by Mary Shelley
CHAPTER XII.
“I called again the following morning, but she was denied to me; twice this happened. She feared me, I believed; and still more franticly I was driven to continue my persecutions. I wrote to her; she did not answer my letters. I entered the grounds of her house clandestinely; I lay in wait for her; I resolved to see her again. At length, one afternoon I found her alone, walking and musing in the more solitary part of the park; I stood suddenly before her, and her first emotion was pleasure, so true was she to her affections, so constant to her hope that at last I should be persuaded not to pain her by a renewal of my former conversation. But I believed that I had a hold on her that I would not forego. When she offered to renew our childhood’s compact of friendship, I asked her how that could be if she refused me her confidence; I asked how she could promise me happiness, whose every hope was blighted. I told her that it was my firm conviction that her mother had intended us for one another, that she had brought her up for me, given her to me, and that thus she was indeed mine. Her eyes flashed fire at this. ‘My mother,’ she said, ‘brought me up for a higher purpose than even conducing to your happiness. She brought me up to fulfil my duties, to be a mother in my turn. I do not deny,’ she continued, ‘that I share in some sort my mother’s fate, and am more maternal than wife-like; and as I fondly wish to resemble her in all her virtues, I will not repine at the circumstances that lead me rather to devote my existence to my children, than to be that most blessed creature, a happy wife — I do not ask for that happiness, I am contented with my lot; my very girlish, romantic repinings do not really make me unhappy.’
“‘Nor your fears, nor his base jealousy, his selfishness, his narrow soul, and brutish violence? I know more than you think, Alithea — I read your heart — you must be miserable, submissive, yet tyrannized over; wedded to your duty, yet watched, suspected, accused. There are traces of tears on your cheeks, my poor girl; your neck is bowed by the yoke, your eyes have no longer the radiance of conscious rectitude, and yet you are innocent.’
“‘God knows I am,’ she replied, as a shower of tears fell from her eyes — but she was ashamed, and brushed them away—’I am, and will be, Rupert, though you would mislead me. Where indeed can I find a consciousness of rectitude, except in my heart? My husband mistrusts me, I acknowledge it — by torture you force the truth — he does not understand, and you would pervert me; in God and my own heart I put my trust, and I will never do that which my conscience tells me is wrong — and despite both I shall be happy. A mother is, in my eyes, a more sacred name than wife. My life is wrapped in my boy, in him I find blameless joy, though all the rest pierce my heart with poisoned arrows.’
“‘You shall, sweet Alithea,’ I cried, ‘preserve him, and every other blessing. You were not born to inherit this maimed, poverty-stricken life, the widowed mother of an orphan child, such are you now; I will be a father to him for your sake, and many other joys will be yours, and the fondest, truest heart that ever warmed man’s bosom shall be all your own. Alithea, you must not offer yourself up a living sacrifice to that base idol, but belong to one whose love, and honour, and eternal devotion merit you, though he possess no other claim. Let me save you from him, I ask no more.’
“I felt a tear, for many long years forgotten, steal down my cheek — my heart worshipped her excellence, and pity, and grief, mingled with my deep regrets; she saw how sincerely I was moved, and tried to comfort me. She wept also, for, despite her steadier thoughts, she knew the cruelty of her destiny, and I do believe her heart yearned to taste, once more before she died, the full joy of complete sympathy. But, if indeed her tears were partly shed for herself, yet she never wavered; she deplored my unhappiness, but she reproved my perversion of principle; she tried to awaken patience, piety, or philosophic fortitude — any of the noble virtues that might enable me to combat the passion by which I was enslaved.
“Time was forgotten as we thus talked with the same openness of heart as in former days, yet those hearts how saddened, and wounded since then! I would not let her go: while the moon rose high, shedding its silvery light over the forest trees, and casting dark shadows on our path, still we indulged in what she deemed our last conference. As I must answer my crimes before God, I swear I could discern no wavering thought, no one idea that strayed to the forbidden ground, toward which I strove to lead her. She told me that she had intended not to see me again till her husband returned; she said that she must implore me not again to seek her in this way, or I should make her a prisoner in her house. I listened — I answered, I knew not what — I was more resolved than ever not to lose her — despite all, I still was mad enough to hope. She left me at last, hoping to have conquered, yet resolved not to see me again, she said, till her husband returned. This determination on her part was in absolute contradiction to what I resolved should be. I had decreed to see her again; nay, more, I would see her, not within the precincts of her home, where all spoke against me; but where she should be free, where, seeing nothing to remind her of the heavy yoke to which she bent her neck, I fondly dreamed I might induce her wholly to throw it aside. If it so pleased her, I would detain her but a few short hours, and restore her to her home in all liberty; but, could I induce her to assert her freedom, and follow me voluntarily — then — to think that possible, the earth reeled under me, and my passion gained strength from its very folly.
“I prepared all things for my plan; I went to Liverpool, and bought two fleet horses and a light foreign calèche suited to my purpose. Returning northward towards Dromore, I sought a solitary spot, for the scene of our last interview, or of the first hour of my lasting bliss. What more solitary than the wild and drear sea shore of the south of Cumberland? Landward it is screened by a sublime background of mountains; but in itself presenting to the view a wide extent of uninhabited sands, intersected by rivers, which when the tide is up presents a dreary expanse of shallow water, and at ebb are left, except in the channels of the rivers, a barren extent of mud and marsh; the surrounding waste being variegated only by a line of sand hills thrown up to the height of thirty or forty feet, shutting in the view from shore, while seaward no boat appeared ever to spread its sail on that lonely sea. On these sands, near the mouth of one of the rivers, there was a small hut deserted, but not in ruins; it was probably occasionally inhabited by guides who are used in this part of the country, to show the track of the fords when the tide is full, and any deviation from the right path is attended by peril, the beds of the rivers being full of ruts and deep holes; that hut I selected as the spot where all should be determined. If she consented to accompany me, we would proceed rapidly forward to Liverpool, and embark for America; if she resolved to return, this spot was but five miles from her home, and I could easily lead her back without suspicion being excited. I was anxious to put my scheme in execution, as her husband was shortly expected.
“It seemed a feasible one. In my own heart I did not expect to induce her to forsake her home; but I might; and the very doubt maddened me. And if I did not, yet for a few hours to have her near me, not in any spot that called her detested husband master, but in the wide, free scenes of nature, the ocean, parent of all liberty, spread at our feet; the way easy to escape, no eye, no ear, to watch and spy out the uncontrolled and genuine emotions of her heart, or no hand to check our progress if she consented to follow. In this plan Osborne, whom I had left at the miserable town of Ravenglass — and who indeed had been the man to find and point out to me the solitary hut, was necessary. My explanation and directions to him were few and peremptory: he was to appear with the calèche, he acting as postillion, at a certain spot; the moment he saw me arrive, as soon as I had placed the lady who was to be my companion in the carriage, he was to put spurs to his horses, and not by any cry of hers, nor command of mine, nor interference of strangers, to be induced to stop till he reached the hut: there she should be free; till then I would have her a prisoner even beyond my own control, lest her entreaties should cheat me out of my resolves.
Osborne looked frightened at some portion of these orders, but I glossed over any inconsistency; my bribe was high, and he submitted.
“At every step I took in this mad and guilty scheme I became more resolved to carry it on. Here is my crime — here the tale of sin, I have to relate. The rest is disaster and endless remorse. What moved me to this height of insanity — what blinded me to the senseless, as well as the unpardonable nature of my design, I cannot tell; except that, for years, I had lived in a dream, and waking in the real world, I refused to accommodate myself to its necessities, but resolved to bend its laws to my desires. I loved Alithea — I had loved her through years of absence; she was the wife of my reveries, my hopes, my heart. I could no more part with the thought of her, as such, than with a consciousness of my own identity. To see her married and a mother might be supposed capable of dissipating these fancies; far from it. Her presence — her beauty — the witchery of her eye, her heart-subduing voice, her sensibility, the perfection of her nature, which her inimitable loveliness only half expressed, but which reached my soul, through a sort of inner sense that acknowledged it with worship; all this added to my frenzy, and steeped me to the very lips in intoxication.
“What right had I to call this matchless creature mine? — None! That I acknowledged — but that he, the man without a soul, the incarnate Belial, should claim her, was not for a moment to be endured. Mad as I was, I aver, and He who reads all hearts be now my testimony, that it was more my wish to set her free from him, than to bind her to myself, that urged me on. I had in the solitary shades of her park, during the arguments and struggles of our last interview, sworn, that if she would suffer me to take her, and her boy too if she chose, away from him, I would claim no share in her myself. I would place her in some romantic spot, build a home worthy of her, surrounded with all the glory of nature, and only see her as a servant and a slave. I pledged my soul to this, and I would have kept my oath. Those who have not loved may look on this as the very acme of my hallucination; it might be — I cannot tell — but so it was.
“All was ready; and I wrote to her to meet me for the last time. In this also I was, in one sense, sincere; for I had determined, if I should fail in my persuasions, never to see her more. She came, but several hours later than I intended, which, to a certain degree, deranged my plans. The weather had a sultriness about it all day, portending storm, occasioning a state of atmosphere that operates to render the human frame uneasy and restless. I paced the lane that bounded the demesnes of Dromore, for hours; I threw myself on a grassy bank. The rack in the upper sky sped along with fearful impetuosity; it traversed the heavens from west to east, driven by a furious wind which had not yet descended to us; for below on earth, no breath of air moved the herbage, or could be perceived amidst the’ topmost boughs of the trees. Every thing in nature, acted upon by these contrary influences, had a strange and wild appearance. The sun descended red towards the ocean before Alithea opened the private gate of the grounds, and stood in all her loveliness before me.
“She brought her son with her. At first this annoyed me; but at a second thought, it seemed to render my whole design more conclusive. She had spoken of this child with such rapture that it would have been a barbarity beyond my acting to have separated her from him. By making him her companion, she completed my purpose; I would take them away together. I met her I thought with self-possession, but she read the conflict of passion in my face, and, half fearful, asked what disturbed me. I attributed my agitation to our approaching parting; and drawing her hand through my arm, walked forward along the lane. At the moment of executing my project, its wickedness and cruelty became so apparent, that a thousand times I was about to confess all, solicit her forgiveness, and leave her for ever: but that hardness, which in the ancient religions is deemed the immediate work of God, crept over my heart, turning its human misgiving to stony resolution. I endeavoured to close every aperture of my soul against the relenting moods that assailed me; yet they came with greater power each time, and at length wholly mastering me, I consented to be subdued. I determined to relinquish my schemes, to bid her an eternal adieu; and moved by self-pity at the desolate lot I was about to encounter, I spoke of separation and absence, and the death of hope, with such heart-felt pathos, as moved her to tears.
“Surely there is no greater enemy to virtue and good intentions, than that want of self-command, the exterior of which, though I had acquired, no portion existed in the inner substance of my mind. Calm, proud, and stern, as I seemed to others, capable of governing the vehemence of my temper, — within I was the same slave of passion I had ever been. I never could force myself to do the thing I hated; I never could persuade myself to relinquish the thing I desired. There is the secret of my crimes; there the vice of my disposition, which produced for her I loved a miserable death, and for myself endless, unutterable woe. For a moment I had become virtuous and heroic. We reached the end of the lane — my emissary appeared with the carriage. I had worked myself up by this time to determine to restore her to her home; to part with her for ever. She believed this. The despair written on my brow — my sombre, mute, yet heart-broken mien — my thoughts, which had totally relinquished their favourite project, and consented to be widowed of her for ever, expressed in brief passionate sentences, proved to her, who had never suspected that I meant otherwise, that I took my last look, and spoke my last words. We reached the end of the lane; Osborne drove up. ‘Be not surprised,’ I said. ‘Yes, it is there, Alithea; the carriage that is to convey me far, far away. Gracious God, do I live to see this hour!’
“The carriage stopped; we walked up to it. A devil at that moment whispered in my ear, a devil, who feeds on human crimes and groans, prompted my arm. Coward and dolt! to use such words — my own hellish mind was the sole instigator. In a moment it was done. I lifted her light figure into the carriage; I jumped in after her; I bade her boy follow. It was too late. One cry from him, one long, piercing shriek from her, and we were gone. With the swiftness of the winds we descended the eminence towards the shore, and left child and all return far behind.
“At that moment the storm burst over us; but the thunder was unheard amidst the rattling of the wheels. Even her cries were lost in the uproar; but as the thickening clouds changed twilight into night, the vivid lightning showed me Alithea at my feet, in convulsions of fear and anguish. There was no help. I raised her in my arms; and she struggled in them without meaning, without knowledge. Spasm succeeded to spasm; I saw them by the flashes of the frequent lightning distort her features with agony, but I could not even hear her groans; the furious haste at which we went, the thunder from above, the plash of the rain, suspended only by the howlings of the rising wind, drowned every other sound. I called to Osborne to stop; he gave no heed to my cries. Methought the horses had taken fright, and held the bit in their teeth, with such unimaginable speed we swept along. The roar of ocean, torn up by the wild west wind, now mingled with the universal uproar — hell had broken loose upon earth — yet what was every other and more noisy tempest compared to that which shook my soul, as I pressed Alithea to my heart in agony, vainly hoping to see the colour revisit her cheeks, and her dear eyes open! Was she already a corpse? I tried to feel her breath upon my cheek; but the speed of our course, and the uproar of the elements, prevented my being able to ascertain whether she was alive or dead. And thus I bore her — thus I made her my bride, thus I, her worshipper, emptied the vials of pain on her beloved head!
CHAPTER XIII.
“At last I became aware that the wheels of the carriage passed through water. Hope revived with the thought. The hut where Osborne was to stop, was to the south of the river we were now crossing; the tide was ebbing, and despite the wind and storm, we passed the ford in safety; a moment more, and the carriage stopped amidst the sands. I took the unfortunate lady in my arms, and carried her into the hut; then fetching the cushions of the carriage, I bade Osborne take the horses on to a covered shed about half a mile off, which he had prepared fo
r them, and return immediately.
“I re-entered the hut — still Alithea lay motionless on the ground where I had placed her. The lightning showed me her pale face; and another flash permitted me to discover a portion of luggage brought here by Osborne — necessary if we fled. Among other things which, soldier-like, I always carried with me, I saw my canteen; it contained the implements for striking a light, and tapers. By such means I could at last discover that my victim still lived; and sometimes also she groaned and sighed heavily. What had happened to her I could not tell, nor by what means consciousness might be restored. I chafed her head and hands in spirituous waters; I made her swallow some — in vain. For a moment she somewhat revived, but relapsed again; and the icy cold of her hands and feet seemed to portend instant dissolution. Osborne returned, as I had ordered; he was totally unaware of the state to which my devilish machinations had brought my victim. He found me hanging over her — calling her by every endearing name — chafing her hands in mine — watching in torture for such signs of returning sense as would assure me that I was not about to see her expire before my eyes. He was scared by what he saw; but I silenced him, and made him light a fire — and heat sand, which I placed at her feet; and then by degrees, with help of large doses of sal-volatile and other drugs, circulation was restored. She opened her eyes and gazed wildly round, and tears gushed from under the lids in large, slow drops. My soul blessed God! Every mad desire and guilty scheme had faded before the expectation of her death. All I asked of Heaven was her life, and leave to restore her to her child and her home. Heaven granted, as I thought, my prayer. The livid streaks which had settled round her mouth and eyes disappeared; her features lost the rigidity of convulsions, a slight colour tinged her cheeks; her hands, late chill and stiff, now had warmth, and voluntary motions of their own. Once or twice she looked round and tried to speak. ‘Gerard!’ that word, the name of her boy, was murmured; I caught the sound as I bent eagerly over her. ‘He is safe — he is well,’ I whispered. ‘All is well; be comforted, Alithea.’ The poor victim smiled; yes, her own sweet smile dawned upon her face. ‘She too is safe,’ I thought. Once again I felt my heart beat freely and at ease.