Dilemmas of Pride Volume II Part 7

CHAPTER XVII.

With a trembling hand, and apparently in the utmost haste, Willoughby folded and sealed the letter he had just finished; and without allowing himself one moment for reflection, rang and ordered the person who appeared to take it to the post-office immediately.

As the door closed, however, after the servant to whom he had given this command, a sense of terror at having thus himself rendered his fate irremediable, overwhelmed him; and, with an instinctive impulse, he grasped at the bell, but immediately flinging it from him, he a.s.sumed a mock composure, and as though there had been some one present before whom to act a part, with a ghastly sort of smile, seated himself. He had for some time been almost expecting, though he would not confess it to his own thoughts, some such blow as this: he had seen, despite every effort to avert his mental vision from the view, that all could not be right; and, weary of secret dread--the true definition of that hope deferred, which maketh the heart sick--he now fancied, for the moment, that there was a sort of stern satisfaction in knowing that fate had done its worst. His brain, however, was already beginning to wander; he was already contemplating, though vaguely, the fatal step which finally ended his career. He thought of Alfred, and his soul secretly yearned for the consolation of pouring out all its sorrows into his affectionate bosom; but _Pride_, under the form of wounded vanity, with a jealous soreness, shrank from the salutary exposure; while so irritable was the state of his mind, that the very pleadings of his own heart, for the balm it longed for, seemed importunate, and were resisted with something of his characteristic obstinacy. Nay, the pettiest and most contemptible considerations from time to time blended themselves indistinctly with his despair, and became, to a certain degree, governing motives of conduct.

The story of his former disappointment, and of such recent occurrence too, he reflected, with a very disproportionate share of uneasiness, would now be renewed, coupled with the present affair: he should become a proverb--a byword--an object for the finger of scorn to point at. Then the wild excitement of the hope with which, despite his fears, he had with strange inconsistency fed his pa.s.sion; this was gone, and he could not endure the void within; while it was upon the brain, the fever seemed to feed. Whether there was a physical cause for this, such as Alfred had sometimes feared; or whether the attachment, though violent, being recently formed, still dwelt more in the imagination than in the heart, it might be difficult to decide; but the effect on Willoughby was that some active principle of misery and evil seemed urging him on to a frantic resistance of his fate; compelling his very pulses to beat at a maddening pace; causing an alternation of quickened and suspended breathing, which fatigued him sensibly; and the while presenting to his imagination, s.n.a.t.c.hes of thoughts, and visions of projects so terrific, that while they were in fact the effects of incipient insanity, they became, in their turn, by the fearful excitement they produced, powerful causes of its future development. There was still an inward struggle, but it ended fatally. He could not--no, he never would p.r.o.nounce her name again! He--in whom else he would have confided every thought--he it was who was preferred; and, though he could not feel a rival's hatred towards his kind, his generous, his unoffending brother--no, he did not, he would not even love him less; but still there was a remembrance that he was his rival; and with it thoughts, strangely blended, of littleness, and the wildest, most extravagant generosity. Alfred should have all--love, wealth, t.i.tle; and then Lady Palliser could no longer object; but he must wait--it might be for a few days, perhaps only a few hours--nay, the sooner the better; why should he live but to cause and to endure misery? Endure!--did he endure? Can powerlessness to resist the decrees of fate, while yet the heart and feelings openly and wilfully rebel against them, be called endurance? Certainly not. But alas, such rebellion brings with it its own punishment. How often had Willoughby, while fearing the worst, inwardly vowed that were he indeed destined to disappointment, he would never survive the blow. Now the blow had fallen, and though his heart secretly turned towards his habitual, his earliest, his deepest seated affection, the love he bore his twin brother, he was pledged, as it were, to resist every gentler emotion, to embrace despair! and unhappily he did so.

He would carefully conceal every circ.u.mstance, every thought; he would allow it to be believed, that the preparations for his marriage were still going forward; nay, he would a.s.sume the most exuberant spirits, and to the last moment of existence preserve his fatal secret. When he was gone, when he had found a resting-place for his weary spirit in the grave, Alfred should know all! Reflecting thus, he journeyed on.

Lady Palliser at first took no notice of Sir Willoughby's sudden departure. At a late hour in the evening, however, she received his note. During its perusal she laughed immoderately, then flinging it towards Caroline, said, "Silly young man! my only object in marrying you to him was to chastise you for your improper conduct. It has happened, however, quite as well; for I was getting amazingly tired of the thing.

Let the intended punishment," she added, with returning severity of manner, "be a lesson to you, that young women in your station, and with the fortune you will possess, are not to make choice for themselves.

When I choose you to marry, and have decided to whom I shall marry you, I shall let you know."

Poor Caroline, how little understood was her position by those, and they were many, the springs of whose peace were poisoned by envy of her greatness! Oh _Pride_, bane of human happiness! mingling bitter mortification in the otherwise palatable cup of humble competency, and lading with its glittering chains, the slaves on whom it seems to heap its choicest gifts.

Caroline, who had apprehended a storm of rage and disappointment, heightened by, perhaps, some suspicion of the truth, was greatly relieved; and, though habituated to the unaccountable caprices of her mother's temper, was somewhat surprised, at the perfect indifference thus shown by Lady Palliser, respecting her ultimate failure on a point, to carry which, so violent a determination had previously been manifested.

On Willoughby's arrival at Arden, he strained every power of his mind to hide from his brother the true state of his feelings; and, to a certain degree, succeeded; his strange manner inducing in Alfred a belief that it was the immediate prospect of the fulfilment of his wishes, which had unsettled his intellect; for, that it was to a certain degree unsettled, this affectionate brother could not help detecting, in the extravagance, the sometimes almost terrific wildness, of the gaiety a.s.sumed by Willoughby. It is impossible to describe the wretchedness of Alfred, while with an aching heart, he watched the flushed cheek and flashing eye of his brother, and listened to the strange unnatural sound of his laugh. We may say, without in the slightest degree exaggerating the disinterestedness of our hero, that every thought of self was forgotten, in the miserable excess of sympathy which the extraordinary circ.u.mstances of others now called forth. It was not only for his brother, that brother to whom from infancy he had been so tenderly attached, that he now felt the cruellest apprehensions; but what was also to be the fate of Caroline, and what would be the misery of their mother, the sorrow of the whole family, if, indeed, the awful infliction he had so long dreaded, had at length fallen upon them?

Or even, were this excitement which now alarmed him so much, to subside again for the present, how dreadful was the prospect opened by its having ever a.s.sumed so serious a form; and the inconsistency of Willoughby's conduct and manner, the incoherence of his expressions in his ill-sustained attempts at conversation, put the fatal truth beyond a doubt. Yet, were all those symptoms so far to abate, that no eye less watchful, less practised to watch than his own, could detect the lurking malady, was it fair, was it honourable, to involve in so frightful a family affliction, the happiness of a being as yet unconscious of it?

Yet who could, who would, who ought to interfere? Delicacy and all good feeling for ever forbade that any surmise should proceed from him. Oh impossible! quite impossible! Fate must roll on, and overwhelm whom it would, he must be pa.s.sive! But he was more: instinctively he strove to conceal from servants, and the few country neighbours whom chance threw in their way, the hourly increasing infirmity of his brother; treating, while such were present, his extravagance as hilarity, and every contradiction and inconsistency as an intended jest; adding thus the while, by the violent and unnatural contrast to his own secret sufferings.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Alfred sometimes thought that possibly he ought so far to conquer his scruples as to write to his mother, and communicate to her, in strict confidence, his apprehensions respecting the state of Willoughby's mind: but he might recover after a short period of quiet, and then his mother might be spared the pang: and he could not, as he had before decided, even within the bosom of his own family,--he could not, be the consequence what it might, bring himself to be the first to suggest such a thought. His mother, of course, would not suspect him of a base desire to grasp at his brother's birth-right, and of a consequent quicksightedness in discerning the approaches of this frightful visitation; but there were those who might so misjudge him. It was, however, he thought, at least his duty to prepare his mother's mind in some degree for whatever might be the result, by saying, that he did not think Willoughby quite well: this, therefore, he did in one or two of his letters. Yet Willoughby himself made no complaint; and to servants and occasional visiters appeared to be in particularly good health and spirits. We remark this now because the comment subsequently becomes important.

After a few days, however, Willoughby, like one who had run at full speed as long as his strength would permit, flagged; his efforts were first less sustained, then his gaiety became confined to wild bursts of noisy mirth, while at length whole hours, with a seeming unconsciousness of the lapse of time, were pa.s.sed in gloomy abstraction. The bursts of seeming mirth, however, were always a.s.sumed when servants or strangers were present; the gloom and abstraction given way to only when alone with his brother.

Willoughby had always felt, and often expressed, great horror of persons being opened after death: to this subject he now recurred with a frequency, and clung to it with a pertinacity quite extraordinary; adding the most solemn injunctions to Alfred to be the protector of his remains whenever he should die.

"You will then be master here," he would say; "every thing will then be yours; my very body I bequeath to you--I make it your property: do not, Alfred, I conjure you, suffer the defenceless corse of your poor brother to be mangled. It would be hard indeed," he would sometimes subjoin, with a wild ironical laugh, "if a man could not find rest even in the grave."

On occasions like these Alfred would sit beside him, and endeavour to sooth him by every kind and rational argument he could devise; not unfrequently Willoughby would appear entirely deaf to all that could be urged; while at other times, he would take Alfred's hand, thank him with gentle kindliness of manner, and hope that he might yet be as truly happy as he deserved to be; joining with this latter expression an earnest and expressive solemnity which almost seemed a blending of prophecy with the prayer of affection. He often talked of having a foreboding that he should die young.

"But why, my dear brother," Alfred would reply, "give way to such thoughts? Why should you die young? You have no ailment, no care, no sorrow----"

"It may be a silly fancy, yet I am possessed with the idea:"--this much Willoughby said with well-acted carelessness. "My only anxiety in dying," he added, with a suddenly altered tone, and an inquiring look of the most mournful tenderness, "is for you, Alfred; I fear you will feel it severely; but do not!--do not! Why should any one be miserable?--I shall not be missed, except by you: no selfish happiness, I know, will enable you entirely to forget me. My mother is kind, very kind; but you were always her favourite--and that in time will reconcile her--"

Caroline was in Alfred's thoughts; her name even trembled on his lips, but he had not courage to give it utterance.

"You speak wildly," he said, "my dear Willoughby; you not missed!

you--who--who--you who love and are beloved." Willoughby laid his hand on Alfred's, and looked anxiously in his face for some moments, but continued silent; at length he moved his lips, as if about to speak; then pressing his brother's hand, dropped it, and exclaimed, "I cannot!--I cannot!" An instant after he burst into a pa.s.sion of tears, and laying his head on Alfred's shoulder, wept like a child, till relieved by giving way to his feelings, though completely exhausted, he seemed to sleep. In a few seconds, however, he started, looked up, and repeated anxiously once or twice, "What have I been saying, Alfred? what have I been saying? I think I have been asleep," he added; "but I have lately got into a strange habit of laying awake the whole night: it is merely a habit. Sleep is altogether a habit, I think. I don't sleep at all now, as I tell you; and yet you see I am perfectly well!"

Alfred looked mournfully at him, and replied, "Would to heaven you were, Willoughby! Do," he added, anxiously, "let us go to town; you ought to take some medical advice; if, as you say, you do not sleep, you cannot be well."

"Well--I am perfectly well I a.s.sure you--shall we ride?" he added, rising and calling his two beautiful greyhounds that lay on the rug before the fire: "I wonder, by the by," he continued, "if they have laid the poison which I ordered for the rats in the stable-lofts; shall we go out at the back way, and I'll see to it myself."

Willoughby hurried out, Alfred followed, and heard him inquire with great precision respecting the poison, and give, in the most rational manner, precautionary directions against mistakes or accidents in its use. A servant in reply pointed out a shelf in the saddle-room, where it lay perfectly apart from all articles of food; and showed both the gentlemen that the outward paper was, according to a usual and very proper precaution on the part of druggists and apothecaries, strongly marked in very large letters--"_Poison, a.r.s.enic_." The characters too, though done with a pen, were those of print, which made them more strikingly legible to every eye.

The brothers now proceeded to ride as Willoughby had proposed; Alfred, however, could think of nothing but the poison: he had often heard of the most artful preparations on the part of deranged persons, and he could not banish the idea that Willoughby had made the particular inquiries he had just heard with a view to possessing himself of the a.r.s.enic; and he determined, lest this should indeed be the case, that he would, as soon as he returned to the house, privately take away the packet from where he had seen it, and put it in some place of security.

If the fearful project of self-destruction did indeed dwell among the wanderings of his brother's mind, the quiet removal of the means would not only prevent the immediate execution of his fatal purpose, but might by possibility change the current of his thoughts into some more healthful channel. Accordingly, as soon after their return as he could find a convenient opportunity, he repaired to the said saddle-room, and not wishing to confide his fears to any one, possessed himself, un.o.bserved as he supposed, of the paper of a.r.s.enic, which he locked up carefully in his own escritoire, feeling, as he did so, almost a security, that he had thus for the present, at least, removed one danger from the reach of his poor brother; for as Willoughby had been scarcely out of his sight, since they came back from their ride, there was no reason to fear that the mischief was already done: nor did it indeed occur to Alfred, when he found the packet laying where he had seen it in the morning, that without displacing the whole, sufficient for the purpose he dreaded might have been taken away.

For the remainder of the day, and especially during dinner, he observed that Willoughby's manners were more than ever strange and inconsistent; and that his efforts at gaiety were fewer and worse sustained than on any former occasion; yet, as long as the servants were present, extravagant. While, the moment the brothers were alone, there was an overflow of mournful tenderness, and an expression of the same character in his countenance which filled Alfred with the most harrowing sensations. Yet a circ.u.mstance had occurred when they were riding, which had in a great measure allayed his immediate fears, and given his thoughts too, a somewhat new direction. They had met with a neighbouring squire who, possessing little either of tact or delicacy, and also thinking himself privileged as being not only an old man but an old acquaintance, immediately began to rally Sir Willoughby on the report of his approaching marriage.

Willoughby saw that Alfred watched him anxiously; and, being rendered by the presence of a stranger doubly determined to keep his secret to the last, he aroused himself to great exertion and replied with astonishing coolness, at the same time admitting the fact of his intended marriage, that the event to which the squire alluded was not to take place so immediately as he seemed to imagine, for that previously to his becoming a benedict he was to join his friends at Paris, and proceed with them on a tour which would occupy some months.

The old gentleman at parting commended him for showing Lady Anne Armadale so soon how little he thought of her, and congratulated him on the great superiority of his present choice, both in beauty and fortune.

The gloom and abstraction of Willoughby after this was so marked that it suggested to Alfred the possibility of his not having yet conquered his first attachment, and of his having entered into his present engagement more out of pique than preference. How strange and absorbing for a time were the speculations occasioned by such a surmise, while some of them were calculated almost to reawaken selfish regrets, yet were these again checked by the appalling thought that such a supposition strengthened his worst fears; contending emotions were more likely seriously and permanently to unsettle the mind than the excitement, however great, of a successful attachment; at least, to suppose such a cause, it was necessary to take for granted a predisposition stronger than there was, perhaps, sufficient grounds to believe did exist.

That disease however, was present, whatever the cause, there could be no doubt; and Alfred firmly resolved, therefore, if he could not the very next day prevail with Willoughby to accompany him to town, that he would send thither for the first medical advice that could be obtained, and also entreat his mother to come to Arden. For he now began to fear with infinite self-reproach that he had already carried delicacy on this point too far.

CHAPTER XIX.

A biscuit and a gla.s.s of wine-and-water was usually the temperate supper of the brothers. They generally took it in the library, and read till they felt disposed to retire for the night. This evening Alfred, who had risen from the table for a book which he happened to be some little time in selecting, observed on his return, but without a suspicion at the moment as to the cause, that the water which Willoughby was pouring into his gla.s.s looked less clear than usual. He remarked upon the circ.u.mstance and advised his brother to put it away and have some fresh brought up.

"It seems very good," said Willoughby, adding wine and taking off the whole at one draught, though in general he sipped it from time to time during perhaps an hour of either reading or conversation.

Alfred accustomed to his brother's love of opposition in trifles was not at all surprised. He sighed, however, for he always considered this infirmity of temper a symptom of the incipient malady he dreaded; so simply saying,

"There is quite a sediment in the goblet you see," he read on, but still without an apprehension. It had somehow never once entered into his calculations, amid all his vague fears, that a mode and occasion so public as the present would have been chosen.

"Put away your book, Alfred," said Willoughby, a few moments after.

Alfred looked up and saw that his brother was pale in the extreme, and with a ghastliness of expression quite alarming.

"I have the idea more strongly impressed upon my mind than ever this evening that I shall not live long!" said Willoughby in a voice changed and hoa.r.s.e; "and that when I do die," he continued, "it will be suddenly, very suddenly: let our good-night then be also a farewell; we know not what may happen before morning."

"Do not make me miserable by such melancholy forebodings," said Alfred, "surely--there is, there can be no cause for such! Willoughby!

Willoughby! you do look ill!" And the thought crossed his mind, that had he not secured the poison he should now be really alarmed.

"It is only a presentiment," said Willoughby, affecting a ghastly smile; "yet, lest it should be verified, indulge me in my childishness, and before I go to bed take leave of me, and--forgive, say you forgive every pettish word, every wilful act, of which I have ever been guilty towards you, my kind, my excellent, my too amiable brother."

"Forgive! dear Willoughby! surely I have all that is kind and n.o.ble in intention to thank you for, nothing to forgive--unless indeed," and he paused in silent alarm. "Oh, Willoughby," he added, gazing at the working of his countenance, "I fear--I fear some terrible purpose! speak to me! tell me I am wrong--you have no such thought--no you would not--you press my hand, what does that mean? Speak, Willoughby! Is it to rea.s.sure me?--oh, my poor mother--think of her!--think of me, how much, how truly I love you, never should I know happiness again, if--oh misery--those eyes--he does not know me!" Willoughby attempted to speak; the words were not only indistinctly uttered, but evidently without purpose in their arrangement; while unable longer to maintain the struggle against bodily suffering, with the wildness of delirium in his looks and gestures, he sank on a sofa writhing in agonies which partook of the nature of convulsions.

The now terrified Alfred, calling aloud for help, hastily loosed his brother's stock and undid the b.u.t.tons of his waistcoat; within which, while so employed, his eye was unavoidably drawn from its close connexion with the frightful circ.u.mstances of the moment, by a piece of crushed paper, on which the word "_Poison_," in the conspicuous characters already described, was nevertheless strikingly visible.

Alfred s.n.a.t.c.hed up this fatal witness; it was a part of what he had seen in the morning, and had but too evidently been thrust into the bosom as a place of concealment after its contents had been emptied into the goblet; nay, it had still a considerable portion of the powder lurking in its folds. The terrible conviction that his precaution had been too late, and that his brother had a.s.suredly swallowed the _poison_, flashed at once upon Alfred, fearfully strengthened by the appearance of Willoughby laying on the sofa, his eyeb.a.l.l.s rolling beneath their closed lids, except when they started wildly open for a second and closed again. He still attempted to speak, but now nearly without the power of articulation, saving that the name of Alfred was more than once distinguishable amid a low rapid murmur, which however soon faded into whispers, then subsided into a mere movement of the lips without sound, and then ceased altogether. By this time the poor sufferer had become quite insensible, and no one had yet answered Alfred's continued calls for help. He now ran to the bell, then to the door, giving orders to the servants, who at length appeared, to fly for the nearest medical aid, adding incoherent directions about bringing antidotes for _poison_, and even naming a.r.s.enic in particular; yet at the same moment, without any direct consciousness of what he was doing, his fingers with a sort of instinctive movement were thrusting within the breast of his own waistcoat, the fatal sc.r.a.p of paper he had found in his brother's bosom; for all the while that with the aid of servants he was vainly endeavouring to render a.s.sistance to Willoughby, confused notions were floating through his mind of the dreadful addition, that in case of the worst, it would be to his poor mother's grief to know that Willoughby had committed the awful crime of putting a period to his own existence; and mingled with these, were thoughts still more disjointed of Christian rites refused to persons guilty of suicide: so that altogether Alfred was actuated, without any power of defining his motives, by a vague sense, that some sort of necessity existed for suppressing the proofs of his brother having wilfully taken the _poison_. He was of course quite incapable at such a moment of a process of reasoning by which to decide what other supposition it would be either probable or desirable should be formed.

Messengers had been despatched in every direction; yet before any medical man arrived, the convulsions had subsided, and death, accompanied by the most ghastly appearances, taken place.

At length the bustle of an arrival was heard; instead, however, of the expected doctor, Geoffery Arden entered the room.