Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete
Maltravers drew the bolt across the door that separated them from
Cesarini; and the two men, whose characters and lives were so strongly
contrasted, were now alone.
"You wished an interview,--an explanation," said Lumley; "I shrink
from neither. Let me forestall inquiry and complaint. I deceived you
knowingly and deliberately, it is quite true,--all stratagems are fair
in love and war. The prize was vast! I believed my career depended on
it: I could not resist the temptation. I knew that before long you would
learn that Evelyn was not your daughter; that the first communication
between yourself and Lady Vargrave would betray me; but it was worth
trying a _coup de main_. You have foiled me, and conquered: be it so;
I congratulate you. You are tolerably rich, and the loss of Evelyn's
fortune will not vex you as it would have done me."
"Lord Vargrave, it is but poor affectation to treat thus lightly the
dark falsehood you conceived, the awful curse you inflicted upon me.
Your sight is now so painful to me, it so stirs the passions that I
would seek to suppress, that the sooner our interview is terminated the
better. I have to charge you, also, with a crime,--not, perhaps, baser
than the one you so calmly own, but the consequences of which were more
fatal: you understand me?"
"I do not."
"Do not tempt me! do not lie!" said Maltravers, still in a calm voice,
though his passions, naturally so strong, shook his whole frame. "To
your arts I owe the exile of years that should have been better spent;
to those arts Cesarini owes the wreck of his reason, and Florence
Lascelles her early grave! Ah, you are pale now; your tongue cleaves to
your mouth! And think you these crimes will go forever unrequited; think
you that there is no justice in the thunderbolts of God?"
"Sir," said Vargrave, starting to his feet, "I know not what you
suspect, I care not what you believe! But I am accountable to man, and
that account I am willing to render. You threatened me in the presence
of my ward; you spoke of cowardice, and hinted at danger. Whatever my
faults, want of courage is not one. Stand by your threats,--I am ready
to brave them!"
"A year, perhaps a short month, ago," replied Maltravers, "and I would
have arrogated justice to my own mortal hand; nay, this very night, had
the hazard of either of our lives been necessary to save Evelyn from
your persecution, I would have incurred all things for her sake! But
that is past; from me you have nothing to fear. The proofs of your
earlier guilt, with its dreadful results, would alone suffice to warn
me from the solemn responsibility of human vengeance. Great Heaven!
what hand could dare to send a criminal so long hardened, so black with
crime, unatoning, unrepentant, and unprepared, before the judgment-seat
of the ALL JUST? Go, unhappy man! may life long be spared to you! Awake!
awake from this world, before your feet pass the irrevocable boundary of
the next!"
"I came not here to listen to homilies, and the cant of the
conventicle," said Vargrave, vainly struggling for a haughtiness of mien
that his conscience-stricken aspect terribly belied; "not I; but this
wrong world is to be blamed, if deeds that strict morality may not
justify, but the effects of which I, no prophet, could not foresee, were
necessary for success in life. I have been but as all other men have
been who struggle against fortune to be rich and great: ambition must
make use of foul ladders."
"Oh," said Maltravers, earnestly, touched involuntarily, and in spite
of his abhorrence of the criminal, by the relenting that this miserable
attempt at self-justification seemed to denote,--"oh, be warned, while
it is yet time; wrap not yourself in these paltry sophistries; look back
to your past career; see to what heights you might have climbed, if with
those rare gifts and energies, with that subtle sagacity and indomitable
courage--your ambition had but chosen the straight, not the crooked,
path. Pause! many years may yet, in the course of nature, afford you
time to retrace your steps, to atone to thousands the injuries you have
inflicted on the few. I know not why I thus address you: but something
diviner than indignation urges me; something tells me that you are
already on the brink of the abyss!"
Lord Vargrave changed colour, nor did he speak for some moments; then
raising his head, with a faint smile, he said, "Maltravers, you are a
false soothsayer. At this moment my paths, crooked though they be, have
led me far towards the summit of my proudest hopes; the straight path
would have left me at the foot of the mountain. You yourself are a
beacon against the course you advise. Let us contrast each other. You
took the straight path, I the crooked. You, my superior in fortune; you,
infinitely above me in genius; you, born to command and never to crouch:
how do we stand now, each in the prime of life? You, with a barren and
profitless reputation; without rank, without power, almost without the
hope of power. I--but you know not my new dignity--I, in the Cabinet
of England's ministry, vast fortunes opening to my gaze, the proudest
station not too high for my reasonable ambition! You, wedding yourself
to some grand chimera of an object, aimless when it eludes your grasp.
I, swinging, squirrel-like, from scheme to scheme; no matter if one
breaks, another is at hand! Some men would have cut their throats
in despair, an hour ago, in losing the object of a seven years'
chase,--Beauty and Wealth, both! I open a letter, and find success in
one quarter to counterbalance failure in another. Bah! bah! each to his
_metier_, Maltravers! For you, honour, melancholy, and, if it please
you, repentance also! For me, the onward, rushing life, never looking
back to the Past, never balancing the stepping-stones to the Future.
Let us not envy each other; if you were not Diogenes, you would be
Alexander. Adieu! our interview is over. Will you forget and forgive,
and shake hands once more? You draw back, you frown! well, perhaps you
are right. If we meet again--"
"It will be as strangers."
"No rash vows! you may return to politics, you may want office. I am of
your way of thinking now: and--ha! ha!--poor Lumley Ferrers could make
you a Lord of the Treasury; smooth travelling and cheap turnpikes on
crooked paths, believe me. Farewell!"
On entering the room into which Cesarini had retired, Maltravers found
him flown. His servant said that the gentleman had gone away shortly
after Lord Vargrave's arrival. Ernest reproached himself bitterly for
neglecting to secure the door that conducted to the ante-chamber; but
still it was probable that Cesarini would return in the morning.
The messenger who had taken the letter to De Montaigne brought back word
that the latter was at his villa, but expected at Paris early the next
day. Maltravers hoped to see him before his departure; meanwhile
he threw himself on his bed, and despite all the anxieties that yet
oppressed him, the fatigues and excitements he had undergone exhausted
even the endurance of that iron frame, and he fell into a profound
slumber.
CHAPTER V.
BY eight to-morrow
Thou shalt be made immortal.
_Measure for Measure_.
LORD VARGRAVE returned to his apartment to find Mr. Howard, who had but
just that instant arrived, warming his white and well-ringed hands by
the fire. He conversed with him for half an hour on all the topics on
which the secretary could give him information, and then dismissed him
once more to the roof of Lady Jane.
As he slowly undressed himself, he saw on his writing-table the note
which Lady Doltimore had referred to, and which he had not yet opened.
He lazily broke the seal, ran his eye carelessly over its few blotted
words of remorse and alarm, and threw it down again with a contemptuous
"pshaw!" Thus unequally are the sorrows of a guilty tie felt by the man
of the world and the woman of society!
As his servant placed before him his wine and water, Vargrave told him
to see early to the preparations for departure, and to call him at nine
o'clock.
"Shall I shut that door, my lord?" said the valet, pointing to one that
communicated with one of those large closets, or _armoires_, that are
common appendages to French bedrooms, and in which wood and sundry other
matters are kept.
"No," said Lord Vargrave, petulantly; "you servants are so fond of
excluding every breath of air. I should never have a window open, if
I did not open it myself. Leave the door as it is, and do not be later
than nine to-morrow."
The servant, who slept in a kind of kennel that communicated with the
anteroom, did as he was bid; and Vargrave put out his candle, betook
himself to bed, and, after drowsily gazing some minutes on the dying
embers of the fire, which threw a dim ghastly light over the chamber,
fell fast asleep. The clock struck the first hour of morning, and in
that house all seemed still.
The next morning, Maltravers was disturbed from his slumber by De
Montaigne, who, arriving, as was often his wont, at an early hour from
his villa, had found Ernest's note of the previous evening.
Maltravers rose and dressed himself; and while De Montaigne was yet
listening to the account which his friend gave of his adventure with
Cesarini, and the unhappy man's accusation of his accomplice, Ernest's
servant entered the room very abruptly.
"Sir," said he, "I thought you might like to know. What is to be done?
The whole hotel is in confusion, Mr. Howard has been sent for, and Lord
Doltimore. So very strange, so sudden!"
"What is the matter? Speak plain."
"Lord Vargrave, sir,--poor Lord Vargrave--"
"Lord Vargrave!"
"Yes, sir; the master of the hotel, hearing you knew his lordship, would
be so glad if you would come down. Lord Vargrave, sir, is dead,--found
dead in his bed!"
Maltravers was rooted to the spot with amaze and horror. Dead! and but
last night so full of life and schemes and hope and ambition.
As soon as he recovered himself, he hurried to the spot, and De
Montaigne followed. The latter, as they descended the stairs, laid his
hand on Ernest's arm and detained him.
"Did you say that Castruccio left the apartment while Vargrave was
with you, and almost immediately after his narrative of Vargrave's
instigation to his crime?"
"Yes."
The eyes of the friends met; a terrible suspicion possessed both. "No;
it is impossible!" exclaimed Maltravers. "How could he obtain entrance,
how pass Lord Vargrave's servants? No, no; think of it not!"
They hurried down the stairs; they reached the other door of Vargrave's
apartment. The notice to Howard, with the name of Vargrave underscored,
was still on the panels. De Montaigne saw and shuddered.
They were in the room by the bedside. A group were collected round; they
gave way as the Englishman and his friend approached; and the eyes
of Maltravers suddenly rested on the face of Lord Vargrave, which was
locked, rigid, and convulsed.
There was a buzz of voices which had ceased at the entrance of
Maltravers; it was now renewed. A surgeon had been summoned--the nearest
surgeon,--a young Englishman of no great repute or name. He was making
inquiries as he bent over the corpse.
"Yes, sir," said Lord Vargrave's servant, "his lordship told me to call
him at nine o'clock. I came in at that hour, but his lordship did not
move nor answer me. I then looked to see if he were very sound asleep,
and I saw that the pillows had got somehow over his face, and his head
seemed to lie very low; so I moved the pillows, and I saw that his
lordship was dead."
"Sir," said the surgeon, turning to Maltravers, "you were a friend
of his lordship, I hear. I have already sent for Mr. Howard and Lord
Doltimore. Shall I speak with you a minute?"