Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон - Lucretia — Complete

“What a pity! I would not offend dear Sir Miles for the world.”

“Well, it’s easy to make it up with him. Go and tell him that he must take you to see Guy’s Oak, in the dell; that you have heard so much about it; and when you get him on his hobby, it is hard if you can’t make your peace.”

“Oh, I’ll certainly do it, Master Varney;” and the young lady lost no time in obeying the hint. Gabriel had set other tongues on the same cry, so that there was a general exclamation when the girl named the subject,—“Oh, Guy’s Oak, by all means!”

Much pleased with the enthusiasm this memorial of his pet ancestor produced, Sir Miles led the way to the dell, and pausing as he reached the verge, said,—

“I fear I cannot do you the honours; it is too steep for my chair to descend safely.”

Gabriel whispered the fair companion whose side he still kept to.

“Now, my dear Sir Miles,” cried the girl, “I positively won’t stir without you; I am sure we could get down the chair without a jolt. Look there, how nicely the ground slopes! Jane, Lucy, my dears, let us take charge of Sir Miles. Now, then.”

The gallant old gentleman would have marched to the breach in such guidance; he kissed the fair hands that lay so temptingly on his chair, and then, rising with some difficulty, said,—

“No, my dears, you have made me so young again that I think I can walk down the steep with the best of you.”

So, leaning partly on his valet, and by the help of the hands extended to him, step after step, Sir Miles, with well-disguised effort, reached the huge roots of the oak.

“The hollow then was much smaller,” said he, “so he was not so easily detected as a man would be now, the damned crop-ears—I beg pardon, my dears; the rascally rebels—poked their swords through the fissure, and two went, one through his jerkin, one through his arm; but he took care not to swear at the liberty, and they went away, not suspecting him.”

While thus speaking, the young people were already playfully struggling which should first enter the oak. Two got precedence, and went in and out, one after the other. Gabriel breathed hard. “The blind owlets!” thought he; “and I put the letter where a mole would have seen it!”

“You know the spell when you enter an oak-tree where the fairies have been,” he whispered to the fair object of his notice. “You must turn round three times, look carefully on the ground, and you will see the face you love best. If I was but a little older, how I should pray—”

“Nonsense!” said the girl, blushing, as she now slid through the crowd, and went timidly in; presently she uttered a little exclamation.

The gallant Sir Miles stooped down to see what was the matter, and offering his hand as she came out, was startled to see her holding a letter.

“Only think what I have found!” said the girl. “What a strange place for a post-office! Bless me! It is directed to Mr. Mainwaring!”

“Mr. Mainwaring!” cried three or four voices; but the baronet’s was mute. His eye recognized Lucretia’s hand; his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth; the blood surged, like a sea, in his temples; his face became purple. Suddenly Gabriel, peeping over the girl’s shoulder, snatched away the letter.

“It is my letter,—it is mine! What a shame in Mainwaring not to have come for it as he promised!”

Sir Miles looked round and breathed more freely.

“Yours, Master Varney!” said the young lady, astonished. “What can make your letters to Mr. Mainwaring such a secret?”

“Oh! you’ll laugh at me; but—but—I wrote a poem on Guy’s Oak, and Mr. Mainwaring promised to get it into the county paper for me; and as he was to pass close by the park pales, through the wood yonder, on his way to D—— last Saturday, we agreed that I should leave it here; but he has forgotten his promise, I see.”

Sir Miles grasped the boy’s arm with a convulsive pressure of gratitude. There was a general cry for Gabriel to read his poem on the spot; but the boy looked sheepish, and hung down his head, and seemed rather more disposed to cry than to recite. Sir Miles, with an effort at simulation that all his long practice of the world never could have nerved him to, unexcited by a motive less strong than the honour of his blood and house, came to the relief of the young wit that had just come to his own.

“Nay,” he said, almost calmly, “I know our young poet is too shy to oblige you. I will take charge of your verses, Master Gabriel;” and with a grave air of command, he took the letter from the boy and placed it in his pocket.

The return to the house was less gay than the visit to the oak. The baronet himself made a feverish effort to appear blithe and debonair as before; but it was not successful. Fortunately, the carriages were all at the door as they reached the house, and luncheon being over, nothing delayed the parting compliments of the guests. As the last carriage drove away, Sir Miles beckoned to Gabriel, and bade him follow him into his room.

When there, he dismissed his valet and said,—

“You know, then, who wrote this letter. Have you been in the secret of the correspondence? Speak the truth, my dear boy; it shall cost you nothing.”

“Oh, Sir Miles!” cried Gabriel, earnestly, “I know nothing whatever beyond this,—that I saw the hand of my dear, kind Miss Lucretia; that I felt, I hardly knew why, that both you and she would not have those people discover it, which they would if the letter had been circulated from one to the other, for some one would have known the hand as well as myself, and therefore I spoke, without thinking, the first thing that came into my head.”

“You—you have obliged me and my niece, sir,” said the baronet, tremulously; and then, with a forced and sickly smile, he added: “Some foolish vagary of Lucretia, I suppose; I must scold her for it. Say nothing about it, however, to any one.”

“Oh, no, sir!”

“Good-by, my dear Gabriel!”

“And that boy saved the honour of my niece’s name,—my mother’s grandchild! O God! this is bitter,—in my old age too!”

He bowed his head over his hands, and tears forced themselves through his fingers. He was long before he had courage to read the letter, though he little foreboded all the shock that it would give him. It was the first letter, not destined to himself, of which he had ever broken the seal. Even that recollection made the honourable old man pause; but his duty was plain and evident, as head of the house and guardian to his niece. Thrice he wiped his spectacles; still they were dim, still the tears would come. He rose tremblingly, walked to the window, and saw the stately deer grouped in the distance, saw the church spire that rose above the burial vault of his ancestors, and his heart sank deeper and deeper as he muttered: “Vain pride! pride!” Then he crept to the door and locked it, and at last, seating himself firmly, as a wounded man to some terrible operation, he read the letter.

Heaven support thee, old man! thou hast to pass through the bitterest trial which honour and affection can undergo,—household treason. When the wife lifts high the blushless front and brazens out her guilt; when the child, with loud voice, throws off all control and makes boast of disobedience,—man revolts at the audacity; his spirit arms against his wrong: its face, at least, is bare; the blow, if sacrilegious, is direct. But when mild words and soft kisses conceal the worst foe Fate can arm; when amidst the confidence of the heart starts up the form of Perfidy; when out from the reptile swells the fiend in its terror; when the breast on which man leaned for comfort has taken counsel to deceive him; when he learns that, day after day, the life entwined with his own has been a lie and a stage-mime,—he feels not the softness of grief, nor the absorption of rage; it is mightier than grief, and more withering than rage,—it is a horror that appalls. The heart does not bleed, the tears do not flow, as in woes to which humanity is commonly subjected; it is as if something that violates the course of nature had taken place,—something monstrous and out of all thought and forewarning; for the domestic traitor is a being apart from the orbit of criminals: the felon has no fear of his innocent children; with a price on his head, he lays it in safety on the bosom of his wife. In his home, the ablest man, the most subtle and suspecting, can be as much a dupe as the simplest. Were it not so as the rule, and the exceptions most rare, this world were the riot of a hell!