I entered my father's chamber. A red glare from the sky gave it a dismal increase of light. Upon a couch lay a form that seemed my father's. The face I saw not. A cloth frightfully stained with blood----No!--It cannot be told.

CHAPTER XV

_----And yet I breathed!

But not the breath of human life!

A serpent round my heart was wreathed, And stung my every thought to strife.

Alike all time! Abhorred all place!

Shuddering I shrunk from nature's face, Where every line that charmed before, The blackness of my bosom wore._

Lord Byron.

From long and dangerous faintings, I revived almost to frenzy. I shed no tears. These are the expression of a milder form of suffering. One horrible image filled my soul; one sense of anguish so strong, so terrible, that every other feeling,--every faculty of mind and body was benumbed in its grasp. Vainly did my awful duties summon me to their performance. I was incapable of action, almost of thought. My eye wandered over surrounding objects, but saw them not. The words which were spoken to me conveyed no meaning to my mind.

At length the form of my early friend seemed to flit before me. She spoke; and though I could not follow the meaning of her words, the sounds were those of kindness. The familiar voice, long a.s.sociated with so many kindly thoughts, reached the heart, waking a milder tone of feeling; and resting my throbbing head upon her breast, I found relief in a pa.s.sionate burst of tears. Little did I think how small was the share which friendship or compa.s.sion could claim in this visit of my friend to the house of mourning! Little did I guess that its chief motive was to rescue the gifts of my prodigality from being confounded with the property of a bankrupt!

She did not long remain with me; for friends more sympathising than she are soon weary of witnessing the unrestrained indulgence of grief. Yet she did not leave me abruptly. She was too much accustomed to follow the smooth path of conciliation, that she continued to pursue it even when it no longer promised advantage; and she satisfied me with some plausible excuse for going, and with a promise of speedy return.

The tears which for many hours I continued to shed relieved my oppressed spirit; and by degrees I awoke to a full sense of my altered state. From the proudest security of affluence,--from a fearless confidence in myself, and in all around me, one fatal stroke had dashed me for ever. A darker storm had burst upon me, and wrought a ruin more deep, more irretrievable. That tie, which not the hardest heart resigns without pain, had been torn from mine with force sudden and terrible; and a pang unutterable had been added to that misfortune which turns love, and reverence, and grat.i.tude into anguish. What could be added to those horrors, except that conscience should rise in her fury to remind me that, when my presence might have soothed my father's sorrows, I had been absent with an injurious purpose; and that the arrows of misfortune had been rendered mortal by the rebellion of his child? This last incurable pang the mercy of Heaven has saved me. I learned that my father died ignorant of my intended flight.

Miss Arnold, I found, had quitted our house for that of her brother, as soon as our last and worst disaster was discovered by the domestics. Of all the summer friends who had amused my prosperity, not one approached to comfort my affliction. Even my servants, chosen without regard to their moral character, and treated with reference to its improvement; corrupted by the example of dissipation; undisciplined and uninstructed,--repaid the neglect of my domestic duties by a hardened carelessness of my wants and will. After the first transports of grief had subsided, I observed this desertion; and I felt it with all the jealousy of misfortune. Not three days were pa.s.sed since a crowd of obsequious attendants had antic.i.p.ated my commands; now I could scarcely obtain even the slight service which real necessity required.

The remains of my unfortunate father still lay near me; and, unable to overcome my horror of pa.s.sing the chamber of death, I remained entirely secluded in my apartment. The first intruder upon this seclusion was the person who came to seal my father's repositories of papers and money.

Having performed his office elsewhere, he entered my apartment with little ceremony; and, telling me that he understood my father had intrusted me with jewels of value, informed me, that it was necessary to prevent access to them for the present. Accustomed as I was to receive all outward testimonies of respect, the intrusion of a stranger at such a time appeared to me a savage outrage. I was ignorant of all the forms of business; and his errand a.s.sumed the nature of the most insulting suspicion. Had all the jewels of the earth lain at my feet he might have borne them away unresisted by me; but the proud spirit which grief had bowed almost to the dust roused itself at once to repel insult; and, pointing to the casket, I haughtily commanded him to do his office quickly and begone. By this sally of impatience, a few trinkets of value which I might have justly claimed as my own were lost to me, being contained in the casket which I thus suffered to be appropriated.

Insulted as I thought, and persecuted in my only place of refuge, I became desirous to quit my dismal abode. I imagined, that whatever impropriety there might be in the continuance of Juliet's residence in my desolate habitation, there could be no reason to deter me from taking refuge with my friend;--my gentle, my affectionate friend, who had ever rejoiced in my prosperity, and gloried in my accomplishments, and loved even my faults. Checking the tears which gushed from my eyes at the thought that a father's roof must shelter me no more, I announced my intention to my friend in a short billet:--'Come to me, dearest Juliet,'

I said, 'come and take me from this house of misery, I only stipulate, that you will not ask me to join your brother's family circle. I wish to see no human being except yourself,--for who is there left me to love but you?--Your own ELLEN PERCY.'

The servant whom I despatched with this note brought back for answer, that Miss Arnold was not at home. I had been accustomed to find every one, but especially Miss Arnold, ever ready to attend my pleasure; and even the easiest lessons of patience were yet new to the spoiled child of prosperity. My little disappointment was aggravated by the captiousness with which the unfortunate watch for instances of coldness and neglect. 'Not at home! Ah,' thought I, 'what pleasure should I have found in idle visiting or amus.e.m.e.nt, while she was wretched?' Still I never doubted, that the very hour of her return would bring her to welcome and to comfort her desolate friend. I waited impatiently,--listened to every sound; and started at every footstep which echoed through my dreary dwelling. But the cheerless evening closed in, and brought no friend. I pa.s.sed the hours, now in framing her excuse, now in reproaching her unkindness, till the night was far spent; then laid my weary head upon my pillow, and wept myself to sleep.

The morning came, and I rose early, that I might be ready to accompany my friend without delay. But I took my comfortless meal alone. Alone I pa.s.sed the hour in which Juliet and I had been accustomed to plan the pastime of the day. The hour came at which my gay equipage was wont to attend our call. Just then I heard a carriage stop at the door, and my sad heart gave one feeble throb of pleasure; for I doubted not that Juliet was come. It was the hea.r.s.e which came to bear my father to his grave.--Juliet, and all things but my lost father, were for a time forgotten.

But as the paroxysm of sorrow subsided, I again became sensible to this unkind delay. My billet had now been so long despatched without obtaining a reply even of cold civility, that I began to doubt the faithfulness of my messenger, I refused to believe that my note had ever reached Miss Arnold; and I endeavoured to shut my eyes against the indifference which even in that case was implied in her leaving me so long to solitary affliction. I was going once more to summon the bearer of my melancholy billet, that I might renew my enquiries in regard to its delivery, when the long expected answer was at length brought to me.

I impatiently tore it open, anxious to learn what strong necessity had compelled my friend to subst.i.tute for her own presence this colder form of welcome. No welcome, even of the coldest form, was there. With many expressions of condolence, and some even of affection, she informed me of her sorrow 'that she could not receive my visit. I must be aware,'

she said, 'that one whose good name was her only dowry should guard the frail treasure with double care. Grieved as she was to wound me, she was obliged to say, that the publicity of my elopement appeared to her brother an insuperable bar to the continuance of our intimacy.

Resistance to his will,' she said, 'was impossible, even if that will had been less reasonable than, with grief, she confessed it to be. But though she must withhold all outward demonstrations of regard, she would ever remain my grateful and obedient servant.'

I sat motionless as the dead, whilst I deciphered these inhuman words.

The icebolt had struck me to the heart. For a time I was stunned by the blow, and a dull stupor overpowered all recollection. Then, suddenly the anguish of abused affection,--the iron fangs of ingrat.i.tude,--entered into my soul; and all that grief, and all that indignation can inflict, burst in bitterness upon the wounded spirit. I gazed wildly on the cruel billet, while, twisting it in the grasp of agony, I wrenched it to atoms; then, raising to heaven an eye of blasphemy, I dared to insult the Father of Mercies with a cry for vengeance.

But the transport of pa.s.sion quickly subsided into despair. I threw myself upon the ground; longing that the earth would open and shelter me from the baseness of mankind. I closed my eyes, and wished in bitterness of soul that it were for ever. Sometimes, as memory recalled some kinder endearment of my ill-requited affection, I would start as beneath the sudden stab of murder; then bow again my miserable head, and remain in the stillness of the grave.

No ray of consolation cheered me. The world, which had so lately appeared bright with pleasure,--the worthy habitation of beings benevolent and happy, was now involved in the gloom, and peopled with the unsightly shapes of darkness. While my mind glanced towards the selfishness of Lord Frederick, and the treachery of Lady St Edmunds,--while it dwelt upon the desertion of her who, for seven years, had shared my heart and all else that I had to bestow, the human kind appeared to me tainted with the malignity of fiends, and I alone born to be the victim of their craft,--the sport of their cruelty!

How often has the same merciless aspersion been cast upon their fellow-creatures by those who, like me, have repelled the friendship of the virtuous? How often, and how unjustly, do they who choose their a.s.sociate for the hour of sunshine, complain when he shrinks from the bitter blast? Oh that my severe experience could warn unwary beings like myself! Oh that they would learn from my fate to shun the fellowship of the unprincipled! Even common reason may teach them to despair of awakening real regard in her whom infinite benefits cannot attach,--nor infinite excellence delight,--nor infinite forgiveness constrain. She wants the very stamina of generous affection; and is destined to wind her way through all the heartless schemes and cowardly apostasies of selfishness.

From the stupor of despair, I was roused by the entrance of the stranger who had before intruded. In the jealous reserve of an anguish too mighty to be profaned by exposure, I rose from my dejected posture; and, with frozen steadiness, enquired, 'what new indignity I had now to bear?'

The stranger, awed as it seemed by something in my look and manner, informed me, not without respectful hesitation, that he was commissioned by the creditors to tell me I know not what of forms and rights, of willingness to allow me all reasonable accommodation, and such property as I might justly claim, and to remind me of the propriety of appointing a friend to watch over my further interests. One word only of the speech was fitted to arrest my attention. 'Friend!' I repeated, with a smile such as wrings the heart more than floods of womanly tears. 'Any one may do the office of a friend! Ay, even one of those kindly souls who drove my father to desperation,--who refused him the poor boon of delay, when delay might have retrieved all! Any of them can insult and renounce me.

This is the modern office of a friend, is it not?'

The stranger, gazing on me with astonishment, proceeded to request, that I would name an early day for removing from my present habitation; since the creditors only waited for my departure, to dismiss the servants, and to bring my father's house, with all that it contained, to public sale.

He added, that he was commissioned by them to present me with a small sum for my immediate occasions.

To be thus forcibly expelled from the home, where, till now, I could command; to be offered as an alms a pittance from funds which I had considered as my hereditary right; to be driven forth to the cold world with all my wounds yet bleeding, stung me as instances of severe injustice and oppression. My spirit, sore with recent injury, writhed under the rude touch. Already goaded almost to frenzy, I told the stranger, that 'had I recollected the rights of his employers, I would not have owed the shelter even of a single night to those whose barbarous exactions had destroyed my father; nor would I ever be indebted to their charity, so long as the humanity of the laws would bestow a little earth to cover me.'

I pulled the bell violently, and gave orders that a hackney-coach should be procured for me. It came almost immediately; and, without uttering another word,--without raising my eyes,--without one expression of feeling, except the convulsive shudderings of my frame, and the cold drops that stood upon my forehead, I pa.s.sed the apartment where my father perished,--the spot where my mother poured upon me her last blessing,--and cast myself upon the wide world without a friend or home.

I ordered the carriage to an obscure street in the city; a narrow, dark, and airless lane. I had once in my life been obliged to pa.s.s through it, and it had impressed my mind as a scene of all that is dismal in poverty and confinement. This very impression made me now choose it for my abode; and I felt a strange and dreary satisfaction in adding this consummation to the horrors of my fate. As the carriage proceeded, I became sensible to the extreme disorder of my frame. Noise and motion were torture to nerves already in the highest state of irritation. Fever throbbed in every vein, and red flashes of light seemed to glare before my heavy eyes. A hope stole upon my mind that all was near a close. I felt a gloomy satisfaction in the thought, that surely my death would reach the heart of my false friend; that surely when she knew that I had found refuge in the grave from calumny and unkindness, she would wish that she had spared me the deadly pang; and would lament that she had doubled the burden which weighed me to the earth.

When the carriage reached the place of its destination, the coachman again applied to me for instructions; and I directed him to stop at any house where lodgings could be obtained. After several ineffectual enquiries, he drew up to the door of a miserable shop, where he was told that a single room was to be hired. 'Would you please to look into my little place yourself, madam?' said a decent-looking woman, who advanced to meet me. 'It is clean, though it be small, and I should be very happy that it would suit.'

'Any thing will suit me,' answered I.

'You, ma'am!' cried the woman in a tone of extreme surprise; then placing herself just opposite to me, she seemed hesitating whether or not she should allow me to pa.s.s. Indeed the contrast of my appearance with the accommodation which I sought might well have awakened suspicion. My mourning, in the choice of which I had taken no share, was in material the most expensive, and in form of the highest fashion. The wildness of despair was probably impressed on my countenance; and my tall figure, lately so light and so elastic, bent under sickness and dejection. The woman surveyed me with a curiosity, which in better days I would have ill endured; but perceiving me ready to sink to the ground, she relaxed her scrutiny, while she offered me a seat, which I eagerly accepted. She then went to the door, upon pretence of desiring the coachman to wait till I should ascertain whether her lodgings were such as I approved; and they entered on a conversation in which I heard my own name repeated. When she returned to me, she poured forth a torrent of words, the meaning of which I was unable to follow, but which seemed intended to apologise for some suspicion. Never imagining that my character could be the cause of hesitation, I fancied that the poor woman doubted of my ability to pay for my accommodation; and drawing out my purse, I put into her hands all that remained of an affluence which had so lately been the envy of thousands. 'It is but a little,' said I, 'but it will outlast me.'

I now desired to be shown to my apartment; and laboriously followed my landlady up a steep miserable stair, into a chamber, low, close, and gloomy. In a sort of recess, shaded by a patched curtain of faded chintz, stood a bed, which, only a few days before, no degree of fatigue could have induced me to occupy. Worn out, and heartbroken as I was, I yet recoiled from it for a moment. 'But it matters not,' thought I, 'I shall not occupy it long;' so I laid myself down without undressing, and desired that I might be left alone.

I was now, indeed, alone. In the wilfulness of desperation, I had myself severed the few and slender ties which might still have bound me to mankind; and I felt a sullen pleasure in the thought that my retreat was inscrutable alike to feeble compa.s.sion and to idle curiosity. The widow, whose roof afforded my humble shelter, and her daughter, a sickly, ignorant, but industrious creature, at first persecuted me with attentions; vainly trying to bribe, with such delicacies as they could procure, the appet.i.te which turned from all with the loathing of disease. They urged me to send for my friends, and for medical advice.

They tried, though ignorant of my real distemper, to soothe me with words of rude comfort. All was in vain. I seldom looked up, or returned any other answer than a faint gesture of impatience; and, weary of my obstinate silence, they at last desisted from their a.s.siduities, nor ever intruded on my solitude, except to bring relief to the parching thirst which consumed me.

Day after day pa.s.sed on in the same dreary quiet. Night, and the twilight of my gloomy habitation, succeeded each other, unnoticed by me.

Disease was preying on my const.i.tution,--hopeless and indignant rejection rankled in my mind. My ceaseless brooding over injury and misfortune was only varied by the dreary consolation that all would soon be lost in the forgetfulness of the grave.

And could a rational and immortal creature turn on the grave a hope in which religion had no part? Could a being, formed for hope and for enjoyment, lose all that the earth has to offer, without reaching forward an eager grasp towards joys less transient? When the meteors which I had so fondly pursued were banished for ever, did no ray from the Fountain of Light descend to cheer my dark dwelling?--No. They who have tasted that the Lord is good, return in their adversity with double eagerness to taste his goodness. But I had lived without G.o.d in my prosperity, and my sorrow was without consolation. In the sunshine of my day I had refused the guiding cloud; and the pillar of fire was withdrawn from my darkness. I had forgotten Him who filleth heaven and earth,--and the heavens and the earth were become one dreary blank to me. The tumult of feeling, indeed, unavoidably subsided; but it was into a calm,--frozen, stern, and cheerless as the long night-calm of a polar sea.

From the supineness of sickness and despair, I was at last forced to momentary exertion. My landlady renewed her entreaties that I would send for my friends; enforcing her request by informing me that my little fund was nearly exhausted. Disturbed with her importunity, and careless of providing against difficulties from which I expected soon to escape, I commanded her to desist. But my commands were no longer indisputable.

The woman probably fearing, from the continuance of my disorder, that my death might soon involve her in trouble and expense, persisted in her importunity. Finding me obstinately determined to persevere in concealment, she proceeded to hint not obscurely, that it would be necessary to consider of some means of supply, or to provide myself with another abode. Only a few days were past since an insinuation like this would have driven me indignant from a palace; but now the depression of sickness was added to that of sorrow, and I only answered, that when I could no longer repay her trouble, I would release her from it.

Dissatisfied, however, with an a.s.surance which she foresaw that I might be unable to fulfil, the widow proceeded to enquire whether I retained any properly which could be converted into money; and mentioned a ring which she observed me to wear. Dead as I was to all earthly affection, I firmly refused to part with this ring, for it had been my mother's. I had drawn it a hundred times from her slender hand, and she thought it best employed as a toy for her little Ellen, while yet its quickly shifting rays made its only value to me. 'No!' said I, as the woman urged me to dispose of it, 'this shall go with me to the grave, in memory that one heart had human feeling towards me.' The landlady, however, venturing a tedious remonstrance against this resolution, the dying fire again gave a momentary flash. 'Be silent,' I cried. 'Speak to me no more till I am penniless; then tell me so at once, and I will that instant leave your house, though I die at the threshold!' Highly offended by this haughty command, the woman immediately retired, leaving me for the rest of that day in total solitude.

An evil was now ready to fall upon me, for which I was wholly unprepared either by experience or reflection. Unaccustomed as I was to approach the abodes of poverty, the very form of want was new to me; and since I had myself been numbered with the poor, my thoughts had chiefly dwelt upon my past misfortunes, or taken refuge from the antic.i.p.ation of future distress in the prospect of dissolution. But, in spite of my wishes and my prophecies, abstinence, and the strength of my const.i.tution, prevailed over my disorder. My heavy eyes were this night visited by a deep and refreshing sleep, from which I awoke not till a mid-day sun glanced through the smoke a dull ray upon the chimney crags that bounded my horizon.

I looked up with a murmur of regret that I was restored to consciousness. 'Why,' thought I, 'must the flaring light revisit those to whom it brings no comfort?' and I closed my eyes in thankless impatience of my prolonged existence. Oh, where is the _human_ physician, whose patience would endure to have his every prescription questioned, and vilified, and rejected! whose pitying hand would offer again and again the medicine which in scorn we dash from our lips!--No!

Such forbearance dwells with one Being alone; and such perverseness we reserve for the infallible Physician.

I presently became sensible that my fever had abated. With a deep feeling of disappointment I perceived that death had eluded my desires; and that I must return to the th.o.r.n.y and perplexing path where the serpent lurked to sting, and tigers prowled for prey. While my thoughts were thus engaged, a footstep crossed my chamber; but, lost in my gloomy reverie, I suffered it, ere I raised my eyes, to approach close to my bed. I was roused by a cry of strong and mingled feeling. 'Miss Mortimer!' I exclaimed; but she could not speak. She threw herself upon my bed, and wept aloud. The voice of true affection for a moment touched my heart; but I remembered that the words of kindness had soothed only to deceive; and stern recollection of my wrongs steeled me against better thoughts.

'Why are you come hither, Miss Mortimer?' said I, coldly withdrawing myself from her arms.

'Unkind Ellen!' returned my weeping friend; 'could I know that you were in sorrow and not seek you? May I not comfort,--or, if that cannot be, may I not mourn with you?'

'I do not mourn--I want no comfort--leave me.'

'Oh say not so, dearest child. You are not forbidden to feel. Let us weep together under the chastis.e.m.e.nt, and trust together that there is mercy in it.'