CHAPTER VIII.
* * * * "Is this the promised end?"--/Lear/.
IT was two hours after that scene before Maltravers left the house. It
was then just on the stroke of the first hour of morning. To him, while
he walked through the streets, and the sharp winds howled on his path,
it was as if a strange and wizard life had passed into and supported
him--a sort of drowsy, dull existence. He was like a sleepwalker,
unconscious of all around him; yet his steps went safe and free; and the
one thought that possessed his being--into which all intellect seemed
shrunk--the thought, not fiery nor vehement, but calm, stern, and
solemn--the thought of revenge--seemed, as it were, grown his soul
itself. He arrived at the door of Colonel Danvers, mounted the stairs,
and as his friend advanced to meet him, said calmly, "Now, then, the
hour has arrived."
"But what would you do now?"
"Come with me, and you shall learn."
"Very well, my carriage is below. Will you direct the servants?"
Maltravers nodded, gave his orders to the careless footman, and the two
friends were soon driving through the less known and courtly regions of
the giant city. It was then that Maltravers concisely stated to Danvers
the fraud that had been practised by Cesarini.
"You will go with me now," concluded Maltravers, "to his house. To do
him justice, he is no coward; he has not shrunk from giving me his
address, nor will he shrink from the atonement I demand. I shall wait
below while you arrange our meeting--at daybreak for to-morrow."
Danvers was astonished and even appalled by the discovery made to him.
There was something so unusual and strange in the whole affair. But
neither his experience, nor his principles of honour, could suggest any
alternative to the plan proposed. For though not regarding the cause of
quarrel in the same light as Maltravers, and putting aside all question
as to the right of the latter to constitute himself the champion of the
betrothed, or the avenger of the dead, it seemed clear to the soldier
that a man whose confidential letter had been garbled by another for the
purpose of slandering his truth and calumniating his name, had no option
but contempt, or the sole retribution (wretched though it be) which the
customs of the higher class permit to those who live within its pale.
But contempt for a wrong that a sorrow so tragic had followed--was
/that/ option in human philosophy?
The carriage stopped at a door in a narrow lane in an obscure suburb.
Yet, dark as all the houses around were, lights were seen in the upper
windows of Cesarini's residence, passing to and fro; and scarce had the
servant's loud knock echoed through the dim thoroughfare, ere the door
was opened. Danvers descended, and entered the passage--"Oh, sir, I am
so glad you are come!" said an old woman, pale and trembling; "he do
take on so!"
"There is no mistake," asked Danvers, halting; "an Italian gentleman
named Cesarini lodges here?"
"Yes, sir, poor cretur--I sent for you to come to him--for says I to my
boy, says I--"
"Whom do you take me for?"
"Why, la, sir, you be's the doctor, ben't you?"
Danvers made no reply; he had a mean opinion of the courage of one who
could act dishonourably; he thought there was some design to cheat his
friend out of his revenge; accordingly he ascended the stairs, motioning
the woman to precede him.
He came back to the door of the carriage in a few minutes. "Let us go
home, Maltravers," said he, "this man is not in a state to meet you."
"Ha!" cried Maltravers, frowning darkly, and all his long-smothered
indignation rushing like fire through every vein of his body; "would he
shrink from the atonement?" He pushed Danvers impatiently aside, leapt
from the carriage, and rushed up-stairs.
Danvers followed.
Heated, wrought-up, furious, Ernest Maltravers burst into a small and
squalid chamber; from the closed doors of which, through many chinks,
had gleamed the light that told him Cesarini was within. And Cesarini's
eyes, blazing with horrible fire, were the first object that met his
gaze. Maltravers stood still, as if frozen into stone.
"Ha! ha!" laughed a shrill and shrieking voice, which contrasted dreadly
with the accents of the soft Tuscan, in which the wild words were
strung--"who comes here with garments dyed in blood? You cannot accuse
me--for my blow drew no blood, it went straight to the heart--it tore no
flesh by the way; we Italians poison our victims! Where art thou--where
art thou, Maltravers? I am ready. Coward, you do not come! Oh, yes,
yes, here you are; the pistols--I will not fight so. I am a wild beast.
Let us rend each other with our teeth and talons!"
Huddled up like a heap of confused and jointless limbs in the furthest
corner of the room, lay the wretch, a raving maniac;--two men keeping
their firm gripe on him, which, ever and anon, with the mighty strength
of madness, he shook off, to fall back senseless and exhausted; his
strained and bloodshot eyes starting from their sockets, the slaver
gathering round his lips, his raven hair standing on end, his delicate
and symmetrical features distorted into a hideous and Gorgon aspect. It
was, indeed, an appalling and sublime spectacle, full of an awful moral,
the meeting of the foes! Here stood Maltravers, strong beyond the
common strength of men, in health, power, conscious superiority,
premeditated vengeance--wise, gifted; all his faculties ripe, developed,
at his command;--the complete and all-armed man, prepared for defence
and offence against every foe--a man who, once roused in a righteous
quarrel, would not have quailed before an army; and there and thus was
his dark and fierce purpose dashed from his soul, shivered into atoms at
his feet. He felt the nothingness of man and man's wrath--in the
presence of the madman on whose head the thunderbolt of a greater curse
than human anger ever breathes had fallen. In his horrible affliction
the Criminal triumphed over the Avenger!
"Yes! yes!" shouted Cesarini, again; "they tell me she is dying; but he
is by her side;--pluck him thence--he shall not touch her hand--she
shall not bless him--she is mine--if I killed her, I have saved her from
him--she is mine in death. Let me in, I say,--I will come in,--I will,
I will see her, and strangle him at her feet." With that, by a
tremendous effort, he tore himself from the clutch of his holders, and
with a sudden and exultant bound sprang across the room, and stood face
to face with Maltravers. The proud brave than turned pale, and recoiled
a step--"It is he! it is he!" shrieked the maniac, and he leaped like a
tiger at the throat of his rival. Maltravers quickly seized his arm,
and whirled him round. Cesarini fell heavily on the floor, mute,
senseless, and in strong convulsions.
"Mysterious Providence!" murmured Maltravers, "thou hast justly rebuked
the mortal for dreaming he might arrogate to himself thy privilege of
vengeance. Forgive the sinner, O God, as I do--as thou teachest this
stubborn heart to forgive--as she forgave who is now with thee, a
blessed saint in heaven!"
When, some minutes afterwards, the doctor, who had been sent for,
arrived, the head of the stricken patient lay on the lap of his foe, and
it was the hand of Maltravers that wiped the froth from the white lips,
and the voice of Maltravers that strove to soothe, and the tears of
Maltravers that were falling on that fiery brow.
"Tend him, sir, tend him as my brother," said Maltravers, hiding his
face as he resigned the charge. "Let him have all that can alleviate
and cure--remove him hence to some fitter abode--send for the best
advice. Restore him, and--and--" He could say no more, but left the
room abruptly.
It was afterwards ascertained that Cesarini had remained in the streets
after his short interview with Ernest, that at length he had knocked at
Lord Saxingham's door just in the very hour when death had claimed its
victim. He heard the announcement--he sought to force his way
up-stairs--they thrust him from the house, and nothing more of him was
known till he arrived at his own door, an hour before Danvers and
Maltravers came, in raging frenzy. Perhaps by one of the dim erratic
gleams of light which always chequer the darkness of insanity, he
retained some faint remembrance of his compact and assignation with
Maltravers, which had happily guided his steps back to his abode.
* * * * *
It was two months after this scene, a lovely Sabbath morning, in the
earliest May, as Lumley, Lord Vargrave, sat alone, by the window in his
late uncle's villa, in his late uncle's easy-chair--his eyes were
resting musingly on the green lawn on which the windows opened, or
rather on two forms that were seated upon a rustic bench in the middle
of the sward. One was the widow in her weeds, the other was that fair
and lovely child destined to be the bride of the new lord. The hands of
the mother and daughter were clasped each in each. There was sadness in
the faces of both--deeper if more resigned on that of the elder, for the
child sought to console her parent, and grief in childhood comes with a
butterfly's wing.
Lumley gazed on them both, and on the child more earnestly.
"She is very lovely," he said; "she will be very rich. After all, I am
not to be pitied. I am a peer, and I have enough to live upon at
present. I am a rising man--our party wants peers; and though I could
not have had more than a subaltern's seat at the Treasury Board six
months ago, when I was an active, zealous, able commoner, now that I am
a lord, with what they call a stake in the country, I may open my mouth
and--bless me! I know not how many windfalls may drop in! My uncle was
wiser than I thought in wrestling for this peerage, which he won and I
wear!--Then, by and by, just at the age when I want to marry and have an
heir (and a pretty wife saves one a vast deal of trouble), L200,000 and
a young beauty! Come, come, I have strong cards in my hands if I play
them tolerably. I must take care that she falls desperately in love
with me. Leave me alone for that--I know the sex, and have never failed
except in--ah, that poor Florence! Well, it is no use regretting! Like
thrifty artists, we must paint out the unmarketable picture, and call
luckier creations to fill up the same canvas!"
Here the servant interrupted Lord Vargrave's meditation by bringing in
the letters and the newspapers which had just been forwarded from his
town house. Lord Vargrave had spoken in the Lords on the previous
Friday, and he wished to see what the Sunday newspapers said of his
speech. So he took up one of the leading papers before he opened the
letters. His eyes rested upon two paragraphs in close neighbourhood
with each other: the first ran thus:
"The celebrated Mr. Maltravers has abruptly resigned his seat for the
------ of ------, and left town yesterday on an extended tour on the
Continent. Speculation is busy on the causes of the singular and
unexpected self-exile of a gentleman so distinguished--in the very
zenith of his career."
"So, he has given up the game!" muttered Lord Vargrave; "he was never a
practical man--I am glad he is out of the way. But what's this about
myself?"
"We hear that important changes are to take place in the government---it
is said that ministers are at last alive to the necessity of
strengthening themselves with new talent. Among other appointments
confidently spoken of in the best-informed circles, we learn that Lord
Vargrave is to have the place of ------. It will be a popular
appointment. Lord Vargrave is not a holiday orator, a mere declamatory
rhetorician--but a man of clear business-like views, and was highly
thought of in the House of Commons. He has also the art of attaching
his friends, and his frank, manly character cannot fail to have its due
effect with the English public. In another column of our journal our
readers will see a full report of his excellent maiden speech in the
House of Lords, on Friday last: the sentiments there expressed do the
highest honour to his lordship's patriotism and sagacity."
"Very well, very well indeed!" said Lumley, rubbing his hands; and
turning to his letters, his attention was drawn to one with an enormous
seal, marked "Private and confidential." He knew before he opened it
that it contained the offer of the appointment alluded to in the
newspaper. He read, and rose exultantly; passing through the French
windows, he joined Lady Vargrave and Evelyn on the lawn, and, as he
smiled on the mother and caressed the child, the scene and the group
made a pleasant picture of English domestic happiness.
Here ends the First Portion of this work: it ends in the view that
bounds us when we look on the practical world with the outward
unspiritual eye--and see life that dissatisfies justice,--for life is so
seen but in fragments. The influence of fate seems so small on the man
who, in erring, but errs as the egotist, and shapes out of ill some use
that can profit himself. But Fate hangs a shadow so vast on the heart
that errs but in venturing and knows only in others the sources of
sorrow and joy.
Go alone, O Maltravers, unfriendly, remote--thy present a waste, and thy
past life a ruin, go forth to the future!--Go, Ferrers, light
cynic--with the crowd take thy way,--complacent, elated,--no cloud upon
conscience, for thou seest but sunshine on fortune.--Go forth to the
future!
Human life is compared to the circle.--Is the simile just? All lines
that are drawn from the centre to touch the circumference, by the law of
the circle, are equal. But the lines that are drawn from the heart of
the man to the verge of his destiny--do they equal each other?--Alas!
some seem so brief, and some lengthen on as for ever.
THE END
