East Lynne Part 85

She could not well stop the child, but every word was rending her heart.

"Lady Isabel was our very, very own mamma," pursued Lucy. "This mamma is not."

"Do you love this one as you did the other?" breathed Lady Isabel.

"Oh, I loved mamma--I loved mamma!" uttered Lucy, clasping her hands.

"But it's all over. Wilson said we must not love her any longer, and Aunt Cornelia said it. Wilson said, if she loved us she would not have gone away from us."

"Wilson said so?" resentfully spoke Lady Isabel.

"She said she need not let that man kidnap her. I am afraid he beat her, for she died. I lie in my bed at night, and wonder whether he did beat her, and what made her die. It was after she died that our new mamma came home. Papa said that she was to be our mamma in place of Lady Isabel and we were to love her dearly."

"Do you love her?" almost pa.s.sionately asked Lady Isabel.

Lucy shook her head.

"Not as I loved mamma."

Joyce entered to show the way to the schoolroom, and they followed her upstairs. As Lady Isabel stood at the window, she saw Mr. Carlyle depart on foot on his way to the office. Barbara was with him, hanging fondly on his arm, about to accompany him to the park gates. So had she fondly hung, so had she accompanied him, in the days gone forever.

Barbara came into the schoolroom in the course of the morning, and entered upon the subject of their studies, the different allotted hours, some to play, some to work. She spoke in a courteous but decided tone, showing that she was the unmistakable mistress of the house and children, and meant to be. Never had Lady Isabel felt her position so keenly--never did it so gall and fret her spirit; but she bowed to meek obedience. A hundred times that day did she yearn to hold the children to her heart, and a hundred times she had to repress the longing.

In a soft, damask dress, not unlike the color of the walls from which the room took its name, a cap of Honiton lace shading her delicate features, sat Mrs. Hare. The justice was in London with Squire Pinner, and Barbara had gone to the Grove and brought her mamma away in triumph.

It was evening now, and Mrs. Hare was paying a visit to the gray parlor.

Miss Carlyle had been dining there, and Lady Isabel, under plea of a violent headache, had begged to decline the invitation to take tea in the drawing-room, for she feared the sharp eyes of Miss Carlyle.

Barbara, upon leaving the dessert-table, went to the nursery, as usual, to her baby, and Mrs. Hare took the opportunity to go and sit a few minutes with the governess--she feared the governess must be very lonely. Miss Carlyle, scorning usage and ceremony, had remained in the dining-room with Mr. Carlyle, a lecture for him, upon some defalcation or other most probably in store. Lady Isabel was alone. Lucy had gone to keep a birthday in the neighborhood, and William was in the nursery.

Mrs. Hare found her in a sad att.i.tude, her hands pressed upon her temples. She had not yet made acquaintance with her beyond a minute's formal introduction.

"I am sorry to hear you are not well, this evening," she gently said.

"Thank you. My head aches much"--which was no false plea.

"I fear you must feel your solitude irksome. It is dull for you to be here all alone."

"I am so used to solitude."

Mrs. Hare sat down, and gazed with sympathy at the young, though somewhat strange-looking woman before her. She detected the signs of mental suffering on her face.

"You have seen sorrow," she uttered, bending forward, and speaking with the utmost sweetness.

"Oh, great sorrow!" burst from Lady Isabel, for her wretched fate was very palpable to her mind that evening, and the tone of sympathy rendered it nearly irrepressible.

"My daughter tells me that you have lost your children, and you have lost your fortune and position. Indeed I feel for you. I wish I could comfort you!"

This did not decrease her anguish. She completely lost all self control, and a gush of tears fell from her eyes.

"Don't pity me! Don't pity me dear Mrs. Hare! Indeed, it only makes endurance harder. Some of us," she added, looking up, with a sickly smile, "are born to sorrow."

"We are all born to it," cried Mrs. Hare. "I, in truth, have cause to say so. Oh, you know not what my position has been--the terrible weight of grief that I have to bear. For many years, I can truly say that I have not known one completely happy moment."

"All do not have to bear this killing sorrow," said Lady Isabel.

"Rely upon it, sorrow of some nature does sooner or later come to all.

In the brightest apparent lot on earth, dark days must mix. Not that there is a doubt but that it falls unequally. Some, as you observe, seem born to it, for it clings to them all their days; others are more favored--as we reckon favor. Perhaps this great amount of trouble is no more than is necessary to take us to Heaven. You know the saying, 'Adversity hardens the heart, or it opens it to Paradise.' It may be that our hearts continue so hard, that the long-continued life's trouble is requisite to soften them. My dear," Mrs. Hare added, in a lower tone, while the tears glistened on her pale cheeks, "there will be a blessed rest for the weary, when this toilsome life is ended; let us find comfort in that thought."

"Ay! Ay!" murmured Lady Isabel. "It is all that is left to me."

"You are young to have acquired so much experience of sorrow."

"We cannot estimate sorrow by years. We may live a whole lifetime of it in a single hour. But we generally bring ill fate upon ourselves," she continued, in a desperation of remorse; "as our conduct is, so will our happiness or misery be."

"Not always," sighed Mrs. Hare. "Sorrow, I grant you, does come all too frequently, from ill-doing; but the worst is, the consequences of this ill-doing fall upon the innocent as well as upon the guilty. A husband's errors will involve his innocent wife; parent's sins fall upon their children; children will break the hearts of their parents. I can truly say, speaking in all humble submission, that I am unconscious of having deserved the great sorrow which came upon me; that no act of mine invited it on; but though it has nearly killed me, I entertain no doubt that it is lined with mercy, if I could only bring my weak rebellious heart to look for it. You, I feel sure, have been equally undeserving."

She? Mrs. Hare marked not the flush of shame, the drooping of the eyelids.

"You have lost your little ones," Mrs. Hare resumed. "That is grief-- great grief; I would not underrate it; but, believe me, it is as nothing compared to the awful fate, should it ever fall upon you, of finding your children grow up and become that which makes you wish they had died in their infancy. There are times when I am tempted to regret that all my treasures are not in that other world; that they had not gone before me. Yes; sorrow is the lot of all."

"Surely, not of all," dissented Lady Isabel. "There are some bright lots on earth."

"There is not a lot but must bear its appointed share," returned Mrs.

Hare. "Bright as it may appear, ay, and as it may continue to be for years, depend upon it, some darkness must overshadow it, earlier or later."

"Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle--what sorrow can there be in store for them?"

asked Lady Isabel, her voice ringing with a strange sound, which Mrs.

Hare noted, though she understood it not.

"Mrs. Carlyle's lot is bright," she said, a sweet smile illumining her features. "She loves her husband with an impa.s.sioned love; and he is worthy of it. A happy fate, indeed, is hers; but she must not expect to be exempted from sorrow. Mr. Carlyle has had his share of it," continued Mrs. Hare.

"Ah!"

"You have doubtless been made acquainted with his history. His first wife left him--left home and her children. He bore it bravely before the world, but I know that it wrung his very heart-strings. She was his heart's sole idol."

"She? Not Barbara?"

The moment the word "Barbara" had escaped her lips, Lady Isabel, recollected herself. She was only Madame Vine, the governess; what would Mrs. Hare think of her familiarity?

Mrs. Hare did not appear to have noticed it; she was absorbed in the subject.

"Barbara?" she uttered; "certainly not. Had his first love been given to Barbara, he would have chosen her then. It was given to Lady Isabel."

"It is given his wife now?"

Mrs. Hare nearly laughed.

"Of course it is; would you wish it to be buried in the grave with the dead, and with one who was false to him? But, my dear, she was the sweetest woman, that unfortunate Lady Isabel. I loved her then, and I cannot help loving her still. Others blamed her, but I pitied. They were well matched; he so good and n.o.ble; she, so lovely and endearing."

"And she left him--threw him to the winds with all his n.o.bility and love!" exclaimed the poor governess, with a gesture of the hands that looked very much like despair.