Lord Byron's Novel (39 page)

M
Y
B
ROTHER
,—When we two parted, my question to you was, Why you should trust me, that I would do what you asked, and why you thought that I could do a better thing for that child, than her present Guardians? For in myself I saw naught, that would cause me to think I was capable of it—of the
deed,
I had no doubt, but of the rest, not at all. I shall tell you all that has occurred, and you may judge for yourself as to whether your trust in me was well placed. Alas—unless you fail, and are hanged in some public square—I shall never learn as much of
thee
.

To my tale.—My visit to the Temple chambers of Mr Wigmore Bland, bearing the papers you were good enough to supply me with—the power of Attorney, and the rest—produced upon the inert mass of our affairs the right Leavening. The Estates of the Sanes are dissolved for ever, or soon enough shall be—and we shall be Landless—tho’ richer in Cash than we have been these several years—the disposition of which shall be as we agreed, provision being made for all Servants, Tenants, cats and dogs too that your tender heart desired to see pensioned. Thus shriven, I set out for the house of the imprisoned child—Mr Bland was well-furnished with details upon the matter of her confinement, which he deplored most fittingly—indeed, he became almost
melancholy
—for a moment—before recovering himself. From him I learned that Lady Sane—as your lawful wedded Wife is still styled—has not recovered her Wits, though she has been treated by a succession of doctors of every persuasion, who fasten upon her, and her Cheque-book, with all the tenacity of the Leech they employ so freely; Mr Bland was certain that
one
at least, and in all likelihood several, were not Doctors at all, except perhaps once in Pantomime.

Upon my arrival in the neighbourhood of that house where Una was confined, I soon learned that I would not be called upon to free the child from those who held her prisoner, if so they did—for even as I came to the house, the talk upon the roads and in the Village was of how she had
freed herself
. You may not know—I think, indeed, that you know nothing at all of her—that like her father’s
brother,
she is subject to Sleep-walking. I know not if this condition had made itself known before, or if the Guardians, set at her gates like a three-headed Cerberus, knew of it, but perhaps they did not—for the locks on all their doors were upon the
inside,
to keep intruders out, but easily undone from within—and so out she went, upon the middle of the Night, and set out upon the Highway, like the Piper’s son, over the hill and far away. In the morning, her absence having been discovered, a Hue and Cry was raised, but she having been gone many Hours, and observed by none as she walked unconscious among them—a sleeper awake, among the sleeping-unawake!—the worst was suspected. Weirs were to be dredged, and Rivers watched; hay-stacks were poked into, and woods beaten—to no avail. You may imagine that in this search I made not myself conspicuous—you have evidence yourself, of a quality I have, or a Talent I may employ, of being, when I choose,
invisible,
or at least unnoticed, despite all that is distinctive about me.

For my part—it is my natural bent—I considered accident or mischance less likely to have been her fate than Evil—I think that those who sleep-walk are commonly able to avoid falling into ponds or stepping off from cliffs—but a Child alone at midnight in her nightdress is a temptation to
some
—and a green county in England is as likely to show one or two such as any spot on Earth.

Shall I keep you upon tenter-hooks, dear Brother, as to how this tale continues, or concludes—or have you gone already to the last page, and seen the outcome, as a maiden with a French romance will do, to learn that the lovers live ‘happily ever after’? The events of the succeeding weeks are perhaps worth the ink & paper to recount, but I shall not expend them—I have not the time, for the Thames is on the turn, and the tide is about to go out, carrying the nation’s Trade (and some of its Populace) to far corners. A cool calculation, made at the Inn of the town where the Child had lost herself, gave me odds of an hundred to one about finding her—lower, of finding her before her Relations did—lower still, of finding her unhurt. Nevertheless I did so, and that because—as it fell out—a fellow who was as cool a calculator as
myself
was the first who chanced upon her that night. In the widening circle of my investigations, I learned that in the next town a Gentleman, thereabouts unknown, had got on the London coach with his sleeping child in his arms—a dark-headed child—and thence I myself hastened.

You may know that in that City, in company with a certain Friend of long standing—anciently a companion of our Father’s—I enjoy’d a brief career in the show business, and found that as to
mobility,
and freedom of seeing and hearing—which last will include
over
hearing, eavesdropping, and related Arts—it has no equal. For sure a Hunchback with a Bear may seem quite remarkable—but in fact he is invisible to most—because
expected
—no more regarded than the paving-stones, or window-sashes, or any thing ordinary—and such a one may stand about by the hour, and collect intelligence—along with a few coppers—which are not to be despised neither. Moreover, among the Brotherhood of show-men much may be learned of the former lives of those now appearing upon the larger stage of Life—they acknowledge their old friends the Countess who once danced at Drury Lane, the fashionable Preacher who lately told fortunes in Green Park, the rich Landlord whose fortune began in a House of indifferent reputation. From the gossip at inns and fair-booths, I learned much concerning the former history of one who now in Mayfair drawing-rooms was making a great stir—a Mesmeric Doctor who had cured many young ladies of maladies that
some
of them had not even known they were afflicted with, until the Doctor examined them—his Magnets, Coppers, jars, fluids, and Ætheric Engines had effected miracles. He is not the first or last who have made a success in such enterprises, but those who talked of him to me, who knew how far the Doctor had
risen,
were admiring. What caused me to inquire further was, ’twas said he was accompanied by a
Child,
who was the centre of his experiments—a Child whom he could, with but a pass of his hand, or the use of a bit of magnetised Nickel, put
deep asleep,
yet remaining alert and upright, able to follow commands, and—what is far more—to
speak
upon question, and to tell others present something of the Name and Nature of their diseases, and
un
eases.—What Science now purports to do, has been done in past centuries by Saints and Priestesses, who spake truths in trances—but no—the Doctor’s lectures claim’d a new revelation, drawn out of Mesmer, Puységur, Combe, & Spurzheim—his young Pythoness was subject to no old-fashioned Delphic transports, but methods never granted Man before. Well! I know not, nor ever will, aught of such things—tell me that all has changed forever, and there are truly new things under the Sun—despite Solomon’s observation—and that soon enough a Steam-engine will conduct man to the Moon—I am happy to suppose it—yet may not change my behaviour—nor invest my Money.

No—my interest was aroused in the Mesmerist, for other reasons—and soon enough I learned more:—that the child was not the Doctor’s own, nor related to him in any way—that he had come upon her in circumstances dark, but not beyond imagining—that he had from the promptings of Charity rescued her from these, and only
after
had discovered her to possess talents & powers of a remarkable sort. You may believe that, by that time, I possessed an Anthology of gossip, report, thief-taker’s tales, &c., none of which satisfied me—had been to see a small Body brought out of the Thames by hook—and an unfortunate child coffin’d in a low dwelling in Southwark—neither of them she. Yet this tale started in my mind a certainty, I know not why, and in not too long a time I had found the supposed Doctor’s residence, and a way of effecting entrance that raised no alarm—many are the small skills in force, fraud, uttering, and lock-picking I have acquired in my travels, to my shame. The house seemed empty—and as a Spy within the enemy’s camp, I opened doors without a sound—until one opened onto a sitting-room, and there upon a tuffet sat a girl-child, in a dress of white, a paper daisy-chain in her lap—alone. And thereupon I opened wide the door, and entered in.

Why did I suppose she would not flee, or raise the alarm? I know not, but in the event I was right. The child kept to her seat with a strange stillness to see me approach—not the frozen stillness of a Deer who thinks itself stalked—tho’ watchful indeed—no, ’twas a reserve not childlike, nor mature neither, but (as it may be)
angelic,
if we think of angels as beings we cannot alarm or grieve. It would not be the last time her regard has struck me thus. ‘Who are you?’ quoth she, to which I at first would not give answer, but asked her of her daisy-chain, and her Doll, which sat propped before her. I cannot say she resembles me—she may, and I perceive it not in such a form—purged, as it were, of all that I see in my Glass—into which I have looked but rarely in the best of times. I know she is dark, like you—how she comes by her colour I know not, unless it is because her
mother
was not fair. Willing she was to have a conversation with me on topics of interest to her, without further inquiry as to who I was that should speak to her here; but at length—her Patience tried—she linked her hands, and struck them most definitely into her lap, and let me know that ‘no-one was to come into this room but persons of the household’, and I must tell her at once who I was.

‘I am your father,’ I said.

This took a long moment in passing through to her mind, though she seemed not astonished to find it arriving there. ‘Then,’ said she to me, ‘you are a Mahometan.’

‘Indeed I am not,’ said I. ‘I think it need not be true of your father—if so you meant it.’

‘My father is a sort of Turk,’ she said, ‘and Turks are Mahometans.’

As there was no disputing her syllogism, I made no reply for some time, and she herself continued. ‘I am a Mahometan,’ says she. ‘Why, how so?’ says I. ‘I am half Mahometan anyway,’ says she, ‘and
all
Mahometan because I say so. I have read about Mahometans and it is nothing at all to be one, but to say Allah and not God, and that is all.’ So she asserted—as near as I can now recount her argument, which struck me as subtle indeed. ‘However,’ she continued then, ‘I have told no-one, as they would not like it at all if they knew.’

‘I dare say.’

‘I did not know my father was like you,’ she said.

Here was a new subject, and one I was prepared to treat. I asked if I alarmed her, and I had reasons to hand—even a Gift, a rich one too, to produce at need—to show her she ought not to be; but she averred she was not alarmed. And then I must ask her the question that lingered in my mind—why she was not surprised that I should have come before her here, at long last. And she said to me, ‘She had that very morning beseeched Allah, as she did every morning, to bring me to her.’

Do you laugh? I swear that I did not—for I bethought me of those many mornings when she had prayed, and had
not
been answered. Now that I had come—however little I was whom she had expected, or
desired
—I must by some means persuade her that she must flee her present situation, and go on in
my company
—a fellow of no seeming promise. Though her regard was indeed cool, and she did not embrace me—nor would I have expected she should—still I sensed the possibility of a
Pact
between us, if I but played my own part right. And, Brother, I falter’d! I have, you may believe, a clear consciousness of my own nature—of the Crimes and Passions that are entangled in it—yet never before had I felt what I then felt, which was
unworthy
—as though my taking her hand, or winning her Favour, would stain her with that History, of which she was herself entirely innocent—the only thing I have ever touch’d, that
was
or
might remain
so! She gazed upon me—so that I forgot the enticements and suchlike that I had thought to put before her—lies, and pretences, that I thought necessary—and wished only to ask her Forgiveness—though for
what,
if not for her plain existence, of which I was the Author, I by no means knew!

By an act of will I became
myself
again—if indeed that is who this black fellow is—but too late—for just as I had made it clear to the child that I wished her to come away with me—that I would bring her straightaway again to those who loved and cared for her—and that the Doctor in whose keeping she now was, was an evil Fairy King, from whom she must with my aid escape—of a sudden the Door flew open, and the man himself whom I had just done characterizing, stood upon the threshold! I knew him by report, and also by the great authority that radiated from him—from his electrified white hair, his glittering Spectacles, and the largest hands I have ever seen on a
gentleman,
if indeed he was such. I rose to face him, prepared to tell him a Tale he might believe, or—failing that—to knock him down, when of a sudden Una too rose, and interposed herself between us.

‘See, Doctor dearest,’ cries she, in all innocence, ‘here is my Father, come to take me away with him!’

You may imagine the good Doctor’s response to this observation. Approaching me as a Boxer might a slighter but an unknown opponent, he held his great hands apart and at the ready, and turned with care to face me. ‘Who are you, and what do you do in this house?’ he asked of me, in a voice low and yet unmistakable in its Command.

‘It is as the child has said,’ I replied, as ready as he for a contest. ‘I am her father; she will come away with me.’

‘To prison?’ he said, with a viperish hatred. ‘It is where
you
are bound. You are in Trespass, Sir, upon my property.’