 | CHAPTER X. The brothers : |  |
10. CHAPTER X.
Is but the parent to a younger crime,
That must be born, in fulness of its hour,
Itself to be prolific—and its seed
Is evermore the dark unholy fiend,
Insatiate of insolence and wrong—
The single fury with a thousand names—
Phrensy, or fate, or vengeful wrath divine.”
The Agamemnon.
It would be madness to attempt the portraiture
of my feelings, as I read the fatal intelligence contained
in that wild but powerful letter,—love—
admiration—impatience—anguish—I know not
which was strongest. At first I felt inclined to
rebel against the prohibition it contained; to doubt
the justice of her conclusions; to ascribe the whole
—as she herself had written it—to her woman-fears.
Then, again, when I thought of her, as I
had seen her the last time, fearlessly protecting
with the mortal weapon my own forfeit life;
when I considered the fearful accuracy with
the unrelenting and unscrupulous malice with
which my death had been meditated, and all but
executed; when I looked upon the frequency of
opportunities for the commission of this or any
other crime, in the present confusion of parties,
and in the distracted turbulence of the whole
realm, I began to feel that I had no right to
ascribe a weak and womanish vacillation to one
whom I had seen so nobly displaying qualities the
very reverse of these, under circumstances the
most trying! I began to feel that I was, indeed,
standing on a precipice's verge, and that my only
hope of safety or success did lie in caution.
At once, therefore, I resolved that I would not
for a moment be wanting to myself; that I would
not for a moment be wanting to her who had so
wonderfully manifested the depth of her devotion
to me, by the self-denying control with which she
had bound up her feelings, and compelled herself
to silence, when a word, a syllable might have
wrought deliverance or utter desolation! I saw,
as it were intuitively, that the only game which
could be crowned with good results was one of
deep, thoughtful, and well-executed artifice. I
saw that I must both deceive and divide, ere I
could hope to conquer. The first step to such a
my own thoughts, motives, character! I would
shake off all the semblance at least, if not all the
reality, of care! I would be foremost in the feast
as in the fray! I would no longer shun the deep
carousal—for, of a surety, there is truth in wine!
I would be all things with all men! I would wind
through thorns and flowers alike—carefully, noiselessly,
stealthily as the snake; that, like the snake,
I might, when certain of my distance and of my
prey, strike once and fatally!
As I revolved these things in my mind, a doubt
—a terrible doubt crossed me!—De Charmi! Had
I not rashly, like an idiot, given full confidence,
and on the merest impulse? “De Charmi”—I
repeated his name musingly—“can it be that he
is treacherous—base—leagued with the enemy?
Fool, fool!” I cried aloud, “henceforth will I speak
nothing; no, not even to myself. Henceforth will
I watch every motion of his eye, every quiver of
his lip, every light and every shadow that plays
upon his face; henceforth will I read his very
soul. If he be false—He that knows all things,
knows that I will stab him to his lying heart—at
the court of his king; in the arms of his mistress;
at the altar of his God!”
As I moved, vehemently, on the bed, in the violence
and something fell to the ground with a
slight but distinct sound—it was the larger packet;
which, in the warmth of the feelings conjured up
by what I had already seen, I had forgotten. It
was not an instant before I had dragged its contents
to daylight.
“It is but fitting,” thus ran the superscription—
“it is but fitting that Harry Mornington should
learn somewhat of her early fortunes whom he
has taken to his heart. Read these, my beloved,
and you will know that, if most miserable, I am
most innocent! You will see and judge, better
than from any words of mine, how desperate is
the hope of succour from violence or rashness.
Read these, and, oh! remember!—
`Merci, O merci Dièu—le bon temps viendra.'
my life been one long term of sorrow. A friendless,
homeless, persecuted orphan! Oh, that the
good time would indeed come, before my spirit
shall be broken, and my body worn away by the
very weariness of wo!”
“I said that my life had been one long term of
sorrow. I—I alone, have no sweet recollections,
no hallowed memories of old home-faces—of
showers, smiling even while they fall. I have none
such. My childhood is a blank, a starless night,
with here and there a dream! There is a vision
of a mother in my soul; of a soft, beautiful, but
ever melancholy mother—of one short summer
day of love and fearless confidence. Of one
whom I called father. I say wrongly; not of himself,
but of his eyes--deep, dark, unfathomably
tender. I can see those eyes looking down upon
my infant sports with a calm and chastened affection.
I can sometimes fancy that I see them, even
now, gazing down from the far firmament, when
the hush of night is heavy over the multitudinous
world. Yet are these but vague and, perchance,
false imaginings, scarcely more distinct than the
reflections on a midnight lake. They may be
real—they may be, and probably are, but the blind
yearnings of a fanciful and affectionate spirit pining
for sympathy and love, and finding none!
“At the furthest period to which I can recur
with certainty, I was the inmate of a noble castle—
a little wretched child; the orphan niece, as I was
told, of the dark lord of that demesne. But never
did I meet even the passing attention, the slight
affectionate notice, which the coldest heart must
lavish at moments on the sole remaining image of
the name of uncle. I was abandoned to the
care of menials; and even by them was rebuked,
slighted, chidden, taunted!—ay, taunted with base
blood and infamy of origin. My heartless kinsman
had three sons; one but a few months my senior;
and him—I saw him daily; not as an equal, not as
a cousin, but as a lord. The others were absent
from their father's mansion—pages in some proud
family. I will not write a name; for my object
in writing at all is to deter you from pursuit, not
to afford a clew. When I was a girl, perhaps of
thirteen years, I was sent to a convent, not as a
novice, but to receive a finished education. Though
stinted in all things else, even to miserly closeness,
in this respect money was profusely lavished.
Embroidery, painting, music, languages, dancing—
every trivial grace was to be cultivated, every
accomplishment to be acquired. Yet, with all this,
the same insults pursued me—the same harsh coldness.
My superior frowned me into silence; my
teachers instructed me in chilling, heartless negligence;
my young companions shunned me, as a
creature under the ban of infamy. I have sometimes
imagined, since, that all this was done with
a view to breaking down my spirit, to rendering
me pliable, soulless, and passionless. If so, how
character. Tenderness—kindness—could have
moulded me to aught; oppression and severity,
and the strong sense of bitter wrong, of cruelty
unmerited, have made me what I am—resolute and
firm to resist—immoveable of purpose, unless my
heart be touched, and then all softness! I grew
up a child of poetry: the secret places of my mind
were my sole storehouses of bliss; and in them I
was happy—I created, I dreamed—I became a
solitary creature of impulses and imagination.
“Time fled—and I grew in years, and in
stature, and, they said, in beauty. My companions,
who had wronged me from the first, now
hated—for they envied me; and I, whose whole
soul was a desire for affection—who had but one
wish—to love some living being who should love
me in return—grew to maturity without a friend!
“They led me back to that old mansion—and
all were altered: I was courted, flattered, cringed
to in humble admiration. I was to be the heiress
of that wide demesne—of those rich woodlands, in
which I had run almost savage as a little child; of
those fair lawns, which I had from a distance witnessed
thronged with the noble and the gay; of
those superb galleries, which I had never been
allowed to enter. I was to be the bride of my
from the pope; and, as is usual in such
cases, my will had not been consulted.
“I was called to an interview with my dark
kinsman, and positively informed of the honour
that awaited me—which I as positively declined.
My uncle was furious. He reviled me as the
child of infamy—the child, almost, of incest—his
sister's daughter, born without the sanction of the
holy church—my father a wretch, a villain, a seducer
of his own kinswoman within the prohibited
degrees. At once, shortly and impetuously, I cast
the falsehood in his teeth! Harry—it must be—it
is a falsehood. No man, however base, however
grasping, could wish to bind a child of infamy
like this to his own son! I offered to take the
veil—to submit myself to an eternal dungeon; but
never—I swore--never would I call husband the
son of him who had slandered my parents, and
robbed their child of her good name! I was remanded
to my chamber, imprisoned, half starved,
scourged. Yes, Harry--by the holy heavens that
are above us!—I, a woman, a helpless woman, was
bound and beaten like a dog, by orders of my own
mother's brother. It was their pretext that I was
mad! I was intrusted to the charge of hags—of
fiends—fiends in the shape of women. Chance
of my fate is here. My mother was the
eldest of her family; and by a settlement—a deed
of entail so ancient that the Salique law of France
affects it not—the descent is vested in the female
line. She was sole heiress to all the titles, lands, and
privileges of an old and noble race. My mother
wedded young, and contrary to her father's and to
her brother's consent. Her father's was withheld
from mere caprice; her brother's, from foul unnatural
avarice—for, failing that one sister and her
race, the fair inheritance would fall to him. He
forged the lie; he brought false papers—perjured
witnesses to prove their consanguinity; he broke
his sister's heart—slaying her with the sword of
her own outraged feelings, of her own murdered
reputation. My father was seen no more.
Whether he fell beneath the murderer's knife;
whether he fled beyond the sea; whether he languishes
in eternal chains—none know. I was
dragged to my uncle's dwelling; there was no
security but in my death, or in my union with his
first-born.
“The brothers returned to their father's hall
well-nurtured, courtly, beautiful, and brave! And
me—wretch that I am—they both loved me. The
elder was dark-haired, dark-eyed—but why should
well know the horrible reality. He
was grave, but passionate, and full of devoted
sentiment and rich romance, even in his gravity:
he was a man whom any girl might worship! I
know not but I—with all my resolutions, all my
vows against it—might have been wrought upon
to yield him my affections; for he was gentle—
full of the melancholy vein of poetry I loved, yet
not without its brilliancy—attentive even to devotion!
Thanks be to the Eternal, the misery of
loving him was spared me; for I learned—no
matter how—I learned, in time to save me, that
another, a gentle being buried in a living grave,
could claim him for her own. I charged him with
it—face to face, eye to eye—I charged him with
his atrocious villany! And, by that holy strength
that dwells in innocence, he quailed before me!
His swarthy cheek reddened, and his features
writhed as if with agony—yet still he persevered.
The younger—I loathed him from the first, for he
had dared to whisper guilt to me—to tempt me—
me, whom he considered as the unwilling bride of
his own brother—to tempt me to illicit love.
“When first I saw them on the lawn, methought
two nobler or more gallant gentlemen ne'er walked
the world in company. Their tones were low and
With all their faults, they were as yet brothers—
brothers in heart, as in their birthright. A brief
month had elapsed, and they were deadliest foemen.
Heart-burnings, envyings, and secret malice
had blazed out into fierce, open, and uncompromising
hate: all knew it, and all knew the miserable
but most guiltless cause.
“Again and again I implored permission to retire
to a convent, to surrender all my earthly rights,
to go forth on the wide world an outcast and a
beggar! Again and again I was denied this meed
of mercy. Had I received the veil, the convent
would have claimed my fortunes as an appanage:
had I gone forth alone, however friendless, and
however humbled, I might yet marry; I might yet
be the mother of wretches like myself, who would
in turn be claimants of their mother's heirdom.
“At length I was told in human words—by
kindred lips I was told—`To one of these my sons
must you be wedded, or you must die.'—`Then
will I die,' was my unalterable answer; and, I
doubt not, ere long the poison or the oubliette
would have brought a close to my afflictions, had
not the guilt of those most abhorred, yet most
miserable, brethren precipitated a catastrophe,
fatal alike to us and to themselves.
“One dark and silent midnight—the midnight of
that morning on which we for the first time met—
my solitary chamber was violently entered by the
emissaries of my elder lover—foul profanation of
the word!—my elder persecutor. That wretched
girl whose end—whose terrible, but surely not unmerited,
end—you witnessed, was the foremost.
Ere I was well awakened, I was blindfolded, bound,
gagged! With the silent expedition of guilt they
arrayed me—hurried me by private ways into a
coach—two persons entered with me, and we were
whirled away as fast as the speed of horses could
move the ponderous vehicle—whither I knew not.
“In an agony of horror and dismay I listened to
catch whatever word might fall from my companions,
whose identity I could well conjecture; but for
many miles they uttered not a syllable: only by the
thick breathing of one did I know him to be a man!
On—on we went—now over smooth and level roads,
now across country—over banks and ruts—sometimes
the branches sweeping the roof and panels—
and anon the wheels imbedded in the tenacious clay,
where, as I judged, we crossed the beds of streamlets
which had resisted the severe and biting frost.
The day was already breaking—as I could discover
even through the bandage, which pressed
tightly on my eyes—when we stopped for a few
us thus far on our frightful journey were removed;
a fresh relay was at hand, and in a few instants we
set off again, and with redoubled fury. We had
not driven far at this fierce rate, before my hands
were unfettered—my eyes and lips unbandaged!
It was as I conjectured—it was the elder who
sat beside me, with a fierce smile of triumph on his
swarthy features—and she, the tool and minister of
his atrocities! I spoke not—I moved not—I looked
not to the right or left—a stupid, dull insensibility
had fallen on me.
“I could judge from the words of that guilty
pair, for they now spoke freely and without concealment,
that they deemed all danger of pursuit
to be over. A party of armed servants, commanded
by the third and youngest of the brethren,
had escorted our flight till we had taken our relays,
and then had left us. I could see that there was
now but one armed horseman riding beside the
window.
“Suddenly we stopped with a shock and heavy
jerk—one of the horses had fallen; and ere the motion
of his fall was ended, the loud report of fire-arms
announced the cause. From a pathway,
source ten yards in front, that light-haired youth
rushed forth; he hurled the musket he had just
which had made a motion to dash onward; they
fell to plunging, and in an instant the carriage was
overturned. He snatched a pistol from his belt
with either hand, discharged one at the outrider,
who instantly fled into the dense forest, and escaped;
then, as his brother dashed the door of the
carriage to atoms with his foot, and sprang out,
sword in hand, he levelled the second full at his
head, with a smile of devilish exultation—`Die,' he
shouted—`die, dog, in the moment of your triumph!'
The flash was so close that I involuntarily
closed my eyes; I heard a whistling sound rush
by me, and, with a succession of the wildest yells,
that miserable girl fell forward, and dragged me to
the bottom of the coach. She clasped me with
her convulsed arms—she tore my very garments
with her teeth—her hot blood streamed over me!
Oh Heaven! Heaven!—I know not how I held my
reason—yet I did hold it; and all the time I heard
the shivering clash of their swords, and the stamping
of their feet upon the frozen soil. I heard the
quick clang of a horse's hoof as you drew nigh—
and struggled violently to get loose, but I could not.
Though speechless, and convulsed, and evidently
in her last agony, she still held me with a gripe
of steel. Suddenly her grasp relaxed—she was
the fatal carriage—beheld the kindred corpses, and
a stranger gazing on those corpses—a stranger now
no longer—I fainted—Harry, you only know the
rest!
“It was on the third night from your departure
—I had not yet retired to my couch, though it was
already two hours past midnight, for you had
promised me—and well I knew you would perform
that promise, cost you what it might—you had
promised to return on the third night. I sat by the
window, gazing out upon the moonlight scenery;
the air was beautifully calm and clear, and the
night wonderfully silent; I could hear the rushing
of the distant Marne in every lull of the light
breeze. Suddenly methought I heard a stealthy
footstep beneath the window—I listened—it was
not repeated. For a moment, I thought of flight,
or of calling for assistance, but an instant's reflection
reasoned me into security—fatal security!
At this moment the shrill note of a trumpet
came to my ear from a distance—I gazed steadily
to the road by which I knew you must return
—I saw your squadron reach the summit of the
hill—their steel caps glancing one by one as they
crossed the brow, and sinking into obscurity as they
entered the shadow of the orchards; I could even
I missed them amid the low roofs of the hamlet;
I lost the sound of their advance!—my breath
came thick—my eyes were filled with tears—my
heart was too full for my bosom. I was then safe,
indeed safe!—I had scarcely nurtured such a hope;
I had felt throughout the day a deep oppression on
my spirits—an overshadowing presentiment of evil
had weighed me down—yet now all, all was forgotten!
I breathed a prayer of thankfulness to
Him that is above; I looked forth again upon the
night, and I saw a little company of horsemen
emerge from the village, and ride briskly down the
moonlit slope. Filled, almost to choking, with gratitude
and love, I flung the casement open, and
leaned out to mark your coming; I saw you reach
the avenue—I lost you as you entered it—I
leaned yet farther out—at that moment—that very
moment of intense pleasure—the tall frame-work
of a ladder rose suddenly between me and the light,
and, ere I could spring back into the apartment,
fell with a jarring sound against the sculptured
window-sill. Rapidly as I darted towards the
lamp, with the hope of extinguishing it, and so escaping
in the gloom—more rapidly had three ruffians
scaled the ladder; they seized me ere I could
reach the door, and—though I screamed and struggled
through the narrow aperture, and bore me down
the steps. One of the party was left watching the
door within, to prevent rescue from that way ere
his comrades could descend. I knew that aid was
close at hand—I shrieked your name, and, not to
my astonishment, you came; your shot struck down
one of the party—they were taken by surprise—
the ladder fell, leaving the ruffian within entrapped
in his own snare. I saw you rush forward—oh
God! I saw you fall—I saw that foul assassin rear
his coward blade to pierce you—then—all glory be
to Him who gave me power!—I snatched the pistol
that had dropped from your hand—I stood over
you—and he—dastardly no less than cruel—he
cowered before me. It was but a second ere they
tore me from my station, and the weapon was discharged
in vain; but that second was your safety,
for, on either hand, the clash of stirrups and the
shouts of your followers came loud and near. At
this critical moment, the wretch within called to
his master to rear up the ladder for his escape—he
was answered by a short and sullen oath. As he
saw them mount to fly, he fired—first his musket,
and then both his pistols—in the despair of vengeance,
at his own treacherous companions; the
ball from the last weapon grazed the face of my
horse; with a savage execration he turned in his
saddle, levelled his own carabine with deliberate
aim—called on his men to fire! I saw the miserable
victim plunge headlong from the window!—I
heard the soft, dull sound of his fall!—and the
whole party dashed away, bearing me with them,
at the top of their horses' speed. We paused for
a moment or two in a clump of trees, I know not
wherefore, for the night had become gloomy and
overcast—yet I heard the jingling of armour, and
the tread of managed chargers sweeping around our
hiding-place. I raised my voice to cry aloud for
succour; but in a moment, ere one tone had found
its way to the air of heaven, a scarf was forced
into my mouth, and folded over my head, close—
almost to suffocation.
My tale of wo is ended—I cannot, dare not
write another word. Seek me not, Harry—
seek me not now—I do beseech you, even if you
shrink not aghast from the idea of reclaiming
one who would be but a reproach to your good
name!—Of all things, seek me not where first
we met—that, that, indeed, were sure destruction!
I am not there—I am not in that horrible vicinity.
Would, oh would that I dared reveal to you
my dwelling-place!—would that I dared reveal to
But I am bound—bound by a fearful oath,
never, by word or deed, by sign or letter, to reveal
or hint the place of my concealment—the names
of my tormentors. I swore it, Harry, with a bursting
heart and burning brain—I swore it by the
bones of my mother—by my love for you—by my
hopes of heaven hereafter—by the life of Him who
died that we might live! I swore it—and wherefore?—that
you might be safe, my beloved, from
the dagger or the bowl. They dare not break
their faith with me in this—I know they dare not
—but how, I may not tell you. Be you prudent
and cautious; seem to the world—seem—but oh,
let it be but seeming—seem to have forgotten, even
while you most remember, your own Isabel. Gird
yourself up with the armour of cautiousness and
craft—so, and so only, may we meet again! Oh
that I could see you, my beloved,—oh that I could
look upon your lordly brow, and hear your blessed
voice—oh that I could hold you in my arms, were
it but for one short hour, though death itself should
follow! Would, oh would we were together—together
even in the tomb—for the tomb knows no
further separation!”
| CHAPTER X. The brothers : | |