CHAPTER V. THE WEAVERS AND THE WOOF.
"And what," said Varney,--"what, while we are pursuing a fancied clew,and seeking to provide first a name, and then a fortune for this younglawyer,--what steps have you really taken to meet the danger thatmenaces me,--to secure, if our inquiries fail, an independence foryourself? Months have elapsed, and you have still shrunk from advancingthe great scheme upon which we built, when the daughter of SusanMainwaring was admitted to your hearth."
"Why recall me, in these rare moments when I feel myself humanstill,--why recall me back to the nethermost abyss of revenge and crime?Oh, let me be sure that I have still a son! Even if John Ardworth, withhis gifts and energies, be denied to me, a son, though in rags, I willgive him wealth!--a son, though ignorant as the merest boor, I willpour into his brain my dark wisdom! A son! a son! my heart swells atthe word. Ah, you sneer! Yes, my heart swells, but not with the mawkishfondness of a feeble mother. In a son, I shall live again,--transmigratefrom this tortured and horrible life of mine; drink back my youth.In him I shall rise from my fall,--strong in his power, great in hisgrandeur. It is because I was born a woman,--had woman's poor passionsand infirm weakness,--that I am what I am. I would transfer myself intothe soul of man,--man, who has the strength to act, and the privilege torise. Into the bronze of man's nature I would pour the experience whichhas broken, with its fierce elements, the puny vessel of clay. Yes,Gabriel, in return for all I have done and sacrificed for you, I askbut co-operation in that one hope of my shattered and storm-beat being.Bear, forbear, await; risk not that hope by some wretched, peddlingcrime which will bring on us both detection,--some wanton revelry inguilt, which is not worth the terror that treads upon its heels."
"You forget," answered Varney, with a kind of submissivesullenness,--for whatever had passed between these two persons intheir secret and fearful intimacy, there was still a power in Lucretia,surviving her fall amidst the fiends, that impressed Varney with theonly respect he felt for man or woman,--"you forget strangely the natureof our elaborate and master project when you speak of 'peddling crime,'or 'wanton revelry' in guilt! You forget, too, how every hour that wewaste deepens the peril that surrounds me, and may sweep from your sidethe sole companion that can aid you in your objects,--nay, without whomthey must wholly fail. Let me speak first of that most urgent danger,for your memory seems short and troubled, since you have learned only tohope the recovery of your son. If this man Stubmore, in whom the trustcreated by my uncle's will is now vested, once comes to town, oncebegins to bustle about his accursed projects of transferring the moneyfrom the Bank of England, I tell you again and again that my forgery onthe bank will be detected, and that transportation will be the smallestpenalty inflicted. Part of the forgery, as you know, was committed onyour behalf, to find the moneys necessary for the research for yourson,--committed on the clear understanding that our project on Helenshould repay me, should enable me, perhaps undetected, to restorethe sums illegally abstracted, or, at the worst, to confess toStubmore--whose character I well know--that, oppressed by difficulties,I had yielded to temptation, that I had forged his name (as I had forgedhis father's) as an authority to sell the capital from the bank, andthat now, in replacing the money, I repaid my error and threw myself onhis indulgence, on his silence. I say that I know enough of the man toknow that I should be thus cheaply saved, or at the worst, I should havebut to strengthen his compassion by a bribe to his avarice; but if Icannot replace the money, I am lost."
"Well, well," said Lucretia; "the money you shall have, let me but findmy son, and--"
"Grant me patience!" cried Varney, impetuously. "But what can your sondo, if found, unless you endow him with the heritage of Laughton? To dothat, Helen, who comes next to Percival St. John in the course ofthe entail, must cease to live! Have I not aided, am I not aiding youhourly, in your grand objects? This evening I shall see a man whom Ihave long lost sight of, but who has acquired in a lawyer's life thetrue scent after evidence: if that evidence exist, it shall be found. Ihave just learned his address. By tomorrow he shall be on the track.I have stinted myself to save from the results of the last forgerythe gold to whet his zeal. For the rest, as I have said, your designinvolves the removal of two lives. Already over the one more difficultto slay the shadow creeps and the pall hangs. I have won, as you wished,and as was necessary, young St. John's familiar acquaintance; when thehour comes, he is in my hands."
Lucretia smiled sternly. "So!" she said, between her ground teeth, "thefather forbade me the house that was my heritage! I have but to lifta finger and breathe a word, and, desolate as I am, I thrust fromthat home the son! The spoiler left me the world,--I leave his son thegrave!"
"But," said Varney, doggedly pursuing his dreadful object, "why forceme to repeat that his is not the only life between you and your son'sinheritance? St. John gone, Helen still remains. And what, if yourresearches fail, are we to lose the rich harvest which Helen will yieldus,--a harvest you reap with the same sickle which gathers in yourrevenge? Do you no longer see in Helen's face the features of hermother? Is the perfidy of William Mainwaring forgotten or forgiven?"
"Gabriel Varney," said Lucretia, in a hollow and tremulous voice, "whenin that hour in which my whole being was revulsed, and I heard the cordsnap from the anchor, and saw the demons of the storm gather round mybark; when in that hour I stooped calmly down and kissed my rival'sbrow,--I murmured an oath which seemed not inspired by my own soul, butby an influence henceforth given to my fate: I vowed that the perfidydealt to me should be repaid; I vowed that the ruin of my own existenceshould fall on the brow which I kissed. I vowed that if shame anddisgrace were to supply the inheritance I had forfeited, I would notstand alone amidst the scorn of the pitiless world. In the vision of myagony, I saw, afar, the altar dressed and the bride-chamber prepared;and I breathed my curse, strong as prophecy, on the marriage-hearth andthe marriage-bed. Why dream, then, that I would rescue the loathed childof that loathed union from your grasp? But is the time come? Yours maybe come: is mine?"
Something so awful there was in the look of his accomplice, so intensein the hate of her low voice, that Varney, wretch as he was, andcontemplating at that very hour the foulest and most hideous guilt, drewback, appalled.
Madame Dalibard resumed, and in a somewhat softer tone, but softenedonly by the anguish of despair.
"Oh, had it been otherwise, what might I have been! Given over from thathour to the very incarnation of plotting crime, none to resist the evilimpulse of my own maddening heart, the partner, forced on me by fate,leading me deeper and deeper into the inextricable hell,--from thathour fraud upon fraud, guilt upon guilt, infamy heaped on infamy, tillI stand a marvel to myself that the thunderbolt falls not, that Naturethrusts not from her breast a living outrage on all her laws! Was I notjustified in the desire of retribution? Every step that I fell, everyglance that I gave to the gulf below, increased but in me the desire forrevenge. All my acts had flowed from one fount: should the stream rollpollution, and the fount spring pure?"
"You have had your revenge on your rival and her husband."
"I had it, and I passed on!" said Lucretia, with nostrils dilated aswith haughty triumph; "they were crushed, and I suffered them to live!Nay, when, by chance, I heard of William Mainwaring's death, I boweddown my head, and I almost think I wept. The old days came back uponme. Yes, I wept! But I had not destroyed their love. No, no; there I hadmiserably failed. A pledge of that love lived. I had left their hearthbarren; Fate sent them a comfort which I had not foreseen. And suddenlymy hate returned, my wrongs rose again, my vengeance was not sated. Thelove that had destroyed more than my life,--my soul,--rose again andcursed me in the face of Helen. The oath which I took when I kissed myrival's brow, demanded another prey when I kissed the child of thosenuptials."
"You are prepared at last, then, to act?" cried Varney, in a tone ofsavage joy.
At that moment, close under the window, rose, sudden and sweet, thevoice of one singing,--the young voice of Helen. The words we
re sodistinct that they came to the ears of the dark-plotting and guiltypair. In the song itself there was little to remark or peculiarlyapposite to the consciences of those who heard; yet in the extreme andtouching purity of the voice, and in the innocence of the general spiritof the words, trite as might be the image they conveyed, there wassomething that contrasted so fearfully their own thoughts and minds thatthey sat silent, looking vacantly into each other's faces, and shrinkingperhaps to turn their eyes within themselves.
HELEN'S HYMN.
Ye fade, yet still how sweet, ye Flowers! Your scent outlives the bloom!So, Father, may my mortal hours Grow sweeter towards the tomb!
In withered leaves a healing cure The simple gleaners find; So may ourwithered hopes endure In virtues left behind!
Oh, not to me be vainly given The lesson ye bestow, Of thoughts thatrise in sweets to Heaven, And turn to use below.
The song died, but still the listeners remained silent, till at length,shaking off the effect, with his laugh of discordant irony, Varneysaid,--
"Sweet innocence, fresh from the nursery! Would it not be sin to sufferthe world to mar it? You hear the prayer: why not grant it, and let theflower 'turn to use below'?"
"Ah, but could it wither first!" muttered Lucretia, with an accent ofsuppressed rage. "Do you think that her--that his--daughter is to me buta vulgar life to be sacrificed merely for gold? Imagine away yoursex, man! Women only know what I--such as I, woman still--feel in thepresence of the pure! Do you fancy that I should not have held deatha blessing if death could have found me in youth such as Helen is? Ah,could she but live to suffer! Die! Well, since it must be, since myson requires the sacrifice, do as you will with the victim that deathmercifully snatches from my grasp. I could have wished to prolong herlife, to load it with some fragment of the curse her parents heaped uponme,--baffled love, and ruin, and despair! I could have hoped, in thisdivision of the spoil, that mine had been the vengeance, if yours thegold. You want the life, I the heart,--the heart to torture first; andthen--why then more willingly than I do now, could I have thrown thecarcass to the jackal!"
"Listen!" began Varney; when the door opened and Helen herself stoodunconsciously smiling at the threshold.