Venetia - Benjamin Disraeli (books to read as a couple TXT) 📗

were valiant and celebrated it remained for him to rival, to excel them, at least in one respect. Their coronet had never rested on a brow fairer than the one for which he destined it. Venetia then, independently of his passionate love, was the only apparent object worth his pursuit, the only thing in this world that had realised his dreams, dreams sacred to his own musing soul, that even she had never shared or guessed. And she, she was to be his. He could not doubt it: but to-morrow would decide; to-morrow would seal his triumph.

His sleep was short and restless; he had almost out-watched the stars, and yet he rose with the early morn. His first thought was of Venetia; he was impatient for the interview, the interview she promised and even proposed. The fresh air was grateful to him; he bounded along to Cherbury, and brushed the dew in his progress from the tall grass and shrubs. In sight of the hall, he for a moment paused. He was before his accustomed hour; and yet he was always too soon. Not to-day, though, not to-day; suddenly he rushes forward and springs down the green vista, for Venetia is on the terrace, and alone!

Always kind, this morning she greeted him with unusual affection. Never had she seemed to him so exquisitely beautiful. Perhaps her countenance to-day was more pale than wont. There seemed a softness in her eyes usually so brilliant and even dazzling; the accents of her salutation were suppressed and tender.

'I thought you would be here early,' she remarked, 'and therefore I rose to meet you.'

Was he to infer from this artless confession that his image had haunted her in her dreams, or only that she would not delay the conversation on which his happiness depended? He could scarcely doubt which version to adopt when she took his arm and led him from the terrace to walk where they could not be disturbed.

'Dear Plantagenet,' she said, 'for indeed you are very dear to me; I told you last night that I would speak to you to-day on your wishes, that are so kind to me and so much intended for my happiness. I do not love suspense; but indeed last night I was too much surprised, too much overcome by what occurred, that exhausted as I naturally was by all our pleasure, I could not tell you what I wished; indeed I could not, dear Plantagenet.'

'My own Venetia!'

'So I hope you will always deem me; for I should be very unhappy if you did not love me, Plantagenet, more unhappy than I have even been these last two years; and I have been very unhappy, very unhappy indeed, Plantagenet.'

'Unhappy, Venetia! my Venetia unhappy?'

'Listen! I will not weep. I can control my feelings. I have learnt to do this; it is very sad, and very different to what my life once was; but I can do it.'

'You amaze me!'

Venetia sighed, and then resumed, but in a tone mournful and low, and yet to a degree firm.

'You have been away five years, Plantagenet.'

'But you have pardoned that.'

'I never blamed you; I had nothing to pardon. It was well for you to be away; and I rejoice your absence has been so profitable to you.'

'But it was wicked to have been so silent.'

'Oh! no, no, no! Such ideas never entered into my head, nor even mamma's. You were very young; you did as all would, as all must do. Harbour not such thoughts. Enough, you have returned and love us yet.'

'Love! adore!'

'Five years are a long space of time, Plantagenet. Events will happen in five years, even at Cherbury. I told you I was changed.'

'Yes!' said Lord Cadurcis, in a voice of some anxiety, with a scrutinising eye.

'You left me a happy child; you find me a woman, and a miserable one.'

'Good God, Venetia! this suspense is awful. Be brief, I pray you. Has any one--'

Venetia looked at him with an air of perplexity. She could not comprehend the idea that impelled his interruption.

'Go on,' Lord Cadurcis added, after a short pause; 'I am indeed all anxiety.'

'You remember that Christmas which you passed at the hall and walking at night in the gallery, and--'

'Well! Your mother, I shall never forget it.'

'You found her weeping when you were once at Marringhurst. You told me of it.'

'Ay, ay!'

'There is a wing of our house shut up. We often talked of it.'

'Often, Venetia; it was a mystery.'

'I have penetrated it,' replied Venetia in a solemn tone; 'and never have I known what happiness is since.'

'Yes, yes!' said Lord Cadurcis, very pale, and in a whisper.

'Plantagenet, I have a father.'

Lord Cadurcis started, and for an instant his arm quitted Venetia's. At length he said in a gloomy voice, 'I know it.'

'Know it!' exclaimed Venetia with astonishment. 'Who could have told you the secret?'

'It is no secret,' replied Cadurcis; 'would that it were!'

'Would that it were! How strange you speak, how strange you look, Plantagenet! If it be no secret that I have a father, why this concealment then? I know that I am not the child of shame!' she added, after a moment's pause, with an air of pride. A tear stole down the cheek of Cadurcis.

'Plantagenet! dear, good Plantagenet! my brother! my own brother! see, I kneel to you; Venetia kneels to you! your own Venetia! Venetia that you love! Oh! if you knew the load that is on my spirit bearing me down to a grave which I would almost welcome, you would speak to me; you would tell me all. I have sighed for this; I have longed for this; I have prayed for this. To meet some one who would speak to me of my father; who had heard of him, who knew him; has been for years the only thought of my being, the only object for which I existed. And now, here comes Plantagenet, my brother! my own brother! and he knows all, and he will tell me; yes, that he will; he will tell his Venetia all, all!'

'Is there not your mother?' said Lord Cadurcis, in a broken tone.

'Forbidden, utterly forbidden. If I speak, they tell me her heart will break; and therefore mine is breaking.'

'Have you no friend?'

'Are not you my friend?'

'Doctor Masham?'

'I have applied to him; he tells me that he lives, and then he shakes his head.'

'You never saw your father; think not of him.'

'Not think of him!' exclaimed Venetia, with extraordinary energy. 'Of what else? For what do I live but to think of him? What object have I in life but to see him? I have seen him, once.'

'Ah!'

'I know his form by heart, and yet it was but a shade. Oh, what a shade! what a glorious, what an immortal shade! If gods were upon earth they would be like my father!'

'His deeds, at least, are not godlike,' observed Lord Cadurcis dryly, and with some bitterness.

'I deny it!' said Venetia, her eyes sparkling with fire, her form dilated with enthusiasm, and involuntarily withdrawing her arm from her companion. Lord Cadurcis looked exceedingly astonished.

'You deny it!' he exclaimed. 'And what should you know about it?'

'Nature whispers to me that nothing but what is grand and noble could be breathed by those lips, or fulfilled by that form.'

'I am glad you have not read his works,' said Lord Cadurcis, with increased bitterness. 'As for his conduct, your mother is a living evidence of his honour, his generosity, and his virtue.'

'My mother!' said Venetia, in a softened voice; 'and yet he loved my mother!'

'She was his victim, as a thousand others may have been.'

'She is his wife!' replied Venetia, with some anxiety.

'Yes, a deserted wife; is that preferable to being a cherished mistress? More honourable, but scarcely less humiliating.'

'She must have misunderstood him,' said Venetia. 'I have perused the secret vows of his passion. I have read his praises of her beauty. I have pored over the music of his emotions when he first became a father; yes, he has gazed on me, even though but for a moment, with love! Over me he has breathed forth the hallowed blessing of a parent! That transcendent form has pressed his lips to mine, and held me with fondness to his heart! And shall I credit aught to his dishonour? Is there a being in existence who can persuade me he is heartless or abandoned? No! I love him! I adore him! I am devoted to him with all the energies of my being! I live only on the memory that he lives, and, were he to die, I should pray to my God that I might join him without delay in a world where it cannot be justice to separate a child from a father.'

And this was Venetia! the fair, the serene Venetia! the young, the inexperienced Venetia! pausing, as it were, on the parting threshold of girlhood, whom, but a few hours since, he had fancied could scarcely have proved a passion; who appeared to him barely to comprehend the meaning of his advances; for whose calmness or whose coldness he had consoled himself by the flattering conviction of her unknowing innocence. Before him stood a beautiful and inspired Moenad, her eye flashing supernatural fire, her form elevated above her accustomed stature, defiance on her swelling brow, and passion on her quivering lip!

Gentle and sensitive as Cadurcis ever appeared to those he loved, there was in his soul a deep and unfathomed well of passions that had been never stirred, and a bitter and mocking spirit in his brain, of which he was himself unconscious. He had repaired this hopeful morn to Cherbury to receive, as he believed, the plighted faith of a simple and affectionate, perhaps grateful, girl. That her unsophisticated and untutored spirit might not receive the advances of his heart with an equal and corresponding ardour, he was prepared. It pleased him that he should watch the gradual development of this bud of sweet affections, waiting, with proud anxiety, her fragrant and her full-blown love. But now it appeared that her coldness or her indifference might be ascribed to any other cause than the one to which he had attributed it, the innocence of an inexperienced mind. This girl was no stranger to powerful passions; she could love, and love with fervency, with devotion, with enthusiasm. This child of joy was a woman of deep and thoughtful sorrows, brooding in solitude over high resolves and passionate aspirations. Why were not the emotions of such a tumultuous soul excited by himself? To him she was calm and imperturbable; she called him brother, she treated him as a child. But a picture, a fantastic shade, could raise in her a tempestuous swell of sentiment that transformed her whole mind, and changed the colour of all her hopes and thoughts. Deeply prejudiced against her father, Cadurcis now hated him, and with a fell and ferocious earnestness that few bosoms but his could prove. Pale with rage, he ground his teeth and watched her with a glance of sarcastic aversion.

'You led me here to listen to a communication which interested me,' he at length said. 'Have I heard it?'

His altered tone, the air of haughtiness which he assumed, were not lost upon