Devereux — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best free novels txt) 📖

resist the impulse. You I loved better than all; but I was jealous of each. If my mother caressed you or Gerald, if you opened your heart to either, it stung me to the quick. I it was who said to my mother, “Caress him not, or I shall think you love him better than me.” I it was who widened, from my veriest childhood, the breach between Gerald and yourself. I it was who gave to the childish reproach a venom, and to the childish quarrel a barb. Was this love? Yes, it was love; but I could not endure that ye should love one another as ye loved me. It delighted me when one confided to my ear a complaint against the other, and said, “Aubrey, this blow could not have come from thee!”

Montreuil early perceived my bias of temper: he might have corrected it and with ease. I was not evil in disposition; I was insensible of my own vice. Had its malignity been revealed to me, I should have recoiled in horror. Montreuil had a vast power over me; he could mould me at his will. Montreuil, I repeat, might have saved me, and thyself, and a third being, better and purer than either of us was, even in our cradles. Montreuil did not: he had an object to serve, and he sacrificed our whole house to it. He found me one day weeping over a dog that I had killed. “Why did you destroy it?” he said; and I answered, “Because it loved Morton better than me!” And the priest said, “Thou didst right, Aubrey!” Yes, from that time he took advantage of my infirmity, and could rouse or calm all my passions in proportion as he irritated or soothed it.

You know this man’s object during the latter period of his residence with us: it was the restoration of the House of Stuart. He was alternately the spy and the agitator in that cause. Among more comprehensive plans for effecting this object, was that of securing the heirs to the great wealth and popular name of Sir William Devereux. This was only a minor mesh in the intricate web of his schemes; but it is the character of the man to take exactly the same pains, and pursue the same laborious intrigues, for a small object as for a great one. His first impression, on entering our house, was in favour of Gerald; and I believe he really likes him to this day better than either of us. Partly your sarcasms, partly Gerald’s disputes with you, partly my representations,—for I was jealous even of the love of Montreuil,—prepossessed him against you. He thought, too, that Gerald had more talent to serve his purposes than yourself and more facility in being moulded to them; and he believed our uncle’s partiality to you far from being unalienable. I have said that, at the latter period of his residence with us, he was an agent of the exiled cause. At the time I now speak of, he had not entered into the great political scheme which engrossed him afterwards. He was merely a restless and aspiring priest, whose whole hope, object, ambition, was the advancement of his order. He knew that whoever inherited, or whoever shared, my uncle’s wealth, could, under legitimate regulation, promote any end which the heads of that order might select; and he wished therefore to gain the mastery over us all. Intrigue was essentially woven with his genius, and by intrigue only did he ever seek to arrive at any end he had in view.* He soon obtained a mysterious and pervading power over Gerald and myself. Your temper at once irritated him, and made him despair of obtaining an ascendant over one who, though he testified in childhood none of the talents for which he has since been noted, testified, nevertheless, a shrewd, penetrating, and sarcastic power of observation and detection. You, therefore, he resolved to leave to the irregularities of your own nature, confident that they would yield him the opportunity of detaching your uncle from you and ultimately securing to Gerald his estates.

* It will be observed that Aubrey frequently repeats former assertions; this is one of the most customary traits of insanity.—ED.

The trial at school first altered his intentions. He imagined that he then saw in you powers which might be rendered availing to him: he conquered his pride—a great feature in his character—and he resolved to seek your affection. Your subsequent regularity of habits and success in study confirmed him in his resolution; and when he learned from my uncle’s own lips that the Devereux estates would devolve on you, he thought that it would be easier to secure your affection to him than to divert that affection which my uncle had conceived for you. At this time, I repeat, he had no particular object in view; none, at least, beyond that of obtaining for the interest of his order the direction of great wealth and some political influence. Some time after—I know not exactly when, but before we returned to take our permanent abode at Devereux Court—a share in the grand political intrigue which was then in so many branches carried on throughout England, and even Europe, was confided to Montreuil.

In this I believe he was the servant of his order, rather than immediately of the exiled House; and I have since heard that even at that day he had acquired a great reputation among the professors of the former. You, Morton, he decoyed not into this scheme before he left England: he had not acquired a sufficient influence over you to trust you with the disclosure. To Gerald and myself he was more confidential. Gerald eagerly embraced his projects through a spirit of enterprise; I through a spirit of awe and of religion. RELIGION! Yes,—then,—long after,—now,—when my heart was and is the home of all withering and evil passions, Religion reigned,—reigns, over me a despot and a tyrant. Its terrors haunt me at this hour; they people the earth and the air with shapes of ghastly menace! They—Heaven pardon me! what would my madness utter? Madness?—madness? Ay, that is the real scourge, the real fire, the real torture, the real hell, of this fair earth!

Montreuil, then, by different pleas, won over Gerald and myself. He left us, but engaged us in constant correspondence. “Aubrey,” he said, before he departed, and when he saw that I was wounded by his apparent cordiality towards you and Gerald—“Aubrey,” he said, soothing me on this point, “think not that I trust Gerald or the arrogant Morton as I trust you. You have my real heart and my real trust. It is necessary to the execution of this project, so important to the interests of religion and so agreeable to the will of Heaven, that we should secure all co-operators: but they, your brothers, Aubrey, are the tools of that mighty design; you are its friend.” Thus it was that, at all times when he irritated too sorely the vice of my nature, he flattered it into seconding his views; and thus, instead of conquering my evil passions, he conquered by them. Curses—No, no, no!—I will be calm.

We returned to Devereux Court, and we grew from boyhood into youth. I loved you then, Morton. Ah! what would I not give now for one pure feeling, such as I felt in your love? Do you remember the day on which you had extorted from my uncle his consent to your leaving us for the pleasures and pomps of London? Do you remember the evening of that day, when I came to seek you, and we sat down on a little mound, and talked over your projects, and you spoke then to me of my devotion and my purer and colder feelings? Morton, at that very moment my veins burned with passion!—at that very moment my heart was feeding the vulture fated to live and prey within it forever! Thrice did I resolve to confide in you, as we then sat together, and thrice did my evil genius forbid it. You seemed, even in your affection to me, so wholly engrossed with your own hopes; you seemed so little to regret leaving me; you stung,