CHAPTER III.

... MISERY  That gathers force each moment as it rolls,

 And must, at last, o’erwhelm me. — LILLO: Fatal Curiosity.

MALTRAVERS found Evelyn alone; she turned towards him with her usual sweet smile of welcome; but the smile vanished at once, as her eyes met his changed and working countenance; cold drops stood upon the rigid and marble brow, the lips writhed as if in bodily torture, the muscles of the face had fallen, and there was a wildness which appalled her in the fixed and feverish brightness of the eyes.

“You are ill, Ernest, — dear Ernest, you are ill, — your look freezes me!”

“Nay, Evelyn,” said Maltravers, recovering himself by one of those efforts of which men who have suffered without sympathy are alone capable,— “nay, I am better now; I have been ill — very ill — but I am better!”

“Ill! and I not know of it?” She attempted to take his hand as she spoke. Maltravers recoiled.

“It is fire! it burns! Avaunt!” he cried, frantically. “O Heaven! spare me, spare me!”

Evelyn was not seriously alarmed; she gazed on him with the tenderest compassion. Was this one of those moody and overwhelming paroxysms to which it had been whispered abroad that he was subject? Strange as it may seem, despite her terror, he was dearer to her in that hour — as she believed, of gloom and darkness — than in all the glory of his majestic intellect, or all the blandishments of his soft address.

“What has happened to you?” she said, approaching him again; “have you seen Lord Vargrave? I know that he has arrived, for his servant has been here to say so; has he uttered anything to distress you? or has—” (she added falteringly and timidly)— “has poor Evelyn offended you? Speak to me, — only speak!”

Maltravers turned, and his face was now calm and serene save by its extreme and almost ghastly paleness, no trace of the hell within him could be discovered.

“Pardon me,” said he, gently, “I know not this morning what I say or do; think not of it, think not of me, — it will pass away when I hear your voice.”

“Shall I sing to you the words I spoke of last night? See, I have them ready; I know them by heart, but I thought you might like to read them, they are so full of simple but deep feeling.”

Maltravers took the song from her hands, and bent over the paper; at first, the letters seemed dim and indistinct, for there was a mist before his eyes; but at last a chord of memory was struck, — he recalled the words: they were some of those he had composed for Alice in the first days of their delicious intercourse, — links of the golden chain, in which he had sought to bind the spirit of knowledge to that of love.

“And from whom,” said he, in a faint voice, as he calmly put down the verses,— “from whom did your mother learn these words?”

“I know not; some dear friend, years ago, composed and gave them to her. It must have been one very dear to her, to judge by the effect they still produce.”

“Think you,” said Maltravers, in a hollow voice, “think you IT WAS YOUR FATHER?”

“My father! She never speaks of him! I have been early taught to shun all allusion to his memory. My father! — it is probable; yes, it may have been my father; whom else could she have loved so fondly?”

There was a long silence; Evelyn was the first to break it.

“I have heard from my mother to-day, Ernest; her letter alarms me, — I scarce know why!”

“Ah! and how—”

“It is hurried and incoherent, — almost wild: she says she has learned some intelligence that has unsettled and unstrung her mind; she has requested me to inquire if any one I am acquainted with has heard of, or met abroad, some person of the name of Butler. You start! — have you known one of that name?”

“I! — did your mother never allude to that name before?”

“Never! — and yet, once I remember—”

“What?”

“That I was reading an account in the papers of the sudden death of some Mr. Butler; and her agitation made a powerful and strange impression upon me, — in fact, she fainted, and seemed almost delirious when she recovered; she would not rest till I had completed the account, and when I came to the particulars of his age, etc. (he was old, I think) she clasped her hands, and wept; but they seemed tears of joy. The name is so common — whom of that name have you known?”

“It is no matter. Is that your mother’s letter; is that her handwriting?”

“Yes;” and Evelyn gave the letter to Maltravers. He glanced over the characters; he had once or twice seen Lady Vargrave’s handwriting before, and had recognized no likeness between that handwriting and such early specimens of Alice’s art as he had witnessed so many years ago; but now, “trifles light as air” had grown “confirmation strong as proof of Holy Writ,” — he thought he detected Alice in every line of the hurried and blotted scroll; and when his eye rested on the words, “Your affectionate MOTHER, Alice!” his blood curdled in his veins.

“It is strange!” said he, still struggling for self-composure; “strange that I never thought of asking her name before! Alice! her name is Alice?”

“A sweet name, is it not? It accords so well with her simple character — how you would love her!”

As she said this, Evelyn turned to Maltravers with enthusiasm, and again she was startled by his aspect; for again it was haggard, distorted, and convulsed.

“Oh, if you love me,” she cried, “do send immediately for advice! And yet; is it illness, Ernest, or is it some grief that you hide from me?”

“It is illness, Evelyn,” said Maltravers, rising: and his knees knocked together. “I am not fit even for your companionship, — I will go home.”

“And send instantly for advice?”

“Ay; it waits me there already.”

“Thank Heaven! and you will write to me one little word — to relieve me? I am so uneasy!”

“I will write to you.”

“This evening?”

“Ay!”

“Now go, — I will not detain you.”

He walked slowly to the door, but when he reached it he turned, and catching her anxious gaze, he opened his arms; overpowered with strange fear and affectionate sympathy, she burst into passionate tears; and surprised out of the timidity and reserve which had hitherto characterized her pure and meek attachment to him, she fell on his breast, and sobbed aloud. Maltravers raised his hands, and, placing them solemnly on her young head, his lips muttered as if in prayer. He paused, and strained her to his heart; but he shunned that parting kiss, which, hitherto, he had so fondly sought. That embrace was one of agony, and not of rapture; and yet Evelyn dreamed not that he designed it for the last!

Maltravers re-entered the room in which he had left Lord Vargrave, who still awaited his return.

He walked up to Lumley, and held out his hand. “You have saved me from a dreadful crime, — from an everlasting remorse. I thank you!”

Hardened and frigid as his nature was, Lumley was touched; the movement of Maltravers took him by surprise. “It has been a dreadful duty, Ernest,” said he, pressing the hand he held; “but to come, too, from me, — your rival!”

“Proceed, proceed, I pray you; explain all this — yet explanation! what do I want to know? Evelyn is my daughter, — Alice’s child! For Heaven’s sake, give me hope; say it is not so; say that she is Alice’s child, but not mine! Father! father! — and they call it a holy name — it is a horrible one!”

“Compose yourself, my dear friend: recollect what you have escaped! You will recover this shock. Time, travel—”

“Peace, man, — peace! Now then I am calm! When Alice left me she had no child. I knew not that she bore within her the pledge of our ill-omened and erring love. Verily, the sins of my youth have arisen against me; and the curse has come home to roost!”

“I cannot explain to you all details.”

“But why not have told me of this? Why not have warned me; why not have said to me, when my heart could have been satisfied by so sweet a tie, ‘Thou hast a daughter: thou art not desolate’? Why reserve the knowledge of the blessing until it has turned to poison? Fiend that you are! you have waited this hour to gloat over the agony from which a word from you a year, nay, a month ago — a little month ago — might have saved me and her!”

Maltravers, as he spoke, approached Vargrave, with eyes sparkling with fierce passion, his hand clenched, his form dilated, the veins on his forehead swelled like cords. Lumley, brave as he was, recoiled.

“I knew not of this secret,” said he, deprecatingly, “till a few days before I came hither; and I came hither at once to disclose it to you. Will you listen to me? I knew that my uncle had married a person much beneath him in rank; but he was guarded and cautious, and I knew no more, except that by a first husband that lady had one daughter, — Evelyn. A chain of accidents suddenly acquainted me with the rest.”

Here Vargrave pretty faithfully repeated what he had learned from the brewer at C —— , and from Mr. Onslow; but when he came to the tacit confirmation of all his suspicions received from Mrs. Leslie, he greatly exaggerated and greatly distorted the account. “Judge, then,” concluded Lumley, “of the horror with which I heard that you had declared an attachment to Evelyn, and that it was returned. Ill as I was, I hastened hither: you know the rest. Are you satisfied?”

“I will go to Alice! I will learn from her own lips — yet, how can I meet her again? How say to her, ‘I have taken from thee thy last hope, — I have broken thy child’s heart’?”

“Forgive me, but I should confess to you, that, from all I can learn from Mrs. Leslie, Lady Vargrave has but one prayer, one hope in life, — that she may never again meet with her betrayer. You may, indeed, in her own letter perceive how much she is terrified by the thought of your discovering her. She has, at length, recovered peace of mind and tranquillity of conscience. She shrinks with dread from the prospect of ever again encountering one once so dear, now associated in her mind with recollections of guilt and sorrow. More than this, she is sensitively alive to the fear of shame, to the dread of detection. If ever her daughter were to know her sin, it would be to her as a death-blow. Yet in her nervous state of health, her ever-quick and uncontrollable feelings, if you were to meet her, she would disguise nothing, conceal nothing. The veil would be torn aside: the menials in her own house would tell the tale, and curiosity circulate, and scandal blacken the story of her early errors. No, Maltravers, at least wait awhile before you see her; wait till her mind can be prepared for such an interview, till precautions can be taken, till you yourself are in a calmer state of mind.”

Maltravers fixed his piercing eyes on Lumley while he thus spoke, and listened in deep attention.

“It matters not,” said he, after a long pause, “whether these be your real reasons for wishing to defer or prevent a meeting between Alice and myself. The affliction that has come upon me bursts with too clear and scorching a blaze of light for me to see any chance of escape or mitigation. Even if Evelyn were the daughter of Alice by another, she would be forever separated from me. The mother and the child! there is a kind of incest even in that thought! But such an alleviation of my anguish is forbidden to my reason. No, poor Alice, I will not disturb the repose thou hast won at last! Thou shalt never have the grief to know that our error has brought upon thy lover so black a doom! All is over! the world never shall find me again. Nothing is left for me but the desert and the grave!”

“Speak not so, Ernest,” said Lord Vargrave, soothingly; “a little while, and you will recover this blow: your control over passion has, even in youth, inspired me with admiration and surprise; and now, in calmer years, and with such incentives to self-mastery, your triumph will come sooner than you think. Evelyn, too, is so young; she has not known you long; perhaps her love, after all, is that caused by some mystic, but innocent working of nature, and she would rejoice to call you ‘father.’ Happy years are yet in store for you.”

Maltravers did not listen to these vain and hollow consolations. With his head drooping on his bosom, his whole form unnerved, the large tears rolling unheeded down his cheeks, he seemed the very picture of a broken-hearted man, whom fate never again could raise from despair. He, who had, for years, so cased himself in pride, on whose very front was engraved the victory over passion and misfortune, whose step had trod the earth in the royalty of the conqueror; the veriest slave that crawls bore not a spirit more humbled, fallen, or subdued! He who had looked with haughty eyes on the infirmities of others, who had disdained to serve his race because of their human follies and partial frailties, — he, even he, the Pharisee of Genius, — had but escaped by a chance, and by the hand of the man he suspected and despised, from a crime at which nature herself recoils, — which all law, social and divine, stigmatizes as inexpiable, which the sternest imagination of the very heathen had invented as the gloomiest catastrophe that can befall the wisdom and the pride of mortals! But one step farther, and the fabulous Oedipus had not been more accursed!

Such thoughts as these, unformed, confused, but strong enough to bow him to the dust, passed through the mind of this wretched man. He had been familiar with grief, he had been dull to enjoyment; sad and bitter memories had consumed his manhood: but pride had been left him still; and he had dared in his secret heart to say, “I can defy Fate!” Now the bolt had fallen; Pride was shattered into fragments, Self-abasement was his companion, Shame sat upon his prostrate soul. The Future had no hope left in store. Nothing was left for him but to die!

Lord Vargrave gazed at him in real pain, in sincere compassion; for his nature, wily, deceitful, perfidious though it was, had cruelty only so far as was necessary to the unrelenting execution of his schemes. No pity could swerve him from a purpose; but he had enough of the man within him to feel pity not the less, even for his own victim! At length Maltravers lifted his head, and waved his hand gently to Lord Vargrave.

“All is now explained,” said he, in a feeble voice; “our interview is over. I must be alone; I have yet to collect my reason, to commune calmly and deliberately with myself; I have to write to her — to invent, to lie, — I, who believed I could never, never utter, even to an enemy, what was false! And I must not soften the blow to her. I must not utter a word of love, — love, it is incest! I must endeavour brutally to crush out the very affection I created! She must hate me! — oh, teach her to hate me! Blacken my name, traduce my motives, — let her believe them levity or perfidy, what you will. So will she forget me the sooner; so will she the easier bear the sorrow which the father brings upon the child. And she has not sinned! O Heaven, the sin was mine! Let my punishment be a sacrifice that Thou wilt accept for her!”

Lord Vargrave attempted again to console; but this time the words died upon his lips. His arts failed him. Maltravers turned impatiently away and pointed to the door.

“I will see you again,” said he, “before I quit Paris; leave your address below.”

Vargrave was not, perhaps, unwilling to terminate a scene so painful: he muttered a few incoherent words, and abruptly withdrew. He heard the door locked behind him as he departed. Ernest Maltravers was alone! — what a solitude!