by Mary Shelley
Edward was brought up in all the magnificence of his uncle’s lordly abode. Luxury and profusion were the elements of the air he breathed. To be without any desired object that could be purchased, appeared baseness and lowest penury. He, also, was considered the favoured one of fortune in the family circle. The elder brother among the Savilles rose above, but the younger fell infinitely below, the undoubted heir of eight thousand a year, and one of the most delightful seats in England. He was brought up to look upon himself as a rich man, and to act as such; and meanwhile, until his father’s death, he had nothing to depend on, except any allowance he might make him.
Colonel Villiers was a man of fashion, addicted to all the extravagances and even vices of the times. He set no bounds to his expenses. Gambling consumed his nights, and his days were spent at horse-races, or any other occupation that at once excited and impoverished him. His income was as a drop of water in the mighty stream of his expenditure. Involvement followed involvement, until he had not a shilling that he could properly call his own.
Poor Edward heard of these things, but did not mark them. He indulged in no blameworthy pursuits, nor spent more than beseemed a man in his rank of life. The idea of debt was familiar to him: every one — even Lord Maristow — was in debt, far beyond his power of immediate payment. He followed the universal example, and suffered no inconvenience, while his wants were obligingly supplied by the fashionable tradesmen. He regarded the period of his coming of age as a time when he should become disembarrassed, and enter upon life with ample means, and still more brilliant prospects.
The day arrived. It was celebrated with splendour at Maristow Castle. Colonel Villiers was abroad; but Lord Maristow wrote to him to remind him of this event, which otherwise he might have forgotten. A kind letter of congratulation was, in consequence, received from him by Edward; to which was appended a postscript, saying, that on his return, at the end of a few weeks, he would consult concerning some arrangements he wished to make with regard to his future income.
His return was deferred; and Edward began to experience some of the annoyances of debt. Still no real pain was associated with his feelings; though he looked forward with eagerness to the hour of liberation. Colonel Villiers came at last. He spoke largely of his intended generosity, which was shown, meanwhile, by his persuading Edward to join in a mortgage for the sake of raising an immediate sum. Edward scarcely knew what he was about. He was delighted to be of service to his father; and without thought or idea of having made a sacrifice, agreed to all that was asked of him. He was promised an allowance of six hundred a year.
The few years that had passed since then were full of painful experience and bitter initiation. His light and airy spirit was slow to conceive ill, or to resent wrong. When his annuity remained unpaid, he listened to his father’s excuses with implicit credence, and deplored his poverty. One day, he received a note from him, written, as usual, in haste and confusion, but breathing anxiety and regret on his account, and promising to pay over to him the first money he could obtain. On the evening of that day, Edward was led by a friend into the gambling room of a celebrated club. The first man on whom his eyes fell, was his father, who was risking and losing rouleaus and notes in abundance. At one moment, while making over a large sum, he suddenly perceived his son. He grew pale, and then a deep blush spread itself over his countenance. Edward withdrew. His young heart was pierced to the core. The consciousness of a father’s falsehood and guilt acted on him as the sudden intelligence of some fatal disaster would have done. He breathed thick — the objects swam round him — he hurried into the streets — he traversed them one after the other. It was not this scene alone — this single act; the veil was withdrawn from a whole series of others similar; and he became aware that his parent had stepped beyond the line of mere extravagance; that he had lost honourable feeling; that lies were common in his mouth; and every other — even his only child — was sacrificed to his own selfish and bad passions.
Edward never again asked his father for money. The immediate result of the meeting in the gambling-room, had been his receiving a portion of what was due to him; but his annuity was always in arrear, and paid so irregularly, that it became worse than nothing in his eyes; especially, as the little that he received was immediately paid over to creditors, and to defray the interest of borrowed money.
He never applied again to Colonel Villiers. He would have considered himself guilty of a crime, had he forced his father to forge fresh subterfuges, and to lie to his own son. Brought up in the midst of the wealthy, he had early imbibed a horror of pecuniary obligation; and this fastidiousness grew more sensitive and peremptory with each added day of his life. Yet with all this, he had not learnt to set a right value upon money; and he squandered whatever he obtained with thoughtless profusion. He had no friend to whose counsel he could recur. Lord Maristow railed against Colonel Villiers; and when he heard of Edward’s difficulties, offered to remonstrate and force his brother-in-law to extricate him: but here ended his assistance, which was earnestly rejected. Horatio’s means were exceedingly limited; but on a word from his cousin, he eagerly besought him to have recourse to his purse. To avoid his kindness, and his uncle’s interference, Edward became reserved: he had recourse to Jews and money-lenders; and appeared at ease, while he was involving himself in countless and still increasing embarrassments.
Edward was naturally extravagant; or, to speak more correctly, his education and position implanted and fostered habits of expense and prodigality, while his careless disposition was unapt to calculate consequences: his very attempts at economy frequently cost him more than his most expensive whims. He was not, like his father, a gambler; nor did he enter into any very reprehensible pleasures: but he had little to spend, and was thoughtless and confiding; and being always in arrear, was forced, in a certain way, to continue a system which perpetually led him further into the maze, and rendered his return impossible. He had no hope of becoming independent, except through his father’s death: Colonel Villiers, meanwhile, had no idea of dying. He was not fifty years of age; and considering his own a better life than his son’s, involuntarily speculated on what he should do if he should chance to survive him. He was a handsome and a fashionable man: he often meditated a second marriage, if he could render it advantageous; and repined at his inability to make settlements, which was an insuperable impediment to his project. Edward’s death would overcome this difficulty. Such were the speculations of father and son; and the portion of filial and paternal affection which their relative position but too usually inspires.
Until he was twenty-one, Edward had never spent a thought upon his scanty resources. Three years had past since then — three brief years, which had a little taught him of what homely stuff the world is made; yet care and even reflection had not yet disturbed his repose. Days, months sped on, and nothing reminded him of his relative wealth or poverty in a way to annoy him, till he knew Ethel. He had been interested for her in America — he had seen her, young and lovely, drowned in grief — sorrowing with the heart’s first prodigal sorrow for her adored father. He had left her, and thought of her no more — except, as a passing reflection, that in the natural course of things, she was now to become the pupil of Lady , and consequently, that her unsophisticated feelings and affectionate heart would speedily be tarnished and hardened under her influence. He anticipated meeting her hereafter in ball-rooms and assemblies, changed into a flirting, giddy, yet worldly-minded girl, intent upon a good establishment, and a fashionable partner.
He encountered her under the sober and primitive guardianship of Mrs. Fitzhenry, unchanged and unharmed. The same radiant innocence beamed from her face; her sweet voice was still true and heart-reaching in its tones; her manner mirrored the purity and lustre of a mind incapable of guile, and adorned with every generous and gentle sentiment. Hedrew near her with respect and admiration, and soon no other object showed fair in his eyes except Ethel. She was the star of the world, and he felt happy only when the li
ght of her presence shone upon him. Her voice and smile visited his dreams, and spoke peace and delight to his heart. She was to him as a jewel (yet sweeter and lovelier than any gem) shut up in a casket, of which he alone possessed the key — as a pearl, of whose existence an Indian diver is aware beneath the waves of ocean, deep buried from every other eye.
There was all in Ethel that could excite and keep alive imaginative and tender love. In characterizing a race of women, a delightful writer has described her individually. “She was in her nature a superior being. Her majestic forehead, her dark, thoughtful eye, assured you that she had communed with herself. She could bear to be left in solitude — yet what a look was her’s if animated by mirth or love! She was poetical, if not a poet; and her imagination was high and chivalrous.” The elevated tone of feeling fostered by her father, her worship of his virtues, and the loneliness of her life in the Illinois, combined to render her dissimilar to any girl Villiers had ever before known or admired. When unobserved, he watched her countenance, and marked the varying tracery of high thoughts and deep emotions pass over it; her dark eye looked out from itself on vacancy, but read there a meaning only to be discerned by vivid imagination. And then when that eye, so full of soul, turned on him, and affection and pleasure at once animated and softened its glances — when her sweet lips, so delicate in their shape, so balmy and soft in their repose, were wreathed into a smile — he felt that his whole being was penetrated with enthusiastic admiration, and that his nature had bent to a law, from which it could never again be liberated.
That she should mingle with the world — enter into its contaminating pursuits — be talked of in it with that spirit of depreciation and impertinence, which is its essence, was odious to him, and he was overjoyed to have her safe at Richmond — secure from Lady — shut up apart from all things, except nature — her unsophisticated aunt, and his own admiration — a bird of beauty, brooding in its own fair nest, unendangered by the fowler. These were his feelings; but by degrees other reflections forced themselves on him; and love which, when it has knocked and been admitted, will be a tyrant, obliged him to entertain regrets and fears which agonized him. His hourly aspiration was to make her his own. Would that dear heart open to receive into its recesses his image, and thenceforward dedicate itself to him only? Might he become her lover, guardian, husband — and they tread together the jungle of life, aiding each other to thread its mazes, and to ward off every danger that might impend over them.
Bitter worldly considerations came to mar the dainty colours of this fair picture. He could not conceal from himself the poverty that must attend him during his father’s life. Lord ‘s singular will reduced Ethel’s property to almost nothing: should he then ally her to his scanty means and broken fortune? His resolution was made. He would not deny himself the present pleasure of seeing her, to spare any future pain in which he should be the only sufferer; but on the first token of exclusive regard on her side, he would withdraw for ever.
CHAPTER VII.
The world is too much with us.
— Wordsworth.
Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry’s morning task was to read the newspapers — the only intercourse she held with the world, and all her knowledge of it, was derived from these daily sheets. Ethel never looked at them — her thoughts held no communion with the vulgar routine of life, and she was too much occupied by her studies and reveries to spend any time upon topics so uninteresting as the state of the nation, or the scandal of the day.
One morning, while she was painting, her aunt observed, in her usual tone of voice, scarce lifting her eyes from the paper, “Mr. Villiers did not tell us this — he is going to be married; I wonder who to!”
“Married!” repeated Ethel.
“Yes, my dear, here it is. ‘We hear from good authority that Mr. Villiers, of Chiverton Park, is about to lead to the hymeneal altar a young and lovely bride, the only child of a gentleman, said to be the richest commoner in England.’ — Who can it be?”
Ethel did not reply, and the elder lady went on to other parts of the newspaper. The poor girl, on whom she had dealt all unaware this chance mortal blow, put down her brush, and hurried into the shrubbery to conceal her agitation. Why did she feel these sharp pangs? Why did a bitter deluge of anguish overflow and seem to choke her breathing, and torture her heart? — she could scarcely tell. “Married! — then I shall never see him more!” And a passion of tears, not refreshing, but forced out by agony, and causing her to feel as if her heart was bursting, shook her delicate frame. At that moment the well-known sound, the galloping of Villiers’s horse up the lane, met her ear. “Does he come here to tell us at last of his wedding-day?” The horse came on — it stopped — the bell was rung. Little acts these, which she had watched for, and listened to, for two months, with such placid and innocent delight, now they seemed the notes of preparation for a scene of despair. She wished to retreat to her own room to compose herself; but it was too late; he was already in that through which she must pass — she heard his voice speaking to her aunt. “Now is he telling her,” she thought. No idea of reproach, or of accusation of unkindness in him, dawned on her heart. No word of love had passed between them — even yet she was unaware that she loved herself; it was the instinctive result of this despot sentiment, which exerted its sway over her, without her being conscious of the cause of her sufferings.
The first words of Mrs. Fitzhenry had been to speak of the paragraph in the newspaper, and to show it her visitor. Villiers read it, and considered it curiously. He saw at once, that however blunderingly worded, his father was its hero; and he wondered what foundation there might be for the rumour. “Singular enough!” he said, carelessly, as he put the paper down.
“You have kept your secret well,” said Mrs. Elizabeth.
“My secret! I did not even know that I had one.”
“I, at least, never heard that you were going to be married.”
“I! — married! Where is Miss Fitzhenry?”
The concatenation of ideas presented by these words fell unremarked on the blunt senses of the good lady, and she replied, “In the shrubbery, I believe, or upstairs: she left me but a moment ago.”
Villiers hastened to the garden and soon discerned the tearful girl, who was bending down to pluck and arrange some flowers, so to hide her disturbed countenance.
Could we, at the moment of trial, summon our reason and our foregone resolves — could we put the impression of the present moment at a distance, which, on the contrary, presses on us with a power as omnipotent over our soul, as a pointed sword piercing the flesh over our life, we might become all that we are not — angels or demigods, or any other being that is not human. As it is, the current of the blood and the texture of the brain are the machinery by which the soul acts, and their mechanism is by no means tractable or easily worked; once put in motion, we can seldom controul their operations; but our serener feelings are whirled into the vortex they create. Thus Edward Villiers had a thousand times in his reveries thought over the possibility of a scene occurring, such as the one he was called upon to act in now — and had planned a line of conduct, but, like mist before the wind, this gossamer of the mind was swept away by an immediate appeal to his heart through his outward sensations. There stood before him, in all her loveliness, the creature whose image had lived with him by day and by night, for several long months; and the gaze of her soft tearful eyes, and the faultering tone of her voice, were the laws to which his sense of prudence, of right, was immediately subjected.
A few confused sentences interchanged, revealed to him that she participated in her aunt’s mistake, and her simple question, “Why did you conceal this from me?” spoke the guilelessness of her thoughts, while the anguish which her countenance expressed, betrayed that the concealment was not the only source of her grief.
This young pair were ignorant how dear they were to each other. Ethel’s affection was that generous giving away of a young heart which is unaware of the value of the gift it m
akes — she had asked for and thought of no return, though her feeling was the result of a reciprocal one on his side; it was the instinctive love of the dawn of womanhood, subdued and refined by her gentle nature and imaginative mind. Edward was more alive to the nature of his own sentiments — but his knowledge stood him in no stead to fortify him against the power of Ethel’s tears. In a moment they understood each other — one second sufficed to cause the before impervious veil to fall at their feet: they had stept beyond this common-place world, and stood beside each other in the new and mysterious region of which Love is emperor.
“Dearest Ethel,” said Villiers, “I have much to tell you. Do arrange that we should ride together. I have very much to tell you. You shall know every thing, and judge for us both, though you should condemn me.”
She looked up in his face with innocent surprise; but no words could destroy the sunshine that brightened her soul: to know that she was loved sufficed then to fill her being to overflowing with happiness, so that there was no room for a second emotion.
The lovers rode out together, and thus secured the tête-à-tête which Villiers especially yearned for. Although she was country-bred, Mrs. Fitzhenry was too timid to mount on horseback, yet she could not feel fear for her niece who, under her father’s guidance, sat her steed with an ease and perfect command of the animal, which long habit rendered second nature to her. As they rode on, considerably in advance of the groom, they were at first silent — the deep sweet silence which is so eloquent of emotion — till with an effort, slackening his pace, and bringing his horse nearer, Villiers began. He spoke of debt, of difficulties, of poverty — of his unconquerable aversion to the making any demands on his father — fruitless demands, for he knew how involved Colonel Villiers was, and how incapable even of paying the allowance he nominally made his son. He declared his reluctance to drag Ethel into the sea of cares and discomforts that he felt must surround his youth. He besought her forgiveness for having loved her — for having linked her heart to his. He could not willingly resign her, while he believed that he, all unworthy, was of any worth in her eyes; but would she not discard him for ever, now that she knew that he was a beggar? and that all to which he could aspire, was an engagement to be fulfilled at some far distant day — a day that might never come — when fortune should smile on him. Ethel listened with exquisite complacency. Every word Villiers spoke was fraught with tenderness; his eye beamed adoration and sincerest love. Consciousness chained her tongue, and her faltering voice refused to frame any echo to the busy instigations of her virgin heart. Yet it seemed to her as if she must speak; as if she were called upon to avow how light and trivial were all worldly considerations in her eyes. With bashful confusion she at length said, “You cannot think that I care for fortune — I was happy in the Illinois.”