"Ten years passed, and then news came that altered my whole situation. My uncle and his only son died; the family estate devolved on me. I was rich and free. Rich in my own eyes, and in the eyes of all to whom competence is wealth. I felt sure that, with this inheritance, Captain Rivers would not disdain me for his child. I gave up my commission immediately, and returned to England.
"England and Alithea! How balmy, how ineffably sweet was the idea of once more beholding the rural spot where she resided; of treading the woodland paths with her—of visiting her dear mother's grave—of renewing our old associations, and knitting our destinies inextricably in one. It was a voyage of bliss. I longed for its conclusion; but feeling that a pathway was stretched across the ocean, leading even into her very presence, I blessed each wave or tract of azure sea we passed over. The limitless Atlantic was my road to her, and became glorified as the vision of the Hebrew shepherd boy; and yet loved with the same homefelt sweetness as that with which I used to regard the lime-tree walk that led to her garden-gate. I forgot the years that had elapsed since we met; it was with difficulty that I forced my imagination to remember that I should not find her pale mother beside her to sanctify our union."
"On landing in England, I at once set off to the far northern county where she resided. I arrived at the well-known village; all looked the same; I recognised the cottages and their flower-gardens, and even some of the elder inhabitants looking, methought, no older than when I left them. My heart hailed my return home with rapture, and I quickened my steps towards the cottage. It was shut up and abandoned. This was the first check my sanguine spirit had met. Hitherto I had not pronounced her name or asked a question—I longed to return, as from a walk, and to find all things as I had left it. Living in a dream, I had not considered the chances and the storms, or even the mere changes, of the seasons of life.
"My pen lags in its task—I dilate on things best hurried over, yet they serve as a screen between me and fate. A few inquiries revealed the truth. Captain Rivers was dead—his daughter married. I had lived in a fool's paradise. None of the obstacles existed that I expected to meet and conquer, but in their stead a fourfold brazen door had risen, locked, barred, and guarded, and I could not even shake a hinge, or put back a bolt.
"I hurried from the fatal spot; it became a hell to me. And oh, to think that I had lived in vain—vainly dreamed of the angel of my idolatry, vainly hoped—and most vainly loved; called her mine when another held her, sold myself to perpetual slavery to her shadow, while her living image enriched the shrine of another's home! The tempest that shook my soul did not permit me to give form, or, indeed, to dwell consecutively on such desolating thoughts. As a man who arrives from a pleasant journey, and turns the corner where he expects to view the dwelling in which repose his wife, his children—all dear to him—and when he gains the desired spot, beholds it smouldering in ashes, and is told that all are consumed, and that their bones lie beneath the ruins; thus was I—my imagination had created home, and bride, and fair being sprung from her side, who called me father, and one word defaced my whole future life and widowed me for ever.
"Now began that chain of incidents that led to a deed I had not thought of. Incidents or accidents; acts, done I know not why; nothing in themselves; but meeting, and kindled by the fiery spirit that raged in my bosom, they gave such direction to its ruinous powers as produced the tragedy for ever to be deplored.
"Bewildered and overwhelmed by the loss which to me had all the novelty and keenness of a disaster of yesterday, though I found that many years had gone by since, in reality, it was completed, I fled from the spot I had so fondly sought, and hurried up to London on no fixed errand, with no determined idea, yet vaguely desiring to do something. Scarcely arrived, I met a man whom I had known in India. He asked me to dine with him, and I complied; because to refuse would have required explanation, and the affirmative was more easily given. I did not mean to keep my engagement; yet when the hour came, so intolerable had I become to myself—so poignant and loathsome were my thoughts—that I went, so to lose for a few moments the present sense of ill. It was a bachelor's dinner, and there were, in addition to myself, three or four other guests—among them a Mr. Neville. From the moment this man opened his lips to speak, I took a violent dislike to him. He was, and always must have been, the man whom among ten thousand I should have marked out to abhor. He was cold, proud, and sarcastic, withal a decayed dandy, turned cynic—who, half despising himself, tried wholly to disdain his fellow-creatures. A man whose bosom never glowed with a generous emotion, and who took pride in the sagacity which enabled him to detect worms and corruption in the loveliness of virtue. A poor, mean-spirited fellow, despite his haughty outside; and then when he spoke of women, how base a thing he seemed! his disbelief in their excellence, his contemptuous pity, his insulting love, made my blood boil. To me there was something sacred in a woman's very shadow. Was she evil, I regarded her with the pious regret with which I might view a shrine desecrated by sacrilegious hands—the odour of sanctity still floated around the rifled altar; I never could regard them as mere fellow-creatures—they were beings of a better species, sometimes gone astray in the world's wilderness, but always elevated above the best among us. For Alithea's sake I respected every woman. How much good I knew of them! Generous, devoted, delicate—their very faults were but misdirected virtues; and this animal dared revile beings of whose very nature he could form no conception. A burden was lifted from my soul when he left us.
"'It is strange,' said our host, 'that Neville should indulge in this kind of talk; he is married to the most beautiful, and the best woman in the world. Much younger than himself, she yet performs her duties as a wife with steadiness and cheerfulness; lovely beyond her sex, she is without its weakness; to please some jealous freak of his, she has withdrawn herself from the world, and buried herself alive at his seat in the North. How she can endure an eternal tête-à-tête with that empty, conceited, and arrogant husband of hers is beyond any guessing.'
"I made some observation expressive of my abhorrence of Mr. Neville's character, and my friend continued—'Disagreeable and shallow as he is, one would have thought that the society of so superior, so perfect a woman, would reconcile him to her sex, but I verily believe he is jealous of her surpassing excellence; and that it is not so much a natural, and I might almost call it generous, fear of losing her affections, as a dislike of seeing her admired, and knowing that she is preferred to him, especially now that he absolutely looks an old fellow. Poor Alithea Rivers—hers is a hard fate!'
"I had a glass of wine in my hand; my convulsive grasp shivered the brittle thing, but I gave no other outward sign; before, I was miserable, I had lost all that made life dear; but to know that she was lost to herself, bound for life to a human brute, curdled my heart's blood, and spread an unnatural chilliness through my frame.
"What a sacrifice was there; a sacrifice of how much more than life, of the heart's sweetest feelings, when a spirit, sent to gladden the world, and cast one drop of celestial nectar into the bitterness of existence, was made garbage for that detested animal; from that moment, from the moment I felt assured that I had seen Alithea's husband, something departed from the world, such as I had once known it, never to return again. A sense of acquiescence in the decrees of Providence, of confidence in the benevolence and beauty of the universe, of pride, despite all my misfortunes, in being man, of pleasure in the loveliness of nature, all departed! I had lost her—that was nothing; it was my disaster, but did not injure the order and grace of the creation; she was, I fondly trusted, married to a better man than I; but, bound to that grovelling and loathsome type of the world's worst qualities, the devil usurped at once the throne of God, and life became a hell.
"'You are miserable, Alithea! you must be miserable! For you there is no sympathy, no mingling of hearts, no generous confidence in another's esteem and kindness, no indulgence in golden imaginations of the beauty of life. You are tied to a foul, corrupting corpse. You are cut off from the dear associations of the social hearth, from the dignified sense of having exchanged virgin purity for a sweeter and more valuable possession in another's heart; coldly and listlessly you look on the day which brings no hope to you, if, indeed, you do not rave and blaspheme in your despair. Oh! with me, the brother of your soul, your servant, lover, untiring friend, how differently had your lot been cast!"
"I rushed from my friend's house; I entered no roof that night; my passions were awake, my fierce volcanic passions! Had I encountered Neville, I had assuredly murdered him; my soul was chaos, yet a tempestuous ray gave a dark light amid the storm; a glimmering, yet permanent irradiation mantled over the ruins among which I stood. I said to myself, 'I am mad, driven to desperation;' but, beneath this outward garb of my thought, I knew and recognised an interior form. I knew what I desired, what I intended, and what, though I tried to cheat myself into the belief that I wavered, I henceforth steadily pursued. There is, perhaps, no more dangerous mood of mind than when we doggedly pursue means, recklessly uncertain of their end.
"Thus was I led to the fatal hour; a life of love, and a sudden bereavement, with such a thing the instrument of my ruin! A contempt for the order of the universe, a stern, demoniacal braving of fate, because I would rule, and put that right which God had let go wrong. Oh, let me not again blaspheme. God made the stars, and the green earth, within whose bosom Alithea lies. She also is his, and I will believe, despite the hellish interference that tainted and deflowered her earthly life, that now she is with the source of all good, reaping the reward of her virtues, the compensation for her suffering. Else, why are we created! To crawl forth, to suffer and die? I cannot believe it. Spirit of the blessed, omnipotence did not form perfection to shatter and dissipate the elements like broken glass! But I rave and wander; Alithea still lives and suffers at the time of which I write, and I erecting myself into a providence, resolved to put that right which was wrong, and cure the world's misrule. From that moment I never paused to look back; I set my soul upon the cast, and I am here. And Alithea! her mysterious grave you shall now approach.
"Bent upon a dangerous purpose, fate led before me an instrument, without which I should have found it difficult to execute my plan. I got a letter from a man in great distress, asking for some small help; he was on the point of quitting England for America, and working his passage; slight assistance would be of inestimable benefit in furthering his plans. The petitioner followed his petition quickly, and was ushered in before me. I scrutinized his shrewd yet down-looking countenance; I scanned his supple yet uncertain carriage; I felt that he was a coward, yet knew he would tamper with roguery, in all safety, for a due reward. I had known the fellow in India; James Osborne was his name; he dabbled in various disreputable money transactions, both with natives and Englishmen, and at last, having excited the suspicion of government, got thrown into prison. He had then written to me, who was considered a sort of refuge for the destitute, and I went to see him. There was no great harm in the man; on the contrary, he was soft-hearted and humane; the infection of dishonesty, caught in bad company, and fostered in poverty, was his ruin; and he joined to this a strong desire to be respectable, if he could only contrive to subsist without double-dealing. I thought, that by extricating him from his embarrassments, and removing him from temptation, I might save him from ignominy; so I paid his passage to England; where he told me that he had friends and resources. But his old habits pursued him, and even now, though poverty was the alleged motive for his emigration, I saw that there was secret fear of legal pursuit for dishonest practices; he had been inveigled, he said, to lend his name to a transaction which turned out a knavish one. With all this, Osborne was not a villain, and scarcely a rogue; there was truth in what he said; he had always an aspiration for a better place in society, but he saw no way of attaining it except by money, and no way of gaining money except by cheating.
"I listened to his story. 'You are an incorrigible fellow,' said I. 'How can I give ear to your promises? Still I am willing to assist you. I am myself going to America; you shall accompany me.' By degrees I afterward explained the service I needed; yet I only half disclosed the truth. Osborne never knew the name or position of the lady who was to be my companion across the Atlantic. A man's notions of the conduct of others are always coloured by his own ruling passion. Osborne thought I was intent on carrying off an heiress.
"With this ally I proceeded to Cumberland—my mind more intent on the result of my schemes than their intermediate detail. I learned before I went that Mr. Neville was still in town. This was a golden opportunity, and I hastened to use it. I reached the spot that Alithea inhabited—I entered the outer gate of the demesne—I rode up to the avenue that led to the house—I was ushered into the room where I knew that I should find her. I summoned every power to calm the throbbing of my heart. I expected to find her changed; but when I saw her, I discovered no alteration. It was strange that so much of girlish appearance should remain. Her figure was light and airy; her rich clustering ringlets abundant as before; her face—it was Alithea! All herself! That soft, loving eye—that clear brow—those music-breathing lips—time had not harmed her—it was herself.
"She did not at once recognise me; the beardless stripling was become a weather-beaten, thought-worn man; but when I told her who I was—the name so long forgotten—never heard since last she spoke it, 'Rupert!' burst from her lips—it united our severed lives; and her look of rapture, her accent all breathless with joy, told me that her heart was still the same—ardent, affectionate, and true.
"We sat together, hand linked in hand, looking at each other with undisguised delight. At first, with satanic cunning, I assumed the brother's part. I questioned her concerning her fate—her feelings; and seeing that she was averse to confess the truth of her disappointed, joyless married state, I led her back to passed days. I spoke of her dear mother. I said that often had the image of that pale, wise spirit checked, guided, and whispered sage lessons to me in my banishment. I recalled a thousand scenes of our childhood, when we wandered together—hand in hand—heart linked to heart—confiding every pain—avowing every wild or rebellious thought, or discussing the mighty secrets of nature and of fate, which to our young hearts were full of awe and mystery, and yet of beauty and joy. As I spoke, I examined her more narrowly. At first she had appeared to me the same; now I marked a difference. Her mouth, the home of smiles, had ever its sweet, benignant expression; but her eyes, there was a heaviness in the lids, a liquid melancholy in their gaze, which said that they were acquainted with tears; her cheeks, once round, peachlike, and downy, were not fallen, yet they had lost their rich fulness. She was more beautiful; there was more reflection, more sentiment in her face; but there was far, far less happiness. Before, smiles sprung up wherever she turned to gaze; now, an interest akin to pity and tears made the spectator's heart ache as he watched the turns of a countenance which was the faithful mirror of the truest heart that ever beat. Worse than this, there ever and anon shot across her face a look that seemed like fear. Oh, how unlike the trusting, dreadless Alithea!
"My talk of other days at first soothed, then excited, and threw her off her guard. By degrees I approached the object of all my talk, and drew her to speak of her father, and the motives that induced her marriage. My knowledge and vivid recollections of all that belonged to her made her unawares speak, as she had not done since we parted, the undisguised truth; and before she knew what she had said, I had led her to confess that she had never loved her husband; that she found no sympathy, and little kindness in him; that her life had been one of endurance of faults alien to her own temperament. Had I been more cautious, I had allowed this to pass off at first, and won her entire confidence before I laid bare my own thoughts; for all she said had never before been breathed into any living ear but mine. It was her principle to submit, and to hide her sense of her husband's defective disposition; and had I not, with a serpent's subtlety, glided on imperceptibly; had I not brought forward her mother's name, and the memory of childhood's cloudless years, she had been mute with me. But now I could contain myself no longer. I told her that I had seen the miserable being to whom she was linked. I uttered curses on the fate that had joined them together. She laid her hand on my arm, and looking in my face with confiding innocence, 'Hush, Rupert,' she said, 'you make me mean more than I would willingly have you think. He is not unkind; I have no right to complain; it is not in every man that we can find a brother's or a friend's heart. Neville does not understand these things; but he is my husband; as such I honour him.'
"I saw the internal feeling that led her to speak thus; I saw the delicate forbearance that filled her noble mind. She thought of her virgin faith plighted—long years spent at his side—her children—her fidelity, which, if it had ceased to cling to him, had never wandered, even in thought, to another; duties exemplarily fulfilled—earnest strivings to forget his worthlessness. All this honour for her own pure nature, she cheated herself into believing was honour paid to him. I resolved to tear the veil which her gentleness and sense of right had drawn before the truth, and I exclaimed, impetuously, 'Wrong yourself not so much, dear girl! do not fancy that your high soul can really bow down to baseness. You pay reverence to your own sense of duty; but you hate—you must hate that man.'
"She started, and her face and neck became died in blushes, proceeding half from anger at being urged beyond her wish, half from native modesty at hearing her husband thus spoken of. As for myself, I grew mad as I looked on her, and felt the sweet, transporting influences that gathered round; here indeed was the creature whom I had loved through so many years, who was mine in my dreams, whose faith and true affection I fancied I held for ever; and she was torn from me, given away, not to one who, like me, knew and felt her matchless excellence, but to a base-minded thing, from whom she must shrink as from an animal of another species. All that her soul contained of elevated thoughts and celestial aspirations, all of generous, high, and heroic that warmed her heart, what were they before a blind, creeping worm, who held a matchless jewel in his hand, and deemed it dross? He even could not understand, or share the more sober affections—mutual trust and mutual forbearance; the utterance of love, the caresses of tenderness, what were these to a wretch who saw baseness and deceit in the most lofty and pure feelings of a woman's heart?
"I expressed these thoughts, or rather, they burst from me. She interrupted me. 'I do not deny,' she said, 'for I know not how you have cheated me of my secret, but that repinings have at times entered my mind; and I have shed foolish tears, to think that the dreams of my girlhood were as a bright morning, quickly followed by a dim, cloudy day. But I have reproved myself for this discontent, and you do very wrong to revive it; the heart will rebel, but religion, and philosophy, and the very tears I shed, sooth its ruffled mood, and make me remember that we do not live to be happy, but to perform our duties; to fulfil mine is the aim of my life; teach me how to do that more completely, more entirely to resign myself, and you will be my benefactor. It is true that my husband does not understand the childish overflowings of my heart, which is too ready to seek its joys among the clouds; he does not dwell with rapture on the thoughts and sentiments which give me so much life and happiness—he is a stronger and sterner nature; a slower one also, I acknowledge, one less ready to sympathize and feel. But if I have in my intercourse with him regretted that lively, cheering interchange of sentiment which I enjoyed with you, you are now here to bestow it, and my life, hitherto defective, your return may render complete.'
"I laughed bitterly. 'Poor innocent bird,' I cried; 'think you at once to be free, and in a cage? at once to feel the fowler's grasp, and fly away to heaven? Alithea, you miserably deceive yourself; hitherto you have but half guessed the secrets of a base grovelling spirit—have you never seen your husband jealous?'
"She shuddered—and I saw a spasm of exquisite pain cloud her features as she averted her head from me, and the look of trembling fear I had before remarked crept over her. I was shocked to see so much of the slave had entered her soul. I told her this; I told her she was being degraded by the very duties which she was devoting herself, body and soul, to perform; I told her that she must be free; she looked wonderingly, but I continued. 'Is not the very name of liberty dear and exhilarating? does it not draw you irresistibly onward? is not the very thought of casting your heavy chains from off you full of new and inexpressible joy? Poor prisoner, do you not yearn to breathe without a fear? would you not with transport escape from your jailer to a home of love and freedom?'
"Hitherto she had fancied that I but regretted her sorrows as she did, and repined as she did over a fate whose real misery she alone could entirely feel; she repented having spoken so openly—yet she loved me for my unfeigned sympathy; but now she saw that something more was meant; she looked earnestly at me, as if to read my heart; she saw its wishes in my eyes, and shrunk from them as from a snake, as she exclaimed, 'Never, dear Rupert, speak thus to me again, or we must again part—I have a son.'
"The radiance of angelic love lighted up her face as she uttered these words; and then, my error and weakness being her strength, she resumed the self-possession she had lost during our previous conversation; with bewitching grace she held out her hand to me, and in a voice modulated by the soul of persuasion, said, 'Let us be friends, Rupert, such as we once were, brother and sister; I will not believe that you are returned only to pain and injure me—I am happy in my children—stay but a little, and you will see how foolish I have been to complain at all. You also will love my boy.'
"Would you not think that these words had sufficed to cure my madness and banish every guilty project? Had you seen her, her inimitable grace of attitude, the blushing, tender expression of her face, and her modest, earnest manner, a manner which spoke the maternal nature, such as Catholics imagine it, without a tincture of the wife, a girlish, yet enthusiastic rapture at the very thought of her child, you would have known that every scheme I meditated was riveted faster, every desire to make her my own for ever more fixed and eager. I went on to urge her, till I saw every feature give token of distress; and at last she suddenly left me, as if unable any longer to bear my pertinacity. She left me without a word, but I saw her face bathed in tears. I was indeed insane. These tears, which sprung from anguish of soul to think that her childhood's companion should thus show himself an injurer instead of a friend, I interpreted into signs of relenting—into a struggle with her heart."
"I called again the following morning, but she was denied to me; twice this happened. She feared me, I believed; and still more franticly I was driven to continue my persecutions. I wrote to her; she did not answer my letters. I entered the grounds of her house clandestinely; I lay in wait for her; I resolved to see her again. At length one afternoon I found her alone, walking and musing in the more solitary part of the park; I stood suddenly before her, and her first emotion was pleasure, so true was she to her affections, so constant to her hope that at last I should be persuaded not to pain her by a renewal of my former conversation. But I believed that I had a hold on her that I would not forego. When she offered to renew our childhood's compact of friendship, I asked her how that could be if she refused me her confidence; I asked how she could promise me happiness, whose every hope was blighted. I told her that it was my firm conviction that her mother had intended us for one another, that she had brought her up for me, given her to me, and that thus she was indeed mine. Her eyes flashed fire at this. 'My mother,' she said, 'brought me up for a higher purpose than even conducing to your happiness. She brought me up to fulfil my duties, to be a mother in my turn. I do not deny,' she continued, 'that I share in some sort my mother's fate, and am more maternal than wife-like; and as I fondly wish to resemble her in all her virtues, I will not repine at the circumstances that lead me rather to devote my existence to my children, than to be that most blessed creature, a happy wife—I do not ask for that happiness; I am contented with my lot; my very girlish, romantic repinings do not really make me unhappy.'
"'Nor your fears, nor his base jealousy, his selfishness, his narrow soul, and brutish violence? I know more than you think, Alithea—I read your heart—you must be miserable; submissive, yet tyrannized over; wedded to your duty, yet watched, suspected, accused. There are traces of tears on your cheeks, my poor girl; your neck is bowed by the yoke, your eyes have no longer the radiance of conscious rectitude, and yet you are innocent.'
"'God knows I am,' she replied, as a shower of tears fell from her eyes—but she was ashamed, and brushed them away—'I am, and will be, Rupert, though you would mislead me. Where, indeed, can I find a consciousness of rectitude, except in my heart? My husband mistrusts me, I acknowledge it—by torture you force the truth—he does not understand, and you would pervert me; in God and my own heart I put my trust, and I will never do that which my conscience tells me is wrong—and despite both I shall be happy. A mother is, in my eyes, a more sacred name than wife. My life is wrapped in my boy; in him I find blameless joy, though all the rest pierce my heart with poisoned arrows.'
"'You shall, sweet Alithea,' I cried, 'preserve him, and every other blessing. You were not born to inherit this maimed, poverty-stricken life, the widowed mother of an orphan child—such are you now; I will be a father to him for your sake, and many other joys will be yours, and the fondest, truest heart that ever warmed man's bosom shall be all your own. Alithea, you must not offer yourself up a living sacrifice to that base idol, but belong to one whose love, and honour, and eternal devotion merit you, though he possess no other claim. Let me save you from him, I ask no more.'
"I felt a tear, for many long years forgotten, steal down my cheek—my heart worshipped her excellence, and pity and grief mingled with my deep regrets; she saw how sincerely I was moved, and tried to comfort me. She wept also, for, despite her steadier thoughts, she knew the cruelty of her destiny, and I do believe her heart yearned to taste, once more before she died, the full joy of complete sympathy. But, if indeed her tears were partly shed for herself, yet she never wavered; she deplored my unhappiness, but she reproved my perversion of principle; she tried to awaken patience, piety, or philosophic fortitude—any of the noble virtues that might enable me to combat the passion by which I was enslaved.
"Time was forgotten as we thus talked with the same openness of heart as in former days, yet those hearts how saddened and wounded since then! I would not let her go: while the moon rose high, shedding its silvery light over the forest trees, and casting dark shadows on our path, still we indulged in what she deemed our last conference. As I must answer my crimes before God, I swear I could discern no wavering thought, no one idea that strayed to the forbidden ground, towards which I strove to lead her. She told me that she had intended not to see me again till her husband returned; she said that she must implore me not again to seek her in this way, or I should make her a prisoner in her house. I listened—I answered, I knew not what—I was more resolved than ever not to lose her—despite all, I still was mad enough to hope. She left me at last, hoping to have conquered, yet resolved not to see me again, she said, till her husband returned. This determination on her part was in absolute contradiction to what I resolved should be. I had decreed to see her again; nay, more, I would see her, not within the precincts of her home, where all spoke against me; but where she should be free, where, seeing nothing to remind her of the heavy yoke to which she bent her neck, I fondly dreamed I might induce her wholly to throw it aside. If it so pleased her, I would detain her but a few short hours, and restore her to her home in all liberty; but, could I induce her to assert her freedom, and follow me voluntarily—then—to think that possible, the earth reeled under me, and my passion gained strength from its very folly.
"I prepared all things for my plan; I went to Liverpool, and bought two fleet horses and a light foreign calèche suited to my purpose. Returning northward towards Dromore, I sought a solitary spot, for the scene of our last interview, or of the first hour of my lasting bliss. What more solitary than the wild and drear seashore of the south of Cumberland? Landward it is screened by a sublime back-ground of mountains; but in itself presenting to the view a wide extent of uninhabited sands, intersected by rivers which, when the tide is up, presents a dreary expanse of shallow water, and at ebb are left, except in the channels of the rivers, a barren extent of mud and marsh; the surrounding waste being variegated only by a line of sand-hills thrown up to the height of thirty or forty feet, shutting in the view from shore, while seaward no boat appeared ever to spread its sail on that lonely sea. On these sands, near the mouth of one of the rivers, there was a small hut deserted, but not in ruins; it was probably occasionally inhabited by guides who are used in this part of the country to show the track of the fords when the tide is full, and any deviation from the right path is attended by peril, the beds of the rivers being full of ruts and deep holes; that hut I selected as the spot where all should be determined. If she consented to accompany me, we would proceed rapidly forward to Liverpool, and embark for America; if she resolved to return, this spot was but five miles from her home, and I could easily lead her back without suspicion being excited. I was anxious to put my scheme in execution, as her husband was shortly expected.
"It seemed a feasible one. In my own heart I did not expect to induce her to forsake her home; but I might; and the very doubt maddened me. And if I did not, yet for a few hours to have her near me, not in any spot that called her detested husband master, but in the wide, free scenes of nature, the ocean, parent of all liberty, spread at our feet; the way easy to escape, no eye, no ear, to watch and spy out the uncontrolled and genuine emotions of her heart, or no hand to check our progress if she consented to follow. In this plan Osborne, whom I had left at the miserable town of Ravenglass—and who, indeed, had been the man to find and point out to me the solitary hut, was necessary. My explanation and directions to him were few and peremptory: he was to appear with the calèche, he acting as postillion, at a certain spot; the moment he saw me arrive, as soon as I had placed the lady who was to be my companion in the carriage, he was to put spurs to his horses, and not by any cry of hers, nor command of mine, nor interference of strangers, to be induced to stop till he reached the hut: there she should be free; till then I would have her a prisoner even beyond my own control, lest her entreaties should cheat me out of my resolves. Osborne looked frightened at some portion of these orders, but I glossed over any inconsistency; my bribe was high, and he submitted.
"At every step I took in this mad and guilty scheme, I became more resolved to carry it on. Here is my crime—here the tale of sin, I have to relate. The rest is disaster and endless remorse. What moved me to this height of insanity—what blinded me to the senseless as well as the unpardonable nature of my design, I cannot tell; except that, for years, I had lived in a dream, and waking in the real world, I refused to accommodate myself to its necessities, but resolved to bend its laws to my desires. I loved Alithea—I had loved her through years of absence; she was the wife of my reveries, my hopes, my heart. I could no more part with the thought of her as such, than with a consciousness of my own identity. To see her married and a mother, might be supposed capable of dissipating these fancies; far from it. Her presence, her beauty, the witchery of her eye, her heart-subduing voice, her sensibility, the perfection of her nature, which her inimitable loveliness only half expressed, but which reached my soul, through a sort of inner sense that acknowledged it with worship; all this added to my phrensy, and steeped me to the very lips in intoxication.
"What right had I to call this matchless creature mine? None! That I acknowledged—but that he, the man without a soul, the incarnate Belial, should claim her, was not to be endured. Mad as I was, I aver, and He who reads all hearts be now my testimony, that it was more my wish to set her free from him than to bind her to myself, that urged me on. I had in the solitary shades of her park, during the arguments and struggles of our last interview, sworn, that if she would suffer me to take her, and her boy too if she chose, away from him, I would place her in some romantic spot, build a home worthy of her, surrounded with all the glory of nature, and only see her as a servant and a slave. I pledged my soul to this, and I would have kept my oath. Those who have not loved may look on this as the very acme of my hallucination; it might be—I cannot tell—but so it was.
"All was ready; and I wrote to her to meet me for the last time. In this also I was, in one sense, sincere; for I had determined, if I should fail in my persuasions, never to see her more. She came, but several hours later than I intended, which, to a certain degree, deranged my plans. The weather had a sultriness about it all day, portending storm, occasioning a state of atmosphere that operates to render the human frame uneasy and restless. I paced the lane that bounded the demesnes of Dromore for hours; I threw myself on a grassy bank. The rack in the upper sky sped along with fearful impetuosity; it traversed the heavens from west to east, driven by a furious wind which had not yet descended to us; for below on earth, no breath of air moved the herbage, or could be perceived amid the topmost boughs of the trees. Everything in nature, acted upon by these contrary influences, had a strange and wild appearance. The sun descended red towards the ocean before Alithea opened the private gate of the grounds, and stood in all her loveliness before me.
"She brought her son with her. At first this annoyed me; but at a second thought it seemed to render my whole design more conclusive. She had spoken of this child with such rapture that it would have been a barbarity beyond my acting to separate her from him. By making him her companion, she completed my purpose; I would take them away together. I met her, I thought, with self-possession, but she read the conflict of passion in my face, and, half fearful, asked what disturbed me. I attributed my agitation to our approaching parting; and drawing her hand through my arm, walked forward along the lane. At the moment of executing my project, its wickedness and cruelty became so apparent, that a thousand times I was about to confess all, solicit her forgiveness, and leave her for ever: but that hardness, which in the ancient religions is deemed the immediate work of God, crept over my heart, turning its human misgiving to stony resolution. I endeavoured to close every aperture of my soul against the relenting moods that assailed me; yet they came with greater power each time, and at length wholly mastering me, I consented to be subdued. I determined to relinquish my schemes, to bid her an eternal adieu; and, moved by self-pity at the desolate lot I was about to encounter, I spoke of separation and absence, and the death of hope with such heartfelt pathos as moved her to tears.
"Surely there is no greater enemy to virtue and good intentions than that want of self-command, the exterior of which, though I had acquired, no portion existed in the inner substance of my mind. Calm, proud, and stern as I seemed to others, capable of governing the vehemence of my temper, within I was the same slave of passion I had ever been. I never could force myself to do the thing I hated; I never could persuade myself to relinquish the thing I desired. There is the secret of my crimes; there the vice of my disposition, which produced for her I loved a miserable death, and for myself endless, unutterable wo. For a moment I had become virtuous and heroic. We reached the end of the lane—my emissary appeared with the carriage. I had worked myself up by this time to determine to restore her to her home; to part with her for ever. She believed this. The despair written on my brow—my sombre, mute, yet heart-broken mien—my thoughts which had totally relinquished their favourite project, and consented to be widowed of her for ever, expressed in brief, passionate sentences, proved to her, who had never suspected that I meant otherwise, that I took my last look and spoke my last words. We reached the end of the lane; Osborne drove up. 'Be not surprised,' I said. 'Yes, it is there, Alithea; the carriage that is to convey me far, far away. Gracious God, do I live to see this hour!'
"The carriage stopped; we walked up to it. A devil at that moment whispered in my ear, a devil, who feeds on human crimes and groans, prompted my arm. Coward and dolt! to use such words—my own hellish mind was the sole instigator. In a moment it was done. I lifted her light figure into the carriage; I jumped in after her; I bade her boy follow. It was too late. One cry from him, one long, piercing shriek from her, and we were gone. With the swiftness of the winds we descended the eminence towards the shore, and left child and all return far behind.
"At that moment the storm burst over us; but the thunder was unheard amid the rattling of the wheels. Even her cries were lost in the uproar; but, as the thickening clouds changed twilight into night, the vivid lightning showed me Alithea at my feet, in convulsions of fear and anguish. There was no help. I raised her in my arms; and she struggled in them without meaning, without knowledge. Spasm succeeded to spasm; I saw them, by the flashes of the frequent lightning, distort her features with agony, but I could not even hear her groans; the furious haste at which we went, the thunder from above, the plash of the rain, suspended only by the howlings of the rising wind, drowned every other sound. I called to Osborne to stop; he gave no heed to my cries. Methought the horses had taken fright, and held the bit in their teeth, with such unimaginable speed we swept along. The roar of ocean, torn up by the wild west wind, now mingled with the universal uproar—hell had broken loose upon earth—yet what was every other and more noisy tempest compared to that which shook my soul, as I pressed Alithea to my heart in agony, vainly hoping to see the colour revisit her cheeks, and her dear eyes open! Was she already a corpse! I tried to feel her breath upon my cheek; but the speed of our course, and the uproar of the elements, prevented my being able to ascertain whether she was alive or dead. And thus I bore her—thus I made her my bride, thus I, her worshipper, emptied the vials of pain on her beloved head!"
"At last I became aware that the wheels of the carriage passed through water. Hope revived with the thought. The hut where Osborne was to stop was to the south of the river we were now crossing: the tide was ebbing, and, despite the wind and storm, we passed the ford in safety; a moment more, and the carriage stopped amid the sands. I took the unfortunate lady in my arms, and carried her into the hut; then, fetching the cushions of the carriage, I bade Osborne take the horses on to a covered shed about half a mile off, which he had prepared for them, and return immediately.
"I re-entered the hut—still Alithea lay motionless on the ground where I had placed her. The lightning showed me her pale face; and another flash permitted me to discover a portion of luggage brought here by Osborne—necessary if we fled. Among other things which, soldier-like, I always carried with me, I saw my canteen; it contained the implements for striking a light, and tapers. By such means I could at last discover that my victim still lived; and sometimes also she groaned and sighed heavily. What, had happened to her I could not tell, nor by what means consciousness might be restored. I chafed her head and hands in spirituous waters; I made her swallow some—in vain. For a moment she somewhat revived, but relapsed again; and the icy cold of her hands and feet seemed to portend instant dissolution. Osborne returned, as I had ordered; he was totally unaware of the state to which my devilish machinations had brought my victim. He found me hanging over her—calling her by every endearing name—chafing her hands in mine—watching in torture for such signs of returning sense as would assure me that I was not about to see her expire before my eyes. He was scared by what he saw; but I silenced him, and made him light a fire, and heat sand, which I placed at her feet; and then, by degrees, with help of large doses of sal-volatile and other drugs, circulation was restored. She opened her eyes and gazed wildly round, and tears gushed from under the lids in large slow drops! My soul blessed God! Every mad desire and guilty scheme had faded before the expectation of her death. All I asked of Heaven was her life, and leave to restore her to her child and her home. Heaven granted, as I thought, my prayer. The livid streaks which had settled round her mouth and eyes disappeared; her features lost the rigidity of convulsions, a slight colour tinged her cheeks; her hands, late chill and stiff, now had warmth and voluntary motions of their own. Once or twice she looked round and tried to speak. 'Gerard!' that word, the name of her boy, was murmured; I caught the sound as I bent eagerly over her. 'He is safe—he is well,' I whispered. 'All is well; be comforted, Alithea.' The poor victim smiled; yes, her own sweet smile dawned upon her face. 'She too is safe,' I thought. Once again I felt my heart beat freely and at ease.
"She continued, however, in a state of torpor. There were two rooms in the hut. I prepared a sort of couch for her in the inner one. I placed her on it; I covered her with her cloak. By degrees the sort of insensibility in which she sunk changed to sleep. We left her then, and sat watching in the outer room. I kept my eyes fixed on her, and saw that each hour added to the tranquillity of her repose; I could not hear her breathe; for though the thunder and rain had ceased, the wind howled and the near ocean roared; its billows, driven by the western gale, encroached upon the sands almost to the threshold of the hut.
"A revulsion had taken place within me; I felt that there was something dearer to me than the fulfilment of my schemes, which was her life. She appeared almost miraculously restored, and my softened heart thanked God and blessed her. I believed I could be happy even in eternal absence, now that the guilt of her death was taken from my soul. Well do I remember the kind of rapture that flowed in upon my heart, as at dawn of day I crept noiselessly to her side, and marked the regular heaving of her bosom; and saw her eyelids, heavy and dark with suffering, it is true, yet gently closed over the dear orbs which again and for many a long year would enjoy the light of day. I felt a new man, I felt happy. In a few short hours I should receive her pardon—convey her home—declare my own guilt; and while absolving her, offer myself as the mark of whatever vengeance her husband might choose to take. Me!—oh, what was I? I had no being; it was dissolved into a mere yearning for her life—her contentment. I was about to render myself up as a criminal to a man whose most generous act would be to meet me in the field; but that was nothing; I thought not of it, either with gladness or regret. She lives—she shall be restored to all she loves—she once again will be at peace.
"These were my dreams as I hung over her, and gradually the break of day became more decided; by the increasing light I could perceive that I had not deceived myself, she slept a healthy, profound, healing sleep: I returned to the outer room; Osborne had wrapped himself in his great-coat, and lay stretched on the floor. I roused him, and told him to go for the horses and carriage immediately, so that the first thing that might welcome Alithea's awakening should be the offer of an immediate return home. He gladly obeyed, and left the hut; but scarcely was he gone than a sort of consciousness came over me, that I would not remain with her alone; so I followed him at some little distance towards the shed where the carriage and horses were.
"The wind had scattered every cloud, and still howled through the clear gray morning sky; the sea was in violent commotion, and huge surges broke heavily and rapidly on the beach. The tide was flowing fast, and the bed of the river we had crossed so safely the night before was covered by the waves; in a little time the ford would be impassable, and this was another reason to hasten the arrival of the horses. To the east each crag and precipice, each vast mountain-top, showed in dark relief against the golden eastern sky; seaward the horizon was misty from the gale, and the ocean stretched out inimitably; curlews and gulls screamed as they skimmed the crested waves, and breaker after breaker dashed furiously at my feet. It was a desolate, but a magnificent spectacle, and my throbbing heart was in unison with its vast grandeurs. I blessed sea, and wind, and heaven, and the dawn; the guilt of my soul had passed from me, and without the grievous penalty I had dreaded; all again was well. I walked swiftly on, I reached the shed. Osborne was busy with the horses; he had done what he could for them the night before, and they seemed tolerably fresh. I spoke cheerfully to the man, as I helped to harness them. Osborne was still pale with fright; but when I told him that I was going to carry the lady back to her friends, and that there was nothing to fear, he took heart; I bade him come slowly along, that the noise of the wheels might not waken her, if she still slept, and I walked beside, my hand on the neck of one horse while he bestrode the other, and we gazed around and pointed to each other signs of the recent tempest, which had been so much more violent than I in my preoccupation had known; and then as the idea of the ford being rendered impassable crossed me again, I bid him get on at a quicker rate, there was no fear of disturbing the sleeping lady, for the wheels were noiseless on the heavy sands.
"I have mentioned that huge sand-hills were thrown up here and there on the beach; two of the highest of these shut out all view of the hut, and even of the river, till we were close upon them. As we passed these mounds, my first glance was to see the state of the tide. The bed of the river was entirely filled with dashing crested waves, which poured in from the sea with inconceivable rapidity, and obliterated every trace of the ford. I looked anxiously round, but it was plain we must wait for the ebbing tide, or make a long detour to seek the upper part of the stream. As I gazed, something caught my eyes as peculiar. The foam of the breaking waves was white, and this object also was white; yet was it real, or but the mockery of a human form? For a moment my heart ceased to beat, and then with wings to my feet I ran to the hut: I rushed into the inner room—the couch was deserted, the whole dwelling empty! I hurried back to the river's brink and strained my eyeballs to catch a sight of the same fearful object; it was there! I could not mistake, a wave lifted up and then again overwhelmed and swallowed it in its abyss, the form, no longer living, the dead body of Alithea. I threw myself into the water, I battled with the waves, the tide bore me on. Again and again I was blinded and overwhelmed by the surges, but still I held on, and made my way into the middle of the roaring flood. As I rose gasping from one large billow that had, for more than a minute, ingulfed me in its strangling depths, I felt a substance strike against me; instinctively I clutched at it, and grasping her long streaming hair, now with renewed strength and frantic energy I made for shore. I was as a plaything to the foaming billows; but by yielding to them, by suffering myself to be carried up the tide to where the river grew shallower and the waves less powerful, I was miserable enough at last to escape. Fool! did I not know that she was dead!—why did I not, clasping her in my arms, resign my life to the waters? No! she had returned to me from the gates of death the night before, and I madly deemed the miracle would be twice performed.
"I reached the bank. Osborne, trembling and ghastly, helped me to lift her on shore; we endeavoured by various means to recall the spark of life—it was too late. She had been long in the water, and was quite dead!
"How can I write these words, how linger on these hideous details? Alas! they are for ever before me; no day, no hour passes but the whole scene is acted over again with startling vividness—and my soul shrinks and shudders from the present image of death. Even now that the dawn of Greece is breaking among the hills—that the balmy summer air fans my cheek—that the distant mountain-tops are gilded by the morning beams, and the rich, tranquil beauty of a southern clime is around—yet even now the roar of that distant ocean is in my ear, the desolate coast stretches out far away, and Alithea lies pale, drenched, and lifeless at my feet.
"I saw it all; and how often and for ever do I go over in my thoughts what had passed during the interval of my absence! She had awoke refreshed—she collected her scattered senses—she remembered the hideous vision of her carrying off. She knew not of my relenting—she feared my violence—she resolved to escape; she was familiar with that shore; its rivers and the laws which governed their tides were known to her. She believed that she could pass the water in safety, for often, when the bed of the estuary was apparently full, she knew that she had forded the stream on horseback, and the waters scarce covered the animal's fetlock. Intent on escaping the man of violence, of reaching her beloved home, she had entered the stream without calculating the difference of a calm neap tide, and the mass of irresistible waves borne up by the strong western wind; they perhaps seemed less terrible than I; to fly from me, she encountered, delivered herself up to them! and there she lay, destroyed, dead, lost for ever!
"No more of this! What then I did may, I now conceive, appear more shocking to my countrymen than all that went before. But I knew little of English customs. I had gone out an inexperienced stripling to India, and my modes of action were formed there. I now know that when one dies in England, they keep the lifeless corpse, weeping and watching beside it, for many days, and then, with lingering ceremonies and the attendance of relations and friends, lay it solemnly in the dismal tomb. But I had seen whole armies mown down by the sword and disease; I was accustomed to the soldier's hastily-dug grave in a climate where corruption follows fast upon death. To hide the dead with speed from every eye was the Indian custom.
"And then, should I take the corpse of Alithea, wet with the ocean tide, ghastly from the throes of recent death, and bear her to her home, and say, here she is—she enjoyed life and happiness yester-evening; I bore her away, behold my work! Should I present myself to her husband, answer his questions, detail the various stages of my crime, and tamely await his vengeance or his pardon! Never!
"Or should I destroy myself at her side, and leave our bodies to tell a frightful tale of mystery and horror? The miserable terrors of my associate would of itself have prevented this catastrophe. I had to reassure and protect him.
"My resolution was quickly made not to outlive my victim—and, making atonement by my death, what other penalty could I be called upon to pay? But my death should not be a tale to appal or amuse the vulgar, or to swell with triumph the heart of Alithea's tyrant husband. Secrecy and oblivion should cover all. My plan was laid, and I acted accordingly.
"Osborne entered into the design with alacrity. He was moved by other feelings, he was possessed by an agony of fear; he did not doubt but that we should be accused of murdering the hapless lady, and the image of the gallows flitted before his eyes.
"Understanding each other without many words, Osborne said that in the shed where we had placed the horses he had remarked a spade; it was so early that no one was about to observe him, and he went to fetch it. He returned in about half an hour; I sat keeping watch the while by the dead, and feasted my eyes with the sight of my pale victim as she lay at my feet. Of what tough materials is man formed, that my heart-strings did not break, and that I outlived that hour!
"Osborne returned, and we went to work. Some ten yards above high-water mark there was a single leafless, moss-grown, skeleton tree, with something like soil about its roots, and sheltered from the spray and breeze by the vicinity of a sand-hill; close to it we dug a deep grave. I placed the cushions in it on which her fair form, all warm and soft, had reposed, during the preceding night. Then I composed her stark limbs, banding the long wet tresses of her abundant hair across her eyes, for ever closed, crossing her hands upon her pure, death-cold bosom; I touched her reverently—I did not even profane her hand by a kiss; I wrapped her in her cloak, and laid her in the open grave. I tore down some of the decaying boughs of the withered tree, and, arching them above her body, threw my own cloak above, so with vain care to protect her lifeless form from immediate contact with the soil. Then we filled up the grave, and, scattering dry sand above, removed every sign of recent opening. This was performed in silence, or with whispered words—the roaring waves were her knell, the rising sun her funeral torch; I was satisfied with the solemnity of the scene around, and I was composed, for I was resolved on death. Osborne trembled in every limb, and his face rivalled in hue her wan, bloodless countenance.
"We carefully removed every article from the hut, and put all in the same state as when we found it. I did not, indeed, fear discovery; who would imagine that my course would be to the desolate seabeach? and if they did, and found all, I should be far, I should be dead. But Osborne was eager to obliterate every mark of the hut having been visited. When he was satisfied that he had accomplished this, without looking behind, I got into the carriage, we drove with what speed we could to Lancaster, and thence to Liverpool. Osborne was in a transport of fear till he got on board an American vessel: fortunately, the wind having veered towards the north, there was one about to weigh anchor. I placed a considerable sum of money in my accomplice's hands, and recommended discretion. He would have questioned me as to my own designs, but he respected my stern silence, and we parted never to meet again. A small coasting vessel, bound for Plymouth, was at that moment making her way out of harbour; I hailed a man on board, and threw myself on to the deck.
"Elizabeth can tell the rest. She knows how I landed in a secluded village of Cornwall, with the intent there to make due sacrifice to the outraged manes of Alithea. Still I grieve for the unaccomplished purpose; still I repine that I did not there die. She stopped my hand. An angel, in likeness of a human child, arrested my arm; and winning my wonder by her extraordinary loveliness, and my interest by her orphan and desolate position, I seemed called upon to live for her sake. The struggle was violent, for I longed to make atonement by my death; and I longed to forget my crimes and their consequences in the oblivious grave. At first I thought that the respite I granted myself would be short; but it lasted for years; and I dragged out a living death, having survived love and hope: remorse my follower; ghastly images of crime and death my comrades. I travelled from place to place, pursued by Alithea's upbraiding ghost and my own torturing thoughts. By frequent change of place, I sought to assuage my pangs; I believe that I increased them. They might perhaps have been mitigated by the monotony of a stationary life. But a traveller's existence is all sensation, and every emotion is rendered active and penetrating by the perpetual variation of the appearances of natural objects. Thought and feeling awaken with the sun, and dewy eve and the radiant stars cause the eyes to turn towards the backward path; while darkness, felt palpably, as one proceeds onward in an unknown land, awakens the snakes of conscience. The storm and expected wreck are images of retribution; while yet the destruction I pined for receded from before my thirsting lips.
"Yet still I dragged on life, most unworthily and unworthy, till on a day I saw the son of my victim at Baden. I witnessed misery, widely spread, through my means; and felt that her disimbodied spirit must curse me for the evil I had brought on her beloved child. I remembered all she had fondly said of him: and the cloudless beauty of his face, his joyous laugh, and free step when last I saw him at her side. He was blighted and destroyed by me; gloomy, savage, and wild, eternal sorrow was written on his brow, fear and hatred gleamed in his eyes. Such by my means had the son of Alithea become; such had his base-minded father rendered him; but mine the guilt—mine be the punishment! What a wretch was I, to live in peace and security, ministered to by an angel—while this dearest part of herself was doomed to anguish, and to the unmitigated influence of the demon for ever at his side, through my accursed means.
"From that hour I became thrice hateful to myself; I had tried to live for my Elizabeth; but that idea passed away with every other solace, in which hitherto I had iniquitously indulged. I resolved to die; but as a taint has been cast by the most villanous heart in the world upon her hallowed name, my first task was to redeem that out of her unworthy husband's hands; and yet I could not, I would not, while living, disclose the truth and give a triumph to my enemy. But soon, oh, very soon, will the soil of Greece drink up my life-blood! and while this writing proclaims her innocence, I shall be sheltered by the grave from the taunts and revilings of men.
"And you, dear child of my affection, who have been to me as a blessing immediate from Heaven, who have warmed my heart with your love and smoothed the fierceness of my temper by your unalterable sweetness; who having blessed me with your virtues, clinging to the ruin with a fidelity I believed impossible, how shall I say farewell to you? Forgive your friend that he deserts you; long ago he deserted himself and the better part of life; it is but the shell of him that remains; and that corroded by remorse, and the desire to die. You deserve better than to have your young days clouded by the shadow of my crime thrown over them. Forget me, and be happy; you must be so, while I—The sun is up; the martial trumpet sounds. It is a joy to think that I shall have a soldier's grave."
Such was the tale presented to the young, enthusiastic, innocent Elizabeth, unveiling the secret of the life of him whom she revered above all the world. Her soul was in her eyes as she read, or rather devoured, page after page, till she arrived at the catastrophe; when a burst of passionate tears relieved her swelling bosom, and carried away upon their stream a thousand, trembling, unspeakable fears that had gathered in wild multitude around her heart. "He is innocent! He, my benefactor, my father, when he accused himself of murder, spoke, as I thought, of a consequence, not an act; and if the chief principle of religion be true, that repentance washes away sin, he is pardoned, and the crime forgotten. Noble, generous heart! What drops of anguish have you not shed in atonement! What glorious obsequies you pay your victim. For she also is acquitted. Gerard's mother is more than innocent. She was true to him, and to the purest sentiments of nature, to the end; nay, more, her life was sacrificed to them." And Elizabeth went over in her mind, as Falkner had often done, the emotions that actuated her to attempt the dangerous passage across the ford. She fancied her awakening on the fatal morning, her wild look around. No familiar object met her view—nor did any friendly voice reassure her; the strange scene and solitary hut were testimonies that she did not dream, and that she had really been torn from home and all she loved by a violence she could not resist. At first she must have listened tremblingly, and fancied her lover-enemy at hand. But all is still. She rises; she ventures to examine the strange dwelling to which she has been carried—no human being presents himself. She quits the threshold of the hut—a familiar scene is before her eyes, the ocean and the dreary but well-known shore—the river which she has so often crossed—and among the foldings of the not distant hills, imbosomed in trees, she sees Dromore, her tranquil home. She knows that it is but a few miles distant; and while she fancies her enemy near at hand, yet the hope animates her that she may cross the stream unseen, and escape. Elizabeth imaged all her hopes and fears; she seemed to see the hapless lady place her uncertain feet, her purpose being stanch and unfaltering, within the shallow wave, which she believed she could traverse in safety; the roar of the advancing tide was in her ears, the spray dashed round her, and her footing grew uncertain, as she sought to find her way across the rugged bed of the river. But she thought only of her child, from whom she had been torn, and her fears of being, through the deed of violence which had carried her off, excluded from her home for ever. To arrive at that home was all her desire. As she advanced she still fixed her eyes on the clustering woods of Dromore, sleeping stilly in the gray, quiet dawn: and she risked her life unhesitatingly to gain the sacred shelter. All depended on her reaching it, quickly and alone; and she was doomed never to see it more. She advances resolutely, but cautiously. The waves rise higher—she is in the midst of the stream—her footing becomes more unsteady—does she look back?—there is no return—her heart proudly repels the very thought of desiring it. She gathers her garments about her—she looks right onward—she steps more carefully—the surges buffet her—they rise higher and higher—the spray is dashed over her head, and blinds her sight—a false step—she falls—the waters open to ingulf her—she is borne away. One thought of her Gerard—one prayer to Heaven, and the human eye can pursue the parting soul no farther. She is lost to earth—none upon it can any longer claim a portion in her.
But she is innocent. The last word murmured in her last sleep—the last word human ears heard her utter, was her son's name. To the last she was all mother; her heart filled with that deep yearning, which a young mother feels to be the very essence of her life, for the presence of her child. There is something so beautiful in a young mother's feelings. Usually a creature to be fostered and protected—taught to look to another for aid and safety; yet a woman is the undaunted guardian of her little child. She will expose herself to a thousand dangers to shield his fragile being from harm. If sickness or injury approach him, her heart is transfixed by terror: readily, joyfully, she would give her own blood to sustain him. The world is a hideous desert when she is threatened to be deprived of him; and when he is near, and she takes him to the shelter of her bosom, and wraps him in her soft, warm embrace, she cares for nothing beyond that circle; and his smiles and infantine caresses are the life of her life. Such a mother was Alithea; and in Gerard she possessed a son capable of calling forth in its intensity, and of fully rewarding, her maternal tenderness. What wonder, when she saw him cast pitilessly down on the road-side—alive or dead she knew not—the wheel of the carriage that bore her away might have crushed and destroyed his tender limbs—what wonder that she should be threatened by instant death, through the excess of her agony? What wonder that, reviving from death, her first and only thought was to escape—to get back to him—to clasp him to her heart—never to be severed more?
How glad, and yet how miserable, Gerard would be to read this tale. His proudest and fondest assertions certified as true, and yet to feel that he had lost her for ever, whose excellence was proved to be thus paramount. Elizabeth's reflections now rested on him—and now turned to Falkner—and now she opened the manuscript again, and read anew—and then again her heart made its commentary, and she wept and rejoiced; and longed to comfort her father, and congratulate Neville, all in a breath.
She never thought of herself. This was Elizabeth's peculiarity. She could be so engrossed by sympathy for others, that she could forget herself wholly. At length she remembered her father's directions, that his manuscript should be given to Neville when he called. She had no thought of disobeying; nor could she help being glad that Gerard's filial affection should receive its reward, even while she was pained to think that Falkner should be changed at once into an enemy in her new friend's eyes. Still her generous nature led her instantly to ally herself to the weaker side. Neville was triumphant—Falkner humiliated and fallen; and thus he drew her closer to him, and riveted the chain of gratitude and fidelity by which she was bound. She had shed many tears for Alithea's untimely fate; for the virtues and happiness hurried to a mysterious end—buried in an untold grave. But she had her reward. Long had she been there, where there is no trouble, no strife—her pure soul received into the company of kindred angels. Her heroism would now be known; her actions justified; she would be raised above her sex in praise; her memory crowned with unfading glory. It was Falkner who needed the exertion of present service, to forgive and console. He must be raised from his self-abasement; his despair must be cured. He must feel that the hour of remorse was past; that of repentance and forgiveness come. He must be rewarded for all his goodness to her, by being made to love life for her sake. Neville, whose heart was free from every base alloy, would enter into these feelings. Content to rescue the fame of his mother from the injury done it; happy in being assured that his faithful, filial love had not been mistaken in its reliance, the first emotion of his generous soul would be to forgive. Yet Elizabeth fancied that, borne away by his ardour in his mother's cause, he might altogether pass over and forget the extenuating circumstances that rendered Falkner worthy of pardon; and she thought it right to accompany the narrative with an explanatory letter. Thus she wrote:—
"My father has given me these papers for the purpose of transmitting them to you. I need not tell you that I read them this day for the first time: that till now I was in total ignorance of the facts they disclose."It is most true that I, a little child, stopped his arm as he was about to destroy himself. Moved by pity for my orphan state, he consented to live. Is this a crime? Yet I could not reconcile him to life, and he went to Greece, seeking death. He went there in the pride of life and health. You saw him at Marseilles; you saw him to-day—the living effigy of remorse and wo."It is hard, at the moment you discover that he was the cause of your mother's death, to ask your sympathy for his sufferings and high-minded contrition. I leave you to follow the dictates of your own heart with regard to him. For myself, attached to him as I am by every sentiment of affection and gratitude, I am, from this moment, more than ever devoted to his service, and eager to prove to him my fidelity."These words come from myself. My father knows not what I write. He simply told me to inform you that he should remain here; and if you desired aught of him, he was ready at your call. He thinks, perhaps, you may require further explanation—further guidance to your mother's grave. Oh, secret and obscure as it is, is it not guarded by angels? Have you not been already led to it?"
"My father has given me these papers for the purpose of transmitting them to you. I need not tell you that I read them this day for the first time: that till now I was in total ignorance of the facts they disclose.
"It is most true that I, a little child, stopped his arm as he was about to destroy himself. Moved by pity for my orphan state, he consented to live. Is this a crime? Yet I could not reconcile him to life, and he went to Greece, seeking death. He went there in the pride of life and health. You saw him at Marseilles; you saw him to-day—the living effigy of remorse and wo.
"It is hard, at the moment you discover that he was the cause of your mother's death, to ask your sympathy for his sufferings and high-minded contrition. I leave you to follow the dictates of your own heart with regard to him. For myself, attached to him as I am by every sentiment of affection and gratitude, I am, from this moment, more than ever devoted to his service, and eager to prove to him my fidelity.
"These words come from myself. My father knows not what I write. He simply told me to inform you that he should remain here; and if you desired aught of him, he was ready at your call. He thinks, perhaps, you may require further explanation—further guidance to your mother's grave. Oh, secret and obscure as it is, is it not guarded by angels? Have you not been already led to it?"
She left off abruptly—she heard a ring at the outer gate—the hour had come—it must be Neville! She placed the papers in the writing-case, and directing and sealing the letter, gave both to the servant, to be delivered to him. Scarcely was this done, when suddenly it flashed across her how the relative situations of Neville and herself were changed. That morning she had been his chosen friend—into her ear he poured the history of his hopes and fears—he claimed her sympathy—and she felt that from her he derived a happiness never felt before. Now he must regard her as the daughter of his mother's destroyer, and should she ever see him more? Instinctively she rushed to the highest room of the house to catch one other glimpse. By the time she reached the window, the act was fulfilled that changed both their lives—the packet given. Dimly, in the twilight, she saw a horseman emerge from under the wall of the garden, and slowly cross the heath; slowly at first, as if he did not comprehend what had happened, or what he was doing. There is something that excites unspeakable tenderness when the form of the loved one is seen, even from far; and Elizabeth, though unaware of the nature and depth of her sensations, yet felt her heart soften and yearn towards her friend. A blessing fell from her lips; while the consciousness of all of doubtful and sad that he must at that moment experience, at being sent from her door with a written communication only, joined to the knowledge that each succeeding hour would add to the barriers that separated them, so overcame her, that when at last he put spurs to his horse, and was borne out of sight into the thickening twilight, she burst into a passion of tears, and wept for some time, not knowing what she did, nor where she was; but feeling that from that hour the colour of her existence was changed—its golden hue departed—and that patience and resignation must henceforth take place of gladness and hope.
She roused herself after a few minutes from this sort of trance, and her thoughts reverted to Falkner. There are few crimes so enormous but that, when we undertake to analyze their motives, they do not find some excuse and pardon in the eyes of all except their perpetrators. Sympathy is more of a deceiver than conscience. The stander-by may dilate on the force of passion and the power of temptation, but the guilty are not cheated by such subterfuges; he knows that the still voice within was articulate to him. He remembers that at the moment of action he felt his arm checked, his ear warned; he could have stopped, and been innocent. Perhaps of all the scourges wielded by the dread Eumenides, there is none so torturing as the consciousness of the wilfulness of the act deplored. It is a mysterious principle, to be driven out by no reasonings, no commonplace philosophy. It had eaten into Falkner's soul; taken sleep from his eyes, strength from his limbs, every healthy and self-complacent sentiment from his soul.
Elizabeth, however, innocent and good as she was, fancied a thousand excuses for an act, whose frightful catastrophe was not foreseen. Falkner called himself a murderer; but, though the untimely death of the unfortunate Alithea was brought about by his means, so far from being guilty of the deed, he would have given a thousand lives to save her. Since her death, she well knew that sleep had not refreshed, nor food nourished him. He was blighted, turned from all the uses and enjoyments of life; he desired the repose of the grave; he had sought death; he had made himself akin to the grim destroyer.
That he had acted wrongly, nay, criminally, Elizabeth acknowledged. But by how many throes of anguish, by what repentance and sacrifice of all that life holds dear, had he not expiated the past! Elizabeth longed to see him again, to tell him how fondly she still loved him, how he was exalted, not debased, in her eyes; to comfort him with her sympathy, cherish him with her love. It was true that she did not quite approve of the present state of his mind; there was too much of pride, too much despair. But when he found that, instead of scorn, his confession met with compassion and redoubled affection, his heart would soften, he would no longer desire to die, so to escape from blame and retribution; but be content to endure, and teach himself that resignation which is the noblest and most unattainable temper of mind to which humanity may aspire.
While these thoughts, founded on a natural piety, pure and gentle as herself, occupied Elizabeth, Falkner indulged in far other speculations. He triumphed. It is strange, that although perpetually deceived and led astray by our imagination, we always fancy that we can foresee, and in some sort command, the consequences of our actions. Falkner, while he deplored his beloved victim with the most heartfelt grief, yet at no time experienced a qualm of fear, because he believed that he held the means of escape in his own hands, and could always shelter himself from the obloquy that he now incurred, in an unapproachable tomb. Through strange accidents, that resource had failed him; he was alive, and his secret was in the hands of his enemies. But as he confronted the injured son of a more injured mother, another thought, dearer to his lawless yet heroic imagination, presented itself. There was one reparation he could make, and doubtless it would be demanded of him. The law of honour would be resorted to, to avenge the death of Alithea. He did not for a moment doubt but that Neville would challenge him. His care must be to fall by the young man's hand. There was a sort of poetical justice in this idea, a noble and fitting ending to his disastrous story, that solaced his pride, and filled him, as it has been said, with triumph.
Having arrived at this conclusion, he felt sure also that the consummation would follow immediately on Neville's perusal of the narration put into his hands, This very day might be his last, and it was necessary to make every preliminary arrangement. Leaving Elizabeth occupied with his fatal papers, he drove to town to seek Mr. Raby's solicitor, to place in his hands the proofs of his adopted child's birth, so to secure her future acknowledgment by her father's family. She was not his child; no drop of his blood flowed in her veins; his name did not belong to her. As Miss Raby, Neville would gladly seek her, while as Miss Falkner, an insuperable barrier existed between them; and though he fell by Gerard's hand, yet he meant to leave a letter to convince her that this was but a sort of cunning suicide, and that it need place no obstacle between two persons whom he believed were formed for each other. What more delightful than that his own Elizabeth should love the son of Alithea? If he survived, indeed, this mutual attachment would be beset by difficulties; his death was like the levelling of a mountain—all was plain, easy, happy, when he no longer deformed the scene.