Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
acquainted,--the robbery of the cottage, the disappearance of Alice, the
suspicions that connected that disappearance with her ruffian father,
the despair and search of Maltravers. He added that Ernest, both before
his departure from England, and on his return, had written to him to
learn if Alice had ever been heard of; the replies of the magistrate
were unsatisfactory. "And do you think, my lord, that Mr. Maltravers has
never to this day ascertained what became of the poor young woman?"
"Why, let me see,--what was her name?"
The magistrate thought a moment, and replied, "Alice Darvil."
"Alice!" exclaimed Vargrave. "Alice!"--aware that such was the Christian
name of his uncle's wife, and now almost convinced of the truth of his
first vague suspicion.
"You seem to know the name?"
"Of Alice; yes--but not Darvil. No, no; I believe he has never heard of
the girl to this hour. Nor you either?"
"I have not. One little circumstance related to me by Mr. Hobbs, your
surveyor's father, gave me some uneasiness. About two years after the
young woman disappeared, a girl, of very humble dress and appearance,
stopped at the gate of Hobbs' Lodge, and asked earnestly for Mr. Butler.
On hearing he was gone, she turned away, and was seen no more. It seems
that this girl had an infant in her arms--which rather shocked
the propriety of Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs. The old gentleman told me the
circumstance a few days after it happened, and I caused inquiry to be
made for the stranger; but she could not be discovered. I thought at
first this possibly might be the lost Alice; but I learned that, during
his stay at the cottage, your friend--despite his error, which we will
not stop to excuse--had exercised so generous and wide a charity amongst
the poor in the town and neighbourhood, that it was a more probable
supposition of the two that the girl belonged to some family he
had formerly relieved, and her visit was that of a mendicant, not a
mistress. Accordingly, after much consideration, I resolved not to
mention the circumstances to Mr. Maltravers, when he wrote to me on his
return from the Continent. A considerable time had then elapsed since
the girl had applied to Mr. Hobbs; all trace of her was lost; the
incident might open wounds that time must have nearly healed, might give
false hopes--or, what was worse, occasion a fresh and unfounded remorse
at the idea of Alice's destitution; it would, in fact, do no good, and
might occasion unnecessary pain. I therefore suppressed all mention of
it."
"You did right: and so the poor girl had an infant in her arms?--humph!
What sort of looking person was this Alice Darvil,--pretty, of course?"
"I never saw her; and none but the persons employed in the premises knew
her by sight; they described her as remarkably lovely."
"Fair and slight, with blue eyes, I suppose?--those are the orthodox
requisites of a heroine."
"Upon my word I forget; indeed I should never have remembered as much
as I do, if the celebrity of Mr. Maltravers, and the consequence of his
family in these parts, together with the sight of his own agony--the
most painful I ever witnessed--had not served to impress the whole
affair very deeply on my mind."
"Was the girl who appeared at the gate of Hobbs' Lodge described to
you?"
"No; they scarcely observed her countenance, except that her complexion
was too fair for a gypsy's; yet, now I think of it, Mrs. Tiddy, who was
with her father when he told me the adventure, dwelt particularly on her
having (as you so pleasantly conjecture) fair hair and blue eyes. Mrs.
Tiddy, being just married, was romantic at that day."
"Well, it is an odd tale; but life is full of odd tales. Here we are at
the house; it really is a splendid old place!"
CHAPTER V.
PENDENT opera interrupta.*--VIRGIL.
* "The things begun are interrupted and suspended."
THE history Vargrave had heard he revolved much when he retired to rest.
He could not but allow that there was still little ground for more than
conjecture that Alice Darvil and Alice Lady Vargrave were one and the
same person. It might, however, be of great importance to him to trace
this conjecture to certainty. The knowledge of a secret of early sin and
degradation in one so pure, so spotless, as Lady Vargrave, might be of
immense service in giving him a power over her, which he could turn to
account with Evelyn. How could he best prosecute further inquiry,--by
repairing at once to Brook-Green, or--the thought struck him--by
visiting and "pumping" Mrs. Leslie, the patroness of Mrs. Butler, of
C-----, the friend of Lady Vargrave? It was worth trying the latter,--it
was little out of his way back to London. His success in picking the
brains of Mr. Onslow of a secret encouraged him in the hope of equal
success with Mrs. Leslie. He decided accordingly, and fell asleep
to dream of Christmas _battues_, royal visitors, the Cabinet, the
premiership! Well, no possession equals the dream of it! Sleep on, my
lord! you would be restless enough if you were to get all you want.
For the next three days, Lord Vargrave was employed in examining the
general outlines of the estate; and the result of this survey satisfied
him as to the expediency of the purchase. On the third day, he was
several miles from the house when a heavy rain came on. Lord Vargrave
was constitutionally hardy, and not having been much exposed to
visitations of the weather of late years, was not practically aware that
when a man is past forty, he cannot endure with impunity all that falls
innocuously on the elasticity of twenty-six. He did not, therefore,
heed the rain that drenched him to the skin, and neglected to change
his dress till he had finished reading some letters and newspapers which
awaited his return at Lisle Court. The consequence of this imprudence
was, that the next morning when he woke, Lord Vargrave found himself,
for almost the first time in his life, seriously ill. His head ached
violently, cold shiverings shook his frame like an ague; the very
strength of the constitution on which the fever had begun to fasten
itself augmented its danger. Lumley--the last man in the world to think
of the possibility of dying--fought up against his own sensations,
ordered his post-horses, as his visit of survey was now over, and
scarcely even alluded to his indisposition. About an hour before he
set off, his letters arrived; one of these informed him that Caroline,
accompanied by Evelyn, had already arrived in Paris; the other was from
Colonel Legard, respectfully resigning his office, on the ground of
an accession of fortune by the sudden death of the admiral, and his
intention to spend the ensuing year in a Continental excursion. This
last letter occasioned Vargrave considerable alarm; he had always felt
a deep jealousy of the handsome ex-guardsman, and he at once suspected
that Legard was about to repair to Paris as his rival. He sighed, and
looked round the spacious apartment, and gazed on the wide prospects of
grove and turf that extended from the window, and said to himself, "Is
another to snatch these from my grasp?" His impatience to visit Mrs.
Leslie, to gain ascendency over Lady Vargrave, to repair to Paris,
to scheme, to manoeuvre, to triumph, accelerated the progress of the
disease that was now burning in his veins; and the hand that he held out
to Mr. Hobbs, as he stepped into his carriage, almost scorched the cold,
plump, moist fingers of the surveyor. Before six o'clock in the evening
Lord Vargrave confessed reluctantly to himself that he was too ill to
proceed much farther. "Howard," said he then, breaking a silence that
had lasted some hours, "don't be alarmed; I feel that I am about to have
a severe attack; I shall stop at M-----(naming a large town they were
approaching); I shall send for the best physician the place affords;
if I am delirious to-morrow, or unable to give my own orders, have the
kindness to send express for Dr. Holland,--but don't leave me yourself,
my good fellow. At my age, it is a hard thing to have no one in the
world to care for me in illness; d-----n affection when I am well!"
After this strange burst, which very much frightened Mr. Howard, Lumley
relapsed into silence, not broken till he reached M-----. The best
physician was sent for; and the next morning, as he had half foreseen
and foretold, Lord Vargrave _was_ delirious!
CHAPTER VI.
NOUGHT under Heaven so strongly doth allure
The sense of man, and all his mind possess,
As Beauty's love-bait.--SPENSER.
LEGARD was, as I have before intimated, a young man of generous and
excellent dispositions, though somewhat spoiled by the tenor of his
education, and the gay and reckless society which had administered
tonics to his vanity and opiates to his intellect. The effect which the
beauty, the grace, the innocence of Evelyn had produced upon him had
been most deep and most salutary. It had rendered dissipation tasteless
and insipid; it had made him look more deeply into his own heart, and
into the rules of life. Though, partly from irksomeness of dependence
upon an uncle at once generous and ungracious, partly from a diffident
and feeling sense of his own inadequate pretensions to the hand of
Miss Cameron, and partly from the prior and acknowledged claims of Lord
Vargrave, he had accepted, half in despair, the appointment offered to
him, he still found it impossible to banish that image which had been
the first to engrave upon ardent and fresh affections an indelible
impression. He secretly chafed at the thought that it was to a fortunate
rival that he owed the independence and the station he had acquired, and
resolved to seize an early opportunity to free himself from obligations
that he deeply regretted he had incurred. At length he learned that Lord
Vargrave had been refused,--that Evelyn was free; and within a few days
from that intelligence, the admiral was seized with apoplexy; and
Legard suddenly found himself possessed, if not of wealth, at least of
a competence sufficient to redeem his character as a suitor from the
suspicion attached to a fortune-hunter and adventurer. Despite the new
prospects opened to him by the death of his uncle, and despite the surly
caprice which had mingled with and alloyed the old admiral's kindness,
Legard was greatly shocked by his death; and his grateful and gentle
nature was at first only sensible to grief for the loss he had
sustained. But when, at last, recovering from his sorrow, he saw Evelyn
disengaged and free, and himself in a position honourably to contest her
hand, he could not resist the sweet and passionate hopes that broke upon
him. He resigned, as we have seen, his official appointment, and set out
for Paris. He reached that city a day or two after the arrival of Lord
and Lady Doltimore. He found the former, who had not forgotten the
cautions of Vargrave, at first cold and distant; but partly from the
indolent habit of submitting to Legard's dictates on matters of taste,
partly from a liking to his society, and principally from the popular
suffrages of fashion, which had always been accorded to Legard, and
which were nowadays diminished by the news of his accession of fortune,
Lord Doltimore, weak and vain, speedily yielded to the influences of his
old associate, and Legard became quietly installed as the _enfant de
la maison_. Caroline was not in this instance a very faithful ally
to Vargrave's views and policy. In his singular _liaison_ with Lady
Doltimore, the crafty manoeuvrer had committed the vulgar fault of
intriguers: he had over-refined and had overreached himself. At the
commencement of their strange and unprincipled intimacy, Vargrave had
had, perhaps, no other thought than that of piquing Evelyn, consoling
his vanity, amusing his _ennui_, and indulging rather his propensities