Ellen Middleton-A Tale Part 12

"She has. What will you do?"

"What can I do?"

"Do you care for me?"

"I am sorry to part with you."

As I said these words, I hid my face in my hands, and from nervous agitation, burst into tears.

"Then we shall never part!" he exclaimed. "Then to-morrow, at this hour, you shall be mine--mine for ever, beyond all human power to part us!--mine, to wors.h.i.+p, to adore, to live for, to die for! Ellen, do you hear me? Speak to me! Answer me! Shall this be? Shall it be? Why do you look so pale and so cold?"

"You are raving, Henry, you are raving; you frighten me, you hurt me; let me go."

I rushed out of the cavern, and sitting down on a stone by the sea-side, cried bitterly.

When I looked up, Henry was standing before me, waiting for my next words with forced calmness; but as I remained silent, he made a strong effort over himself, and said quietly, "I will explain to you what I mean; lam not going to make love to you now; I have not time to tell you what I feel, and what you know as well as I do; but thus much I must tell you, my sister is right when she says that your uncle will never consent to our marriage: he never will, Ellen; and if we part now, we part for ever; and G.o.d only knows the misery which hangs over both our heads if we do."

I raised my head at these words, and looked at him with surprise; he had no right to a.s.sume that such a separation would make me miserable; my pride was wounded, and spoke in my eyes: he read their language, and went on:--

"This is no time for girlish resentment; forgive me, Ellen; I make you angry, but when the fate of a whole life, and more than one life, hangs on the decision of an hour, it is no tune for weighing words; and mine must be few. Mrs. Brandon knows that I love you, and _how_ I love you! she thinks too that you love me. She is well acquainted with her brother's inflexible prejudices, with his stubborn character; she received from your dying mother a charge to s.h.i.+eld and protect you; should he ever turn against you, and make you unhappy by the sternness of his conscientious but iron nature, she will obey that charge; she will go with you to-morrow to the church at Henley, and stand by us while we--"

"Stop, Henry, stop, I cannot, will not, listen to such words as these. You ask me to marry; to seal my fate, against my uncle's will, without my aunt's consent; you ask me to add another drop of sorrow to the cup already too bitter and too full. That _I_ should do this! Oh, my G.o.d, he asks me to do this, and I sit by and listen; Henry, I almost hate you for the thought."

"Can you believe," he rejoined, "that _she_ would not bless you for the act? Can you think that when she hears that the child of her adoption, the child of her love, has saved from anguish, from despair, from guilt, the brother whom she nursed in his cradle, whose mother she was, as she has been yours,--can you think that she will not p.r.o.nounce a secret but fervent blessing on your head? She obeys her husband's stern commands, Ellen, but her heart aches for us. Oh! for her sake, in the name of your dying mother, whose letter Mrs. Brandon will show you; for my sake, for your own; I implore you not to drive me to despair! for again I repeat it, unutterable misery, which you do not, which you cannot, now understand or foresee, awaits you, if you should revise to yield to my entreaties."

"Henry, you speak a strange language, and I must know the truth. I am tired of doubts; I am tired of fears; I am weary of my life; and I must speak. What unknown misery do you threaten me with? What are your secrets? Ay, I must know them!" And in my turn, I seized his arm, and pus.h.i.+ng away the hair from my forehead, I looked him full in the face. "Why am I to avoid the Tracys? Why do vulgar ruffians use your name to terrify me into a marriage with you? Why am I now to be forced into a secret marriage, and at a day's notice? and if your ungovernable pa.s.sions are not instantly gratified, why are you to plunge into guilt and into despair?"

Frightened at my own violence, I sat down breathless and trembling. He on the contrary had grown calm, and there was almost a sneer on his lips as he answered, "Those vulgar ruffians are relatives of the Tracys, and, for their sakes, I wished to spare them an exposure which would have been of no use to any one. I believe that they meant no more than a foolish practical joke, of which the account was highly coloured by Rosa Moore; but you can easily understand that such people would not be desirable acquaintances to make, and I, therefore, recommended you to keep away from a house where you might meet them. As to the misery that you may bring upon yourself, Ellen, if you return to Elmsley, I may not, perhaps, fully make you feel it; but when I tell you, that your uncle, determined as he is to prevent your marrying me, is as much determined to make you marry Edward Middleton, you may, perhaps, form some idea of it."

"Marry Edward," (I muttered to myself,) and then shuddering at the recollection of the words he was reported to have said--I cried, "No, no; that can never be."

"No, never," said Henry, in a solemn voice. "There is a gulf between you which can never be filled up."

"What, what?" I cried with a sensation of terror.

"Did you not say just now yourself, Ellen, that such a marriage never could be? But you know not what persecution would be employed in order to bring it about. Poor Julia's death was, in a worldly sense, a great advantage to you. It made you at once a rich heiress." (I could not stifle a groan of anguish, but Henry went on as if he had not heard it.) "I happen to know that your uncle has settled the whole of his property upon you in the event of your marrying Edward; but I also know that he will disinherit either of you who should refuse to comply with that condition."

"I never will consent to it. Let him have my uncle's fortune; let me be banished from Elmsley; but nothing shall ever make me agree to what would degrade him and myself."

"Then, Ellen," eagerly exclaimed Henry; "then, Ellen, if such is your resolution, do not hesitate an instant more. Once married to me, you are safe in my arms from dangers which you do not dream of, which I dare not point out to you. Ellen, I tremble for myself and for you if you should refuse me.

Together, we may have trials to meet; but parted, they will be fearful. We must meet them together. Our fates are linked in a strange mysterious manner. There is a similarity in our destinies, and if you leave me now--"

He paused, his voice was choked with the violence of his emotion; the reckless, the daring Henry Lovell was weeping like a child. Oh, then again I thought I liked him, for I knelt down by his side, I took his hand in mine, I bathed it with my tears, and I whispered to him that I would promise anything, that I would plight my faith to him, do anything but consent to the secret marriage he proposed.

Again and again, he urged it with increasing vehemence, with ardent supplications. Once he said, "Ellen, you are destroying my happiness and your own; but not ours alone; you know not what you do. The fate of a pure and innocent existence is at this moment in your hands; do not doom it to secret anguish, to hopeless sorrow. Have mercy on yourself, on me, on her!"

In vain I pressed him to explain himself; he only protested, over and over again, with still greater agitation, and even swore that we must be married now or never; that it was useless to speak of the future. He spurned every alternative, and every promise I offered to make; till, at last, indignant and irritated, I exclaimed, as I got up and turned towards the town, "Well, then, let it be so; let us part for ever; everything is at an end between us."

He rushed before me, stopped me, held both my hands in his iron grasp, and with a countenance that one could hardly have recognised as his own, so dreadful was its expression of rage, he said, "No; all is _not_ at an end between us. We do not part for ever. _Now_, even at this moment, I could bring you on your knees at my feet; I could force you to implore my pity, my forbearance, ill-fated, unhappy girl, whom I love with that fierce love, which idolises one hour and hates the next. No, we do not part for ever; through life I shall be at your side, either to wors.h.i.+p and adore you, to be all in all to you, in spite of man and laws, and duties and ties; or else to haunt your path, to spoil your joys, to wring your soul.

Ellen, I must be the blessing or the curse of your life.

_Never_ shall I be indifferent to you. You have refused, in ignorance, in madness, you have refused to be my wife. You shall be my victim! Either you shall love me as wildly, as pa.s.sionately as I love you, and weep with tears of blood that you spurned me to-day; or if ever you love another, I will stand between him and you, and with each throb of love for him, there will be in your heart a pang of fear, a shudder of terror, a thought of me. This is our parting--you would have it so--farewell!"

He rushed back to the sea-sh.o.r.e; I walked on, unable to collect my thoughts. When I arrived at the inn, I found everybody at luncheon. There was a great deal of conversation going on, and discussions as to the time and manner of our return; I felt bewildered, and scarcely understood the meaning of what was said.

Mrs. Brandon, in pity for me, I suppose, took Rosa's place in the pony-chaise; she did not say much to me, but had the kindness to allow me to lean back, and cry in quiet. She evidently thought that never had there been a girl so in love, or so broken-hearted before. She was very good-natured, but there was a shade of pique in her manner, which probably arose from my refusal to avail myself of her help for the secret marriage which had been proposed.

We arrived late at Brandon. I was obliged to go to bed with a raging head-ache--found that Mrs. Swift, my aunt's maid, had arrived--took leave of Mrs. Brandon, and of the other women in the house, in my room that night--did not see Henry again--and at seven o'clock the following morning was already at some distance from Brandon, on my way to Elmsley.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Why did he marry Fulvia and not love her?"

SHAKESPEARE.

My journey back to Elmsley was everyway a very different one from that which I had made from it a month before. The weather was cold and windy, and the absence of suns.h.i.+ne made every object we pa.s.sed appear less attractive than the impression which my memory had retained.

Sir Walter Scott remarks, in one of his novels, that good humour gives to a plain face the same charm as suns.h.i.+ne lends to an ugly country. I agreed entirely with him, as I looked first on Salisbury Plain, without one gleam to diversify its gloomy extent, and then on Mrs. Swift's unmeaning face, the stern rigidity of which never relaxed into a smile, and contrasted it with the cheerful light of dear Mrs. Hatton's radiant, though certainly not beautiful features.

I had much to think about, but I found it difficult to define and collect my ideas. Henry and I had parted in anger, and it was almost with a curse on his lips that he had taken leave of me. He, too, knew my secret; he, too, used that knowledge to threaten and terrify me. Had Edward betrayed it to him, since he left England? or was it he who had denounced me to Edward?

Alas! it mattered little which it was. I was stunned, I felt as if one by one all those whom I cared for would upbraid and forsake me. A dreadful recollection remained on my mind of something which Henry had said in that last conversation, of Julia's death having been a great worldly advantage to me, and of my uncle having settled his fortune upon me. My blood ran cold at the thought--a marriage with Edward was the condition annexed. The Exile's dream of the home to which he can never return, the Desert Traveller's vision of water which he can never approach, are to them what to me were those words,--a marriage with Edward. Something which in the shadowy dreams of girlhood had hovered in my fancy; something which the terrors and the trials of the last year had crushed and subdued; something which in the feverish excitement of the last months had been dimmed but not destroyed; something which survived hope, and rose again in the silence of the soul when the restless stimulus of outward excitements failed. But it could never be! How could I ever stand in the place of that wretched child whose image would rise between me and the altar if ever I ventured to approach it, as my uncle's heiress, as Edward's bride? _His_ Bride! The very sight of me had rendered Elmsley insupportable to him; the knowledge of my guilt (for guilty I was, though guiltless of the dreadful consequences of my ungovernable impetuosity) had driven him from England. Was he not Julia's cousin? Was not Julia's death the work of my hand?

And had not Henry said that her death had been an advantage to me? He had; and then he spoke of bringing me down upon my knees before him to implore his pity; he poisoned his weapon, and then dealt the blow. _His_ pity! Oh, as I thought of that, I longed to see him but for one moment again, if only to tell him that I spurned his pity, despised his forbearance, and that, taught by himself, I had learned one lesson at least, which I should never forget, and that was to be revenged! And in the struggle he had begun. I felt myself the strongest, for I did not love him; in that last scene the truth had been revealed to myself as well as to him. The slight links which bound me to him, had in a moment snapt; but _he_ loved me, with a fierce and selfish love indeed, but still he loved me; and if there is torment in unrequited love; if there is agony in reading the cold language of indifference in the eyes on which you gaze away the happiness of your life, that torment, that agony, should be his. These thoughts were dreadful; I shudder as I write them; but my feelings were excited, and my pride galled nearly to madness. I remember that I clenched with such violence a smelling-bottle, that it broke to pieces in my hand, and the current of my thoughts was suddenly turned to Mrs. Swift's exclamation of "La, Miss! You've broken your bottle, and spilt the Eau de Cologne! What could you have been thinking of?"

What had I been thinking of? Oh that world of thought within us! That turmoil of restless activity which boils beneath the calm surface of our every day's life! We sit and we talk; we walk and we drive; we lie down to sleep, and we rise up again the next day; as if life offered nothing to rouse the inmost pa.s.sions of the soul; as if hopes tremblingly cherished were not often dashed to the earth; as if fears we scarcely dare to define were not hovering near our hearts, and resolutions were not formed in silence and abandoned in despair; as if the spirit of darkness was not prompting the soul to deeds of evil, and the hand of G.o.d was not stretched out between us and the yawning gulf of destruction. And others look on; and, like Mrs. Swift, wonder what we can be thinking of. G.o.d help them!

or rather may He help us, for we need it most.

At the end of the second day we reached the well-known gates of Elmsley, and in a few moments more I was locked in my aunt's embrace. I wept bitterly as I kissed her, and she seemed to consider my tears as perfectly natural; her whole manner was soothing and sympathising. My uncle received me kindly enough, though rather coldly even for him. I longed to explain to Mrs. Middleton that I did not care for Henry, and that my uncle's decision against him was not the cause of the deep depression which I could neither struggle with nor conceal; but how could I disclaim _that_ cause and allege no other? Also the intimate intercourse which had been formerly habitual between her and myself had been broken up, so that my heart had become as a sealed book to her, and I dared not open it again; its one dark page formed an invincible barrier to that communion of thoughts which had been ours in bygone days.

And so days and weeks went by; I heard nothing of Henry nor of Edward, though both were almost constantly before my mind's eye; in this perpetual wear and tear of feeling my health began to give way, and I grew ever, day paler and thinner.

About three months after my return to Elmsley, I was sitting one afternoon at that library window where I mentioned once before having often watched the sunset with Edward. The autumnal tints were gilding the trees in the park with their glowing hues, and the air had that wintry mildness which is soothing though melancholy. The window was open; and, wrapped up in a thick shawl, I was inhaling the damp moist air, and listening to the rustle of the dried leaves which were being swept from the gravel walk below; the low twitter of some robin-redb.r.e.a.s.t.s was in unison with the scene, and affected me in an Unaccountable manner. My tears fell fast on the book in my hand. This book was the "Christian Year;" that gift of Edward, which I had thrust away in a fit of irritation about a year ago. I had opened it again that morning, and, partly as a kind of expiation, partly with a vague hope of awakening in myself a new tone of feeling--something to put in the place of that incessant review of the past, around which my thoughts were ever revolving,--I forced myself to read a few of the pa.s.sages marked with a pencil. I had been interrupted while so doing, but had carried away the book with me, and now again applied myself to the same task. I read stanza after stanza which spoke of guilt, of suffering, and of remorse; but I did not close the book in anger as before. It was true that they were carefully chosen, pointedly marked; but what of that? Was I not guilty? Was I not wretched? Did I not deserve worse at his hands? Nay more; _had_ I deserved the forbearance, the mercy, he had shown me? Ought I not to bless him for them? It was such thoughts as these that made my tears flow, but that at the same time soothed the bitterness of my feelings.

I put down my book; and, while gazing on the darkening clumps of trees before me, I watched the approach of the boy who was riding through the avenue to the house, with the letter-bag strapped before him. I heard the step of the servant who was crossing the hall on his way to my uncle's study. In a few moments I heard Mrs. Middleton's voice on the stairs; and, about an hour after that, when it was getting quite dark, and I was leaving the library, I met Mrs. Swift, who told me that my aunt wished to speak to me in her dressing-room.

There is something very apt to make one feel nervous in the fact of being sent for; and if it happens to be immediately after the arrival of the post, all the more so. I walked up-stairs in consequence with a kind of feeling that something had happened or was going to happen; so that when I opened the door, and saw at one glance that my aunt was much agitated and in tears, I felt frightened.

"What has happened?" I exclaimed. "What is it? Who is ill?"

"n.o.body--nothing of that kind," she replied, "but it is painful" (she paused, struggled with herself, and went on)--"it is painful, and you must prepare yourself, my dear child, to hear something that will shock and grieve you. Henry" (she looked into my face with intense anxiety)--"Henry has made us all very unhappy, but _you_, my child, _you_" (she seized both my hands and put them upon her eyes, as if to give herself courage to speak) "it will make you miserable. What shall I say to you, my own love? He is utterly unworthy of you; he has forgotten you, Ellen--given up all thoughts of you; he is--"

"Is he going to be married?" I eagerly exclaimed, "speak, dearest aunt, speak--is it so?"

"He is married" (she replied in a tone of deep dejection), "disgracefully married!"

She looked up in my face, and seemed quite bewildered at the expression of my countenance. I was expecting her next words with breathless anxiety, and could only repeat, "To whom, to whom?"