Devereux — Volume 06 by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (top 10 novels of all time .txt) 📗

I saw its rugged walls stretch—stretch away, on either side, until they reached hell; and there I beheld—but I will not tell you till we meet there! Now I am calm again: read on.

We could not discover Isora nor her home: perhaps the priest took care that it should be so; for, at that time, what with his devilish whispers and my own heart, I often scarcely knew what I was or what I desired; and I sat for hours and gazed upon the air, and it seemed so soft and still that I longed to make an opening in my forehead that it might enter there, and so cool and quiet the dull, throbbing, scorching anguish that lay like molten lead in my brain; at length we found the house. "To-morrow," said the Abbe, and he shed tears over me,—for there were times when that hard man did feel,—"to-morrow, my child, thou shalt see her; but be soft and calm." To-morrow came; but Montreuil was pale, paler than I had ever seen him, and he gazed upon me and said, "Not to-day, Son, not to-day; she has gone out, and will not return till nightfall." My brother, the evening came, and with it came Desmarais; he came in terror and alarm. "The villain Oswald," he said, "has betrayed all; he drew me aside and told me so. 'Hark ye, Jean,' he whispered, 'hark ye: your master has my brother's written confession and the real will; but I have provided for your safety, and if he pleases it, for Montreuil's. The packet is not to be opened till the seventh day; fly before then. But I know," added Desmarais, "where the packet is placed;" and he took Montreuil aside, and for a while I heard not what they said; but I did overhear Desmarais at last, and I learned that it was your /bridal night/.

What felt I then? The same tempestuous fury,—the same whirlwind and storm of heart that I had felt before, at the mere anticipation of such an event? No; I felt a bright ray of joy flash through me. Yes, joy; but it was that joy which a conqueror feels when he knows his mortal foe is in his power and when he dooms that enemy to death. "They shall perish, and on this night," I said inly. "I have sworn it; I swore to Isora that the bridal couch should be stained with blood, and I will keep the oath!" I approached the pair; they were discussing the means for obtaining the packet. Montreuil urged Desmarais to purloin it from the place where you had deposited it, and then to abscond; but to this plan Desmarais was vehemently opposed. He insisted that there would be no possible chance of his escape from a search so scrutinizing as that which would necessarily ensue, and he evidently resolved not /alone/ to incur the danger of the theft. "The Count," said he, "saw that I was present when he put away the packet. Suspicion will fall solely on me. Whither should I fly? No: I will serve you with my talents, but not with my life." "Wretch," said Montreuil, "if that packet is opened, thy life is already gone." "Yes," said Desmarais; "but we may yet purloin the papers, and throw the guilt upon some other quarter. What if I admit you when the Count is abroad? What if you steal the packet, and carry away other articles of more seeming value? What, too, if you wound me in the arm or the breast, and I coin some terrible tale of robbers, and of my resistance, could we not manage then to throw suspicion upon common housebreakers,—nay, could we not throw it upon Oswald himself? Let us silence that traitor by death, and who shall contradict our tale? No danger shall attend this plan. I will give you the key of the escritoire: the theft will not be the work of a moment." Montreuil at first demurred to this proposal, but Desmarais was, I repeat, resolved not to incur the danger of the theft alone; the stake was great, and it was not in Montreuil's nature to shrink from peril, when once it became necessary to confront it. "Be it so," he said, at last, "though the scheme is full of difficulty and of danger: be it so. We have not a day to lose. To-morrow the Count will place the document in some place of greater safety, and unknown to us: the deed shall be done to-night. Procure the key of the escritoire; admit me this night; I will steal disguised into the chamber; I will commit the act from which you, who alone could commit it with safety, shrink. Instruct me exactly as to the place where the articles you speak of are placed. I will abstract them also. See that if the Count wake, he has no weapon at hand. Wound yourself, as you say, in some place not dangerous to life, and to-morrow, or within an hour after my escape, tell what tale you will. I will go, meanwhile, at once to Oswald; I will either bribe his silence—ay, and his immediate absence from England—or he shall die. A death that secures our own self-preservation is excusable in the reading of all law, divine or human." I heard, but they deemed me insensible: they had already begun to grow unheeding of my presence. Montreuil saw me, and his countenance grew soft. "I know all," I said, as I caught his eye which looked on me in pity, "I know all: they are married. Enough!—with my hope ceases my love: care not for me."

Montreuil embraced and spoke to me in kindness and in praise. He assured me that you had kept your wedding so close a secret that he knew it not, nor did even Desmarais, till the evening before,—till after he had proposed that I should visit Isora that very day. I know not, I care not, whether he was sincere in this. In whatever way one line in the dread scroll of his conduct be read, the scroll was written in guile, and in blood was it sealed. I appeared not to notice Montreuil or his accomplice any more. The latter left the house first. Montreuil stole forth, as he thought, unobserved; he was masked, and in complete disguise. I, too, went forth. I hastened to a shop where such things were procured; I purchased a mask and cloak similar to the priest's. I had heard Montreuil agree with Desmarais that the door of the house should be left ajar, in order to give greater facility to the escape of the former; I repaired to the house in time to see Montreuil enter it. A strange, sharp sort of cunning, which I had never known before, ran through the dark confusion of my mind. I waited for a minute, till it was likely that Montreuil had gained your chamber; I then pushed open the door, and ascended the stairs. I met no one; the moonlight fell around me, and its rays seemed to me like ghosts, pale and shrouded, and gazing upon me with wan and lustreless eyes. I know not how I found your chamber, but it was the only one I entered. I stood in the same room with Isora and yourself: ye lay in sleep; Isora's face—O God! I know no more—no more of that night of horror—save that I fled from the house reeking with blood,—a murderer,—and the murderer of Isora!

Then came a long, long dream. I was in a sea of blood,—blood-red was the sky, and one still, solitary star that gleamed far away with a sickly and wan light was the only spot, above and around, which was not of the same intolerable dye. And I thought my eyelids were cut off, as those of the Roman consul are said to have been, and I had nothing to shield my eyes from that crimson light, and the rolling waters of that unnatural sea. And the red air burned through my eyes into my brain, and then that also, methought, became blood; and all memory,—all images of memory,—all idea,—wore a material shape and a material colour, and were blood too. Everything was unutterably silent, except when my own shrieks rang over the shoreless ocean, as I drifted on. At last I fixed my eyes—the eyes which I might never close—upon that pale and single star; and after I had gazed a little while, the star seemed to change slowly—slowly—until it grew like the pale face of that murdered girl, and then it vanished utterly, and /all/ was blood!

This vision was sometimes broken, sometimes varied by others, but it always returned; and when at last I completely woke from it, I was in Italy, in a convent. Montreuil had lost no time in removing me from England. But once, shortly after my recovery, for I was mad for many months, he visited me, and he saw what a wreck I had become. He pitied me; and when I told him I longed above all things for liberty—for the green earth and the fresh air, and a removal from that gloomy abode—he opened the convent gates and blessed me, and bade me go forth. "All I require of you," said he, "is a promise. If it be understood that you live, you will be persecuted by inquiries and questions which will terminate in a conviction of your crime: let it therefore be reported in England that you are dead. Consent to the report, and promise never to quit Italy nor to see Morton Devereux."

I promised; and that promise I have kept: but I promised not that I would never reveal to you, in writing, the black tale which I have now recorded. May it reach you! There is one in this vicinity who has undertaken to bear it to you: he says he has known misery; and when he said so, his voice sounded in my ear like yours; and I looked upon him, and thought his features were cast somewhat in the same mould as your own; so I have trusted him. I have now told all. I have wrenched the secret from my heart in agony and with fear. I have told all: though things which I believe are fiends have started forth from the grim walls around to forbid it; though dark wings have swept by me, and talons, as of a bird, have attempted to tear away the paper on which I write; though eyes, whose light was never drunk from earth, have glared on me; and mocking voices and horrible laughter have made my flesh creep, and thrilled through the marrow of my bones,—I have told all; I have finished my last labour in this world, and I will now lie down and die.

AUBREY DEVEREUX.

The paper dropped from my hands. Whatever I had felt in reading it, I had not flinched once from the task. From the first word even to the last, I had gone through the dreadful tale, nor uttered a syllable, nor moved a limb. And now as I rose, though I had found the being who to me had withered this world into one impassable desert; though I had found the unrelenting foe and the escaped murderer of Isora, the object of the execration and vindictiveness of years,—not one single throb of wrath, not one single sentiment of vengeance, was in my breast. I passed at once to the bedside of my brother: he was awake, but still and calm,—the calm and stillness of exhausted nature. I knelt down quietly beside him. I took his hand, and I shrank not from the touch, though by that hand the only woman I ever loved had perished.

"Look up, Aubrey!" said I, struggling with tears which, despite of my most earnest effort, came over me; "look up: all is forgiven. Who on earth shall withhold pardon from a crime which on earth has been so awfully punished? Look up, Aubrey; I am your brother, and I forgive you. You are right: my childhood was harsh and fierce; and had you feared me less you might have confided in me, and you would not have sinned and suffered as