Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
This was the case with Mrs. Westbrook; and this new turn of mind
brought her naturally into contact with the principal saint of the
neighbourhood, Mr. Richard Templeton. We have seen that that gentleman
was not happy in his first marriage; death had not then annulled the
bond. He was of an ardent and sensual temperament, and quietly, under
the broad cloak of his doctrines, he indulged his constitutional
tendencies. Perhaps in this respect he was not worse than nine men out
of ten. But then he professed to be better than nine hundred thousand
nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a million! To a fault of
temperament was added the craft of hypocrisy, and the vulgar error
became a dangerous vice. Upon Mary Westbrook, the widow's daughter, he
gazed with eyes that were far from being the eyes of the spirit. Even
at the age of fourteen she charmed him; but when, after watching
her ripening beauty expand, three years were added to that age,
Mr. Templeton was most deeply in love. Mary was indeed lovely,--her
disposition naturally good and gentle, but her education worse than
neglected. To the frivolities and meannesses of a second-rate fashion,
inculcated into her till her father's death, had now succeeded the
quackeries, the slavish subservience, the intolerant bigotries, of a
transcendental superstition. In a change so abrupt and violent, the
whole character of the poor girl was shaken; her principles unsettled,
vague, and unformed, and naturally of mediocre and even feeble
intellect, she clung to the first plank held out to her in "that wide
sea of wax" in which "she halted." Early taught to place the most
implicit faith in the dictates of Mr. Templeton, fastening her belief
round him as the vine winds its tendrils round the oak, yielding to his
ascendency, and pleased with his fostering and almost caressing manner,
no confessor in Papal Italy ever was more dangerous to village virtue
than Richard Templeton (who deemed himself the archetype of the only
pure Protestantism) to the morals and heart of Mary Westbrook.
Mrs. Westbrook, whose constitution had been prematurely broken by long
participation in the excesses of London dissipation and by the reverse
of fortune which still preyed upon a spirit it had rather soured than
humbled, died when Mary was eighteen. Templeton became the sole friend,
comforter, and supporter of the daughter.
In an evil hour (let us trust not from premeditated villany),--an hour
when the heart of one was softened by grief and gratitude, and the
conscience of the other laid asleep by passion, the virtue of Mary
Westbrook was betrayed. Her sorrow and remorse, his own fears of
detection and awakened self-reproach, occasioned Templeton the most
anxious and poignant regret. There had been a young woman in Mrs.
Westbrook's service, who had left it a short time before the widow died,
in consequence of her marriage. Her husband ill-used her; and glad to
escape from him and prove her gratitude to her employer's daughter, of
whom she had been extremely fond, she had returned to Miss Westbrook
after the funeral of her mother. The name of this woman was Sarah Miles.
Templeton saw that Sarah more than suspected his connection with Mary;
it was necessary to make a confidant,--he selected her. Miss Westbrook
was removed to a distant part of the country, and Templeton visited her
cautiously and rarely. Four months afterwards, Mrs. Templeton died, and
the husband was free to repair his wrong. Oh, how he then repented of
what had passed! but four months' delay, and all this sin and sorrow
might have been saved! He was now racked with perplexity and doubt: his
unfortunate victim was advanced in her pregnancy. It was necessary,
if he wished his child to be legitimate--still more if he wished to
preserve the honour of its mother--that he should not hesitate long in
the reparation to which duty and conscience urged him. But on the other
hand, he, the saint, the oracle, the immaculate example for all forms,
proprieties, and decorums, to scandalize the world by so rapid and
premature a hymen--
"Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in his galled eyes,
To marry."
No! he could not brave the sneer of the gossips, the triumph of his
foes, the dejection of his disciples, by so rank and rash a folly.
But still Mary pined so, he feared for her health--for his own unborn
offspring. There was a middle path,--a compromise between duty and
the world; he grasped at it as most men similarly situated would have
done,--they were married, but privately, and under feigned names: the
secret was kept close. Sarah Miles was the only witness acquainted with
the real condition and names of the parties.
Reconciled to herself, the bride recovered health and spirits, Templeton
formed the most sanguine hopes. He resolved, as soon as the confinement
was over, to go abroad; Mary should follow; in a foreign land they
should be publicly married; they would remain some years on the
Continent; when he returned, his child's age could be put back a year.
Oh, nothing could be more clear and easy!
Death shivered into atoms all the plans of Mr. Templeton. Mary suffered
most severely in childbirth, and died a few weeks afterwards. Templeton
at first was inconsolable, but worldly thoughts were great comforters.
He had done all that conscience could do to atone a sin, and he was
freed from a most embarrassing dilemma, and from a temporary banishment
utterly uncongenial and unpalatable to his habits and ideas. But now he
had a child,--a legitimate child, successor to his name, his wealth; a
first-born child,--the only one ever sprung from him, the prop and
hope of advancing years! On this child he doted with all that paternal
passion which the hardest and coldest men often feel the most for their
own flesh and blood--for fatherly love is sometimes but a transfer of
self-love from one fund to another.
Yet this child--this darling that he longed to show to the whole
world--it was absolutely necessary, for the present, that he should
conceal and disown. It had happened that Sarah's husband died of his own
excesses a few weeks before the birth of Templeton's child, she having
herself just recovered from her confinement; Sarah was therefore free
forever from her husband's vigilance and control. To her care the
destined heiress was committed, and her own child put out to nurse. And
this was the woman and this the child who had excited so much benevolent
curiosity in the breasts of the worthy clergyman and the three old maids
of C-----.* Alarmed at Sarah's account of the scrutiny of the parson,
and at his own rencontre with that hawk-eyed pastor, Templeton lost no
time in changing the abode of the nurse; and to her new residence had
the banker bent his way, with rod and angle, on that evening which
witnessed his adventure with Luke Darvil.** When Mr. Templeton first
met Alice, his own child was only about thirteen or fourteen months
old,--but little older than Alice's. If the beauty of Mrs. Leslie's
_protege_ first excited his coarser nature, her maternal tenderness,
her anxious care for her little one, struck a congenial chord in the
father's heart. It connected him with her by a mute and unceasing
sympathy. Templeton had felt so deeply the alarm and pain of illicit
love, he had been (as he profanely believed) saved from the brink of
public shame by so signal an interference of grace, that he resolved no
more to hazard his good name and his peace of mind upon such perilous
rocks. The dearest desire at his heart was to have his daughter under
his roof,--to fondle, to play with her, to watch her growth, to win
her affection. This, at present, seemed impossible. But if he were to
marry,--marry a widow, to whom he might confide all, or a portion, of
the truth; if that child could be passed off as hers--ah, that was the
best plan! And Templeton wanted a wife! Years were creeping on him, and
the day would come when a wife would be useful as a nurse. But Alice was
supposed to be a widow; and Alice was so meek, so docile, so motherly.
If she could be induced to remove from C-----, either part with her own
child or call it her niece,--and adopt his. Such, from time to time,
were Templeton's thoughts, as he visited Alice, and found, with every
visit, fresh evidence of her tender and beautiful disposition; such
the objects which, in the First Part of this work, we intimated were
different from those of mere admiration for her beauty.*** But again,
worldly doubts and fears--the dislike of so unsuitable an alliance, the
worse than lowness of Alice's origin, the dread of discovery for her
early error--held him back, wavering and irresolute. To say truth, too,
her innocence and purity of thought kept him at a certain distance.
He was acute enough to see that he--even he, the great Richard
Templeton--might be refused by the faithful Alice.
* See "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 164.
** "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 181.
*** "Our banker always seemed more struck by Alice's moral
feelings than even by her physical beauty. Her love for her
child, for instance, impressed him powerfully," etc. "His
feelings altogether for Alice, the designs he entertained
towards her, were of a very complicated nature, and it will
be long, perhaps, before the reader can thoroughly comprehend
them."--See "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 178.
At last Darvil was dead; he breathed more freely, he revolved more
seriously his projects; and at this time, Sarah, wooed by her first
lover, wished to marry again; his secret would pass from her breast to
her second husband's, and thence how far would it travel? Added to this,
Sarah's conscience grew uneasy; the brand ought to be effaced from the
memory of the dead mother, the legitimacy of the child proclaimed;
she became importunate, she wearied and she alarmed the pious man. He
therefore resolved to rid himself of the only witness to his marriage
whose testimony he had cause to fear,--of the presence of the only
one acquainted with his sin and the real name of the husband of Mary
Westbrook. He consented to Sarah's marriage with William Elton, and
offered a liberal dowry on the condition that she should yield to the
wish of Elton himself, an adventurous young man, who desired to try his
fortunes in the New World. His daughter he must remove elsewhere.
While this was going on, Alice's child, long delicate and drooping,
became seriously ill. Symptoms of decline appeared; the physician
recommended a milder air, and Devonshire was suggested. Nothing could
equal the generous, the fatherly kindness which Templeton evinced on
this most painful occasion. He insisted on providing Alice with the
means to undertake the journey with ease and comfort; and poor Alice,
with a heart heavy with gratitude and sorrow, consented for her child's
sake to all he offered.
Now the banker began to perceive that all his hopes and wishes were in
good train. He foresaw that the child of Alice was doomed!--that was one
obstacle out of the way. Alice herself was to be removed from the sphere
of her humble calling. In a distant county she might appear of better
station, and under another name. Conformably to these views, he
suggested to her that, in proportion to the seeming wealth and
respectability of patients, did doctors attend to their complaints. He
proposed that Alice should depart privately to a town many miles off;
that there he would provide for her a carriage, and engage a servant;
that he would do this for her as for a relation, and that she should
take that relation's name. To this, Alice rapt in her child, and
submissive to all that might be for the child's benefit, passively
consented. It was arranged then as proposed, and under the name of