Falkner: A Novel

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

"Do not ask me to reason with you and refute your arguments," replied Elizabeth; "our position is different from that of any other parent and child. I will not say I owe you more than daughter ever owed father—perhaps the sacred tie of blood may stand in place of the obligations you have heaped on me; but I will not reason; I cannot leave you. Right or wrong in the eyes of others, my own heart would perpetually reproach me. I should image your solitary wanderings, your lonely hours of sickness and suffering, and my peace of mind would be destroyed."

"It is true," said Falkner, "that I am more friendless than most men; yet I am not so weak and womanish that I need perpetual support. Your society is dear to me, dearer, God, who reads my heart, knows, than liberty or life; I shall return to that society, and again enjoy it; but, for a time, do not fear but that I can form such transitory ties as will prevent solitary suffering. Men and women abound who will feel benevolently towards the lonely stranger; money purchases respect; blameless manners win kindness. I shall find friends in my need if I desire it, and I shall return at last to you."

"My dearest father," said Elizabeth, "you cannot deceive me. I penetrate your motives, but you wholly mistake. You would force me also to mistake your character, but I know you too well. You never form transitory friendships; you take no pleasure in the ordinary run of human intercourse. You inquire; you seek for instruction; you endeavour to confer benefits; but you have no happiness except such as you derive from your heart, and that is not easily impressed. Did you not for many long years continue faithful to one idea—adhere to one image—devote yourself to one, one only, despite all that separated you? Did not the impediment you found to the fulfilment of your visions blight your whole life, and bring you here? Pardon me if I allude to these things. I cannot be to you what she was, but you can no more banish me from your heart and imagination than you could her. I know that you cannot. We are not parent and child," she continued, playfully, "but we have a strong resemblance on one point—fidelity is our characteristic; we will not speak of this to others, they might think that we boasted. I am not quite sure that it is not a defect; at least in some cases, as with you it proved a misfortune. To me it can never be such: it repays itself. I cannot leave you, whatever befalls. If Gerard Neville is hereafter lost to me, I cannot help it; it would kill me to fall off from you. I must follow the natural, the irresistible bent of my character.

"To-morrow, the day after to-morrow, we will speak more of this. What is necessary for your happiness, be assured, I will fulfil without repining; but now, dearest father, let us not speak of the future now; my heart is too full of the present—the future appears to me a dream never to be arrived at. Oh, how more than blessed I shall be when the future, the long future, shall grow into interest and importance!"

They were interrupted. One person came in, and then another, and the appalling details of the morrow effectually banished all thoughts of plans, the necessity of which Falkner wished to impress on his young companion. He also was obliged to give himself up to present cares. He received all, he talked to all, with a serious but unembarrassed air: while Elizabeth sat shuddering by, wiping away her tears unseen, and turning her dimmed eyes from one to the other, pale and miserable. We have fortitude and resignation for ourselves; but when those beloved are in peril we can only weep and pray. Sheltered in a dusky corner, a little retreated behind Falkner, she watched, she listened to all, and her heart almost broke. "Leave him! after this leave him!" she thought, "a prey to such memories? Oh, may all good angels desert me when I become so vile a wretch!"

The hour came when they must part. She was not to see him on the morrow, until the trial was over; for her presence during the preliminary scenes was neither fitting nor practicable. Already great indulgences had been granted to the prisoner, arising from his peculiar position, the great length of time since the supposed crime had been committed, and the impression, now become general, that he was innocent. But this had limits—the morrow was to decide all, and send him forth free and guiltless, or doom him to all the horrors of condemnation and final suffering.

Their parting was solemn. Neither indulged in grief. Falkner felt composed—Elizabeth endeavoured to assume tranquillity; but her lips quivered, and she could not speak; it was like separating not to meet for years; a few short hours, and she would look again upon his face—but how much would happen in the interval! how mighty a change have occurred! What agony would both have gone through! the one picturing, the other enduring the scene of the morrow; the gaze of thousands—the accusation—the evidence—the defence—the verdict—each of these bearing with it to the well-born and refined a barbed dart, pregnant with thrilling poison; ignominy added to danger. How Elizabeth longed to express to the assembled world the honour in which she held him, whom all looked on as overwhelmed with disgrace; how she yearned to declare the glory she took in the ties that bound them, and the affection that she bore! She must be mute—but she felt all this to bursting; and her last words, "Best of men! excellent, upright, noble, generous, God will preserve you and restore you to me!" expressed in some degree the swelling emotions of her soul. They parted. Night and silence gathered round Falkner's pillow. With stoical firmness he banished retrospect—he banished care. He laid his hopes and fears at the feet of that Almighty power, who holds earth and all it contains in the hollow of his hand, and he would trouble himself no more concerning the inevitable though unknown decree. His thoughts were at first solemn and calm; and then, as the human mind can never, even in torture, fix itself unalterably on one point, milder and more pleasing reveries presented themselves. He thought of himself as a wild yet not worthless schoolboy—he remembered the cottage porch clustered over with odoriferous parasites, under whose shadow sat—the sick, pale lady, with her starry eyes and wise lessons, and her radiant daughter, whose soft hand he held as they both nestled close at her feet. He recalled his wanderings with that daughter over hill and dale, when their steps were light, and their hearts unburdened with a care, soared to that heaven which her blessed spirit had already reached. Oh, what is life, that these dreams of youth and innocence should have conducted her to an untimely grave—him to a felon's cell! The thought came with a sharp pang; again he banished it, and the land of Greece, his perils, and his wanderings with Elizabeth on the shores of Zante, now replaced his other memories. He then bore a burden on his heart, which veiled with dark crape the glories of a sunny climate, the heart-cheering tenderness of his adopted child—this was less bitter, this meeting of fate, this atonement. Sleep crept over him at last; and such is the force of innocence, that though a cloud of agony hung over his awakening, yet he slept peacefully on the eve of his trial.

Towards morning his sleep became less tranquil. He moved—he groaned—then, opening his eyes, he started up, struggling to attain full consciousness of where he was, and wherefore. He had been dreaming—and he asked himself what had been the subject of his dreams. Was it Greece—or the dreary waste shores of Cumberland? And why did that fair lingering shape beckon him? Was it Alithea or Elizabeth? Before these confused doubts could be solved, he recognised the walls of the cell, and saw the shadow of the bars of his windows on the curtain spread before it. It was morning—the morning—where would another sun find him?

He rose and drew aside the curtain—and there were the dark, high walls—weather-stained and huge; clear, but sunless daylight was spread over each object—it penetrated every nook, and yet was devoid of cheer. There is indeed something inexpressibly desolate in the sight of the early, gray, chill dawn dissipating the shadows of night, when the day which it harbingers is to bring misery. Night is a cloak—a shelter—a defence—all men sleep at night—the law sleeps, and its dread ministrants are harmless in their beds, hushed like cradled children. "Even now they sleep," thought Falkner, "pillowed and curtained in luxury—but day is come, and they will soon resume their offices—and drag me before them—and wherefore?—because it is day—because it is Wednesday—because names have been given to portions of time, which otherwise might be passed over and forgotten."

To the surgeon's eye a human body sometimes presents itself merely as a mass of bones, muscles, and arteries—though that human body may contain a soul to emulate Shakspeare—and thus there are moments when the wretched dissect the forms of life—and contemplating only the outward semblance of events, wonder how so much power of misery, or the reverse, resides in what is after all but sleeping or waking—walking here or walking there—seeing one fellow-creature instead of another. Such were the morbid sensations that absorbed Falkner as day grew clearer and clearer—the narrow court more gloomy as compared with the sky, and the objects in his cell assumed their natural colour and appearances. "All asleep," he again thought, "except I, the sufferer; and does my own Elizabeth sleep? Heaven grant it, and guard her slumbers! May those dear eyes long remain closed in peace upon this miserable day!"