CHAPTER IV.
THE SOLUTION OF MANY MYSTERIES.--A DARK VIEW OF THE LIFE AND NATURE OFMAN.
POWERFUL, though not clearly developed in my own mind, was the motivewhich made me so strongly desire to preserve the _incognito_ during myinterview with the Hermit. I have before said that I could not resist avague but intense belief that he was a person whom I had long believedin the grave; and I had more than once struggled against a dark butpassing suspicion that that person was in some measure--mediately,though not directly--connected with the mysteries of my former life.If both these conjectures were true, I thought it possible that thecommunication the Hermit wished to make might be made yet more willinglyto me as a stranger than if he knew who was in reality his confidant.And, at all events, if I could curb the impetuous gushings of my ownheart, which yearned for immediate disclosure, I might by hint andprelude ascertain the advantages and disadvantages of revealing myself.
I arrived at the well: the Hermit was already at the place ofrendezvous, seated in the same posture in which I had before seen him. Imade my reverence and accosted him.
"I have not failed you, Father."
"That is rarely a true boast with men," said the Hermit, smilingmournfully, but without sarcasm; "and were the promise of greater avail,it might not have been so rigidly kept."
"The promise, Father, seemed to me of greater weight than you wouldintimate," answered I.
"How mean you?" said the Hermit, hastily.
"Why, that we may perhaps serve each other by our meeting: you, Father,may comfort me by your counsels; I you by my readiness to obey yourrequest."
The Hermit looked at me for some moments, and, as well as I could,I turned away my face from his gaze. I might have spared myself theeffort. He seemed to recognize nothing familiar in my countenance;perhaps his mental malady assisted my own alteration.
"I have inquired respecting you," he said, after a pause, "and I hearthat you are a learned and wise man, who has seen much of the world, andplayed the part both of soldier and of scholar in its various theatres:is my information true?"
"Not true with the respect to the learning, Father, but true with regardto the experience. I have been a pilgrim in many countries of Europe."
"Indeed!" said the Hermit, eagerly. "Come with me to my home, and tellme of the wonders you have seen."
I assisted the Hermit to rise, and he walked slowly towards the cavern,leaning upon my arm. Ob, how that light touch thrilled through myframe! How I longed to cry, "Are you not the one whom I have loved,and mourned, and believed buried in the tomb?" But I checked myself. Wemoved on in silence. The Hermit's hand was on the door of the cavern,when he said, in a calm tone, but with evident effort, and turning hisface from me while he spoke:--
"And did your wanderings ever carry you into the farther regions of thenorth? Did the fame of the great Czar ever lead you to the city he hasfounded?"
"I am right! I am right!" thought I, as I answered, "In truth, holyFather, I spent not a long time at Petersburg; but I am not a strangereither to its wonders or its inhabitants."
"Possibly, then, you may have met with the English favourite of theCzar of whom I hear in my retreat that men have lately spoken somewhatlargely?" The Hermit paused again. We were now in a long, low passage,almost in darkness. I scarcely saw him, yet I heard a convulsed movementin his throat before he uttered the remainder of the sentence. "He iscalled the Count Devereux."
"Father," said I, calmly, "I have both seen and known the man."
"Ha!" said the Hermit, and he leaned for a moment against the wall;"known him--and--how--how--I mean, where is he at this present time?"
"That, Father, is a difficult question respecting one who has led soactive a life. He was ambassador at the court of------just before I leftit."
We had now passed the passage and gained a room of tolerable size; aniron lamp burned within, and afforded a sufficient but somewhat dimlight. The Hermit, as I concluded my reply, sank down on a long stonebench, beside a table of the same substance, and leaning his face onhis hand, so that the long, large sleeve he wore perfectly concealed hisfeatures, said, "Pardon me; my breath is short, and my frame weak; I amquite exhausted, but will speak to you more anon."
I uttered a short answer, and drew a small wooden stool within a fewfeet of the Hermit's seat. After a brief silence he rose, placed wine,bread, and preserved fruits before me and bade me eat. I seemed tocomply with his request, and the apparent diversion of my attention fromhimself somewhat relieved the embarrassment under which he evidentlylaboured.
"May I hope," he said, "that were my commission to this--to the CountDevereux--you would execute it faithfully and with speed? Yet stay: youhave a high mien, as of one above fortune, but your garb is rude andpoor; and if aught of gold could compensate your trouble, the Hermit hasother treasuries besides this cell."
"I will do your bidding, Father, without robbing the poor. You wish,then, that I should seek Morton Devereux; you wish that I should summonhim hither; you wish to see and to confer with him?"
"God of mercy forbid!" cried the Hermit, and with such a vehemence thatI was startled from the design of revealing myself, which I was on thepoint of executing. "I would rather that these walls would crush me intodust, or that this solid stone would crumble beneath my feet,--ay, eveninto a bottomless pit, than meet the glance of Morton Devereux!"
"Is it even so?" said I, stooping over the wine-cup; "ye have been foesthen, I suspect. Well, it matters not: tell me your errand, and it shallbe done."
"Done!" cried the Hermit, and a new and certainly a most naturalsuspicion darted within him, "done! and--fool that I am!--who or whatare you that I should believe you take so keen an interest in the wishesof a man utterly unknown to you? I tell you that my wish is that youshould cross seas and traverse lands until you find the man I have namedto you. Will a stranger do this, and without hire? No--no--I was a fool,and will trust the monks, and give gold, and then my errand will besped."
"Father, or rather brother," said I, with a slow and firm voice, "foryou are of mine own age, and you have the passion and the infirmitywhich make brethren of all mankind, I am one to whom all places arealike: it matters not whether I visit a northern or a southern clime; Ihave wealth, which is sufficient to smooth toil; I have leisure, whichmakes occupation an enjoyment. More than this, I am one who in hisgayest and wildest moments has ever loved mankind, and would haverenounced at any time his own pleasure for the advantage of another. Butat this time, above all others, I am most disposed to forget myself, andthere is a passion in your words which leads me to hope that it may be agreat benefit which I can confer upon you."
"You speak well," said the Hermit, musingly, "and I may trust you; Iwill consider yet a little longer, and to-morrow at this hour you shallhave my final answer. If you execute the charge I entrust to you, maythe blessing of a dying and most wretched man cleave to you forever! Buthush; the clock strikes: it is my hour of prayer."
And, pointing to a huge black clock that hung opposite the door, andindicated the hour of nine (according to our English mode of numberingthe hours), the Hermit fell on his knees, and, clasping his handstightly, bent his face over them in the attitude of humiliation anddevotion. I followed his example. After a few minutes he rose: "Once inevery three hours," said he, with a ghastly expression, "for the lasttwelve years have I bowed my soul in anguish before God, and risen tofeel that it was in vain: I am cursed without and within!"
"My Father, my Father, is this your faith in the mercies of the Redeemerwho died for man?"
"Talk not to me of faith!" cried the Hermit, wildly. "Ye laymen andworldlings know nothing of its mysteries and its powers. But begone! thedread hour is upon me, when my tongue is loosed and my brain darkened,and I know not my words and shudder at my own thoughts. Begone! no humanbeing shall witness those moments: they are only for Heaven and my ownsoul."
So saying, this unhappy and strange being seized me by the arm anddragged me towards the passage we had entered. I was in
doubt whetherto yield to or contend with him; but there was a glare in his eye anda flush upon his brow, which, while it betrayed the dreadful diseaseof his mind, made me fear that resistance to his wishes might operatedangerously upon a frame so feeble and reduced. I therefore mechanicallyobeyed him. He opened again the entrance to his rugged home, and themoonlight streamed wanly over his dark robes and spectral figure.
"Go," said he, more mildly than before, "go, and forgive the vehemenceof one whose mind and heart alike are broken within him. Go, but returnto-morrow at sunset. Your air disposes me to trust you."
So saying, he closed the door upon me, and I stood without the cavernalone.
But did I return home? Did I hasten to press my couch in sleep and sweetforgetfulness, while he was in that gloomy sepulture of the living, aprey to anguish, and torn by the fangs of madness and a fierce disease?No: on the damp grass, beneath the silent skies, I passed a night whichcould scarcely have been less wretched than his own. My conjecture wasnow and in full confirmed. Heavens! how I loved that man! how, from myyoungest years, had my soul's fondest affections interlaced themselveswith him! with what anguish had I wept his imagined death! and now toknow that he lay within those walls, smitten from brain to heart with sofearful and mysterious a curse,--to know, too, that he dreaded the sightof me,--of me who would have laid down my life for his! the grave, whichI imagined his home, had been a mercy to a doom like this.
"He fears," I murmured, and I wept as I said it, "to look on one whowould watch over, and soothe, and bear with him, with more than awoman's love! By what awful fate has this calamity fallen on one soholy and so pure? or by what preordered destiny did I come to thesesolitudes, to find at the same time a new charm for the earth and aspell to change it again into a desert and a place of woe?"
All night I kept vigil by the cave, and listened if I could catch moanor sound; but everything was silent: the thick walls of the rock kepteven the voice of despair from my ear. The day dawned, and I retiredamong the trees, lest the Hermit might come out unawares and see me. Atsunrise I saw him appear for a few moments and again retire, and I thenhastened home, exhausted and wearied by the internal conflicts of thenight, to gather coolness and composure for the ensuing interview, whichI contemplated at once with eagerness and dread.
At the appointed hour I repaired to the cavern: the door was partiallyclosed; I opened it, hearing no answer to my knock, and walked gentlyalong the passage; but I now heard shrieks and groans and wild laughteras I neared the rude chamber. I paused for a moment, and then in terrorand dismay entered the apartment. It was empty, but I saw near the clocka small door, from within which the sounds that alarmed me proceeded. Ihad no scruple in opening it, and found myself in the Hermit's sleepingchamber,--a small dark room, where, upon a straw pallet, lay thewretched occupant in a state of frantic delirium. I stood mute andhorror-struck, while his exclamations of frenzy burst upon my ear.
"There--there!" he cried, "I have struck thee to the heart, and now Iwill kneel, and kiss those white lips, and bathe my hands in that blood!Ha!--do I hate thee?--hate--ay--hate,--abhor, detest! Haveyou the beads there?--let me tell them. Yes, I will go to theconfessional--confess?--No, no--all the priests in the world couldnot lift up a soul so heavy with guilt. Help--help--help! I amfalling--falling--there is the pit, and the fire, and the devils! Do youhear them laugh?--I can laugh too!--ha! ha! ha! Hush, I have written itall out, in a fair hand; he shall read it; and then, O God! what curseshe will heap upon my head! Blessed Saint Francis, hear me! Lazarus,Lazarus, speak for me!"
Thus did the Hermit rave, while my flesh crept to hear him. I stood byhis bedside, and called on him, but he neither heard nor saw me. Uponthe ground, by the bed's head, as if it had dropped from underthe pillow, was a packet seated and directed to myself. I knew thehandwriting at a glance, even though the letters were blotted andirregular, and possibly traced in the first moment that his presentcurse fell upon the writer. I placed the packet in my bosom; theHermit saw not the motion; he lay back on the bed, seemingly in utterexhaustion. I turned away, and hastened to the monastery for assistance.As I hurried through the passage, the Hermit's shrieks again broke uponme, with a fiercer vehemence than before. I flew from them, as ifthey were sounds from the abyss of Hades. I flew till, breathless,and half-senseless myself, I fell down exhausted by the gate of themonastery.
The two most skilled in physic of the brethren were immediatelysummoned, and they lost not a moment in accompanying me to the cavern.All that evening, until midnight, the frenzy of the maniac seemed ratherto increase than abate. But at that hour, exactly indeed as the clockstruck twelve, he fell all at once into a deep sleep.
Then for the first time, but not till the weary brethren had at thisfavourable symptom permitted themselves to return for a brief intervalto the monastery, to seek refreshment for themselves and to bring downnew medicines for the patient,--then, for the first time, I rose fromthe Hermit's couch by which I had hitherto kept watch, and repairing tothe outer chamber, took forth the packet superscribed with my name.
There, alone in that gray vault, and by the sepulchral light of thesingle lamp, I read what follows:--
THE HERMIT'S MANUSCRIPT.
Morton Devereux, if ever this reach you, read it, shudder, and, whateveryour afflictions, bless God that you are not as I am. Do you remembermy prevailing characteristic as a boy? No, you do not. You will say"devotion!" It was not! "Gentleness." It was not: it was JEALOUSY! Nowdoes the truth flash on you? Yes, that was the disease that was in myblood, and in my heart, and through whose ghastly medium every livingobject was beheld. Did I love you? Yes, I loved you,--ay, almost witha love equal to your own. I loved my mother; I loved Gerald; I lovedMontreuil. It was a part of my nature to love, and I did not resist theimpulse. You I loved better than all; but I was jealous of each. If mymother caressed you or Gerald, if you opened your heart to either, itstung me to the quick. I it was who said to my mother, "Caress him not,or I shall think you love him better than me." I it was who widened,from my veriest childhood, the breach between Gerald and yourself. Iit was who gave to the childish reproach a venom, and to the childishquarrel a barb. Was this love? Yes, it was love; but I could not endurethat ye should love one another as ye loved me. It delighted me whenone confided to my ear a complaint against the other, and said, "Aubrey,this blow could not have come from thee!"
Montreuil early perceived my bias of temper: he might have corrected itand with ease. I was not evil in disposition; I was insensible of my ownvice. Had its malignity been revealed to me, I should have recoiled inhorror. Montreuil had a vast power over me; he could mould me at hiswill. Montreuil, I repeat, might have saved me, and thyself, and a thirdbeing, better and purer than either of us was, even in our cradles.Montreuil did not: he had an object to serve, and he sacrificed ourwhole house to it. He found me one day weeping over a dog that I hadkilled. "Why did you destroy it?" he said; and I answered, "Because itloved Morton better than me!" And the priest said, "Thou didst right,Aubrey!" Yes, from that time he took advantage of my infirmity, andcould rouse or calm all my passions in proportion as he irritated orsoothed it.
You know this man's object during the latter period of his residencewith us: it was the restoration of the House of Stuart. He wasalternately the spy and the agitator in that cause. Among morecomprehensive plans for effecting this object, was that of securing theheirs to the great wealth and popular name of Sir William Devereux. Thiswas only a minor mesh in the intricate web of his schemes; but it is thecharacter of the man to take exactly the same pains, and pursue the samelaborious intrigues, for a small object as for a great one. His firstimpression, on entering our house, was in favour of Gerald; and Ibelieve he really likes him to this day better than either of us.Partly your sarcasms, partly Gerald's disputes with you, partlymy representations,--for I was jealous even of the love ofMontreuil,--prepossessed him against you. He thought, too, that Geraldhad more talent to serve his purposes than yourself and more facility inbeing moulded to them; and he
believed our uncle's partiality to you farfrom being unalienable. I have said that, at the latter period of hisresidence with us, he was an agent of the exiled cause. At the time I_now_ speak of, he had not entered into the great political scheme whichengrossed him afterwards. He was merely a restless and aspiring priest,whose whole hope, object, ambition, was the advancement of his order.He knew that whoever inherited, or whoever shared, my uncle's wealth,could, under legitimate regulation, promote _any_ end which the headsof that order might select; and he wished therefore to gain the masteryover us all. Intrigue was essentially woven with his genius, and byintrigue only did he ever seek to arrive at _any_ end he had in view.*He soon obtained a mysterious and pervading power over Gerald andmyself. Your temper at once irritated him, and made him despair ofobtaining an ascendant over one who, though he testified in childhoodnone of the talents for which he has since been noted, testified,nevertheless, a shrewd, penetrating, and sarcastic power ofobservation and detection. You, therefore, he resolved to leave to theirregularities of your own nature, confident that they would yield himthe opportunity of detaching your uncle from you and ultimately securingto Gerald his estates.
* It will be observed that Aubrey frequently repeats former assertions;this is one of the most customary traits of insanity.--ED.
The trial at school first altered his intentions. He imagined thathe then saw in you powers which might be rendered availing to him: heconquered his pride--a great feature in his character--and he resolvedto seek your affection. Your subsequent regularity of habits and successin study confirmed him in his resolution; and when he learned from myuncle's own lips that the Devereux estates would devolve on you, hethought that it would be easier to secure your affection to him thanto divert that affection which my uncle had conceived for you. At thistime, I repeat, he had no particular object in view; none, at least,beyond that of obtaining for the interest of his order the direction ofgreat wealth and some political influence. Some time after--I know notexactly when, but before we returned to take our permanent abode atDevereux Court--a share in the grand political intrigue which was thenin so many branches carried on throughout England, and even Europe, wasconfided to Montreuil.
In this I believe he was the servant of his order, rather thanimmediately of the exiled House; and I have since heard that even atthat day he had acquired a great reputation among the professors ofthe former. You, Morton, he decoyed not into this scheme before he leftEngland: he had not acquired a sufficient influence over you to trustyou with the disclosure. To Gerald and myself he was more confidential.Gerald eagerly embraced his projects through a spirit of enterprise;I through a spirit of awe and of religion. RELIGION! Yes,--then,--longafter,--now,--when my heart was and is the home of all withering andevil passions, Religion reigned,--reigns, over me a despot and a tyrant.Its terrors haunt me at this hour; they people the earth and the airwith shapes of ghastly menace! They--Heaven pardon me! what would mymadness utter? Madness?--madness? Ay, _that_ is the real scourge, thereal fire, the real torture, the real hell, of this fair earth!
Montreuil, then, by different pleas, won over Gerald and myself. He leftus, but engaged us in constant correspondence. "Aubrey," he said,before he departed, and when he saw that I was wounded by his apparentcordiality towards you and Gerald--"Aubrey," he said, soothing me onthis point, "think not that I trust Gerald or the arrogant Morton as Itrust you. _You_ have my real heart and my real trust. It is necessaryto the execution of this project, so important to the interests ofreligion and so agreeable to the will of Heaven, that we should secureall co-operators: but they, your brothers, Aubrey, are the tools of thatmighty design; you are its friend." Thus it was that, at all times whenhe irritated too sorely the vice of my nature, he flattered it intoseconding his views; and thus, instead of conquering my evil passions,he conquered by them. Curses--No, no, no!--I _will_ be calm.
We returned to Devereux Court, and we grew from boyhood into youth.I loved you then, Morton. Ah! what would I not give now for one purefeeling, such as I felt in your love? Do you remember the day on whichyou had extorted from my uncle his consent to your leaving us for thepleasures and pomps of London? Do you remember the evening of that day,when I came to seek you, and we sat down on a little mound, and talkedover your projects, and you spoke then to me of my devotion and my purerand colder feelings? Morton, at that very moment my veins burned withpassion!--at that very moment my heart was feeding the vulture fated tolive and prey within it forever! Thrice did I resolve to confide in you,as we then sat together, and thrice did my evil genius forbid it. Youseemed, even in your affection to me, so wholly engrossed with your ownhopes; you seemed so little to regret leaving me; you stung, so oftenand so deeply, in our short conference, that feeling which mademe desire to monopolize all things in those I loved, that I saidinly,--"Why should I bare my heart to one who can so little understandit?" And so we turned home, and you dreamed not of that which was thenwithin me, and which was destined to be your curse and mine.
Not many weeks previous to that night, I had seen one whom to see was tolove! Love!--I tell you, Morton, that _that_ word is expressive of softand fond emotion, and there should be another expressive of all that isfierce and dark and unrelenting in the human heart!--all that seems mostlike the deadliest and the blackest hate, and yet is not hate! Isaw this being, and from that moment my real nature, which had slepthitherto, awoke! I remember well it was one evening in the beginning ofsummer that I first saw her. She sat alore in the little garden besidethe cottage door, and I paused, and, unseen, looked over the slightfence that separated us, and fed my eyes with a loveliness that Ithought till then only twilight or the stars could wear! From thatevening I came, night after night, to watch her from the same spot; andevery time I beheld her the poison entered deeper and deeper intomy system. At length I had an opportunity of being known to her, ofspeaking to her, of hearing her speak, of touching the ground she hadhallowed, of entering the home where she dwelt!
I must explain: I said that both Gerald and myself correspondedprivately with Montreuil; we were both bound over to secrecy with regardto you; and this, my temper and Gerald's coolness with you rendered aneasy obligation to both;--I say my temper, for I loved to think I hada secret not known to another; and I carried this reserve even tothe degree of concealing from Gerald himself the greater part of thecorrespondence between me and the Abbe. In his correspondence with eachof us, Montreuil acted with his usual skill; to Gerald, as the elder inyears, the more prone to enterprise, and the manlier in aspect and incharacter, was allotted whatever object was of real trust or importance.Gerald it was who, under pretence of pursuing his accustomed sports,conferred with the various agents of intrigue who from time to timevisited our coast; and to me the Abbe gave words of endearment andaffected the language of more entire trust. "Whatever," he would say,"in our present half mellowed projects, is exposed to danger, butdoes not promise reward, I entrust to Gerald; hereafter, far higheremployment, under far safer and surer auspices, will be yours. We arethe heads: be ours the nobler occupation to plan; and let us leaveto inferior natures the vain and perilous triumph to execute what wedesign."
All this I readily assented to; for, despite my acquiescence inMontreuil's wishes, I loved not enterprise, or rather I hated whateverroused me from the dreamy and abstracted indolence which was most dearto my temperament. Sometimes, however, with a great show of confidence,Montreuil would request me to execute some quiet and unimportantcommission; and of this nature was one I received while I was thus,unknown even to the object, steeping my soul in the first intoxicationof love. The plots then carried on by certain ecclesiastics I neednot say extended, in one linked chain, over the greater part of theContinent. Spain, in especial, was the theatre of these intrigues;and among the tools employed in executing them were some who, thoughbanished from that country, still, by the rank they had held in it,carried a certain importance in their very names. Foremost of thesewas the father of the woman I loved; and foremost, in whatever promisedoccupation to a res
tless mind, he was always certain to be.
Montreuil now commissioned me to seek out a certain Barnard (anunderling in those secret practices or services, for which he afterwardssuffered, and who was then in that part of the country), and tocommunicate to him some messages of which he was to be the bearer tothis Spaniard. A thought flashed upon me--Montreuil's letter mentioned,accidentally, that the Spaniard had never hitherto seen Barnard: could Inot personate the latter, deliver the messages myself, and thus win thatintroduction to the daughter which I so burningly desired, and which,from the close reserve of the father's habits, I might not otherwiseeffect? The plan was open to two objections: one, that I was knownpersonally in the town in the environs of which the Spaniard lived, andhe might therefore very soon discover who I really was; the other thatI was not in possession of all the information which Barnard mightpossess, and which the Spaniard might wish to learn; but theseobjections had not much weight with me. To the first, I said inly, "Iwill oppose the most constant caution; I will go always on foot andalone; I will never be seen in the town itself; and even should theSpaniard, who seems rarely to stir abroad, and who, possibly, does notspeak our language,--even should he learn by accident that Barnard isonly another name for Aubrey Devereux, it will not be before I havegained my object; nor, perhaps, before the time when I myself may wishto acknowledge my identity." To the second objection I saw a yet moreready answer. "I will acquaint Montreuil at once," I said, "with myintention; I will claim his connivance as a proof of his confidence, andas an essay of my own genius of intrigue." I did so; the priest, perhapsdelighted to involve me so deeply, and to find me so ardent in hisproject, consented. Fortunately, as I before said, Barnard was anunderling,--young, unknown, and obscure. My youth, therefore, was notso great a foe to my assumed disguise as it might otherwise have been.Montreuil supplied all requisite information. I tried (for the firsttime, with a beating heart and a tremulous voice) the imposition! itsucceeded; I continued it. Yes, Morton, yes!--pour forth upon me yourbitterest execration, in me, in your brother, in the brother so dearto you,--in the brother whom you imagined so passionless, so pure; sosinless,--behold that Barnard, the lover, the idolatrous lover--the foe,the deadly foe,--of Isora d'Alvarez!
Here the manuscript was defaced for some pages by incoherent andmeaningless ravings. It seemed as if one of his dark fits of frenzy hadat that time come over the writer. At length, in a more firm and clearcharacter than that immediately preceding it, the manuscript continuedas follows:--
I loved her, but even then it was with a fierce and ominous love(ominous of what it became). Often in the still evenings, when we stoodtogether watching the sun set; when my tongue trembled, but did notdare to speak; when all soft and sweet thoughts filled the heart andglistened in the eye of that most sensitive and fairy being; when my ownbrow perhaps seemed to reflect the same emotions,--feelings which I evenshuddered to conceive raged within me. Had we stood together in thosemoments upon the brink of a precipice, I could have wound my arms aroundher and leaped with her into the abyss. Everything but one nursed mypassion; nature, solitude, early dreams, all kindled and fed that fire:Religion only combated it; I knew it was a crime to love any of earth'screatures as I loved. I used the scourge and the fast;* I wept hot,burning tears; I prayed, and the intensity of my prayer appalled evenmyself, as it rose from my maddened heart, in the depth and stillnessof the lone night: but the flame burned higher and more scorchingly fromthe opposition; nay, it was the very knowledge that my love was criminalthat made it assume so fearful and dark a shape. "Thou art the cause ofmy downfall from Heaven!" I muttered, when I looked upon Isora's calmface: "thou feelest it not, and I could destroy thee and myself,--myselfthe criminal, thee the cause of the crime!"
* I need not point out to the novel-reader how completely the characterof Aubrey has been stolen in a certain celebrated French romance. Butthe writer I allude to is not so unmerciful as M. de Balzac, who haspillaged scenes in "The Disowned" with a most gratifying politeness.
It must have been that my eyes betrayed my feelings that Isora loved menot, that she shrank from me even at the first: why else should I nothave called forth the same sentiments which she gave to you? Was not myform cast in a mould as fair as yours? did not my voice whisper in assweet a tone? did I not love her with as wild a love? Why should she nothave loved me? I was the first whom she behold: she would--ay, perhapsshe would have loved me, if you had not come and marred all. Curseyourself, then, that you were my rival! curse yourself that you mademy heart as a furnace, and smote my brain with frenzy; curse--O sweetVirgin, forgive me!--I know not,--I know not what my tongue utters or myhand traces!
You came, then, Morton, you came; you knew her; you loved her; she lovedyou. I learned that you had gained admittance to the cottage, andthe moment I learned it, I looked on Isora, and felt my fate, as byintuition: I saw at once that she was prepared to love you; I saw thevery moment when that love kindled from conception into form; I saw--andat that moment my eyes reeled and my ears rang as with the sound of arushing sea, and I thought I felt a cord snap within my brain, which hasnever been united again.
Once only, after your introduction to the cottage, did I think ofconfiding to you my love and rivalship; you remember one night when wemet by the castle cave, and when your kindness touched and softenedme despite of myself. The day after that night I sought you, with theintention of communicating to you all; and while I was yet strugglingwith my embarrassment and the suffocating tide of my emotions, youpremeditated me by giving me _your_ confidence. Engrossed by your ownfeelings, you were not observant of mine; and as you dwelt and dilatedupon your love for Isora, all emotions, save those of agony and of fury,vanished from my breast. I did not answer you then at any length, forI was too agitated to trust to prolix speech; but by the next day Ihad recovered myself, and I resolved, as far as I was able, to play thehypocrite, "he cannot love her as I do!" I said; "perhaps I may, withoutdisclosure of my rivalship and without sin in the attempt, detach himfrom her by reason." Fraught with this idea, I collected myself, soughtyou, remonstrated with you, represented the worldly folly of yourlove, and uttered all that prudence preaches--in vain, when it preachesagainst passion!
Let me be brief. I saw that I made no impression on you; I stifled mywrath; I continued to visit and watch Isora. I timed my opportunitieswell: my constant knowledge of your motions allowed me to do that;besides, I represented to the Spaniard the necessity, through politicalmotives, of concealing myself from you; hence, we never encountered eachother. One evening, Alvarez had gone out to meet one of his countrymenand confederates. I found Isora alone, in the most sequestered partof the garden; her loveliness, and her exceeding gentleness of manner,melted me. For the first time audibly my heart spoke out, and I toldher of my idolatry. Idolatry! ay, _that_ is the only word, since itsignifies both worship and guilt! She heard me timidly, gently, coldly.She spoke; and I found confirmed from her own lips what my reason hadbefore told me,--that there was no hope for me. The iron that enteredalso roused my heart. "Enough!" I cried fiercely, "you love this MortonDevereux, and for him I am scorned." Isora blushed and trembled, andall my senses fled from me. I scarcely know in what words my rage and mydespair clothed themselves: but I know that I divulged myself to her; Iknow that I told her I was the brother, the rival, the enemy of the manshe loved,--I know that I uttered the fiercest and the wildest menacesand execrations,--I know that my vehemence so overpowered and terrifiedher that her mind was scarcely less clouded--less lost, rather--than myown. At that moment the sound of your horse's hoofs was heard. Isora'seyes brightened and her mien grew firm. "He comes," she said, "and hewill protect me!" "Hark!" I said, sinking my voice, and, as my drawnsword flashed in one hand, the other grasped her arm with a savageforce,--"hark, woman!" I said,--and an oath of the blackest furyaccompanied my threats,--"swear that you will never divulge to MortonDevereux who is his real rival, that you will never declare to him norto any one else that the false Barnard and the true Aubrey Devereuxare the same,--swear t
his, or I swear [and I repeated, with a solemnvehemence, that dread oath] that I will stay here; that I will confrontmy rival; that, the moment he beholds me, I will plunge this sword inhis bosom; and that, before I perish myself, I will hasten to thetown, and will utter there a secret which will send your father to thegallows: now, your choice?"
Morton, you have often praised, my uncle has often jested at, thewomanish softness of my face. There have been moments when I have seenthat face in the glass, and known it not, but started in wild affright,and fancied that I beheld a demon; perhaps in that moment this changewas over it. Slowly Isora gazed upon me; slowly blanched into the huesof death grew her cheek and lip; slowly that lip uttered the oath Ienjoined. I released my gripe, and she fell to the earth suddenly, andstunned as if struck by lightning. I stayed not to look on what I haddone; I heard your step advance; I fled by a path that led from thegarden to the beach; and I reached my home without retaining a singlerecollection of the space I had traversed to attain it.
Despite the night I passed--a night which I will leave you to imagine--Irose the next morning with a burning interest to learn from you whathad passed after my flight, and with a power, peculiar to the stormiestpassions, of an outward composure while I listened to the recital. I sawthat I was safe; and I heard, with a joy so rapturous that I questionwhether even Isora's assent to my love would have given me an equaltransport, that she had rejected you. I uttered some advice to youcommonplace enough: it displeased you, and we separated.
That evening, to my surprise, I was privately visited by Montreuil.He had some designs in hand which brought him from France into theneighbourhood, but which made him desirous of concealment. He soondrew from me my secret; it is marvellous, indeed, what power he had ofpenetrating, ruling, moulding, my feelings and my thoughts. He wished,at that time, a communication to be made and a letter to be given toAlvarez. I could not execute this commission personally; for you hadinformed me of your intention of watching if you could not discover ormeet with Barnard, and I knew you were absent from home on that verypurpose. Nor was Montreuil himself desirous of incurring the risk ofbeing seen by you,--you over whom, sooner or later, he then trusted toobtain a power equal to that which he held over your brothers. Geraldthen was chosen to execute the commission. He did so; he met Alvarez forthe first and only time on the beach, by the town of------. You saw him,and imagined you beheld the real Barnard.
But I anticipate; for you did not inform me of that occurrence, northe inference you drew from it, till afterwards. You returned, however,after witnessing that meeting, and for two days your passions(passions which, intense and fierce as mine, show that, under similarcircumstances, you might have been equally guilty) terminated in fever.You were confined to your bed for three or four days; meanwhile I tookadvantage of the event. Montreuil suggested a plan which I readilyembraced. I sought the Spaniard, and told him in confidence that youwere a suitor--but a suitor upon the most dishonourable terms--to hisdaughter. I told him, moreover, that you had detected his schemes, and,in order to deprive Isora of protection and abate any obstacles arisingfrom her pride, meant to betray him to the Government. I told him thathis best and most prudent, nay, his only chance of safety for Isora andhimself was to leave his present home and take refuge in the vast mazesof the metropolis. I told him not to betray to you his knowledge ofyour criminal intentions, lest it might needlessly exasperate you. Ifurnished him wherewithal to repay you the sum which you had lent him,and by which you had commenced his acquaintance; and I dictated to himthe very terms of the note in which the sum was to be inclosed. Afterthis I felt happy. You were separated from Isora: she might forget you;you might forget her. I was possessed of the secret of her father'spresent retreat: I might seek it at my pleasure, and ultimately--so hopewhispered--prosper in my love.
Some time afterwards you mentioned your suspicions of Gerald; I did notcorroborate, but I did not seek to destroy them. "They already hateeach other," I said; "can the hate be greater? meanwhile, let it divertsuspicion from me!" Gerald knew of the agency of the real Barnard,though he did not know that I had assumed the name of that person. Whenyou taxed him with his knowledge of the man, he was naturally confused.You interpreted that confusion into the fact of being your rival, whilein truth it arose from his belief that you had possessed yourself ofhis political schemes. Montreuil, who had lurked chiefly in the isletopposite "the Castle Cave," had returned to France on the same daythat Alvarez repaired to London. Previous to this, we had held someconferences together upon my love. At first he had opposed and reasonedwith it; but, startled and astonished by the intensity with which itpossessed me, he gave way to my vehemence at last.
I have said that I had adopted his advice in one instance. The fact ofhaving received his advice,--the advice of one so pious, so free fromhuman passion, so devoted to one object, which appeared to him the causeof Religion; advice, too, in a love so fiery and overwhelming, that factmade me think myself less criminal than I had done before. He advised meyet further. "Do not seek Isora," he said, "till some time has elapsed;till her new-born love for your brother has died away; till theimpression of fear you have caused in her is somewhat effaced; till timeand absence, too, have done their work in the mind of Morton, and youwill no longer have for your rival one who is not only a brother, but aman of a fierce, resolute, and unrelenting temper."
I yielded to this advice: partly because it promised so fair; partlybecause I was not systematically vicious, and I wished, if possible,to do away with our rivalship; and principally, because I knew, in themeanwhile, that if I was deprived of her presence, so also were you; andjealousy with me was a far more intolerable and engrossing passion thanthe very love from which it sprang. So time passed on: you affected tohave conquered your attachment; you affected to take pleasure in levityand the idlest pursuits of worldly men. I saw deeper into your heart;for the moment I entertained the passion of love in my own breast, myeyes became gifted with a second vision to penetrate the most mysteriousand hoarded secrets in the love of others.
Two circumstances of importance happened before you left DevereuxCourt for London; the one was the introduction to your service of JeanDesmarais, the second was your breach with Montreuil. I speak now ofthe first. A very early friend did the priest possess, born in the samevillage as himself and in the same rank of life; he had received a goodeducation and possessed natural genius. At a time when, from some fraudin a situation of trust which he had held in a French nobleman'sfamily, he was in destitute and desperate circumstances, it occurredto Montreuil to provide for him by placing him in our family. Someaccidental and frivolous remark of yours which I had repeated in mycorrespondence with Montreuil as illustrative of your manner, and youraffected pursuits at that time, presented an opportunity to a planbefore conceived. Desmarais came to England in a smuggler's vessel,presented himself to you as a servant, and was accepted. In this planMontreuil had two views: first, that of securing Desmarais a place inEngland, tolerably profitable to himself and convenient for any plot orscheme which Montreuil might require of him in this country; secondly,that of setting a perpetual and most adroit spy upon all your motions.
As to the second occurrence to which I have referred; namely, yourbreach with Montreuil--
Here Aubrey, with the same terrible distinctness which had characterizedhis previous details and which shed a double horror over the contrast ofthe darker and more frantic passages in the manuscript, related what thereader will remember Oswald had narrated before, respecting the letterhe had brought from Madame de Balzac. It seems that Montreuil's abruptappearance in the hall had been caused by Desmarais, who had recognizedOswald, on his dismounting at the gate, and had previously known thathe was in the employment of the Jansenistical _intriguante_ Madame deBalzac.
Aubrey proceeded then to say that Montreuil, invested with far moredirect authority and power than he had been hitherto in the projects ofthat wise order whose doctrines he had so darkly perverted, repaired toLondon; and that, soon after my departure for the
same place, Gerald andAubrey left Devereux Court in company with each other; but Gerald,whom very trifling things diverted from any project, however important,returned to Devereux Court to accomplish the prosecution of some rustic_amour_, without even reaching London. Aubrey, on the contrary, hadproceeded to the metropolis, sought the suburb in which Alvarez lived,procured, in order to avoid any probable chance of meeting me, a lodgingin the same obscure quarter, and had renewed his suit to Isora. Thereader is already in possession of the ill success which attended it.Aubrey had at last confessed his real name to the father. The Spaniardwas dazzled by the prospect of so honourable an alliance for hisdaughter. From both came Isora's persecution, but in both was itresisted. Passing over passages in the manuscript of the most stormyincoherence and the most gloomy passion, I come to what follows--
I learned then from Desmarais that you had taken away her and the dyingfather, that you had placed them in a safe and honourable home. Thatman, so implicitly the creature of Montreuil, or rather of his owninterest, with which Montreuil was identified, was easily induced tobetray you also to me,--me whom he imagined, moreover, utterly thetool of the priest, and of whose torturing interest in this peculiardisclosure he was not at that time aware. I visited Isora in her newabode, and again and again she trembled beneath my rage. Then, forthe second time, I attempted force. Ha! ha! Morton, I think I see younow!--I think I hear your muttered curse! Curse on! When you read this Ishall be beyond your vengeance, beyond human power. And yet I think ifI were mere clay; if I were the mere senseless heap of ashes thatthe grave covers; if I were not the thing that must live forever andforever, far away in unimagined worlds, where nought that has earth'slife can come,--I should tremble beneath the sod as your foot pressedand your execration rang over it. A second time I attempted force; asecond time I was repulsed by the same means,--by a woman's hand and awoman's dagger. But I knew that I had one hold over Isora from which,while she loved you, I could never be driven: I knew that by threateningyour _life_, I could command her will and terrify her into compliancewith my own. I made her reiterate her vow of concealment; and Idiscovered, by some words dropping from her fear, that she believedyou already suspected me, and had been withheld by her entreaties fromseeking me out. I questioned her more, and soon perceived that it was(as indeed I knew before) Gerald whom you suspected, not me; but I didnot tell this to Isora. I suffered her to cherish a mistake profitableto my disguise; but I saw at once that it might betray me, if you evermet and conferred at length with Gerald upon this point, and I exactedfrom Isora a pledge that she would effectually and forever bind younot to breathe a single suspicion to him. When I had left the room, Ireturned once more to warn her against uniting herself with you. Wretch,selfish, accursed wretch that you were, why did you suffer her totransgress that warning?
I fled from the house, as a fiend flies from a being whom he haspossessed. I returned at night to look up at the window, and linger bythe door, and keep watch beside the home which held Isora. Such, in herformer abode, had been my nightly wont. I had no evil thought nor foulintent in this customary vigil,--no, not one! Strangely enough, with thetempestuous and overwhelming emotions which constituted the greaterpart of my love was mingled--though subdued and latent--a stream of thesoftest, yea, I might add almost of the holiest tenderness. Often afterone of those outpourings of rage and menace and despair, I would flyto some quiet spot and weep till all the hardness of my heart was weptaway. And often in those nightly vigils I would pause by the door andmurmur, "This shelter, denied not to the beggar and the beggar's child,this would you deny to me if you could dream that I was so near you. Andyet, had you loved me, instead of lavishing upon me all your hatred andyour contempt,--had you loved me, I would have served and worshipped youas man knows not worship or service. You shudder at my vehemence now: Icould not then have breathed a whisper to wound you. You tremble now atthe fierceness of my breast: you would then rather have marvelled at itssoftness."
I was already at my old watch when you encountered me: you addressed me;I answered not; you approached me, and I fled. Fled there--there was theshame, and the sting of my sentiments towards you. I am not naturallyafraid of danger, though my nerves are sometimes weak and have sometimesshrunk from it. I have known something of peril in late years when myframe has been bowed and broken--perils by storms at sea, and the knivesof robbers upon land--and I have looked upon it with a quiet eye.But you, Morton Devereux, you I always feared. I had seen from yourchildhood others whose nature was far stronger than mine yield andrecoil at yours; I had seen the giant and bold strength of Gerald quailbefore your bent brow; I had seen even the hardy pride of Montreuilbaffled by your curled lip and the stern sarcasm of your glance; I hadseen you, too, in your wild moments of ungoverned rage, and I knew thatif earth held one whose passions were fiercer than my own it was you.But your passions were sustained even in their fiercest excess; yourpassions were the mere weapons of your mind: my passions were thetorturers and the tyrants of mine. Your passions seconded your will;mine blinded and overwhelmed it. From my infancy, even while I loved youmost, you awed me; and years, in deepening the impression, had made itindelible. I could not confront the thought of your knowing all, and ofmeeting you after that knowledge. And this fear, while it unnerved me atsome moments, at others only maddened my ferocity the more by the stingsof shame and self-contempt.
I fled from you: you pursued; you gained upon me; you remember how I waspreserved. I dashed through the inebriated revellers who obstructed yourpath, and reached my own lodging, which was close at hand; for the sameday on which I learned Isora's change of residence I changed my ownin order to be near it. Did I feel joy for my escape? No: I could havegnawed the very flesh from my bones in the agony of my shame. "I couldbrave," I said, "I could threat, I could offer violence to the woman whorejected me, and yet I could not face the rival for whom I am scorned!"At that moment a resolution flashed across my mind, exactly as if atrain of living fire had been driven before it. Morton, I resolved tomurder you, and in that very hour! A pistol lay on my table; I took it,concealed it about my person, and repaired to the shelter of a largeportico, beside which I knew that you must pass to your own home in thesame street. Scarcely three minutes had elapsed between the reaching myhouse and the leaving it on this errand. I knew, for I had heardswords clash, that you would be detained some time in the street by therioters; I thought it probable also that you might still continue thesearch for me; and I knew even that, had you hastened at once to yourhome, you could scarcely have reached it before I reached my shelter.I hurried on; I arrived at the spot; I screened myself and awaited yourcoming. You came, borne in the arms of two men; others followed in therear; I saw your face destitute of the hue and aspect of life, and yourclothes streaming with blood. I was horror-stricken. I joined the crowd;I learned that you had been stabbed, and it was feared mortally.
I did not return home: no, I went into the fields, and lay out allnight, and lifted up my heart to God, and wept aloud, and peace fellupon me,--at least, what was peace compared to the tempestuous darknesswhich had before reigned in my breast. The sight of you, bleedingand insensible,--you, against whom I had harboured a fratricide'spurpose,--had stricken, as it were, the weapon from my hand and themadness from my mind. I shuddered at what I had escaped; I blessed Godfor my deliverance; and with the gratitude and the awe came repentance;and repentance brought a resolution to fly, since I could not wrestlewith my mighty and dread temptation: the moment that resolution wasformed, it was as if an incubus were taken from my breast. Even the nextmorning I did not return home: my anxiety for you was such that I forgotall caution; I went to your house myself; I saw one of your servants towhom I was personally unknown. I inquired respecting you, and learnedthat your wound had not been mortal, and that the servant had overheardone of the medical attendants say you were not even in danger.
At this news I felt the serpent stir again within me, but I resolved tocrush it at the first: I would not even expose myself to the temptationof passing by Iso
ra's house; I went straight in search of my horse; Imounted, and fled resolutely from the scene of my soul's peril. "I willgo," I said, "to the home of our childhood; I will surround myselfby the mute tokens of the early love which my brother bore me; Iwill think,--while penance and prayer cleanse my soul from its blackguilt,--I will think that I am also making a sacrifice to that brother."
I returned then to Devereux Court, and I resolved to forego allhope--all persecution--of Isora! My brother--my brother, my heart yearnsto you at this moment, even though years and distance, and, above all,my own crimes, place a gulf between us which I may never pass; it yearnsto you when I think of those quiet shades, and the scenes where, pureand unsullied, we wandered together, when life was all verdure andfreshness, and we dreamed not of what was to come! If even now my heartyearns to you, Morton, when I think of that home and those days, believethat it had some softness and some mercy for you then. Yes, I repeat,I resolved to subdue my own emotions, and interpose no longer betweenIsora and yourself. Full of this determination, and utterly meltedtowards you, I wrote you a long letter; such as we would have writtento each other in our first youth. Two days after that letter all my newpurposes were swept away, and the whole soil of evil thoughts which theyhad covered, not destroyed, rose again as the tide flowed from it, blackand rugged as before.
The very night on which I had writ that letter, came Montreuil secretlyto my chamber. He had been accustomed to visit Gerald by stealth andat sudden moments; and there was something almost supernatural in themanner in which he seemed to pass from place to place, unmolested andunseen. He had now conceived a villanous project; and he had visitedDevereux Court in order to ascertain the likelihood of its success;he there found that it was necessary to involve me in his scheme. Myuncle's physician had said privately that Sir William could not livemany months longer. Either from Gerald or my mother Montreuil learnedthis fact; and he was resolved, if possible, that, the family estatesshould not glide from all chance of his influence over them into yourpossession. Montreuil was literally as poor as the rigid law of hisorder enjoins its disciples to be; all his schemes required the disposalof large sums, and in no private source could he hope for such pecuniarypower as he was likely to find in the coffers of any member of ourfamily, yourself only excepted. It was this man's boast to want, andyet to command, all things; and he was now determined that if any craft,resolution, or guilt could occasion the transfer of my uncle's wealthfrom you to Gerald or to myself, it should not be wanting.
Now, then, he found the advantage of the dissensions with each otherwhich he had either sown or mellowed in our breasts. He came to turnthose wrathful thoughts which when he last saw me I had expressedtowards you to the favor and success of his design. He found my mindstrangely altered, but he affected to applaud the change. He questionedme respecting my uncle's health, and I told him what had reallyoccurred; namely, that my uncle had on the preceding day read over to mesome part of a will which he had just made, and in which the vast bulkof his property was bequeathed to you. At this news Montreuil must haveperceived at once the necessity of winning my consent to his project;for, since I had seen the actual testament, no fraudulent transfer ofthe property therein bequeathed could take place without my knowledgethat some fraud had been recurred to. Montreuil knew me well; he knewthat avarice, that pleasure, that ambition, were powerless words withme, producing no effect and affording no temptation: but he knew thatpassion, jealousy, spiritual terrors, were the springs that moved everypart and nerve of my moral being. The two former, then, he now put intoaction; the last he held back in reserve. He spoke to me no further uponthe subject he had then at heart; not a word further on the dispositionof the estates: he spoke to me only of Isora and of you; he aroused, byhint and insinuation, the new sleep into which all those emotions--thefuries of the heart--had been for a moment lulled. He told me he hadlately seen Isora; he dwelt glowingly on her beauty; he commended myheroism in resigning her to a brother whose love for her was little incomparison to mine, who had, in reality, never loved _me_,--whose jestsand irony had been levelled no less at myself than at others. He paintedyour person and your mind, in contrast to my own, in colors so covertlydepreciating as to irritate more and more that vanity with whichjealousy is so woven, and from which, perhaps (a Titan son of so feeblea parent), it is born. He hung lingeringly over all the treasure thatyou would enjoy and that I--I, the first discoverer, had so nobly and sogenerously relinquished.
"Relinquished!" I cried, "no, I was driven from it; I left it not whilea hope of possessing it remained." The priest affected astonishment."How! was I sure of that? I had, it is true, wooed Isora; but wouldshe, even if she had felt no preference for Morton, would she havesurrendered the heir to a princely wealth for the humble love ofthe younger son? I did not know women: with them all love was eitherwantonness, custom, or pride; it was the last principle that swayedIsora. Had I sought to enlist it on my side? Not at all. Again, I hadonly striven to detach Isora from Morton; had I ever attempted the mucheasier task of detaching Morton from Isora? No, never;" and Montreuilrepeated his panegyric on my generous surrender of my rights. Iinterrupted him; I had not surrendered: I never would surrender while ahope remained. But, where was that hope, and how was it to be realized?After much artful prelude, the priest explained. He proposed to useevery means to array against your union with Isora all motives ofambition, interest, and aggrandizement. "I know Morton's character,"said he, "to its very depths. His chief virtue is honour; his chiefprinciple is ambition. He will not attempt to win this girl otherwisethan by marriage; for the very reasons that would induce most men toattempt it, namely, her unfriended state, her poverty, her confidence inhim, and her love, or that semblance of love which he believes to be thepassion itself. This virtue,--I call it so, though it is none, for thereis no virtue out of religion,--this virtue, then, will place before himonly two plans of conduct, either to marry her or to forsake her. Now,then, if we can bring his ambition, that great lever of his conduct, inopposition to the first alternative, only the last remains: I say thatwe _can_ employ that engine in your behalf; leave it to me, and I willdo so. Then, Aubrey, in the moment of her pique, her resentment, heroutraged vanity, at being thus left, you shall appear; not as you havehitherto done in menace and terror, but soft, subdued, with looks alllove, with vows all penitence; vindicating all your past vehemence bythe excess of your passion, and promising all future tenderness by theinfluence of the same motive, the motive which to a woman pardons everyerror and hallows every crime. Then will she contrast your love withyour brother's: then will the scale fall from her eyes; then willshe see what hitherto she has been blinded to, that your brother, toyourself, is a satyr to Hyperion; then will she blush and falter, andhide her cheek in your bosom." "Hold, hold!" I cried "do with me whatyou will; counsel, and I will act!"
Here again the manuscript was defaced by a sudden burst of execrationupon Montreuil, followed by ravings that gradually blackened into themost gloomy and incoherent outpourings of madness; at length the historyproceeded.
"You wrote to ask me to sound our uncle on the subject of your intendedmarriage. Montreuil drew up my answer; and I constrained myself, despitemy revived hatred to you, to transcribe its expressions of affection. Myuncle wrote to you also; and we strengthened his dislike to the stepyou had proposed, by hints from myself disrespectful to Isora, and ananonymous communication dated from London and to the same purport. Allthis while I knew not that Isora had been in your house; your answerto my letter seemed to imply that you would not disobey my uncle.Montreuil, who was still lurking in the neighbourhood and who at nightprivately met or sought me, affected exultation at the incipient successof his advice. He pretended to receive perpetual intelligence of yourmotions and conduct, and he informed me now that Isora had come to yourhouse on hearing of your wound; that you had not (agreeably,Montreuil added to his view of your character) taken advantage of herindiscretion; that immediately on receiving your uncle's and my ownletters, you had separated yourself from her; a
nd, that though youstill visited her, it was apparently with a view of breaking off allconnection by gradual and gentle steps; at all events, you had taken nomeasures towards marriage.
"Now, then," said Montreuil, "for one finishing stroke, and the prize isyours. Your uncle cannot, you find, live long: could he but be persuadedto leave his property to Gerald or to you, with only a trifling legacy(comparatively speaking) to Morton, that worldly-minded and enterprisingperson would be utterly prevented from marrying a penniless and unknownforeigner. Nothing but his own high prospects, so utterly above thenecessity of fortune in a wife, can excuse such a measure now, even tohis own mind; if therefore, we can effect this transfer of property,and in the meanwhile prevent Morton from marrying, your rival is goneforever, and with his brilliant advantages of wealth will also vanishhis merits in the eyes of Isora. Do not be startled at this thought:there is no crime in it; I, your confessor, your tutor, the servantof the Church, am the last person to counsel, to hint even, at what iscriminal; but the end sanctifies all means. By transferring this vastproperty, you do not only insure your object, but you advance the greatcause of Kings, the Church, and of the Religion which presides overboth. Wealth, in Morton's possession, will be useless to this cause,perhaps pernicious: in your hands or in Gerald's, it will be ofinestimable service. Wealth produced from the public should be appliedto the uses of the public, yea, even though a petty injury to oneindividual be the price."
Thus, and in this manner, did Montreuil prepare my mind for the step hemeditated; but I was not yet ripe for it. So inconsistent is guilt, thatI could commit murder, wrong, almost all villany that passion dictated,but I was struck aghast by the thought of fraud. Montreuil perceivedthat I was not yet wholly his, and his next plan was to remove me froma spot where I might check his measures. He persuaded me to travel for afew weeks. "On your return," said he, "consider Isora yours; meanwhile,let change of scene beguile suspense." I was passive in his hands, and Iwent whither he directed.
Let me be brief here on the black fraud that ensued. Among the otherarts of Jean Desmarais, was that of copying exactly any handwriting. Hewas then in London, in your service. Montrenil sent for him to come tothe neighbourhood of Devereux Court. Meanwhile, the priest had procuredfrom the notary who had drawn up, and who now possessed, the will of myunsuspecting uncle, that document. The notary had been long knownto, and sometimes politically employed by, Montreuil, for he washalf-brother to that Oswald, whom I have before mentioned as the earlycomrade of the priest and Desmarais. This circumstance, it is probable,first induced Montreuil to contemplate the plan of a substituted will.Before Desmarais arrived, in order to copy those parts of the will whichmy uncle's humour had led him to write in his own hand, you, alarmedby a letter from my uncle, came to the Court, and on the same day SirWilliam (taken ill the preceding evening) died. Between that day and theone on which the funeral occurred the will was copied by Desmarais; onlyGerald's name was substituted for yours, and the forty thousand poundsleft to him--a sum equal to that bestowed on myself--was cut down into alegacy of twenty thousand pounds to you. Less than this Montreuil darednot insert as the bequest to you: and it is possible that the sameregard to probabilities prevented all mention of himself in thesubstituted will. This was all the alteration made. My uncle's writingwas copied exactly; and, save the departure from his apparent intentionsin your favour, I believe not a particle in the effected fraud wascalculated to excite suspicion. Immediately on the reading of the will,Montreuil repaired to me and confessed what had taken place.
"Aubrey," he said, "I have done this for your sake partly; but Ihave had a much higher end in view than even your happiness or myaffectionate wishes to promote it. I live solely for one object,--theaggrandizement of that holy order to which I belong; the schemes of thatorder are devoted only to the interests of Heaven, and by serving themI serve Heaven itself. Aubrey, child of my adoption and of my earthlyhopes, those schemes require carnal instruments, and work, even throughMammon, unto the goal of righteousness. What I have done is just beforeGod and man. I have wrested a weapon from the hand of an enemy, andplaced it in the hand of an ally. I have not touched one atom of thiswealth, though, with the same ease with which I have transferred it fromMorton to Gerald, I might have made my own private fortune. I have nottouched one atom of it; nor for you, whom I love more than any livingbeing, have I done what my heart dictated. I might have caused theinheritance to pass to you. I have not done so. Why? Because then Ishould have consulted a selfish desire at the expense of the interestsof mankind. Gerald is fitter to be the tool those interests require thanyou are. Gerald I have made that tool. You, too, I have spared the pangswhich your conscience, so peculiarly, so morbidly acute, might sufferat being selected as the instrument of a seeming wrong to Morton.All required of you is silence. If your wants ever ask more than yourlegacy, you have, as I have, a claim to that wealth which your pleasureallows Gerald to possess. Meanwhile, let us secure to you that treasuredearer to you than gold."
If Montreuil did not quite blind me by speeches of this nature, myengrossing, absorbing passion required little to make it cling to anyhope of its fruition. I assented, therefore, though not withoutmany previous struggles, to Montreuil's project, or rather to itsconcealment; nay, I wrote some time after, at his desire and hisdictation, a letter to you, stating feigned reasons for my uncle'salteration of former intentions, and exonerating Gerald from allconnivance in that alteration, or abetment in the fraud you professedthat it was your open belief had been committed. This was due to Gerald;for at that time, and for aught I know, at the present, he was perfectlyunconscious by what means he had attained his fortune: he believedthat your love for Isora had given my uncle offence, and hence yourdisinheritance; and Montreuil took effectual care to exasperate himagainst you, by dwelling on the malice which your suspicions and yourproceedings against him so glaringly testified. Whether Montreuil reallythought you would give over all intention of marrying Isora upon yourreverse of fortune, which is likely enough from his estimate ofyour character; or whether he only wished by any means to obtain myacquiescence in a measure important to his views, I know not, but henever left me, nor ever ceased to sustain my fevered and unhallowedhopes, from the hour in which he first communicated to me the fraudulentsubstitution of the will till we repaired together to London. This wedid not do so long as he could detain me in the country by assurancesthat I should ruin all by appearing before Isora until you had entirelydeserted her.
Morton, hitherto I have written as if my veins were filled with water,instead of the raging fire that flows through them until it reaches mybrain, and there it stops, and eats away all things,--even memory,that once seemed eternal! Now I feel as I approach the consummationof--ha--of what--ay, of what? Brother, did you ever, when you thoughtyourself quite alone, at night, not a breath stirring,--did you everraise your eyes, and see exactly opposite to you a devil?--a dreadthing, that moves not, speaks not, but glares upon you with a fixed,dead, unrelenting eye?--that thing is before me now and witnesses everyword I write. But it deters me not! no, nor terrifies me. I have saidthat I would fulfil this task, and I have nearly done it; thoughat times the gray cavern yawned, and I saw its rugged wallsstretch--stretch away, on either side, until they reached hell; andthere I beheld--but I will not tell you till we meet there! Now I amcalm again: read on.
We could not discover Isora nor her home: perhaps the priest took carethat it should be so; for, at that time, what with his devilish whispersand my own heart, I often scarcely knew what I was or what I desired;and I sat for hours and gazed upon the air, and it seemed so soft andstill that I longed to make an opening in my forehead that it mightenter there, and so cool and quiet the dull, throbbing, scorchinganguish that lay like molten lead in my brain; at length we found thehouse. "To-morrow," said the Abbe, and he shed tears over me,--for therewere times when that hard man did feel,--"to-morrow, my child, thoushalt see her; but be soft and calm." To-morrow came; but Montreuil waspale, paler than I had ever seen him, and he gaze
d upon me and said,"Not to-day, Son, not to-day; she has gone out, and will not return tillnightfall." My brother, the evening came, and with it came Desmarais; hecame in terror and alarm. "The villain Oswald," he said, "has betrayedall; he drew me aside and told me so. 'Hark ye, Jean,' he whispered,'hark ye: your master has my brother's written confession and the realwill; but I have provided for your safety, and if he pleases it, forMontreuil's. The packet is not to be opened till the seventh day; flybefore then. But I know," added Desmarais, "where the packet is placed;"and he took Montreuil aside, and for a while I heard not what they said;but I did overhear Desmarais at last, and I learned that it was your_bridal night_.
What felt I then? The same tempestuous fury,--the same whirlwind andstorm of heart that I had felt before, at the mere anticipation of suchan event? No; I felt a bright ray of joy flash through me. Yes, joy; butit was that joy which a conqueror feels when he knows his mortal foe isin his power and when he dooms that enemy to death. "They shall perish,and on this night," I said inly. "I have sworn it; I swore to Isorathat the bridal couch should be stained with blood, and I will keepthe oath!" I approached the pair; they were discussing the means forobtaining the packet. Montreuil urged Desmarais to purloin it from theplace where you had deposited it, and then to abscond; but to this planDesmarais was vehemently opposed. He insisted that there would be nopossible chance of his escape from a search so scrutinizing as thatwhich would necessarily ensue, and he evidently resolved not _alone_to incur the danger of the theft. "The Count," said he, "saw that I waspresent when he put away the packet. Suspicion will fall solely on me.Whither should I fly? No: I will serve you with my talents, but not withmy life." "Wretch," said Montreuil, "if that packet is opened, thy lifeis already gone." "Yes," said Desmarais; "but we may yet purloin thepapers, and throw the guilt upon some other quarter. What if I admit youwhen the Count is abroad? What if you steal the packet, and carry awayother articles of more seeming value? What, too, if you wound me in thearm or the breast, and I coin some terrible tale of robbers, and ofmy resistance, could we not manage then to throw suspicion upon commonhousebreakers,--nay, could we not throw it upon Oswald himself? Let ussilence that traitor by death, and who shall contradict our tale?No danger shall attend this plan. I will give you the key of theescritoire: the theft will not be the work of a moment." Montreuil atfirst demurred to this proposal, but Desmarais was, I repeat, resolvednot to incur the danger of the theft alone; the stake was great, and itwas not in Montreuil's nature to shrink from peril, when once it becamenecessary to confront it. "Be it so," he said, at last, "though thescheme is full of difficulty and of danger: be it so. We have not a dayto lose. To-morrow the Count will place the document in some place ofgreater safety, and unknown to us: the deed shall be done to-night.Procure the key of the escritoire; admit me this night; I will stealdisguised into the chamber; I will commit the act from which you, whoalone could commit it with safety, shrink. Instruct me exactly as to theplace where the articles you speak of are placed. I will abstractthem also. See that if the Count wake, he has no weapon at hand.Wound yourself, as you say, in some place not dangerous to life, andto-morrow, or within an hour after my escape, tell what tale you will.I will go, meanwhile, at once to Oswald; I will either bribe hissilence--ay, and his immediate absence from England--or he shall die. Adeath that secures our own self-preservation is excusable in the readingof all law, divine or human." I heard, but they deemed me insensible:they had already begun to grow unheeding of my presence. Montreuil sawme, and his countenance grew soft. "I know all," I said, as I caughthis eye which looked on me in pity, "I know all: they are married.Enough!--with my hope ceases my love: care not for me."
Montreuil embraced and spoke to me in kindness and in praise. He assuredme that you had kept your wedding so close a secret that he knew itnot, nor did even Desmarais, till the evening before,--till after hehad proposed that I should visit Isora that very day. I know not, I carenot, whether he was sincere in this. In whatever way one line in thedread scroll of his conduct be read, the scroll was written in guile,and in blood was it sealed. I appeared not to notice Montreuil or hisaccomplice any more. The latter left the house first. Montreuil stoleforth, as he thought, unobserved; he was masked, and in completedisguise. I, too, went forth. I hastened to a shop where such thingswere procured; I purchased a mask and cloak similar to the priest's.I had heard Montreuil agree with Desmarais that the door of the houseshould be left ajar, in order to give greater facility to the escape ofthe former; I repaired to the house in time to see Montreuil enter it.A strange, sharp sort of cunning, which I had never known before, ranthrough the dark confusion of my mind. I waited for a minute, till itwas likely that Montreuil had gained your chamber; I then pushed openthe door, and ascended the stairs. I met no one; the moonlight fellaround me, and its rays seemed to me like ghosts, pale and shrouded, andgazing upon me with wan and lustreless eyes. I know not how I found yourchamber, but it was the only one I entered. I stood in the same roomwith Isora and yourself: ye lay in sleep; Isora's face--O God! I know nomore--no more of that night of horror--save that I fled from the housereeking with blood,--a murderer,--and the murderer of Isora!
Then came a long, long dream. I was in a sea of blood,--blood-red wasthe sky, and one still, solitary star that gleamed far away with asickly and wan light was the only spot, above and around, which was notof the same intolerable dye. And I thought my eyelids were cut off, asthose of the Roman consul are said to have been, and I had nothing toshield my eyes from that crimson light, and the rolling waters of thatunnatural sea. And the red air burned through my eyes into my brain, andthen that also, methought, became blood; and all memory,--all imagesof memory,--all idea,--wore a material shape and a material colour, andwere blood too. Everything was unutterably silent, except when my ownshrieks rang over the shoreless ocean, as I drifted on. At last I fixedmy eyes--the eyes which I might never close--upon that pale and singlestar; and after I had gazed a little while, the star seemed to changeslowly--slowly--until it grew like the pale face of that murdered girl,and then it vanished utterly, and _all_ was blood!
This vision was sometimes broken, sometimes varied by others, but italways returned; and when at last I completely woke from it, I was inItaly, in a convent. Montreuil had lost no time in removing me fromEngland. But once, shortly after my recovery, for I was mad for manymonths, he visited me, and he saw what a wreck I had become. He pitiedme; and when I told him I longed above all things for liberty--for thegreen earth and the fresh air, and a removal from that gloomy abode--heopened the convent gates and blessed me, and bade me go forth. "All Irequire of you," said he, "is a promise. If it be understood that youlive, you will be persecuted by inquiries and questions which willterminate in a conviction of your crime: let it therefore be reported inEngland that you are dead. Consent to the report, and promise never toquit Italy nor to see Morton Devereux."
I promised; and that promise I have kept: but I promised not that Iwould never reveal to you, in writing, the black tale which I havenow recorded. May it reach you! There is one in this vicinity who hasundertaken to bear it to you: he says he has known misery; and when hesaid so, his voice sounded in my ear like yours; and I looked upon him,and thought his features were cast somewhat in the same mould as yourown; so I have trusted him. I have now told all. I have wrenched thesecret from my heart in agony and with fear. I have told all: thoughthings which I believe are fiends have started forth from the grim wallsaround to forbid it; though dark wings have swept by me, and talons,as of a bird, have attempted to tear away the paper on which I write;though eyes, whose light was never drunk from earth, have glared on me;and mocking voices and horrible laughter have made my flesh creep,and thrilled through the marrow of my bones,--I have told all; I havefinished my last labour in this world, and I will now lie down and die.
AUBREY DEVEREUX.
The paper dropped from my hands. Whatever I had felt in reading it, Ihad not flinched once from the task. From the first word even to thelast, I had gone thro
ugh the dreadful tale, nor uttered a syllable, normoved a limb. And now as I rose, though I had found the being who to mehad withered this world into one impassable desert; though I had foundthe unrelenting foe and the escaped murderer of Isora, the object of theexecration and vindictiveness of years,--not one single throb of wrath,not one single sentiment of vengeance, was in my breast. I passedat once to the bedside of my brother: he was awake, but still andcalm,--the calm and stillness of exhausted nature. I knelt down quietlybeside him. I took his hand, and I shrank not from the touch, though bythat hand the only woman I ever loved had perished.
"Look up, Aubrey!" said I, struggling with tears which, despite of mymost earnest effort, came over me; "look up: all is forgiven. Who onearth shall withhold pardon from a crime which on earth has been soawfully punished? Look up, Aubrey; I am your brother, and I forgive you.You are right: my childhood was harsh and fierce; and had you feared meless you might have confided in me, and you would not have sinned andsuffered as you have done now. Fear me no longer. Look up, Aubrey, it isMorton who calls you. Why do you not speak? My brother, my brother,--aword, a single word, I implore you."
For one moment did Aubrey raise his eyes, one moment did he meet mine.His lips quivered wildly: I heard the death-rattle; he sank back, andhis hand dropped from my clasp. My words had snapped asunder the lastchord of life. Merciful Heaven! I thank Thee that those words were thewords of pardon!