of the
mother, and Sir Miles’s obstinate resentment thereat, seemed to warrant
the supposition that he would probably only leave to the orphan the
usual portion of a daughter of the house, and that the lands would go
in their ordinary destination. This belief, adopted passively, and as a
thing of course, had had a very prejudicial effect upon Vernon’s career.
What mattered that he overenjoyed his youth, that the subordinate
property of the Vernons, a paltry four or five thousand pounds a year,
went a little too fast,--the splendid estates of Laughton would recover
all. From this dream he had only been awakened, two or three years
before, by an attachment he had formed to the portionless daughter of
an earl; and the Grange being too far encumbered to allow him the proper
settlements which the lady’s family required, it became a matter of
importance to ascertain Sir Miles’s intentions. Too delicate himself to
sound them, he had prevailed upon the earl, who was well acquainted with
Sir Miles, to take Laughton in his way to his own seat in Dorsetshire,
and, without betraying the grounds of his interest in the question,
learn carelessly, as it were, the views of the wealthy man. The result
had been a severe and terrible disappointment. Sir Miles had then fully
determined upon constituting Lucretia his heiress; and with the usual
openness of his character, he had plainly said so upon the very first
covert and polished allusion to the subject which the earl slyly made.
This discovery, in breaking off all hopes of a union with Lady Mary
Stanville, had crushed more than mercenary expectations. It affected,
through his heart, Vernon’s health and spirits; it rankled deep, and
was resented at first as a fatal injury. But Vernon’s native nobility of
disposition gradually softened an indignation which his reason convinced
him was groundless and unjust. Sir Miles had never encouraged the
expectations which Vernon’s family and himself had unthinkingly formed.
The baronet was master of his own fortune, and after all, was it not
more natural that he should prefer the child he had brought up and
reared, to a distant relation, little more than an acquaintance, simply
because man succeeded to man in the mouldy pedigree of the St. Johns?
And, Mary fairly lost to him, his constitutional indifference to money,
a certain French levity of temper, a persuasion that his life was
nearing its wasted close, had left him without regret, as without
resentment, at his kinsman’s decision. His boyish affection for the
hearty, generous old gentleman returned, and though he abhorred the
country, he had, without a single interested thought or calculation,
cordially accepted the baronet’s hospitable overtures, and deserted, for
the wilds of Hampshire, “the sweet shady side of Pall-Mall.”

We may now enter the drawing-room at Laughton, in which were already
assembled several of the families residing in the more immediate
neighbourhood, and who sociably dropped in to chat around the national
tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or
three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for
in that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in
the houses of our rural Thanes. Our country seats became bustling and
animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families
resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates. The Continent was
closed to us; the fastidious exclusiveness which comes from habitual
residence in cities had not made that demarcation, in castes and in
talk, between neighbour and neighbour, which exists now. Our squires
were less educated, less refined, but more hospitable and unassuming.
In a word, there was what does not exist now, except in some districts
remote from London,--a rural society for those who sought it.

The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus. But first we must cast
a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to be the first object
to attract a stranger’s notice. It was a long, and not particularly
well-proportioned apartment,--according, at least, to modern
notions,--for it had rather the appearance of two rooms thrown into one.
At the distance of about thirty-five feet, the walls, before somewhat
narrow, were met by an arch, supported by carved pilasters, which opened
into a space nearly double the width of the previous part of the room,
with a domed ceiling and an embayed window of such depth that the recess
almost formed a chamber in itself. But both these divisions of the
apartment corresponded exactly in point of decoration,--they had the
same small panelling, painted a very light green, which seemed almost
white by candlelight, each compartment wrought with an arabesque; the
same enriched frieze and cornice; they had the same high mantelpieces,
ascending to the ceiling, with the arms of St. John in bold relief. They
had, too, the same old-fashioned and venerable furniture, draperies
of thick figured velvet, with immense chairs and sofas to
correspond,--interspersed, it is true, with more modern and commodious
inventions of the upholsterer’s art, in grave stuffed leather or lively
chintz. Two windows, nearly as deep as that in the farther division,
broke the outline of the former one, and helped to give that irregular
and nooky appearance to the apartment which took all discomfort from
its extent, and furnished all convenience for solitary study or detached
flirtation. With little respect for the carved work of the panels, the
walls were covered with pictures brought by Sir Miles from Italy; here
and there marble busts and statues gave lightness to the character of
the room, and harmonized well with that half-Italian mode of decoration
which belongs to the period of James the First. The shape of the
chamber, in its divisions, lent itself admirably to that friendly and
sociable intermixture of amusements which reconciles the tastes of young
and old. In the first division, near the fireplace, Sir Miles, seated
in his easy-chair, and sheltered from the opening door by a seven-fold
tapestry screen, was still at chess with his librarian. At a little
distance a middle-aged gentleman and three turbaned matrons were cutting
in at whist, shilling points, with a half-crown bet optional, and not
much ventured on. On tables, drawn into the recesses of the windows,
were the day’s newspapers, Gilray’s caricatures, the last new
publications, and such other ingenious suggestions to chit-chat. And
round these tables grouped those who had not yet found elsewhere their
evening’s amusement,--two or three shy young clergymen, the parish
doctor, four or five squires who felt great interest in politics, but
never dreamed of the extravagance of taking in a daily paper, and who
now, monopolizing all the journals they could find, began fairly with
the heroic resolution to skip nothing, from the first advertisement to
the printer’s name. Amidst one of these groups Mainwaring had bashfully
ensconced himself. In the farther division, the chandelier, suspended
from the domed ceiling, threw its cheerful light over a large circular
table below, on which gleamed the ponderous tea-urn of massive silver,
with its usual accompaniments. Nor were wanting there, in addition to
those airy nothings, sliced infinitesimally, from a French roll,
the more substantial and now exiled cheer of cakes,--plum and seed,
Yorkshire and saffron,--attesting the light hand of the housekeeper and
the strong digestion of the guests. Round this table were seated, in
full gossip, the maids and the matrons, with a slight sprinkling of
the bolder young gentlemen who had been taught to please the fair. The
warmth of the evening allowed the upper casement to be opened and the
curtains drawn aside, and the July moonlight feebly struggled against
the blaze of the lights within. At this table it was Miss Clavering’s
obvious duty to preside; but that was a complaisance to which she rarely
condescended. Nevertheless, she had her own way of doing the honour of
her uncle’s house, which was not without courtesy and grace; to glide
from one to the other, exchange a few friendly words, see that each
set had its well-known amusements, and, finally, sit quietly down to
converse with some who, from gravity or age, appeared most to neglect
or be neglected by the rest, was her ordinary, and not unpopular mode of
welcoming the guests at Laughton,--not unpopular; for she thus avoided
all interference with the flirtations and conquests of humbler damsels,
whom her station and her endowments might otherwise have crossed or
humbled, while she insured the good word of the old, to whom the young
are seldom so attentive. But if a stranger of more than provincial
repute chanced to be present; if some stray member of parliament, or
barrister on the circuit, or wandering artist, accompanied any of the
neighbours,--to him Lucretia gave more earnest and undivided attention.
Him she sought to draw into a conversation deeper than the usual babble,
and with her calm, searching eyes, bent on him while he spoke, seemed to
fathom the intellect she set in play. But as yet, this evening, she had
not made her appearance,--a sin against etiquette very unusual in her.
Perhaps her recent conversation with Dalibard had absorbed her thoughts
to forgetfulness of the less important demands on her attention. Her
absence had not interfered with the gayety at the tea-table, which
was frank even to noisiness as it centred round the laughing face of
Ardworth, who, though unknown to most or all of the ladies present,
beyond a brief introduction to one or two of the first comers from Sir
Miles (as the host had risen from his chess to bid them welcome), had
already contrived to make himself perfectly at home and outrageously
popular. Niched between two bouncing lasses, he had commenced
acquaintance with them in a strain of familiar drollery and fun, which
had soon broadened its circle, and now embraced the whole group in
the happy contagion of good-humour and young animal spirits. Gabriel,
allowed to sit up later than his usual hour, had not, as might have been
expected, attached himself to this circle, nor indeed to any; he might
be seen moving quietly about,--now contemplating the pictures on the
wall with a curious eye; now pausing at the whist-table, and noting the
game with the interest of an embryo gamester; now throwing himself on an
ottoman, and trying to coax towards him Dash or Ponto,--trying in vain,
for both the dogs abhorred him; yet still, through all this general
movement, had any one taken the pains to observe him closely, it might
have been sufficiently apparent that his keen, bright, restless eye,
from the corner of its long, sly lids, roved chiefly towards the three
persons whom he approached the least,--his father, Mainwaring, and Mr.
Vernon. This last had ensconced himself apart from all, in the angle
formed by one of the pilasters of the arch that divided the room, so
that he was in command, as it were, of both sections. Reclined, with the
careless grace that seemed inseparable from every attitude and motion of
his person, in one of the great velvet chairs, with a book in his hand,
which, to say truth, was turned upside down, but in the lecture of which
he seemed absorbed, he heard at one hand the mirthful laughter that
circled round young Ardworth, or, in its pauses, caught, on the other
side, muttered exclamations from the grave whist-players: “If you
had but trumped that diamond, ma’am!” “Bless me, sir, it was the best
heart!” And somehow or other, both the laughter and the exclamations
affected him alike with what then was called “the spleen,”--for the one
reminded him of his own young days of joyless, careless mirth, of which
his mechanical gayety now was but a mocking ghost; and the other seemed
a satire, a parody, on the fierce but noiseless rapture of gaming,
through which his passions had passed, when thousands had slipped away
with a bland smile, provoking not one of those natural ebullitions
of emotion which there accompanied the loss of a shilling point. And
besides this, Vernon had been so accustomed to the success of the
drawing-room, to be a somebody and a something in the company of wits
and princes, that he felt, for the first time, a sense of insignificance
in this provincial circle. Those fat squires had heard nothing of Mr.
Vernon, except that he would not have Laughton,--he had no acres, no
vote in their county; he was a nobody to them. Those ruddy maidens,
though now and then, indeed, one or two might steal an admiring glance
at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him not with the female
interest he had been accustomed to inspire. They felt instinctively that
he could be nothing to them, nor they to him,--a mere London fop, and
not half so handsome as Squires Bluff and Chuff.

Rousing himself from this little vexation to his vanity with a conscious
smile at his own weakness, Vernon turned his looks towards the door,
waiting for Lucretia’s entrance, and since her uncle’s address to him,
feeling that new and indescribable interest in her appearance which is
apt to steal into every breast when what was before but an indifferent
acquaintance, is suddenly enhaloed with the light of a possible wife.
At length the door opened, and Lucretia entered. Mr. Vernon lowered
his book, and gazed with an earnestness that partook both of doubt and
admiration.

Lucretia Clavering was tall,--tall beyond what is admitted to be tall
in woman; but in her height there was nothing either awkward or
masculine,--a figure more perfect never served for model to a sculptor.
The dress at that day, unbecoming as we now deem it, was not to her--at
least, on the whole disadvantageous. The short waist gave greater
sweep to her majestic length of limb, while the classic thinness of the
drapery betrayed the exact proportion and the exquisite contour. The
arms then were worn bare almost to the shoulder, and Lucretia’s arms
were not more faultless in shape than dazzling in their snowy colour;
the stately neck, the falling shoulders, the firm, slight, yet rounded
bust,--all would have charmed equally the artist and the sensualist.
Fortunately, the sole defect of her form was not apparent at a distance:
that defect was in the hand; it had not the usual faults of female
youthfulness,--the superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness
of colour,--on the contrary, it was small and thin; but it was,
nevertheless, more the hand of a man than a woman: the shape had a man’s
nervous distinctness, the veins swelled like sinews, the joints of the
fingers were marked and prominent. In that hand it almost seemed as if
the iron force of the character betrayed itself. But, as we have said,
this slight defect, which few, if seen, would hypercritically notice,
could not, of course, be perceptible as she moved slowly up the room;
and Vernon’s eye, glancing over the noble figure, rested upon the
face. Was it handsome? Was it repelling? Strange that in feature it
had pretensions to the highest order of beauty, and yet even that
experienced connoisseur in female charms was almost as puzzled what
sentence to pronounce. The hair, as was the fashion of the day,
clustered in profuse curls over the forehead, but could not conceal a
slight line or wrinkle between the brows; and this line, rare in women
at any age, rare even in men at hers, gave an expression at once of
thought and sternness to the whole face. The eyebrows themselves were
straight, and not strongly marked, a shade or two perhaps too light,--a
fault still more apparent in the lashes; the eyes were large, full,
and though bright, astonishingly calm and deep,--at least in ordinary
moments; yet withal they wanted the charm of that steadfast and open
look which goes at once to the heart and invites its trust,--their
expression was rather vague and abstracted. She usually looked aslant
while she spoke, and this, which with some appears but shyness, in
one so self-collected had an air of falsehood. But when, at times, if
earnest, and bent rather on examining those she addressed than guarding
herself from penetration, she fixed those eyes upon you with sudden and
direct scrutiny, the gaze impressed you powerfully, and haunted you
with a strange spell. The eye itself was of a peculiar and displeasing
colour,--not blue, nor gray, nor black, nor hazel, but rather of that
cat-like green which is drowsy in the light, and vivid in the shade.
The profile was purely Greek, and so seen, Lucretia’s beauty seemed
incontestable; but in front face, and still more when inclined between
the two, all the features took a sharpness that, however regular, had
something chilling and severe: the mouth was small, but the lips were
thin and pale, and had an expression of effort and contraction which
added to the distrust that her sidelong glance was calculated to
inspire. The teeth were dazzlingly white, but sharp and thin, and the
eye-teeth were much longer than the rest. The complexion was pale,
but without much delicacy,--the paleness seemed not natural to it, but
rather that hue which study and late vigils give to men; so that she
wanted the freshness and bloom of youth, and looked older than she
was,--an effect confirmed by an absence of roundness in the cheek not
noticeable in the profile, but rendering the front face somewhat
harsh as well as sharp. In a word, the face and the figure were not in
harmony: the figure prevented you from pronouncing her to be masculine;
the face took from the figure the charm of feminacy. It was the head of
the young Augustus upon the form of Agrippina. One touch more, and
we close a description which already perhaps the reader may consider
frivolously minute. If you had placed before the mouth and lower part of
the face a mask or bandage, the whole character of the upper face would
have changed at once,--the eye lost its glittering falseness, the brow
its sinister contraction; you would have pronounced the face not only
beautiful, but sweet and womanly. Take that bandage suddenly away and
the change would have startled you, and startled you the more because
you could detect no sufficient defect or disproportion in the lower part
of the countenance to explain it. It was as if the mouth was the key
to the whole: the key nothing without the text, the text uncomprehended
without the key.

Such, then, was Lucretia Clavering in outward appearance at the age of
twenty,--striking to the most careless eye; interesting and perplexing
the student in that dark language never yet deciphered,--the human
countenance. The reader must have observed that the effect every face
that he remarks for the first time produces is different from the
impression it leaves upon him when habitually seen. Perhaps no two
persons differ more from each other than does the same countenance in
our earliest recollection of it from the countenance regarded in the
familiarity of repeated intercourse. And this was especially the case
with Lucretia Clavering’s: the first impulse of nearly all who beheld it
was distrust that partook of fear; it almost inspired you with a sense
of danger. The judgment rose up against it; the heart set itself on its
guard. But this uneasy sentiment soon died away, with most observers, in
admiration at the chiselled outline, which, like the Grecian
sculpture, gained the more the more it was examined, in respect for the
intellectual power of the expression, and in fascinated pleasure at the
charm of a smile, rarely employed, it is true, but the more attractive
both for that reason and for its sudden effect in giving brightness and
persuasion to an aspect that needed them so much. It was literally like
the abrupt breaking out of a sunbeam; and the repellent impression of
the face thus familiarized away, the matchless form took its natural
influence; so that while one who but saw Lucretia for a moment might
have pronounced her almost plain, and certainly not prepossessing in
appearance, those with whom she lived, those whom she sought to please,
those who saw her daily, united in acknowledgment of her beauty; and
if they still felt awe, attributed it only to the force of her
understanding.

As she now came midway up the room, Gabriel started from his seat and
ran to her caressingly. Lucretia bent down, and placed her hand upon his
fair locks. As she did so, he whispered,--

“Mr. Vernon has been watching for you.”

“Hush! Where is your father?”

“Behind the screen, at chess with Sir Miles.”

“With Sir Miles!” and Lucretia’s eye fell, with the direct gaze we have
before referred to, upon the boy’s face.

“I have been looking over them pretty often,” said he, meaningly: “they
have talked of nothing but the game.” Lucretia lifted her head, and
glanced round with her furtive eye; the boy divined the search, and
with a scarce perceptible gesture pointed her attention to Mainwaring’s
retreat. Her vivid smile passed over her lips as she bowed slightly to
her lover, and then, withdrawing the hand which Gabriel had taken in his
own, she moved on, passed Vernon with a commonplace word or two, and was
soon exchanging greetings with the gay merry-makers in the farther
part of the room. A few minutes afterwards, the servants entered, the
tea-table was removed, chairs were thrust back, a single lady of a
certain age volunteered her services at the piano, and dancing began
within the ample space which the arch fenced off from the whist-players.
Vernon had watched his opportunity, and at the first sound of the piano
had gained Lucretia’s side, and with grave politeness pre-engaged her
hand for the opening dance.

At that day, though it is not so very long ago, gentlemen were not
ashamed to dance, and to dance well; it was no languid saunter through
a quadrille; it was fair, deliberate, skilful dancing amongst the
courtly,--free, bounding movement amongst the gay.

Vernon, as might be expected, was the most admired performer of the
evening; but he was thinking very little of the notice he at last
excited, he was employing such ingenuity as his experience of life
supplied to the deficiencies of a very imperfect education, limited to
the little flogged into him at Eton, in deciphering the character and
getting at the heart of his fair partner.

“I wonder you do not make Sir Miles take you to London, my cousin, if
you will allow me to call you so. You ought to have been presented.”

“I have no wish to go to London yet.”

“Yet!” said Mr. Vernon, with the somewhat fade gallantry of his day;
“beauty even like yours has little time to spare.”

“Hands across, hands across!” cried Mr. Ardworth.

“And,” continued Mr. Vernon, as soon as a pause was permitted to him,
“there is a song which the prince sings, written by some sensible
old-fashioned fellow, which says,--

“‘Gather your rosebuds while you may, For time is still a flying.”’

“You have obeyed the moral of the song yourself, I believe, Mr. Vernon.”

“Call me cousin, or Charles,--Charley, if you like, as most of my
friends do; nobody ever calls me Mr. Vernon,--I don’t know myself by
that name.”

“Down the middle; we are all waiting for you,” shouted Ardworth.

And down the middle, with wondrous grace, glided the exquisite nankeens
of Charley Vernon.

The dance now, thanks to Ardworth, became too animated and riotous to
allow more than a few broken monosyllables till Vernon and his partner
gained the end of the set, and then, flirting his partner’s fan, he
recommenced,--

“Seriously, my cousin, you must sometimes feel very much moped here.”

“Never!” answered Lucretia. Not once yet had her eye rested on Mr.
Vernon. She felt that she was sounded.

“Yet I am sure you have a taste for the pomps and vanities. Aha! there
is ambition under those careless curls,” said Mr. Vernon, with his easy,
adorable impertinence.

Lucretia winced.

“But if I were ambitious, what field for ambition could I find in
London?”

“The same as Alexander,--empire, my cousin.”

“You forget that I am not a man. Man, indeed, may hope for an empire. It
is something to be a Pitt, or even a Warren Hastings.”

Mr. Vernon stared. Was this stupidity, or what?

“A woman has an empire more undisputed than Mr. Pitt’s, and more
pitiless than that of Governor Hastings.”

“Oh, pardon me, Mr. Vernon--”

“Charles, if you please.”

Lucretia’s brow darkened.

“Pardon me,” she repeated; “but these compliments, if such they are
meant to be, meet a very ungrateful return. A woman’s empire over gauzes
and ribbons, over tea-tables and drums, over fops and coquettes, is not
worth a journey from Laughton to London.”

“You think you can despise admiration?”

“What you mean by admiration,--yes.”

“And love too?” said Vernon, in a whisper.

Now Lucretia at once and abruptly raised her eyes to her partner. Was he
aiming at her secret? Was he hinting at intentions of his own? The look
chilled Vernon, and he turned away his head.

Suddenly, then, in pursuance of a new train of ideas, Lucretia altered
her manner to him. She had detected what before she had surmised.
This sudden familiarity on his part arose from notions her uncle had
instilled,--the visitor had been incited to become the suitor. Her
penetration into character, which from childhood had been her passionate
study, told her that on that light, polished, fearless nature scorn
would have slight effect; to meet the familiarity would be the best
means to secure a friend, to disarm a wooer. She changed then her
manner; she summoned up her extraordinary craft; she accepted the
intimacy held out to her, not to unguard herself, but to lay open her
opponent. It became necessary to her to know this man, to have such
power as the knowledge might give her. Insensibly and gradually she led
her companion away from his design of approaching her own secrets or
character, into frank talk about himself. All unconsciously he began
to lay bare to his listener the infirmities of his erring, open heart.
Silently she looked down, and plumbed them all,--the frivolity, the
recklessness, the half gay, half mournful sense of waste and ruin.
There, blooming amongst the wrecks, she saw the fairest flowers of
noble manhood profuse and fragrant still,--generosity and courage and
disregard for self. Spendthrift and gambler on one side the medal;
gentleman and soldier on the other. Beside this maimed and imperfect
nature she measured her own prepared and profound intellect, and as she
listened, her smile became more bland and frequent. She could afford to
be gracious; she felt superiority, scorn, and safety.

As this seeming intimacy had matured, Vernon and his partner had
quitted the dance, and were conversing apart in the recess of one of the
windows, which the newspaper readers had deserted, in the part of the
room where Sir Miles and Dalibard, still seated, were about to commence
their third game at chess. The baronet’s hand ceased from the task of
arranging his pawns; his eye was upon the pair; and then, after a long
and complacent gaze, it looked round without discovering the object it
sought.

“I am about to task your kindness most improperly, Monsieur Dalibard,”
 said Sir Miles, with that politeness so displeasing to Ardworth, “but
will you do me the favour to move aside that fold of the screen? I wish
for a better view of our young people. Thank you very much.”

Sir Miles now discovered Mainwaring, and observed that, far from
regarding with self-betraying jealousy the apparent flirtation going
on between Lucretia and her kinsman, he was engaged in animated
conversation with the chairman of the quarter sessions. Sir Miles was
satisfied, and ranged his pawns. All this time, and indeed ever since
they had sat down to play, the Provencal had been waiting, with the
patience that belonged to his character, for some observation from Sir
Miles on the subject which, his sagacity perceived, was engrossing his
thoughts. There had been about the old gentleman a fidgety restlessness
which showed that something was on his mind. His eyes had been
frequently turned towards his niece since her entrance; once or twice
he had cleared his throat and hemmed,--his usual prelude to some
more important communication; and Dalibard had heard him muttering to
himself, and fancied he caught the name of “Mainwaring.” And indeed the
baronet had been repeatedly on the verge of sounding his secretary,
and as often had been checked both by pride in himself and pride for
Lucretia. It seemed to him beneath his own dignity and hers even to
hint to an inferior a fear, a doubt, of the heiress of Laughton. Olivier
Dalibard could easily have led on his patron, he could easily, if he
pleased it, have dropped words to instil suspicion and prompt question;
but that was not his object,--he rather shunned than courted any
reference to himself upon the matter; for he knew that Lucretia, if
she could suppose that he, however indirectly, had betrayed her to her
uncle, would at once declare his own suit to her, and so procure his
immediate dismissal; while, aware of her powers of dissimulation and her
influence over her uncle, he feared that a single word from her would
suffice to remove all suspicion in Sir Miles, however ingeniously
implanted, and however truthfully grounded. But all the while, under his
apparent calm, his mind was busy and his passions burning.

“Pshaw! your old play,--the bishop again,” said Sir Miles, laughing, as
he moved a knight to frustrate his adversary’s supposed plan; and then,
turning back, he once more contemplated the growing familiarity between
Vernon and his niece. This time he could not contain his pleasure.
“Dalibard, my dear sir,” he said, rubbing his hands, “look yonder: they
would make a handsome couple!”

“Who, sir?” said the Provencal, looking another way, with dogged
stupidity.

“Who? Damn it, man! Nay, pray forgive my ill manners, but I felt glad,
sir, and proud, sir. Who? Charley Vernon and Lucretia Clavering.”

“Assuredly, yes. Do you think that there is a chance of so happy an
event?”

“Why, it depends only on Lucretia; I shall never force her.” Here Sir
Miles stopped, for Gabriel, unperceived before, picked up his patron’s
pocket-handkerchief.

Olivier Dalibard’s gray eyes rested coldly on his son. “You are not
dancing to-night, my boy. Go; I like to see you amused.”

The boy obeyed at once, as he always did, the paternal commands. He
found a partner, and joined a dance just begun; and in the midst of the
dance, Honore Gabriel Varney seemed a new being,--not Ardworth himself
so thoroughly entered into the enjoyment of the exercise, the lights,
the music. With brilliant eyes and dilated nostrils, he seemed
prematurely to feel all that is exciting and voluptuous in that
exhilaration which to childhood is usually so innocent. His glances
followed the fairest form; his clasp lingered in the softest hand; his
voice trembled as the warm breath of his partner came on his cheeks.

Meanwhile the conversation between the chess-players continued.

“Yes,” said the baronet, “it depends only on Lucretia. And she seems
pleased with Vernon: who would not be?”

“Your penetration rarely deceives you, sir. I own I think with you. Does
Mr. Vernon know that you would permit the alliance?”

“Yes; but--” the baronet stopped short.

“You were saying, but--But what, Sir Miles?”

“Why, the dog affected diffidence; he had some fear lest he should not
win her affections. But luckily, at least, they are disengaged.”

Dalibard looked grave, and his eye, as if involuntarily, glanced towards
Mainwaring. As ill-luck would have it, the young man had then ceased his
conversation with the chairman of the quarter sessions, and with arms
folded, brow contracted, and looks, earnest, anxious, and intent, was
contemplating the whispered conference between Lucretia and Vernon.

Sir Miles’s eye had followed his secretary’s, and his face changed. His
hand fell on the chess board and upset half the men; he uttered a very
audible “Zounds!”

“I think, Sir Miles,” said the Provencal, rising, as if conscious that
Sir Miles wished to play no more,--“I think that if you spoke soon to
Miss Clavering as to your views with regard to Mr. Vernon, it might
ripen matters; for I have heard it said by French mothers--and our
Frenchwomen understand the female heart, sir--that a girl having no
other affection is often prepossessed at once in favour of a man whom
she knows beforehand is prepared to woo and to win her, whereas without
that knowledge he would have seemed but an ordinary acquaintance.”

“It is shrewdly said, my dear Monsieur Dalibard; and for more reasons
than one, the sooner I speak to her the better. Lend me your arm. It is
time for supper; I see the dance is over.”

Passing by the place where Mainwaring still leaned, the baronet looked
at him fixedly. The young man did not notice the gaze. Sir Miles touched
him gently. He started as from a revery.

“You have not danced, Mr. Mainwaring.”

“I dance so seldom, Sir Miles,” said Mainwaring, colouring.

“Ah! you employ your head more than your heels, young gentleman,--very
right; I must speak to you to-morrow. Well, ladies, I hope you have
enjoyed yourselves? My dear Mrs. Vesey, you and I are old friends, you
know; many a minuet we have danced together, eh? We can’t dance now,
but we can walk arm-in-arm together still. Honour me. And your little
grandson--vaccinated, eh? Wonderful invention! To supper, ladies, to
supper!”

The company were gone. The lights were out,--all save the lights of
heaven; and they came bright and still through the casements. Moonbeam
and Starbeam, they seemed now to have the old house to themselves. In
came the rays, brighter and longer and bolder, like fairies that march,
rank upon rank, into their kingdom of solitude. Down the oak stairs,
from the casements, blazoned with heraldry, moved the rays, creepingly,
fearfully. On the armour in the hall clustered the rays boldly and
brightly, till the steel shone out like a mirror. In the library, long
and low, they just entered, stopped short: it was no place for their
play. In the drawing-room, now deserted, they were more curious and
adventurous. Through the large window, still open, they came in freely
and archly, as if to spy what had caused such disorder; the stiff chairs
out of place, the smooth floor despoiled of its carpet, that flower
dropped on the ground, that scarf forgotten on the table,--the rays
lingered upon them all. Up and down through the house, from the base to
the roof, roved the children of the air, and found but two spirits awake
amidst the slumber of the rest.

In that tower to the east, in the tapestry chamber with the large gilded
bed in the recess, came the rays, tamed and wan, as if scared by the
grosser light on the table. By that table sat a girl, her brow leaning
on one hand; in the other she held a rose,--it is a love-token:
exchanged with its sister rose, by stealth, in mute sign of reproach for
doubt excited,--an assurance and a reconciliation. A love-token!--shrink
not, ye rays; there is something akin to you in love. But see,--the hand
closes convulsively on the flower; it hides it not in the breast; it
lifts it not to the lip: it throws it passionately aside. “How long!”
 muttered the girl, impetuously,--“how long! And to think that will here
cannot shorten an hour!” Then she rose, and walked to and fro, and each
time she gained a certain niche in the chamber she paused, and then
irresolutely passed on again. What is in that niche? Only books. What
can books teach thee, pale girl? The step treads firmer; this time
it halts more resolved. The hand that clasped the flower takes down a
volume. The girl sits again before the light. See, O rays! what is the
volume? Moon and Starbeam, ye love what lovers read by the lamp in the
loneliness. No love-ditty this; no yet holier lesson to patience, and
moral to hope. What hast thou, young girl, strong in health and rich in
years, with the lore of the leech,--with prognostics and symptoms and
diseases? She is tracing with hard eyes the signs that precede the grim
enemy in his most sudden approach,--the habits that invite him, the
warnings that he gives. He whose wealth shall make her free has twice
had the visiting shock; he starves not, he lives frae! She closes the
volume, and, musing, metes him out the hours and days he has to live.
Shrink back, ye rays! The love is disenhallowed; while the hand was on
the rose, the thought was on the charnel.

Yonder, in the opposite tower, in the small casement near the roof, came
the rays. Childhood is asleep. Moon and Starbeam, ye love the slumbers
of the child! The door opens, a dark figure steals noiselessly in. The
father comes to look on the sleep of his son. Holy tenderness, if this
be all! “Gabriel, wake!” said a low, stern voice, and a rough hand shook
the sleeper.

The sharpest test of those nerves upon which depends the mere animal
courage is to be roused suddenly, in the depth of night, by a violent
hand. The impulse of Gabriel, thus startled, was neither of timidity
nor surprise. It was that of some Spartan boy not new to danger; with a
slight cry and a fierce spring, the son’s hand clutched at the father’s
throat. Dalibard shook him off with an effort, and a smile, half in
approval, half in irony, played by the moonlight over his lips.

“Blood will out, young tiger,” said he. “Hush, and hear me!”

“Is it you, Father?” said Gabriel. “I thought, I dreamed--”

“No matter; think, dream always that man should be prepared for defence
from peril!”

“Gabriel,” and the pale scholar seated himself on the bed, “turn your
face to mine,--nearer; let the moon fall on it; lift your eyes; look
at me--so! Are you not playing false to me? Are you not Lucretia’s spy,
while you are pretending to be mine? It is so; your eye betrays you.
Now, heed me; you have a mind beyond your years. Do you love best the
miserable garret in London, the hard fare and squalid dress, or
your lodgment here, the sense of luxury, the sight of splendour, the
atmosphere of wealth? You have the choice before you.”

“I choose, as you would have me, then,” said the boy, “the last.”

“I believe you. Attend! You do not love me,--that is natural; you are
the son of Clara Varney! You have supposed that in loving Lucretia
Clavering you might vex or thwart me, you scarce knew how; and Lucretia
Clavering has gold and gifts and soft words and promises to bribe
withal. I now tell you openly my plan with regard to this girl: it is
my aim to marry her; to be master of this house and these lands. If
I succeed, you share them with me. By betraying me, word or look, to
Lucretia, you frustrate this aim; you plot against our rise and to our
ruin. Deem not that you could escape my fall; if I am driven hence,--as
you might drive me,--you share my fate; and mark me, you are delivered
up to my revenge! You cease to be my son,--you are my foe. Child! you
know me.”

The boy, bold as he was, shuddered; but after a pause so brief that a
breath scarce passed between his silence and his words, he replied with
emphasis,--

“Father, you have read my heart. I have been persuaded by Lucretia (for
she bewitches me) to watch you,--at least, when you are with Sir Miles.
I knew that this was mixed up with Mr. Mainwaring. Now that you have
made me understand your own views, I will be true to you,--true without
threats.”

The father looked hard on him, and seemed satisfied with the gaze.
“Remember, at least, that your future rests upon your truth; that is no
threat,--that is a thought of hope. Now sleep or muse on it.” He dropped
the curtain which his hand had drawn aside, and stole from the room
as noiselessly as he had entered. The boy slept no more. Deceit and
cupidity and corrupt ambition were at work in his brain. Shrink back,
Moon and Starbeam! On that child’s brow play the demons who had followed
the father’s step to his bed of sleep.

Back to his own room, close at hand, crept Olivier Dalibard. The walls
were lined with books,--many in language and deep in lore. Moon and
Starbeam, ye love the midnight solitude of the scholar! The Provencal
stole to the casement, and looked forth. All was serene,--breathless
trees and gleaming sculpture and whitened sward, girdled by the mass of
shadow. Of what thought the man? Not of the present loveliness which
the scene gave to his eye, nor of the future mysteries which the stars
should whisper to the soul. Gloomily over a stormy and a hideous past
roved the memory, stored with fraud and foul with crime,--plan upon
plan, schemed with ruthless wisdom, followed up by remorseless daring,
and yet all now a ruin and a blank; an intellect at war with good,
and the good had conquered! But the conviction neither touched the
conscience nor enlightened the reason; he felt, it is true, a moody
sense of impotence, but it brought rage, not despondency. It was not
that he submitted to Good as too powerful to oppose, but that he deemed
he had not yet gained all the mastery over the arsenal of Evil. And evil
he called it not. Good and evil to him were but subordinate genii at the
command of Mind; they were the slaves of the lamp. But had he got at the
true secret of the lamp itself? “How is it,” he thought, as he turned
impatiently from the casement, “that I am baffled here where my fortunes
seemed most assured? Here the mind has been of my own training, and
prepared by nature to my hand; here all opportunity has smiled. And
suddenly the merest commonplace in the vulgar lives of mortals,--an
unlooked-for rival; rival, too, of the mould I had taught her to
despise; one of the stock gallants of a comedy, no character but youth
and fair looks,--yea, the lover of the stage starts up, and the fabric
of years is overthrown.” As he thus mused, he placed his hand upon
a small box on one of the tables. “Yet within this,” resumed his
soliloquy, and he struck the lid, that gave back a dull sound,--“within
this I hold the keys of life and death! Fool! the power does not
reach to the heart, except to still it. Verily and indeed were the
old heathens mistaken? Are there no philters to change the current of
desire? But touch one chord in a girl’s affection, and all the rest is
mine, all, all, lands, station, power, all the rest are in the opening
of this lid!”

Hide in the cloud, O Moon! shrink back, ye Stars! send not your holy,
pure, and trouble-lulling light to the countenance blanched and livid
with the thoughts of murder.




CHAPTER III. CONFERENCES.

The next day Sir Miles did not appear at breakfast,--not that he was
unwell, but that he meditated holding certain audiences, and on such
occasions the good old gentleman liked to prepare himself. He belonged
to a school in which, amidst much that was hearty and convivial, there
was much also that nowadays would seem stiff and formal, contrasting the
other school immediately succeeding him, which Mr. Vernon represented,
and of which the Charles Surface of Sheridan is a faithful and admirable
type. The room that Sir Miles appropriated to himself was, properly
speaking, the state apartment, called, in the old inventories, “King
James’s chamber;” it was on the first floor, communicating with the
picture-gallery, which at the farther end opened upon a corridor
admitting to the principal bedrooms. As Sir Miles cared nothing for
holiday state, he had unscrupulously taken his cubiculum in this
chamber, which was really the handsomest in the house, except the
banquet-hall, placed his bed in one angle with a huge screen before it,
filled up the space with his Italian antiquities and curiosities; and
fixed his favourite pictures on the faded gilt leather panelled on the
walls. His main motive in this was the communication with the adjoining
gallery, which, when the weather was unfavourable, furnished ample
room for his habitual walk. He knew how many strides by the help of his
crutch made a mile, and this was convenient. Moreover, he liked to
look, when alone, on those old portraits of his ancestors, which he
had religiously conserved in their places, preferring to thrust his
Florentine and Venetian masterpieces into bedrooms and parlours,
rather than to dislodge from the gallery the stiff ruffs, doublets, and
farthingales of his predecessors. It was whispered in the house that
the baronet, whenever he had to reprove a tenant or lecture a dependant,
took care to have him brought to his sanctum, through the full length of
this gallery, so that the victim might be duly prepared and awed by the
imposing effect of so stately a journey, and the grave faces of all the
generations of St. John, which could not fail to impress him with the
dignity of the family, and alarm him at the prospect of the injured
frown of its representative. Across this gallery now, following the
steps of the powdered valet, strode young Ardworth, staring now and then
at some portrait more than usually grim, more often wondering why his
boots, that never creaked before, should creak on those particular
boards, and feeling a quiet curiosity, without the least mixture of fear
or awe as to what old Squaretoes intended to say to him. But all feeling
of irreverence ceased when, shown into the baronet’s room, and the door
closed, Sir Miles rose with a smile, and cordially shaking his hand,
said, dropping the punctilious courtesy of Mister: “Ardworth, sir, if I
had a little prejudice against you before you came, you have conquered
it. You are a fine, manly, spirited fellow, sir; and you have an old
man’s good wishes,--which are no bad beginning to a young man’s good
fortune.”

The colour rushed over Ardworth’s forehead, and a tear sprang to his
eyes. He felt a rising at his throat as he stammered out some not very
audible reply.

“I wished to see you, young gentleman, that I might judge myself what
you would like best, and what would best fit you. Your father is in the
army: what say you to a pair of colours?”

“Oh, Sir Miles, that is my utmost ambition! Anything but law, except the
Church; anything but the Church, except the desk and a counter!”

The baronet, much pleased, gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Ha,
ha! we gentlemen, you see (for the Ardworths are very well born, very),
we gentlemen understand each other! Between you and me, I never liked
the law, never thought a man of birth should belong to it. Take money
for lying,--shabby, shocking! Don’t let that go any farther! The
Church-Mother Church--I honour her! Church and State go together! But
one ought to be very good to preach to others,--better than you and I
are, eh? ha, ha! Well, then, you like the army,--there’s a letter for
you to the Horse Guards. Go up to town; your business is done. And, as
for your outfit,--read this little book at your leisure.” And Sir Miles
thrust a pocketbook into Ardworth’s hand.

“But pardon me,” said the young man, much bewildered. “What claim have
I, Sir Miles, to such generosity? I know that my uncle offended you.”

“Sir, that’s the claim!” said Sir Miles, gravely. “I cannot live long,”
 he added, with a touch of melancholy in his voice; “let me die in peace
with all! Perhaps I injured your uncle,--who knows but, if so, he hears
and pardons me now?”

“Oh, Sir Miles!” exclaimed the thoughtless, generous-hearted young man;
“and my little playfellow, Susan, your own niece!”

Sir Miles drew back haughtily; but the burst that offended him rose
so evidently from the heart, was so excusable from its motive and the
youth’s ignorance of the world, that his frown soon vanished as he said,
calmly and gravely,--

“No man, my good sir, can allow to others the right to touch on his
family affairs; I trust I shall be just to the poor young lady. And so,
if we never meet again, let us think well of each other. Go, my boy;
serve your king and your country!”

“I will do my best, Sir Miles, if only to merit your kindness.”

“Stay a moment: you are intimate, I find, with young Mainwaring?”

“An old college friendship, Sir Miles.”

“The army will not do for him, eh?”

“He is too clever for it, sir.”

“Ah, he’d make a lawyer, I suppose,--glib tongue enough, and can talk
well; and lie, if he’s paid for it?”

“I don’t know how lawyers regard those matters, Sir Miles; but if you
don’t make him a lawyer, I am sure you must leave him an honest man.”

“Really and truly--”

“Upon my honour I think so.”

“Good-day to you, and good luck. You must catch the coach at the lodge;
for I see by the papers that, in spite of all the talk about peace, they
are raising regiments like wildfire.”

With very different feelings from those with which he had entered the
room, Ardworth quitted it. He hurried into his own chamber to thrust
his clothes into his portmanteau, and while thus employed, Mainwaring
entered.

“Joy, my dear fellow, wish me joy! I am going to town,--into the army;
abroad; to be shot at, thank Heaven! That dear old gentleman! Just throw
me that coat, will you?”

A very few more words sufficed to explain what had passed to Mainwaring.
He sighed when his friend had finished: “I wish I were going with you!”

“Do you? Sir Miles has only got to write another letter to the Horse
Guards. But no, you are meant to be something better than food for
powder; and, besides, your Lucretia! Hang it, I am sorry I cannot stay
to examine her as I had promised; but I have seen enough to know that
she certainly loves you. Ah, when she changed flowers with you, you did
not think I saw you,--sly, was not I? Pshaw! She was only playing with
Vernon. But still, do you know, Will, now that Sir Miles has spoken to
me so, that I could have sobbed, ‘God bless you, my old boy!’ ‘pon
my life, I could! Now, do you know that I feel enraged with you for
abetting that girl to deceive him?”

“I am enraged with myself; and--”

Here a servant entered, and informed Mainwaring that he had been
searching for him; Sir Miles requested to see him in his room.
Mainwaring started like a culprit.

“Never fear,” whispered Ardworth; “he has no suspicion of you, I’m
sure. Shake hands. When shall we meet again? Is it not odd, I, who am
a republican by theory, taking King George’s pay to fight against the
French? No use stopping now to moralize on such contradictions. John,
Tom,--what’s your name?--here, my man, here, throw that portmanteau
on your shoulder and come to the lodge.” And so, full of health, hope,
vivacity, and spirit, John Walter Ardworth departed on his career.

Meanwhile Mainwaring slowly took his way to Sir Miles. As he approached
the gallery, he met Lucretia, who was coming from her own room. “Sir
Miles has sent for me,” he said meaningly. He had time for no more, for
the valet was at the door of the gallery, waiting to usher him to his
host. “Ha! you will say not a word that can betray us; guard your
looks too!” whispered Lucretia, hurriedly; “afterwards, join me by the
cedars.” She passed on towards the staircase, and glanced at the large
clock that was placed there. “Past eleven! Vernon is never up before
twelve. I must see him before my uncle sends for me, as he will send
if he suspects--” She paused, went back to her room, rang for her maid,
dressed as for walking, and said carelessly, “If Sir Miles wants me,
I am gone to the rectory, and shall probably return by the village, so
that I shall be back about one.” Towards the rectory, indeed, Lucretia
bent her way; but half-way there, turned back, and passing through the
plantation at the rear of the house, awaited Mainwaring on the bench
beneath the cedars. He was not long before he joined her. His face was
sad and thoughtful; and when he seated himself by her side, it was with
a weariness of spirit that alarmed her.

“Well,” said she, fearfully, and she placed her hand on his.

“Oh, Lucretia,” he exclaimed, as he pressed that hand with an emotion
that came from other passions than love, “we, or rather I, have done
great wrong. I have been leading you to betray your uncle’s trust, to
convert your gratitude to him into hypocrisy. I have been unworthy of
myself. I am poor, I am humbly born, but till I came here, I was rich
and proud in honour. I am not so now. Lucretia, pardon me, pardon me!
Let the dream be over; we must not sin thus; for it is sin, and the
worst of sin,--treachery. We must part: forget me!”

“Forget you! Never, never, never!” cried Lucretia, with suppressed but
most earnest vehemence, her breast heaving, her hands, as he dropped the
one he held, clasped together, her eyes full of tears,--transformed at
once into softness, meekness, even while racked by passion and despair.

“Oh, William, say anything,--reproach, chide, despise me, for mine is
all the fault; say anything but that word ‘part.’ I have chosen you, I
have sought you out, I have wooed you, if you will; be it so. I cling
to you, you are my all,--all that saves me from--from myself,” she added
falteringly, and in a hollow voice. “Your love--you know not what it is
to me! I scarcely knew it myself before. I feel what it is now, when you
say ‘part.’”

Agitated and tortured, Mainwaring writhed at these burning words, bent
his face low, and covered it with his hands.

He felt her clasp struggling to withdraw them, yielded, and saw her
kneeling at his feet. His manhood and his gratitude and his heart all
moved by that sight in one so haughty, he opened his arms, and she fell
on his breast. “You will never say ‘part’ again, William!” she gasped
convulsively.

“But what are we to do?”

“Say, first, what has passed between you and my uncle.”

“Little to relate; for I can repeat words, not tones and looks.
Sir Miles spoke to me, at first kindly and encouragingly, about my
prospects, said it was time that I should fix myself, added a few
words, with menacing emphasis, against what he called ‘idle dreams and
desultory ambition,’ and observing that I changed countenance,--for I
felt that I did,--his manner became more cold and severe. Lucretia,
if he has not detected our secret, he more than suspects my--my
presumption. Finally, he said dryly, that I had better return home,
consult with my father, and that if I preferred entering into the
service of the Government to any mercantile profession, he thought
he had sufficient interest to promote my views. But, clearly and
distinctly, he left on my mind one impression,--that my visits here are
over.”

“Did he allude to me--to Mr. Vernon?”

“Ah, Lucretia! do you know him so little,--his delicacy, his pride?”

Lucretia was silent, and Mainwaring continued:--

“I felt that I was dismissed. I took my leave of your uncle; I came
hither with the intention to say farewell forever.”

“Hush! hush! that thought is over. And you return to your
father’s,--perhaps better so: it is but hope deferred; and in your
absence I can the more easily allay all suspicion, if suspicion exist.
But I must write to you; we must correspond. William, dear William,
write often,--write kindly; tell me, in every letter, that you love
me,--that you love only me; that you will be patient, and confide.”

“Dear Lucretia,” said Mainwaring, tenderly, and moved by the pathos
of her earnest and imploring voice, “but you forget: the bag is always
brought first to Sir Miles; he will recognize my hand. And to whom can
you trust your own letters?”

“True,” replied Lucretia, despondingly; and there was a pause. Suddenly
she lifted her head, and cried: “But your father’s house is not far from
this,--not ten miles; we can find a spot at the remote end of the park,
near the path through the great wood: there I can leave my letters;
there I can find yours.”

“But it must be seldom. If any of Sir Miles’s servants see me, if--”

“Oh, William, William, this is not the language of love!”

“Forgive me,--I think of you!”

“Love thinks of nothing but itself; it is tyrannical, absorbing,--it
forgets even the object loved; it feeds on danger; it strengthens by
obstacles,” said Lucretia, tossing her hair from her forehead, and with
an expression of dark and wild power on her brow and in her eyes. “Fear
not for me; I am sufficient guard upon myself. Even while I speak, I
think,--yes, I have thought of the very spot. You remember that hollow
oak at the bottom of the dell, in which Guy St. John, the Cavalier, is
said to have hid himself from Fairfax’s soldiers? Every Monday I will
leave a letter in that hollow; every Tuesday you can search for it, and
leave your own. This is but once a week; there is no risk here.”

Mainwaring’s conscience still smote him, but he had not the strength to
resist the energy of Lucretia. The force of her character seized upon
the weak part of his own,--its gentleness, its fear of inflicting
pain, its reluctance to say “No,”--that simple cause of misery to the
over-timid. A few sentences more, full of courage, confidence, and
passion, on the part of the woman, of constraint and yet of soothed and
grateful affection on that of the man, and the affianced parted.

Mainwaring had already given orders to have his trunks sent to him at
his father’s; and, a hardy pedestrian by habit, he now struck across the
park, passed the dell and the hollow tree, commonly called “Guy’s Oak,”
 and across woodland and fields golden with ripening corn, took his way
to the town, in the centre of which, square, solid, and imposing,
stood the respectable residence of his bustling, active, electioneering
father.

Lucretia’s eye followed a form as fair as ever captivated maiden’s
glance, till it was out of sight; and then, as she emerged from the
shade of the cedars into the more open space of the garden, her usual
thoughtful composure was restored to her steadfast countenance. On the
terrace, she caught sight of Vernon, who had just quitted his own room,
where he always breakfasted alone, and who was now languidly stretched
on a bench, and basking in the sun. Like all who have abused life,
Vernon was not the same man in the early part of the day. The spirits
that rose to temperate heat the third hour after noon, and expanded into
glow when the lights shone over gay carousers, at morning were flat and
exhausted. With hollow eyes and that weary fall of the muscles of the
cheeks which betrays the votary of Bacchus,--the convivial three-bottle
man,--Charley Vernon forced a smile, meant to be airy and impertinent,
to his pale lips, as he rose with effort, and extended three fingers to
his cousin.

“Where have you been hiding? Catching bloom from the roses? You have the
prettiest shade of colour,--just enough; not a hue too much. And there
is Sir Miles’s valet gone to the rectory, and the fat footman puffing
away towards the village, and I, like a faithful warden, from my post at
the castle, all looking out for the truant.”

“But who wants me, cousin?” said Lucretia, with the full blaze of her
rare and captivating smile.

“The knight of Laughton confessedly wants thee, O damsel! The knight of
the Bleeding Heart may want thee more,--dare he own it?”

And with a hand that trembled a little, not with love, at least, it
trembled always a little before the Madeira at luncheon,--he lifted hers
to his lips.

“Compliments again,--words, idle words!” said Lucretia, looking down
bashfully.

“How can I convince thee of my sincerity, unless thou takest my life as
its pledge, maid of Laughton?”

And very much tired of standing, Charley Vernon drew her gently to
the bench and seated himself by her side. Lucretia’s eyes were still
downcast, and she remained silent; Vernon, suppressing a yawn, felt
that he was bound to continue. There was nothing very formidable in
Lucretia’s manner.

“‘Fore Gad!” thought he, “I suppose I must take the heiress after all;
the sooner ‘t is over, the sooner I can get back to Brook Street.”

“It is premature, my fair cousin,” said he, aloud,--“premature, after
less than a week’s visit, and only some fourteen or fifteen hours’
permitted friendship and intimacy, to say what is uppermost in my
thoughts; but we spendthrifts are provokingly handsome! Sir Miles, your
good uncle, is pleased to forgive all my follies and faults upon one
condition,--that you will take on yourself the task to reform me. Will
you, my fair cousin? Such as I am, you behold me. I am no sinner in the
disguise of a saint. My fortune is spent, my health is not strong; but
a young widow’s is no mournful position. I am gay when I am well,
good-tempered when ailing. I never betrayed a trust,--can you trust me
with yourself?”

This was a long speech, and Charley Vernon felt pleased that it was
over. There was much in it that would have touched a heart even closed
to him, and a little genuine emotion had given light to his eyes, and
color to his cheek. Amidst all the ravages of dissipation, there was
something interesting in his countenance, and manly in his tone and
his gesture. But Lucretia was only sensible to one part of his
confession,--her uncle consented to his suit. This was all of which
she desired to be assured, and against this she now sought to screen
herself.

“Your candour, Mr. Vernon,” she said, avoiding his eye, “deserves
candour in me; I cannot affect to misunderstand you. But you take me by
surprise; I was so unprepared for this. Give me time,--I must reflect.”

“Reflection is dull work in the country; you can reflect more amusingly
in town, my fair cousin.”

“I will wait, then, till I find myself in town.”

“Ah, you make me the happiest, the most grateful of men,” cried
Mr. Vernon, rising, with a semi-genuflection which seemed to imply,
“Consider yourself knelt to,”--just as a courteous assailer, with a
motion of the hand, implies, “Consider yourself horsewhipped.”

Lucretia, who, with all her intellect, had no capacity for humour,
recoiled, and looked up in positive surprise.

“I do not understand you, Mr. Vernon,” she said, with austere gravity.

“Allow me the bliss of flattering myself that you, at least, are
understood,” replied Charley Vernon, with imperturbable assurance. “You
will wait to reflect till you are in town,--that is to say, the day
after our honeymoon, when you awake in Mayfair.”

Before Lucretia could reply, she saw the indefatigable valet formally
approaching, with the anticipated message that Sir Miles requested to
see her. She replied hurriedly to this last, that she would be with her
uncle immediately; and when he had again disappeared within the porch,
she said, with a constrained effort at frankness,--

“Mr. Vernon, if I have misunderstood your words, I think I do not
mistake your character. You cannot wish to take advantage of my
affection for my uncle, and the passive obedience I owe to him, to
force me into a step of which--of which--I have not yet sufficiently
considered the results. If you really desire that my feelings should be
consulted, that I should not--pardon me--consider myself sacrificed to
the family pride of my guardian and the interests of my suitor--”

“Madam!” exclaimed Vernon, reddening.

Pleased with the irritating effect her words had produced, Lucretia
continued calmly, “If, in a word, I am to be a free agent in a choice
on which my happiness depends, forbear to urge Sir Miles further at
present; forbear to press your suit upon me. Give me the delay of a few
months; I shall know how to appreciate your delicacy.”

“Miss Clavering,” answered Vernon, with a touch of the St. John
haughtiness, “I am in despair that you should even think so grave an
appeal to my honour necessary. I am well aware of your expectations and
my poverty. And, believe me, I would rather rot in a prison than enrich
myself by forcing your inclinations. You have but to say the word, and
I will (as becomes me as a man and gentleman) screen you from all chance
of Sir Miles’s displeasure, by taking it on myself to decline an honour
of which I feel, indeed, very undeserving.”

“But I have offended you,” said Lucretia, softly, while she turned aside
to conceal the glad light of her eyes,--“pardon me; and to prove that
you do so, give me your arm to my uncle’s room.”

Vernon, with rather more of Sir Miles’s antiquated stiffness than his
own rakish ease, offered his arm, with a profound reverence, to his
cousin, and they took their way to the house. Not till they had passed
up the stairs, and were even in the gallery, did further words pass
between them. Then Vernon said,--

“But what is your wish, Miss Clavering? On what footing shall I remain
here?”

“Will you suffer me to dictate?” replied Lucretia, stopping short with
well-feigned confusion, as if suddenly aware that the right to dictate
gives the right to hope.

“Ah, consider me at least your slave!” whispered Vernon, as, his
eye resting on the contour of that matchless neck, partially and
advantageously turned from him, he began, with his constitutional
admiration of the sex, to feel interested in a pursuit that now seemed,
after piquing, to flatter his self-love.

“Then I will use the privilege when we meet again,” answered Lucretia;
and drawing her arm gently from his, she passed on to her uncle, leaving
Vernon midway in the gallery.

Those faded portraits looked down on her with that melancholy gloom
which the effigies of our dead ancestors seem mysteriously to acquire.
To noble and aspiring spirits, no homily to truth and honour and fair
ambition is more eloquent than the mute and melancholy canvas from which
our fathers, made, by death, our household gods, contemplate us still.
They appear to confide to us the charge of their unblemished names. They
speak to us from the grave, and heard aright, the pride of family is the
guardian angel of its heirs. But Lucretia, with her hard and scholastic
mind, despised as the veriest weakness all the poetry that belongs
to the sense of a pure descent. It was because she was proud as the
proudest in herself that she had nothing but contempt for the virtue,
the valour, or the wisdom of those that had gone before. So, with a
brain busy with guile and stratagem, she trod on, beneath the eyes of
the simple and spotless Dead.

Vernon, thus left alone, mused a few moments on what had passed between
himself and the heiress; and then, slowly retracing his steps, his eye
roved along the stately series of his line. “Faith!” he muttered, “if
my boyhood had been passed in this old gallery, his Royal Highness would
have lost a good fellow and hard drinker, and his Majesty would have had
perhaps a more distinguished soldier,--certainly a worthier subject. If
I marry this lady, and we are blessed with a son, he shall walk through
this gallery once a day before he is flogged into Latin!”

Lucretia’s interview with her uncle was a masterpiece of art. What pity
that such craft and subtlety were wasted in our little day, and on such
petty objects; under the Medici, that spirit had gone far to the shaping
of history. Sure, from her uncle’s openness, that he would plunge at
once into the subject for which she deemed she was summoned, she evinced
no repugnance when, tenderly kissing her, he asked if Charles Vernon had
a chance of winning favour in her eyes. She knew that she was safe in
saying “No;” that her uncle would never force her inclinations,--safe
so far as Vernon was concerned; but she desired more: she desired
thoroughly to quench all suspicion that her heart was pre-occupied;
entirely to remove from Sir Miles’s thoughts the image of Mainwaring;
and a denial of one suitor might quicken the baronet’s eyes to the
concealment of the other. Nor was this all; if Sir Miles was seriously
bent upon seeing her settled in marriage before his death, the dismissal
of Vernon might only expose her to the importunity of new candidates
more difficult to deal with. Vernon himself she could use as the shield
against the arrows of a host. Therefore, when Sir Miles repeated his
question, she answered, with much gentleness and seeming modest sense,
that Mr. Vernon had much that must prepossess in his favour; that in
addition to his own advantages he had one, the highest in her eyes,--her
uncle’s sanction and approval. But--and she hesitated with becoming and
natural diffidence--were not his habits unfixed and roving? So it was
said; she knew not herself,--she would trust her happiness to her uncle.
But if so, and if Mr. Vernon were really disposed to change, would it
not be prudent to try him,--try him where there was temptation, not in
the repose of Laughton, but amidst his own haunts of London? Sir Miles
had friends who would honestly inform him of the result. She did but
suggest this; she was too ready to leave all to her dear guardian’s
acuteness and experience.

Melted by her docility, and in high approval of the prudence which
betokened a more rational judgment than he himself had evinced, the
good old man clasped her to his breast and shed tears as he praised and
thanked her. She had decided, as she always did, for the best; Heaven
forbid that she should be wasted on an incorrigible man of pleasure!
“And,” said the frank-hearted gentleman, unable long to keep any thought
concealed,--“and to think that I could have wronged you for a moment, my
own noble child; that I could have been dolt enough to suppose that
the good looks of that boy Mainwaring might have caused you to forget
what--But you change colour!”--for, with all her dissimulation, Lucretia
loved too ardently not to shrink at that name thus suddenly pronounced.
“Oh,” continued the baronet, drawing her still nearer towards him, while
with one hand he put back her face, that he might read its expression
the more closely,--“oh, if it had been so,--if it be so, I will pity,
not blame you, for my neglect was the fault: pity you, for I have known
a similar struggle; admire you in pity, for you have the spirit of your
ancestors, and you will conquer the weakness. Speak! have I touched on
the truth? Speak without fear, child,--you have no mother; but in age a
man sometimes gets a mother’s heart.”

Startled and alarmed as the lark when the step nears its nest, Lucretia
summoned all the dark wile of her nature to mislead the intruder. “No,
uncle, no; I am not so unworthy. You misconceived my emotion.”

“Ah, you know that he has had the presumption to love you,--the
puppy!--and you feel the compassion you women always feel for such
offenders? Is that it?”

Rapidly Lucretia considered if it would be wise to leave that impression
on his mind. On one hand, it might account for a moment’s agitation; and
if Mainwaring were detected hovering near the domain, in the exchange of
their correspondence, it might appear but the idle, if hopeless, romance
of youth, which haunts the mere home of its object,--but no; on
the other hand, it left his banishment absolute and confirmed. Her
resolution was taken with a promptitude that made her pause not
perceptible.

“No, my dear uncle,” she said, so cheerfully that it removed all doubt
from the mind of her listener; “but M. Dalibard has rallied me on the
subject, and I was so angry with him that when you touched on it, I
thought more of my quarrel with him than of poor timid Mr. Mainwaring
himself. Come, now, own it, dear sir! M. Dalibard has instilled this
strange fancy into your head?”

“No, ‘S life; if he had taken such a liberty, I should have lost my
librarian. No, I assure you, it was rather Vernon; you know true love is
jealous.”

“Vernon!” thought Lucretia; “he must go, and at once.” Sliding from her
uncle’s arms to the stool at his feet, she then led the conversation
more familiarly back into the channel it had lost; and when at last
she escaped, it was with the understanding that, without promise or
compromise, Mr. Vernon should return to London at once, and be put upon
the ordeal through which she felt assured it was little likely he should
pass with success.




CHAPTER IV. GUY’S OAK.

Three weeks afterwards, the life at Laughton seemed restored to the
cheerful and somewhat monotonous tranquillity of its course, before
chafed and disturbed by the recent interruptions to the stream. Vernon
had departed, satisfied with the justice of the trial imposed on him,
and far too high-spirited to seek to extort from niece or uncle any
engagement beyond that which, to a nice sense of honour, the trial
itself imposed. His memory and his heart were still faithful to Mary;
but his senses, his fancy, his vanity, were a little involved in his
success with the heiress. Though so free from all mercenary meanness,
Mr. Vernon was still enough man of the world to be sensible of the
advantages of the alliance which had first been pressed on him by Sir
Miles, and from which Lucretia herself appeared not to be averse. The
season of London was over, but there was always a set, and that set the
one in which Charley Vernon principally moved, who found town fuller
than the country. Besides, he went occasionally to Brighton, which was
then to England what Baiae was to Rome. The prince was holding gay court
at the Pavilion, and that was the atmosphere which Vernon was habituated
to breathe. He was no parasite of royalty; he had that strong personal
affection to the prince which it is often the good fortune of royalty to
attract. Nothing is less founded than the complaint which poets put into
the lips of princes, that they have no friends,--it is, at least, their
own perverse fault if that be the case; a little amiability, a little of
frank kindness, goes so far when it emanates from the rays of a crown.
But Vernon was stronger than Lucretia deemed him; once contemplating the
prospect of a union which was to consign to his charge the happiness of
another, and feeling all that he should owe in such a marriage to the
confidence both of niece and uncle, he evinced steadier principles than
he had ever made manifest when he had only his own fortune to mar, and
his own happiness to trifle with. He joined his old companions, but he
kept aloof from their more dissipated pursuits. Beyond what was then
thought the venial error of too devout libations to Bacchus, Charley
Vernon seemed reformed.

Ardworth had joined a regiment which had departed for the field of
action. Mainwaring was still with his father, and had not yet announced
to Sir Miles any wish or project for the future.

Olivier Dalibard, as before, passed his mornings alone in his
chamber,--his noons and his evenings with Sir Miles. He avoided all
private conferences with Lucretia. She did not provoke them. Young
Gabriel amused himself in copying Sir Miles’s pictures, sketching from
Nature, scribbling in his room prose or verse, no matter which (he never
showed his lucubrations), pinching the dogs when he could catch them
alone, shooting the cats, if they appeared in the plantation, on
pretence of love for the young pheasants, sauntering into the cottages,
where he was a favourite because of his good looks, but where he always
contrived to leave the trace of his visits in disorder and mischief,
upsetting the tea-kettle and scalding the children, or, what he loved
dearly, setting two gossips by the ears. But these occupations were over
by the hour Lucretia left her apartment. From that time he never left
her out of view; and when encouraged to join her at his usual privileged
times, whether in the gardens at sunset or in her evening niche in
the drawing-room, he was sleek, silken, and caressing as Cupid, after
plaguing the Nymphs, at the feet of Psyche. These two strange persons
had indeed apparently that sort of sentimental familiarity which is
sometimes seen between a fair boy and a girl much older than himself;
but the attraction that drew them together was an indefinable instinct
of their similarity in many traits of their several characters,--the
whelp leopard sported fearlessly around the she-panther. Before
Olivier’s midnight conference with his son, Gabriel had drawn close and
closer to Lucretia, as an ally against his father; for that father he
cherished feelings which, beneath the most docile obedience, concealed
horror and hate, and something of the ferocity of revenge. And if young
Varney loved any one on earth except himself, it was Lucretia Clavering.
She had administered to his ruling passions, which were for effect
and display; she had devised the dress which set off to the utmost his
exterior, and gave it that picturesque and artistic appearance which he
had sighed for in his study of the portraits of Titian and Vandyke. She
supplied him (for in money she was generous) with enough to gratify and
forestall every boyish caprice; and this liberality now turned against
her, for it had increased into a settled vice his natural taste for
extravagance, and made all other considerations subordinate to that
of feeding his cupidity. She praised his drawings, which, though
self-taught, were indeed extraordinary, predicted his fame as an
artist, lifted him into consequence amongst the guests by her notice and
eulogies, and what, perhaps, won him more than all, he felt that it
was to her--to Dalibard’s desire to conceal before her his more cruel
propensities--that he owed his father’s change from the most refined
severity to the most paternal gentleness.

And thus he had repaid her, as she expected, by a devotion which she
trusted to employ against her tutor himself, should the baffled aspirant
become the scheming rival and the secret foe. But now,--thoroughly aware
of the gravity of his father’s objects, seeing before him the chance
of a settled establishment at Laughton, a positive and influential
connection with Lucretia; and on the other hand a return to the poverty
he recalled with disgust, and the terrors of his father’s solitary
malice and revenge,--he entered fully into Dalibard’s sombre plans,
and without scruple or remorse, would have abetted any harm to his
benefactress. Thus craft, doomed to have accomplices in craft,
resembles the spider, whose web, spread indeed for the fly, attracts the
fellow-spider that shall thrust it forth, and profit by the meshes it
has woven for a victim, to surrender to a master.

Already young Varney, set quietly and ceaselessly to spy every movement
of Lucretia’s, had reported to his father two visits to the most retired
part of the park; but he had not yet ventured near enough to discover
the exact spot, and his very watch on Lucretia had prevented
the detection of Mainwaring himself in his stealthy exchange of
correspondence. Dalibard bade him continue his watch, without hinting at
his ulterior intentions, for, indeed, in these he was not decided. Even
should he discover any communication between Lucretia and Mainwaring,
how reveal it to Sir Miles without forever precluding himself from the
chance of profiting by the betrayal? Could Lucretia ever forgive the
injury, and could she fail to detect the hand that inflicted it? His
only hope was in the removal of Mainwaring from his path by other
agencies than his own, and (by an appearance of generosity and
self-abandonment, in keeping her secret and submitting to his fate) he
trusted to regain the confidence she now withheld from him, and use it
to his advantage when the time came to defend himself from Vernon. For
he had learned from Sir Miles the passive understanding with respect
to that candidate for her hand; and he felt assured that had Mainwaring
never existed, could he cease to exist for her hopes, Lucretia, despite
her dissimulation, would succumb to one she feared but respected, rather
than one she evidently trifled with and despised.

“But the course to be taken must be adopted after the evidence is
collected,” thought the subtle schemer, and he tranquilly continued his
chess with the baronet.

Before, however, Gabriel could make any further discoveries, an event
occurred which excited very different emotions amongst those it more
immediately interested.

Sir Miles had, during the last twelve months, been visited by two
seizures, seemingly of an apoplectic character. Whether they were
apoplexy, or the less alarming attacks that arise from some more gentle
congestion, occasioned by free living and indolent habits, was matter
of doubt with his physician,--not a very skilful, though a very
formal, man. Country doctors were not then the same able, educated, and
scientific class that they are now rapidly becoming. Sir Miles himself
so stoutly and so eagerly repudiated the least hint of the more
unfavourable interpretation that the doctor, if not convinced by his
patient, was awed from expressing plainly a contrary opinion. There are
certain persons who will dismiss their physician if he tells them the
truth: Sir Miles was one of them.

In his character there was a weakness not uncommon to the proud. He
did not fear death, but he shrank from the thought that others should
calculate on his dying. He was fond of his power, though he exercised
it gently: he knew that the power of wealth and station is enfeebled in
proportion as its dependants can foresee the date of its transfer. He
dreaded, too, the comments which are always made on those visited by his
peculiar disease: “Poor Sir Miles! an apoplectic fit. His intellect
must be very much shaken; he revoked at whist last night,--memory sadly
impaired!” This may be a pitiable foible; but heroes and statesmen have
had it most: pardon it in the proud old man! He enjoined the physician
to state throughout the house and the neighbourhood that the attacks
were wholly innocent and unimportant. The physician did so, and was
generally believed; for Sir Miles seemed as lively and as vigorous
after them as before. Two persons alone were not deceived,--Dalibard
and Lucretia. The first, at an earlier part of his life, had studied
pathology with the profound research and ingenious application which he
brought to bear upon all he undertook. He whispered from the first to
Lucretia,--“Unless your uncle changes his habits, takes exercise, and
forbears wine and the table, his days are numbered.”

And when this intelligence was first conveyed to her, before she had
become acquainted with Mainwaring, Lucretia felt the shock of a grief
sudden and sincere. We have seen how these better sentiments changed
as human life became an obstacle in her way. In her character, what
phrenologists call “destructiveness,” in the comprehensive sense of the
word, was superlatively developed. She had not actual cruelty; she was
not bloodthirsty: those vices belong to a different cast of character.
She was rather deliberately and intellectually unsparing. A goal was
before her; she must march to it: all in the way were but hostile
impediments. At first, however, Sir Miles was not in the way, except to
fortune, and for that, as avarice was not her leading vice, she could
well wait; therefore, at this hint of the Provencal’s she ventured to
urge her uncle to abstinence and exercise. But Sir Miles was touchy on
the subject; he feared the interpretations which great change of habits
might suggest. The memory of the fearful warning died away, and he felt
as well as before; for, save an old rheumatic gout (which had long since
left him with no other apparent evil but a lameness in the joints that
rendered exercise unwelcome and painful), he possessed one of those
comfortable, and often treacherous, constitutions which evince no
displeasure at irregularities, and bear all liberties with philosophical
composure. Accordingly, he would have his own way; and he contrived
to coax or to force his doctor into an authority on his side: wine was
necessary to his constitution; much exercise was a dangerous fatigue.
The second attack, following four months after the first, was less
alarming, and Sir Miles fancied it concealed even from his niece; but
three nights after his recovery, the old baronet sat musing alone for
some time in his own room before he retired to rest. Then he rose,
opened his desk, and read his will attentively, locked it up with a
slight sigh, and took down his Bible. The next morning he despatched
the letters which summoned Ardworth and Vernon to his house; and as he
quitted his room, his look lingered with melancholy fondness upon the
portraits in the gallery. No one was by the old man to interpret these
slight signs, in which lay a world of meaning.

A few weeks after Vernon had left the house, and in the midst of the
restored tranquillity we have described, it so happened that Sir Miles’s
physician, after dining at the Hall, had been summoned to attend one of
the children at the neighbouring rectory; and there he spent the night.
A little before daybreak his slumbers were disturbed; he was recalled
in all haste to Laughton Hall. For the third time, he found Sir Miles
speechless. Dalibard was by his bedside. Lucretia had not been made
aware of the seizure; for Sir Miles had previously told his valet (who
of late slept in the same room) never to alarm Miss Clavering if he was
taken ill. The doctor was about to apply his usual remedies; but when he
drew forth his lancet, Dalibard placed his hand on the physician’s arm.

“Not this time,” he said slowly, and with emphasis; “it will be his
death.”

“Pooh, sir!” said the doctor, disdainfully.

“Do so, then; bleed him, and take the responsibility. I have studied
medicine,--I know these symptoms. In this case the apoplexy may
spare,--the lancet kills.”

The physician drew back dismayed and doubtful.

“What would you do, then?”

“Wait three minutes longer the effect of the cataplasms I have applied.
If they fail--”

“Ay, then?”

“A chill bath and vigorous friction.”

“Sir, I will never permit it.”

“Then murder your patient your own way.”

All this while Sir Miles lay senseless, his eyes wide open, his
teeth locked. The doctor drew near, looked at the lancet, and said
irresolutely,--

“Your practice is new to me; but if you have studied medicine, that’s
another matter. Will you guarantee the success of your plan?”

“Yes.”

“Mind, I wash my hands of it; I take Mr. Jones to witness;” and he
appealed to the valet.

“Call up the footman and lift your master,” said Dalibard; and the
doctor, glancing round, saw that a bath, filled some seven or eight
inches deep with water, stood already prepared in the room. Perplexed
and irresolute, he offered no obstacle to Dalibard’s movements. The
body, seemingly lifeless, was placed in the bath; and the servants,
under Dalibard’s directions, applied vigorous and incessant friction.
Several minutes elapsed before any favourable symptom took place. At
length Sir Miles heaved a deep sigh, and the eyes moved; a minute or two
more, and the teeth chattered; the blood, set in motion, appeared on the
surface of the skin; life ebbed back. The danger was passed, the
dark foe driven from the citadel. Sir Miles spoke audibly, though
incoherently, as he was taken back to his bed, warmly covered up, the
lights removed, noise forbidden, and Dalibard and the doctor remained in
silence by the bedside.

“Rich man,” thought Dalibard, “thine hour is not yet come; thy wealth
must not pass to the boy Mainwaring.” Sir Miles’s recovery, under the
care of Dalibard, who now had his own way, was as rapid and complete as
before. Lucretia when she heard, the next morning, of the attack, felt,
we dare not say a guilty joy, but a terrible and feverish agitation.
Sir Miles himself, informed by his valet of Dalibard’s wrestle with the
doctor, felt a profound gratitude and reverent wonder for the simple
means to which he probably owed his restoration; and he listened, with
a docility which Dalibard was not prepared to expect, to his learned
secretary’s urgent admonitions as to the life he must lead if he desired
to live at all. Convinced, at last, that wine and good cheer had not
blockaded out the enemy, and having to do, in Olivier Dalibard, with a
very different temper from the doctor’s, he assented with a tolerable
grace to the trial of a strict regimen and to daily exercise in the
open air. Dalibard now became constantly with him; the increase of his
influence was as natural as it was apparent. Lucretia trembled; she
divined a danger in his power, now separate from her own, and which
threatened to be independent of it. She became abstracted and uneasy;
jealousy of the Provencal possessed her. She began to meditate schemes
for his downfall. At this time, Sir Miles received the following letter
from Mr. Fielden:--

SOUTHAMPTON, Aug. 20, 1801.

DEAR SIR MILES,--You will remember that I informed you when I arrived
at Southampton with my dear young charge; and Susan has twice written
to her sister, implying the request which she lacked the courage, seeing
that she is timid, expressly to urge, that Miss Clavering might again be
permitted to visit her. Miss Clavering has answered as might be expected
from the propinquity of the relationship; but she has perhaps the same
fears of offending you that actuate her sister. But now, since the
worthy clergyman who had undertaken my parochial duties has found the
air insalubrious, and prays me not to enforce the engagement by which we
had exchanged our several charges for the space of a calendar year, I am
reluctantly compelled to return home,--my dear wife, thank Heaven, being
already restored to health, which is an unspeakable mercy; and I am
sure I cannot be sufficiently grateful to Providence, which has not only
provided me with a liberal independence of more than 200 pounds a year,
but the best of wives and the most dutiful of children,--possessions
that I venture to call “the riches of the heart.” Now, I pray you, my
dear Sir Miles, to gratify these two deserving young persons, and to
suffer Miss Lucretia incontinently to visit her sister. Counting on your
consent, thus boldly demanded, I have already prepared an apartment for
Miss Clavering; and Susan is busy in what, though I do not know much of
such feminine matters, the whole house declares to be a most beautiful
and fanciful toilet-cover, with roses and forget-me-nots cut out of
muslin, and two large silk tassels, which cost her three shillings and
fourpence. I cannot conclude without thanking you from my heart for your
noble kindness to young Ardworth. He is so full of ardour and spirit
that I remember, poor lad, when I left him, as I thought, hard at
work on that well-known problem of Euclid vulgarly called the Asses’
Bridge,--I found him describing a figure of 8 on the village pond, which
was only just frozen over! Poor lad! Heaven will take care of him, I
know, as it does of all who take no care of themselves. Ah, Sir Miles,
if you could but see Susan,--such a nurse, too, in illness! I have the
honour to be, Sir Miles,

Your most humble, poor servant, to command,

MATTHEW FIELDEN.

Sir Miles put this letter in his niece’s hand, and said kindly, “Why not
have gone to see your sister before? I should not have been angry. Go,
my child, as soon as you like. To-morrow is Sunday,--no travelling that
day; but the next, the carriage shall be at your order.”

Lucretia hesitated a moment. To leave Dalibard in sole possession of the
field, even for a few days, was a thought of alarm; but what evil could
he do in that time? And her pulse beat quickly: Mainwaring could come
to Southampton; she should see him again, after more than six weeks’
absence! She had so much to relate and to hear; she fancied his last
letter had been colder and sho

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/7691