by Mary Shelley
“What then has happened?” asked Elizabeth; “and where is my dear father?”
“Your father! Miss Raby,” repeated a deep, serious, but melodious voice; “whom do you call your father?”
Elizabeth, in her agitation, had not caught her aunt’s name, and turned with surprise to the questioner, whom Lady Cecil introduced as one who had known and loved her real father; as her aunt, come to offer a happy and honourable home — and the affection of a relative, to one so long lost, so gladly found.
“We have come to carry you off with us,” said Lady Cecil; “your position here is altogether disagreeable; but every thing is changed now, and you will come with us.”
“But my father,” cried Elizabeth; “for what other name can I give to my benefactor? Dear Lady Cecil, where is he?”
“Do you not then know?” asked Lady Cecil, hesitatingly.”
“This very morning I heard something frightful, heart-breaking; but since you are here, it must be all a fiction, or at least the dreadful mistake is put right. Tell me, where is Mr. Falkner?”
“I know less than you, I believe,” replied her friend; “my information is only gathered from the hasty letters of my brother, which explain nothing.”
“But Mr. Neville has told you,” said Elizabeth, “that my dear father is accused of murder; accused by him who possesses the best proof of his innocence. I had thought Mr. Neville generous, unsuspicious” —
“Nor is it he,” interrupted Lady Cecil, “who brings this accusation. I tell you I know little; but Sir Boyvill is the origin of Mr. Falkner’s arrest. The account he read seemed to him unsatisfactory, and the remains of poor Mrs. Neville. — Indeed, dear Elizabeth, you must not question me, for I know nothing; much less than you. Gerard puts much faith in the innocence of Mr. Falkner.”
“Bless him for that!” cried Elizabeth, tears gushing into her eyes. “Oh yes, I knew that he would be just and generous. My poor, poor father! by what fatal mistake is your cause judged by one incapable of understanding or appreciating you.”
“Yet,” said Lady Cecil, “he cannot be wholly innocent; the flight, the catastrophe, the concealment of his victim’s death; — is there not guilt in these events?”
“Much, much; I will not excuse or extenuate. If ever you read his narrative, which, at his desire, I gave Mr. Neville, you will learn from that every exculpation he can allege. It is not for me to speak, nor to hear even of his past errors; never was remorse more bitter, contrition more sincere. But for me, he had not survived the unhappy lady a week; but for me, he had died in Greece, to expiate his fault. Will not this satisfy his angry accusers?
“I must act from higher motives. Gratitude, duty, every human obligation bind me to him. He took me, a deserted orphan, from a state of miserable dependence on a grudging, vulgar woman; he brought me up as his child; he was more to me than father ever was. He has nursed me as my own mother would in sickness; in perilous voyages he has carried me in his arms, and sheltered me from the storm, while he exposed himself for my sake; year after year, while none else have cared for, have thought of me, I have been the object of his solicitude. He has consented to endure life, that I might not be left desolate, when I knew not that one of my father’s family would acknowledge me. Shall I desert him now? Never!”
“But you cannot help him,” said Lady Cecil; “he must be tried by the laws of his country. I hope he has not in truth offended against them; but you cannot serve him.”
“Where is he?” dear Lady Cecil; “tell me where he is?”
“I fear there can be no doubt he is in prison at Carlisle.”
“And do you think that I cannot serve him there? in prison as a criminal! Miserable as his fate makes me, miserable as I too well know that he is, it is some compensation to my selfish heart to know that I can serve him, that I can be all in all of happiness and comfort to him. Even now he pines for me; he knows that I never leave his side when in sorrow; he wonders I am not already there. Yes, in prison, in shame, he will be happy when he sees me again. I shall go to him, and then, too, I shall have comfort.”
She spoke with a generous animation, while yet her eyes glistened, and her voice trembled with emotion. Lady Cecil was moved, while she deplored; she caressed her; she praised, while Mrs. Raby said, “It is impossible not to honour your intentions, which spring from so pure and noble a source. I think, indeed, that you overrate your obligations to Mr. Falkner. Had he restored you to us after your mother’s death, you would have found, I trust, a happy home with me. He adopted you, because it best pleased him so to do. He disregarded the evil he brought upon us by so doing; and only restored you to us when the consequence of his crimes prevented him from being any longer a protection.”
“Pardon me,” said Elizabeth, “if I interrupt you. Mr. Falkner is a suffering, he believed himself to be a dying, man; he lived in anguish till he could declare his error, to clear the name of his unhappy victim; he wished first to secure my future lot, before he dared fate for himself; chance altered his designs; such were his motives, generous towards me as they ever were.”
“And you, dear Elizabeth,” said Lady Cecil, “must act in obedience to them and to his wishes. He anticipated disgrace from his disclosures, a disgrace which you must not share. You speak like a romantic girl of serving him in prison. You cannot guess what a modern gaol is, its vulgar and shocking inhabitants: the hideous language and squalid sights are such, that their very existence should be a secret to the innocent: be assured that Mr. Falkner, if he be, as I believe him, a man of honour and delicacy, will shudder at the very thought of your approaching such contamination; he will be best pleased to know you safe and happy with your family.”
“What a picture do you draw!” cried Elizabeth, trying to suppress her tears; “my poor, poor father, whose life hangs by a thread! how can he survive the accumulation of evil? But he will forget all these horrors when I am with him. I know, thank God, I do indeed know, that I have power to cheer and support him, even at the worst.”
“This is madness!” observed Lady Cecil, in a tone of distress.
Mrs. Raby interposed with her suggestions. She spoke of her own desire, the desire of all the family, to welcome Elizabeth; she told her that with them, belonging to them, she had new duties; her obedience was due to her relatives; she must not act so as to injure them. She alluded to their oppressed religion; to the malicious joy their enemies would have in divulging such a tale as that would be, if their niece’s conduct made the whole course of events public. And, as well as she could, she intimated that if she mixed up her name in a tale so full of horror and guilt, her father’s family could never after receive her.
Elizabeth heard all this with considerable coldness. “It grieves me,” she said, “to repay intended kindness with something like repulse. I have no wish to speak of the past; nor to remind you that if I was not brought up in obedience to you all, it was because my father was disowned, my mother abandoned; and I, a little child, an orphan, was left to live and die in dependence. I, who then bore your name, had become a subject of niggard and degrading charity. Then, young as I was, I felt gratitude, obedience, duty, all due to the generous benefactor who raised me from this depth of want, and made me the child of his heart. It is a lesson I have been learning many years; I cannot unlearn it now. I am his; bought by his kindness; earned by his unceasing care for me, I belong to him — his child — if you will, his servant — I do not quarrel with names — a child’s duty I pay him, and will ever. Do not be angry with me, dear aunt, if I may give you that name — dearest Lady Cecil, do not look so imploringly on me — I am very unhappy. Mr. Falkner, a prisoner, accused of the most hideous crime — treated with ignominy — he whose nerves are agonized by a touch — whose frame is even now decaying through sickness and sorrow — and I, and every hope, away. I am very unhappy. Do not urge me to what is impossible, and thrice, thrice wicked. I must go to him; day and night I shall have no peace till I am at his side; do not, for my sake do not, dispute
this sacred duty.”
It was not thus that the two ladies could be led to desist; they soothed her, but again returned to the charge. Lady Cecil brought a thousand arguments of worldly wisdom, of feminine delicacy. Mrs. Raby insinuated the duty owed to her family, to shield it from the disgrace she was bringing on it. They both insisted on the impossibility, on the foolish romance of her notions. Had she been really his daughter, her joining him in prison was impracticable — out of all propriety. But Elizabeth had been brought up to regard feelings, rather than conventional observances; duties, not proprieties. All her life Falkner had been law, rule, every tie to her; she knew and felt nothing beyond. When she had followed him to Greece — when she had visited the Morea, to bear him dying away — when at Zante she had watched by his sick couch, the world, and all the Rabys it contained, were nothing to her; and now, when he was visited by a far heavier calamity, when in solitude and misery, he had besides her, no one comfort under heaven, was she to adopt a new system of conduct, become a timid, home-bred young lady, tied by the most frivolous rules, impeded by fictitious notions of propriety and false delicacy? Whether they were right, and she were wrong — whether indeed such submission to society — such useless, degrading dereliction of nobler duties, was adapted for feminine conduct, and whether she, despising such bonds, sought a bold and dangerous freedom, she could not tell; she only knew and felt, that for her, educated as she had been, beyond the narrow paling of boarding-school ideas, or the refinements of a lady’s boudoir, that, where her benefactor was, there she ought to be; and that to prove her gratitude, to preserve her faithful attachment to him amidst dire adversity, was her sacred duty — a virtue, before which every minor moral faded and disappeared.
The discussion was long; and even when they found her proof against every attack, they would not give up. They entreated her to go home with them for that day. A wild light beamed from her eyes. “I am going home,” she cried; “an hour hence, and I shall be gone to where my true home is. How strange it is that you should imagine that I could linger here!
“Be not afraid for me, dear Lady Cecil,” she continued, “all will go well with me; and you will, after a little reflection, acknowledge that I could not act other than I do. And will you, Mrs. Raby, forgive my seeming ingratitude? I acknowledge the justice of your demands. I thank you for your proposed kindness. The name of Raby shall receive no injury; it shall never escape my lips. My father will preserve the same silence. Be not angry with me; but — except that I remember my dear parents with affection — I would say, I take more joy and pride in being his daughter — his friend at this need — than in the distinction and prosperity your kindness offers. I give up every claim on my family; the name of Raby shall not be tainted: but Elizabeth Falkner, with all her wilfulness and faults, shall, at least, prove her gratitude to him who bestowed that appellation on her.”
And thus they parted. Lady Cecil veiling her distress in sullenness; while Mrs. Raby was struck and moved by her niece’s generosity, which was in accordance with her own noble mind. But she felt that other judges would sit upon the cause, and decide from other motives. She parted from her as a Pagan relative might from a young Christian martyr — admiring, while she deplored her sacrifice, and feeling herself wholly incapable of saving.
CHAPTER VIII.
Elizabeth delayed not a moment proceeding on her journey; an exalted enthusiasm made her heart beat high, and almost joyously. This buoyancy of spirit, springing from a generous course of action, is the compensation provided for our sacrifices of inclination — and at least, on first setting out, blinds us to the sad results we may be preparing for ourselves. Elated by a sense of acting according to the dictates of her conscience, despite the horror of the circumstances that closed in the prospect, her spirits were light, and her eyes glistened with a feeling at once triumphant and tender, while reflecting on the comfort she was bringing to her unfortunate benefactor. A spasm of horror seized her now and then, as the recollection pressed that he was in prison — accused as a murderer — but her young heart refused to be cowed, even by the ignominy and anguish of such a reflection.
A philosopher not long ago remarked, when adverting to the principle of destruction latent in all works of art, and the overthrow of the most durable edifices; “but when they are destroyed, so as to produce only dust, Nature asserts an empire over them; and the vegetative world rises in constant youth, and in a period of annual successions, by the labours of man, providing food, vitality and beauty adorn the wrecks of monuments, which were once raised for purposes of glory.” Thus when crime and woe attack and wreck an erring human being, the affections and virtues of one faithfully attached, decorate the ruin with alien beauty; and make that pleasant to the eye and heart, which otherwise we might turn from as a loathsome spectacle.
It was a cold September day when she began her journey, and the solitary hours spent on the road exhausted her spirits. In the evening she arrived at Stony Stratford, and here, at the invitation of her servant, consented to spend the night. The solitary inn room, without a fire, and her lonely supper, chilled her; so susceptible are we to the minor casualties of life, even when we meet the greater with heroic resolution. She longed to skip the present hour, to be arrived — she longed to see Falkner, and to hear his voice — she felt forlorn and deserted. At this moment the door was opened, “a gentleman” was announced, and Gerard Neville entered. Love and nature at this moment asserted their full sway — her heart bounded in her bosom, her cheek flushed, her soul was deluged at once with a sense of living delight — she had never thought to see him more — she had tried to forget that she regretted this; but he was there, and she felt that such a pleasure were cheaply purchased by the sacrifice of her existence. He also felt the influence of the spell. He came agitated by many fears, perplexed by the very motive that led him to her — but she was there in all her charms, the dear object of his nightly dreams and waking reveries — hesitation and reserve vanished in her presence, and they both felt the alliance of their hearts.
“Now that I am here, and see you,” said Neville, “it seems to me the most natural thing in the world, that I should have followed you as I have done. While away, I had a thousand misgivings — and wherefore? did you not sympathize in my sufferings, and desire to aid me in my endeavours; and I feel convinced that fate, while by the turn of events it appeared to disunite, has, in fact, linked us closer than ever. I am come with a message from Sophia — and to urge also, on my own part, a change in your resolves; you must not pursue your present journey.”
“You have, indeed, been taking a lesson from Lady Cecil, when you say this,” replied Elizabeth; “she has taught you to be worldly for me — a lesson you would not learn on your own account — she did not seduce me in this way; I gave you my support when you were going to America.”
Elizabeth began to speak almost sportively, but the mention of America brought to her recollection the cause of his going, and the circumstances that prevented him; and the tears gushed from her eyes as she continued in a voice broken by emotion. “Oh, Mr. Neville, I smile while my heart is breaking — My dear, dear father! What misery is this that you have brought on him — and how, while he treated you with unreserve, have you falsely — you must know — accused him of crime, and pursued your vengeance in a vindictive and ignominious manner? It is not well done!”
“I pardon your injustice,” said Neville; “though it is very great. One of my reasons for coming, was to explain the exact state of things, though I believed that your knowledge of me would have caused you to reject the idea of my being a party to my father’s feelings of revenge.”
Neville then related all that had passed; — the discovery of his mother’s remains in the very spot Falkner had indicated, and Sir Boyvill’s resolve to bring the whole train of events before the public. “Perhaps,” he continued, “my father believes in the justice of his accusation — he never saw Mr. Falkner, and cannot be impressed as I am by the tokens of a noble mind, which,
despite his errors, are indelibly imprinted on his brow. At all events, he is filled with a sense of his own injuries — stung by the disdain heaped on him in that narration, and angry that he had been led to wrong a wife, the memory of whose virtues and beauty now revives, bitterly to reproach him. I cannot wonder at his conduct, even while I deplore it: I do deplore it on your account; — for Mr. Falkner, God knows I would have visited his crime in another mode; yet all he suffers he has brought on himself — he must feel it due — and must bear it as best he may: forgive me if I seem harsh — I compassionate him through you — I cannot for his own sake.”
“How falsely do you reason,” cried Elizabeth, “and you also are swayed and perverted by passion. He is innocent of the hideous crime laid to his charge — you know and feel that he is innocent; and were he guilty — I have heard you lament that crime is so hardly visited by the laws of society. I have heard you say, that even where guilt is joined to the hardness of habitual vice, that it ought to be treated with the indulgence of a correcting father, not by the cruel vengeance of the law. And now, when one whose very substance and flesh are corroded by remorse — one whose conscience acts as a perpetual scourge — one who has expiated his fault by many years spent in acts of benevolence and heroism; this man, because his error has injured you, you, forgetting your own philosophy, would make over to a fate, which, considering who and what he is, is the most calamitous human imagination can conceive.”
Neville could not hear this appeal without the deepest pain.—”Let us forget,” he at last said, “these things for a few minutes. They did not arise through me, nor can I prevent them; indeed they are now beyond all human control. Falkner could as easily restore my mother, whose remains we found mouldering in the grave which he dug for them; he could as easily bring her back to the life and happiness of which he deprived her, as I, my father, or any one, free him from the course of law to which he is made over. We must all abide by the issue — there is no remedy. But you — I would speak of you—”