She now entered the house, as usual, without ceremony, and proceeded to the room where she commonly found Mrs. Winston; but on this occasion Gertrude was not there. Her mother looked listlessly at two or three of the books upon the table, and wandered into the adjoining apartment, absent in mind, but disappointed at not seeing her she sought. Here she lingered a few minutes more, and then pa.s.sed on into the smaller room, where, as she well recollected, she had encountered Randolph Trevethlan.

A young lady, sitting with her back to the door, turned as it opened, and Mrs. Pendarrel immediately recognized Randolph's companion at the opera, his sister. Helen also remembered the original of her miniature, and rose from her chair as Esther advanced.

"What!" the last-named lady exclaimed, fixing her keen eyes upon Helen.

"Have I been mocked? Have I been the sport of a paltry conspiracy? Has my daughter been nursing the thief, and condoling with me upon the robbery? Fawning upon me with hypocritical lamentations, and sheltering those who wronged me? For I see it all. It was here the plot was hatched; here the correspondence was managed; here the flight was arranged. Did not Gertrude always boast that she would thwart my schemes? Yet I hardly thought she would go so far as this."

"Madam," Helen e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in great confusion, "madam, you do Mrs.

Winston wrong. She knew nothing of my brother's design. Neither did I.

But let your blame only fall on me, for I was the unconscious means of its execution."

"Do you dare to answer me, Miss Trevethlan?" Esther asked angrily. "And what do you here? What does one of your name in the house of one of mine? Name! What is your name? You have none. What business has one like you to be here?"

"I am an intruder, madam," Helen answered, the tears rising in her soft eyes--"I have felt it, and know it. But I came here before this unhappy matter. The invitation was very kind. We were very poor. I would relieve my brother."

"Poor! did you say, Miss Trevethlan?" exclaimed Esther. "Yes; and you will be still poorer before many days are gone! Unhappy? No, no; you did not think so. The beggar does not call it unhappy when he inveigles away a rich heiress. But it is a mistake. She has nothing. You will be no richer for the stolen marriage; neither you nor your brother, Miss Trevethlan."

"Oh, madam," said Helen in much distress, "I wish you could read in my heart. You would spare me these reproaches. You do not know how I deplore what has occurred. The loss of our home, the poverty and sorrow you speak of, everything I would have endured, rather than my brother had done this. We want nothing of you, madam, nothing but forgiveness; and you may spare sarcasms which are undeserved."

"Would your brother ask my forgiveness?" said Mrs. Pendarrel. "Was there a word of the kind in Mildred's letter? No, Miss Trevethlan; forgiveness will never be asked, and never be granted. Why; do you not hate me yourself? You must have learned from infancy to detest my name. Was not Pendarrel pointed at as the destroyer of Trevethlan? Am not I the author of the desolation which has fallen upon your head? Truly, Miss Trevethlan, it might rouse your father's spirit from his grave, to feel that one of his children dwelt under the roof of one of mine."

"No, madam," Helen exclaimed, almost as vehemently as she was addressed--"a thousand times no. Not till lately did I know there was any difference."

"'Tis untrue!" said Esther. "'Tis nonsense. You were born to hate. You were bequeathed an inheritance of hate. You accepted it. Did not you send me with scorn from your doors? It was your turn then. It is mine now. Hate breeds hate."

"And on which side did it begin, if it were so?" Helen asked. "On ours?

Madam, were we not treated as if hatred were indeed our only inheritance? Was not my brother insulted with an offer of charity? I speak his mind, and not my own, for I thought the offer was kind. But I see now that he was right."

"You will be glad to have the offer repeated ere long," said Esther bitterly.

"You wronged us then, madam," Helen said, "and you wrong us now. We, alone on the earth, young, mourning the only parent we had ever known, little likely were we to hate our nearest connections. Was hatred bequeathed to us? No, madam. I might deem our inherited feelings were far other, for this portrait was the last companion of our poor father.

They found it upon his heart when he died."

Esther caught the miniature from Helen's hand, and gazed earnestly at it for some seconds. Then she pressed it to her lips in a kind of ecstacy.

"He loved me to the last," she murmured.

But the transport pa.s.sed away as rapidly as it came. Melancholy, stern and dark, fell over Mrs. Pendarrel's brow. She clasped the miniature upon her bosom.

"Girl," she said, almost in a whisper, "you give me great joy and sorrow inexpressible. I have been desperately wronged. My life has been a blank. I cannot change on a sudden. I do not know what to think. Let me keep this portrait."

And she departed from the room and from the house, leaving Helen bewildered by a host of perplexing reflections. She remembered what Randolph said concerning that miniature, but she was unaware of the promise exacted from him at their father's death-bed. She scarcely understood in what manner the law-suit had been only the final step in a career of vengeance. But she felt that she had been grievously insulted, and she perceived the ambiguity of her situation at Mrs. Winston's. She resolved on returning to Hampstead without delay.

It was a pity, for she had been an angel of peace to Gertrude. She had taught the husband and wife to know one another, and the knowledge might soon become affection. Yet her hostess confessed to herself that the resolution was correct, even though she was ignorant of the conversation which had immediately inspired it. She did not so much as attempt to delay its execution, and the same afternoon found Helen once more an inmate of Mr. Peach's modest, but pleasant and pretty dwelling.

Comfort followed her there. Rereworth's letter to Polydore Riches came to revive hope, and to bring oblivion of the affronts and menaces of the morning. The news exhilarated the chaplain's drooping spirits, and inclined him to regard the elopement with less severity. And Helen thought with grat.i.tude of the writer, and perhaps remembered those readings of Scott and Byron in Mrs. Winston's little drawing-room.

Besides this, the fugitives were now approaching the metropolis, and might possibly arrive the same night. Here were copious sources of conversation to fill the evening when the chaplain talked with Helen in the pleasant parlour, where she had sat during the past winter, and which had witnessed the extinction of all those hopes, so long and so fondly cherished at Trevethlan Castle, the day-dreams of Merlin's Cave.

If Mrs. Pendarrel inflicted much pain in her short interview with Helen, she did not quit it herself unscathed. The sight of her portrait aroused a thousand recollections, familiar indeed to Esther's hours of reverie, but never so vividly presented before. She thought of the day when she permitted that miniature to be taken from her neck. In the morning she hung it there, not without an idea that it might pa.s.s into another's possession before night. Often had the favour been solicited by the lover, and as often refused by the coquette. But at last a.s.siduity might triumph over waywardness. Side by side they strolled over the lawns of Pendarrel, enjoying converse such as is only derided by the unhappy wights who have never shared it. There was a secluded little pool, formed by the rivulet which murmured through the wilderness, surrounded by flowering shrubs, and over-arched so closely by spreading forest-trees, that the sunshine scarcely penetrated to the surface of the water. It was in that bower, under the thickest of the leafy canopy, that Henry Trevethlan detached the miniature from the chain by which it hung, and his lips met those of Esther in the first kiss of love. How well she remembered it now! Every little circ.u.mstance, the att.i.tude in which they stood, the few whispered words, came back to her mind, fresh as the things of yesterday. A bright-winged b.u.t.terfly alighted for a moment upon her wrist, and he called her Psyche, his soul, without whom he should die. The b.u.t.terfly rested but a second--was its flight ominous of what had occurred since? And had he virtually died? Had his subsequent existence been a mere life in death? Had his soul indeed remained always with her? So, Esther thought, it would seem. And had he forgiven the ruin into which he was driven by despair? Had he pardoned the despair itself, the wreck of all his hopes and feelings, the anguish which abided with him to the last?

Questions like these pa.s.sed rapidly through Esther's mind, while she gazed on the fair young face which once had been her own. Very different was her aspect now. The round and glowing cheeks had become hollow and pale. The smooth white forehead was furrowed with the lines of sorrow.

Silver threads mingled with the dark tresses. The eyes, in the miniature deep and inscrutable, were now wild and bright. The pa.s.sions of the girl had been developed in the woman, and had left their trace on every feature.

And then Esther turned to self-justification. Had she made no atonement?

Had she suffered nothing? Had her heart been unwasted? Resolutely as she had striven to repress all memory of that early dream, had she succeeded in the attempt? Was not the lava still hot beneath the foliage which grew over it? Had not the smouldering fire broken forth anew on the news of Henry's death? And again she thought she had been hardly used by the precipitation with which he abandoned her. It was cruel to afford her no chance of reconciliation. If he might charge her with vanity or wilfulness, surely she might accuse him of rancour and pride. If the happiness of her lover had been shattered by the storm, neither had her own escaped its ravages.

She had endeavoured to forget them in the gratification of her love of rule, and her eager pursuit of revenge. The first she enjoyed in the management of her own household, the second in the downfall of Trevethlan. Ambition and appet.i.te grew with what they fed on. "Pendar'l and Trevethlan shall own one name." Not till that prediction had been fulfilled to the letter, and to her own glory, could Esther rest. Her old lover had departed from the scene; she prolonged the contest with his children. They increased her ardour by the mode in which they met her first advances. For a season she seemed to be foiled. But the check gave new vigour to her never-dying wrath.

And before long the orphans crossed her path. And soon he, the heir of all his father's pride, encountered her, face to face, as the companion of her child. She had trembled to think of what that meeting might call forth. But then she learned the tale, which would fulfil all her desires to an extent beyond her dreams, and forgot her danger in the exultation of approaching triumph. Triumph came, but only as the precursor of defeat; for her enemy, ruined and dishonoured, had suborned the affection of her daughter, and made her house desolate in the very hour of victory.

Yes, scandal made merry with the name of Pendarrel. Esther, with all her rigid discipline, with all her cherished authority, had seen the child, for whose marriage with another her word was pledged, elude her control, and steal to a furtive union with the man whom she had been labouring to bring to want and shame. It was nearly enough to deprive her of her reason. No time was this to think of forgiveness. She would not believe that Helen Trevethlan was so innocent as she pretended. The production of the miniature was a theatrical trick. The picture should revive the memory of a never-forgiven wrong.

Let the suit then be pressed. Let there be no respite. Let calamity fall fast and heavy. Let disobedience and presumption meet their just reward.

But where was the agent? Where was he who had pointed out the path of revenge? What had he said when she last saw him? Better, Esther thought scornfully, better even that match than this. And what meant his dark insinuations? Had he not dared to threaten?

Langour crept over the muser. She began to grow aweary of the sun. She felt as if her self-control were slipping from her grasp. Shadowy fears beset her. She did not like to be alone. She was glad when her husband came home from his official duties; and he became seriously alarmed at her altered demeanour. She seemed to be sinking into a state of lethargy, which might affect her mind. Mr. Pendarrel sent to beg Mrs.

Winston to come and watch by her mother, who was evidently very ill. And Gertrude came, but for some time her presence seemed only to irritate the invalid. It might be observed that from about this day Esther entirely discontinued her old practice of calling her husband by the name which he had abandoned to obtain her hand.

CHAPTER XII.

Anne magis Siculi gemuerunt aera juvenci, Aut magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis Purpureas subter cervices terruit, _Imus_; _Imus praecipites_, quam si sibi dicat, intus Palleat infelix, quod proxima nesciat uxor?

Persius.

_Down, headlong, down_--Say could that bull of fire, Or thread-suspended sword such fear inspire, As his, whose thoughts, to bosom-wife unknown, Ring in his livid heart--_Down, headlong, down_?

That same evening the fugitive couple arrived in the metropolis, and took up their abode in apartments engaged for them by Mr. Riches at a hotel. It was time. Already they were beginning to long for other company than their own; a few days more might make their own companionship intolerable. One quarter of the moon had nearly taught them the vanity of the lover's chimera, that they were all-sufficient for one another. There was so much anxiety about their path, so much gloom around the present, so much dismay in the future, that their spirits drooped, and even love seemed to grow cold in their hearts. Let them beware, for they were united for ever. In the preservation of their mutual regard lay their only chance of peace; should that vanish, there was nothing but misery before them. The day might then come when Mildred would be qualified to receive succour from her mother, on the terms which Esther, in the fierceness of her first indignation, had not scrupled to prescribe.

The sense of the fault they had committed lay at the bottom of their discontent. Mildred repented with bitter sorrow her rupture of all filial ties, and exaggerated her sister's account of the distress it had occasioned, thinking sometimes that she might even have broken her mother's heart. She forgot the severity with which she had lately been treated, and remembered only the tenderness which she had not seldom experienced. She often recollected how she had been pressed to her mother's bosom on the night of the fire, and she trembled to dwell upon the affection which one moment had cast away.

Randolph read some portion of her thoughts; and he perceived that the maternal sorrow to which he had once looked forward with perverse eagerness, afforded him none of the satisfaction he had expected. It was not so he ought to avenge his own or his father's wrongs. The scheme recoiled upon himself. There was no happiness for him while his bride was unhappy, and nothing but wretchednes for her until she had made her peace at home. And so Randolph saw that his stolen marriage had actually contributed to Esther's triumph. She had now not only his worldly wealth, but himself beneath her foot. He had placed himself in a position where he must either sue for mercy or behold his wife pining away before his eyes.

Amidst such gloomy speculations, one bright spot sometimes appeared to his mental vision. "I have thought," his father said, in those well remembered words, "she was not so indifferent to me as she chose to pretend. If it were so, she has avenged me on herself, and has my forgiveness." Would that Randolph had dwelt oftener upon the hope contained in this qualification, and more seldom upon the stern injunction! Would that he had not suffered the early affront to himself to take so firm a hold of him! That he had not fomented his personal quarrel, until now he could see no avenue to reconciliation! That he had listened with more humility to the remonstrances of Polydore Riches!

These wishes were idle now. It was a sad evening of the honeymoon when Randolph and his bride sat together in their hired and temporary abode, having none of their own, and hardly daring to consider what would become of them. In slow and broken sentences they discussed their future prospects, and strove to cheer one another with hopes in which neither put any trust.

At an early hour in the morning, Randolph escorted Mildred to her sister's, and left her there, he himself proceeding to Hampstead.

Gertrude had no consolation to offer the young wife. Indeed, she was obliged to own that Mrs. Pendarrel was in a condition to cause considerable alarm. She said it would be dangerous for Mildred to present herself, and would only permit her to call in the carriage at the house in May Fair and remain at the door, while she herself ascertained their mother's state. It was not satisfactory; and Gertrude resumed her watch; while Mildred returned in increased solicitude to such distraction as could be supplied by her attendant. Sorely puzzled was Rhoda at so woeful a termination to an elopement.

Meantime, Randolph continued on his way to the dwelling which had sheltered himself and Helen in the first enthusiasm of their arrival in the metropolis. Little had they then deemed how soon that enthusiasm was to be chilled; little they thought how soon they would return to their home by the sea with all their hopes extinguished. And still less could they know, that even that brief absence would be pregnant with events to influence their whole lives; and that whereas when they quitted their birth-place they were heart-whole and fancy-free, one of them, at least, would return to it the slave of pa.s.sion and unable to hope.

They had lost that home since then. They had bidden farewell, and, as they might at times fear, for ever, to the scenes endeared by a thousand recollections. Thenceforth they could only lean upon one another. And suddenly they were separated. The brother, rashly and wrongfully, had taken another partner in misfortune, and abandoned the former sharer of his affections. And now, with such feelings, they once more met. Yet, amidst all these mournful reminiscences, Randolph felt some relief from his trouble in Helen's greeting. She inquired very warmly for her sister, and he was delighted at hearing the word.

She told him of her interview with Mrs. Pendarrel the morning before, and he listened with a degree of interest which surprised her. He questioned her eagerly respecting every word that was uttered, and his cheeks flushed with anger when he extorted from the narrator an account of Mrs. Pendarrel's insults. But this expression seemed to pa.s.s away, when Helen described the emotion displayed by Esther at the sight of her own likeness, and the whispered exclamation--"He loved me to the last!"