by Mary Shelley
But she is innocent. The last word murmured in her last sleep — the last word human ears heard her utter, was her son’s name. To the last she was all mother; her heart filled with that deep yearning, which a young mother feels to be the very essence of her life, for the presence of her child. There is something so beautiful in a young mother’s feelings. Usually a creature to be fostered and protected — taught to look to another for aid and safety; yet a woman is the undaunted guardian of her little child. She will expose herself to a thousand dangers to shield his fragile being from harm. If sickness or injury approach him, her heart is transfixed by terror: readily, joyfully, she would give her own blood to sustain him. The world is a hideous desert when she is threatened to be deprived of him; and when he is near, and she takes him to the shelter of her bosom, and wraps him in her soft, warm embrace, she cares for nothing beyond that circle; and his smiles and infantine caresses are the life of her life. Such a mother was Alithea; and in Gerard she possessed a son capable of calling forth in its intensity, and of fully rewarding, her maternal tenderness. What wonder, when she saw him cast pitilessly down, on the road side — alive or dead she knew not — the wheel of the carriage that bore her away, might have crushed and destroyed his tender limbs — what wonder that she should be threatened by instant death, through the excess of her agony? What wonder that, reviving from death, her first and only thought was to escape — to get back to him — to clasp him to her heart — never to be severed more?
How glad, and yet how miserable, Gerard would be to read this tale. His proudest and fondest assertions certified as true, and yet to feel that he had lost her for ever, whose excellence was proved to be thus paramount. Elizabeth’s reflections now rested on him — and now turned to Falkner — and now she opened the manuscript again, and read anew — and then again her heart made its commentary, and she wept and rejoiced; and longed to comfort her father, and congratulate Neville, all in a breath.
She never thought of herself. This was Elizabeth’s peculiarity. She could be so engrossed by sympathy for others, that she could forget herself wholly. At length she remembered her father’s directions, that his manuscript should be given to Neville when he called. She had no thought of disobeying; nor could she help being glad that Gerard’s filial affection should receive its reward, even while she was pained to think that Falkner should be changed at once into an enemy in her new friend’s eyes. Still her generous nature led her instantly to ally herself to the weaker side. Neville was triumphant — Falkner humiliated and fallen; and thus he drew her closer to him, and riveted the chain of gratitude and fidelity by which she was bound. She had shed many tears for Alithea’s untimely fate; for the virtues and happiness hurried to a mysterious end — buried in an untold grave. But she had her reward. Long had she been there, where there is no trouble, no strife — her pure soul received into the company of kindred angels. Her heroism would now be known; her actions justified; she would be raised above her sex in praise; her memory crowned with unfading glory. It was Falkner who needed the exertion of present service, to forgive and console. He must be raised from his self-abasement; his despair must be cured. He must feel that the hour of remorse was past; that of repentance and forgiveness come. He must be rewarded for all his goodness to her, by being made to love life for her sake. Neville, whose heart was free from every base alloy, would enter into these feelings. Content to rescue the fame of his mother from the injury done it; happy in being assured that his faithful, filial love had not been mistaken in its reliance, the first emotion of his generous soul would be to forgive. Yet Elizabeth fancied that, borne away by his ardour in his mother’s cause, he might altogether pass over and forget the extenuating circumstances that rendered Falkner worthy of pardon; and she thought it right to accompany the narrative with an explanatory letter. Thus she wrote:
“My father has given me these papers for the purpose of transmitting them to you. I need not tell you that I read them this day for the first time; that till now I was in total ignorance of the facts they disclose.
“It is most true that I, a little child, stopped his arm as he was about to destroy himself. Moved by pity for my orphan state, he consented to live. Is this a crime? Yet I could not reconcile him to life, and he went to Greece, seeking death. He went there in the pride of life and health. You saw him at Marseilles; you saw him to-day — the living effigy of remorse and woe.
“It is hard, at the moment you discover that he was the cause of your mother’s death, to ask your sympathy for his sufferings and high-minded contrition. I leave you to follow the dictates of your own heart, with regard to him. For myself, attached to him as I am by every sentiment of affection and gratitude, I am, from this moment, more than ever devoted to his service, and eager to prove to him my fidelity.
“These words come from myself. My father knows not what I write. He simply told me to inform you that he should remain here; and if you desired aught of him, he was ready at your call. He thinks, perhaps, you may require further explanation — further guidance to your mother’s grave. Oh, secret and obscure as it is, is it not guarded by angels? Have you not been already led to it?”
She left off abruptly — she heard a ring at the outer gate — the hour had come — it must be Neville! She placed the papers in the writing-case, and directing and sealing the letter, gave both to the servant, to be delivered to him. Scarcely was this done, when, suddenly it flashed across her, how the relative situations of Neville and herself were changed. That morning she had been his chosen friend — into her ear he poured the history of his hopes and fears — he claimed her sympathy — and she felt that from her he derived a happiness never felt before. Now he must regard her as the daughter of his mother’s destroyer, and should she ever see him more? Instinctively she rushed to the highest room of the house to catch one other glimpse. By the time she reached the window, the act was fulfilled that changed both their lives — the packet given. Dimly, in the twilight, she saw a horseman emerge from under the wall of the garden, and slowly cross the heath; slowly at first, as if he did not comprehend what had happened, or what he was doing. There is something that excites unspeakable tenderness when the form of the loved one is seen, even from far; and Elizabeth, though unaware of the nature and depth of her sensations, yet felt her heart soften and yearn towards her friend. A blessing fell from her lips; while the consciousness of all of doubtful and sad that he must at that moment experience, at being sent from her door with a written communication only, joined to the knowledge that each succeeding hour would add to the barriers that separated them, so overcame her, that when at last he put spurs to his horse, and was borne out of sight into the thickening twilight, she burst into a passion of tears, and wept for some time, not knowing what she did, nor where she was; but feeling that from that hour the colour of her existence was changed — its golden hue departed — and that patience and resignation must henceforth take place of gladness and hope.
She roused herself after a few minutes from this sort of trance, and her thoughts reverted to Falkner. There are few crimes so enormous but that, when we undertake to analyse their motives, they do not find some excuse and pardon in the eyes of all, except their perpetrators. Sympathy is more of a deceiver than conscience. The stander-by may dilate on the force of passion and the power of temptation, but the guilty are not cheated by such subterfuges; he knows that the still voice within was articulate to him. He remembers that at the moment of action he felt his arm checked, his ear warned; he could have stopped, and been innocent. Perhaps of all the scourges wielded by the dread Eumenides, there is none so torturing as the consciousness of the wilfulness of the act deplored. It is a mysterious principle, to be driven out by no reasonings, no commonplace philosophy. It had eaten into Falkner’s soul; taken sleep from his eyes, strength from his limbs, every healthy and self-complacent sentiment from his soul.
Elizabeth, however, innocent and good as she was, fancied a thousand excuses for an act, whose frightful catastroph
e was not foreseen. Falkner called himself a murderer; but though the untimely death of the unfortunate Alithea was brought about by his means, so far from being guilty of the deed, he would have given a thousand lives to save her. Since her death, she well knew that sleep had not refreshed, nor food nourished him. He was blighted, turned from all the uses, and enjoyments of life; he desired the repose of the grave; he had sought death; he had made himself akin to the grim destroyer.
That he had acted wrongly, nay criminally, Elizabeth acknowledged. But by how many throes of anguish, by what repentance and sacrifice of all that life holds dear, had he not expiated the past! Elizabeth longed to see him again, to tell him how fondly she still loved him, how he was exalted, not debased in her eyes; to comfort him with her sympathy, cherish him with her love. It was true that she did not quite approve of the present state of his mind; there was too much of pride, too much despair. But when he found that, instead of scorn, his confessions met with compassion and redoubled affection, his heart would soften, he would no longer desire to die, so to escape from blame and retribution; but be content to endure, and teach himself that resignation which is the noblest, and most unattainable temper of mind to which humanity may aspire.
CHAPTER XV.
While these thoughts, founded on a natural piety, pure and gentle as herself, occupied Elizabeth, Falkner indulged in far other speculations. He triumphed. It is strange, that although perpetually deceived and led astray by our imagination, we always fancy that we can foresee, and in some sort command, the consequences of our actions. Falkner, while he deplored his beloved victim with the most heartfelt grief, yet at no time experienced a qualm of fear, because he believed that he held the means of escape in his own hands, and could always shelter himself from the obloquy that he now incurred, in an unapproachable tomb. Through strange accidents, that resource had failed him; he was alive, and his secret was in the hands of his enemies. But as he confronted the injured son of a more injured mother, another thought, dearer to his lawless yet heroic imagination, presented itself. There was one reparation he could make, and doubtless it would be demanded of him. The law of honour would be resorted to, to avenge the death of Alithea. He did not for a moment doubt but that Neville would challenge him. His care must be to fall by the young man’s hand. There was a sort of poetical justice in this idea, a noble and fitting ending to his disastrous story, that solaced his pride, and filled him, as has been said, with triumph.
Having arrived at this conclusion, he felt sure also that the consummation would follow immediately on Neville’s perusal of the narration put into his hands. This very day might be his last, and it was necessary to make every preliminary arrangement. Leaving Elizabeth occupied with his fatal papers, he drove to town to seek Mr. Raby’s solicitor, to place in his hands the proofs of his adopted child’s birth, so to secure her future acknowledgment by her father’s family. She was not his child; no drop of his blood flowed in her veins; his name did not belong to her. As Miss Raby, Neville would gladly seek her, while as Miss Falkner, an insuperable barrier existed between them; and though he fell by Gerard’s hand, yet he meant to leave a letter to convince her that this was but a sort of cunning suicide, and that it need place no obstacle between two persons, whom he believed were formed for each other. What more delightful than that his own Elizabeth, should love the son of Alithea! If he survived, indeed, this mutual attachment would be beset by difficulties; his death was like the levelling of a mountain, all was plain, easy, happy, when he no longer deformed the scene.
He had some difficulty in meeting with Mr. Raby’s man of business. He found him however perfectly acquainted with all the circumstances, and eager to examine the documents placed in his hands. He had already written to Treby and received confirmation of all Falkner’s statements. This activity had been imparted by Mrs. Raby, then at Tunbridge Wells, who was anxious to render justice to the orphan, the moment she had been informed of her existence; Falkner heard with great satisfaction of the excellent qualities of this lady, and the interest she showed in poor Edwin Raby’s orphan child. The day was consumed, and part of the evening in these arrangements, and a final interview with his own solicitor. His will was already made, he divided his property between Elizabeth, and his cousin, the only surviving daughter of his uncle.
Something of shame was in his heart when he returned and met again his adopted child, a shame ennobled by the sense that he was soon to offer up his life as atonement; while she, who had long been reflecting on all that occurred, yet felt it brought home more keenly when she again saw him, and read in his countenance the tale of remorse and grief, more legibly than in the written page. Passionately and gratefully attached, her heart warmed towards him, his very look of suffering was an urgent call upon her fidelity; and though she felt all the change that his disclosures operated, though she saw the flowery path she had been treading, at once wasted and barren, all sense of personal disappointment was merged in her desire to prove her affection at that moment; silently, but with heroic fervour, she offered herself up at the shrine of his broken fortunes: love, friendship, good name, life itself, if need were, should be set at nought; weighed in a balance against her duty to him, they were but as a feather in the scale.
They sat together as of old, their looks were affectionate, their talk cheerful; it seemed to embrace the future as well as the present, and yet to exclude every painful reflection. The heart of each bore its own secret without betrayal. Falkner expected in a few hours to be called upon to expiate with his life the evils he had caused, while Elizabeth’s thoughts wandered to Neville. Now he was reading the fatal narrative; now agonized pity for his mother, now abhorrence of Falkner, alternated in his heart; her image was cast out, or only called up to be associated with the hated name of the destroyer. Her sensibility was keenly excited. How ardently had she prayed, how fervently had she believed that he would succeed in establishing his mother’s innocence; in what high honour she had held his filial piety, — these things were still the same; yet how changed were both towards each other! It was impossible that they should ever meet again as formerly, ever take counsel together, that she should ever be made happy by the reflection that she was his friend and comforter.
Falkner called her attention by a detail of his journey to Belleforest, and the probability that she would soon have a visit from her aunt. Here was a new revulsion; Elizabeth was forced to remember that her name was Raby. Falkner described the majestic beauties of the ancestral seat of her family, tried to impress her with the imposing grandeur of its antiquity, to interest her in its religion and prejudices, to gild the reality of pride and desertion with the false colours of principle and faith. He spoke of Mrs. Raby, as he had heard her mentioned, as a woman of warm feeling, strong intellect, and extreme generosity. Elizabeth listened, but her eyes were fondly fixed on Falkner’s face, and at last she exclaimed with spontaneous earnestness, “For all this I am your child, and we shall never be divided!”
It was now near midnight; at each moment Falkner expected a message from the son of his victim. He engaged Elizabeth to retire to her room, that her suspicions might not be excited by the arrival of a visitor at that unaccustomed hour. He was glad to see her wholly unsuspicious of what he deemed the inevitable consequence of his confession; for though her thoughts evidently wandered, and traces of regret clouded her brow, it was regret, not fear, that inspired sadness; she tried to cheer, to comfort for the past, and gain fortitude to meet the future; but that future presented no more appalling image than the never seeing Gerard Neville more.
She went, and he remained waiting and watching the livelong night, but no one came. The following day passed, and the same mysterious silence was observed. What could it mean? It was impossible to accuse Alithea’s child of lukewarmness in her cause, or want of courage. A sort of dark, mysterious fear crept over Falkner’s heart; something would be done; some vengeance taken. In what frightful shape would the ghost of the past haunt him? He seemed to scent horror and
disgrace in the very winds, yet he was spellbound; he must await Neville’s call, he must remain as he had promised, to offer the atonement demanded. He had felt glad and triumphant when he believed that reparation to be his life in the field; but the delay was ominous; he knew not why, but at each ring at the gate, each step along the passages of the house, his heart grew chill, his soul quailed. He despised himself for cowardice, yet it was not that; but he knew that evil was at hand; he pitied Elizabeth, and he shrunk from himself as one doomed to dishonour, and unspeakable misery.