"Oh," he exclaimed, in broken accents, which gradually became more clear and loud, "what—what have I lost!—lost forever! No, no, I will be worthy of you! I do not, I dare not, say that I love you still! I feel what I owe to Lucretia. How I became first ensnared, infatuated; how, with your image graven so deeply here—"
"Mainwaring—Mr. Mainwaring—I must not hear you. Is this your promise?"
"Yes, you must hear me yet. How I became engaged to your sister,—so different indeed from you,—I start in amaze and bewilderment when I seek to conjecture. But so it was. For me she has forfeited fortune, rank, all which that proud, stern heart so prized and coveted. Heaven is my witness how I have struggled to repay her affection with my own! If I cannot succeed, at least all that faith and gratitude can give are hers. Yes, when I leave you, comforted by your forgiveness, your prayers, I shall have strength to tear you from my heart; it is my duty, my fate. With a firm step I will go to these abhorred nuptials. Oh, shudder not, turn not away. Forgive the word; but I must speak,—my heart will out; yes, abhorred nuptials! Between my grave and the altar, would—would that I had a choice!"
From this burst, which in vain from time to time Susan had sought to check, Mainwaring was startled by an apparition which froze his veins, as a ghost from the grave. The door was thrown open, and Lucretia stood in the aperture,—stood, gazing on him, face to face; and her own was so colourless, so rigid, so locked in its livid and awful solemnity of aspect that it was, indeed, as one risen from the dead.
Dismayed by the abrupt cry and the changed face of her lover, Susan turned and beheld her sister. With the impulse of the pierced and loving heart, which divined all the agony inflicted, she sprang to Lucretia's side, she fell to the ground and clasped her knees.
"Do not heed, do not believe him; it is but the frenzy of a moment. He spoke but to deceive me,—me, who loved him once! Mine alone, mine is the crime. He knows all your worth. Pity—pity—pity on yourself, on him, on me!"
Lucretia's eyes fell with the glare of a fiend upon the imploring face lifted to her own. Her lips moved, but no sound was audible. At length she drew herself from her sister's clasp, and walked steadily up to Mainwaring. She surveyed him with a calm and cruel gaze, as if she enjoyed his shame and terror. Before, however, she spoke, Mrs. Fielden, who had watched, as one spellbound, Lucretia's movements, and, without hearing what had passed, had the full foreboding of what would ensue, but had not stirred till Lucretia herself terminated the suspense and broke the charm of her awe,—before she spoke, Mrs. Fielden rushed in, and giving vent to her agitation in loud sobs, as she threw her arms round Susan, who was still kneeling on the floor, brought something of grotesque to the more tragic and fearful character of the scene.
"My uncle was right; there is neither courage nor honour in the low-born! He, the schemer, too, is right. All hollow,—all false!" Thus said Lucretia, with a strange sort of musing accent, at first scornful, at last only quietly abstracted. "Rise, sir," she then added, with her most imperious tone; "do you not hear your Susan weep? Do you fear in my presence to console her? Coward to her, as forsworn to me! Go, sir, you are free!"
"Hear me," faltered Mainwaring, attempting to seize her hand; "I do not ask you to forgive; but—"
"Forgive, sir!" interrupted Lucretia, rearing her head, and with a look of freezing and unspeakable majesty. "There is only one person here who needs a pardon; but her fault is inexpiable: it is the woman who stooped beneath her—"
With these words, hurled from her with a scorn which crushed while it galled, she mechanically drew round her form her black mantle; her eye glanced on the deep mourning of the garment, and her memory recalled all that love had cost her; but she added no other reproach. Slowly she turned away. Passing Susan, who lay senseless in Mrs. Fielden's arms, she paused, and kissed her forehead.
"When she recovers, madam," she said to Mrs. Fielden, who was moved and astonished by this softness, "say that Lucretia Clavering uttered a vow when she kissed the brow of William Mainwaring's future wife!"
Olivier Dalibard was still seated in the parlour below when Lucretia entered. Her face yet retained its almost unearthly rigidity and calm; but a sort of darkness had come over its ashen pallor,—that shade so indescribable, which is seen in the human face, after long illness, a day or two before death. Dalibard was appalled; for he had too often seen that hue in the dying not to recognize it now. His emotion was sufficiently genuine to give more than usual earnestness to his voice and gesture, as he poured out every word that spoke sympathy and soothing. For a long time Lucretia did not seem to hear him; at last her face softened,—the ice broke.
"Motherless, friendless, lone, alone forever, undone, undone!" she murmured. Her head sank upon the shoulder of her fearful counsellor, unconscious of its resting-place, and she burst into tears,—tears which perhaps saved her reason or her life.
CHAPTER IX
When Mr. Fielden returned home, Lucretia had quitted the house. She left a line for him in her usual bold, clear handwriting, referring him to his wife for explanation of the reasons that forbade a further residence beneath his roof. She had removed to an hotel until she had leisure to arrange her plans for the future. In a few months she should be of age; and in the meanwhile, who now living claimed authority over her? For the rest, she added, "I repeat what I told Mr. Mainwaring: all engagement between us is at an end; he will not insult me either by letter or by visit. It is natural that I should at present shrink from seeing Susan Mivers. Hereafter, if permitted, I will visit Mrs. Mainwaring."
Though all had chanced as Mr. Fielden had desired (if, as he once half meditated, he had spoken to Lucretia herself); though a marriage that could have brought happiness to none, and would have made the misery of two, was at an end,—he yet felt a bitter pang, almost of remorse, when be learned what had occurred. And Lucretia, before secretly disliked (if any one he could dislike), became dear to him at once, by sorrow and compassion. Forgetting every other person, he hurried to the hotel Lucretia had chosen; but her coldness deceived and her pride repelled him. She listened dryly to all he said, and merely replied: "I feel only gratitude at my escape. Let this subject now close forever."
Mr. Fielden left her presence with less anxious and commiserating feelings,—perhaps all had chanced for the best. And on returning home, his whole mind became absorbed in alarm for Susan. She was delirious, and in great danger; it was many weeks before she recovered. Meanwhile, Lucretia had removed into private apartments, of which she withheld the address. During this time, therefore, they lost sight of her.
If amidst the punishments with which the sombre imagination of poets has diversified the Realm of the tortured Shadows, it had depicted some soul condemned to look evermore down into an abyss, all change to its gaze forbidden, chasm upon chasm yawning deeper and deeper, darker and darker, endless and infinite, so that, eternally gazing, the soul became, as it were, a part of the abyss,—such an image would symbol forth the state of Lucretia's mind.
It was not the mere desolation of one whom love has abandoned and betrayed. In the abyss were mingled inextricably together the gloom of the past and of the future,—there, the broken fortunes, the crushed ambition, the ruin of the worldly expectations long inseparable from her schemes; and amidst them, the angry shade of the more than father, whose heart she had wrung, and whose old age she had speeded to the grave. These sacrifices to love, while love was left to her, might have haunted her at moments; but a smile, a word, a glance, banished the regret and the remorse. Now, love being razed out of life, the ruins of all else loomed dismal amidst the darkness; and a voice rose up, whispering: "Lo, fool, what thou hast lost because thou didst believe and love!" And this thought grasped together the two worlds of being,—the what has been, and the what shall be. All