CHAPTER XXI.

"Oh! had I met thee then, when life was bright, Thy smile might still have fed its tranquil light; But now thou com'st, like sunny skies, Too late to cheer the seaman's eyes, When wrecked and lost his bark before him lies! No--leave this heart to rest, if rest it may, Since youth, and love, and hope have passed away." _Moore._

We return to Viscount de Vere. When the Earl had left him, the guards had departed, the door been bolted and barred, and lights fled, he felt indeed alone. The dungeon in which he was confined was cold and dark, but scarcely so cold as the past seemed to him, and scarcely so dark as the future. Seldom, perhaps, has such an adverse fate ever followed mortal,--seldom has one seen an instance in which one who might have graced the rank to which he was born, has been, as it were, crushed to be a disgrace! We can afford to look harshly on the character of Captain de Vere; but pity must mingle with our frown when we look fairly on his victim. In the expressive words of the poet we have before quoted,--

"His heart was formed for softness--warped to wrong."

He had no right to become what he did. Had he had ordinary advantages, he might have lived to be an ornament to his profession, and an example instead of a beacon to warn others from the shoals on which he had wrecked his bark. We have only to glance over a few of the turning points in his life to see this. An innocent child,--not for his own fault but his father's,--is carried off by a wronged and desperate man. Had this not occurred, in all probability he would have grown up in his right position, and this tale would never have been written. This child, bred as a young pirate, nurtured among the wildest scenes of vice and bloodshed, was by a happy incident, rescued from this odious life; and had the action that delivered him destroyed his evil angel, Stacy, he would have still, in all likelihood, reflected honour on his rescuer. In the changes of life this young man and his destroyer are again thrown together, and an evil acquaintance begun. His greatest friend is cut off by yellow fever, and bearer of his sword, he makes his first acquaintance with her, his wild passion for whom sealed his woe. Once more he is thrown amongst his own family as a stranger, and as a guest enters his paternal hall.

His brother, in a high position at his expense, sues for and obtains the love of his adored one. No marvel the fiend of jealousy burned within him. He seeks Stacy as a counsellor, and by another strange mischance, meets his brother the Captain. From that fatal night we may date the first move downwards; like the train on the incline he began slowly,--his descent became swifter and swifter,--till at last, unable to arrest his dread pace, with fearful rapidity he rushed down the steep of sin and misery to the gulf of everlasting woe! He tried, first by deception, then by passionate entreaty, to regain the heart he had lost. Then came the second lost opportunity,--the night at the Towers, when a little firmness would have stayed his decline. He was of a wavering mind, an unfixed will, and the stern, strong-minded Captain outflanked him, and the second stage of infamy began.

We need not recapitulate the abduction of Ellen Ravensworth, the relief, his rescue from prison, subsequent disgraceful life, and attempted outrage on his old flame. Attachment had lost its pureness, all its hallowed light was shadowed, dimmed, departed; yet who could read of the last wrest from his native land, or see the hopeless passion in his black heart, when he felt himself wrung away from love and virtue, yet hating the life of crime he was drifting to, without feeling pity for the lost, erring man against whom the stars seemed to fight in their courses! After that fatal night the scene grows darker; we pass over the slave dealer and bloodthirsty brigand; the fearful quarrel, where brother mixed with brother in mortal fray; the escape, and the surrender; and we are now gazing on the actor of so many dreadful scenes lying a chained convict in a Neapolitan gaol.

We last saw him flying with his blood-won prize;--what has become of her--of Caroline Lennox? Often in a heart black as night there lingers something human,--something which, if it be not virtue, is so like it that it is attractive the more so for being alone amid a host of evil passions,--an Abdiel among innumerable false ones! Such a glimpse of better days shone in Adrian's mind, when he first resolved to save Caroline, and for her sake perpetrated the dark crime. At the first town he arrived at, Ariano, he left the young lady at the inn, giving also full directions that everything should be placed at her command which money could buy; for this he gave the host a purse of gold, at the same time threatening him with Adrian Vardarelli's vengeance if he failed to give an account of it. That name was sufficient to instil terror into the man's heart; and Caroline lacked no good thing till she was rescued from her sad position and sent to Scotland. Here (at Ariano) we leave her for the present, and follow Adrian, who, by forced marches, reached Naples, and at once gave himself up to the authorities; he was flung into the gaol where we found him, loaded with chains, till the merciful authorities chose to end his sufferings by beheadal or hanging.

He was a man then more sinned against than sinning,--led by worse advisers to perpetrate deeds which, left to himself, he would never even have thought of. Since the Earl's visit to him, and the discovery of his real position, his mind had grown darker and darker; so miserable did he become that death would have been a friend! It had been better he had never known it. One thing alone shed a ray, not of hope, but comfort in his night of sorrow: this was the thought he should ere long see her for whom he still entertained the liveliest affection. Strange it should have been so!--she whose broken plight had brought him to his present low estate, was yet dearer than all else; she was the only being he yet desired to live for. He felt he must have forfeited her love, her regard,--but not her pity. To hear her say, "I forgive;" to press the hand he had once pressed, when sincere and faithful; to hear the voice he loved and had heard in better hours; this would be the last joy he should rejoice in; and then, having bid farewell to her, having feasted his eyes once more, welcome darkness, welcome death! He was roused from such thoughts by the re-entrance of his keeper; this was unusual, and he began to wonder what it might mean. It was the Earl's gratuity to his guard which occasioned the surprise; in his eyes his prisoner was now a very different person; one who enjoyed the protection of the great English lord was very different from the friendless captive; and anxious to make reparation for the past, the Italian soldier, Giacomo, was bearer of a good repast, whilst two other men brought a mattress, on which the outlaw might lie more comfortably, as well as a sheepskin to cover him.

"Is there anything else Signore would like?" asked the guard of his astonished prisoner.

"Yes," replied Viscount de Vere. He then whispered something in the man's ear; a gesture told him he understood his meaning. The man then unbound his hands and feet, left a lantern and his supper, saying he would bring what he asked for early next day, and consigned him once more to solitude and his dark thoughts.

When the doors were barred the unhappy man rose, stretched his limbs, ate a few morsels of bread, drank a deep draught of spirits, and then began to pace his cell, backwards and forwards, as long as the light befriended him. Ere long the lamp began to flicker, the wick was burned to the socket, and it lit up, and darkened the prison with spasmodic convulsions, till it went out and left him in total darkness. Groping his way to the miserable bed, he stretched himself on it, drew the sheepskin over him, and actually slept.

He was awoke by the noise of the door being unbolted; soon afterwards Giacomo appeared with his breakfast,--the first one he had seen,--thanks to the purse! he also received from his keeper a small parcel, from which he tore the paper, and produced a glass phial full of a liquid as clear as water; he drew the cork, placed the bottle beneath his nose, and then, as if satisfied it was what he wanted, recorked it, and hid it under his vest.

"An English donna is going to visit Signore," said Giacomo.

"At what hour?"

"Afternoon, I think."

"Oh, my God!" exclaimed Viscount de Vere, clasping his hands together. "Leave me now;--no,--stay,--bring paper, pen, and ink."

In a short time these were brought, and the Viscount began to write. Several times he tore up what he had written; at last, as if satisfied with the contents, he folded the sheet, and addressed it to--

"_The Right Honourable, the Countess of Wentworth._" He also placed it beneath his vest. He then walked again hurriedly up and down his cell, often marking a ray of sunshine which crept along the damp ground--this was his timepiece. So accurately had he noticed its travels, he seemed to know the very minutes of its onward march. Hours rolled on. The beam had reached the allotted distance. "'Tis noon," he involuntarily exclaimed, drawing a long, deep sigh.

A few minutes, and he heard a footstep approaching the door, the key grated in the wards--he shuddered, and staggering rather than walking to his couch, threw himself on his breast, and buried his face in his hands. He heard the door open, and soon afterwards a light step approaching him--it ceased--she stood beside him. With a sudden exertion he sprung up and threw himself on his knees; for a few seconds he dared not look up; at last he raised his eyes--yes, there she stood, the lady of his love; long years had passed since he last saw her, but she was the same Ellen, her beauty matured, but unimpaired; she stood like his good angel, weeping over her lost charge; tear after tear gathered and fell from those large, blue eyes. This was his third strange interview with the adored idol of his heart. Once he had kneeled at her feet and from those lips heard the fatal words that sealed his doom; once he had stood the brutal oppressor over the weeping suppliant; now he kneeled at her feet, the convict prisoner; each had been a darker shade. On former occasions twice had Ellen opened the conversation, this time she was unable to speak, and it devolved on him to break silence.

"Ellen," he said, "unworthy as I feel to take your pure name on my defiled lips, do you forgive me? Oh! say so, and I die happy."

"Edward, I have nothing to forgive; I have forgiven long ago; it is I who should ask forgiveness of you."

"Thanks, lady, I can now die happy."

"Ah, Edward--for so I must still call you--to die happy there is need of forgiveness of sins; but why do you talk of death? I do hope and believe Wentworth will be able to procure your freedom, and then let your remaining years try and make up for the past, of which we will speak no more."

"No. I shall never leave this dungeon: it is too late now. Mine has been a wayward fate, it will soon be over. I have been too black a criminal; I have long bade adieu to hope."

"Ah! say not so: you little know the power of grace. Sinners greater far than you have been washed and made clean; why should you despair?"

"Ellen, it is useless to speak thus; I tell you I am lost, eternally lost. Had my life been different, had you been what you might have been to me, it would have been far otherwise; but regrets are useless, you have come too late to save me from the reward of my crimes."

"Oh, Edward! I know I have been deeply to blame, I know it was my change of sentiments to you that worked your ruin; to my dying hour I shall never cease to mourn over my fault. Oh, if I was the first to lead you astray, let me be the first to guide you back, and if in this world we have been severed, in that which is to come we shall meet to part never more. I speak as a sister now, as I am; dear brother, say not it is too late."

"Ellen, do not blame yourself thus. How was it possible you should love me? your heart was free, and because denied to me, I strove by mad violence to regain it, and lost all, deservedly."

"But you have it now, not as it was, but in a new light, a sister's love; and as a sister I have mourned over you; and often, often have I remembered in my prayers my erring friend. Oh! let them be granted by my seeing you put away the old man and be renewed in spirit."

"Alas! it is all to no purpose. I am lost, lost."

"You mistake the Gospel, it saves to the _uttermost_; the veriest outcast can find peace, for every sin there is forgiveness."

"Save one--you forget the verse, 'There is a sin unto death.'"

"But we know not what that is, and while life lasts the greatest sinner may return; the prayer of the dying thief was heard, so will yours be heard and answered."

"Vain, vain, I tell you, Ellen; I cannot pray; the Spirit left me long ago. I know the very night--the very hour--he left; that night I sold myself to the devil, the night I agreed to the diabolic plot against you, Ellen. Since then I have never felt aught save remorse, no desire to be better; prayer has frozen on my lips, I am a reprobate."

"You think too darkly. Oh! try and pray with me; resist the evil spirit, and he will flee from you."

The Countess knelt down beside the wretched man, and offered up a fervent prayer to heaven for him. He heard it with a cold, gloomy expression, and when she ceased, only said, "I cannot say amen; I tried, but it is impossible; believe me, Ellen, I am lost,--and, what is more, I mourn not my lost heaven. I want not paradise, but rest. Could I rest for ever in the dark grave 'twill be enough. I have seen you, I have heard you forgive me; the voice I loved in better days to hear has thrilled through me; I have had all I want, leave me to finish life as I deserve. Why should you or my brother trouble yourselves more?"

Tears of sorrow again coursed the Countess's cheek, as she bent over her old lover, and, taking his hand, said, "Do you love me, Edward?"

"Love you? yes; beyond all things earthly and divine. Ellen, you are the only being I love," answered the Viscount, with wild emotion.

"Then, if you love me, you will try and prepare for that place where I humbly hope--nay, believe--after death I shall live; you would not wish to be parted both in time and in eternity?"

"Ellen, you ask an impossibility. Ask anything else. No, it is not my wish, but so it must be. In this life I have seen you afar off, in the life that is to come I must see you afar off too. Oh! that we had never met. Do you recollect what I said when on my knees, which were never bent to man or to God since that moment? did I not say your refusal would drive me to desperation? see what it has done. I do not blame you; I have myself to blame: but ours was an ill-starred acquaintance--an ill-starred love. No, no, you will mourn for me here; you will sometimes give a passing thought to one who adored you so, for never was needle truer to the north than in weal and woe my heart has been to you. This is all I ask; and for me, I am not worthy to love you,--you are like a star I may look up to and worship, but which is at once shrined far above my affection or my hate."

For a long while after the Viscount ceased no word was uttered by either. The scene was at once a striking and a sad one. The prisoner had sunk back on his side, and, resting on his left elbow, gazed on the lovely being who knelt beside him with her hands clasped, and her eyes turned heavenwards. Her lips moved as though she were breathing a fervent petition for her brother. How marked was the contrast between the expression of those two!--vice had sullied the handsome features of one; virtue had lent a purer radiance to the sweet face of the other. How strange the contrast of their hearts!--one like the glacier, cold, dead, unmelting; the other like the warm sunbeam, which, alas! throws its brightness, but thaws not the icy mass it shines on. How different were their thoughts!--one was thinking with remorse on his wretched past life, without hope of a future; the other, whilst mourning over the falsehood which had worked such a ruin, was still ardent with hope that in due time her prayers would be answered; and as the mastless, rudderless vessel, tossed and well nigh wrecked on the tumultuous billows, can yet be refitted, and with a wise captain and pilot steer her way to the haven she was bound for, so would this erring man forget, in that plenitude of rest, peace, and happiness, the storms and tempests, shoals and rocks, of the voyages that had brought him thither.

This silence might have lasted still longer had not the entrance of Giacomo broken it.

"My lady," said he, "Milord wishes to see you; would you follow me?"

The Countess rose. "Adieu, then, for the present, Edward; I shall pray for you, and you will show your love to me by thinking more calmly. I will come and see you again soon, and I hope in another place than this."

She held her hand out with a mournful smile; the Viscount seized it and pressed it to his lips, his heart was too full to allow him to frame the word "adieu." The lady turned away; he watched her till the dark door shut her out from his view, then, sitting up, took the small phial from his breast, laid the letter on the bed beside him, drew the cork, and tossed it from him. "I have nothing more to live for since I have seen her; there is no spot on earth I could live at, and feel she was another's wife," thought the hapless man. "Farewell, Ellen! a long farewell."

He then emptied the contents of the bottle over his throat: it was prussic acid, and with fearful rapidity did its fatal work! he felt the hand of death on him whilst he was even swallowing it, sank back, uttered a faint cry of distress, and ceased to live, in less than a minute after swallowing the dreadful draught! So died he, poor erring man! So died he who should have been a peer of England, and yet ended his life a prisoned brigand, a suicide!

When the Earl sent for the Countess it was to inform her that he had procured the necessary pardon for his brother.

"He is in an unhappy state of mind," said the Countess, "but I have hopes that the very fear of unworthiness he has is the first fruits of repentance, and the foretaste of better thoughts."

"God grant it may be so," said the Earl; "but now let us go and tell him the good tidings; it will doubtless have a favourable effect on him, for freedom engenders far better thoughts than captivity."

Together they sought the gaol once more, eager to bear the glad tidings. When they entered, the Countess hastened forward: the fixed features, the glassy eye and clenched hands, the empty phial beside him, told the dread truth, and with a cry of terror, she sank in a dead swoon at the side of the hapless victim. The Earl, terrified at the dangerous effect it might produce on his wife, and shocked at the catastrophe, called for assistance, himself bore the senseless lady from the terrible scene, and attended to her first. It was long ere she recovered the dreadful shock she had sustained, and even when her consciousness returned she wept in such an hysterical manner, as to alarm her husband not a little. When she reached the villa she became calmer, but it was many days ere she again left her room.

The Earl, after seeing his wife in safety, returned to the prison, and long gazed in silence on the remains of the wretched suicide: he found too the letter addressed to the Countess; it was a very sad one.

"December 25. Castel Capuano.

"When you read this I shall have ceased to breathe: life has to me been a weary load, and I am glad to shake it off. It might have been far different, and 'tis the thought of what might have been makes the present hour so bitter. You might have been mine, and I might have been great, and good! but what matters what might have been, I have to do with what _is_. No joy to look back on, no heaven to look forward to, I am a heartbroken man. I have been the dupe of others,--my crimes have been my misfortune rather than fault. I have no redeeming trait save love to you; can the guilty love the guiltless--the vile love the pure? my passion answers all, 'I loved the right, the wrong pursued.' I have been a bane to my family, I might have been a blessing! You forgive me, Ellen: it is all I want! Forget such a one as I ever lived. I ask the tribute of one tear at my sad fate; you will not deny my last request. Oh! Ellen, it gives the sting to death, this separation from you, but it must be so. Farewell!

"Sometimes in quiet hours think of his luckless fate, who loved you too well,

"Ever your deeply attached,

"ARTHUR DE VERE."

"P.S. This is the first, and will be the last time I ever signed my real name. Ask my brother, to whom I have been so unworthy a brother, to see that my remains are decently interred. Tell my story on my tombstone, then bury me out of sight and out of mind. This last act of my wretched career may be the worst, life has lost its charm--pardon me the pain this crime may give you."

When the Earl read this letter to his wife it was with bitter grief she heard his last, worst deed--and we need not say she often thought of that misguided man, shed not one but many, many a tear, and thus fulfilled his last petition. Ah, what an end had her young lover come to!

The remains of Viscount de Vere were interred in the grounds of the Villa Reale, and over his tomb rose a marble fane with the following inscription--

Here lies ARTHUR PLANTAGENET VERE DE VERE-- Viscount De Vere, EARL OF WENTWORTH, a title to which he never succeeded! By an unaccountable fate--stolen in his infancy; misguided in his manhood. He died by his own hand on the 25th of December, MDCCXXIX. Aged XXXIX.

"Oh breathe not his name, let it sleep in the shade Where cold and unhonoured his relics are laid."

A few days after the funeral, which took place at the dead hour of midnight, the Earl and Countess with their daughter left Naples by their yacht, and sailed for Leith, where they arrived safely after a long and stormy passage. They then started for the Towers, where they lived in deep seclusion.

Mr. Scroop had meanwhile started for Italy to bring home the unfortunate daughter of his murdered father-in-law, and make arrangements with the authorities for bringing his murderers to justice, a point, however, in which they entirely failed to succeed.