Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
Cameron, which, as at once a common yet a well-sounding name, occurred
to his invention, Alice departed with her sick charge and a female
attendant (who knew nothing of her previous calling or story), on the
road to Devonshire. Templeton himself resolved to follow her thither in
a few days; and it was fixed that they should meet at Exeter.
It was on this melancholy journey that occurred that memorable day when
Alice once more beheld Maltravers; and, as she believed, uttering the
vows of love to another.* The indisposition of her child had delayed her
some hours at the inn: the poor sufferer had fallen asleep; and Alice
had stolen from its couch for a little while, when her eyes rested on
the father. Oh, how then she longed, she burned to tell him of the new
sanctity, that, by a human life, had been added to their early love! And
when, crushed and sick at heart, she turned away, and believed herself
forgotten and replaced, it was the pride of the mother rather than of
the mistress that supported her. She, meek creature, felt not the
injury to herself; but _his_ child,--the sufferer, perhaps the dying
one,--_there_, _there_ was the wrong! No! she would not hazard the
chance of a cold--great Heaven! perchance an _incredulous_--look upon
the hushed, pale face above. But little time was left for thought, for
explanation, for discovery. She saw him--unconscious of the ties so
near, and thus lost--depart as a stranger from the spot; and henceforth
was gone the sweet hope of living for the future. Nothing was left
her but the pledge of that which had been. Mournful, despondent, half
broken-hearted, she resumed her journey. At Exeter she was joined, as
agreed, by Mr. Templeton; and with him came a fair, a blooming, and
healthful girl to contrast her own drooping charge. Though but a few
weeks older, you would have supposed the little stranger by a year the
senior of Alice's child: the one was so well grown, so advanced; the
other so backward, so nipped in the sickly bud.
* See "Ernest Maltravers," book v., p. 221.
"You can repay me for all, for more than I have done; more than I
ever can do for you and yours," said Templeton, "by taking this young
stranger also under your care. It is the child of one dear, most dear
to me; an orphan; I know not with whom else to place it. Let it for the
present be supposed your own,--the elder child."
Alice could refuse nothing to her benefactor; but her heart did not open
at first to the beautiful girl, whose sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks
mocked the languid looks and faded hues of her own darling. But the
sufferer seemed to hail a playmate; it smiled, it put forth its poor,
thin hands; it uttered its inarticulate cry of pleasure, and Alice burst
into tears, and clasped them _both_ to her heart.
Mr. Templeton took care not to rest under the same roof with her he
now seriously intended to make his wife; but he followed Alice to the
seaside, and visited her daily. Her infant rallied; it was tenacious
of the upper air; it clung to life so fondly; poor child, it could not
foresee what a bitter thing to some of us life is! And now it was that
Templeton, learning from Alice her adventure with her absent lover,
learning that all hope in that quarter was gone, seized the occasion,
and pressed his suit. Alice at the hour was overflowing with gratitude;
in her child's reviving looks she read all her obligations to her
benefactor. But still, at the word _love_, at the name of _marriage_,
her heart recoiled; and the lost, the faithless, came back to his fatal
throne. In choked and broken accents, she startled the banker with the
refusal--the faltering, tearful, but resolute refusal--of his suit.
But Templeton brought new engines to work: he wooed her through her
child; he painted all the brilliant prospects that would open to the
infant by her marriage with him. He would cherish, rear, provide for it
as his own. This shook her resolves; but this did not prevail. He had
recourse to a more generous appeal: he told her so much of his
history with Mary Westbrook as commenced with his hasty and indecorous
marriage,--attributing the haste to love! made her comprehend his
scruples in owning the child of a union the world would be certain to
ridicule or condemn; he expatiated on the inestimable blessings
she could afford him, by delivering him from all embarrassment, and
restoring his daughter, though under a borrowed name, to her father's
roof. At this Alice mused; at this she seemed irresolute. She had long
seen how inexpressibly dear to Templeton was the child confided to her
care; how he grew pale if the slightest ailment reached her; how he
chafed at the very wind if it visited her cheek too roughly; and she now
said to him simply,--
"Is your child, in truth, your dearest object in life? Is it with her,
and her alone, that your dearest hopes are connected?"
"It is,--it is indeed!" said the banker, honestly surprised out of his
gallantry; "at least," he added, recovering his self-possession, "as
much so as is compatible with my affection for you."
"And only if I marry you, and adopt her as my own, do you think that
your secret may be safely kept, and all your wishes with respect to her
be fulfilled?"
"Only so."
"And for that reason, chiefly, nay entirely, you condescend to forget
what I have been, and seek my hand? Well, if that were all, I owe you
too much; my poor babe tells me too loudly what I owe you to draw back
from anything that can give you so blessed an enjoyment. Ah, one's
child! one's own child, under one's own roof, it _is_ such a blessing!
But then, if I marry you, it can be only to secure to you that object;
to be as a mother to your child; but wife only in name to you! I am not
so lost as to despise myself. I know now, though I knew it not at first,
that I have been guilty; nothing can excuse that guilt but fidelity to
_him_! Oh, yes! I never, never can be unfaithful to my babe's father!
As for all else, dispose of me as you will." And Alice, who from very
innocence had uttered all this without a blush, now clasped her hands
passionately, and left Templeton speechless with mortification and
surprise.
When he recovered himself, he affected not to understand her; but Alice
was not satisfied, and all further conversation ceased. He began slowly,
and at last, and after repeated conferences and urgings, to comprehend
how strange and stubborn in some points was the humble creature whom his
proposals so highly honoured. Though his daughter was indeed his first
object in life; though for her he was willing to make a _mesalliance_,
the extent of which it would be incumbent on him studiously to
conceal,--yet still, the beauty of Alice awoke an earthlier sentiment
that he was not disposed to conquer. He was quite willing to make
promises, and talk generously; but when it came to an oath,--a solemn, a
binding oath--and this Alice rigidly exacted,--he was startled, and
drew back. Though hypocritical, he was, as we have before said, a
most sincere believer. He might creep through a promise with unbruised
conscience; but he was not one who could have dared to violate an oath,
and lay the load of perjury on his soul. Perhaps, after all, the union
never would have taken place, but Templeton fell ill; that soft and
relaxing air did not agree with him; a low but dangerous fever seized
him, and the worldly man trembled at the aspect of Death. It was in this
illness that Alice nursed him with a daughter's vigilance and care;
and when at length he recovered, impressed with her zeal and kindness,
softened by illness, afraid of the approach of solitary age,--and
feeling more than ever his duties to his motherless child, he threw
himself at Alice's feet, and solemnly vowed all that she required.
It was during this residence in Devonshire, and especially during his
illness, that Templeton made and cultivated the acquaintance of Mr.
Aubrey. The good clergyman prayed with him by his sick-bed; and
when Templeton's danger was at its height, he sought to relieve his
conscience by a confession of his wrongs to Mary Westbrook. The name
startled Aubrey; and when he learned that the lovely child who had so
often sat on his knee, and smiled in his face, was the granddaughter
of his first and only love, he had a new interest in her welfare, a
new reason to urge Templeton to reparation, a new motive to desire to
procure for the infant years of Eleanor's grandchild the gentle care of
the young mother, whose own bereavement he sorrowfully foretold. Perhaps
the advice and exhortations of Aubrey went far towards assisting the
conscience of Mr. Templeton, and reconciling him to the sacrifice he
made to his affection for his daughter. Be that as it may, he married
Alice, and Aubrey solemnized and blessed the chill and barren union.
But now came a new and inexpressible affliction; the child of Alice had
rallied but for a time. The dread disease had but dallied with its prey;
it came on with rapid and sudden force; and within a month from the day
that saw Alice the bride of Templeton, the last hope was gone, and the
mother was bereft and childless!
The blow that stunned Alice was not, after the first natural shock of
sympathy, an unwelcome event to the banker. Now _his_ child would be
Alice's sole care; now there could be no gossip, no suspicion why, in
life and after death, he should prefer one child, supposed not his own,
to the other.
He hastened to remove Alice from the scene of her affliction. He
dismissed the solitary attendant who had accompanied her on her journey;
he bore his wife to London, and finally settled, as we have seen, at a
villa in its vicinity. And there, more and more, day by day, centred his
love upon the supposed daughter of Mrs. Templeton, his darling and his
heiress, the beautiful Evelyn Cameron.
For the first year or two, Templeton evinced some alarming disposition
to escape from the oath he had imposed upon himself; but on the
slightest hint there was a sternness in the wife, in all else so
respectful, so submissive, that repressed and awed him. She even
threatened--and at one time was with difficulty prevented carrying
the threat into effect--to leave his roof forever, if there were the
slightest question of the sanctity of his vow. Templeton trembled; such
a separation would excite gossip, curiosity, scandal, a noise in the
world, public talk, possible discovery. Besides, Alice was necessary
to Evelyn, necessary to his own comfort; something to scold in health,
something to rely upon in illness. Gradually then, but sullenly, he
reconciled himself to his lot; and as years and infirmities grew upon
him, he was contented at least to have secured a faithful friend and
an anxious nurse. Still a marriage of this sort was not blessed:
Templeton's vanity was wounded; his temper, always harsh, was soured;
he avenged his affront by a thousand petty tyrannies; and, without a
murmur, Alice perhaps in those years of rank and opulence suffered more
than in all her wanderings, with love at her heart and her infant in her
arms.
Evelyn was to be the heiress to the wealth of the banker. But the
_title_ of the new peer!--if he could unite wealth and title, and set
the coronet on that young brow! This had led him to seek the alliance
with Lumley. And on his death-bed, it was not the secret of Alice, but
that of Mary Westbrook and his daughter, which he had revealed to his
dismayed and astonished nephew, in excuse for the apparently unjust
alienation of his property, and as the cause of the alliance he had
sought.
While her husband, if husband he might be called, lived, Alice had
seemed to bury in her bosom her regret--deep, mighty, passionate, as it
was--for her lost child, the child of the unforgotten lover, to whom,