Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
fabulous Oedipus had not been more accursed!
Such thoughts as these, unformed, confused, but strong enough to bow him
to the dust, passed through the mind of this wretched man. He had been
familiar with grief, he had been dull to enjoyment; sad and bitter
memories had consumed his manhood: but pride had been left him still;
and he had dared in his secret heart to say, "I can defy Fate!" Now the
bolt had fallen; Pride was shattered into fragments, Self-abasement was
his companion, Shame sat upon his prostrate soul. The Future had no hope
left in store. Nothing was left for him but to die!
Lord Vargrave gazed at him in real pain, in sincere compassion; for his
nature, wily, deceitful, perfidious though it was, had cruelty only so
far as was necessary to the unrelenting execution of his schemes. No
pity could swerve him from a purpose; but he had enough of the man
within him to feel pity not the less, even for his own victim! At length
Maltravers lifted his head, and waved his hand gently to Lord Vargrave.
"All is now explained," said he, in a feeble voice; "our interview
is over. I must be alone; I have yet to collect my reason, to commune
calmly and deliberately with myself; I have to write to her--to invent,
to lie,--I, who believed I could never, never utter, even to an enemy,
what was false! And I must not soften the blow to her. I must not utter
a word of love,--love, it is incest! I must endeavour brutally to crush
out the very affection I created! She must hate me!--oh, _teach_ her
to hate me! Blacken my name, traduce my motives,--let her believe them
levity or perfidy, what you will. So will she forget me the sooner; so
will she the easier bear the sorrow which the father brings upon the
child. And _she_ has not sinned! O Heaven, the sin was mine! Let my
punishment be a sacrifice that Thou wilt accept for her!"
Lord Vargrave attempted again to console; but this time the words died
upon his lips. His arts failed him. Maltravers turned impatiently away
and pointed to the door.
"I will see you again," said he, "before I quit Paris; leave your
address below."
Vargrave was not, perhaps, unwilling to terminate a scene so painful:
he muttered a few incoherent words, and abruptly withdrew. He heard
the door locked behind him as he departed. Ernest Maltravers was
alone!--what a solitude!
CHAPTER IV.
PITY me not, but lend thy serious hearing
To what I shall unfold.--_Hamlet_.
LETTER FROM ERNEST MALTRAVERS TO EVELYN CAMERON.
EVELYN!
All that you have read of faithlessness and perfidy will seem tame to
you when compared with that conduct which you are doomed to meet from
me. We must part, and for ever. We have seen each other for the last
time. It is bootless even to ask the cause. Believe that I am fickle,
false, heartless,--that a whim has changed me, if you will. My resolve
is unalterable. We meet no more even as friends. I do not ask you either
to forgive or to remember me. Look on me as one wholly unworthy even
of resentment! Do not think that I write this in madness or in fever or
excitement. Judge me not by my seeming illness this morning. I invent no
excuse, no extenuation, for my broken faith and perjured vows. Calmly,
coldly, and deliberately I write; and thus writing, I renounce your
love.
This language is wanton cruelty,--it is fiendish insult,--is it not,
Evelyn? Am I not a villain? Are you not grateful for your escape? Do you
not look on the past with a shudder at the precipice on which you stood?
I have done with this subject,--I turn to another. We are parted,
Evelyn, and forever. Do not fancy,--I repeat, do not fancy that there
is any error, any strange infatuation on my mind, that there is any
possibility that the sentence can be annulled. It were almost easier to
call the dead from the grave than bring us again together, as we were
and as we hoped to be. Now that you are convinced of that truth, learn,
as soon as you have recovered the first shock of knowing how much
wickedness there is on earth,--learn to turn to the future for happier
and more suitable ties than those you could have formed with me. You
are very young; in youth our first impressions are lively but
evanescent,--you will wonder hereafter at having fancied you loved me.
Another and a fairer image will replace mine. This is what I desire and
pray for. _As soon as I learn that you love another, that you are wedded
to another, I will re-appear in the world; till then, I am a wanderer
and an exile. Your hand alone can efface from my brow the brand of
Cain!_ When I am gone, Lord Vargrave will probably renew his suit. I
would rather you married one of your own years,--one whom you could love
fondly, one who would chase away every remembrance of the wretch who
now forsakes you. But perhaps I have mistaken Lord Vargrave's character;
perhaps he may be worthier of you than I deemed (_I_ who set up for
the censor of other men!); perhaps he may both win and deserve your
affection.
Evelyn, farewell! God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, will
watch over you!
ERNEST MALTRAVERS.
CHAPTER V.
OUR acts our angels are, or good or ill,
The fatal shadows that walk by us still.--JOHN FLETCHER.
THE next morning came; the carriage was at the door of Maltravers, to
bear him away he cared not whither. Where could he fly from memory? He
had just despatched the letter to Evelyn,--a letter studiously written
for the object of destroying all the affection to which he had so fondly
looked as the last charm of life. He was now only waiting for Vargrave,
to whom he had sent, and who hastened to obey the summons.
When Lumley arrived, he was shocked at the alteration which a single
night had effected in the appearance of Maltravers; but he was surprised
and relieved to find him calm and self-possessed.
"Vargrave," said Maltravers, "whatever our past coldness, henceforth I
owe to you an eternal gratitude; and henceforth this awful secret makes
between us an indissoluble bond. If I have understood you rightly,
neither Alice nor other living being than yourself know that in me,
Ernest Maltravers, stands the guilty object of Alice's first love. Let
that secret still be kept; relieve Alice's mind from the apprehension of
learning that the man who betrayed her yet lives: he will not live
long! I leave time and method of explanation to your own judgment and
acuteness. Now for Evelyn." Here Maltravers stated generally the tone of
the letter he had written. Vargrave listened thoughtfully.
"Maltravers," said he, "it is right to try first the effect of your
letter. But if it fail, if it only serve to inflame the imagination and
excite the interest, if Evelyn still continue to love you, if that love
preys upon her, if it should undermine health and spirit, if it should
destroy her?"
Maltravers groaned. Lumley proceeded: "I say this not to wound you,
but to provide against all circumstances. I too have spent the night in
revolving what is best to be done in such a case; and this is the plan
I have formed. Let us, if need be, tell the truth to Evelyn, robbing
the truth only of its shame. Nay, nay, listen. Why not say that under a
borrowed name and in the romance of early youth you knew and loved Alice
(though in innocence and honour)? Your tender age, the difference of
rank, forbade your union. Her father, discovering your clandestine
correspondence, suddenly removed her from the country, and destroyed all
clew for your inquiries. You lost sight of each other,--each was taught
to believe the other dead. Alice was compelled by her father to marry
Mr. Cameron; and after his death, her poverty and her love for her only
child induced her to accept my uncle. You have now learned all,--have
learned that Evelyn is the daughter of your first love, the daughter
of one who adores you still, and whose life your remembrance has for so
many years embittered. Evelyn herself will at once comprehend all the
scruples of a delicate mind; Evelyn herself will recoil from the thought
of making the child the rival to the mother. She will understand why you
have flown from her; she will sympathize with your struggles; she will
recall the constant melancholy of Alice; she will hope that the ancient
love may be renewed, and efface all grief; Generosity and Duty alike
will urge her to conquer her own affection! And hereafter, when time
has restored you both, father and child may meet with such sentiments as
father and child may own!"
Maltravers was silent for some minutes; at length he said abruptly, "And
you really loved her, Vargrave,--you love her still? Your dearest care
must be her welfare."
"It is! indeed, it is!"
"Then I must trust to your discretion; I can have no other confidant;
I myself am not fit to judge. My mind is darkened--you may be right--I
think so."
"One word more,--she may discredit my tale, if unsupported. Will you
write one line to me to say that I am authorized to reveal the secret,
and that it is known only to me? I will not use it unless I should think
it absolutely required."
Hastily and mechanically Maltravers wrote a few words to the effect of
what Lumley had suggested. "I will inform you," he said to Vargrave as
he gave him the paper, "of whatever spot may become my asylum; and you
can communicate to me all that I dread and long to hear; but let no man
know the refuge of despair!"
There was positively a tear in Vargrave's cold eye,--the only tear that
had glistened there for many years; he paused irresolute, then advanced,
again halted, muttered to himself, and turned aside.
"As for the world," Lumley resumed, after a pause, "your engagement has
been public,--some public account of its breach must be invented. You
have always been considered a proud man; we will say that it was
low birth on the side of both mother and father (the last only just
discovered) that broke off the alliance!"
Vargrave was talking to the deaf; what cared Maltravers for the world?
He hastened from the room, threw himself into his carriage, and Vargrave
was left to plot, to hope, and to aspire.
BOOK X.
"A dream!"--HOMER, I, 3.
CHAPTER I.
QUALIS ubi in lucem coluber
... Mala gramina pastus.*--VIRGIL.
Pars minima est ipsa puella sui.**--OVID.
* "As when a snake glides into light, having fed on pernicious
pastures."
** "The girl is the least part of himself."
IT would be superfluous, and, perhaps, a sickening task, to detail at
length the mode and manner in which Vargrave coiled his snares round the
unfortunate girl whom his destiny had marked out for his prey. He was
right in foreseeing that, after the first amazement caused by the
letter of Maltravers, Evelyn would feel resentment crushed beneath her
certainty of his affection her incredulity at his self-accusations,
and her secret conviction that some reverse, some misfortune he was
unwilling she should share, was the occasion of his farewell and flight.
Vargrave therefore very soon communicated to Evelyn the tale he had
suggested to Maltravers. He reminded her of the habitual sorrow, the
evidence of which was so visible in Lady Vargrave; of her indifference
to the pleasures of the world; of her sensitive shrinking from all
recurrence to her early fate. "The secret of this," said he, "is in a
youthful and most fervent attachment; your mother loved a young stranger
above her in rank, who (his head being full of German romance) was then
roaming about the country on pedestrian and adventurous excursions,
under the assumed name of Butler. By him she was most ardently beloved
in return. Her father, perhaps, suspected the rank of her lover, and
was fearful of her honour being compromised. He was a strange man, that
father! and I know not his real character and motives; but he suddenly