CHAPTER II.
LUCRETIA.
When Lucretia first came to the house of Sir Miles St. John she was an
infant about four years old. The baronet then lived principally in
London, with occasional visits rather to the Continent or a watering-
place than to his own family mansion. He did not pay any minute
attention to his little ward, satisfied that her nurse was sedulous, and
her nursery airy and commodious. When, at the age of seven, she began to
interest him, and he himself, approaching old age, began seriously to
consider whether he should select her as his heiress, for hitherto he had
not formed any decided or definite notions on the matter, he was startled
by a temper so vehement, so self-willed and sternly imperious, so
obstinately bent upon attaining its object, so indifferently contemptuous
of warning, reproof, coaxing, or punishment, that her governess honestly
came to him in despair.
The management of this unmanageable child interested Sir Miles. It
caused him to think of Lucretia seriously; it caused him to have her much
in his society, and always in his thoughts. The result was, that by
amusing and occupying him, she forced a stronger hold on his affections
than she might have done had she been more like the ordinary run of
commonplace children. Of all dogs, there is no dog that so attaches a
master as a dog that snarls at everybody else,--that no other hand can
venture to pat with impunity; of all horses, there is none which so
flatters the rider, from Alexander downwards, as a horse that nobody else
can ride. Extend this principle to the human species, and you may
understand why Lucretia became so dear to Sir Miles St. John,--she got at
his heart through his vanity. For though, at times, her brow darkened
and her eye flashed even at his remonstrance, she was yet no sooner in
his society than she made a marked distinction between him and the
subordinates who had hitherto sought to control her. Was this affection?
He thought so. Alas! what parent can trace the workings of a child's
mind,--springs moved by an idle word from a nurse; a whispered conference
between hirelings. Was it possible that Lucretia had not often been
menaced, as the direst evil that could befall her, with her uncle's
displeasure; that long before she could be sensible of mere worldly loss
or profit, she was not impressed with a vague sense of Sir Miles's power
over her fate,--nay, when trampling, in childish wrath and scorn, upon
some menial's irritable feelings, was it possible that she had not been
told that, but for Sir Miles, she would be little better than a servant
herself? Be this as it may, all weakness is prone to dissimulate; and
rare and happy is the child whose feelings are as pure and transparent as
the fond parent deems them. There is something in children, too, which
seems like an instinctive deference to the aristocratic appearances which
sway the world. Sir Miles's stately person, his imposing dress, the
respect with which he was surrounded, all tended to beget notions of
superiority and power, to which it was no shame to succumb, as it was to
Miss Black, the governess, whom the maids answered pertly, or Martha, the
nurse, whom Miss Black snubbed if Lucretia tore her frock.
Sir Miles's affection once won, his penetration not, perhaps, blinded to
her more evident faults, but his self-love soothed towards regarding them
leniently, there was much in Lucretia's external gifts which justified
the predilection of the haughty man. As a child she was beautiful, and,
perhaps from her very imperfections of temper, her beauty had that air of
distinction which the love of command is apt to confer. If Sir Miles was
with his friends when Lucretia swept into the room, he was pleased to
hear them call her their little "princess," and was pleased yet more at a
certain dignified tranquillity with which she received their caresses or
their toys, and which he regarded as the sign of a superior mind; nor was
it long, indeed, before what we call "a superior mind" developed itself
in the young Lucretia. All children are quick till they are set
methodically to study; but Lucretia's quickness defied even that numbing
ordeal, by which half of us are rendered dunces. Rapidity and precision
in all the tasks set to her, in the comprehension of all the explanations
given to her questions, evinced singular powers of readiness and
reasoning.
As she grew older, she became more reserved and thoughtful. Seeing but
few children of her own age, and mixing intimately with none, her mind
was debarred from the usual objects which distract the vivacity, the
restless and wondrous observation, of childhood. She came in and out of
Sir Miles's library of a morning, or his drawing-room of an evening, till
her hour for rest, with unquestioned and sometimes unnoticed freedom; she
listened to the conversation around her, and formed her own conclusions
unchecked. It has a great influence upon a child, whether for good or
for evil, to mix early and habitually with those grown up,--for good to
the mere intellect always; the evil depends upon the character and
discretion of those the child sees and hears. "Reverence the greatest is
due to the children," exclaims the wisest of the Romans [Cicero. The
sentiment is borrowed by Juvenal.],--that is to say, that we must revere
the candour and inexperience and innocence of their minds.
Now, Sir Miles's habitual associates were persons of the world,--well-
bred and decorous, indeed, before children, as the best of the old school
were, avoiding all anecdotes; all allusions, for which the prudent matron
would send her girls out of the room; but with that reserve speaking of
the world as the world goes: if talking of young A----, calculating
carelessly what he would have when old A----, his father, died; naturally
giving to wealth and station and ability their fixed importance in life;
not over-apt to single out for eulogium some quiet goodness; rather
inclined to speak with irony of pretensions to virtue; rarely speaking
but with respect of the worldly seemings which rule mankind. All these
had their inevitable effect upon that keen, quick, yet moody and
reflective intellect.
Sir Miles removed at last to Laughton. He gave up London,--why, he
acknowledged not to himself; but it was because he had outlived his age.
Most of his old set were gone; new hours, new habits, had stolen in. He
had ceased to be of importance as a marrying man, as a personage of
fashion; his health was impaired; he shrank from the fatigues of a
contested election; he resigned his seat in parliament for his native
county; and once settled at Laughton, the life there soothed and
flattered him,--there all his former claims to distinction were still
fresh. He amused himself by collecting, in his old halls and chambers,
his statues and pictures, and felt that, without fatigue or trouble, he
was a greater man at Laughton in his old age than he had been in London
during his youth.
Lucretia was then thirteen. Three years afterwards, Olivier Dalibard was
established in the house; and from that time a great change became
noticeable in her. The irregular vehemence of her temper gradually
subsided, and was replaced by an habitual self-command which rendered the
rare deviations from it more effective and imposing. Her pride changed
its character wholly and permanently; no word, no look of scorn to the
low-born and the poor escaped her. The masculine studies which her
erudite tutor opened to a grasping and inquisitive mind, elevated her
very errors above the petty distinctions of class. She imbibed earnestly
what Dalibard assumed or felt,--the more dangerous pride of the fallen
angel,--and set up the intellect as a deity. All belonging to the mere
study of mind charmed and enchained her; but active and practical in her
very reveries, if she brooded, it was to scheme, to plot, to weave, web,
and mesh, and to smile in haughty triumph at her own ingenuity and
daring. The first lesson of mere worldly wisdom teaches us to command
temper; it was worldly wisdom that made the once impetuous girl calm,
tranquil, and serene. Sir Miles was pleased by a change that removed
from Lucretia's outward character its chief blot,--perhaps, as his frame
declined, he sighed sometimes to think that with so much majesty there
appeared but little tenderness; he took, however, the merits with the
faults, and was content upon the whole.
If the Provencal had taken more than common pains with his young pupil,
the pains were not solely disinterested. In plunging her mind amidst
that profound corruption which belongs only to intellect cultivated in
scorn of good and in suppression of heart, he had his own views to serve.
He watched the age when the passions ripen, and he grasped at the fruit
which his training sought to mature. In the human heart ill regulated
there is a dark desire for the forbidden. This Lucretia felt; this her
studies cherished, and her thoughts brooded over. She detected, with the
quickness of her sex, the preceptor's stealthy aim. She started not at
the danger. Proud of her mastery over herself, she rather triumphed in
luring on into weakness this master-intelligence which had lighted up her
own,--to see her slave in her teacher; to despise or to pity him whom she
had first contemplated with awe. And with this mere pride of the
understanding might be connected that of the sex; she had attained the
years when woman is curious to know and to sound her power. To inflame
Dalibard's cupidity or ambition was easy; but to touch his heart,--that
marble heart!--this had its dignity and its charm. Strange to say, she
succeeded; the passion, as well as interests, of this dangerous and able
man became enlisted in his hopes. And now the game played between them
had a terror in its suspense; for if Dalibard penetrated not into the
recesses of his pupil's complicated nature, she was far from having yet
sounded the hell that lay, black and devouring, beneath his own. Not
through her affections,--those he scarce hoped for,--but through her
inexperience, her vanity, her passions, he contemplated the path to his
victory over her soul and her fate. And so resolute, so wily, so
unscrupulous was this person, who had played upon all the subtlest keys
and chords in the scale of turbulent life, that, despite the lofty smile
with which Lucretia at length heard and repelled his suit, he had no fear
of the ultimate issue, when all his projects were traversed, all his
mines and stratagems abruptly brought to a close, by an event which he
had wholly unforeseen,--the appearance of a rival; the ardent and almost
purifying love, which, escaping a while from all the demons he had
evoked, she had, with a girl's frank heart and impulse, conceived for
Mainwaring. And here, indeed, was the great crisis in Lucretia's life
and destiny. So interwoven with her nature had become the hard
calculations of the understanding; so habitual to her now was the zest
for scheming, which revels in the play and vivacity of intrigue and plot,
and which Shakspeare has perhaps intended chiefly to depict in the
villany of Iago,--that it is probable Lucretia could never become a
character thoroughly amiable and honest. But with a happy and well-placed
love, her ambition might have had legitimate vents; her restless
energies, the woman's natural field in sympathies for another. The
heart, once opened, softens by use; gradually and unconsciously the
interchange of affection, the companionship with an upright and ingenuous
mind (for virtue is not only beautiful, it is contagious), might have had
their redeeming and hallowing influence. Happier, indeed, had it been,
if her choice had fallen upon a more commanding and lofty nature! But
perhaps it was the very meekness and susceptibility of Mainwaring's
temper, relieved from feebleness by his talents, which, once in play,
were undeniably great, that pleased her by contrast with her own hardness
of spirit and despotism of will.
That Sir Miles should have been blind to the position of the lovers is
less disparaging to his penetration than it may appear; for the very
imprudence with which Lucretia abandoned herself to the society of
Mainwaring during his visits at Laughton took a resemblance to candour.
Sir Miles knew his niece to be more than commonly clever and well
informed; that she, like him, should feel that the conversation of a
superior young man was a relief to the ordinary babble of their country
neighbours, was natural enough; and if now and then a doubt, a fear, had
crossed his mind and rendered him more touched than he liked to own by
Vernon's remarks, it had vanished upon perceiving that Lucretia never
seemed a shade more pensive in Mainwaring's absence. The listlessness
and the melancholy which are apt to accompany love, especially where
unpropitiously placed, were not visible on the surface of this strong
nature. In truth, once assured that Mainwaring returned her affection,
Lucretia reposed on the future with a calm and resolute confidence; and
her customary dissimulation closed like an unruffled sea over all the
undercurrents that met and played below. Still, Sir Miles's attention
once, however slightly, aroused to the recollection that Lucretia was at
the age when woman naturally meditates upon love and marriage, had
suggested, afresh and more vividly, a project which had before been
indistinctly conceived,--namely, the union of the divided branches of his
house, by the marriage of the last male of the Vernons with the heiress
of the St. Johns. Sir Miles had seen much of Vernon himself at various
intervals; he had been present at his christening, though he had refused
to be his godfather, for fear of raising undue expectations; he had
visited and munificently "tipped" him at Eton; he had accompanied him to
his quarters when he joined the prince's regiment; he had come often in
contact with him when, at the death of his father, Vernon retired from
the army and blazed in the front ranks of metropolitan fashion; he had
given him counsel and had even lent him money. Vernon's spendthrift
habits and dissipated if not dissolute life had certainly confirmed the
old baronet in his intentions to trust the lands of Laughton to the
lesser risk which property incurs in the hands of a female, if tightly
settled on her, than in the more colossal and multiform luxuries of an
expensive man; and to do him justice, during the flush of Vernon's
riotous career he had shrunk from the thought of confiding the happiness
of his niece to so unstable a partner. But of late, whether from his
impaired health or his broken fortunes, Vernon's follies had been less
glaring. He had now arrived at the mature age of thirty-three, when wild
oats may reasonably be sown. The composed and steadfast character of
Lucretia might serve to guide and direct him; and Sir Miles was one of
those who hold the doctrine that a reformed rake makes the best husband.
Add to this, there was nothing in Vernon's reputation--once allowing that
his thirst for pleasure was slaked--which could excite serious
apprehensions. Through all his difficulties, he had maintained his
honour unblemished; a thousand traits of amiability and kindness of heart
made him popular and beloved. He was nobody's enemy but his own. His
very distresses--the prospect of his ruin, if left unassisted by Sir
Miles's testamentary dispositions--were arguments in his favour. And,
after all, though Lucretia was a nearer relation, Vernon was in truth the
direct male heir, and according to the usual prejudices of family,
therefore, the fitter representative of the ancient line. With these
feelings and views, he had invited Vernon to his house, and we have seen
already that his favourable impressions had been confirmed by the visit.
And here we must say that Vernon himself had been brought up in boyhood
and youth to regard himself the presumptive inheritor of Laughton. It
had been, from time immemorial, the custom of the St. Johns to pass by
the claims of females in the settlement of the entails; from male to male
the estate had gone, furnishing warriors to the army, and senators to the
State. And if when Lucretia first came to Sir Miles's house the bright
prospect seemed somewhat obscure, still the mesalliance of the mother,
and Sir Miles's obstinate resentment thereat, seemed to warrant the
supposition that he would probably only leave to the orphan the usual
portion of a daughter of the house, and that the lands would go in their
ordinary destination. This belief, adopted passively, and as a thing of
course, had had a very prejudicial effect upon Vernon's career. What
mattered that he overenjoyed his youth, that the subordinate property of
the Vernons, a paltry four or five thousand pounds a year, went a little
too fast,--the splendid estates of Laughton would recover all. From this
dream he had only been awakened, two or three years before, by an
attachment he had formed to the portionless daughter of an earl; and the
Grange being too far encumbered to allow him the proper settlements which
the lady's family required, it became a matter of importance to ascertain
Sir Miles's intentions. Too delicate himself to sound them, he had
prevailed upon the earl, who was well acquainted with Sir Miles, to take
Laughton in his way to his own seat in Dorsetshire, and, without
betraying the grounds of his interest in the question, learn carelessly,
as it were, the views of the wealthy man. The result had been a severe
and terrible disappointment. Sir Miles had then fully determined upon
constituting Lucretia his heiress; and with the usual openness of his
character, he had plainly said so upon the very first covert and polished
allusion to the subject which the earl slyly made. This discovery, in
breaking off all hopes of a union with Lady Mary Stanville, had crushed
more than mercenary expectations. It affected, through his heart,
Vernon's health and spirits; it rankled deep, and was resented at first
as a fatal injury. But Vernon's native nobility of disposition gradually
softened an indignation which his reason convinced him was groundless and
unjust. Sir Miles had never encouraged the expectations which Vernon's
family and himself had unthinkingly formed. The baronet was master of
his own fortune, and after all, was it not more natural that he should
prefer the child he had brought up and reared, to a distant relation,
little more than an acquaintance, simply because man succeeded to man in
the mouldy pedigree of the St. Johns? And, Mary fairly lost to him, his
constitutional indifference to money, a certain French levity of temper,
a persuasion that his life was nearing its wasted close, had left him
without regret, as without resentment, at his kinsman's decision. His
boyish affection for the hearty, generous old gentleman returned, and
though he abhorred the country, he had, without a single interested
thought or calculation, cordially accepted the baronet's hospitable
overtures, and deserted, for the wilds of Hampshire, "the sweet shady
side of Pall-Mall."
We may now enter the drawing-room at Laughton, in which were already
assembled several of the families residing in the more immediate
neighbourhood, and who sociably dropped in to chat around the national
tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or
three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for in
that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in the
houses of our rural Thanes. Our country seats became bustling and
animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families
resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates. The Continent was
closed to us; the fastidious exclusiveness which comes from habitual
residence in cities had not made that demarcation, in castes and in talk,
between neighbour and neighbour, which exists now. Our squires were less
educated, less refined, but more hospitable and unassuming. In a word,
there was what does not exist now, except in some districts remote from
London,--a rural society for those who sought it.
The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus. But first we must cast
a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to be the first object
to attract a stranger's notice. It was a long, and not particularly
well-proportioned apartment,--according, at least, to modern notions,--
for it had rather the appearance of two rooms thrown into one. At the
distance of about thirty-five feet, the walls, before somewhat narrow,
were met by an arch, supported by carved pilasters, which opened into a
space nearly double the width of the previous part of the room, with a
domed ceiling and an embayed window of such depth that the recess almost
formed a chamber in itself. But both these divisions of the apartment
corresponded exactly in point of decoration,--they had the same small
panelling, painted a very light green, which seemed almost white by
candlelight, each compartment wrought with an arabesque; the same
enriched frieze and cornice; they had the same high mantelpieces,
ascending to the ceiling, with the arms of St. John in bold relief. They
had, too, the same old-fashioned and venerable furniture, draperies of
thick figured velvet, with immense chairs and sofas to correspond,--
interspersed, it is true, with more modern and commodious inventions of
the upholsterer's art, in grave stuffed leather or lively chintz. Two
windows, nearly as deep as that in the farther division, broke the
outline of the former one, and helped to give that irregular and nooky
appearance to the apartment which took all discomfort from its extent,
and furnished all convenience for solitary study or detached flirtation.
With little respect for the carved work of the panels, the walls were
covered with pictures brought by Sir Miles from Italy; here and there
marble busts and statues gave lightness to the character of the room, and
harmonized well with that half-Italian mode of decoration which belongs
to the period of James the First. The shape of the chamber, in its
divisions, lent itself admirably to that friendly and sociable
intermixture of amusements which reconciles the tastes of young and old.
In the first division, near the fireplace, Sir Miles, seated in his easy-
chair, and sheltered from the opening door by a seven-fold tapestry
screen, was still at chess with his librarian. At a little distance a
middle-aged gentleman and three turbaned matrons were cutting in at
whist, shilling points, with a half-crown bet optional, and not much
ventured on. On tables, drawn into the recesses of the windows, were the
day's newspapers, Gilray's caricatures, the last new publications, and
such other ingenious suggestions to chit-chat. And round these tables
grouped those who had not yet found elsewhere their evening's amusement,-
-two or three shy young clergymen, the parish doctor, four or five
squires who felt great interest in politics, but never dreamed of the
extravagance of taking in a daily paper, and who now, monopolizing all
the journals they could find, began fairly with the heroic resolution to
skip nothing, from the first advertisement to the printer's name. Amidst
one of these groups Mainwaring had bashfully ensconced himself. In the
farther division, the chandelier, suspended from the domed ceiling, threw
its cheerful light over a large circular table below, on which gleamed
the ponderous tea-urn of massive silver, with its usual accompaniments.
Nor were wanting there, in addition to those airy nothings, sliced
infinitesimally, from a French roll, the more substantial and now exiled
cheer of cakes,--plum and seed, Yorkshire and saffron,--attesting the
light hand of the housekeeper and the strong digestion of the guests.
Round this table were seated, in full gossip, the maids and the matrons,
with a slight sprinkling of the bolder young gentlemen who had been
taught to please the fair. The warmth of the evening allowed the upper
casement to be opened and the curtains drawn aside, and the July
moonlight feebly struggled against the blaze of the lights within. At
this table it was Miss Clavering's obvious duty to preside; but that was
a complaisance to which she rarely condescended. Nevertheless, she had
her own way of doing the honour of her uncle's house, which was not
without courtesy and grace; to glide from one to the other, exchange a
few friendly words, see that each set had its well-known amusements, and,
finally, sit quietly down to converse with some who, from gravity or age,
appeared most to neglect or be neglected by the rest, was her ordinary,
and not unpopular mode of welcoming the guests at Laughton,--not
unpopular; for she thus avoided all interference with the flirtations and
conquests of humbler damsels, whom her station and her endowments might
otherwise have crossed or humbled, while she insured the good word of the
old, to whom the young are seldom so attentive. But if a stranger of
more than provincial repute chanced to be present; if some stray member
of parliament, or barrister on the circuit, or wandering artist,
accompanied any of the neighbours,--to him Lucretia gave more earnest and
undivided attention. Him she sought to draw into a conversation deeper
than the usual babble, and with her calm, searching eyes, bent on him
while he spoke, seemed to fathom the intellect she set in play. But as
yet, this evening, she had not made her appearance,--a sin against
etiquette very unusual in her. Perhaps her recent conversation with
Dalibard had absorbed her thoughts to forgetfulness of the less important
demands on her attention. Her absence had not interfered with the gayety
at the tea-table, which was frank even to noisiness as it centred round
the laughing face of Ardworth, who, though unknown to most or all of the
ladies present, beyond a brief introduction to one or two of the first
comers from Sir Miles (as the host had risen from his chess to bid them
welcome), had already contrived to make himself perfectly at home and
outrageously popular. Niched between two bouncing lasses, he had
commenced acquaintance with them in a strain of familiar drollery and
fun, which had soon broadened its circle, and now embraced the whole
group in the happy contagion of good-humour and young animal spirits.
Gabriel, allowed to sit up later than his usual hour, had not, as might
have been expected, attached himself to this circle, nor indeed to any;
he might be seen moving quietly about,--now contemplating the pictures on
the wall with a curious eye; now pausing at the whist-table, and noting
the game with the interest of an embryo gamester; now throwing himself on
an ottoman, and trying to coax towards him Dash or Ponto,--trying in
vain, for both the dogs abhorred him; yet still, through all this general
movement, had any one taken the pains to observe him closely, it might
have been sufficiently apparent that his keen, bright, restless eye, from
the corner of its long, sly lids, roved chiefly towards the three persons
whom he approached the least,--his father, Mainwaring, and Mr. Vernon.
This last had ensconced himself apart from all, in the angle formed by
one of the pilasters of the arch that divided the room, so that he was in
command, as it were, of both sections. Reclined, with the careless grace
that seemed inseparable from every attitude and motion of his person, in
one of the great velvet chairs, with a book in his hand, which, to say
truth, was turned upside down, but in the lecture of which he seemed
absorbed, he heard at one hand the mirthful laughter that circled round
young Ardworth, or, in its pauses, caught, on the other side, muttered
exclamations from the grave whist-players: "If you had but trumped that
diamond, ma'am!" "Bless me, sir, it was the best heart!" And somehow or
other, both the laughter and the exclamations affected him alike with
what then was called "the spleen,"--for the one reminded him of his own
young days of joyless, careless mirth, of which his mechanical gayety now
was but a mocking ghost; and the other seemed a satire, a parody, on the
fierce but noiseless rapture of gaming, through which his passions had
passed, when thousands had slipped away with a bland smile, provoking not
one of those natural ebullitions of emotion which there accompanied the
loss of a shilling point. And besides this, Vernon had been so
accustomed to the success of the drawing-room, to be a somebody and a
something in the company of wits and princes, that he felt, for the first
time, a sense of insignificance in this provincial circle. Those fat
squires had heard nothing of Mr. Vernon, except that he would not have
Laughton,--he had no acres, no vote in their county; he was a nobody to
them. Those ruddy maidens, though now and then, indeed, one or two might
steal an admiring glance at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him
not with the female interest he had been accustomed to inspire. They
felt instinctively that he could be nothing to them, nor they to him,
--a mere London fop, and not half so handsome as Squires Bluff and Chuff.
Rousing himself from this little vexation to his vanity with a conscious
smile at his own weakness, Vernon turned his looks towards the door,
waiting for Lucretia's entrance, and since her uncle's address to him,
feeling that new and indescribable interest in her appearance which is
apt to steal into every breast when what was before but an indifferent
acquaintance, is suddenly enhaloed with the light of a possible wife.
At length the door opened, and Lucretia entered. Mr. Vernon lowered his
book, and gazed with an earnestness that partook both of doubt and
admiration.
Lucretia Clavering was tall,--tall beyond what is admitted to be tall in
woman; but in her height there was nothing either awkward or masculine,--
a figure more perfect never served for model to a sculptor. The dress at
that day, unbecoming as we now deem it, was not to her--at least, on the
whole disadvantageous. The short waist gave greater sweep to her
majestic length of limb, while the classic thinness of the drapery
betrayed the exact proportion and the exquisite contour. The arms then
were worn bare almost to the shoulder, and Lucretia's arms were not more
faultless in shape than dazzling in their snowy colour; the stately neck,
the falling shoulders, the firm, slight, yet rounded bust,--all would
have charmed equally the artist and the sensualist. Fortunately, the sole
defect of her form was not apparent at a distance: that defect was in the
hand; it had not the usual faults of female youthfulness,--the
superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness of colour,--on the
contrary, it was small and thin; but it was, nevertheless, more the hand
of a man than a woman: the shape had a man's nervous distinctness, the
veins swelled like sinews, the joints of the fingers were marked and
prominent. In that hand it almost seemed as if the iron force of the
character betrayed itself. But, as we have said, this slight defect,
which few, if seen, would hypercritically notice, could not, of course,
be perceptible as she moved slowly up the room; and Vernon's eye,
glancing over the noble figure, rested upon the face. Was it handsome?
Was it repelling? Strange that in feature it had pretensions to the
highest order of beauty, and yet even that experienced connoisseur in
female charms was almost as puzzled what sentence to pronounce. The
hair, as was the fashion of the day, clustered in profuse curls over the
forehead, but could not conceal a slight line or wrinkle between the
brows; and this line, rare in women at any age, rare even in men at hers,
gave an expression at once of thought and sternness to the whole face.
The eyebrows themselves were straight, and not strongly marked, a shade
or two perhaps too light,--a fault still more apparent in the lashes; the
eyes were large, full, and though bright, astonishingly calm and deep,--
at least in ordinary moments; yet withal they wanted the charm of that
steadfast and open look which goes at once to the heart and invites its
trust,--their expression was rather vague and abstracted. She usually
looked aslant while she spoke, and this, which with some appears but
shyness, in one so self-collected had an air of falsehood. But when, at
times, if earnest, and bent rather on examining those she addressed than
guarding herself from penetration, she fixed those eyes upon you with
sudden and direct scrutiny, the gaze impressed you powerfully, and
haunted you with a strange spell. The eye itself was of a peculiar and
displeasing colour,--not blue, nor gray, nor black, nor hazel, but rather
of that cat-like green which is drowsy in the light, and vivid in the
shade. The profile was purely Greek, and so seen, Lucretia's beauty
seemed incontestable; but in front face, and still more when inclined
between the two, all the features took a sharpness that, however regular,
had something chilling and severe: the mouth was small, but the lips were
thin and pale, and had an expression of effort and contraction which
added to the distrust that her sidelong glance was calculated to inspire.
The teeth were dazzlingly white, but sharp and thin, and the eye-teeth
were much longer than the rest. The complexion was pale, but without much
delicacy,--the paleness seemed not natural to it, but rather that hue
which study and late vigils give to men; so that she wanted the freshness
and bloom of youth, and looked older than she was,--an effect confirmed
by an absence of roundness in the cheek not noticeable in the profile,
but rendering the front face somewhat harsh as well as sharp. In a word,
the face and the figure were not in harmony: the figure prevented you
from pronouncing her to be masculine; the face took from the figure the
charm of feminacy. It was the head of the young Augustus upon the form
of Agrippina. One touch more, and we close a description which already
perhaps the reader may consider frivolously minute. If you had placed
before the mouth and lower part of the face a mask or bandage, the whole
character of the upper face would have changed at once,--the eye lost its
glittering falseness, the brow its sinister contraction; you would have
pronounced the face not only beautiful, but sweet and womanly. Take that
bandage suddenly away and the change would have startled you, and
startled you the more because you could detect no sufficient defect or
disproportion in the lower part of the countenance to explain it. It was
as if the mouth was the key to the whole: the key nothing without the
text, the text uncomprehended without the key.
Such, then, was Lucretia Clavering in outward appearance at the age of
twenty,--striking to the most careless eye; interesting and perplexing
the student in that dark language never yet deciphered,--the human
countenance. The reader must have observed that the effect every face
that he remarks for the first time produces is different from the
impression it leaves upon him when habitually seen. Perhaps no two
persons differ more from each other than does the same countenance in our
earliest recollection of it from the countenance regarded in the
familiarity of repeated intercourse. And this was especially the case
with Lucretia Clavering's: the first impulse of nearly all who beheld it
was distrust that partook of fear; it almost inspired you with a sense of
danger. The judgment rose up against it; the heart set itself on its
guard. But this uneasy sentiment soon died away, with most observers, in
admiration at the chiselled outline, which, like the Grecian sculpture,
gained the more the more it was examined, in respect for the intellectual
power of the expression, and in fascinated pleasure at the charm of a
smile, rarely employed, it is true, but the more attractive both for that
reason and for its sudden effect in giving brightness and persuasion to
an aspect that needed them so much. It was literally like the abrupt
breaking out of a sunbeam; and the repellent impression of the face thus
familiarized away, the matchless form took its natural influence; so that
while one who but saw Lucretia for a moment might have pronounced her
almost plain, and certainly not prepossessing in appearance, those with
whom she lived, those whom she sought to please, those who saw her daily,
united in acknowledgment of her beauty; and if they still felt awe,
attributed it only to the force of her understanding.
As she now came midway up the room, Gabriel started from his seat and ran
to her caressingly. Lucretia bent down, and placed her hand upon his
fair locks. As she did so, he whispered,--
"Mr. Vernon has been watching for you."
"Hush! Where is your father?"
"Behind the screen, at chess with Sir Miles."
"With Sir Miles!" and Lucretia's eye fell, with the direct gaze we have
before referred to, upon the boy's face.
"I have been looking over them pretty often," said he, meaningly: "they
have talked of nothing but the game." Lucretia lifted her head, and
glanced round with her furtive eye; the boy divined the search, and with
a scarce perceptible gesture pointed her attention to Mainwaring's
retreat. Her vivid smile passed over her lips as she bowed slightly to
her lover, and then, withdrawing the hand which Gabriel had taken in his
own, she moved on, passed Vernon with a commonplace word or two, and was
soon exchanging greetings with the gay merry-makers in the farther part
of the room. A few minutes afterwards, the servants entered, the tea-
table was removed, chairs were thrust back, a single lady of a certain
age volunteered her services at the piano, and dancing began within the
ample space which the arch fenced off from the whist-players. Vernon had
watched his opportunity, and at the first sound of the piano had gained
Lucretia's side, and with grave politeness pre-engaged her hand for the
opening dance.
At that day, though it is not so very long ago, gentlemen were not
ashamed to dance, and to dance well; it was no languid saunter through a
quadrille; it was fair, deliberate, skilful dancing amongst the courtly,
--free, bounding movement amongst the gay.
Vernon, as might be expected, was the most admired performer of the
evening; but he was thinking very little of the notice he at last
excited, he was employing such ingenuity as his experience of life
supplied to the deficiencies of a very imperfect education, limited to
the little flogged into him at Eton, in deciphering the character and
getting at the heart of his fair partner.
"I wonder you do not make Sir Miles take you to London, my cousin, if you
will allow me to call you so. You ought to have been presented."
"I have no wish to go to London yet."
"Yet!" said Mr. Vernon, with the somewhat fade gallantry of his day;
"beauty even like yours has little time to spare."
"Hands across, hands across!" cried Mr. Ardworth.
"And," continued Mr. Vernon, as soon as a pause was permitted to him,
"there is a song which the prince sings, written by some sensible old-
fashioned fellow, which says,--
"'Gather your rosebuds while you may, For time is still a
flying."'
"You have obeyed the moral of the song yourself, I believe, Mr. Vernon."
"Call me cousin, or Charles,--Charley, if you like, as most of my friends
do; nobody ever calls me Mr. Vernon,--I don't know myself by that name."
"Down the middle; we are all waiting for you," shouted Ardworth.
And down the middle, with wondrous grace, glided the exquisite nankeens
of Charley Vernon.
The dance now, thanks to Ardworth, became too animated and riotous to
allow more than a few broken monosyllables till Vernon and his partner
gained the end of the set, and then, flirting his partner's fan, he
recommenced,--
"Seriously, my cousin, you must sometimes feel very much moped here."
"Never!" answered Lucretia. Not once yet had her eye rested on Mr.
Vernon. She felt that she was sounded.
"Yet I am sure you have a taste for the pomps and vanities. Aha! there
is ambition under those careless curls," said Mr. Vernon, with his easy,
adorable impertinence.
Lucretia winced.
"But if I were ambitious, what field for ambition could I find in
London?"
"The same as Alexander,--empire, my cousin."
"You forget that I am not a man. Man, indeed, may hope for an empire.
It is something to be a Pitt, or even a Warren Hastings."
Mr. Vernon stared. Was this stupidity, or what?
"A woman has an empire more undisputed than Mr. Pitt's, and more pitiless
than that of Governor Hastings."
"Oh, pardon me, Mr. Vernon--"
"Charles, if you please."
Lucretia's brow darkened.
"Pardon me," she repeated; "but these compliments, if such they are meant
to be, meet a very ungrateful return. A woman's empire over gauzes and
ribbons, over tea-tables and drums, over fops and coquettes, is not worth
a journey from Laughton to London."
"You think you can despise admiration?"
"What you mean by admiration,--yes."
"And love too?" said Vernon, in a whisper.
Now Lucretia at once and abruptly raised her eyes to her partner. Was he
aiming at her secret? Was he hinting at intentions of his own? The look
chilled Vernon, and he turned away his head.
Suddenly, then, in pursuance of a new train of ideas, Lucretia altered
her manner to him. She had detected what before she had surmised. This
sudden familiarity on his part arose from notions her uncle had
instilled,--the visitor had been incited to become the suitor. Her
penetration into character, which from childhood had been her passionate
study, told her that on that light, polished, fearless nature scorn would
have slight effect; to meet the familiarity would be the best means to
secure a friend, to disarm a wooer. She changed then her manner; she
summoned up her extraordinary craft; she accepted the intimacy held out
to her, not to unguard herself, but to lay open her opponent. It became
necessary to her to know this man, to have such power as the knowledge
might give her. Insensibly and gradually she led her companion away from
his design of approaching her own secrets or character, into frank talk
about himself. All unconsciously he began to lay bare to his listener
the infirmities of his erring, open heart. Silently she looked down, and
plumbed them all,--the frivolity, the recklessness, the half gay, half
mournful sense of waste and ruin. There, blooming amongst the wrecks,
she saw the fairest flowers of noble manhood profuse and fragrant still,
--generosity and courage and disregard for self. Spendthrift and gambler
on one side the medal; gentleman and soldier on the other. Beside this
maimed and imperfect nature she measured her own prepared and profound
intellect, and as she listened, her smile became more bland and frequent.
She could afford to be gracious; she felt superiority, scorn, and safety.
As this seeming intimacy had matured, Vernon and his partner had quitted
the dance, and were conversing apart in the recess of one of the windows,
which the newspaper readers had deserted, in the part of the room where
Sir Miles and Dalibard, still seated, were about to commence their third
game at chess. The baronet's hand ceased from the task of arranging his
pawns; his eye was upon the pair; and then, after a long and complacent
gaze, it looked round without discovering the object it sought.
"I am about to task your kindness most improperly, Monsieur Dalibard,"
said Sir Miles, with that politeness so displeasing to Ardworth, "but
will you do me the favour to move aside that fold of the screen? I wish
for a better view of our young people. Thank you very much."
Sir Miles now discovered Mainwaring, and observed that, far from
regarding with self-betraying jealousy the apparent flirtation going on
between Lucretia and her kinsman, he was engaged in animated conversation
with the chairman of the quarter sessions. Sir Miles was satisfied, and
ranged his pawns. All this time, and indeed ever since they had sat down
to play, the Provencal had been waiting, with the patience that belonged
to his character, for some observation from Sir Miles on the subject
which, his sagacity perceived, was engrossing his thoughts. There had
been about the old gentleman a fidgety restlessness which showed that
something was on his mind. His eyes had been frequently turned towards
his niece since her entrance; once or twice he had cleared his throat and
hemmed,--his usual prelude to some more important communication; and
Dalibard had heard him muttering to himself, and fancied he caught the
name of "Mainwaring." And indeed the baronet had been repeatedly on the
verge of sounding his secretary, and as often had been checked both by
pride in himself and pride for Lucretia. It seemed to him beneath his
own dignity and hers even to hint to an inferior a fear, a doubt, of the
heiress of Laughton. Olivier Dalibard could easily have led on his
patron, he could easily, if he pleased it, have dropped words to instil
suspicion and prompt question; but that was not his object,--he rather
shunned than courted any reference to himself upon the matter; for he
knew that Lucretia, if she could suppose that he, however indirectly, had
betrayed her to her uncle, would at once declare his own suit to her, and
so procure his immediate dismissal; while, aware of her powers of
dissimulation and her influence over her uncle, he feared that a single
word from her would suffice to remove all suspicion in Sir Miles, however
ingeniously implanted, and however truthfully grounded. But all the
while, under his apparent calm, his mind was busy and his passions
burning.
"Pshaw! your old play,--the bishop again," said Sir Miles, laughing, as
he moved a knight to frustrate his adversary's supposed plan; and then,
turning back, he once more contemplated the growing familiarity between
Vernon and his niece. This time he could not contain his pleasure.
"Dalibard, my dear sir," he said, rubbing his hands, "look yonder: they
would make a handsome couple!"
"Who, sir?" said the Provencal, looking another way, with dogged
stupidity.
"Who? Damn it, man! Nay, pray forgive my ill manners, but I felt glad,
sir, and proud, sir. Who? Charley Vernon and Lucretia Clavering."
"Assuredly, yes. Do you think that there is a chance of so happy an
event?"
"Why, it depends only on Lucretia; I shall never force her." Here Sir
Miles stopped, for Gabriel, unperceived before, picked up his patron's
pocket-handkerchief.
Olivier Dalibard's gray eyes rested coldly on his son. "You are not
dancing to-night, my boy. Go; I like to see you amused."
The boy obeyed at once, as he always did, the paternal commands. He
found a partner, and joined a dance just begun; and in the midst of the
dance, Honore Gabriel Varney seemed a new being,--not Ardworth himself so
thoroughly entered into the enjoyment of the exercise, the lights, the
music. With brilliant eyes and dilated nostrils, he seemed prematurely
to feel all that is exciting and voluptuous in that exhilaration which to
childhood is usually so innocent. His glances followed the fairest form;
his clasp lingered in the softest hand; his voice trembled as the warm
breath of his partner came on his cheeks.
Meanwhile the conversation between the chess-players continued.
"Yes," said the baronet, "it depends only on Lucretia. And she seems
pleased with Vernon: who would not be?"
"Your penetration rarely deceives you, sir. I own I think with you.
Does Mr. Vernon know that you would permit the alliance?"
"Yes; but--" the baronet stopped short.
"You were saying, but-- But what, Sir Miles?"
"Why, the dog affected diffidence; he had some fear lest he should not
win her affections. But luckily, at least, they are disengaged."
Dalibard looked grave, and his eye, as if involuntarily, glanced towards
Mainwaring. As ill-luck would have it, the young man had then ceased his
conversation with the chairman of the quarter sessions, and with arms
folded, brow contracted, and looks, earnest, anxious, and intent, was
contemplating the whispered conference between Lucretia and Vernon.
Sir Miles's eye had followed his secretary's, and his face changed. His
hand fell on the chess board and upset half the men; he uttered a very
audible "Zounds!"
"I think, Sir Miles," said the Provencal, rising, as if conscious that
Sir Miles wished to play no more,--"I think that if you spoke soon to
Miss Clavering as to your views with regard to Mr. Vernon, it might ripen
matters; for I have heard it said by French mothers--and our Frenchwomen
understand the female heart, sir--that a girl having no other affection
is often prepossessed at once in favour of a man whom she knows
beforehand is prepared to woo and to win her, whereas without that
knowledge he would have seemed but an ordinary acquaintance."
"It is shrewdly said, my dear Monsieur Dalibard; and for more reasons
than one, the sooner I speak to her the better. Lend me your arm. It is
time for supper; I see the dance is over."
Passing by the place where Mainwaring still leaned, the baronet looked at
him fixedly. The young man did not notice the gaze. Sir Miles touched
him gently. He started as from a revery.
"You have not danced, Mr. Mainwaring."
"I dance so seldom, Sir Miles," said Mainwaring, colouring.
"Ah! you employ your head more than your heels, young gentleman,--very
right; I must speak to you to-morrow. Well, ladies, I hope you have
enjoyed yourselves? My dear Mrs. Vesey, you and I are old friends, you
know; many a minuet we have danced together, eh? We can't dance now, but
we can walk arm-in-arm together still. Honour me. And your little
grandson--vaccinated, eh? Wonderful invention! To supper, ladies, to
supper!"
The company were gone. The lights were out,--all save the lights of
heaven; and they came bright and still through the casements. Moonbeam
and Starbeam, they seemed now to have the old house to themselves. In
came the rays, brighter and longer and bolder, like fairies that march,
rank upon rank, into their kingdom of solitude. Down the oak stairs,
from the casements, blazoned with heraldry, moved the rays, creepingly,
fearfully. On the armour in the hall clustered the rays boldly and
brightly, till the steel shone out like a mirror. In the library, long
and low, they just entered, stopped short: it was no place for their
play. In the drawing-room, now deserted, they were more curious and
adventurous. Through the large window, still open, they came in freely
and archly, as if to spy what had caused such disorder; the stiff chairs
out of place, the smooth floor despoiled of its carpet, that flower
dropped on the ground, that scarf forgotten on the table,--the rays
lingered upon them all. Up and down through the house, from the base to
the roof, roved the children of the air, and found but two spirits awake
amidst the slumber of the rest.
In that tower to the east, in the tapestry chamber with the large gilded
bed in the recess, came the rays, tamed and wan, as if scared by the
grosser light on the table. By that table sat a girl, her brow leaning
on one hand; in the other she held a rose,--it is a love-token: exchanged
with its sister rose, by stealth, in mute sign of reproach for doubt
excited,--an assurance and a reconciliation. A love-token!--shrink not,
ye rays; there is something akin to you in love. But see,--the hand
closes convulsively on the flower; it hides it not in the breast; it
lifts it not to the lip: it throws it passionately aside. "How long!"
muttered the girl, impetuously,--"how long! And to think that will here
cannot shorten an hour!" Then she rose, and walked to and fro, and each
time she gained a certain niche in the chamber she paused, and then
irresolutely passed on again. What is in that niche? Only books. What
can books teach thee, pale girl? The step treads firmer; this time it
halts more resolved. The hand that clasped the flower takes down a
volume. The girl sits again before the light. See, O rays! what is the
volume? Moon and Starbeam, ye love what lovers read by the lamp in the
loneliness. No love-ditty this; no yet holier lesson to patience, and
moral to hope. What hast thou, young girl, strong in health and rich in
years, with the lore of the leech,--with prognostics and symptoms and
diseases? She is tracing with hard eyes the signs that precede the grim
enemy in his most sudden approach,--the habits that invite him, the
warnings that he gives. He whose wealth shall make her free has twice
had the visiting shock; he starves not, he lives frae! She closes the
volume, and, musing, metes him out the hours and days he has to live.
Shrink back, ye rays! The love is disenhallowed; while the hand was on
the rose, the thought was on the charnel.
Yonder, in the opposite tower, in the small casement near the roof, came
the rays. Childhood is asleep. Moon and Starbeam, ye love the slumbers
of the child! The door opens, a dark figure steals noiselessly in. The
father comes to look on the sleep of his son. Holy tenderness, if this
be all! "Gabriel, wake!" said a low, stern voice, and a rough hand shook
the sleeper.
The sharpest test of those nerves upon which depends the mere animal
courage is to be roused suddenly, in the depth of night, by a violent
hand. The impulse of Gabriel, thus startled, was neither of timidity nor
surprise. It was that of some Spartan boy not new to danger; with a
slight cry and a fierce spring, the son's hand clutched at the father's
throat. Dalibard shook him off with an effort, and a smile, half in
approval, half in irony, played by the moonlight over his lips.
"Blood will out, young tiger," said he. "Hush, and hear me!"
"Is it you, Father?" said Gabriel. "I thought, I dreamed--"
"No matter; think, dream always that man should be prepared for defence
from peril!"
"Gabriel," and the pale scholar seated himself on the bed, "turn your
face to mine,--nearer; let the moon fall on it; lift your eyes; look at
me--so! Are you not playing false to me? Are you not Lucretia's spy,
while you are pretending to be mine? It is so; your eye betrays you.
Now, heed me; you have a mind beyond your years. Do you love best the
miserable garret in London, the hard fare and squalid dress, or your
lodgment here, the sense of luxury, the sight of splendour, the
atmosphere of wealth? You have the choice before you."
"I choose, as you would have me, then," said the boy, "the last."
"I believe you. Attend! You do not love me,--that is natural; you are
the son of Clara Varney! You have supposed that in loving Lucretia
Clavering you might vex or thwart me, you scarce knew how; and Lucretia
Clavering has gold and gifts and soft words and promises to bribe withal.
I now tell you openly my plan with regard to this girl: it is my aim to
marry her; to be master of this house and these lands. If I succeed, you
share them with me. By betraying me, word or look, to Lucretia, you
frustrate this aim; you plot against our rise and to our ruin. Deem not
that you could escape my fall; if I am driven hence,--as you might drive
me,--you share my fate; and mark me, you are delivered up to my revenge!
You cease to be my son,--you are my foe. Child! you know me."
The boy, bold as he was, shuddered; but after a pause so brief that a
breath scarce passed between his silence and his words, he replied with
emphasis,--
"Father, you have read my heart. I have been persuaded by Lucretia (for
she bewitches me) to watch you,--at least, when you are with Sir Miles.
I knew that this was mixed up with Mr. Mainwaring. Now that you have
made me understand your own views, I will be true to you,--true without
threats."
The father looked hard on him, and seemed satisfied with the gaze.
"Remember, at least, that your future rests upon your truth; that is no
threat,--that is a thought of hope. Now sleep or muse on it." He dropped
the curtain which his hand had drawn aside, and stole from the room as
noiselessly as he had entered. The boy slept no more. Deceit and
cupidity and corrupt ambition were at work in his brain. Shrink back,
Moon and Starbeam! On that child's brow play the demons who had followed
the father's step to his bed of sleep.
Back to his own room, close at hand, crept Olivier Dalibard. The walls
were lined with books,--many in language and deep in lore. Moon and
Starbeam, ye love the midnight solitude of the scholar! The Provencal
stole to the casement, and looked forth. All was serene,--breathless
trees and gleaming sculpture and whitened sward, girdled by the mass of
shadow. Of what thought the man? Not of the present loveliness which
the scene gave to his eye, nor of the future mysteries which the stars
should whisper to the soul. Gloomily over a stormy and a hideous past
roved the memory, stored with fraud and foul with crime,--plan upon plan,
schemed with ruthless wisdom, followed up by remorseless daring, and yet
all now a ruin and a blank; an intellect at war with good, and the good
had conquered! But the conviction neither touched the conscience nor
enlightened the reason; he felt, it is true, a moody sense of impotence,
but it brought rage, not despondency. It was not that he submitted to
Good as too powerful to oppose, but that he deemed he had not yet gained
all the mastery over the arsenal of Evil. And evil he called it not.
Good and evil to him were but subordinate genii at the command of Mind;
they were the slaves of the lamp. But had he got at the true secret of
the lamp itself? "How is it," he thought, as he turned impatiently from
the casement, "that I am baffled here where my fortunes seemed most
assured? Here the mind has been of my own training, and prepared by
nature to my hand; here all opportunity has smiled. And suddenly the
merest commonplace in the vulgar lives of mortals,--an unlooked-for
rival; rival, too, of the mould I had taught her to despise; one of the
stock gallants of a comedy, no character but youth and fair looks,--yea,
the lover of the stage starts up, and the fabric of years is overthrown."
As he thus mused, he placed his hand upon a small box on one of the
tables. "Yet within this," resumed his soliloquy, and he struck the lid,
that gave back a dull sound,--"within this I hold the keys of life and
death! Fool! the power does not reach to the heart, except to still it.
Verily and indeed were the old heathens mistaken? Are there no philters
to change the current of desire? But touch one chord in a girl's
affection, and all the rest is mine, all, all, lands, station, power, all
the rest are in the opening of this lid!"
Hide in the cloud, O Moon! shrink back, ye Stars! send not your holy,
pure, and trouble-lulling light to the countenance blanched and livid
with the thoughts of murder.
