CHAPTER IV. GUY'S OAK.
Three weeks afterwards, the life at Laughton seemed restored to thecheerful and somewhat monotonous tranquillity of its course, beforechafed and disturbed by the recent interruptions to the stream. Vernonhad departed, satisfied with the justice of the trial imposed on him,and far too high-spirited to seek to extort from niece or uncle anyengagement beyond that which, to a nice sense of honour, the trialitself imposed. His memory and his heart were still faithful to Mary;but his senses, his fancy, his vanity, were a little involved in hissuccess with the heiress. Though so free from all mercenary meanness,Mr. Vernon was still enough man of the world to be sensible of theadvantages of the alliance which had first been pressed on him by SirMiles, and from which Lucretia herself appeared not to be averse. Theseason of London was over, but there was always a set, and that set theone in which Charley Vernon principally moved, who found town fullerthan the country. Besides, he went occasionally to Brighton, which wasthen to England what Baiae was to Rome. The prince was holding gay courtat the Pavilion, and that was the atmosphere which Vernon was habituatedto breathe. He was no parasite of royalty; he had that strong personalaffection to the prince which it is often the good fortune of royalty toattract. Nothing is less founded than the complaint which poets put intothe lips of princes, that they have no friends,--it is, at least, theirown perverse fault if that be the case; a little amiability, a little offrank kindness, goes so far when it emanates from the rays of a crown.But Vernon was stronger than Lucretia deemed him; once contemplating theprospect of a union which was to consign to his charge the happiness ofanother, and feeling all that he should owe in such a marriage to theconfidence both of niece and uncle, he evinced steadier principles thanhe had ever made manifest when he had only his own fortune to mar, andhis own happiness to trifle with. He joined his old companions, but hekept aloof from their more dissipated pursuits. Beyond what was thenthought the venial error of too devout libations to Bacchus, CharleyVernon seemed reformed.
Ardworth had joined a regiment which had departed for the field ofaction. Mainwaring was still with his father, and had not yet announcedto Sir Miles any wish or project for the future.
Olivier Dalibard, as before, passed his mornings alone in hischamber,--his noons and his evenings with Sir Miles. He avoided allprivate conferences with Lucretia. She did not provoke them. YoungGabriel amused himself in copying Sir Miles's pictures, sketching fromNature, scribbling in his room prose or verse, no matter which (he nevershowed his lucubrations), pinching the dogs when he could catch themalone, shooting the cats, if they appeared in the plantation, onpretence of love for the young pheasants, sauntering into the cottages,where he was a favourite because of his good looks, but where he alwayscontrived to leave the trace of his visits in disorder and mischief,upsetting the tea-kettle and scalding the children, or, what he loveddearly, setting two gossips by the ears. But these occupations were overby the hour Lucretia left her apartment. From that time he never lefther out of view; and when encouraged to join her at his usual privilegedtimes, whether in the gardens at sunset or in her evening niche inthe drawing-room, he was sleek, silken, and caressing as Cupid, afterplaguing the Nymphs, at the feet of Psyche. These two strange personshad indeed apparently that sort of sentimental familiarity which issometimes seen between a fair boy and a girl much older than himself;but the attraction that drew them together was an indefinable instinctof their similarity in many traits of their several characters,--thewhelp leopard sported fearlessly around the she-panther. BeforeOlivier's midnight conference with his son, Gabriel had drawn close andcloser to Lucretia, as an ally against his father; for that father hecherished feelings which, beneath the most docile obedience, concealedhorror and hate, and something of the ferocity of revenge. And if youngVarney loved any one on earth except himself, it was Lucretia Clavering.She had administered to his ruling passions, which were for effectand display; she had devised the dress which set off to the utmost hisexterior, and gave it that picturesque and artistic appearance which hehad sighed for in his study of the portraits of Titian and Vandyke. Shesupplied him (for in money she was generous) with enough to gratify andforestall every boyish caprice; and this liberality now turned againsther, for it had increased into a settled vice his natural taste forextravagance, and made all other considerations subordinate to thatof feeding his cupidity. She praised his drawings, which, thoughself-taught, were indeed extraordinary, predicted his fame as anartist, lifted him into consequence amongst the guests by her notice andeulogies, and what, perhaps, won him more than all, he felt that itwas to her--to Dalibard's desire to conceal before her his more cruelpropensities--that he owed his father's change from the most refinedseverity to the most paternal gentleness.
And thus he had repaid her, as she expected, by a devotion which shetrusted to employ against her tutor himself, should the baffled aspirantbecome the scheming rival and the secret foe. But now,--thoroughly awareof the gravity of his father's objects, seeing before him the chanceof a settled establishment at Laughton, a positive and influentialconnection with Lucretia; and on the other hand a return to the povertyhe recalled with disgust, and the terrors of his father's solitarymalice and revenge,--he entered fully into Dalibard's sombre plans,and without scruple or remorse, would have abetted any harm to hisbenefactress. Thus craft, doomed to have accomplices in craft,resembles the spider, whose web, spread indeed for the fly, attracts thefellow-spider that shall thrust it forth, and profit by the meshes ithas woven for a victim, to surrender to a master.
Already young Varney, set quietly and ceaselessly to spy every movementof Lucretia's, had reported to his father two visits to the most retiredpart of the park; but he had not yet ventured near enough to discoverthe exact spot, and his very watch on Lucretia had preventedthe detection of Mainwaring himself in his stealthy exchange ofcorrespondence. Dalibard bade him continue his watch, without hinting athis ulterior intentions, for, indeed, in these he was not decided. Evenshould he discover any communication between Lucretia and Mainwaring,how reveal it to Sir Miles without forever precluding himself from thechance of profiting by the betrayal? Could Lucretia ever forgive theinjury, and could she fail to detect the hand that inflicted it? Hisonly hope was in the removal of Mainwaring from his path by otheragencies than his own, and (by an appearance of generosity andself-abandonment, in keeping her secret and submitting to his fate) hetrusted to regain the confidence she now withheld from him, and use itto his advantage when the time came to defend himself from Vernon. Forhe had learned from Sir Miles the passive understanding with respectto that candidate for her hand; and he felt assured that had Mainwaringnever existed, could he cease to exist for her hopes, Lucretia, despiteher dissimulation, would succumb to one she feared but respected, ratherthan one she evidently trifled with and despised.
"But the course to be taken must be adopted after the evidence iscollected," thought the subtle schemer, and he tranquilly continued hischess with the baronet.
Before, however, Gabriel could make any further discoveries, an eventoccurred which excited very different emotions amongst those it moreimmediately interested.
Sir Miles had, during the last twelve months, been visited by twoseizures, seemingly of an apoplectic character. Whether they wereapoplexy, or the less alarming attacks that arise from some more gentlecongestion, occasioned by free living and indolent habits, was matterof doubt with his physician,--not a very skilful, though a veryformal, man. Country doctors were not then the same able, educated, andscientific class that they are now rapidly becoming. Sir Miles himselfso stoutly and so eagerly repudiated the least hint of the moreunfavourable interpretation that the doctor, if not convinced by hispatient, was awed from expressing plainly a contrary opinion. There arecertain persons who will dismiss their physician if he tells them thetruth: Sir Miles was one of them.
In his character there was a weakness not uncommon to the proud. Hedid not fear death, but he shrank from the thought that others shouldcalculate on his dying. He was fond of hi
s power, though he exercisedit gently: he knew that the power of wealth and station is enfeebled inproportion as its dependants can foresee the date of its transfer. Hedreaded, too, the comments which are always made on those visited by hispeculiar disease: "Poor Sir Miles! an apoplectic fit. His intellectmust be very much shaken; he revoked at whist last night,--memory sadlyimpaired!" This may be a pitiable foible; but heroes and statesmen havehad it most: pardon it in the proud old man! He enjoined the physicianto state throughout the house and the neighbourhood that the attackswere wholly innocent and unimportant. The physician did so, and wasgenerally believed; for Sir Miles seemed as lively and as vigorousafter them as before. Two persons alone were not deceived,--Dalibardand Lucretia. The first, at an earlier part of his life, had studiedpathology with the profound research and ingenious application which hebrought to bear upon all he undertook. He whispered from the first toLucretia,--"Unless your uncle changes his habits, takes exercise, andforbears wine and the table, his days are numbered."
And when this intelligence was first conveyed to her, before she hadbecome acquainted with Mainwaring, Lucretia felt the shock of a griefsudden and sincere. We have seen how these better sentiments changedas human life became an obstacle in her way. In her character, whatphrenologists call "destructiveness," in the comprehensive sense of theword, was superlatively developed. She had not actual cruelty; she wasnot bloodthirsty: those vices belong to a different cast of character.She was rather deliberately and intellectually unsparing. A goal wasbefore her; she must march to it: all in the way were but hostileimpediments. At first, however, Sir Miles was not in the way, except tofortune, and for that, as avarice was not her leading vice, she couldwell wait; therefore, at this hint of the Provencal's she ventured tourge her uncle to abstinence and exercise. But Sir Miles was touchy onthe subject; he feared the interpretations which great change of habitsmight suggest. The memory of the fearful warning died away, and he feltas well as before; for, save an old rheumatic gout (which had long sinceleft him with no other apparent evil but a lameness in the joints thatrendered exercise unwelcome and painful), he possessed one of thosecomfortable, and often treacherous, constitutions which evince nodispleasure at irregularities, and bear all liberties with philosophicalcomposure. Accordingly, he would have his own way; and he contrivedto coax or to force his doctor into an authority on his side: wine wasnecessary to his constitution; much exercise was a dangerous fatigue.The second attack, following four months after the first, was lessalarming, and Sir Miles fancied it concealed even from his niece; butthree nights after his recovery, the old baronet sat musing alone forsome time in his own room before he retired to rest. Then he rose,opened his desk, and read his will attentively, locked it up with aslight sigh, and took down his Bible. The next morning he despatchedthe letters which summoned Ardworth and Vernon to his house; and as hequitted his room, his look lingered with melancholy fondness upon theportraits in the gallery. No one was by the old man to interpret theseslight signs, in which lay a world of meaning.
A few weeks after Vernon had left the house, and in the midst of therestored tranquillity we have described, it so happened that Sir Miles'sphysician, after dining at the Hall, had been summoned to attend one ofthe children at the neighbouring rectory; and there he spent the night.A little before daybreak his slumbers were disturbed; he was recalledin all haste to Laughton Hall. For the third time, he found Sir Milesspeechless. Dalibard was by his bedside. Lucretia had not been madeaware of the seizure; for Sir Miles had previously told his valet (whoof late slept in the same room) never to alarm Miss Clavering if he wastaken ill. The doctor was about to apply his usual remedies; but when hedrew forth his lancet, Dalibard placed his hand on the physician's arm.
"Not this time," he said slowly, and with emphasis; "it will be hisdeath."
"Pooh, sir!" said the doctor, disdainfully.
"Do so, then; bleed him, and take the responsibility. I have studiedmedicine,--I know these symptoms. In this case the apoplexy mayspare,--the lancet kills."
The physician drew back dismayed and doubtful.
"What would you do, then?"
"Wait three minutes longer the effect of the cataplasms I have applied.If they fail--"
"Ay, then?"
"A chill bath and vigorous friction."
"Sir, I will never permit it."
"Then murder your patient your own way."
All this while Sir Miles lay senseless, his eyes wide open, histeeth locked. The doctor drew near, looked at the lancet, and saidirresolutely,--
"Your practice is new to me; but if you have studied medicine, that'sanother matter. Will you guarantee the success of your plan?"
"Yes."
"Mind, I wash my hands of it; I take Mr. Jones to witness;" and heappealed to the valet.
"Call up the footman and lift your master," said Dalibard; and thedoctor, glancing round, saw that a bath, filled some seven or eightinches deep with water, stood already prepared in the room. Perplexedand irresolute, he offered no obstacle to Dalibard's movements. Thebody, seemingly lifeless, was placed in the bath; and the servants,under Dalibard's directions, applied vigorous and incessant friction.Several minutes elapsed before any favourable symptom took place. Atlength Sir Miles heaved a deep sigh, and the eyes moved; a minute or twomore, and the teeth chattered; the blood, set in motion, appeared on thesurface of the skin; life ebbed back. The danger was passed, thedark foe driven from the citadel. Sir Miles spoke audibly, thoughincoherently, as he was taken back to his bed, warmly covered up, thelights removed, noise forbidden, and Dalibard and the doctor remained insilence by the bedside.
"Rich man," thought Dalibard, "thine hour is not yet come; thy wealthmust not pass to the boy Mainwaring." Sir Miles's recovery, under thecare of Dalibard, who now had his own way, was as rapid and complete asbefore. Lucretia when she heard, the next morning, of the attack, felt,we dare not say a guilty joy, but a terrible and feverish agitation.Sir Miles himself, informed by his valet of Dalibard's wrestle with thedoctor, felt a profound gratitude and reverent wonder for the simplemeans to which he probably owed his restoration; and he listened, witha docility which Dalibard was not prepared to expect, to his learnedsecretary's urgent admonitions as to the life he must lead if he desiredto live at all. Convinced, at last, that wine and good cheer had notblockaded out the enemy, and having to do, in Olivier Dalibard, with avery different temper from the doctor's, he assented with a tolerablegrace to the trial of a strict regimen and to daily exercise in theopen air. Dalibard now became constantly with him; the increase of hisinfluence was as natural as it was apparent. Lucretia trembled; shedivined a danger in his power, now separate from her own, and whichthreatened to be independent of it. She became abstracted and uneasy;jealousy of the Provencal possessed her. She began to meditate schemesfor his downfall. At this time, Sir Miles received the following letterfrom Mr. Fielden:--
SOUTHAMPTON, Aug. 20, 1801.
DEAR SIR MILES,--You will remember that I informed you when I arrivedat Southampton with my dear young charge; and Susan has twice writtento her sister, implying the request which she lacked the courage, seeingthat she is timid, expressly to urge, that Miss Clavering might again bepermitted to visit her. Miss Clavering has answered as might be expectedfrom the propinquity of the relationship; but she has perhaps the samefears of offending you that actuate her sister. But now, since theworthy clergyman who had undertaken my parochial duties has found theair insalubrious, and prays me not to enforce the engagement by which wehad exchanged our several charges for the space of a calendar year, I amreluctantly compelled to return home,--my dear wife, thank Heaven, beingalready restored to health, which is an unspeakable mercy; and I amsure I cannot be sufficiently grateful to Providence, which has not onlyprovided me with a liberal independence of more than 200 pounds a year,but the best of wives and the most dutiful of children,--possessionsthat I venture to call "the riches of the heart." Now, I pray you, mydear Sir Miles, to gratify these two deserving young persons, and tosuffer Miss Lu
cretia incontinently to visit her sister. Counting on yourconsent, thus boldly demanded, I have already prepared an apartment forMiss Clavering; and Susan is busy in what, though I do not know much ofsuch feminine matters, the whole house declares to be a most beautifuland fanciful toilet-cover, with roses and forget-me-nots cut out ofmuslin, and two large silk tassels, which cost her three shillings andfourpence. I cannot conclude without thanking you from my heart for yournoble kindness to young Ardworth. He is so full of ardour and spiritthat I remember, poor lad, when I left him, as I thought, hard atwork on that well-known problem of Euclid vulgarly called the Asses'Bridge,--I found him describing a figure of 8 on the village pond, whichwas only just frozen over! Poor lad! Heaven will take care of him, Iknow, as it does of all who take no care of themselves. Ah, Sir Miles,if you could but see Susan,--such a nurse, too, in illness! I have thehonour to be, Sir Miles,
Your most humble, poor servant, to command,
MATTHEW FIELDEN.
Sir Miles put this letter in his niece's hand, and said kindly, "Why nothave gone to see your sister before? I should not have been angry. Go,my child, as soon as you like. To-morrow is Sunday,--no travelling thatday; but the next, the carriage shall be at your order."
Lucretia hesitated a moment. To leave Dalibard in sole possession of thefield, even for a few days, was a thought of alarm; but what evil couldhe do in that time? And her pulse beat quickly: Mainwaring could cometo Southampton; she should see him again, after more than six weeks'absence! She had so much to relate and to hear; she fancied his lastletter had been colder and shorter; she yearned to hear him say, withhis own lips, that he loved her still. This idea banished or prevailedover all others. She thanked her uncle cheerfully and gayly, and thejourney was settled.
"Be at watch early on Monday," said Olivier to his son.
Monday came; the baronet had ordered the carriage to be at the doorat ten. A little before eight, Lucretia stole out, and took her way toGuy's Oak. Gabriel had placed himself in readiness; he had climbed atree at the bottom of the park (near the place where hitherto he hadlost sight of her); she passed under it,--on through a dark grove ofpollard oaks. When she was at a sufficient distance, the boy droppedfrom his perch; with the stealth of an Indian he crept on her trace,following from tree to tree, always sheltered, always watchful. He sawher pause at the dell and look round; she descended into the hollow;he slunk through the fern; he gained the marge of the dell, and lookeddown,--she was lost to his sight. At length, to his surprise, he saw thegleam of her robe emerge from the hollow of a tree,--her head stoopedas she came through the aperture; he had time to shrink back amongst thefern; she passed on hurriedly, the same way she had taken, back to thehouse; then into the dell crept the boy. Guy's Oak, vast and venerable,with gnarled green boughs below, and sere branches above, that told thatits day of fall was decreed at last, rose high from the abyss ofthe hollow, high and far-seen amidst the trees that stood on thevantage-ground above,--even as a great name soars the loftier when itsprings from the grave. A dark and irregular fissure gave entranceto the heart of the oak. The boy glided in and looked round; he sawnothing, yet something there must be. The rays of the early sun did notpenetrate into the hollow, it was as dim as a cave. He felt slowly inevery crevice, and a startled moth or two flew out. It was not for mothsthat the girl had come to Guy's Oak! He drew back, at last, in despair;as he did so, he heard a low sound close at hand,--a low, murmuring,angry sound, like a hiss; he looked round, and through the dark, twoburning eyes fixed his own: he had startled a snake from its bed. Hedrew out in time, as the reptile sprang; but now his task, search, andobject were forgotten. With the versatility of a child, his thoughtswere all on the enemy he had provoked. That zest of prey which isinherent in man's breast, which makes him love the sport and the chase,and maddens boyhood and age with the passion for slaughter, leaped upwithin him; anything of danger and contest and excitement gave GabrielVarney a strange fever of pleasure. He sprang up the sides of the dell,climbed the park pales on which it bordered, was in the wood where theyoung shoots rose green and strong from the underwood. To cut a stafffor the strife, to descend again into the dell, creep again throughthe fissure, look round for those vengeful eyes, was quick done as thejoyous play of the impulse. The poor snake had slid down in content andfancied security; its young, perhaps, were not far off; its wrath hadbeen the instinct Nature gives to the mother. It hath done thee no harmyet, boy; leave it in peace! The young hunter had no ear to such whisperof prudence or mercy. Dim and blind in the fissure, he struck the groundand the tree with his stick, shouted out, bade the eyes gleam, anddefied them. Whether or not the reptile had spent its ire in the firstfruitless spring, and this unlooked-for return of the intruder ratherdaunted than exasperated, we leave those better versed in naturalhistory to conjecture; but instead of obeying the challenge and courtingthe contest, it glided by the sides of the oak, close to the very feetof its foe, and emerging into the light, dragged its gray coils throughthe grass; but its hiss still betrayed it. Gabriel sprang through thefissure and struck at the craven, insulting it with a laugh of scornas he struck. Suddenly it halted, suddenly reared its crest; the throatswelled with venom, the tongue darted out, and again, green as emeralds,glared the spite of its eyes. No fear felt Gabriel Varney; his arm wasaverted; he gazed, spelled and admiringly, with the eye of an artist.Had he had pencil and tablet at that moment, he would have dropped hisweapon for the sketch, though the snake had been as deadly as the viperof Sumatra. The sight sank into his memory, to be reproduced often bythe wild, morbid fancies of his hand. Scarce a moment, however, had hefor the gaze; the reptile sprang, and fell, baffled and bruised bythe involuntary blow of its enemy. As it writhed on the grass, how itscolours came out; how graceful were the movements of its pain! And stillthe boy gazed, till the eye was sated and the cruelty returned. A blow,a second, a third,--all the beauty is gone; shapeless, and clotted withgore, that elegant head; mangled and dissevered the airy spires of thatdelicate shape, which had glanced in its circling involutions, freeand winding as a poet's thought through his verse. The boy trampled thequivering relics into the sod, with a fierce animal joy of conquest, andturned once more towards the hollow, for a last almost hopeless survey.Lo, his object was found! In his search for the snake, either his staffor his foot had disturbed a layer of moss in the corner; the faint ray,ere he entered the hollow, gleamed upon something white. He emerged fromthe cavity with a letter in his hand; he read the address, thrust itinto his bosom, and as stealthily, but more rapidly, than he had come,took his way to his father.