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

I had not, however, much leisure for these thoughts. When I arrived at the lodgings of Alvarez, I found that a great change had taken place in his condition; he had recovered speech, though imperfectly, and testified a return to sense. I flew upstairs with a light step to congratulate Isora: she met me at the door. “Hush!” she whispered: “my father sleeps!” But she did not speak with the animation I had anticipated.

“What is the matter, dearest?” said I, following her into another apartment: “you seem sad, and your eyes are red with tears, which are not, methinks, entirely the tears of joy at this happy change in your father.”

“I am marked out for suffering,” returned Isora, more keenly than she was wont to speak. I pressed her to explain her meaning; she hesitated at first, but at length confessed that her father had always been anxious for her marriage with this soi-disant Barnard, and that his first words on his recovery had been to press her to consent to his wishes.

“My poor father,” said she, weepingly, “speaks and thinks only for my fancied good; but his senses as yet are only recovered in part, and he cannot even understand me when I speak of you. ‘I shall die,’ he said, ‘I shall die, and you will be left on the wide world!’ I in vain endeavoured to explain to him that I should have a protector: he fell asleep muttering those words, and with tears in his eyes.”

“Does he know as much of this Barnard as you do?” said I.

“Heavens, no!—or he would never have pressed me to marry one so wicked.”

“Does he know even who he is?”

“Yes!” said Isora, after a pause; “but he has not known it long.”

Here the physician joined us, and taking me aside, informed me that, as he had foreboded, sleep had been the harbinger of death, and that Don Diego was no more. I broke the news as gently as I could to Isora: but her grief was far more violent than I could have anticipated; and nothing seemed to cut her so deeply to the heart as the thought that his last wish had been one with which she had not complied, and could never comply.

I pass over the first days of mourning: I come to the one after Don Diego’s funeral. I had been with Isora in the morning; I left her for a few hours, and returned at the first dusk of evening with some books and music, which I vainly hoped she might recur to for a momentary abstraction from her grief. I dismissed my carriage, with the intention of walking home, and addressing the woman-servant who admitted me, inquired, as was my wont, after Isora. “She has been very ill,” replied the woman, “ever since the strange gentleman left her.”

“The strange gentleman?”

Yes, he had forced his way upstairs, despite of the denial the servant had been ordered to give to all strangers. He had entered Isora’s room; and the woman, in answer to my urgent inquiries, added that she had heard his voice raised to a loud and harsh key in the apartment; he had stayed there about a quarter of an hour, and had then hurried out, seemingly in great disorder and agitation.

“What description of man was he?” I asked.

The woman answered that he was mantled from head to foot in his cloak, which was richly laced, and his hat was looped with diamonds, but slouched over that part of his face which the collar of his cloak did not hide, so that she could not further describe him than as one of a haughty and abrupt bearing, and evidently belonging to the higher ranks.

Convinced that Gerald had been the intruder, I hastened up the stairs to Isora. She received me with a sickly and faint smile, and endeavoured to conceal the traces of her tears.

“So!” said I, “this insolent persecutor of yours has discovered your abode, and again insulted or intimidated you. He shall do so no more! I will seek him to-morrow; and no affinity of blood shall prevent—”

“Morton, dear Morton!” cried Isora, in great alarm, and yet with a certain determination stamped upon her features, “hear me! It is true this man has been here; it is true that, fearful and terrible as he is, he has agitated and alarmed me: but it was only for you, Morton,—by the Holy Virgin, it was only for you! ‘The moment,’ said he, and his voice ran shiveringly through my heart like a dagger, ‘the moment Morton Devereux discovers who is his rival, that moment his death-warrant is irrevocably sealed!’”

“Arrogant boaster!” I cried, and my blood burned with the intense rage which a much slighter cause would have kindled from the natural fierceness of my temper. “Does he think my life is at his bidding, to allow or to withhold? Unhand me, Isora, unhand me! I tell you I will seek him this moment, and dare him to do his worst!”

“Do so,” said Isora, calmly, and releasing her hold; “do so; but hear me first: the moment you breathe to him your suspicions you place an eternal barrier betwixt yourself and me! Pledge me your faith that you will never, while I live at least, reveal to him—to any one whom you suspect—your reproach, your defiance, your knowledge—nay, not even your lightest suspicion—of his identity with my persecutor; promise me this, Morton Devereux, or I, in my turn, before that crucifix, whose sanctity we both acknowledge and adore,—that crucifix which has descended to my race for three unbroken centuries,—which, for my departed father, in the solemn vow, and in the death-agony, has still been a witness, a consolation, and a pledge, between the soul and its Creator,—by that crucifix which my dying mother clasped to her bosom when she committed me, an infant, to the care of that Heaven which hears and records forever our lightest word,—I swear that I will never be yours!”

“Isora!” said I, awed and startled, yet struggling against the impression her energy had made upon me, “you know not to what you pledge yourself, nor what you require of me. If I do not seek out this man, if I do not expose to him my knowledge of his pursuit and unhallowed persecution of you, if I do not effectually prohibit and prevent their continuance, think well, what security have I for your future peace of mind,—nay, even for the safety of your honour or your life? A man thus bold, daring and unbaffled in his pursuit, thus vigilant and skilful in his selection of time and occasion,—so that, despite my constant and anxious endeavour to meet him in your presence, I have never been able to do so,—from a man, I say, thus pertinacious in resolution, thus crafty in disguise, what may you not dread when you leave him utterly fearless by the license of impunity? Think too, again, Isora, that the mystery dishonours as much as the danger menaces. Is it meet that my betrothed and my future bride should be subjected to these secret and terrible visitations,—visitations of a man professing himself her lover, and evincing the vehemence of his passion by that of his pursuit? Isora—Isora—you have not weighed these things; you know not what you demand of me.”

“I do!” answered Isora; “I do know all that I demand of you; I demand of you only to preserve your life.”

“How,” said I, impatiently, “cannot my hand preserve my life? and is it for