Lucretia — Volume 06

As he spoke, he threw upon the hearth the contents of the casket, and set his heel upon the logs. A bluish flame shot up, breaking into countless sparks, and then died.

Lucretia watched him without speaking.

In coming back towards the table, Varney felt something hard beneath his tread; he stooped, and picked up the ring which has before been described as amongst the ghastly treasures of the casket, and which had rolled on the floor almost to Lucretia's feet, as he had emptied the contents on the hearth.

"This, at least, need tell no tales," said he; "a pity to destroy so rare a piece of workmanship,—one, too, which we never can replace!"

"Ay," said Lucretia, abstractedly; "and if detection comes, it may secure a refuge from the gibbet. Give me the ring."

"A refuge more terrible than the detection," said Varney,—"beware of such a thought," as Lucretia, taking it from his hand, placed the ring on her finger.

"And now I leave you for a while to recollect yourself,—to compose your countenance and your thoughts. I will send for the physician."

Lucretia, with her eyes fixed on the floor, did not heed him, and he withdrew.

So motionless was her attitude, so still her very breathing, that the unseen witness behind the tapestry, who, while struck with horror at what he had overheard (the general purport of which it was impossible that he could misunderstand), was parched with impatience to escape to rescue his beloved master from his impending fate, and warn him of the fate hovering nearer still over Helen, ventured to creep along the wall to the threshold, to peer forth from the arras, and seeing her eyes still downcast, to emerge, and place his hand on the door. At that very moment Lucretia looked up, and saw him gliding from the tapestry; their eyes met: his were fascinated as the bird's by the snake's. At the sight, all her craft, her intellect, returned. With a glance, she comprehended the terrible danger that awaited her. Before he was aware of her movement, she was at his side; her hand on his own, her voice in his ear.

"Stir not a step, utter not a sound, or you are—"

Beck did not suffer her to proceed. With the violence rather of fear than of courage, he struck her to the ground; but she clung to him still, and though rendered for the moment speechless by the suddenness of the blow, her eyes took an expression of unspeakable cruelty and fierceness. He struggled with all his might to shake her off; as he did so, she placed feebly her other hand upon the wrist of the lifted arm that had smitten her, and he felt a sharp pain, as if the nails had fastened into the flesh. This but exasperated him to new efforts. He extricated himself from her grasp, which relaxed as her lips writhed into a smile of scorn and triumph, and, spurning her while she lay before the threshold, he opened the door, sprang forward, and escaped. No thought had he of tarrying in that House of Pelops, those human shambles, of denouncing Murder in its lair; to fly to reach his master, warn, and shield him,— that was the sole thought which crossed his confused, bewildered brain.

It might be from four to five minutes that Lucretia, half-stunned, half- senseless, lay upon those floors,—for besides the violence of her fall, the shock of the struggle upon nerves weakened by the agony of apprehension, occasioned by the imminent and unforeseen chance of detection, paralyzed her wondrous vigour of mind and frame,—when Varney entered.

"They tell me she sleeps," he said, in hoarse, muttered accents, before he saw the prostrate form at his very feet. But Varney's step, Varney's voice, had awakened Lucretia's reason to consciousness and the sense of peril. Rising, though with effort, she related hurriedly what had passed.

"Fly, fly!" she gasped, as she concluded. "Fly, to detain, to secrete, this man somewhere for the next few hours. Silence him but till then; I have done the rest!" and her finger pointed to the fatal ring. Varney waited for no further words; he hurried out, and made at once to the stables: his shrewdness conjectured that Beck would carry his tale elsewhere. The groom was already gone (his fellows said) without a word, but towards the lodge that led to the Southampton road. Varney ordered the swiftest horse the stables held to be saddled, and said, as he sprang on his back,—

"I, too, must go towards Southampton. The poor young lady! I must prepare your master,—he is on his road back to us;" and the last word was scarce out of his lips as the sparks flew from the flints under the horse's hoofs, and he spurred from the yard.

As he rode at full speed through the park, the villain's mind sped more rapidly than the animal he bestrode,—sped from fear to hope, hope to assurance. Grant that the spy lived to tell his tale,—incoherent, improbable as the tale would be,—who would believe it? How easy to meet tale by tale! The man must own that he was secreted behind the tapestry,—wherefore but to rob? Detected by Madame Dalibard, he had coined this wretched fable. And the spy, too, could not live through the day; he bore Death with him as he rode, he fed its force by his speed, and the effects of the venom itself would be those of frenzy. Tush! his tale, at best, would seem but the ravings of delirium. Still, it was well to track him where he went,—delay him, if possible; and Varney's spurs plunged deep and deeper into the bleeding flanks: on desperately scoured the horse. He passed the lodge; he was on the road; a chaise and pair dashed by him; he heard not a voice exclaim "Varney!" he saw not the wondering face of John Ardworth; bending over the tossing mane, he was deaf, he was blind, to all without and around. A milestone glides by, another, and a third. Ha! his eyes can see now. The object of his chase is before him,—he views distinctly, on the brow of yon hill, the horse and the rider, spurring fast, like himself. They descend the hill, horse and horseman, and are snatched from his sight. Up the steep strains the pursuer. He is at the summit. He sees the fugitive before him, almost within hearing. Beck has slackened his steed; he seems swaying to and fro in the saddle. Ho, ho! the barbed ring begins to work in his veins. Varney looks round,—not another soul is in sight; a deep wood skirts the road. Place and time seem to favour; Beck has reined in his horse,—he bends low over the saddle, as if about to fall. Varney utters a half- suppressed cry of triumph, shakes his reins, and spurs on, when suddenly- -by the curve of the road, hid before—another chaise comes in sight, close where Beck had wearily halted.

The chaise stops; Varney pulls in, and draws aside to the hedgerow. Some one within the vehicle is speaking to the fugitive! May it not be St. John himself? To his rage and his terror, he sees Beck painfully dismount from his horse, sees him totter to the door of the chaise, sees a servant leap from the box and help him up the step, sees him enter. It must be Percival on his return,—Percival, to whom he tells that story of horror! Varney's brute-like courage forsook him; his heart was appalled. In one of those panics so common with that boldness which is but animal, his sole thought became that of escape. He turned his horse's head to the fence, forced his way desperately through the barrier, made into the wood, and sat there, cowering and listening, till in another minute he heard the wheels rattle on, and the horses gallop hard down the hill towards the park.

The autumn wind swept through the trees, it shook the branches of the lofty ash that overhung the Accursed One. What observer of Nature knows not that peculiar sound which the ash gives forth in the blast? Not the solemn groan of the oak, not the hollow murmur of the beech, but a shrill wail, a shriek as of a human voice in sharp anguish. Varney shuddered, as if he had heard the death-cry of his intended victim. Through briers and thickets, torn by the thorns, bruised by the boughs, he plunged deeper and deeper into the wood, gained at length the main path cut through it, found himself in a lane, and rode on, careless whither, till he had reached a small town, about ten miles from Laughton, where he resolved to wait till his nerves had recovered their tone, and he could more calmly calculate the chances of safety.

CHAPTER XXVII

LUCRETIA REGAINS HER SON

It seemed as if now, when danger became most imminent and present, that that very danger served to restore to Lucretia Dalibard her faculties, which during the earlier day had been steeped in a kind of dreary stupor. The absolute necessity of playing out her execrable part with all suitable and consistent hypocrisy, braced her into iron. But the disguise she assumed was a supernatural effort, it stretched to cracking every fibre of the brain; it seemed almost to herself as if, her object once gained, either life or consciousness could hold out no more.

A chaise stopped at the porch; two gentlemen descended. The elder paused irresolutely, and at length, taking out a card, inscribed "Mr. Walter Ardworth," said, "If Madame Dalibard can be spoken to for a moment, will you give her this card?"

The footman hesitatingly stared at the card, and then invited the gentleman into the hall while he took up the message. Not long had the visitor to wait, pacing the dark oak floors and gazing on the faded banners, before the servant reappeared: Madame Dalibard would see him. He followed his guide up the stairs, while his young companion turned from the hall, and seated himself musingly on one of the benches on the deserted terrace.

Grasping the arms of her chair with both hands, her eyes fixed eagerly on his face, Lucretia Dalibard awaited the welcome visitor.

Prepared as he had been for change, Walter was startled by the ghastly alteration in Lucretia's features, increased as it was at that moment by all the emotions which raged within. He sank into the chair placed for him opposite Lucretia, and clearing his throat, said falteringly,—

"I grieve indeed, Madame, that my visit, intended to bring but joy, should chance thus inopportunely. The servant informed me as we came up the stairs that your niece was ill; and I sympathize with your natural anxiety,—Susan's only child, too; poor Susan!"

"Sir," said Lucretia, impatiently, "these moments are precious. Sir, sir, my son,—my son!" and her eyes glanced to the door. "You have brought with you a companion,—does he wait without? My son!"

"Madame, give me a moment's patience. I will be brief, and compress what in other moments might be a long narrative into a few sentences."

Rapidly then Walter Ardworth passed over the details, unnecessary now to repeat to the reader,—the injunctions of Braddell, the delivery of the child to the woman selected by his fellow-sectarian (who, it seemed, by John Ardworth's recent inquiries, was afterwards expelled the community, and who, there was reason to believe, had been the first seducer of the woman thus recommended). No clew to the child's parentage had been given to the woman with the sum intrusted for his maintenance, which sum had perhaps been the main cause of her reckless progress to infamy and ruin. The narrator passed lightly over the neglect and cruelty of the nurse, to her abandonment of the child when the money was exhausted. Fortunately she had overlooked the coral round its neck. By that coral, and by the initials V. B., which Ardworth had had the precaution to have burned into the child's wrist, the lost son had been discovered; the nurse herself (found in the person of Martha Skeggs, Lucretia's own servant) had been confronted with the woman to whom she gave the child, and recognized at once. Nor had it been difficult to obtain from her the confession which completed the evidence.

"In this discovery," concluded Ardworth, "the person I employed met your own agent, and the last links in the chain they traced together. But to that person—to his zeal and intelligence—you owe the happiness I trust to give you. He sympathized with me the more that he knew you personally, felt for your sorrows, and had a lingering belief that you supposed him to be the child you yearned for. Madame, thank my son for the restoration of your own!"

Without sound, Lucretia had listened to these details, though her countenance changed fearfully as the narrator proceeded. But now she groaned aloud and in agony.

"Nay, Madame," said Ardworth, feelingly, and in some surprise, "surely the discovery of your son should create gladder emotions! Though, indeed, you will be prepared to find that the poor youth so reared wants education and refinement, I have heard enough to convince me that his dispositions are good and his heart grateful. Judge of this yourself; he is in these walls, he is—"

"Abandoned by a harlot,—reared by a beggar! My son!" interrupted Lucretia, in broken sentences. "Well, sir, have you discharged your task! Well have you replaced a mother!" Before Ardworth could reply, loud and rapid steps were heard in the corridor, and a voice, cracked, indistinct, but vehement. The door was thrown open, and, half-supported by Captain Greville, half dragging him along, his features convulsed, whether by pain or passion, the spy upon Lucretia's secrets, the denouncer of her crime, tottered to the threshold. Pointing to where she sat with his long, lean arm, Beck exclaimed, "Seize her! I 'cuse her, face to face, of the murder of her niece,—of—of I told you, sir—I told you—"

"Madame," said Captain Greville, "you stand charged by this witness with the most terrible of human crimes. I judge you not. Your niece, I rejoice to bear, yet lives. Pray God that her death be not traced to those kindred hands!" Turning her eyes from one to the other with a wandering stare, Lucretia Dalibard remained silent. But there was still scorn on her lip, and defiance on her brow. At last she said slowly, and to Ardworth,—

"Where is my son? You say he is within these walls. Call him forth to protect his mother! Give me at least my son,—my son!"

Her last words were drowned by a fresh burst of fury from her denouncer. In all the coarsest invective his education could supply, in all the hideous vulgarities of his untutored dialect, in that uncurbed licentiousness of tone, look, and manner which passion, once aroused, gives to the dregs and scum of the populace, Beck poured forth his frightful charges, his frantic execrations. In vain Captain Greville strove to check him; in vain Walter Ardworth sought to draw him from the room. But while the poor wretch—maddening not more with the consciousness of the crime than with the excitement of the poison in his blood—thus raved and stormed, a terrible suspicion crossed Walter Ardworth; mechanically,—as his grasp was on the accuser's arm,—he bared the sleeve, and on the wrist were the dark-blue letters burned into the skin and bearing witness to his identity with the lost Vincent Braddell.

"Hold, hold!" he exclaimed then; "hold, unhappy man!—it is your mother whom you denounce!"

Lucretia sprang up erect; her eyes seemed starting from her head. She caught at the arm pointed towards her in wrath and menace, and there, amidst those letters that proclaimed her son, was the small puncture, surrounded by a livid circle, that announced her victim. In the same instant she discovered her child in the man who was calling down upon her head the hatred of Earth and the justice of Heaven, and knew herself his murderess!

She dropped the arm, and sank back on the chair; and whether the poison had now reached to the vitals, or whether so unwonted a passion in so frail a frame sufficed for the death-stroke, Beck himself, with a low, suffocated cry, slid from the hand of Ardworth, and tottering a step or so, the blood gushed from his mouth over Lucretia's robe; his head drooped an instant, and, falling, rested first upon her lap, then struck heavily upon the floor. The two men bent over him and raised him in their arms; his eyes opened and closed, his throat rattled, and as he fell back into their arms a corpse, a laugh rose close at hand,—it rang through the walls, it was heard near and afar, above and below; not an ear in that house that heard it not. In that laugh fled forever, till the Judgment-day, from the blackened ruins of her lost soul, the reason of the murderess-mother.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE LOTS VANISH WITHIN THE URN

Varney's self-commune restored to him his constitutional audacity. He returned to Laughton towards the evening, and held a long conference with Greville. Fortunately for him, perhaps, and happily for all, Helen had lost all more dangerous symptoms; and the physician, who was in the house, saw in her state nothing not easily to be accounted for by natural causes. Percival had arrived, had seen Helen,—no wonder she was better! Both from him and from Helen, Madame Dalibard's fearful condition was for the present concealed. Ardworth's story, and the fact of Beck's identity with Vincent Braddell, were also reserved for a later occasion. The tale which Beck had poured into the ear of Greville (when, recognizing the St. John livery, the captain stopped his chaise to inquire if Percival were at the Hall, and when thrilled by the hideous import of his broken reply, that gentleman had caused him to enter the vehicle to explain himself further), Varney, with his wonted art and address, contrived to strip of all probable semblance. Evidently the poor lad had been already delirious; his story must be deemed the nightmare of his disordered reason. Varney insisted upon surgical examination as to the cause of his death. The membranes of the brain were found surcharged with blood, as in cases of great mental excitement; the slight puncture in the wrist, ascribed to the prick of a rusty nail, provoked no suspicion. If some doubts remained still in Greville's acute mind, he was not eager to express, still less to act upon them. Helen was declared to be out of danger; Percival was safe,—why affix by minute inquiry into the alleged guilt of Madame Dalibard (already so awfully affected by the death of her son and by the loss of her reason) so foul a stain on the honoured family of St. John? But Greville was naturally anxious to free the house as soon as possible both of Varney and that ominous Lucretia, whose sojourn under its roof seemed accursed. He therefore readily assented when Varney proposed, as his obvious and personal duty, to take charge of his mother-in-law, and remove her to London for immediate advice.

At the dead of the black-clouded night, no moon and no stars, the son of Olivier Dalibard bore away the form of the once-formidable Lucretia,—the form, for the mind was gone; that teeming, restless, and fertile intellect, which had carried along the projects with the preterhuman energies of the fiend, was hurled into night and chaos. Manacled and bound, for at times her paroxysms were terrible, and all partook of the destructive and murderous character which her faculties, when present, had betrayed, she was placed in the vehicle by the shrinking side of her accomplice.

Long before he arrived in London, Varney had got rid of his fearful companion. His chaise had stopped at the iron gates of a large building somewhat out of the main road, and the doors of the madhouse closed on Lucretia Dalibard.

Varney then hastened to Dover, with intention of flight into France; he was just about to step into the vessel, when he was tapped rudely on the shoulder, and a determined voice said, "Mr. Gabriel Varney, you are my prisoner!"

"For what? Some paltry debt?" said Varney, haughtily.

"For forgery on the Bank of England!"

Varney's hand plunged into his vest. The officer seized it in time, and wrested the blade from his grasp. Once arrested for an offence it was impossible to disprove, although the very smallest of which his conscience might charge him, Varney sank into the blackest despair. Though he had often boasted, not only to others, but to his own vain breast, of the easy courage with which, when life ceased to yield enjoyment, he could dismiss it by the act of his own will; though he had possessed himself of Lucretia's murderous ring, and death, if fearful, was therefore at his command,—self-destruction was the last thought that occurred to him; that morbid excitability of fancy which, whether in his art or in his deeds, had led him to strange delight in horror, now served but to haunt him with the images of death in those ghastliest shapes familiar to them who look only into the bottom of the charnel, and see but the rat and the worm and the loathsome agencies of corruption. It was not the despair of conscience that seized him, it was the abject clinging to life; not the remorse of the soul,—that still slept within him, too noble an agency for one so debased,—but the gross physical terror. As the fear of the tiger, once aroused, is more paralyzing than that of the deer, proportioned to the savageness of a disposition to which fear is a novelty, so the very boldness of Varney, coming only from the perfection of the nervous organization, and unsupported by one moral sentiment, once struck down, was corrupted into the vilest cowardice. With his audacity, his shrewdness forsook him. Advised by his lawyer to plead guilty, he obeyed, and the sentence of transportation for life gave him at first a feeling of reprieve; but when his imagination began to picture, in the darkness of his cell, all the true tortures of that penalty,—not so much, perhaps, to the uneducated peasant-felon, inured to toil, and familiarized with coarse companionship, as to one pampered like himself by all soft and half-womanly indulgences,—the shaven hair, the convict's dress, the rigorous privation, the drudging toil, the exile, seemed as grim as the grave. In the dotage of faculties smitten into drivelling, he wrote to the Home Office, offering to disclose secrets connected with crimes that had hitherto escaped or baffled justice, on condition that his sentence might be repealed, or mitigated into the gentler forms of ordinary transportation. No answer was returned to him, but his letter provoked research. Circumstances connected with his uncle's death, and with various other dark passages in his life, sealed against him all hope of a more merciful sentence; and when some acquaintances, whom his art had made for him, and who, while grieving for his crime, saw in it some excuses (ignorant of his feller deeds), sought to intercede in his behalf, the reply of the Home Office was obvious: "He is a fortunate man to have been tried and condemned for his least offence." Not one indulgence that could distinguish him from the most execrable ruffian condemned to the same sentence was conceded.

The idea of the gibbet lost all its horror. Here was a gibbet for every hour. No hope,—no escape. Already that Future Doom which comprehends the "Forever" opened upon him black and fathomless. The hour-glass was broken up, the hand of the timepiece was arrested. The Beyond stretched before him without limit, without goal,—on into Annihilation or into Hell.

EPILOGUE TO PART THE SECOND