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

upon Isora’s calm face: “thou feelest it not, and I could destroy thee and myself,—myself the criminal, thee the cause of the crime!”

* I need not point out to the novel-reader how completely the character of Aubrey has been stolen in a certain celebrated French romance. But the writer I allude to is not so unmerciful as M. de Balzac, who has pillaged scenes in “The Disowned” with a most gratifying politeness.

It must have been that my eyes betrayed my feelings that Isora loved me not, that she shrank from me even at the first: why else should I not have called forth the same sentiments which she gave to you? Was not my form cast in a mould as fair as yours? did not my voice whisper in as sweet a tone? did I not love her with as wild a love? Why should she not have loved me? I was the first whom she behold: she would—ay, perhaps she would have loved me, if you had not come and marred all. Curse yourself, then, that you were my rival! curse yourself that you made my heart as a furnace, and smote my brain with frenzy; curse—O sweet Virgin, forgive me!—I know not,—I know not what my tongue utters or my hand traces!

You came, then, Morton, you came; you knew her; you loved her; she loved you. I learned that you had gained admittance to the cottage, and the moment I learned it, I looked on Isora, and felt my fate, as by intuition: I saw at once that she was prepared to love you; I saw the very moment when that love kindled from conception into form; I saw—and at that moment my eyes reeled and my ears rang as with the sound of a rushing sea, and I thought I felt a cord snap within my brain, which has never been united again.

Once only, after your introduction to the cottage, did I think of confiding to you my love and rivalship; you remember one night when we met by the castle cave, and when your kindness touched and softened me despite of myself. The day after that night I sought you, with the intention of communicating to you all; and while I was yet struggling with my embarrassment and the suffocating tide of my emotions, you premeditated me by giving me your confidence. Engrossed by your own feelings, you were not observant of mine; and as you dwelt and dilated upon your love for Isora, all emotions, save those of agony and of fury, vanished from my breast. I did not answer you then at any length, for I was too agitated to trust to prolix speech; but by the next day I had recovered myself, and I resolved, as far as I was able, to play the hypocrite, “he cannot love her as I do!” I said; “perhaps I may, without disclosure of my rivalship and without sin in the attempt, detach him from her by reason.” Fraught with this idea, I collected myself, sought you, remonstrated with you, represented the worldly folly of your love, and uttered all that prudence preaches—in vain, when it preaches against passion!

Let me be brief. I saw that I made no impression on you; I stifled my wrath; I continued to visit and watch Isora. I timed my opportunities well: my constant knowledge of your motions allowed me to do that; besides, I represented to the Spaniard the necessity, through political motives, of concealing myself from you; hence, we never encountered each other. One evening, Alvarez had gone out to meet one of his countrymen and confederates. I found Isora alone, in the most sequestered part of the garden; her loveliness, and her exceeding gentleness of manner, melted me. For the first time audibly my heart spoke out, and I told her of my idolatry. Idolatry! ay, that is the only word, since it signifies both worship and guilt! She heard me timidly, gently, coldly. She spoke; and I found confirmed from her own lips what my reason had before told me,—that there was no hope for me. The iron that entered also roused my heart. “Enough!” I cried fiercely, “you love this Morton Devereux, and for him I am scorned.” Isora blushed and trembled, and all my senses fled from me. I scarcely know in what words my rage and my despair clothed themselves: but I know that I divulged myself to her; I know that I told her I was the brother, the rival, the enemy of the man she loved,—I know that I uttered the fiercest and the wildest menaces and execrations,—I know that my vehemence so overpowered and terrified her that her mind was scarcely less clouded—less lost, rather—than my own. At that moment the sound of your horse’s hoofs was heard. Isora’s eyes brightened and her mien grew firm. “He comes,” she said, “and he will protect me!” “Hark!” I said, sinking my voice, and, as my drawn sword flashed in one hand, the other grasped her arm with a savage force,—“hark, woman!” I said,—and an oath of the blackest fury accompanied my threats,—“swear that you will never divulge to Morton Devereux who is his real rival, that you will never declare to him nor to any one else that the false Barnard and the true Aubrey Devereux are the same,—swear this, or I swear [and I repeated, with a solemn vehemence, that dread oath] that I will stay here; that I will confront my rival; that, the moment he beholds me, I will plunge this sword in his bosom; and that, before I perish myself, I will hasten to the town, and will utter there a secret which will send your father to the gallows: now, your choice?”

Morton, you have often praised, my uncle has often jested at, the womanish softness of my face. There have been moments when I have seen that face in the glass, and known it not, but started in wild affright, and fancied that I beheld a demon; perhaps in that moment this change was over it. Slowly Isora gazed upon me; slowly blanched into the hues of death grew her cheek and lip; slowly that lip uttered the oath I enjoined. I released my gripe, and she fell to the earth suddenly, and stunned as if struck by lightning. I stayed not to look on what I had done; I heard your step advance; I fled by a path that led from the garden to the beach; and I reached my home without retaining a single recollection of the space I had traversed to attain it.

Despite the night I passed—a night which I will leave you to imagine—I rose the next morning with a burning interest to learn from you what had passed after my flight, and with a power, peculiar to the stormiest passions, of an outward composure while I listened to the recital. I saw that I was safe; and I heard, with a joy so rapturous that I question whether even Isora’s assent to my love would have given me an equal transport, that she had rejected you. I uttered some advice to you commonplace enough: it displeased you, and we separated.

That evening, to my surprise, I was privately visited by Montreuil. He had some designs in hand which brought him from France into the neighbourhood, but which made him desirous of concealment. He soon drew from me my secret; it is marvellous, indeed, what power he had of penetrating, ruling, moulding, my feelings and my thoughts. He wished, at that time, a communication to be made and a letter to be given to Alvarez. I could not execute this commission personally; for you had informed me of your intention of watching if you could not discover or meet with Barnard, and I knew you were absent from home on that very purpose. Nor was Montreuil himself desirous of incurring the risk of being seen by you,—you over whom, sooner or later, he then trusted to obtain a power equal to that which he held over your brothers. Gerald then was chosen to execute the commission. He did so; he met Alvarez for the first and only time on the beach, by the town