by Mary Shelley
It is a singular law of human life, that the past, which apparently no longer forms a portion of our existence, never dies; new shoots, as it were, spring up at different intervals and places, all bearing the indelible characteristics of the parent stalk; the circular emblem of eternity is suggested by this meeting and recurrence of the broken ends of our life. Falkner had been many years absent from England. He had quitted it to get rid of the consequences of an act which he deeply deplored, but which he did not wish his enemies to have the triumph of avenging. So completely during this interval had he been cut off from any, even allusion to the past, that he often tried to deceive himself into thinking it a dream; — often into the persuasion, that, tragical as was the catastrophe he had brought about, it was in its result for the best. The remembrance of the young and lovely victim lying dead at his feet, prevented his ever being really the dupe of these fond deceits — but still, memory and imagination alone ministered to remorse — it was brought home to him by none of the effects from which he had separated himself by a vast extent of sea and land.
The sight of the English at Baden was exceedingly painful to him. They seemed so many accusers and judges; he sedulously avoided their resorts, and turned away when he saw any approach. Yet he permitted Elizabeth to visit among them, and heard her accounts of what she saw and heard even with pleasure; for every word showed the favourable impression she made, and the simplicity of her own tastes and feelings. It was a new world to her, to find herself talked to, praised and caressed, by decrepit, painted, but courteous old princesses, dowagers, and all the tribe of German nobility and English fashionable wanderers. She was much amused, and her lively descriptions often made Falkner smile, and pleased him by proving that her firm and unsophisticated heart was not to be deluded by adulation.
Soon, however, she became more interested by a strange tale she brought home, of a solitary boy. He was English — handsome, and well born — but savage, and secluded to a degree that admitted of no attention being paid him. She heard him spoken of at first, at the house of some foreigners. They entered on a dissertation on the peculiar melancholy of the English, that could develop itself in a lad scarcely sixteen. He was a misanthrope. He was seen rambling the country, either on foot, or on a pony — but he would accept no invitations — shunned the very aspect of his fellows — never appearing, by any chance, in the frequented walks about the baths. Was he deaf and dumb? Some replied in the affirmative, and yet this opinion gained no general belief. Elizabeth once saw him at a little distance, seated under a wide-spreading tree in a little dell — to her he seemed more handsome than any thing she had ever seen, and more sad. One day she was in company with a gentleman, who she was told was his father; a man somewhat advanced in years — of a stern, saturnine aspect — whose smile was a sneer, and who spoke of his only child, calling him that “unhappy boy,” in a tone that bespoke rather contempt than commiseration. It soon became rumoured that he was somewhat alienated in mind through the ill-treatment of his parent — and Elizabeth could almost believe this — she was so struck by the unfeeling and disagreeable appearance of the stranger.
All this she related to Falkner with peculiar earnestness—”If you could only see him,” she said, “if we could only get him here — we would cure his misery, and his wicked father should no longer torment him. If he is deranged, he is harmless, and I am sure he would love us. — It is too sad to see one so gentle and so beautiful pining away without any to love him.”
Falkner smiled at the desire to cure every evil that crossed her path, which is one of the sweetest illusions of youth, and asked, “Has he no mother?”
“No,” replied Elizabeth, “he is an orphan like me, and his father is worse than dead, as he is so inhuman. Oh! how I wish you would save him as you saved me.”
“That, I am afraid, would be out of my power,” said Falkner; “yet, if you can make any acquaintance with him, and can bring him here, perhaps we may discover some method of serving him.”
For Falkner had, with all his sufferings and his faults, much of the Don Quixote about him, and never heard a story of oppression without forming a scheme to relieve the victim. On this permission, Elizabeth watched for some opportunity to become acquainted with the poor boy. But it was vain. Sometimes she saw him at a distance; but if walking in the same path, he turned off as soon as he saw her; or, if sitting down, he got up, and disappeared, as if by magic. Miss Jervis thought her endeavours by no means proper, and would give her no assistance. “If any lady introduced him to you,” she said, “it would be very well; but, to run after a young gentleman, only because he looks unhappy, is very odd, and even wrong.”
Still Elizabeth persisted; she argued, that she did not want to know him herself, but that her father should be acquainted with him — and either induce his father to treat him better, or take him home to live with them.
They lived at some distance from the baths, in a shady dell, whose sides, a little further on, were broken and abrupt. One afternoon, they were lingering not far from their house, when they heard a noise among the underwood and shrubs above them, as if some one was breaking his way through. “It is he, — look!” cried Elizabeth; and there emerged from the covert, on to a more open, but still more precipitous path, the youth they had remarked: he was urging his horse, with wilful blindness to danger, down a declivity which the animal was unwilling to attempt. Falkner saw the danger, and was sure that the boy was unaware of how steep the path grew at the foot of the hill. He called out to him, but the lad did not heed his voice — in another minute the horse’s feet slipped, the rider was thrown over his head, and the animal himself rolled over. With a scream, Elizabeth sprang to the side of the fallen youth, but he rose without any appearance of great injury — or any complaint — evidently displeased at being observed: his sullen look merged into one of anxiety as he approached his fallen horse, whom, together with Falkner, he assisted to rise — the poor thing had fallen on a sharp point of a rock, and his side was cut and bleeding. The lad was now all activity, he rushed to the stream that watered the little dell, to procure water, which he brought in his hat to wash the wound; and as he did so, Elizabeth remarked to her father that he used only one hand, and that the other arm was surely hurt. Meanwhile Falkner had gazed on the boy with a mixture of admiration and pain. He was wondrously handsome; large, deep-set hazel eyes, shaded by long dark lashes — full at once of fire, and softness; a brow of extreme beauty, over which clustered a profusion of chesnut-coloured hair; an oval face; a person, light and graceful as a sculptured image — all this, added to an expression of gloom that amounted to sullenness, with which, despite the extreme refinement of his features, a certain fierceness even was mingled, formed a study a painter would have selected for a kind of ideal poetic sort of bandit stripling; but, besides this, there was resemblance, strange, and thrilling, that struck Falkner, and made him eye him with a painful curiosity. The lad spoke with fondness to his horse, and accepted the offer made that it should be taken to Falkner’s stable, and looked to by his groom.
“And you, too,” said Elizabeth, “you are in pain, you are hurt.”
“That is nothing,” said the youth; “let me see that I have not killed this poor fellow — and I am not hurt to signify.”
Elizabeth felt by no means sure of this. And while the horse was carefully led home, and his wound visited, she sent a servant off for a surgeon, believing, in her own mind, that the stranger had broken his arm. She was not far wrong — he had dislocated his wrist. “It were better had it been my neck,” he muttered, as he yielded his hand to the gripe of the surgeon, nor did he seem to wince during the painful operation; far more annoyed was he by the eyes fixed upon him, and the questions asked — his manner, which had become mollified as he waited on his poor horse, resumed all its former repulsiveness; he looked like a young savage, surrounded by enemies whom he suspects, yet is unwilling to assail: and when his hand was bandaged, and his horse again and again recommended to the groom, he w
as about to take leave, with thanks that almost seemed reproaches, for having an obligation thrust on him, when Miss Jervis exclaimed, “Surely I am not mistaken — are you not Master Neville?”
Falkner started as if a snake had glided across his path, while the youth, colouring to the very roots of his hair, and looking at her with a sort of rage at being thus in a matter detected, replied, “My name is Neville.”
“I thought so,” said the other; “I used to see you at Lady Glenfell’s. How is your father, Sir Boyvill?”
But the youth would answer to more; he darted at the questioner a look of fury, and rushed away. “Poor fellow!” cried Miss Jervis, “he is wilder than ever — his is a very sad case. His mother was the Mrs. Neville talked of so much once — she deserted him, and his father hates him. The young gentleman is half crazed, by ill treatment and neglect.”
“Dearest father, are you ill?” cried Elizabeth — for Falkner had turned ashy pale — but he commanded his voice to say that he was well, and left the room; a few minutes afterwards he had left the house, and, seeking the most secluded pathways, walked quickly on as if to escape from himself. It would not do — the form of her son was before him — a ghost to haunt him to madness. Her son, whom she had loved with passion inexpressible, crazed by neglect and unkindness. Crazed he was not — every word he spoke showed a perfect possession of acute faculties — but it was almost worse to see so much misery in one so young. In person, he was a model of beauty and grace — his mind seemed formed with equal perfection; a quick apprehension, a sensibility, all alive to every touch; but these were nursed in anguish and wrong, and strained from their true conclusions into resentment, suspicion, and a fierce disdain of all who injured, which seemed to his morbid feelings all who named or approached him. Falkner knew that he was the cause of this evil. How different a life he had led, if his mother had lived! The tenderness of her disposition, joined to her great talents and sweetness, rendered her unparalleled in the attention she paid to his happiness and education. No mother ever equalled her — for no woman ever possessed at once equal virtues and equal capacities. How tenderly she had reared him, how devotedly fond she was, Falkner too well knew; and tones and looks, half forgotten, were recalled vividly to his mind at the sight of this poor boy, wretched and desolate through his rashness. What availed it to hate, to curse the father! — he had never been delivered over to this father, had never been hated by him, had his mother survived. All these thoughts crowded into Falkner’s mind, and awoke an anguish, which time had rendered, to a certain degree, torpid. He regarded himself with bitter contempt and abhorrence — he feared, with a kind of insane terror, to see the youth again, whose eyes, so like hers, he had robbed of all expression of happiness, and clouded by eternal sorrow. He wandered on — shrouded himself in the deepest thickets, and clambered abrupt hills, so that, by breathless fatigue of body, he might cheat his soul of its agony.
Night came on, and he did not return home. Elizabeth grew uneasy — till at last, on making more minute inquiry, she found that he had come back, and was retired to his room.
It was the custom of Falkner to ride every morning with his daughter soon after sunrise; and on the morrow, Elizabeth had just equipped herself, her thoughts full of the handsome boy — whose humanity to his horse, combined with fortitude in enduring great personal pain, rendered far more interesting than ever. She felt sure that, having once commenced, their acquaintance would go on, and that his savage shyness would be conquered by her father’s kindness. To alleviate the sorrows of his lot — to win his confidence by affection, and to render him happy, was a project that was occupying her delightfully — when the tramp of a horse attracted her attention — and, looking from the window, she saw Falkner ride off at a quick pace. A few minutes afterwards a note was brought to her from him. It said: —
“Dear Elizabeth,
“Some intelligence which I received yesterday obliges me unexpectedly to leave Baden. You will find me at Mayence. Request Miss Jervis to have every thing packed up as speedily as possible; and to send for the landlord, and give up the possession of our house. The rent is paid. Come in the carriage. I shall expect you this evening.
“Yours, dearest,
“J. Falkner.”
Nothing could be more disappointing than this note. Her first fairy dream beyond the limits of her home, to be thus brushed away at once. No word of young Neville — no hope held out of return! For a moment an emotion ruffled her mind, very like ill humour. She read the note again — it seemed yet more unsatisfactory — but in turning the page, she found a postscript. “Pardon me,” it said, “for not seeing you last night; I was not well — nor am I now.”
These few words instantly gave a new direction to her thoughts — her father not well, and she absent, was very painful — then she recurred to the beginning of the note. “Intelligence received yesterday,” — some evil news, surely — since the result was to make him ill — at such a word the recollection of his sufferings rushed upon her, and she thought no more of the unhappy boy, but, hurrying to Miss Jervis, entreated her to use the utmost expedition that they might depart speedily. Once she visited Neville’s horse; it was doing well, and she ordered it to be led carefully and slowly to Sir Boyvill’s stables.
So great was her impatience, that by noon they were in the carriage — and in a few hours they joined Falkner at Mayence. Elizabeth gazed anxiously on him. He was an altered man — there was something wild and haggard in his looks, that bespoke a sleepless night, and a struggle of painful emotion by which the very elements of his being were convulsed—”You are ill, dear father,” cried Elizabeth; “you have heard some news that afflicts you very much.”
“I have,” he replied; “but do not regard me: I shall recover the shock soon, and then all will be as it was before. Do not ask questions — but we must return to England immediately.”
To England! such a word Falkner had never before spoken — Miss Jervis looked almost surprised, and really pleased. A return to her native country, so long deserted, and almost forgotten, was an event to excite Elizabeth even to agitation — the very name was full of so many associations. Were they hereafter to reside there? Should they visit Treby? What was about to happen? She was bid ask no questions, and she obeyed — but her thoughts were the more busy. She remembered also that Neville was English, and she looked forward to meeting him, and renewing her projects for his welfare.
CHAPTER VIII.
In the human heart — and if observation does not err — more particularly in the heart of man, the passions exert their influence fitfully. With some analogy to the laws which govern the elements — they now sleep in calm, and now arise with the violence of furious winds. Falkner had latterly attained a state of feeling approaching to equanimity. He displayed more cheerfulness — a readier interest in the daily course of events — a power to give himself up to any topic discussed in his presence; but this had now vanished. Gloom sat on his brow — he was inattentive even to Elizabeth. Sunk back in the carriage — his eyes bent on vacancy, he was the prey of thoughts, each of which had the power to wound.
It was a melancholy journey. And when they arrived in London, Falkner became still more absorbed and wretched. The action of remorse, which had been for some time suspended, renewed its attacks, and made him look upon himself as a creature at once hateful and accursed. We are such weak beings that the senses have power to impress us with a vividness, which no mere mental operation can produce. Falkner had been at various time haunted by the probable consequences of his guilt on the child of his victim. He recollected the selfish and arrogant character of his father; and conscience had led him to reproach himself with the conviction, that whatever virtues young Neville derived from his mother, or had been implanted by her care, must have been rooted out by the neglect or evil example of his surviving parent. The actual effect of her loss he had not anticipated. There was something heart-breaking to see a youth, nobly gifted by nature and fortune, delivered over to a s
ullen resentment for unmerited wrongs — to dejection, if not to despair. An uninterested observer must deeply compassionate him; Elizabeth had done so, child as she was — with a pity almost painful from its excess — what then must he feel who knew himself to be the cause of all his woe?