Adeline Mowbray Part 34

At this speech Adeline's fort.i.tude entirely gave way. _Her_ child had not had the small-pox, and she had been for some minutes in reach of the infection; and with a look of horror, forgetting her business, and every thing but Editha, she was on the point of leaving the room, when a servant hastily entered, and told Mary that her little boy was dead.

At hearing this, even her cold heart was moved, and throwing herself back on the sofa she fell into a strong hysteric; while Adeline, losing all remembrance of her insolence in her distress, flew to her a.s.sistance; and, in pity for a mother weeping the loss of her infant, forgot for a moment that she was endangering the life of her own child.

Mr Langley, mean time, though grieved for the death of the infant, was alive to the generous forgiving disposition which Adeline evinced; and could not help exclaiming. 'Oh, Mrs Berrendale! forgive us! we deserved not such kindness at your hands:' and Adeline, wanting to loosen the tight stays of Mary, and not choosing to undress her before such a witness, coldly begged him to withdraw, advising him at the same time to go and see whether the child was really dead, as it might possibly only appear so.

Revived by this possibility, Mr Langley left Mary to the care of Adeline, and left the room. But whether it was that Mary had a mind to impress her lover and the father of her child with an idea of her sensibility, or whether she had overheard Adeline's supposition, certain it is, that as soon as Langley went away, and Adeline began to unlace her stays, she hastily recovered, and declared her stays should remain as they were: but still exclaiming about her poor dear Benny, she kept her arms closely clasped round Adeline's waist, and reposed her head on her bosom.

Adeline's fears and pity for her being thus allayed, she began to have leisure to feel and fear for herself; and the idea, that, by being in such close contact with Mary, she was imbibing so much of the disease as must inevitably communicate it to Editha, recurred so forcibly to her mind, that, begging for mercy's sake she would loose her hold, she endeavoured to break from the arms of her tormentor.

But in vain.--As soon as Mary saw that Adeline wished to leave her, she was the more eager to hold her fast; and protesting she should die if she had the barbarity to leave her alone, she only hugged her the closer. 'Well, then, I'll try to stay till Mr Langley returns,' cried Adeline: but some minutes elapsed, and Mr Langley did not return; and then Adeline, recollecting that when he did return he would come fresh fraught with the pestilence from the dead body of his infant, could no longer master her feelings, but screaming wildly,--'I shall be the death of my child; let me go,'--she struggled with the determined Mary. 'You will drive me mad if you detain me,' cried Adeline.

'You will drive me mad if you go,' replied Mary, giving way to a violent hysterical scream, while with successful strength she parried all Adeline's endeavours to break from her. But what can resist the strength of phrensy and despair? Adeline, at length worked up to madness by the fatal control exercised over her, by one great effort threw the sobbing Mary from her, and, darting down stairs with the rapidity of phrensy, nearly knocked down Mr Langley in her pa.s.sage, who was coming to announce the restoration of the little boy.

She soon reached Fleet-street, and was on her road home before Langley and Mary had recovered their consternation: but she suddenly recollected that homewards she must not proceed; that she carried death about her; and wholly bewildered by this insupportable idea, she ran along the Strand, muttering the incoherencies of phrensy as she went, till she was intercepted in her pa.s.sage by some young men of _ton_, who had been dining together, and, being half intoxicated, were on their way to the theatre.

Two of these gentlemen, with extended arms, prevented her further progress.

'Where are you going, my pretty girl,' cried one, 'in this hurry? shall I see you home? heh!'

'Home!' replied Adeline; 'name it not. My child! my child! thy mother has destroyed thee.'

'So!' cried another, 'actress, by all that's tragical!'

'Unhand me!' exclaimed Adeline wildly. 'Do not you know, poor babe, that I carry death and infection about with me!'

'The devil you do!' returned the gentleman; 'then the sooner you take yourself off the better.'

'I believe the poor soul is mad,' said a third, making way for Adeline to pa.s.s.

'But,' cried the first who spoke, catching hold of her, 'if so, there is method and meaning in her madness; for she called Jaby here a poor babe, and we all know he is little better.'

By this time Adeline was in a state of complete phrensy, and was again darting down the street in spite of the gentleman's efforts to hold her, when another gentleman, whom curiosity had induced to stop and listen to what pa.s.sed, suddenly seized hold of her arm, and exclaimed, 'Good Heavens! what can this mean? It is--it can be no other than Miss Mowbray.'

At the sound of her own name Adeline started: but in a moment her senses were quite lost again; and the gentleman, who was no other than Colonel Mordaunt, being fully aware of her situation, after reproving the young men for sporting with distress so apparent, called a coach which happened to be pa.s.sing, and desired to know whither he should have the honour of conducting her.

But she was too lost to be able to answer the question: he therefore, lifting her into the coach, desired the man to drive towards Dover-street; and when there, he ordered him to drive to Margaret-street, Oxford-street; when, not being able to obtain one coherent word from Adeline, and nothing but expressions of agony, terror, and self-condemnation, he desired him to stop at such a house, and, conducting Adeline up stairs, desired the first a.s.sistance to be procured immediately.

It was not to his own lodgings that Colonel Mordaunt had conducted Adeline, but to the house of a convenient friend of his, who, though not generally known as such, and bearing a tolerably good character in the world, was very kind to the tender distresses of her friends, and had no objection to a.s.sist the meetings of two fond lovers.

It is to be supposed, then, that she was surprised at seeing Colonel Mordaunt with a companion, who was an object of pity and horror rather than of love: but she did not want humanity; and when the colonel recommended Adeline to her tenderest care, she with great readiness ordered a bed to be prepared, and a.s.sisted in prevailing on Adeline to lie down on it. In a short time a physician and a surgeon arrived; and Adeline, having been bled and made to swallow strong opiates, was undressed by her attentive landlady; and though still in a state of unconsciousness, she fell into a sound sleep which lasted till morning.

But Colonel Mordaunt pa.s.sed a sleepless night. The sight of Adeline, even frantic and wretched as she appeared, had revived the pa.s.sion which he had conceived for her; and if on her awaking the next morning she should appear perfectly rational, and her phrensy merely the result of some great fright which she had received, he resolved to renew his addresses, and take advantage of the opportunity now offered him, while she was as it were in his power.

But to return to the Temple.--Soon after Mr Langley had entered his own room, and while Mary and he were commenting on the frantic behaviour of Adeline, the tawny boy came back from his walk, and heard with marks of emotion, apparently beyond his age, (for though near twelve he did not look above eight years old,) of the sudden and frantic disappearance of Adeline.

'Oh! my dear friend,' cried he, 'if, you are not gone home you will break my poor mother's heart!'

'And who is your mother?'

'Her name is Savanna; and she lives with Mrs Berrendale.'

'Mrs Berrendale!' cried Mary, 'Miss Mowbray you mean.'

'No, I do not; her name was Mowbray, but is now Berrendale.'

'What! is she really married?' asked Langley.

'Yes to be sure.'

'But how do you know that she is?'

'Oh! because I went to church with them, and my mother cooked the wedding-dinner, and I ate plum-pudding and drank punch, and we were very merry,--only my mother cried, because my father could not come.'

'Very circ.u.mstantial evidence indeed!' cried Langley, 'and I am very sorry that I did not know so much before. So you and your mother love this extraordinary fine woman, Mrs Berrendale, heh?'

'Love her! To be sure--we should be very wicked if we did not. Did you never hear the story of the pineapple?' said the tawny boy.

'Not I. What was it?' and the tawny boy, delighted to tell the story, with sparkling eyes sat down to relate it.

'You must know, Mr Glenmurray longed for a pineapple.'

'Mrs Glenmurray you mean,' said Mary laughing immoderately.

'I know what I say,' replied the tawny boy angrily; 'and so Miss Adeline, as she was then called, went out to buy one;--well, and so she met my poor father going to prison, and I was crying after her, and so--' Here he paused, and bursting into tears exclaimed, 'And perhaps she is crying herself now, and I must go and see for her directly.'

'Do so, my fine fellow,' cried Langley: 'you had better go home, tell your mother what has pa.s.sed, and to-morrow' (accompanying him down stairs, and speaking in a low voice) 'I will either write a note of apology or call on Mrs Berrendale myself.'

The tawny boy instantly set off, running as fast as he could, telling Langley first, that if any harm had happened to his friend, both he and his mother should lie down and die. And this further proof of Adeline's merit did not tend to calm Langley's remorse for having exposed her to the various distresses which she had undergone at his chambers.

CHAPTER XX

Adeline awoke early the next morning perfectly sane, though weakened by the exertions which she had experienced the night before, and saw with surprise and alarm that she was not in her own lodging.

But she had scarcely convinced herself that she was awake, when Mrs Selby, the mistress of the house, appeared at her bed-side, and, seeing what was pa.s.sing in her mind by her countenance, explained to her as delicately as she could the situation in which she had been brought there.

'And who brought me hither?' replied Adeline, dreadfully agitated, as the remembrance of what had pa.s.sed by degrees burst upon her.

'Colonel Mordaunt of the guards,' was the answer; and Adeline was shocked to find that he was the person to whom she was under so essential an obligation. She then hastily arose, being eager to return home; and in a short time she was ready to enter the drawing-room, and to express her thanks to Colonel Mordaunt.

But in vain did she insist on going home directly, to ease the fears of her family. The physician, who arrived at the moment, forbade her going out without having first taken both medicine and refreshment; and by the time that, after the most earnest entreaties, she obtained leave to depart, she recollected that, as her clothes were the same, she might still impart disease to her child, and therefore must on no account think of returning to Editha.

'Whither, whither then can I go?' cried she, forgetting she was not alone.

'Why not stay here?' said the colonel, who had been purposely left alone with her. 'O dearest of women! that you would but accept the protection of a man who adores you; who has long loved you; who has been so fortunate as to rescue you from a situation of misery and danger, and the study of whose life it shall be to make you happy.'