Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

“ When Alban Morley returned to the library, he saw Darrell at the farther corner of the room, on his knees. Well might Guy Darrell thank Heaven for the mercies vouchsafed to him that night. Life preserved? Is that all? Might life yet be bettered and gladdened? Was there aught in the grim woman's words that might bequeath thoughts which reflection would ripen into influences over action?—aught that might suggest the cases in which, not ignobly, Pity might subjugate Scorn? In the royal abode of that Soul, does Pride only fortify Honour?—is it but the mild king, not the imperial despot? ”

“ Lightly, as a wolf enters a sheepfold, he swung himself over the moss-grown fence; he gained the buttresses of the great raw pile; high and clear above, from Darrell's chamber, streamed the light; all the rest of the old house was closed and dark, buried no doubt in slumber.
He is now in the hollows of the skeleton pile; he mounts the ladder; the lock of the door before him yields to his rude implements but artful hand. He is in the long gallery; the moonlight comes broad and clear through the large casements. What wealth of art is on the walls! but how profitless to the robber's greed. ”

“ Genius is bound to be indulgent. It should know human errors so well—has, with its large luminous forces, such errors itself when it deigns to be human, that, where others may scorn, genius should only pity." She paused a moment, and then slowly resumed. "And pity was my due. Had you, or had any one lofty as yourself in reputed honour, but said to me, 'Thou hast sinned, thou must suffer; but sin itself needs compassion, and compassion forbids thee to despair,' why, then, I might have been gentler to the things of earth, and less steeled against the influences of Heaven than I have been. ”

“ To penetrate into the home of this haughty scorner—to confront him in his own chamber at the dead of night, man to man, force to force; to say to him, "None now can deliver you from me—I come no more as a suppliant—I command you to accept my terms"; to gloat over the fears which, the strong man felt assured, would bow the rich man to beg for mercy at his feet;—this was the picture which Jasper Losely conjured up; and even the spoil to be won by violence smiled on him less than the grand position which the violence itself would bestow. ”

“ She is now with no powerless, miserable convict, for whom Law has no respect. She is now no helpless infant without a choice, without a will. She is safe from all, save the wanton, unprofitable effort to disgrace her. O Jasper, Jasper, be human—she is so delicate of frame—she is so sensitive to reproach, so tremulously alive to honour—I am not fit to be near her now. I have been a tricksome, shifty vagrant, and, innocent though I be, the felon's brand is on me! ”

“ Farmers, their business over, came in and out in quick succession; those who did not dine at the ordinaries taking their hasty snack, or stirrup-cup, while their horses were being saddled; others to look at the newspaper, or exchange a word on the state of markets and the nation. Jasper, wearied and sullen, had to wait for the refreshments he ordered, and meanwhile fell into a sort of half-doze, as was not now unusual in him in the intervals between food and mischief. From this creeping torpor he was suddenly roused by the sound of Darrell's name. ”

“ Losely had for him his vast physical strength, his penury, despair, and vindictive purpose. Darrell had in his favour the intellect which gives presence of mind; the energy of nerve, which is no more to be seen in the sinew and bone than the fluid which fells can be seen in the jars and the wires; and that superb kind of pride, which, if terror be felt, makes its action impossible, because a disgrace, and bravery a matter of course, simply because it is honour. ”

“ Jasper had expected so much from his marriage with the great man's daughter—counted so thoroughly on her power to obtain pardon and confer wealth—and his disappointment had been so keen —been accompanied with such mortification—that he regarded the man whom he had most injured as the man who had most injured him. But not till now did his angry feelings assume the shape of a definite vengeance. So long as there was a chance that he could extort from Darrell the money that was the essential necessary to his life, he checked his thoughts whenever they suggested a profitless gratification of rage. ”

“ Darrell!" And Losely rose.
"I do not fear you," replied Darrell, still seated. "I cannot conceive that you are here with no other design than a profitless murder. You are here, you say, to make terms; it will be time enough to see whose life is endangered when all your propositions have been stated. As yet you have only suggested a robbery, to which you ask me to assist you. Impossible! Grant even that you were able to murder me, you would be just as far off from your booty. And yet you say your terms have risen! To me they seem fallen to nothing! ”

“ Jasper had no intention to intrude himself that day on Lady Montfort. His self-love shrank from presenting himself to a lady of such rank, and to whom he had been once presented on equal terms, as the bridegroom of her friend and the confidential visitor to her mother, in habiliments that bespoke so utter a fall. Better, too, on all accounts, to appear something of a gentleman; more likely to excite pity for suffering—less likely to suggest excuse for rebutting his claims, and showing him to the door. ”

“ Grant this, and I will never cross you again—never attempt to find, and, if I find by chance, never claim as my child by your daughter that wandering girl. I will never shame you by naming our connection. I will not offend the law, nor die by the hangman; yet I shall not live long, for I suffer much, and I drink hard."
The last words were spoken gloomily, not altogether without a strange dreary pathos. And amidst all his just scorn and anger, the large human heart of Guy Darrell was for the moment touched. ”

“ With a strange desire to avoid the haunts of men, he selected—at each choice of way in the many paths branching right and left, between waste and woodland—the lane that seemed the narrowest and the dimmest. It was not remorse that gnawed him, neither was it mere mercenary disappointment, nor even the pang of baffled vengeance—it was the profound humiliation of diseased self-love—the conviction that, with all his brute power, he had been powerless in the very time and scene in which he had pictured to himself so complete a triumph. ”

“ As soon as he had fortified himself by food and drink, Jasper rose, paid for his refreshments and walked forth. Noiseless and rapid, skirting the hedgerows by the lane that led to Fawley, and scarcely distinguishable under their shadow, the human wild-beast strided on in scent of its quarry. It was night when Jasper once more reached the moss-grown pales round the demesnes of the old Manor-house. ”

“ So finding himself in one of the large squares of Bloomsbury, he gathered himself up under the sheltering porch of a spacious mansion, unconscious that it was the very residence which Darrell had once occupied, and that from that portico the Black Horses had borne away the mother of his wife. In a few minutes he was fast asleep—sleeping with such heavy deathlike soundness, that the policeman passing him on his beat, after one or two vain attempts to rouse him, was seized with a rare compassion, and suffered the weary outcast to slumber on. ”

“ I have resolved that to-morrow night I will be in that man's room, and that man shall be on his knees before me."
Cutts turned sharply round on his saddle, and by the aid of the moonlight surveyed Losely's countenance. "Oh, I see," he said, "there is more than robbery in your mind. You have some feeling of hate—of vengeance; the man has injured you?"
"He has treated me as if I were a dog," said Jasper; "and a dog can bite."
Cutts mused a few moments. "I have heard you talk at times about some rich relation or connection on whom you had claims; Darrell is the man, I suppose?" ”

“ Hartopp, that man commit the crime imputed to him!—a planned, deliberate robbery—an ungrateful, infamous breach of trust! That man—that! he who rejects the money he does not earn, even when pressed on him by anxious imploring friends—-he who has now gone voluntarily forth, aged and lonely, to wring his bread from the humblest calling rather than incur the risk of injuring the child with whose existence he had charged himself!—the dark midnight thief! ”

“ Jasper, who had risen from his knees while speaking, here stamped heavily on the floor, as if with anger at the heart-stricken aspect of his silenced father; and continued with a voice that seemed struggling to regain its old imperious, rollicking, burly swell.
"What is done cannot be undone. Fling it aside, sir—look to the future; you with your pedlar's pack, I with my empty pockets! What can save you from the workhouse—me from the hulks or gibbet? ”

“ In a few minutes more, Losely was again on horseback; and as he rode towards Ouzelford, Rugge and his dusty Faithful shambled on in the opposite direction—shambled on, footsore and limping, along the wide, waste, wintry thoroughfare—vanishing from the eye, as their fates henceforth from this story. There they go by the white hard milestone; farther on, by the trunk of the hedgerow-tree, which lies lopped and leafless—cumbering the wayside, till the time come to cast it off to the thronged, dull stackyard. ”

“ I revoke every offer to aid a life that has existed but to darken and desolate those it was permitted to approach. Starve or rob! perish miserably! And if I pour not on your head my parting curse, it is only because I know that man has no right to curse; and casting you back on your own evil self is the sole revenge which my belief in Heaven permits me."
Thus saying, Darrell strode on-swiftly, but not as one who flies. Jasper made three long bounds, and was almost at his side, when he was startled by the explosion of a gun. ”

“ It was but the visit which he, Jasper Losely, Esquire, thought fit to pay, however unceremoniously and unseasonably, to the house of a father-in-law! At the worst, should he fail in finding Darrell, or securing an unwitnessed interview—should he, instead, alarm the household, it would be a proof of the integrity of his intentions that he had no weapons save those which Nature bestows on the wild man as the mightiest of her wild beasts. ”

“ Whether the effect so suddenly produced might have continued, or whether the startled miscreant might not have lashed himself into renewed wrath and inexpiable crime, passes out of conjecture. At that instant simultaneously were heard hurried footsteps in the corridor without, violent blows on the door, and voices exclaiming, "Open, open!—Darrell, Darrell!"—while the bell at the portals of the old house rang fast and shrill. ”

“ I can set that story right."
"You can," said Darrell, with that exceeding calmness which comes from exceeding wrath; "and perhaps, sir, that story, whatever it might be, you invented. No dog so toothless as not to bite—eh, sir?"
"Well," returned Jasper, mistaking Darrell's composure, "at that time certainly it seemed my interest that you should not marry again; but /basta! basta!/ enough of bygones. If I bit once, I will serve now. Come, sir, you are a man of the world, let us close the bargain." ”

“ From one of the largest villas in these charming suburbs came forth a gentleman, middle-aged, and of a very mild and prepossessing countenance. A young lady without a bonnet, but a kerchief thrown over her sleek dark hair, accompanied him to the garden-gate, twining both hands affectionately round his arm, and entreating him not to stand in thorough draughts and catch cold, nor to step into puddles and wet his feet, and to be sure to be back before dark, as there were such shocking accounts in the newspapers of persons robbed and garotted even in the most populous highways ”

“ Whatever Losely's intention in hastening after Darrell, he had no option now but to relinquish it, and drop back. The village itself was not many hundred yards distant; and, after all, what good in violence, except the gratified rage of the moment? Violence would not give to Jasper Losely the income that had just been within his grasp, and had so unexpectedly eluded it. He remained, therefore, in the lane, standing still, and seeing Darrell turn quietly into his park through another gate close to the Manor-house. ”

“ GIVE THY SINEWS A MIND THAT CONCEIVES THE HEROIC, AND WHAT NOBLE THINGS THOU MAYST DO, BUT VALUE THY SINEWS FOR RUDE STRENGTH ALONE, AND THAT STRENGTH MAY BE TURNED TO THY SHAME AND THY TORTURE. THE WEALTH OF THY LIFE WILL BUT TEMPT TO ITS WASTE. ABUSE, AT FIRST FELT NOT, WILL POISON THE USES OF SENSE. WILD BULLS GORE AND TRAMPLE THEIR FOES. THOU HAST SOUL! WILT THOU TRAMPLE AND GORE IT? Jasper Losely, on quitting his father, spent his last coins in payment for his horse's food, and in fiery drink for himself. ”

“ It is simply because I would not have that last disgrace on Guy Darrell's name that I offer you a subsistence in lands where you will be less exposed to those temptations which induced you to invest the sums that, by your own tale, had been obtained from me on false pretences, in the sink of a Paris gambling house. A subsistence that, if it does not pamper vice, at least places you beyond the necessity of crime, is at your option. ”