Ellen Middleton-A Tale Part 38

"G.o.d only knows that," he answered in a gruff voice. "You seem like to die too; and well you may!"

I bade the coachman drive me home; and all the way I repeated to myself in a low voice--_home_, _home;_ and when we reached it, I hardly dared to enter again that house from which Edward had banished me. The porter put into my hand some notes and letters. I took them, and, for the last time, went up to my own room. It was getting dark, and I rang for candles. I looked at the letters in my hand with a sort of vague groundless hope, that something in them might alter the dreadful certainty of my fate. The servant swept the hearth, and put on fresh coals, and then asked, "Do you expect Mr.

Middleton home to dinner, Ma'am?"

I could not say no; I could not speak; I shook my head, and made a sign to him to go; and when the door was closed upon him, I flung myself with my face on the ground, and wept in anguish of spirit.

Then, for the first time, I asked myself what I should do, where I should go. To speak to any one I had ever known before, to justify myself to any one but to Edward, to leave his house for that of any friend or acquaintance, was impossible. Condemned and discarded by him, I had no other thought, but as a wounded animal to creep to some corner of the world, and die there in silence.

I glanced at the letters before me; one was an invitation for the Wednesday in the following week. My name and Edward's were joined together, as they _never_ would be again. The details of that every-day happiness of life, which was for ever destroyed, rose before me; and my heart rebelled against its fate, and murmured against G.o.d. I opened the next; it was from Henry. The image of his dying and childless wife was before me; and I shuddered as I read these lines:

"Your character is gone, your reputation is lost, you are for ever parted from Edward. Nothing remains to you now but the proffered devotion of my whole life. I have not returned to my detested home since the last scene that drove me from it, and never shall again. As long as you live I shall be at your side; wherever you go I shall follow you. There is a wild joy in my heart, for our destiny is accomplished; and henceforward we must be all in all to each other. Ellen, idol of my soul, you shall be mine. The excess of my love must win back love at last. Write me one line; tell me where you go; what you do.

Life has not strength, language has not words, for this tumultuous fever of agitation, for this hour of love and terror, of anguish and of joy."

I tore open the next letter, and read as follows:

"My blessed child, I shall see you to-morrow, and I can feel _almost_ happy in that prospect. You and Edward occupied your uncle's last thoughts; and on you both he p.r.o.nounced his last blessing. The sight of your mutual happiness, your devotion to each other, will seem to me a tribute to his memory, and a consolation to my own sorrows. Edward has been as a son to me in my affliction, and I like to think that in you he possesses the greatest blessing that my grateful tenderness could desire for him.

"I wish I could feel happy about Henry and Alice; I had hoped that the birth of their child would have made him more domestic, and drawn them more closely together; but, except a few hurried lines in which he announced the fact to me, and another short letter since, I have heard nothing from him; and I have received a strange one from her grandmother. She insists upon seeing me immediately on my return to England, and speaks of communicating some dreadful secret to me. If I did not think her mad, this would frighten me; but her language and conduct ever since the marriage have been so strange, that I suspect she must be out of her mind. I shall go to Henry's house at once on my arrival to-morrow; and by the middle of the day I hope to be once more with you, my beloved and precious child. The past is sad, the future is gloomy; I have many fears and disquietudes; but _you_ are my light in darkness, my bird of peace amid the storms of life; and in your happiness I shall forget my own sorrows. Give my best love to dearest Edward.

"Ever your most affectionate,

"M. M."

The cup was full at last; I was drinking it to the dregs; what wonder if it turned my brain? Banished for ever by Edward--persecuted by Henry's fatal pa.s.sion--denounced to Mrs.

Middleton--accused of murder--what was I doing here? Could I not walk out, and, in the black cold depths of the river, still for ever the pa.s.sionate beating of that heart which had throbbed so long? Could I not swallow poison; and, in the agonies of deaths send for Edward?

Death! No; I dared not die! I was afraid to die: but I would seek a living grave. I would fly from the face of those who loved, and of those who hated me.

Edward had forbidden my name to be uttered before him. Never again should it be uttered as the name of a living creature. I would take another, and bury myself in a seclusion where I might linger through the increasing symptoms of that illness which, during the last few days, I had detected and recognised by the hectic spots on my cheeks, by a racking cough, and nightly sweats. There I should live alone, suffer alone, and die alone; and when the record of my death, if recorded at all, should casually meet the eyes of those who once loved me, it would pa.s.s unnoticed; and my own name, my fatal name, if ever p.r.o.nounced by them, would sound as the knell of blighted joys--of hopes gone by--as the memory of a mysterious shame, and of a nameless sorrow.

My eyes turned accidentally to a painting of the Cathedral at --, which hung over the chimney-piece in my room. A superst.i.tious and nervous fancy took possession of me. I felt as if my fate directed me there. I turned my eyes away, and tried to _think_, but could not. A vague terror pursued me; and still, as I fixed my eyes on this picture, I felt as if _there_, among those solemn arches, in those dim aisles, I should be _safe_. I felt as if a mountain would be removed from my breast as soon as I had reached a place where my name and my fate were unknown. _There_, Henry would not pursue me; _there_, I should never be told that Alice was dead, and that I had destroyed her; _there_, I should never hear that Mrs.

Middleton had learnt to hate me; there, she would never ask me what I had done with her child; and miles and miles would lie between me and _him_, whom I so hopelessly loved, and so wildly feared.

The hours went by, and each time the clock struck I startled with affright; but I grew calmer as the night advanced; I had something to do, for my strange vague fancy was changed into a settled resolve.

I fetched a small portmanteau, and put into it some linen and some money, Edward's miniature, and a small prayer-book, which he had once given to me. My cough was dreadful, and shook me to pieces; but I listened to its hollow sound with a terrible joy; and as I counted the bank-notes in my pocket-book, I wrote with a pencil on the back of the last--"For my burial."

The clock struck five, and I put on my bonnet and my cloak.

The light was faintly dawning. I opened with a trembling hand the door of the adjoining room, and unclosed the shutters, to look once and for the last time on Edward's full-length picture. The light was so faint, and my swelled and burning eyes were so dim, that I could hardly discern its features, and I saw nothing before me but the vision of that dreadful moment when I last beheld him, I knelt before it, and breathed a prayer for _him_, which will be heard at the throne of Grace, if prayers can avail from the lips of those who cannot, and dare not, pray for themselves.

A noise in the room above my head startled and hurried me. I took up the portmanteau in my room, and carried it with difficulty down the stairs; I reached the hall door, and pushed it open--I closed it behind me; and, if ever there was a pang which baffles description--if ever there was an act which resembles suicide, in all but the apparent suspension of agony which death seems to yield, it was mine, when I closed that door; and, with a weakened frame, an aching head, and a broken heart, dragged myself with difficulty along the street, and stood s.h.i.+vering and burning at once, to wait till the first hackney-coach appeared on the stand.

I called one, and drove to the place from which I had seen that the stage-coaches set off. I saw the name of--on one of them, and secured a place. An hour afterwards we started; and, as I drove out of London, it was snowing hard.

After a few hours' travelling, the burning fever which had supported me, subsided: and the horrible solitude of the future appalled me. Nothing like a hope before me--nothing but the cold chill of despair in my heart--nothing but strange voices and faces about me. A dark, heavy, speechless grief weighed like lead on my soul, but wrought like fire in my brain.

Late that night I reached this place.

From that moment to this, a night of horror has gathered around me. No tidings have reached, no enemy has pursued, no friend has discovered me. I am alone, and I am dying. I watch day by day the progress of the disease which is killing mc. In reckless despair I accelerate its progress; and then I tremble and shudder at the approach of death. I drag myself to the cathedral, and in its awful silence, or in the low chaunting of the choir, I find a soothing power, which acts at times as a spell over the dark visions and secret terrors of my soul.

But I cannot pray when others pray. My brain is confused, and my spirit weary. I cannot kneel in mockery before G.o.d, while my soul rebels against Him. The voices of the dead and of the dying mingle with the rise and fall of the organ. Sometimes a note vibrates on my ear like a death-cry--the sound of rus.h.i.+ng waters besets me--the curse of Cain follows me, and his words of complaint are ever upon my lips--"My punishment is greater than I can bear!"

Is there no balm for such sorrows? No refuge for such despair?

Tell me, ye who know; for verily, my soul is in great agony, and there is none to comfort me! I am pa.s.sing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and G.o.d is not with me!

CONCLUSION.

"What angel shall Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive Unless her prayers, whom Heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath Of greatest Justice."

SHAKESPEARE.

"Love her, Angelo, I have confessed her, and I know her virtue."

SHAKESPEARE.

"Une vie a bien faire uniquement pa.s.see D'innocence, d'amour, d'espoir, de purete, Tant d'aspirations vers son Dieu repetees, Tant de foi dans la mort, tant de vertus jetees En gage a l'Immortalite.

"Tant de nuits sans sommeil pour veiller la souffrance, Tant de pain retranche pour nourrir l'Indigence; Tant de pleurs toujours prets a s'unir a des pleurs, Tant de soupirs brulans vers une autre patrie, Et tant de patience, a porter une vie, Dont la Couronne etait ailleurs."

LAMARTINE.

On a cold evening in February, Mrs. Middleton was sitting alone in the library of Elmsley Priory; the wind was howling round the old house in that mournful key which stirs up in the soul a vague emotion; the roaring of the swollen torrent was audible, and the low distant barking of the keeper's dogs chimed in with it. Mrs. Middleton was dressed in the deep mourning of a widow. She was not more than forty, and yet her hair was prematurely grey, and the heavy listlessness with which one of her hands hung by her side, and the other struck repeatedly and unconsciously the table on which she leant, told that the spring within was broken, and that suffering, and not time, had done its work upon her.

An embroidering-frame was near her, and after a while she drew it to herself and began to work. When she had made a few st.i.tches she let the needle fall, and her head sank upon the support of the frame, and there she remained buried in thought till the door at the end of the library was softly opened. She looked up eagerly, and gazed in silence on the beautiful being who was approaching her, and who after kissing her on the forehead sat down near her, and employed herself with the work she had given up.

And that lovely vision, what was she like? What did that pale smooth brow, those earnest eyes, that bloodless cheek, and delicate form resemble? A lily shattered by the storm; a dove scared from her nest, but faithful in her fear. An expression wholly at variance with the features that wear it, is a startling thing. Tears in the eyes of an old and iron-featured man; laughter on a pale and dying face; care and deep-seated sorrow in the round lineaments of childhood, make us wonder and grieve; but more at variance than any of these was the expression of Alice Lovell's beautiful features with the character they seemed made to bear. Intense and anxious watchfulness marked it now, a tremulous quiver shook her hand as she drew the threads through the canvas; and though her large eyes were calm, and her att.i.tude composed, the least sound made her start.

"How is he now?" inquired Mrs. Middleton in a voice scarcely above a whisper.