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Book online «Devereux — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best free novels txt) 📖». Author Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton
At that name my feelings, shocked and stunned at first by the unexpected intelligence of the poor Spaniard’s danger, felt a sudden and fierce revulsion. I combated it. “This is no time,” I thought, “for any jealous, for any selfish, emotion. If I can serve her, if I can relieve her father, let me be contented.”—“She will see me,” I said aloud, and I slipped some money in the woman’s hand. “I am an old friend of the family, and I shall not be an unwelcome intruder on the sickroom of the sufferer.”
“Intruder, sir,—bless you, the poor gentleman is quite speechless and insensible.”
At hearing this I could refrain no longer. Isora’s disconsolate, solitary, destitute condition broke irresistibly upon me, and all scruple of more delicate and formal nature vanished at once. I ascended the stairs, followed by the old woman—she stopped me by the threshold of a room on the second floor, and whispered “There!” I paused an instant,—collected breath and courage, and entered. The room was partially darkened. The curtains were drawn closely around the bed. By a table, on which stood two or three phials of medicine, I beheld Isora, listening with an eager, a most eager and intent face to a man whose garb betrayed his healing profession, and who, laying a finger on the outstretched palm of his other hand, appeared giving his precise instructions, and uttering that oracular breath which—mere human words to him—was a message of fate itself,—a fiat on which hung all that makes life life to his trembling and devout listener. Monarchs of earth, ye have not so supreme a power over woe and happiness as one village leech! As he turned to leave her, she drew from a most slender purse a few petty coins, and I saw that she muttered some words indicative of the shame of poverty, as she tremblingly tended them to the outstretched palm. Twice did that palm close and open on the paltry sum; and the third time the native instinct of the heart overcame the later impulse of the profession. The limb of Galen drew back, and shaking with a gentle oscillation his capitalian honours, he laid the money softly on the table, and buttoning up the pouch of his nether garment, as if to resist temptation, he pressed the poor hand still extended towards him, and bowing over it with a kind respect for which I did long to approach and kiss his most withered and undainty cheek, he turned quickly round, and almost fell against me in the abstracted hurry of his exit.
“Hush!” said I, softly. “What hope of your patient?”
The leech glanced at me meaningly, and I whispered to him to wait for me below. Isora had not yet seen me. It is a notable distinction in the feelings, that all but the solitary one of grief sharpen into exquisite edge the keenness of the senses, but grief blunts them to a most dull obtuseness. I hesitated now to come forward; and so I stood, hat in hand, by the door, and not knowing that the tears streamed down my cheeks as I fixed my gaze upon Isora. She too stood still, just where the leech had left her, with her eyes fixed upon the ground, and her head drooping. The right hand, which the man had pressed, had sunk slowly and heavily by her side, with the small snowy fingers half closed over the palm. There is no describing the despondency which the listless position of that hand spoke, and the left hand lay with a like indolence of sorrow on the table, with one finger outstretched and pointing towards the phials, just as it bad, some moments before, seconded the injunctions of the prim physician. Well, for my part, if I were a painter I would come now and then to a sick chamber for a study.
At last Isora, with a very quiet gesture of self-recovery, moved towards the bed, and the next moment I was by her side. If my life depended on it, I could not write one, no, not one syllable more of this scene.
CHAPTER XI.
CONTAINING MORE THAN ANY OTHER CHAPTER IN THE SECOND BOOK OF THIS HISTORY.
MY first proposal was to remove the patient, with all due care and gentleness, to a better lodging, and a district more convenient for the visits of the most eminent physicians. When I expressed this wish to Isora, she looked at me long and wistfully, and then burst into tears. “You will not deceive us,” said she, “and I accept your kindness at once,—from him I rejected the same offer.”
“Him?—of whom speak you?—this Barnard, or rather—but I know him!” A startling expression passed over Isora’s speaking face.
“Know him!” she cried, interrupting me, “you do not,—you cannot!”
“Take courage, dearest Isora,—if I may so dare to call you,—take courage: it is fearful to have a rival in that quarter; but I am prepared for it. This Barnard, tell me again, do you love him?”
“Love—O God, no!”
“What then? do you still fear him?—fear him, too, protected by the unsleeping eye and the vigilant hand of a love like mine?”
“Yes!” she said falteringly, “I fear for you!”
“Me!” I cried, laughing scornfully, “me! nay, dearest, there breathes not that man whom you need fear on my account. But, answer me; is not—”
“For Heaven’s sake, for mercy’s sake!” cried Isora, eagerly, “do not question me; I may not tell you who, or what this man is; I am bound, by a most solemn oath, never to divulge that secret.”
“I care not,” said I, calmly, “I want no confirmation of my knowledge: this masked rival is my own brother!”
I fixed my eyes full on Isora while I said this, and she quailed beneath my gaze: her cheek, her lips, were utterly without colour, and an expression of sickening and keen anguish was graven upon her face. She made no answer.
“Yes!” resumed I, bitterly, “it is my brother,—be it so,—I am prepared; but if you can, Isora, say one word to deny it.”
Isora’s tongue seemed literally to cleave to her mouth; at last with a violent effort, she muttered, “I have told you, Morton, that I am bound by oath not to divulge this secret; nor may I breathe a single syllable calculated to do so,—if I deny one name, you may question me on more,—and, therefore, to deny one is a breach of my oath. But, beware!” she added vehemently, “oh! beware how your suspicions—mere vague, baseless suspicions—criminate a brother; and, above all, whomsoever you believe to be the real being under this disguised name, as you value your life, and therefore mine,—breathe not to him a syllable of your belief.”
I was so struck with the energy with which this was said, that, after a short pause, I rejoined, in an altered tone,—
“I cannot believe that I have aught against life to fear from a brother’s hand; but I will promise you to guard against latent danger. But is your oath so peremptory that you cannot deny even one name?—if not, and you can deny this, I swear to you that I will never question you upon another.”
Again a fierce convulsion wrung the lip and distorted
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