CHAPTER V.
IN WHICH THE HISTORY MAKES A GREAT STRIDE TOWARDS THE FINALCATASTROPHE.--THE RETURN TO ENGLAND, AND THE VISIT TO A DEVOTEE.
AT night, and in the thrilling forms of the Catholic ritual, was AubreyDevereux consigned to earth. After that ceremony I could linger nolonger in the vicinity of the hermitage. I took leave of the Abbot andrichly endowed his convent in return for the protection it had affordedto the anchorite, and the Masses which had been said for his soul.Before I left Anselmo, I questioned him if any friend to the Hermithad ever, during his seclusion, held any communication with the Abbotrespecting him. Anselmo, after a little hesitation, confessed that aman, a Frenchman, seemingly of no high rank, had several times visitedthe convent, as if to scrutinize the habits and life of the anchorite;he had declared himself commissioned by the Hermit's relations to makeinquiry of him from time to time; but he had given the Abbot no clew todiscover himself, though Anselmo had especially hinted at the expediencyof being acquainted with some quarter to which he could direct anyinformation of change in the Hermit's habits or health. This man hadbeen last at the convent about two months before the present date; butone of the brothers declared that he had seen him in the vicinity of thewell on the very day on which the Hermit died. The description of thisstranger was essentially different from that which would have been givenof Montreuil, but I imagined that if not the Abbe himself, the strangerwas one in his confidence or his employ.
I now repaired to Rome, where I made the most extensive though guardedinquiries after Montreuil, and at length I learned that he was lyingconcealed, or rather unnoticed, in England, under a disguised name;having, by friends or by money, obtained therein a tacit connivance,though not an open pardon. No sooner did I learn this intelligence,than I resolved forthwith to depart to that country. I crossed the Alps,traversed France, and took ship at Calais for Dover.
Behold me, then, upon the swift seas bent upon a doublepurpose,--reconciliation with a brother whom I had wronged, andvengeance,--no, not vengeance, but _justice_ against the criminal Ihad discovered. No! it was not revenge: it was no infuriate, no unholydesire of inflicting punishment upon a personal foe which possessed me;it was a steady, calm, unwavering resolution, to obtain justice againstthe profound and systematized guilt of a villain who had been the baneof all who had come within his contact, that nerved my arm and engrossedmy heart. Bear witness, Heaven, I am not a vindictive man! I have, it istrue, been extreme in hatred as in love; but I have ever had the powerto control myself from yielding to its impulse. When the full persuasionof Gerald's crime reigned within me, I had thralled my emotion; I hadcurbed it within the circle of my own heart, though there, thus pent andself-consuming, it was an agony and a torture; I had resisted the voiceof that blood which cried from the earth against a murderer, and whichhad consigned the solemn charge of justice to my hands. Year after yearI had nursed an unappeased desire; nor ever when it stung the most,suffered it to become an actual revenge. I had knelt in tears and insoftness by Aubrey's bed; I had poured forth my pardon over him; I hadfelt, while I did so,--no, not so much sternness as would have slain aworm. By his hand had the murderous stroke been dealt; on his soul wasthe crimson stain of that blood which had flowed through the veins ofthe gentlest and the most innocent of God's creatures; and yet the blowwas unavenged and the crime forgiven. For him there was a palliative, oreven a gloomy but an unanswerable excuse. In the confession which had soterribly solved the mystery of my life, the seeds of that curse, whichhad grown at last into MADNESS, might be discovered even in the firstdawn of Aubrey's existence. The latent poison might be detected inthe morbid fever of his young devotion, in his jealous cravings ofaffection, in the first flush of his ill-omened love,--even beforerivalship and wrath began. Then, too, his guilt had not been regularlyorganized into one cold and deliberate system: it broke forth inimpetuous starts, in frantic paroxysms; it was often wrestled with,though by a feeble mind; it was often conquered by a tender though afitful temper; it might not have rushed into the last and most awfulcrime, but for the damning instigation and the atrocious craft of one,who (Aubrey rightly said) could wield and mould the unhappy victimat his will. Might not, did I say? Nay, but for Montreuil's accursedinfluence, had I not Aubrey's own word that that crime never _wouldhave_ been committed? He had resolved to stifle his love,--his heart hadalready melted to Isora and to me,--he had already tasted the sweets ofa virtuous resolution, and conquered the first bitterness of oppositionto his passion. Why should not the resolution thus auspiciously begunhave been mellowed into effect? Why should not the grateful and awfulremembrance of the crime he had escaped continue to preserve him frommeditating crime anew? And (oh, thought, which, while I now write,steals over me and brings with it an unutterable horde of emotions!) butfor that all-tainting, all-withering influence, Aubrey's soul might atthis moment have been pure from murder and Isora--the living Isora--bymy side!
What wonder, as these thoughts came over me, that sense, feeling,reason, gradually shrank and hardened into one stern resolve? I lookedas from a height over the whole conduct of Montreuil. I saw him in ourearly infancy with no definite motive (beyond the general policy ofintrigue), no fixed design, which might somewhat have lessened thecallousness of the crime, not only fomenting dissensions in the heartsof brothers; not only turning the season of warm affections, and yet ofunopened passion, into strife and rancour, but seizing upon the inherentand reigning vice of our bosoms, which he should have seized to crush,in order only by that master-vice to weave our characters, and swayour conduct to his will, whenever a cool-blooded and merciless policyrequired us to be of that will the minions and the tools. Thus hadhe taken hold of the diseased jealousy of Aubrey, and by that handle,joined to the latent spring of superstition, guided him on his wretchedcourse of misery and guilt. Thus, by a moral irresolution in Gerald hadhe bowed him also to his purposes, and by an infantine animosity betweenthat brother and myself, held us both in a state of mutual hatred whichI shuddered to recall. Readily could I now perceive that my charges ormy suspicions against Gerald, which, in ordinary circumstances, he mighthave dispassionately come forward to disprove, had been represented tohim by Montreuil in the light of groundless and wilful insults; and thushe had been led to scorn that full and cool explanation which, if ithad not elucidated the mystery of my afflictions, would have removed thefalse suspicion of guilt from himself and the real guilt of wrath andanimosity from me.
The crime of the forged will, and the outrage to the dead and to myself,was a link in his woven guilt which I regarded the least. I lookedrather to the black and the consummate craft by which Aubrey had beenimplicated in that sin; and my indignation became mixed with horror whenI saw Montreuil working to that end of fraud by the instigation notonly of a guilty and unlawful passion, but of the yet more unnatural andterrific engine of _frenzy_,--of a maniac's despair. Over the peace, thehappiness, the honour, the virtue of a whole family, through fraud andthrough blood, this priest had marched onward to the goal of his icy andheartless ambition, unrelenting and unrepenting; "but not," I said, as Iclenched my hand till the nails met in the flesh, "not forever uncheckedand unrequited!"
But in what manner was justice to be obtained? A public court of law?What! drag forward the deep dishonour of my house, the gloomy andconvulsive history of my departed brother, his crime and his insanity?What! bring that history, connected as it was with the fate of Isora,before the curious and the insolent gaze of the babbling world? Barethat awful record to the jests, to the scrutiny, the marvel and thepity, of that most coarse of all tribunals,--an English court of law?and that most torturing of all exposures,--the vulgar comments of anEnglish public? Could I do this? Yea, in the sternness of my soul,I felt that I could submit even to that humiliation, if no other waypresented itself by which I could arrive at justice. _Was_ there noother way?--at that question conjecture paused: I formed no scheme, orrather, I formed a hundred and rejected them all; my mind settled, atlast, into an indistinct, unquestioned, but prophetic resolut
ion, that,whenever my path crossed Montreuil's, it should be to his destruction. Iasked not how, nor when, the blow was to be dealt; I felt only a solemnand exultant certainty that, whether it borrowed the sword of thelaw, or the weapon of private justice, _mine_ should be the hand whichbrought retribution to the ashes of the dead and the agony of thesurvivor.
So soon as my mind had subsided into this determination, I suffered mythoughts to dwell upon subjects less sternly agitating. Fondly did Ilook forward to a meeting with Gerald, and a reconciliation of all ourearly and most frivolous disputes. As an atonement for the injustice mysuspicions had done him, I resolved not to reclaim my inheritance.My fortune was already ample; and all that I cared to possess of thehereditary estates were the ruins of the old house and the copses of thesurrounding park: these Gerald would in all likelihood easily yieldto me; and with the natural sanguineness of my temperament, I alreadyplanned the reconstruction of the ancient building, and the method ofthat solitary life in which I resolved that the remainder of my yearsshould be spent.
Turning from this train of thought, I recurred to the mysterious andsudden disappearance of Oswald: _that_ I was now easily able to accountfor. There could be no doubt but that Montreuil had (immediately afterthe murder), as he declared he would, induced Oswald to quit England,and preserve silence, either by bribery or by threats. And when Irecalled the impression which the man had made upon me,--an impressioncertainly not favourable to the elevation or the rigid honesty of hismind,--I could not but imagine that one or the other of these meansMontreuil found far from difficult of success. The delirious fever intowhich the wounds and the scene of that night had thrown me, and thelong interval that consequently elapsed before inquiry was directed toOswald, gave him every opportunity and indulgence in absenting himselffrom the country, and it was not improbable that he had accompaniedAubrey to Italy.
Here I paused, in deep acknowledgment of the truth of Aubrey'sassertion, that "under similar circumstances I might perhaps have beenequally guilty." My passions had indeed been "intense and fierce as hisown;" and there was a dread coincidence in the state of mind into whicheach of us had been thrown by the event of that night, which made theepoch of a desolated existence to both of us; if mine had been buta passing delirium, and his a confirmed and lasting disease of theintellect, the causes of our malady had been widely different. He hadbeen the criminal; I, only the sufferer.
Thus, as I leaned over the deck and the waves bore me homeward, after somany years and vicissitudes, did the shadows of thought and memory flitacross me. How seemingly apart, yet how closely linked, had been thegreat events in my wandering and wild life! My early acquaintance withBolingbroke, whom for more than nine years I had not seen, and who, ata superficial glance, would seem to have exercised influence over mypublic rather than my private life,--how secretly, yet how powerfully,had that circumstance led even to the very thoughts which now possessedme, and to the very object on which I was now bound. But for thatcircumstance I might not have learned of the retreat of Don Diegod'Alvarez in his last illness; I might never have renewed my love toIsora; and whatever had been her fate, destitution and povertywould have been a less misfortune than her union with me. But for myfriendship for Bolingbroke, I might not have visited France, norgained the favour of the Regent, nor the ill offices of Dubois, nor theprotection and kindness of the Czar. I might never have been ambassadorat the court of------, nor met with Bezoni, nor sought an asylum fora spirit sated with pomp and thirsting for truth, at the foot of theApennines, nor read that history (which, indeed, might then neverhave occurred) that now rankled at my heart, urging my movements andcolouring my desires. Thus, by the finest but the strongest meshes hadthe thread of my political honours been woven with that of my privateafflictions. And thus, even at the licentious festivals of the Regent ofFrance, or the lifeless parade of the court of------, the dark stream ofevents had flowed onward beneath my feet, bearing me insensibly to thatvery spot of time from which I now surveyed the past and looked upon themist and shadows of the future.
Adverse winds made the little voyage across the Channel a business offour days. On the evening of the last we landed at Dover. Within thirtymiles of that town was my mother's retreat; and I resolved, before Isought a reconciliation with Gerald or justice against Montreuil, tovisit her seclusion. Accordingly, the next day I repaired to her abode.
What a contrast is there between the lives of human beings! Consideringthe beginning and the end of all mortal careers are the same, howwonderfully is the interval varied! Some, the weeds of the world, dashedfrom shore to shore,--all vicissitude, enterprise, strife, disquiet;others, the world's lichen, rooted to some peaceful rock, growing,flourishing, withering on the same spot,--scarce a feeling expressed,scarce a sentiment called forth, scarce a tithe of the properties oftheir very nature expanded into action.
There was an air of quiet and stillness in the red quadrangularbuilding, as my carriage stopped at its porch, which struck upon me,like a breathing reproach to those who sought the abode of peace withfeelings opposed to the spirit of the place. A small projecting porchwas covered with ivy, and thence issued an aged portress in answer to mysummons.
"The Countess Devereux," said she, "is now the superior of this society[convent they called it not], and rarely admits any stranger."
I gave in my claim to admission, and was ushered into a small parlour:all there, too, was still,--the brown oak wainscoting, the huge chairs,the few antique portraits, the _uninhabited_ aspect of the chamber,--allwere silently eloquent of quietude, but a quietude comfortless andsombre. At length my mother appeared. I sprang forward: my childhood wasbefore me,--years, care, change were forgotten,--I was a boy again,--Isprang forward, and was in my mother's embrace! It was long before,recovering myself, I noted how lifeless and chill was that embrace, butI did so at last, and my enthusiasm withered at once.
We sat down together, and conversed long and uninterruptedly, but ourconversation was like that of acquaintances, not the fondest and closestof all relations (for I need scarcely add that I told her not of mymeeting with Aubrey, nor undeceived her with respect to the date of hisdeath). Every monastic recluse that I had hitherto seen, even in themost seeming content with retirement, had loved to converse of theexterior world, and had betrayed an interest in its events: for mymother only, worldly objects and interests seemed utterly dead. Sheexpressed little surprise to see me,--little surprise at my alteration;she only said that my mien was improved, and that I reminded her of myfather: she testified no anxiety to hear of my travels or my adventures;she testified even no willingness to speak of herself; she described tome the life of one day, and then said that the history of ten years wastold. A close cap confined all the locks for whose rich luxuriance andgolden hue she had once been noted,--for here they were not the victimof a vow, as in a nunnery they would have been,--and her dress wasplain, simple, and unadorned. Save these alterations of attire, nonewere visible in her exterior: the torpor of her life seemed to haveparalyzed even time; the bloom yet dwelt in her unwrinkled cheek; themouth had not fallen; the faultless features were faultless still. Butthere was a deeper stillness than ever breathing through this frame: itwas as if the soul had been lulled to sleep; her mien was lifeless;her voice was lifeless; her gesture was lifeless; the impression sheproduced was like that of entering some chamber which has not beenentered before for a century. She consented to my request to stay withher all the day: a bed was prepared for me; and at sunrise the nextmorning I was folded once more in the chilling mechanism of her embrace,and dismissed on my journey to the metropolis.