Morley Ernstein; or, the Tenants of the Heart

by G. P. R. James

CHAPTER LIV.

That season of the year was approaching when it is necessary for foreigners to quit Rome, if they hold their life very dearly; and Morley Ernstein, though certainly with no thought of malaria, had more than once proposed to Lieberg to pursue their way to Naples, but for some reason, best known to himself, the latter had always made some excuse to delay. In the meantime, he surrounded Morley Ernstein with temptations of all sorts, upon which we will not dwell, having already displayed the course which he followed, and the means which he took, and it being unnecessary to repeat nearly the same story. He did not succeed, it is true, to any great extent. Some few pieces of extravagance, Morley certainly was led to commit--some few acts which he regretted,--not many, but enough to give Lieberg encouragement to pursue his plan with good hope of success at last; for the water does not more certainly wear the stone over which it passes, than a constant familiarity with vicious scenes destroys the moral principle in the heart of man.

Morley Ernstein would not approach the gaming-table, however, neither would he drink to anything like excess, though that also was tried by his dear friend, who well knew, that, as in the case of the Santon, one folly of such a kind opens the door to vices of all sorts. It may be asked, what was the object of all this?--it may be said that there must be a motive for all human actions. Reader, I cannot clearly tell you what the object was; and Lieberg's conduct certainly seemed more fiend-like than human. He afterwards indeed uttered some dark words which were never explained and might be untrue; but if there was not some deep seated cause of enmity towards Morley Ernstein in his bosom, arising in circumstances that we know not, we can only guess at his purposes and motives. To degrade Morley in the eyes of Helen Barham was certainly one end in view; but besides this, we have seen that his young companion had on more than one occasion thwarted him in an object of passion, had mortified his vanity and wounded his pride; and if we take these causes of offence, acting upon a malignant mind, together with the natural antipathy that the evil feel towards the good, and the jealous hatred of a man who sees another preferred by the being that he loves, the motives may perhaps be considered sufficient for his conduct. There may indeed have been something more--I am inclined to believe it was so--but what, I know not.

The struggle was still going on with Morley Ernstein between temptation and resistance, when, one day, as he was passing along the Piazza del Popolo, he saw a magnificent carriage, undoubtedly of English construction, standing before the great hotel, the name of which I forget, with two or three servants round the door, and the usual quantity of lackeys, couriers, and ciceroni at the entrance of the inn. When his eyes first lighted upon it he was at a considerable distance, and while he was still some thirty yards, a lady came out of the hotel with a quick step, and entered the vehicle. The door was closed, the order given where to drive, and the carriage, taking a turn, dashed past Morley the moment after. There was an earl's coronet and emblazoned arms upon the panel, and Morley, raising his eyes to the window, beheld the countenance of Juliet Carr. How often had he seen that face with joy--ay, even after hope had passed away; and the first sensation had always been pleasure; but now, there was something in Juliet's dress and appearance--something in the magnificence of the equipage--something, perhaps, in his own pre-conceived suspicions which made the sight of her he loved feel like a heavy blow upon his heart. She evidently did not see him, and was speaking with a smile to some one else who was in the vehicle with her. Morley paused for an instant to recover breath, and then advancing to the inn, determined to have his doubts satisfied, he asked an English servant, who was still gazing after the carriage, whose it was.

The man was one of those saucy English footmen who are the disgrace of many of our noble houses; and to any one but a man of Morley's distinguished appearance he might have made an insolent reply. To him, however, he answered, in a civil tone--"The Countess of Clavering, sir."

"Lord Clavering has not long been married, I think," said Morley, in as firm a voice as he could command.

"About a month, sir," replied the man, with a grin, "and he has already gone back to England to attend the house of peers. That was my lady who just drove away."

Morley turned with his heart burning and his brain whirling round; but, pausing after he had taken a step or two, with a bitter smile curling his lip, he took out his card-case, and, walking back, gave the man a card, saying--"That for Lady Clavering, with my congratulations."

The attempt to describe the feelings of Morley Ernstein, when the full agony burst upon him, would indeed be vain. His passionate indignation approached nearly to madness; his bitter, bitter anguish of spirit might have tempted him, at that moment, to commit any act which his worst enemy could wish. He felt it--he knew it to be so--his command over himself was gone, and he feared to return to the inn where he had left Lieberg, lest he might be led into some irretrievable step of folly or of vice. He wandered, then, through the streets of Rome for several hours, with the hurried pace and unequal step of a man torn by terrible emotions. He saw nothing that passed him; his eye marked none of the objects it rested upon; his spirit, busy within itself, seemed to have lost communication with the bodily senses; and it was nearly night when he was recalled to himself by some one suddenly seizing his arm, and exclaiming--"What is the matter, Morley? I have been following you this half hour, and you do not seem to know where you are going, or what you are doing."

"Nor do I, Lieberg," replied Morley. "All I have undergone is not equal to this."

"Nay, nay," said Lieberg; "come back to the hotel, and tell me what is the matter. By keeping your griefs and anxieties to yourself you more than double them; and not only that, but you are unjust to me. In striving to suggest those things which might divert your mind without knowing what it is that weighs upon it, I very often may propose the worst things when I wish to offer the best. I beseech you, Morley, tell me all."

"I will, Lieberg--I will," replied Morley. "I will; but let us go home first;" and walking quickly on by the side of his companion he took his way to the hotel, where, casting himself into a chair, he covered his eyes with his hands for two or three minutes to collect his thoughts, and then gave Lieberg a hurried and confused account of his attachment to Juliet Carr, and all that had occurred in the course of that true love, which had run even more roughly than is usually the case with the troubled course of human affection.

After he had brought his narrative up to the events of Venice, he paused, and Lieberg replied--"I had known something of all this, Morley, but not accurately, and I see I have made several mistakes in dealing with you. I did not know that you loved her so intensely. You may think me light, but my passions and attachments are as strong, or stronger than your own. I believed that you would have acted, if you truly loved her, as I would have acted under similar circumstances, that you would have pursued her, struggled against her resolutions, combated her arguments, set at nought idle vows, and ultimately won her for your happiness and for her own. But I forgot, Morley, that you are less experienced in all things than I am, and though passion may give the impetus to action, it is experience that must guide it to success. I forgot this, I say, and fancying that you loved her with one of those half loves, which may be diverted by pleasures and occupations, or swallowed up in another attachment, I endeavoured to lead your mind upon a course it could not follow. Now, however, I am convinced that you do love--at least I believe so, but I shall soon see, by the steps which you once take when your eyes are open. You seem to think that she has true affection for you; and, though from your agitation now, I suppose you have seen her again, and that she has once more treated you with the same cruel coldness, if you do love her, you will pursue her with that vigour of determination which will sweep away all obstacles. There is a might in real passion to which all inferior things soon bow, and which woman's heart can never resist, even for an hour, when once convinced that it is truly present. But that conviction cannot be produced by any sign of weakness,--you must show her that you love her, as none but strong and powerful hearts can love. That you are resolved to possess her, or to die----"

"Vain, vain, vain!" cried Morley, in bitterness of spirit. "It is all now in vain; she did love me; but driven by some promise extorted by her father, I suppose, she is now the wife of another!"

Lieberg started, and gazed upon him in surprise, then grasped his arm, and with his dark star-like eyes fixed on his face, exclaimed--"Take her from him! What right has he to possess her? Is she not yours? Yours by the bond of the heart's affection--yours by the tie that is beyond the earth--yours by the union of spirit with spirit! Talk not to me of human laws and ordinances, where the soul itself recognises a rule that is defined. You are her husband, if with the true intensity of heaven's own fire you love her and she loves you. You are her husband, I say, and every hour of her union with another is adultery. Take her from him, Morley--take her from him, be he who he may. Scruple at no means, stop at no pitiful considerations; it is due to her as well as to yourself--it is due to her in every sense. Think, think of the long and lasting misery that she must endure. Do you not know--are you not sure that every hour she must recollect you? What human ordinance will blot you out from her memory? What empty words, spoken at an altar, will erase from her heart the husband of her early dreams. Morley, if you are a lover--if you are a man--you will spare that sweet, mistaken girl the hell-fire tenderness of him whom she cannot love!"

"Hush, hush, hush!" cried Morley. "You will drive me mad!"

"You are mad already, Morley", replied Lieberg, "or you would fly to her at once. You would show her the brow which she loves, scathed with the lightning of passion, the form of him to whom she promised heaven, blighted by the consuming hell of disappointed affection. You would call upon her to remedy the wrong that she has committed--you would urge her with those words of power, the omnipotent magic of love, to save you from despair, destruction, and death, and to give you back the joy of which she has robbed you."

Thus did he proceed, reader, adding to the words he spoke, that overpowering eloquence of look, gesture, and tone, which has far more effect than language, but can never be described. Let it be remembered, too, that this was addressed to Morley Ernstein at a moment when the whole powers of his mind were shaken by the agony he endured, when reason herself tottered on her throne, and despair had broken down the great prop of all good principle--hope. He sat and listened, not without a knowledge that there was wrong and evil in the words he heard; but it was as a man for whom all life's joys and expectations are extinct, and who, in a moment of frenzied desperation, takes quietly the cup he knows to be poisoned, and drains it with a bitter smile.

At length, however, he rose, and said, "Lieberg, I will leave you for to-night. I cannot converse with any one--my story is scarcely told, but a few words more will do it. She is married to a man as old as her father--to a Lord Clavering--"

"Why, he is just gone to England!" exclaimed Lieberg.

"I know it," answered Morley, "and has left her here."

"Fly to her, Morley--fly to her!" cried Lieberg, grasping his hand--"fly to her this very night!"

"No," answered Morley, "no! Whatever I do, I must have time for thought."

Thus saying, he left him, and in the silence and solitude of his own chamber, paced up and down for more than an hour, with the better spirit within him struggling vehemently against the spell, but too weak to cast it off by its own efforts.

"I must fly," he said to himself, at length--"I must fly from this man, or he will destroy me. I will fly speedily, both from him and from the presence of her who has cast away my happiness and her own. To-morrow I will seek for the means, and to-night I will see him no more. I will throw off his dangerous companionship. To avoid evil is the next thing to conquering it."

He opened the door to call his servant Adam Gray; the old man was sitting at the other side of the antechamber, and looking eagerly towards the entrance of his master's room.

"I have knocked twice, sir," he said, "but you did not hear me."

"I was busy with very sad meditations, Adam," replied his master.

"I thought so, sir," answered the old man, simply, "for I saw to-day the person who always causes them--I wish I might say all--"

"Say nothing, my good Adam--say nothing upon that subject," replied Morley.

"No; I must not tell anything now, sir," rejoined Adam Gray, "but the time will come for me to speak."

"You said you knocked," continued Morley, gravely; "what do you want?"

"Why, sir," replied Adam, "there's another person in Rome besides her; a person whom you will be glad to see, I think; and who will be glad enough to see you, poor thing!"

"Who is that?" demanded his master; the expression, "poor thing," showing him that his old servant spoke of some person he believed to be attached to him, and making his mind immediately turn to Veronica. Alas, he never thought of Helen Barham!

"Why, sir, it is the young lady who was for some time with Lady Malcolm," replied Adam Gray. "Miss Barham, or Miss Helen, as people always call her. I saw her maid looking about the town with the courier, about an hour or two ago, and told them where you were, so just now the courier brought this note for you."

Morley ordered lights into his room, and taking the note, read as follows:--

"My Dear Sir;

"Although, under ordinary circumstances, it might seem strange for me to ask you to come to see me, yet I feel that it would show a want of gratitude were I to be in the same city with yourself and not tell you that I am here. But I have another excuse for that which I acknowledge I am very willing to do. You are, I dare say, aware, by this time, of my poor brother's death, and that the property which to my great regret, he claimed and obtained from you, has descended to me. There is still, however, some business to settle in regard to it, which I am sure he would have wished to arrange himself as I propose, if his life had been spared to do so. In regard to these arrangements, I could much wish to speak with you, as well as to assure you that I am, ever most truly,

"Your grateful,

"Helen Barham."

"P.S. I will wait at home to-morrow till you call, unless you let me know that it is inconvenient to do so on that day."

Morley answered the note at once, and named the hour, and this return to the ordinary things of life had some effect in calming his mind again. Twice he asked himself why Adam Gray had called Helen "poor thing," but he turned his thoughts away from the images to which the reply gave rise.