Devereux — Volume 06

"And did your wanderings ever carry you into the farther regions of the north? Did the fame of the great Czar ever lead you to the city he has founded?"

"I am right! I am right! " thought I, as I answered, "In truth, holy Father, I spent not a long time at Petersburg; but I am not a stranger either to its wonders or its inhabitants."

"Possibly, then, you may have met with the English favourite of the Czar of whom I hear in my retreat that men have lately spoken somewhat largely?" The Hermit paused again. We were now in a long, low passage, almost in darkness. I scarcely saw him, yet I heard a convulsed movement in his throat before he uttered the remainder of the sentence. "He is called the Count Devereux."

"Father," said I, calmly, "I have both seen and known the man."

"Ha!" said the Hermit, and he leaned for a moment against the wall; "known him—and—how—how—I mean, where is he at this present time?"

"That, Father, is a difficult question respecting one who has led so active a life. He was ambassador at the court of ——— just before I left it."

We had now passed the passage and gained a room of tolerable size; an iron lamp burned within, and afforded a sufficient but somewhat dim light. The Hermit, as I concluded my reply, sank down on a long stone bench, beside a table of the same substance, and leaning his face on his hand, so that the long, large sleeve he wore perfectly concealed his features, said, "Pardon me; my breath is short, and my frame weak; I am quite exhausted, but will speak to you more anon."

I uttered a short answer, and drew a small wooden stool within a few feet of the Hermit's seat. After a brief silence he rose, placed wine, bread, and preserved fruits before me and bade me eat. I seemed to comply with his request, and the apparent diversion of my attention from himself somewhat relieved the embarrassment under which he evidently laboured.

"May I hope," he said, "that were my commission to this—to the Count Devereux—you would execute it faithfully and with speed? Yet stay: you have a high mien, as of one above fortune, but your garb is rude and poor; and if aught of gold could compensate your trouble, the Hermit has other treasuries besides this cell."

"I will do your bidding, Father, without robbing the poor. You wish, then, that I should seek Morton Devereux; you wish that I should summon him hither; you wish to see and to confer with him?"

"God of mercy forbid!" cried the Hermit, and with such a vehemence that I was startled from the design of revealing myself, which I was on the point of executing. "I would rather that these walls would crush me into dust, or that this solid stone would crumble beneath my feet,—ay, even into a bottomless pit, than meet the glance of Morton Devereux!"

"Is it even so?" said I, stooping over the wine-cup; "ye have been foes then, I suspect. Well, it matters not: tell me your errand, and it shall be done."

"Done!" cried the Hermit, and a new and certainly a most natural suspicion darted within him, "done! and—fool that I am!—who or what are you that I should believe you take so keen an interest in the wishes of a man utterly unknown to you? I tell you that my wish is that you should cross seas and traverse lands until you find the man I have named to you. Will a stranger do this, and without hire? No—no—I was a fool, and will trust the monks, and give gold, and then my errand will be sped."

"Father, or rather brother," said I, with a slow and firm voice, "for you are of mine own age, and you have the passion and the infirmity which make brethren of all mankind, I am one to whom all places are alike: it matters not whether I visit a northern or a southern clime; I have wealth, which is sufficient to smooth toil; I have leisure, which makes occupation an enjoyment. More than this, I am one who in his gayest and wildest moments has ever loved mankind, and would have renounced at any time his own pleasure for the advantage of another. But at this time, above all others, I am most disposed to forget myself, and there is a passion in your words which leads me to hope that it may be a great benefit which I can confer upon you."

"You speak well," said the Hermit, musingly, "and I may trust you; I will consider yet a little longer, and to-morrow at this hour you shall have my final answer. If you execute the charge I entrust to you, may the blessing of a dying and most wretched man cleave to you forever! But hush; the clock strikes: it is my hour of prayer."

And, pointing to a huge black clock that hung opposite the door, and indicated the hour of nine (according to our English mode of numbering the hours), the Hermit fell on his knees, and, clasping his hands tightly, bent his face over them in the attitude of humiliation and devotion. I followed his example. After a few minutes he rose: "Once in every three hours," said he, with a ghastly expression, "for the last twelve years have I bowed my soul in anguish before God, and risen to feel that it was in vain: I am cursed without and within!"

"My Father, my Father, is this your faith in the mercies of the Redeemer who died for man?"

"Talk not to me of faith!" cried the Hermit, wildly. "Ye laymen and worldlings know nothing of its mysteries and its powers. But begone! the dread hour is upon me, when my tongue is loosed and my brain darkened, and I know not my words and shudder at my own thoughts. Begone! no human being shall witness those moments: they are only for Heaven and my own soul."

So saying, this unhappy and strange being seized me by the arm and dragged me towards the passage we had entered. I was in doubt whether to yield to or contend with him; but there was a glare in his eye and a flush upon his brow, which, while it betrayed the dreadful disease of his mind, made me fear that resistance to his wishes might operate dangerously upon a frame so feeble and reduced. I therefore mechanically obeyed him. He opened again the entrance to his rugged home, and the moonlight streamed wanly over his dark robes and spectral figure.

"Go," said he, more mildly than before, "go, and forgive the vehemence of one whose mind and heart alike are broken within him. Go, but return to-morrow at sunset. Your air disposes me to trust you."

So saying, he closed the door upon me, and I stood without the cavern alone.

But did I return home? Did I hasten to press my couch in sleep and sweet forgetfulness, while he was in that gloomy sepulture of the living, a prey to anguish, and torn by the fangs of madness and a fierce disease? No: on the damp grass, beneath the silent skies, I passed a night which could scarcely have been less wretched than his own. My conjecture was now and in full confirmed. Heavens! how I loved that man! how, from my youngest years, had my soul's fondest affections interlaced themselves with him! with what anguish had I wept his imagined death! and now to know that he lay within those walls, smitten from brain to heart with so fearful and mysterious a curse,—to know, too, that he dreaded the sight of me,—of me who would have laid down my life for his! the grave, which I imagined his home, had been a mercy to a doom like this.

"He fears," I murmured, and I wept as I said it, "to look on one who would watch over, and soothe, and bear with him, with more than a woman's love! By what awful fate has this calamity fallen on one so holy and so pure? or by what preordered destiny did I come to these solitudes, to find at the same time a new charm for the earth and a spell to change it again into a desert and a place of woe?"

All night I kept vigil by the cave, and listened if I could catch moan or sound; but everything was silent: the thick walls of the rock kept even the voice of despair from my ear. The day dawned, and I retired among the trees, lest the Hermit might come out unawares and see me. At sunrise I saw him appear for a few moments and again retire, and I then hastened home, exhausted and wearied by the internal conflicts of the night, to gather coolness and composure for the ensuing interview, which I contemplated at once with eagerness and dread.

At the appointed hour I repaired to the cavern: the door was partially closed; I opened it, hearing no answer to my knock, and walked gently along the passage; but I now heard shrieks and groans and wild laughter as I neared the rude chamber. I paused for a moment, and then in terror and dismay entered the apartment. It was empty, but I saw near the clock a small door, from within which the sounds that alarmed me proceeded. I had no scruple in opening it, and found myself in the Hermit's sleeping chamber,—a small dark room, where, upon a straw pallet, lay the wretched occupant in a state of frantic delirium. I stood mute and horror-struck, while his exclamations of frenzy burst upon my ear.

"There—there!" he cried, "I have struck thee to the heart, and now I will kneel, and kiss those white lips, and bathe my hands in that blood! Ha!—do I hate thee?—hate—ay—hate,—abhor, detest! Have you the beads there?—let me tell them. Yes, I will go to the confessional—confess?—No, no—all the priests in the world could not lift up a soul so heavy with guilt. Help—help—help! I am falling—falling—there is the pit, and the fire, and the devils! Do you hear them laugh?—I can laugh too!—ha! ha! ha! Hush, I have written it all out, in a fair hand; he shall read it; and then, O God! what curses he will heap upon my head! Blessed Saint Francis, hear me! Lazarus, Lazarus, speak for me!"

Thus did the Hermit rave, while my flesh crept to hear him. I stood by his bedside, and called on him, but he neither heard nor saw me. Upon the ground, by the bed's head, as if it had dropped from under the pillow, was a packet seated and directed to myself. I knew the handwriting at a glance, even though the letters were blotted and irregular, and possibly traced in the first moment that his present curse fell upon the writer. I placed the packet in my bosom; the Hermit saw not the motion; he lay back on the bed, seemingly in utter exhaustion. I turned away, and hastened to the monastery for assistance. As I hurried through the passage, the Hermit's shrieks again broke upon me, with a fiercer vehemence than before. I flew from them, as if they were sounds from the abyss of Hades. I flew till, breathless, and half-senseless myself, I fell down exhausted by the gate of the monastery.

The two most skilled in physic of the brethren were immediately summoned, and they lost not a moment in accompanying me to the cavern. All that evening, until midnight, the frenzy of the maniac seemed rather to increase than abate. But at that hour, exactly indeed as the clock struck twelve, he fell all at once into a deep sleep.

Then for the first time, but not till the weary brethren had at this favourable symptom permitted themselves to return for a brief interval to the monastery, to seek refreshment for themselves and to bring down new medicines for the patient,—then, for the first time, I rose from the Hermit's couch by which I had hitherto kept watch, and repairing to the outer chamber, took forth the packet superscribed with my name.

There, alone in that gray vault, and by the sepulchral light of the single lamp, I read what follows:—

THE HERMIT'S MANUSCRIPT

Morton Devereux, if ever this reach you, read it, shudder, and, whatever your afflictions, bless God that you are not as I am. Do you remember my prevailing characteristic as a boy? No, you do not. You will say "devotion!" It was not! "Gentleness." It was not: it was JEALOUSY! Now does the truth flash on you? Yes, that was the disease that was in my blood, and in my heart, and through whose ghastly medium every living object was beheld. Did I love you? Yes, I loved you,—ay, almost with a love equal to your own. I loved my mother; I loved Gerald; I loved Montreuil. It was a part of my nature to love, and I did not resist the impulse. You I loved better than all; but I was jealous of each. If my mother caressed you or Gerald, if you opened your heart to either, it stung me to the quick. I it was who said to my mother, "Caress him not, or I shall think you love him better than me." I it was who widened, from my veriest childhood, the breach between Gerald and yourself. I it was who gave to the childish reproach a venom, and to the childish quarrel a barb. Was this love? Yes, it was love; but I could not endure that ye should love one another as ye loved me. It delighted me when one confided to my ear a complaint against the other, and said, "Aubrey, this blow could not have come from thee!"

Montreuil early perceived my bias of temper: he might have corrected it and with ease. I was not evil in disposition; I was insensible of my own vice. Had its malignity been revealed to me, I should have recoiled in horror. Montreuil had a vast power over me; he could mould me at his will. Montreuil, I repeat, might have saved me, and thyself, and a third being, better and purer than either of us was, even in our cradles. Montreuil did not: he had an object to serve, and he sacrificed our whole house to it. He found me one day weeping over a dog that I had killed. "Why did you destroy it?" he said; and I answered, "Because it loved Morton better than me!" And the priest said, "Thou didst right, Aubrey!" Yes, from that time he took advantage of my infirmity, and could rouse or calm all my passions in proportion as he irritated or soothed it.

You know this man's object during the latter period of his residence with us: it was the restoration of the House of Stuart. He was alternately the spy and the agitator in that cause. Among more comprehensive plans for effecting this object, was that of securing the heirs to the great wealth and popular name of Sir William Devereux. This was only a minor mesh in the intricate web of his schemes; but it is the character of the man to take exactly the same pains, and pursue the same laborious intrigues, for a small object as for a great one. His first impression, on entering our house, was in favour of Gerald; and I believe he really likes him to this day better than either of us. Partly your sarcasms, partly Gerald's disputes with you, partly my representations,—for I was jealous even of the love of Montreuil,—prepossessed him against you. He thought, too, that Gerald had more talent to serve his purposes than yourself and more facility in being moulded to them; and he believed our uncle's partiality to you far from being unalienable. I have said that, at the latter period of his residence with us, he was an agent of the exiled cause. At the time I /now/ speak of, he had not entered into the great political scheme which engrossed him afterwards. He was merely a restless and aspiring priest, whose whole hope, object, ambition, was the advancement of his order. He knew that whoever inherited, or whoever shared, my uncle's wealth, could, under legitimate regulation, promote /any/ end which the heads of that order might select; and he wished therefore to gain the mastery over us all. Intrigue was essentially woven with his genius, and by intrigue only did he ever seek to arrive at /any/ end he had in view.1 He soon obtained a mysterious and pervading power over Gerald and myself. Your temper at once irritated him, and made him despair of obtaining an ascendant over one who, though he testified in childhood none of the talents for which he has since been noted, testified, nevertheless, a shrewd, penetrating, and sarcastic power of observation and detection. You, therefore, he resolved to leave to the irregularities of your own nature, confident that they would yield him the opportunity of detaching your uncle from you and ultimately securing to Gerald his estates.

The trial at school first altered his intentions. He imagined that he then saw in you powers which might be rendered availing to him: he conquered his pride—a great feature in his character—and he resolved to seek your affection. Your subsequent regularity of habits and success in study confirmed him in his resolution; and when he learned from my uncle's own lips that the Devereux estates would devolve on you, he thought that it would be easier to secure your affection to him than to divert that affection which my uncle had conceived for you. At this time, I repeat, he had no particular object in view; none, at least, beyond that of obtaining for the interest of his order the direction of great wealth and some political influence. Some time after—I know not exactly when, but before we returned to take our permanent abode at Devereux Court—a share in the grand political intrigue which was then in so many branches carried on throughout England, and even Europe, was confided to Montreuil.

In this I believe he was the servant of his order, rather than immediately of the exiled House; and I have since heard that even at that day he had acquired a great reputation among the professors of the former. You, Morton, he decoyed not into this scheme before he left England: he had not acquired a sufficient influence over you to trust you with the disclosure. To Gerald and myself he was more confidential. Gerald eagerly embraced his projects through a spirit of enterprise; I through a spirit of awe and of religion. RELIGION! Yes,—then,—long after,—now,—when my heart was and is the home of all withering and evil passions, Religion reigned,—reigns, over me a despot and a tyrant. Its terrors haunt me at this hour; they people the earth and the air with shapes of ghastly menace! They—Heaven pardon me! what would my madness utter? Madness?—madness? Ay, /that/ is the real scourge, the real fire, the real torture, the real hell, of this fair earth!

Montreuil, then, by different pleas, won over Gerald and myself. He left us, but engaged us in constant correspondence. "Aubrey," he said, before he departed, and when he saw that I was wounded by his apparent cordiality towards you and Gerald—"Aubrey," he said, soothing me on this point, "think not that I trust Gerald or the arrogant Morton as I trust you. /You/ have my real heart and my real trust. It is necessary to the execution of this project, so important to the interests of religion and so agreeable to the will of Heaven, that we should secure all co-operators: but they, your brothers, Aubrey, are the tools of that mighty design; you are its friend." Thus it was that, at all times when he irritated too sorely the vice of my nature, he flattered it into seconding his views; and thus, instead of conquering my evil passions, he conquered by them. Curses—No, no, no!—I /will/ be calm.

We returned to Devereux Court, and we grew from boyhood into youth. I loved you then, Morton. Ah! what would I not give now for one pure feeling, such as I felt in your love? Do you remember the day on which you had extorted from my uncle his consent to your leaving us for the pleasures and pomps of London? Do you remember the evening of that day, when I came to seek you, and we sat down on a little mound, and talked over your projects, and you spoke then to me of my devotion and my purer and colder feelings? Morton, at that very moment my veins burned with passion!—at that very moment my heart was feeding the vulture fated to live and prey within it forever! Thrice did I resolve to confide in you, as we then sat together, and thrice did my evil genius forbid it. You seemed, even in your affection to me, so wholly engrossed with your own hopes; you seemed so little to regret leaving me; you stung, so often and so deeply, in our short conference, that feeling which made me desire to monopolize all things in those I loved, that I said inly,—"Why should I bare my heart to one who can so little understand it?" And so we turned home, and you dreamed not of that which was then within me, and which was destined to be your curse and mine.

Not many weeks previous to that night, I had seen one whom to see was to love! Love!—I tell you, Morton, that /that/ word is expressive of soft and fond emotion, and there should be another expressive of all that is fierce and dark and unrelenting m the human heart!—all that seems most like the deadliest and the blackest hate, and yet is not hate! I saw this being, and from that moment my real nature, which had slept hitherto, awoke! I remember well it was one evening in the beginning of summer that I first saw her. She sat alore in the little garden beside the cottage door, and I paused, and, unseen, looked over the slight fence that separated us, and fed my eyes with a loveliness that I thought till then only twilight or the stars could wear! From that evening I came, night after night, to watch her from the same spot; and every time I beheld her the poison entered deeper and deeper into my system. At length I had an opportunity of being known to her, of speaking to her, of hearing her speak, of touching the ground she had hallowed, of entering the home where she dwelt!

I must explain: I said that both Gerald and myself corresponded privately with Montreuil; we were both bound over to secrecy with regard to you; and this, my temper and Gerald's coolness with you rendered an easy obligation to both;—I say my temper, for I loved to think I had a secret not known to another; and I carried this reserve even to the degree of concealing from Gerald himself the greater part of the correspondence between me and the Abbe. In his correspondence with each of us, Montreuil acted with his usual skill; to Gerald, as the elder in years, the more prone to enterprise, and the manlier in aspect and in character, was allotted whatever object was of real trust or importance. Gerald it was who, under pretence of pursuing his accustomed sports, conferred with the various agents of intrigue who from time to time visited our coast; and to me the Abbe gave words of endearment and affected the language of more entire trust. "Whatever," he would say, "in our present half mellowed projects, is exposed to danger, but does not promise reward, I entrust to Gerald; hereafter, far higher employment, under far safer and surer auspices, will be yours. We are the heads: be ours the nobler occupation to plan; and let us leave to inferior natures the vain and perilous triumph to execute what we design."

All this I readily assented to; for, despite my acquiescence in Montreuil's wishes, I loved not enterprise, or rather I hated whatever roused me from the dreamy and abstracted indolence which was most dear to my temperament. Sometimes, however, with a great show of confidence, Montreuil would request me to execute some quiet and unimportant commission; and of this nature was one I received while I was thus, unknown even to the object, steeping my soul in the first intoxication of love. The plots then carried on by certain ecclesiastics I need not say extended, in one linked chain, over the greater part of the Continent. Spain, in especial, was the theatre of these intrigues; and among the tools employed in executing them were some who, though banished from that country, still, by the rank they had held in it, carried a certain importance in their very names. Foremost of these was the father of the woman I loved; and foremost, in whatever promised occupation to a restless mind, he was always certain to be.

Montreuil now commissioned me to seek out a certain Barnard (an underling in those secret practices or services, for which he afterwards suffered, and who was then in that part of the country), and to communicate to him some messages of which he was to be the bearer to this Spaniard. A thought flashed upon me—Montreuil's letter mentioned, accidentally, that the Spaniard had never hitherto seen Barnard: could I not personate the latter, deliver the messages myself, and thus win that introduction to the daughter which I so burningly desired, and which, from the close reserve of the father's habits, I might not otherwise effect? The plan was open to two objections: one, that I was known personally in the town in the environs of which the Spaniard lived, and he might therefore very soon discover who I really was; the other that I was not in possession of all the information which Barnard might possess, and which the Spaniard might wish to learn; but these objections had not much weight with me. To the first, I said inly, "I will oppose the most constant caution; I will go always on foot and alone; I will never be seen in the town itself; and even should the Spaniard, who seems rarely to stir abroad, and who, possibly, does not speak our language,—even should he learn by accident that Barnard is only another name for Aubrey Devereux, it will not be before I have gained my object; nor, perhaps, before the time when I myself may wish to acknowledge my identity." To the second objection I saw a yet more ready answer. "I will acquaint Montreuil at once," I said, "with my intention; I will claim his connivance as a proof of his confidence, and as an essay of my own genius of intrigue." I did so; the priest, perhaps delighted to involve me so deeply, and to find me so ardent in his project, consented. Fortunately, as I before said, Barnard was an underling,—young, unknown, and obscure. My youth, therefore, was not so great a foe to my assumed disguise as it might otherwise have been. Montreuil supplied all requisite information. I tried (for the first time, with a beating heart and a tremulous voice) the imposition! it succeeded; I continued it. Yes, Morton, yes!—pour forth upon me your bitterest execration, in me, in your brother, in the brother so dear to you,—in the brother whom you imagined so passionless, so pure; so sinless,—behold that Barnard, the lover, the idolatrous lover—the foe, the deadly foe,—of Isora d'Alvarez!