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Pelham, a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
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Volume 7 - Chapter 74 |
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_ VOLUME VII CHAPTER LXXIV I do but hide Under these words, like embers, every spark Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark The grave is yawning;--as its roof shall cover My limbs with dust and worms, under and over, So let oblivion hide this grief. Julian and Maddalo. With thee, the very future fled, I stand amid the past alone; A tomb which still shall guard the dead Tho' every earthlier trace be flown, A tomb o'er which the weeds that love Decay--their wild luxuriance wreathe! The cold and callous stone above--And only thou and death beneath. From Unpublished Poems by ------.
"You remember my character at school--the difficulty with which you drew me from the visionary and abstracted loneliness which, even at that time, was more consonant to my taste, than all the sports and society resorted to by other boys--and the deep, and, to you, inexplicable delight with which I returned to my reveries and solitude again. That character has continued through life the same; circumstances have strengthened, not altered it. So has it been with you; the temper, the habits, the tastes, so strongly contrasted with mine in boyhood, have lost nothing of that contrast. Your ardour for the various ambition of life is still the antipodes to my indifference; your daring, restless, thoughtful, resolution in the pursuit, still shames my indolence and abstraction. You are still the votary of the world, but will become its conqueror--I its fugitive--and shall die its victim. "After we parted at school, I went for a short time to a tutor's in--shire. Of this place I soon grew weary; and my father's death leaving me in a great measure at my own disposal, I lost no time in leaving it. I was seized with that mania for travel common enough to all persons of my youth and disposition. My mother allowed me an almost unlimited command over the fortune hereafter to be my own; and, yielding to my wishes, rather than her fears, she suffered me, at the age of eighteen, to set out for the Continent alone. Perhaps the quiet and reserve of my character made her think me less exposed to the dangers of youth, than if I had been of a more active and versatile temper. This is no uncommon mistake; a serious and contemplative disposition is, however, often the worst formed to acquire readily the knowledge of the world, and always the most calculated to suffer deeply from the experience. "I took up my residence for some time at Spa. It is, you know, perhaps, a place dull enough to make gambling the only amusement; every one played--and I did not escape the contagion; nor did I wish it: for, like the minister Godolphin, I loved gaming for its own sake, because it was a substitute for conversation. This habit brought me acquainted with Mr. Tyrrell, who was then staying at Spa; he had not, at that time, quite dissipated his fortune, but was daily progressing to so desirable a consummation. A gambler's acquaintance is readily made, and easily kept, provided you gamble too. "We became as intimate as the reserve of my habits ever suffered me to become with any one, but you. He was many years older than me--had seen a great deal of the world--had mixed much in its best societies, and, at that time, whatever was the grossierete of his mind, had little of the coarseness of manner which very soon afterwards distinguished him; evil communication works rapidly in its results. Our acquaintance was, therefore, natural enough, especially when it is considered that my purse was entirely at his disposal--for borrowing is twice blessed, in him that takes and him that gives--the receiver becomes complaisant and conceding, and the lender thinks favourably of one he has obliged. "We parted at Spa, under a mutual promise to write. I forget if this promise was kept--probably not; we were not, however, the worse friends for being bad correspondents. I continued my travels for about another year; I then returned to England, the same melancholy and dreaming enthusiast as before. It is true that we are the creatures of circumstances; but circumstances are also, in a great measure, the creatures of us. I mean, they receive their colour from the previous bent of our own minds; what raises one would depress another, and what vitiates my neighbour might correct me. Thus the experience of the world makes some persons more worldly--others more abstracted, and the indulgence of the senses becomes a violence to one mind, and a second nature to another. As for me, I had tasted all the pleasures youth and opulence can purchase, and was more averse to them than ever. I had mixed with many varieties of men--I was still more rivetted to the monotony of self. "I cannot hope, while I mention these peculiarities, that I am a very uncommon character; I believe the present age has produced many such. Some time hence, it will be a curious inquiry to ascertain the causes of that acute and sensitive morbidity of mind, which has been, and still is, so epidemic a disease. You know me well enough to believe, that I am not fond of the cant of assuming an artificial character, or of creating a fictitious interest; and I am far from wishing to impose upon you a malady of constitution for a dignity of mind. You must pardon my prolixity. I own that it is very painful to me to come to the main part of my confessions, and I am endeavouring to prepare myself by lingering over the prelude." Glanville paused here for a few moments. In spite of the sententious coolness with which he pretended to speak, I saw that he was powerfully and painfully affected. "Well," he continued, "to resume the thread of my narrative; after I had stayed some weeks with my mother and sister, I took advantage of their departure for the continent, and resolved to make a tour through England. Rich people, and I have always been very rich, get exceedingly tired of the embarrassment of their riches. I seized with delight at the idea of travelling without carriages and servants; I took merely a favourite horse, and the black dog, poor Terror, which you see now at my feet. "The day I commenced this plan was to me the epoch of a new and terrible existence. However, you must pardon me if I am not here sufficiently diffuse. Suffice it, that I became acquainted with a being whom, for the first and only time in my life, I loved! This miniature attempts to express her likeness; the initials at the back, interwoven with my own, are hers." "Yes," said I, incautiously, "they are the initials of Gertrude Douglas." "What!" cried Glanville, in a loud tone, which he instantly checked, and continued in an indrawn, muttered whisper: "How long is it since I heard that name! and now--now--" he broke off abruptly, and then said, with a calmer voice, "I know not how you have learnt her name; perhaps you will explain?" "From Thornton," said I. "And has he told you more?" cried Glanville, as if gasping for breath--the "history--the dreadful--" "Not a word," said I, hastily; "he was with me when I found the picture, and he explained the initials." "It is well!" answered Glanville, recovering himself; "you will see presently if I have reason to love that those foul and sordid lips should profane the story I am about to relate. Gertrude was an only daughter; though of gentle blood, she was no match for me, either in rank or fortune. Did I say just now that the world had not altered me? See my folly; one year before I saw her, and I should not have thought her, but myself honoured by a marriage;--twelve little months had sufficed to--God forgive me! I took advantage of her love--her youth--her innocence--she fled with me--but not to the altar!" Again Glanville paused, and again, by a violent effort, conquered his emotion, and proceeded: "Never let vice be done by halves--never let a man invest all his purer affections in the woman he ruins--never let him cherish the kindness, if he gratifies the selfishness, of his heart. A profligate, who really loves his victim, is one of the most wretched of beings. In spite of my successful and triumphant passion--in spite of the delirium of the first intoxication of possession, and of the better and deeper delight of a reciprocity of thought--feeling, sympathy, for the first time, found;--in the midst of all the luxuries my wealth could produce, and of the voluptuous and spring-like hues with which youth, health, and first love, clothe the earth which the loved one treads, and the air which she inhales: in spite of these, in spite of all, I was any thing but happy. If Gertrude's cheek seemed a shade more pale, or her eye less bright, I remembered the sacrifice she had made me, and believed that she felt it too. It was in vain, that, with a tender and generous devotion--never found but in woman--she assured me that my love was a recompense for all; the more touching was her tenderness, the more poignant my remorse. I never loved but her; I have never, therefore, entered into the common-place of passion, and I cannot, even to this day, look upon her sex as ours do in general. I thought, I think so still, that ingratitude to a woman is often a more odious offence--I am sure it contains a more painful penalty--than ingratitude to a man. But enough of this; if you know me, you can penetrate the nature of my feelings--if not, it is in vain to expect your sympathy. "I never loved living long in one place. We travelled over the greater part of England and France. What must be the enchantment of love, when accompanied with innocence and joy, when, even in sin, in remorse, in grief, it brings us a rapture to which all other things are tame. Oh! those were moments steeped in the very elixir of life; overflowing with the hoarded fondness and sympathies of hearts too full for words, and yet too agitated for silence, when we journeyed alone, and at night, and as the shadows and stillness of the waning hours gathered round us, drew closer to each other, and concentrated this breathing world in the deep and embracing sentiment of our mutual love! It was then that I laid my burning temples on her bosom, and felt, while my hand clasped her's, that my visions were realized, and my wandering spirit had sunk unto its rest. "I remember well that, one night, we were travelling through one of the most beautiful parts of England it was in the very height and flush of summer, and the moon (what scene of love--whether in reality, or romance--has any thing of tenderness, or passion, or divinity, where her light is not!) filled the intense skies of June with her presence, and cast a sadder and paler beauty over Gertrude's cheek. She was always of a melancholy and despondent temper; perhaps, for that reason, she was more congenial to my own; and when I gazed upon her that night, I was not surprised to see her eyes filled with tears. 'You will laugh at me,' she said, as I kissed them off, and inquired into the cause; 'but I feel a presentiment that I cannot shake off; it tells me that you will travel this road again before many months are past, and that I shall not be with you, perhaps not upon the earth.' She was right in all her foreboding, but the suggestion of her death;--that came later. "We took up our residence for some time at a beautiful situation, a short distance from a small watering place. Here, to my great surprise, I met with Tyrrell. He had come there partly to see a relation from whom he had some expectations, and partly to recruit his health, which was much broken by his irregularities and excesses. I could not refuse to renew my old acquaintance with him, and, indeed, I thought him too much of a man of the world, and of society, to feel with him that particular delicacy, in regard to Gertrude, which made me in general shun all intercourse with my former friends. He was in great pecuniary embarrassment--much more deeply so than I then imagined; for I believed the embarrassment to be only temporary. However, my purse was then, as before, at his disposal, and he did not scruple to avail himself very largely of my offers. He came frequently to our house; and poor Gertrude, who thought I had, for her sake, made a real sacrifice in renouncing my acquaintance, endeavoured to conquer her usual diffidence, and that more painful feeling than diffidence, natural to her station, and even to affect a pleasure in the society of my friend, which she was very far from feeling. "I was detained at--for several weeks by Gertrude's confinement. The child--happy being!--died a week after its birth. Gertrude was still in bed, and unable to leave it, when I received a letter from Ellen, to say, that my mother was then staying at Toulouse, and dangerously ill; if I wished once more to see her, Ellen besought me to lose no time in setting off for the continent. You may imagine my situation, or rather you cannot, for you cannot conceive the smallest particle of that intense love I bore to Gertrude. To you--to any other man, it might seem no extraordinary hardship to leave her even for an uncertain period--to me it was like tearing away the very life from my heart. "I procured her a sort of half companion, and half nurse; I provided for her every thing that the most anxious and fearful love could suggest; and with a mind full of forebodings too darkly to be realized hereafter, I hastened to the nearest seaport, and set sail for France. "When I arrived at Toulouse my mother was much better, but still in a very uncertain and dangerous state of health. I stayed with her for more than a month, during which time every post brought me a line from Gertrude, and bore back a message from 'my heart to her's' in return. This was no mean consolation, more especially when each letter spoke of increasing health and strength. At the month's end, I was preparing to return--my mother was slowly recovering, and I no longer had any fears on her account; but, there are links in our destiny fearfully interwoven with each other, and ending only in the anguish of our ultimate doom. The day before that fixed for my departure, I had been into a house where an epidemic disease raged; that night I complained of oppressive and deadly illness--before morning I was in a high fever. "During the time I was sensible of my state, I wrote constantly to Gertrude, and carefully concealed my illness; but for several days I was delirious. When I recovered I called eagerly for my letters--there were none--none! I could not believe I was yet awake; but days still passed on, and not a line from England--from Gertrude. The instant I was able, I insisted upon putting horses to my carriage; I could bear no longer the torture of my suspense. By the most rapid journeys my debility would allow me to bear, I arrived in England. I travelled down to--by the same road that I had gone over with her; the words of her foreboding, at that time, sunk like ice into my heart, 'You will travel this road again before many months are past, and I shall not be with you: perhaps, I shall not be upon the earth.' At that thought I could have called unto the grave to open for me. Her unaccountable and lengthened silence, in spite of all the urgency and entreaties of my letters for a reply, filled me with presentiments the most fearful. Oh, God--oh, God, they were nothing to the truth! "At last I arrived at--; my carriage stopped at the very house--my whole frame was perfectly frozen with dread--I trembled from limb to limb--the ice of a thousand winters seemed curdling through my blood. The bell rung--once, twice--no answer. I would have leaped out of the carriage--I would have forced an entrance, but I was unable to move. A man fettered and spell-bound by an incubus, is less helpless than I was. At last, an old female I had never seen before, appeared. "'Where is she? How!' I could utter no more--my eyes were fixed upon the inquisitive and frightened countenance opposite to my own. Those eyes, I thought, might have said all that my lips could not; I was deceived--the old woman understood me no more than I did her; another person appeared--I recognized the face--it was that of a girl, who had been one of our attendants. Will you believe, that at that sight, the sight of one I had seen before, and could associate with the remembrance of the breathing, the living, the present Gertrude, a thrill of joy flashed across me--my fears seemed to vanish--my spell to cease? "I sprung from the carriage; I caught the girl by the robe. 'Your mistress,' said I, 'your mistress--she is well--she is alive--speak, speak?' The girl shrieked out; my eagerness, and, perhaps, my emaciated and altered appearance, terrified her; but she had the strong nerves of youth, and was soon re-assured. She requested me to step in, and she would tell me all. My wife (Gertrude always went by that name), was alive, and, she believed, well, but she had left that place some weeks since. Trembling, and still fearful, but, comparatively, in Heaven, to my former agony, I followed the girl and the old woman into the house. "The former got me some water. 'Now,' said I, when I had drank a long and hearty draught, 'I am ready to hear all--my wife has left this house, you say--for what place?' The girl hesitated and looked down; the old woman, who was somewhat deaf, and did not rightly understand my questions, or the nature of the personal interest I had in the reply, answered,--'What does the gentleman want? the poor young lady who was last here? Lord help her!' "'What of her?' I called out, in a new alarm. 'What of her? Where has she gone? Who took her away?' "'Who took her?' mumbled the old woman, fretful at my impatient tone; 'Who took her? why, the mad doctor, to be sure!' "I heard no more; my frame could support no longer the agonies my mind had undergone; I fell lifeless on the ground. "When I recovered, it was in the dead of night. I was in bed, the old woman and the girl were at my side. I rose slowly and calmly. You know, all men who have ever suffered much, know the strange anomalies of despair--the quiet of our veriest anguish. Deceived by my bearing, I learned, by degrees, from my attendants, that Gertrude had some weeks since betrayed sudden symptoms of insanity; that these, in a very few hours, arose to an alarming pitch.--From some reason the woman could not explain, she had, a short time before, discarded the companion I had left with her; she was, therefore, alone among servants. They sent for the ignorant practitioners of the place; they tried their nostrums without success; her madness increased; her attendants, with that superstitious horror of insanity, common to the lower classes, became more and more violently alarmed; the landlady insisted on her removal; and--and--I told you, Peham--I told you--they sent her away--sent her to a madhouse! All this I listened to!--all!--aye, and patiently! I noted down the address of her present abode; it was about the distance of twenty miles from--. I ordered fresh horses and set off immediately. "I arrived there at day-break. It was a large, old house, which, like a French hotel, seemed to have no visible door; dark and gloomy, the pile appeared worthy of the purpose to which it was devoted. It was a long time before we aroused any one to answer our call; at length, I was ushered into a small parlour--how minutely I remember every article in the room; what varieties there are in the extreme passions! sometimes the same feeling will deaden all the senses--sometimes render them a hundred fold more acute!-- "At last, a man of a smiling and rosy aspect appeared. He pointed to a chair--rubbed his hands--and begged me to unfold my business; few words sufficed to do that. I requested to see his patient; I demanded by what authority she had been put under his care. The man's face altered. He was but little pleased with the nature of my visit. 'The lady,' he said, coolly, 'had been entrusted to his care, with an adequate remuneration, by Mr. Tyrrell; without that gentleman's permission he could not think even of suffering me to see her. I controlled my passion; I knew something, if not of the nature of private mad-houses, at least of that of mankind. I claimed his patient as my wife; I expressed myself obliged by his care, and begged his acceptance of a further remuneration, which I tendered, and which was eagerly accepted. The way was now cleared--there is no hell to which a golden branch will not win your admittance. "The man detained me no longer; he hastened to lead the way. We passed through various long passages; sometimes the low moan of pain and weakness came upon my ear--sometimes the confused murmur of the idiot's drivelling soliloquy. From one passage, at right angles with the one through which we proceeded, came a fierce and thrilling shriek; it sunk at once into silence--perhaps by the lash! "We were now in a different department of the building--all was silence--hushed deep--breathless: this seemed to me more awful than the terrible sounds I had just heard. My guide went slowly on, sometimes breaking the stillness of the dim gallery by the jingle of his keys--sometimes by a muttered panegyric on himself and his humanity. I neither heeded nor answered him. "We read in the annals of the Inquisition, of every limb, nerve, sinew of the victim, being so nicely and accurately strained to their utmost, that the frame would not bear the additional screwing of a single hair breadth. Such seemed my state. We came to a small door, at the right hand; it was the last but one in the passage. We paused before it. 'Stop,' said I, 'for one moment:' and I was so faint and sick at heart, that I leaned against the wall to recover myself, before I let him open the door: when he did, it was a greater relief than I can express, to see that all was utterly dark. 'Wait, Sir,' said the guide, as he entered; and a sullen noise told me that he was unbarring the heavy shutter. "Slowly the grey cold light of the morning broke in: a dark figure was stretched upon a wretched bed, at the far end of the room. She raised herself at the sound. She turned her face towards me; I did not fall, nor faint, nor shriek; I stood motionless, as if fixed into stone; and yet it was Gertrude upon whom I gazed! Oh, Heaven! who but myself could have recognized her? Her cheek was as the cheek of the dead--the hueless skin clung to the bone--the eye was dull and glassy for one moment, the next it became terribly and preternaturally bright--but not with the ray of intellect, or consciousness, or recognition. She looked long and hard at me; a voice, hollow and broken, but which still penetrated my heart, came forth through the wan lips, that scarcely moved with the exertion. 'I am very cold,' it said--'but if I complain, you will beat me.' She fell down again upon the bed, and hid her face. "My guide, who was leaning carelessly by the window, turned to me with a sort of smirk--'This is her way, Sir,' he said; 'her madness is of a very singular description: we have not, as yet, been able to discover how far it extends; sometimes she seems conscious of the past, sometimes utterly oblivious of every thing: for days she is perfectly silent, or, at least, says nothing more than you have just heard; but, at times, she raves so violently, that--that--but I never use force where it can be helped.' "I looked at the man, but I could not answer, unless I had torn him to pieces on the spot. I turned away hastily from the room; but I did not quit the house without Gertrude--I placed her in the carriage, by my side--notwithstanding all the protestations and fears of the keeper: these were readily silenced by the sum I gave him; it was large enough to have liberated half his household. In fact, I gathered from his conversation, that Tyrrell had spoken of Gertrude as an unhappy female whom he himself had seduced, and would now be rid of. I thank you, Pelham, for that frown, but keep your indignation till a fitter season for it. "I took my victim, for I then regarded her as such, to a secluded and lonely spot: I procured for her whatever advice England could afford; all was in vain. Night and day I was by her side, but she never, for a moment, seemed to recollect me: yet were there times of fierce and overpowering delirium, when my name was uttered in the transport of the most passionate enthusiasm--when my features as absent, though not present, were recalled and dwelt upon with all the minuteness of the most faithful detail; and I knelt by her in all those moments, when no other human being was near, and clasped her wan hand, and wiped the dew from her forehead, and gazed upon her convulsed and changing face, and called upon her in a voice which could once have allayed her wildest emotions; and had the agony of seeing her eye dwell upon me with the most estranged indifference and the most vehement and fearful aversion. But ever and anon, she uttered words which chilled the very marrow of my bones; words which I would not, dared not believe, had any meaning or method in their madness--but which entered into my own brain, and preyed there like the devouring of a fire. There was a truth in those ravings--a reason in that incoherence--and my cup was not yet full. "At last, one physician, who appeared to me to have more knowledge than the rest of the mysterious workings of her dreadful disease, advised me to take her to the scenes of her first childhood: 'Those scenes,' said he, justly, 'are in all stages of life, the most fondly remembered; and I have noted, that in many cases of insanity, places are easier recalled than persons: perhaps, if we can once awaken one link in the chain, it will communicate to the rest.' "I took this advice, and set off to Norfolk. Her early home was not many miles distant from the churchyard where you once met me, and in that churchyard her mother was buried. She had died before Gertrude's flight; the father's death had followed it: perhaps my sufferings were a just retribution. The house had gone into other hands, and I had no difficulty in engaging it. Thank Heaven, I was spared the pain of seeing any of Gertrude's relations. "It was night when we moved to the house. I had placed within the room where she used to sleep, all the furniture and books, with which it appeared, from my inquiries, to have been formerly filled. We laid her in the bed that had held that faded and altered form, in its freshest and purest years. I shrouded myself in one corner of the room, and counted the dull minutes till the daylight dawned. I pass over the detail of my recital--the experiment partially succeeded--would to God that it had not! would that she had gone down to her grave with her dreadful secret unrevealed! would--but--" Here Glanville's voice failed him, and there was a brief silence before he recommenced. "Gertrude now had many lucid intervals; but these my presence were always sufficient to change into a delirious raving, even more incoherent than her insanity had ever yet been. She would fly from me with the most fearful cries, bury her face in her hands, and seem like one oppressed and haunted by a supernatural visitation, as long as I remained in the room; the moment I left her, she began, though slowly, to recover. "This was to me the bitterest affliction of all--to be forbidden to nurse, to cherish, to tend her, was like taking from me my last hope! But little can the thoughtless or the worldly dream of the depths of a real love; I used to wait all day by her door, and it was luxury enough to me to catch her accents or hear her move, or sigh, or even weep; and all night, when she could not know of my presence, I used to lie down by her bedside; and when I sank into a short and convulsed sleep, I saw her once more, in my brief and fleeting dreams, in all the devoted love, and glowing beauty, which had once constituted the whole of my happiness, and my world. "One day I had been called from my post by her door. They came to me hastily--she was in strong convulsions. I flew up stairs, and supported her in my arms till the fits had ceased: we then placed her in bed; she never rose from it again; but on that bed of death, the words, as well as the cause, of her former insanity, were explained--the mystery was unravelled. "It was a still and breathless night. The moon, which was at its decrease, came through the half-closed shutters, and beneath its solemn and eternal light, she yielded to my entreaties, and revealed all. The man--my friend--Tyrrell--had polluted her ear with his addresses, and when forbidden the house, had bribed the woman I had left with her, to convey his letters--she was discharged--but Tyrrell was no ordinary villain; he entered the house one evening, when no one but Gertrude was there--Come near me, Pelham--nearer--bend down your ear--he used force, violence! That night Gertrude's senses deserted her--you know the rest. "The moment that I gathered, from Gertrude's broken sentences, their meaning, that moment the demon entered into my soul. All human feelings seemed to fly from my heart; it shrunk into one burning, and thirsty, and fiery want--that was for revenge. I would have sprung from the bedside, but Gertrude's hand clung to me, and detained me; the damp, chill grasp, grew colder and colder--it ceased--the hand fell--I turned--one slight, but awful shudder, went over that face, made yet more wan, by the light of the waning and ghastly moon--one convulsion shook the limbs--one murmur passed the falling and hueless lips. I cannot tell you the rest--you know--you can guess it. "That day week we buried her in the lonely churchyard--where she had, in her lucid moments, wished to lie--by the side of her mother." _ |
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