Falkner: a Novel
Copyright© 2025 by Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
Chapter 44
Elizabeth listened in silence. All that had passed made a deep impression—from the moment that the solicitor had expressed a wish that Falkner had a zealous friend to cross the Atlantic—till now, that he himself dilated on the good that would result from representations being clearly and fervently made to Osborne, she was revolving an idea that absorbed her whole faculties.
This idea was no other than going to America herself. She had no doubt that, seeing Osborne, she could persuade him, and the difficulties of the journey appeared slight to her who had travelled so much. She asked Falkner many questions, and his answers confirmed her more and more in her plan. No objection presented itself to her mind; already she felt sure of success. There was scarcely time, it was true, for the voyage; but she hoped that the trial might be again deferred, if reasonable hopes were held out of Osborne’s ultimate arrival. It was painful to leave Falkner without a friend, but the object of her journey was paramount even to this consideration; but it must, it should be undertaken. Still she said nothing of her scheme, and Falkner could not guess at what was passing in her mind.
Wrapped in the revery suggested by such a plan, she returned home in the evening, without thinking of the apparition of Neville, which had so filled her mind in the morning. It was not till at her own door that the thought glanced through her mind, and she remembered that she had seen nothing of him—she looked across the open space where he had stood the evening before. It was entirely vacant. She felt disappointed and saddened; and she began to reflect on her total friendlessness—no one to aid her in preparations for her voyage—none to advise—her sole resource was in hirelings. But her independent, firm spirit quickly threw off this weakness, and she began a note to Mr. Colville, asking him to call on her, as she wished to arrange everything definitively before she spoke to Falkner. As she wrote, she heard a rapid, decided step in her quiet street, followed by a hurried yet gentle knock at her door. She started up. “It is he!” the words were on her lips, when Gerard entered; she held out her hand, gladness thrilling through her whole frame, her heart throbbing wildly—her eyes lighted up with joy. “This is indeed kind,” she cried. “Oh, Mr. Neville, how happy your visit makes me!”
He did not look happy; he had grown paler and thinner, and the melancholy which had sat on his countenance before, banished for a time by her, had returned, with the addition of a look of wildness, that reminded her of the youth of Baden; Elizabeth was shocked to remark these traces of suffering; and her next impulse was to ask, “What has happened? I fear some new misfortune has occurred.”
“It is the property of misfortune to be ever new,” he replied, “to be always producing fresh and more miserable results. I have no right to press my feelings on you; your burden is sufficient; but I could not refrain any longer from seeing in what way adversity had exerted its pernicious influence over you.”
His manner was gloomy and agitated; she, resigned, devoted to her duties; commanding herself, day by day, to fulfil her task of patience, and of acquiring cheerfulness for Falkner’s sake; she imagined that some fresh disaster must be the occasion of these marks of emotion. She did not know that fruitless struggles to alleviate the evils of her situation, vain broodings over its horrors, and bitter regret at losing her, had robbed him of sleep, of appetite, of all repose. “I despise myself for my weakness,” he said, “when I see your fortitude. You are more than woman, more than human being ever was, and you must feel the utmost contempt for one whom fortune bends and breaks as it does me. You are well, however, and half my dreams of misery have been false and vain. God guards and preserves you: I ought to have placed more faith in him.”
“But tell me, dear Mr. Neville, tell me, what has happened?”
“Nothing!” he replied; “and does not that imply the worst? I cannot make up my mind to endure the visitation of ill fallen upon us; it drives me from place to place like an unlaid ghost. I am very selfish to speak in this manner. Yet it is your sufferings that fill my mind to bursting; were all the evil poured on my own head, while you were spared, welcome, most welcome would be the bitterest infliction! but you, Elizabeth, you are my cruel father’s victim, and the future will be more hideous than the hideous present!”
Elizabeth was shocked and surprised; what could he mean? “The future,” she replied, “will bring my dear father’s liberation; how then can that be so bad?”
He looked earnestly and inquiringly on her. “Yes,” she continued, “my sorrows, heavy as they are, have not that additional pang; I have no doubt of the ultimate justice that will be rendered my father. We have much to endure in the interim, much that undermines the fortitude and visits the heart with sickening throes; there is no help but patience; let us have patience, and this adversity will pass away; the prison and the trial will be over, and freedom and security again be ours.”
“I see how it is,” replied Neville; “we each live in a world of our own, and it is wicked in me to give you a glimpse of the scene as it is presented to me.”
“Yet speak; explain!” said Elizabeth; “you have frightened me so much that any explanation must be better than the thoughts which your words, your manner, suggest.”
“Nay,” said Neville, “do not let my follies infect you. Your views, your hopes, are doubtless founded on reason. It is, if you will forgive the allusion that may seem too light for so sad a subject, but the old story of the silver and brazen shield. I see the dark, the fearful side of things; I live among your enemies—that is, the enemies of Mr. Falkner. I hear of nothing but his guilt, and the expiation prepared for it. I am maddened by all I hear.
“I have implored my father not to pursue his vengeance. Convinced as I am of the truth of Mr. Falkner’s narration, the idea that one so gifted should be made over to the fate that awaits him is abhorrent; and when I think that you are involved in such a scene of wrong and horror, my blood freezes in my veins. I have implored my father, I have quarrelled with him, I have made Sophia advocate the cause of justice against malice; all in vain. Could you see the old man—my father I mean; pardon my irreverence—how he revels in the demoniacal hope of revenge, and with what hideous delight he gloats upon the detail of ignominy to be inflicted on one so much his superior in every noble quality, you would feel the loathing I do. He heaps sarcasm and contempt on my feeble spirit, as he names my pardon of my mother’s destroyer, my esteem for him, and my sympathy for you; but that does not touch me. It is the knowledge that he will succeed, and you be lost and miserable for ever, that drives me to desperation.
“I fancied that these thoughts must pursue you even more painfully than they do me. I saw you writhing beneath the tortures of despair, wasting away under the influence of intense misery. You haunted my dreams, accompanied by every image of horror—sometimes you were bleeding, ghastly, dying—sometimes you took my poor mother’s form, as Falkner describes it, snatched cold and pale from the waves—other visions flitted by, still more frightful. Despairing of moving my father, abhorring the society of every human being, I have been living for the last month at Dromore. A few days ago my father arrived there. I wondered till I heard the cause. The time for expecting Osborne had arrived. As vultures have instinct for carrion, so he swooped down at the far off scent of evil fortune; he had an emissary at Liverpool, on the watch to hear of this man’s arrival. Disgusted at this foul appetite for evil, I left him. I came here—only to see you, to gaze on you afar, was to purify the world of the ‘blasts from hell’ which the bad passions I have so long contemplated spread round me. My father learned whither I had gone; I had a letter from him this morning—you may guess at its contents.”
“He triumphs in Osborne’s refusal to appear,” said Elizabeth, who was much moved by the picture of hatred and malice Neville had presented to her; and trembled from head to foot as she listened, from the violent emotions his account excited, and the vehemence of his manner as he spoke.
“He does indeed triumph,” replied Neville; “and you—you and Mr. Falkner, do you not despair?”
“If you could see my dear father,” said Elizabeth, her courage returning at the thought, “you would see how innocence and a noble mind can sustain; at the worst, he does not despair. He bears the present with fortitude, he looks to the future with resignation. His soul is firm, his spirit inflexible.”
“And you share these feelings?”
“Partly I do, and partly I have other thoughts to support me. Osborne’s cowardice is a grievous blow, but it must be remedied. The man we sent to bring him was too easily discouraged. Other means must be tried. I shall go to America, I shall see Osborne, and you cannot doubt of my success.”
“You?” cried Neville; “you to go to America? you to follow the traces of a man who hides himself? Impossible! This is worse madness than all. Does Falkner consent to so senseless an expedition?”
“You use strong expressions,” interrupted Elizabeth.
“I do,” he replied; “and I have a right to do so—I beg your pardon. But my meaning is justifiable—you must not undertake this voyage. It is as useless as improper. Suppose yourself arrived on the shores of wide America. You seek a man who conceals himself, you know not where: can you perambulate large cities, cross wide extents of country, go from town to town in search of him? It is by personal exertion alone that he can be found; and your age and sex wholly prevent that.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.