CHAPTER IX. THE ROSE BENEATH THE UPAS.
And from that day Percival had his privileged entry into MadameDalibard's house. The little narrative of the circumstances connectedwith his first meeting with Helen, partly drawn from Percival, partlyafterwards from Helen (with blushing and faltered excuses from thelatter for not having mentioned before an incident that might, perhapsneedlessly, vex or alarm her aunt in so delicate a state of health), wasreceived by Lucretia with rare graciousness. The connection, not onlybetween herself and Percival, but between Percival and Helen, wasallowed and even dwelt upon by Madame Dalibard as a natural reason forpermitting the artless intimacy which immediately sprang up betweenthese young persons. She permitted Percival to call daily, to remain forhours, to share in their simple meals, to wander alone with Helen in thegarden, assist her to bind up the ragged flowers, and sit by her in theold ivy-grown arbour when their work was done. She affected to look uponthem both as children, and to leave to them that happy familiarity whichchildhood only sanctions, and compared to which the affection of matureryears seems at once coarse and cold.
As they grew more familiar, the differences and similarities in theircharacters came out, and nothing more delightful than the harmony intowhich even the contrasts blended ever invited the guardian angel topause and smile. As flowers in some trained parterre relieve each other,now softening, now heightening, each several hue, till all unite in oneconcord of interwoven beauty, so these two blooming natures, broughttogether, seemed, where varying still, to melt and fuse their affluencesinto one wealth of innocence and sweetness. Both had a native buoyancyand cheerfulness of spirit, a noble trustfulness in others, a singularcandour and freshness of mind and feeling. But beneath the gayety ofHelen there was a soft and holy under-stream of thoughtful melancholy,a high and religious sentiment, that vibrated more exquisitely to thesubtle mysteries of creation, the solemn unison between the brightworld without and the grave destinies of that world within (which isan imperishable soul), than the lighter and more vivid youthfulness ofPercival had yet conceived. In him lay the germs of the active mortalwho might win distinction in the bold career we run upon the surface ofthe earth. In her there was that finer and more spiritual essencewhich lifts the poet to the golden atmosphere of dreams, and reveals inglimpses to the saint the choral Populace of Heaven. We do not saythat Helen would ever have found the utterance of the poet, that herreveries, undefined and unanalyzed, could have taken the sharp, clearform of words; for to the poet practically developed and made manifestto the world, many other gifts besides the mere poetic sense areneeded,--stern study, and logical generalization of scattered truths,and patient observation of the characters of men, and the wisdom thatcomes from sorrow and passion, and a sage's experience of things actual,embracing the dark secrets of human infirmity and crime. But despite allthat has been said in disparagement or disbelief of "mute, ingloriousMiltons," we maintain that there are natures in which the divinestelement of poetry exists, the purer and more delicate for escaping frombodily form and evaporating from the coarser vessels into which thepoet, so called, must pour the ethereal fluid. There is a certain virtuewithin us, comprehending our subtlest and noblest emotions, which ispoetry while untold, and grows pale and poor in proportion as we strainit into poems. Nay, it may be said of this airy property of our inmostbeing that, more or less, it departs from us according as we give itforth into the world, even, as only by the loss of its particles, therose wastes its perfume on the air. So this more spiritual sensibilitydwelt in Helen as the latent mesmerism in water, as the invisiblefairy in an enchanted ring. It was an essence or divinity, shrined andshrouded in herself, which gave her more intimate and vital union withall the influences of the universe, a companion to her loneliness, anangel hymning low to her own listening soul. This made her enjoyment ofNature, in its merest trifles, exquisite and profound; this gave to hertenderness of heart all the delicious and sportive variety loveborrows from imagination; this lifted her piety above the mere forms ofconventional religion, and breathed into her prayers the ecstasy of thesaint.
But Helen was not the less filled with the sweet humanities of her ageand sex; her very gravity was tinged with rosy light, as a western cloudwith the sun. She had sportiveness and caprice, and even whim, as thebutterfly, though the emblem of the soul, still flutters wantonly overevery wild-flower, and expands its glowing wings on the sides of thebeaten road. And with a sense of weakness in the common world (growingout of her very strength in nobler atmospheres), she leaned the moretrustfully on the strong arm of her young adorer, not fancying that thedifference between them arose from superiority in her; but rather as abird, once tamed, flies at the sight of the hawk to the breast of itsowner, so from each airy flight into the loftier heaven, let but thethought of danger daunt her wing, and, as in a more powerful nature, shetook refuge on that fostering heart.
The love between these children--for so, if not literally in years, intheir newness to all that steals the freshness and the dew from maturerlife they may be rightly called--was such as befitted those whose soulshave not forfeited the Eden. It was more like the love of fairies thanof human beings. They showed it to each other innocently and frankly;yet of love as we of the grosser creation call it, with its impatientpains and burning hopes, they never spoke nor dreamed. It was anunutterable, ecstatic fondness, a clinging to each other in thought,desire, and heart, a joy more than mortal in each other's presence; yet,in parting, not that idle and empty sorrow which unfits the weak forthe homelier demands on time and life, and this because of the wondroustrust in themselves and in the future, which made a main part of theircredulous, happy natures. Neither felt fear nor jealousy, or if jealousycame, it was the pretty, childlike jealousies which have no sting,--ofthe bird, if Helen listened to its note too long; of the flower, ifPercival left Helen's side too quickly to tie up its drooping petals orrefresh its dusty leaves. Close by the stir of the great city, with allits fret and chafe and storm of life, in the desolate garden of thatsombre house, and under the withering eyes of relentless Crime, revivedthe Arcady of old,--the scene vocal to the reeds of idyllist andshepherd; and in the midst of the iron Tragedy, harmlessly andunconsciously arose the strain of the Pastoral Music.
It would be a vain effort to describe the state of Lucretia's mind whileshe watched the progress of the affection she had favoured, and gazed onthe spectacle of the fearless happiness she had promoted. The image ofa felicity at once so great and so holy wore to her gloomy sight theaspect of a mocking Fury. It rose in contrast to her own ghastly andcrime-stained life; it did not upbraid her conscience with guilt soloudly as it scoffed at her intellect for folly. These children, playingon the verge of life, how much more of life's true secret did theyalready know than she, with all her vast native powers and wasted realmsof blackened and charred experience! For what had she studied, andschemed, and calculated, and toiled, and sinned? As a conqueror strickenunto death would render up all the regions vanquished by his sword forone drop of water to his burning lips, how gladly would she have givenall the knowledge bought with blood and fire, to feel one moment asthose children felt! Then, from out her silent and grim despair, stoodforth, fierce and prominent, the great fiend, Revenge.
By a monomania not uncommon to those who have made self the centre ofbeing, Lucretia referred to her own sullen history of wrong and passionall that bore analogy to it, however distant. She had never beenenabled, without an intolerable pang of hate and envy, to contemplatecourtship and love in others. From the rudest shape to the most refined,that master-passion in the existence, at least of woman,--reminding herof her own brief episode of human tenderness and devotion,--opened everywound and wrung every fibre of a heart that, while crime had induratedit to most emotions, memory still left morbidly sensitive to one. Butif tortured by the sight of love in those who had had no connection withher fate, who stood apart from her lurid orbit and were gazed upon onlyafar (as a lost soul, from the abyss, sees the gleam of angels' wingswithin some planet it never has explored),
how ineffably more fierceand intolerable was the wrath that seized her when, in her hauntedimagination, she saw all Susan's rapture at the vows of Mainwaringmantling in Helen's face! All that might have disarmed a heart as hard,but less diseased, less preoccupied by revenge, only irritated more theconsuming hate of that inexorable spirit. Helen's seraphic purity,her exquisite, overflowing kindness, ever forgetting self, her airycheerfulness, even her very moods of melancholy, calm and seeminglycauseless as they were, perpetually galled and blistered that writhing,preternatural susceptibility which is formed by the consciousness ofinfamy, the dreary egotism of one cut off from the charities of theworld, with whom all mirth is sardonic convulsion, all sadness raylessand unresigned despair.
Of the two, Percival inspired her with feelings the most akin tohumanity. For him, despite her bitter memories of his father, she feltsomething of compassion, and shrank from the touch of his frank hand inremorse. She had often need to whisper to herself that his life was anobstacle to the heritage of the son of whom, as we have seen, she wasin search, and whom, indeed, she believed she had already found in JohnArdworth; that it was not in wrath and in vengeance that this victimwas to be swept into the grave, but as an indispensable sacrifice to acherished object, a determined policy. As, in the studies of her youth,she had adopted the Machiavelism of ancient State-craft as a ruleadmissible in private life, so she seemed scarcely to admit as a crimethat which was but the removal of a barrier between her aim and herend. Before she had become personally acquainted with Percival she hadrejected all occasion to know him. She had suffered Varney to call uponhim as the old protege of Sir Miles, and to wind into his intimacy,meaning to leave to her accomplice, when the hour should arrive, thedread task of destruction. This not from cowardice, for Gabriel had oncerightly described her when he said that if she lived with shadows shecould quell them, but simply because, more intellectually unsparingthan constitutionally cruel (save where the old vindictive memoriesthoroughly unsexed her), this was a victim whose pangs she desired notto witness, over whose fate it was no luxury to gloat and revel. Shewished not to see nor to know him living, only to learn that he was nomore, and that Helen alone stood between Laughton and her son. Now thathe had himself, as if with predestined feet, crossed her threshold, thathe, like Helen, had delivered himself into her toils, the hideous guilt,before removed from her hands, became haunting, fronted her face toface, and filled her with a superstitious awe.
Meanwhile, her outward manner to both her meditated victims, if moodyand fitful at times, was not such as would have provoked suspicion evenin less credulous hearts. From the first entry of Helen under her roofshe had been formal and measured in her welcome,--kept her, as it were,aloof, and affected no prodigal superfluity of dissimulation; but shehad never been positively harsh or unkind in word or in deed, and hadcoldly excused herself for the repulsiveness of her manner.
"I am irritable," she said, "from long suffering, I am unsocial fromhabitual solitude; do not expect from me the fondness and warmth thatshould belong to our relationship. Do not harass yourself with vainsolicitude for one whom all seeming attention but reminds more painfullyof infirmity, and who, even thus stricken down, would be independentof all cares not bought and paid for. Be satisfied to live here in allreasonable liberty, to follow your own habits and caprices uncontrolled.Regard me but as a piece of necessary furniture. You can never displeaseme but when you notice that I live and suffer."
If Helen wept bitterly at these hard words when first spoken, it was notwith anger that her loving heart was so thrown back upon herself. On thecontrary, she became inspired with a compassion so great that ittook the character of reverence. She regarded this very coldness as amournful dignity. She felt grateful that one who could thus dispensewith, should yet have sought her. She had heard her mother say thatshe had been under great obligations to Lucretia; and now, when shewas forbidden to repay them even by a kiss on those weary eyelids, adaughter's hand to that sleepless pillow; when she saw that the barrierfirst imposed was irremovable, that no time diminished the distanceher aunt set between them, that the least approach to the tenderness ofservice beyond the most casual offices really seemed but to fret thoseexcitable nerves, and fever the hand that she ventured timorously toclasp,--she retreated into herself with a sad amaze that increased herpity and heightened her respect. To her, love seemed so necessary athing in the helplessness of human life, even when blessed with healthand youth, that this rejection of all love in one so bowed and crippled,struck her imagination as something sublime in its dreary grandeur andstoic pride of independence. She regarded it as of old a tenderand pious nun would have regarded the asceticism of some sanctifiedrecluse,--as Theresa (had she lived in the same age) might have regardedSaint Simeon Stylites existing aloft from human sympathy on the rooflesssummit of his column of stone; and with this feeling she sought toinspire Percival. He had the heart to enter into her compassion, but notthe imagination to sympathize with her reverence. Even the repugnantawe that he had first conceived for Madame Dalibard, so bold was heby temperament, he had long since cast off; he recognized only themoroseness and petulance of an habitual invalid, and shook playfullyhis glossy curls when Helen, with her sweet seriousness, insisted on hisrecognizing more.
To this house few, indeed, were the visitors admitted. The Miverses,whom the benevolent officiousness of Mr. Fielden had originally sentthither to see their young kinswoman, now and then came to press Helento join some party to the theatre or Vauxhall, or a picnic in RichmondPark; but when they found their overtures, which had at first beenpolitely accepted by Madame Dalibard, were rejected, they graduallyceased their visits, wounded and indignant.
Certain it was that Lucretia had at one time eagerly caught at theirwell-meant civilities to Helen,--now she as abruptly declined them. Why?It would be hard to plumb into all the black secrets of that heart. Itwould have been but natural to her, who shrank from dooming Helen to noworse calamity than a virgin's grave, to have designed to throw her intosuch uncongenial guidance, amidst all the manifold temptations of thecorrupt city,--to have suffered her to be seen and to be ensnared bythose gallants ever on the watch for defenceless beauty; and to contrastwith their elegance of mien and fatal flatteries the grossness of thecompanions selected for her, and the unloving discomfort of the homeinto which she had been thrown. But now that St. John had appeared,that Helen's heart and fancy were steeled alike against more dangeroustemptation, the object to be obtained from the pressing courtesy of Mrs.Mivers existed no more. The vengeance flowed into other channels.
The only other visitors at the house were John Ardworth and GabrielVarney.
Madame Dalibard watched vigilantly the countenance and manner ofArdworth when, after presenting him to Percival, she whispered: "I amglad you assured me as to your sentiments for Helen. She had found therethe lover you wished for her,--'gay and handsome as herself.'"
And in the sudden paleness that overspread Ardworth's face, in hiscompressed lips and convulsive start, she read with unspeakable rage theuntold secret of his heart, till the rage gave way to complacency at thethought that the last insult to her wrongs was spared her,--that her son(as son she believed he was) could not now, at least, be the successfulsuitor of her loathed sister's loathed child. Her discovery, perhaps,confirmed her in her countenance to Percival's progressive wooing, andhalf reconciled her to the pangs it inflicted on herself.
At the first introduction Ardworth had scarcely glanced at Percival. Heregarded him but as the sleek flutterer in the sunshine of fortune.And for the idle, the gay, the fair, the well-dressed and wealthy, thesturdy workman of his own rough way felt something of the uncharitabledisdain which the laborious have-nots too usually entertain for theprosperous haves. But the moment the unwelcome intelligence of MadameDalibard was conveyed to him, the smooth-faced boy swelled into dignityand importance.
Yet it was not merely as a rival that that strong, manly heart, afterthe first natural agony, regarded Percival. No, he looked upon him lesswith anger than w
ith interest,--as the one in whom Helen's happiness washenceforth to be invested. And to Madame Dalibard's astonishment,--forthis nature was wholly new to her experience,--she saw him, even inthat first interview, composing his rough face to smiles, smoothing hisbluff, imperious accents into courtesy, listening patiently, watchingbenignly, and at last thrusting his large hand frankly forth, gripingPercival's slender fingers in his own; and then, with an indistinctchuckle that seemed half laugh and half groan, as if he did not dare totrust himself further, he made his wonted unceremonious nod, and strodehurriedly from the room.
But he came again and again, almost daily, for about a fortnight.Sometimes, without entering the house, he would join the young people inthe garden, assist them with awkward hands in their playful work on thegarden, or sit with them in the ivied bower; and warming more and moreeach time he came, talk at last with the cordial frankness of an elderbrother. There was no disguise in this; he began to love Percival,--whatwould seem more strange to the superficial, to admire him. Genius has aquick perception of the moral qualities; genius, which, differingthus from mere talent, is more allied to the heart than to the head,sympathizes genially with goodness. Ardworth respected that young,ingenuous, unpolluted mind; he himself felt better and purer in itsatmosphere. Much of the affection he cherished for Helen passed thusbeautifully and nobly into his sentiments for the one whom Helen notunworthily preferred. And they grew so fond of him,--as the young andgentle ever will grow fond of genius, however rough, once admitted toits companionship!
Percival by this time had recalled to his mind where he had first seenthat strong-featured, dark-browed countenance, and he gayly remindedArdworth of his discourtesy, on the brow of the hill which commanded theview of London. That reminiscence made his new friend writhe; for then,amidst all his ambitious visions of the future, he had seen Helen in thedistance,--the reward of every labour, the fairest star in his horizon.But he strove stoutly against the regret of the illusion lost; thevivendi causae were left him still, and for the nymph that had glidedfrom his clasp, he clung at least to the laurel that was left in herplace. In the folds of his robust fortitude Ardworth thus wrapped hissecret. Neither of his young playmates suspected it. He would havedisdained himself if he had so poisoned their pleasure. That hesuffered when alone, much and bitterly, is not to be denied; but in thatmasculine and complete being, Love took but its legitimate rank amidstthe passions and cares of man. It soured no existence, it broke noheart; the wind swept some blossoms from the bough, and tossed wildlythe agitated branches from root to summit, but the trunk stood firm.
In some of these visits to Madame Dalibard's, Ardworth renewed withher the more private conversation which had so unsettled his pastconvictions as to his birth, and so disturbed the calm, strong currentsof his mind. He was chiefly anxious to learn what conjectures MadameDalibard had formed as to his parentage, and what ground there was forbelief that he was near in blood to herself, or that he was born to astation less dependent on continuous exertion; but on these points thedark sibyl preserved an obstinate silence. She was satisfied with thehints she had already thrown out, and absolutely refused to say moretill better authorized by the inquiries she had set on foot. Artfullyshe turned from these topics of closer and more household interest tothose on which she had previously insisted, connected with the generalknowledge of mankind, and the complicated science of practical life.To fire his genius, wing his energies, inflame his ambition above thatslow, laborious drudgery to which he had linked the chances of hiscareer, and which her fiery and rapid intellect was wholly unableto comprehend--save as a waste of life for uncertain and distantobjects--became her task. And she saw with delight that Ardworthlistened to her more assentingly than he had done at first. In truth,the pain shut within his heart, the conflict waged keenly between hisreason and his passion, unfitted him for the time for mere mechanicalemployment, in which his genius could afford him no consolation. Now,genius is given to man, not only to enlighten others, but to comfortas well as to elevate himself. Thus, in all the sorrows of actualexistence, the man is doubly inclined to turn to his genius fordistraction. Harassed in this world of action, he knocks at the gate ofthat world of idea or fancy which he is privileged to enter; he escapesfrom the clay to the spirit. And rarely, till some great grief comes,does the man in whom the celestial fire is lodged know all the gift ofwhich he is possessed. At last Ardworth's visits ceased abruptly. Heshut himself up once more in his chambers; but the law books were laidaside.
Varney, who generally contrived to call when Ardworth was not there,seldom interrupted the lovers in their little paradise of the garden;but he took occasion to ripen and cement his intimacy with Percival.Sometimes he walked or (if St. John had his cabriolet) drove home anddined with him, tete-a-tete, in Curzon Street; and as he made Helen hischief subject of conversation, Percival could not but esteem him amongstthe most agreeable of men. With Helen, when Percival was not there,Varney held some secret conferences,--secret even from Percival. Two orthree times, before the hour in which Percival was accustomed to come,they had been out together; and Helen's face looked more cheerful thanusual on their return. It was not surprising that Gabriel Varney, sodispleasing to a man like Ardworth, should have won little less favourwith Helen than with Percival; for, to say nothing of an ease andsuavity of manner which stole into the confidence of those in whom toconfide was a natural propensity, his various acquisitions and talents,imposing from the surface over which they spread, and the glitterwhich they made, had an inevitable effect upon a mind so susceptibleas Helen's to admiration for art and respect for knowledge. But whatchiefly conciliated her to Varney, whom she regarded, moreover, as heraunt's most intimate friend, was that she was persuaded he wasunhappy, and wronged by the world of fortune. Varney had a habit of sorepresenting himself,--of dwelling with a bitter eloquence, whichhis natural malignity made forcible, on the injustice of the world tosuperior intellect. He was a great accuser of Fate. It is the illogicalweakness of some evil natures to lay all their crimes, and theconsequences of crime, upon Destiny. There was a heat, a vigour, a rushof words, and a readiness of strong, if trite, imagery in what Varneysaid that deceived the young into the monstrous error that he was anenthusiast,--misanthropical, perhaps, but only so from enthusiasm. Howcould Helen, whose slightest thought, when a star broke forth from thecloud, or a bird sung suddenly from the copse, had more of wisdom andof poetry than all Varney's gaudy and painted seemings ever could evenmimic,--how could she be so deceived? Yet so it was. Here stood a manwhose youth she supposed had been devoted to refined and elevatingpursuits, gifted, neglected, disappointed, solitary, and unhappy. Shesaw little beyond. You had but to touch her pity to win her interestand to excite her trust. Of anything further, even had Percival neverexisted, she could not have dreamed. It was because a secret andundefinable repugnance, in the midst of pity, trust, and friendship, putVarney altogether out of the light of a possible lover, that all thosesentiments were so easily kindled. This repugnance arose not fromthe disparity between their years; it was rather that namelessuncongeniality which does not forbid friendship, but is irreconcilablewith love. To do Varney justice, he never offered to reconcile the two.Not for love did he secretly confer with Helen; not for love did hisheart beat against the hand which reposed so carelessly on his murderousarm.