The next day Henry was obliged to return to London: indeed, he wished to be upon the spot, in case of Mr. Cresford’s arrival; and Ellen was, on the same account, equally anxious he should depart.
Mrs. Allenham made several attempts to learn from Ellen the particulars of her separation; but Ellen assured her the subject was at present too painful to dwell upon; and they remained together in melancholy calmness not unmixed with gêne, for Caroline was somewhat hurt at Ellen’s reserve.
She had one conversation with her father, in which he was all kindness and sympathy, and she now sat down to a task which she deemed one of absolute necessity, although of the utmost difficulty, namely, to write to Mr. Cresford a letter which should meet him on his arrival in London, and convey to him the dreadful intelligence, which sooner or later, must reach him.
It was as follows:—
“I know not how to address you, and I dread lest you should have heard from some other quarter all that has occurred, and may cast aside the letter of one whom you deem untrue to you, without reading her own statement of the facts.
“Believe me, when I swear by every thing we hold most sacred, that the first communication I received from you, from the time I read the official account of your death in the public newspapers, was the letter I received last month, dated from Gratz. I had then for two years believed myself the wife of Mr. Hamilton.
“As I write these words, my spirit quails at the effect I know they must produce on you; my heart bleeds for the pain I am inflicting on you; for, indeed, I do justice to the strength of your affection for me, and I grieve to be thus the cause of anguish to one who loves me! It is a cruel return for all the fidelity you have preserved to me; but you must know the truth, and I had rather you should learn it from me, than from common report—from the busy tongue of slander.
“Mr. Maitland never brought me the letter to which you allude. I have never seen any of your companions in misfortune, except Colonel Eversham, who told me how he followed your remains to the grave, and I have yet to learn by what means you effected your escape from Verdun. For two years I mourned you in sincerity and truth. During all that time I regulated my conduct by what I supposed would have been your wishes, if you had been able to express them to me before your supposed death.
“Some months after the expiration of my two years’ mourning, I accepted the hand of Mr. Hamilton. You must feel, that, although this second marriage is null and void, and that in the eye of the law I am your wife, an eternal barrier is placed between yourself and me.
“Upon the reception of your first letter, Mr. Hamilton left me, and I have not seen him since. Upon the confirmation of this first letter (in the authenticity of which we scarcely believed), I removed with—the—two children to my father’s.” [She had at first written “your two children;” but she felt as if by that word she were tacitly yielding them up to him, and she substituted our. This she feared might imply that their reunion was not impossible, and she wrote the.] “Indeed, indeed, my conscience acquits me of having wilfully done any thing wrong, though I am aware I have cast a blight over the fate of all those whose happiness I would gladly die to secure. Would I could die! But it is our duty to suffer and submit. Misfortune has, I hope, taught you likewise the duty of resignation. Pray, as I do, for strength to fulfil our pilgrimage here on earth in unrepining patience and humility, so that we may hereafter be deemed worthy of our Maker’s promised blessings to those who do his will in this world. Our misfortunes have not originated in guilt: in that reflection let us find a supporting hope; and rest assured that, had I known you to be living, no length of absence, no human power, no imaginable circumstances, should have shaken my adherence to my maiden vow of constancy: you should have found me as you left me—
“Your faithful wife,
“Ellen Cresford.”
With what unutterable anguish did she write that name! For some minutes she held the pen suspended before she summoned courage to trace the dreaded characters. Yet why, when her whole letter avowed herself his wife, why fear to write the word? She forced herself to do so; but as she wrote, she felt guilty towards Algernon. She had been so completely in the habit of doing every thing with reference to him, of being guided by him, of acting as if his eye was always upon her, that she thought what would be his emotions, if he saw her thus deliberately deny him! Yet this was indeed her name, and if she avoided it, she might irritate him who was in very truth her husband; him, who had a right at any moment to tear her children from her! She would no longer hesitate—she would not give herself the opportunity of altering the signature; she sealed the letter, she directed it, she enclosed it to her brother, and when all was done, she felt her separation from him she loved more complete than ever. A gush of tenderness came over her soul. If Algernon had at that moment been at her feet, there is no knowing whether she might not have consented to fly with him to the wilds of America, or to any spot on earth where human institutions could not reach.
When Algernon arrived at Belhanger, a few days after Ellen’s departure, he lost no time in sending little Agnes to rejoin her mother. He thought the presence of her child,—his child,—might afford her the sensation nearest approaching to pleasure of any thing she was now capable of experiencing. It was not without many a bitter pang that he brought himself to part from the only object that remained to him, of all that a few short weeks ago had made him the happiest man alive. But, in addition to his anxiety to lessen by any means within his power the bitterness of her fate, it is possible that a lingering hope mingled itself, that she could not refuse to let him occasionally see his child, and that he might perhaps thus obtain an interview with herself.
His home was now utterly desolate. He wandered as she had done before, like an unquiet spirit, from room to room. He pictured to himself what must have been her feelings when she tore herself from them. He longed to know how she had passed that last sad month; he wished for every trifling detail concerning her occupations, her looks, and yet he did not like to question the servants. He saw in their faces an expression of wonder and dismay; they moved about with stealthy steps, and spoke with subdued voices, while in the part of the house which he inhabited; or else, as he passed by the offices, he heard the loud laugh proceeding from the servants-hall, or the blithe carol of the laundry-maids over their wash-tub, which jarred his feelings, and he was tempted to exclaim mentally against the heartlessness of menials. Their curiosity, and their want of sympathy, both checked the inclination to question them concerning Ellen, which his restlessness caused frequently to arise in his bosom. Moreover, he scarcely knew in what terms to speak of her.
Mrs. Topham, however, spared him the trouble of deciding for himself. A few days after his return, she made her appearance to receive his orders about the furniture of the chintz-room, saying that Mrs. Hamilton had desired her to ask him what he wished to have done, and also to inquire his pleasure concerning the neck-cloths. He begged her to use her own discretion on those subjects, but still detained her in conversation, hoping she would, of her own accord, allude to Ellen.
Finding that Mrs. Topham’s discourse was strictly confined to her business, he ventured at length to say,
“I am afraid your mistress was not quite well when she left Belhanger?”
“Why certainly, sir, Mrs. Hamilton did not look so well as she used to do. There was not a servant in the house that did not remark it. But it was very lonesome for her here by herself, and we thought perhaps that was the reason she appeared so low. I am sure, sir, we all heartily wished for you back again, if it was only for our poor mistress’s sake.”
Mrs. Topham, whose curiosity had only been repressed by her respectful discretion, had no mind to lose this opportunity of ascertaining whether her master and mistress were really parted or not, and of satisfactorily clearing up the mystery of their late proceedings.
“I suppose, sir,” she continued, “my mistress will be coming back soon;—do you not think it would be a good thing to get the muslin curtains in the boudoir washed before her return?”
Poor Hamilton had wished to lead the conversation to Ellen, and now he had succeeded in doing so, he writhed under the questions,—he thought it better not to hear her name mentioned at all, than to be subject to them, and hastily bidding Mrs. Topham see to all those things in her own department, he hurried out to mount his horse, and to gallop like a maniac over the country, as if he could thus escape from the corroding care which followed faster than he could fly.
When, in violent exercise alone, did he experience temporary relief from misery. At home every thing breathed of Ellen, and, though it was agonizing to him to see traces of her on all sides, he could not tear himself from the spot; he would pass whole hours in her morning room, looking over her books, turning over the leaves of the blotting book, in which were notes, memorandums, various little matters which belonged to her. He would gaze for several minutes upon any half-bound book, which had “Ellen Hamilton” written in her hand on the outside. Those two words contained for his heart a world of passionate and blasted feelings. The very household accounts were not without a charm in his eyes—for they perpetuated the memory of a time when she was his wife.
There is no need to dwell upon the emotions of Ellen when the nurse brought her child. The smiles of the infant and the letter which accompanied it were a momentary balm to her heart. Algernon expressed his conviction that, whatever their own fates might be, he could in no way so effectually secure the ultimate and eternal welfare of their child, as by causing its young mind to be trained to all that was virtuous, under Ellen’s own immediate eye. She could not but be gratified by his opinion of her, and grateful for his kindness. It was about a fortnight from the period of their final separation, when Henry Wareham was one day called out of his office to speak to a gentleman who awaited him in a private apartment. Henry’s heart misgave him. His worst fears were on the point of being realized. It must be Cresford.
The room was dark. Henry’s eyes were dizzy with intense anxiety; he thought he did not recognise the face; but it was Cresford’s voice which asked,
“Are you Henry Wareham?”
“Heavens! Cresford. Is it indeed yourself?”
“Where is my wife?” uttered Cresford, in a choked tone of defiance.
“Ellen is with her father,” stammered Henry.
“Why was she not here to receive her husband?” continued Cresford.
“Here is a letter, Cresford, which she desired me to give you, and which will explain all.”
“Then what I have heard is true!” exclaimed Cresford in a burst of uncontrollable passion. “Your virtuous sister thought I was safe in an Austrian dungeon, and she has given the loose to her profligate fancies, under the specious veil of marriage! Well done, your sanctified hypocrite! The mourning widow of Ephesus with a vengeance!” And he laughed an appalling, withering laugh, which made Henry shudder. His eyes glared with the fire of madness. Henry almost shrank with the involuntary terror from which the bravest cannot defend themselves if they suspect mental aberration in a fellow-creature.
“Cresford, read this letter, and I think you will not make use of such hard expressions. Though you may be miserable, you will not be so angry.”
“So, because I have loved her with mad idolatry, because my passion for her has driven me to acts of desperation,—has driven me to set at nought my life—my safety, you think I am such a besotted fool, that three lines traced by her hand, are to turn the whole current of my feelings; that she can persuade me quietly to yield her to the arms of my rival.” He paused, then added in a deep and thrilling voice, “You neither of you know me. You know not half I have gone through.”
“Cresford, all I implore is that you will read my sister’s letter. We all believed you dead. The partners in the firm all believed it.”
“It was their interest—it was your interest to do so,” he answered with a bitter smile.
However, he took the letter.
“Oh, how I have longed to see any thing belonging to her. And now—”
A tear gathered in his eye. Henry augured well of that omen, and stood in silence, somewhat apart.
He had leisure to remark the havoc which time and suffering, and, as he began to fear, madness, had worked in the fine features of his brother-in-law. They were sharper, his nose more prominent, his lips thinner, and more compressed. His brow low on his eye, which glanced quickly and suspiciously from beneath it. Although still young, for Cresford was not yet thirty, his hair was considerably mixed with grey.
Henry watched the varying expression of his countenance as he proceeded with poor Ellen’s letter, and he sincerely commiserated the wretched man, who was now a prey to the most agonizing passions of our nature—blasted hope—indignant jealousy.
When he came to the part in which she spoke of having for two years believed herself the wife of Mr. Hamilton, he stamped upon the floor, and crushing the paper in his clenched hand, Henry thought would have destroyed it, in the paroxysm of his rage. However, he proceeded, and a softer shade stole over his face when he read of her grief at making such a return for all his kindness and affection. A tear trickled down his cheek as he came to the part where she described her strict adherence to his wishes; and when she mentioned her having parted from Mr. Hamilton upon the reception of his first letter, he vehemently laid his hand on Henry’s arm.
“Is this true?” he said. “Did she part from that man at once?”
“Indeed she did, and has not seen him since.”
“Henry, did she love him?—answer me that.”
Henry hesitated—“They seemed to live comfortably together, whenever I have seen them.”
“Madness! distraction! Did they love each other?”
“I saw but little of them, for I was always in the office,” replied Henry evasively.
“I must see her—I must see her herself; I must know the truth!” He resumed the letter, but hastily passing over that part which spoke of resignation, “There is no use in preaching resignation to me! She might as well attempt to chain the ocean!” He glanced at the signature. “Oh, merciful Heaven! that I could forget all that has gone before; that I could annihilate the preceding words, and preserve nothing but the last, ‘Your faithful wife, Ellen Cresford!’”
He gazed in rapturous tenderness upon the words; his tears flowed fast; he kissed the name again and again. Then hastily turning to Henry, he added, “I must see her once again, and then—God knows what will become of me!”
He rushed out of the house, and before many minutes had elapsed was on his road to Captain Wareham’s residence.
CHAPTER XII.
Ellen was one morning quietly seated in the back drawing-room which had been given up to her and her children; the elder ones were employed, George in reading to his mother, and Caroline in working, seated on a stool at her feet, while the little Agnes was playing on the floor. Ellen heard a knock at the door. Every sound made her start. She heard a loud voice in the passage! A voice! His voice! Yes it was his voice whom she had so long believed in the grave, uttering in loud and stern accents, “Show me to Mrs. Cresford,—I must instantly see her,” and he darted by the servant up the stairs.
“Not into the front room, sir,” the servant called out; “there is company in the front room! the back room, sir, if you please.”
Cresford burst open the door, and stood before her, pale and haggard. She did not faint, she did not scream: she had risen from her seat, and she stood transfixed!
She was as beautiful as ever. Sorrow could but dim her brilliancy,—the finely chiselled features, the marble brow, the angelic expression, the feminine dignity, were all there. Cresford gazed in agonized admiration.
“How I have longed for this moment!—this moment, which proves one of torture! Ellen, Ellen, you never loved me, or you could not have done what you have done. But I was resolved to see you again.—Yes, if heaven and hell had conspired against me, I would have gazed upon that face again.” She hid her face with her hands. “No,” he said, and forcibly removed them, “I will look upon those features. It was the recollection of those eyes, of that brow, those lips, which made me cling to life, while they induced me to hazard it a thousand times to gain another sight of them; it was to gaze on them that I practised the imposture by which I escaped from my prison; it was to gaze on them that I preserved my life, though treated as a spy, a prisoner, and a maniac!”
Ellen shook from head to foot. Fear, simple, deadly fear, absorbed every other feeling. She spoke not, she struggled not.
“Ellen, do you love me still? Have you thought of me in absence? Have you wept for me? Is your heart faithful?”
A horrible surmise crossed her. Surely he could not contemplate the idea of taking her back.—“Do you love me, Ellen?” he repeated, and he still held her hands.
“I pity you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Do you love me?” and he dashed her hands from him.
“No!” she exclaimed, clasping them earnestly, “No! my whole heart, soul, and affections are Algernon’s,” and she sank on the floor.
“And do I live to hear you avow your guilt? Shameless, abandoned creature! You, whom I so worshipped! now, now,—in truth my brain will madden!” He struck his forehead with his clenched hands. Then looking round, “These are my children, are they not?—I believed them mine. Yes, yes, they are mine, and mine they shall be! Come with me, children; you shall not remain to be contaminated by the example of a creature who glories in her shame. And this,” he added, and lifted the little Agnes from the floor, “this, this is his child! Take it,—take it, before I commit any crime I may repent of!” Ellen rushed to it, tore it from him, and hugged it to her bosom. “But these are mine!” he continued, and “these are mine, by every law of nature and of man!” He seized one in each hand. She flew to him,—she clung round his feet. He looked down on her in triumph.
“Oh, spare my children! Oh, Charles, have mercy upon me,” and she desperately held the children who clung round her.
At this moment Captain Wareham, who had heard the tumult, entered,
“Captain Wareham, you see a man who claims his children—his children—by the law of the land, his! I conclude you will not interfere with the exercise of my rights as a free-born Englishman.”
Ellen had sunk exhausted and sobbing on the floor, feeling that her father would protect her, and preserve her children.
“Surely, Mr. Cresford, this is not the manner in which an Englishman, and a gentleman, would enforce his rights.”
“I have been taunted by that woman with her love for another man, and I cannot leave my children in her keeping. They must be delivered up to me.”
“They shall—they shall, Mr. Cresford. I pledge myself that before evening they shall be sent to you, at any place you may appoint.”
“I am at the hotel opposite, sir, and there I await them within the next two hours.”
He darted down the stairs, and out of the house.
The terrified children hung round their mother; Captain Wareham supported her; Caroline—Matilda rushed in. Concealment was no longer practicable—despair and consternation prevailed through the whole house. The two Miss Parkses, who had been “the company in the front drawing-room,” discreetly took their departure, but not before they had seen and heard enough to be perfectly au fait as to the cause of the confusion, and, in a quarter-of-an-hour, the fact of Mrs. Hamilton’s first husband’s return was known in every house in the Close, and in half-an-hour more throughout the whole town. But one feeling, however, prevailed—sincere sorrow for the unfortunate Ellen!
Her manners were so gentle, she had not an enemy—her conduct so irreproachable, that even the slander of a country-town coterie had never approached her name. Every one felt disposed to be angry with Mr. Cresford for being alive, and many a parent made use of the event to impress upon the minds of their children the dreadful consequences of a deviation from truth, under any circumstances whatsoever.
Why should we return to the scene where Ellen is helplessly kissing her two elder children, while they are as helplessly hanging around her? The idea of resistance never for a moment crossed her. The strong arm of the law she knew could wrest them from her—there was no hope of touching Cresford’s heart. Ellen thought this was the bitterest drop of all, in her cup of woe. To be parted from the beings over whose welfare, bodily and mental, she had so carefully watched; in whom she had with tender, and patient care, sown the seeds of good, which she now saw every day bearing fruit according to her most sanguine wishes! The instinctive bond between mother and child may be equally strong at all ages; but when, in addition to the natural pang at such a tie being severed, there is the sorrowful and disappointing prospect of seeing your labour of love all wasted, and the grief of seeing your sorrow shared by the innocent sufferers, there can be no anguish more poignant, more hopeless.
In man there may exist a preference towards the children of the woman he loves, over those of the woman he has not loved—not so in the gentler sex. It frequently happens that maternal affection is the more powerful principle in those who have been disappointed in their hopes of conjugal happiness. The heart whose tenderness has been repelled in one quarter, expands and fixes itself in the one other lawful direction, and Ellen’s love for her elder children fully equalled that she felt for the child of Algernon.
She has taken her last kiss of them; she has for the last time wrapped the handkerchiefs close round their throats to defend them from the chill of the evening; she has for the thousandth time bade them be good children, and implored them to remember all she has told them concerning their duty to God, and to their fellow-creatures. Above all, she made them both promise never to forget to say their prayers, and added, “never forget to pray for me, my children.”
“No, no, mamma; but we shall see you again soon.”
“We will hope so, my loves—we shall, I trust, meet again, here, or elsewhere,” and her eyes sought that Heaven to which her spirit longed to flee, and be at rest.
“We are not always to remain with that pale dark stranger?”
“He is your father, my children. You owe to him the same duty you owe to me.” But she could not bid them love him, obey him, watch his every look, and attend to his every word, as they did to hers, for alas! she remembered but too well what was his violent uncertain temper in happier days, and she trembled to think to what guardianship their helpless innocence was committed.
“If strangers,” she added, “should speak slightingly of me, darlings,—my own dear good children will not believe them. I know they will not.”
Once more they were locked in a long and close embrace—gradually she relaxed her hold. Matilda, Caroline, Captain Wareham gently unwound them from her. The awe-struck children let themselves be quietly withdrawn, and when Ellen recovered from her swoon, they were with their father some miles on the road to London.
What were Cresford’s emotions?—Such was the tumult of his soul they could scarcely be defined. The circumstances under which the children had been introduced to their father were not such as to inspire them with filial affection; and, notwithstanding their mother’s parting injunction, they looked upon him with fear and horror, as the stranger who had made mamma so unhappy, and had taken them away from her in such a hurry. They could not the least comprehend what was meant by this man’s being their father, for they remembered wearing black frocks for a long time, because their father was dead.
Cresford saw the instinctive terror with which, when he kissed them, and bade them love him, they shrank from his caresses. With increased bitterness he exclaimed, “She has taught them to hate me! My own children hate me,—my wife disowns me! I am an outcast on the face of the earth! It had been better, a thousand times better for me to have consumed away the remnant of my existence in my dungeon! There I had hope!—I could think of my Ellen,—of my children! and fancy the time might come when I should once more know happiness with them. Oh! for those visionary days of fancied bliss!—how much better than this horrible waking certainty of endless misery! But I will be revenged! If I am miserable, those who have made me so shall not be happy!” And at that moment he took the resolution of availing himself of every power which the law placed in his hands, of bringing her, who had caused him to be the wretch he was, to open and public shame.
The rest of the journey was performed in silence. His heart had been too long seared by suffering, to open to parental affection. His children showed none for him; he was not in a state of mind to attempt to win it by patient kindness, and he felt injured as a father, as well as a husband. In truth, a calmer, gentler disposition than his might have had all the milk of human kindness turned to gall, in his situation. He had most truly loved his wife, and his case was as pitiable, and as hopeless a one, as can well be imagined. The mental aberration to which he had slightly alluded, and which had prevented him for some years from even attempting to make his imprisonment in Austria known, either to his friends or to the Government, had been brought on by the vehement and ungoverned nature of his passions; which, as might be expected, did not meet with the soothing treatment calculated to allay them, but, on the contrary, with every thing tending most to inflame and irritate them. The reason which might have controlled them remained, in some degree, weakened, while the passions themselves were in full force.
Upon his arrival in London he deposited his children at an hotel, and sallied forth in search of a lawyer. He walked to Lincoln’s Inn, and knocked at the first door that presented itself. He was admitted, and was shown up to a middle-aged, quiet little man, with spectacles upon his nose.
CHAPTER XIII.
“Sir,” said Cresford to the lawyer, “I come to you for justice. You see before you a man who has been deeply injured in his honour, his affections, and his rights as a man, a husband, and a father.”
Mr. M‘Leod pointed to a chair, and begged the gentleman to be seated—professed his willingness to lend any assistance in his power to a person who appeared to be suffering under such injuries, and begged him calmly to detail to him the circumstances of the case, that he might judge in what mode he could best render this assistance.
“I am calm, sir: if you knew all, you would wonder at my calmness. During the year of peace in 1802, I was called to France on mercantile business. I left a wife I adored—Oh, sir! she was the loveliest creature that ever walked this earth—she seemed as pure as she was lovely. I worshipped her as the Persians of old worshipped the sun. She was every thing to me! I scarcely suffered the wind to blow on her. The gaze of another man appeared to me almost pollution to a creature so sacred. I left her with her father, as I thought, in honour and in safety, and with her my two children.
“Every one knows the fate of those who were found in France upon the declaration of hostilities. I was one of the détenus, and at Verdun I was condemned to drag out many, many weary months, in absence from her I so madly adored. A vague jealousy, a fear of what might occur in my absence, racked my brain almost to madness. I would not accept my parole: the severity of my imprisonment was nothing to me. Of what avail was the liberty of wandering a few miles from the town, to one whose whole soul was in another land? It mattered little to me where I was detained, if I was far from her, and I would be bound by no ties of honour from attempting every thing in my power to make my escape. Several times I had nearly accomplished it, but each time the vigilance of my jailers overtook me.
“At length I thought of a plan which proved successful. I wrote a letter to my wife, informing her that I intended to counterfeit illness,—on my feigned death-bed, to obtain permission to be buried by torch-light in the Protestant burying-ground outside the town, and with the assistance of my friend and only confidant, Morton, to follow my own funeral procession, at night, wrapt in a military cloak, as one of the mourners. Every thing succeeded to my wishes. I was considered as falling a victim to my mental sufferings, and my fate excited pity. I obtained the permission required. Morton administered a strong sleeping draught, and as he was my constant attendant, he pronounced me dead. I was placed in my coffin, and on the evening of my funeral, which was the next succeeding my supposed death, he begged to be allowed to weep in private over the bier of his best friend, and took that opportunity of opening the coffin, dressing me in the clothes which he had conveyed into the room, filling the coffin with some billets of wood which had been brought to make up the fire, and of concealing me in an adjoining closet till the moment arrived for the procession to move on. I then mixed among the mourners, and by favour of the darkness, escaped detection. As most of the other officers were on parole, there was no difficulty made as to the number who passed the gates, and with a palpitating heart, I found myself, unfettered by any pledge of honour, beyond the walls of Verdun.
“It was not till all present were occupied in actually lowering the coffin into the ground that I ventured to absent myself. I took that moment to steal away, and plunging into a neighbouring thicket, I remained there closely concealed, till they had all wound their way back into the town.
“Morton had placed for me a peasant’s dress, a bag of provisions, and some money, in a hollow tree, the situation of which he had so accurately described to me, that I found it without much loss of time, and having changed my dress, and carefully concealed my military costume, I dashed right onwards, and before morning had cleared three leagues. I need not tell you how I made my way from day to day—how I crossed the Rhine in an open boat, which in my wanderings I found moored to the shore; how I was, in Germany, immediately seized as a spy, and how for four years, I was enabled still to endure the tortures of an Austrian dungeon, by the distant hope of some day being restored to my Ellen,—my Ellen! I thought her mine then! I have escaped from my dungeon—I have returned! I came to my home—no one knew me—I asked for my wife—I received no answer—I inquired for my children—they were at Mr. Hamilton’s!—for that is his name—that is the name of the man who has robbed me of my wife—my wedded, lawful wife!—for she is my wife! By the law of the land, she is my wife, sir? There is justice for me in this land of law, of liberty, of impartial justice, is there not? She can be prosecuted for bigamy, sir. She must be found guilty. I come to you to learn how to proceed—Do you advise me, guide me. Oh! my brain is confused and maddened! I cannot, cannot think!”
Cresford paced the apartment in violent agitation. The quiet lawyer looked up from his spectacles, and half wondered whether his would-be client was quite in his right senses. Cresford had not paused for a moment. There was a relief in thus disburthening himself of all that had long been pent up in his soul. He had found those who were nearest and dearest to him, severed, eternally severed from him. All other ties and affections were as nothing before those which had been thus rudely rent asunder, and having once begun to speak to this stranger, he poured forth all his tale as to his best friend. He might also be prompted to indulge in this confidence by a feeling unknown to himself, that a person totally unacquainted with Ellen would be more likely to listen with complete sympathy to his wrongs, than any one who had known, or even seen her.
Mr. M‘Leod answered,
“Indeed, sir, your case appears to be a very hard one. You wrote, you say, to your wife to inform her of the plan you meant to adopt?”
“I wrote to her explaining the whole thing, and sent the letter by my friend Maitland, who succeeded in making his escape a month before I put my plan in execution. I waited to make sure he got off in safety. He wrote to me the evening before he sailed in a fishing-vessel for England.”
“And you are confident she received this letter?”
“She says she did not—but she had fallen in love with Hamilton! She never loved me, I am now sure she never loved me,” he repeated in a tone of deep despondency, but he continued with more bitterness: “It was very convenient to her to believe in my death; convenient to my partners in trade, to divide the profits of the business—very convenient for her brother to be admitted to a share. Ha, ha, ha! they have all revelled in my spoils—they have thought me safe in my dungeon! But I am here—I am alive—they cannot prove me dead. I will wrest my wife, my children, my property, from the spoiler’s grasp!” and he laughed a wild laugh of desperation.
It had been Mr. M‘Leod’s fate frequently to see people under a state of great excitement, so that, although he feared his visiter’s mind might be somewhat warped by his misfortunes, he did not doubt there was ground for all he stated, and he now inquired methodically into his name, his connections, his residence.
He remembered the name as one of considerable note in the mercantile world, and he had some recollection of having heard his death mentioned, as one of the melancholy consequences of the cruel and unjustifiable act of arbitrary power, which must always be a disgrace on the name of Napoleon.
“Indeed, Mr. Cresford,” rejoined M‘Leod, “I pity you most sincerely—whether your wife may be to blame or not.”
“Whether my wife may be to blame or not? And do I hear an Englishman, whose profession it is to right the injured, to procure justice for all indifferently—do I hear him advocate the cause of the faithless wife? then, indeed, have I little chance of redress!”
“My good sir, you misunderstand me entirely. I do not mean to advocate her cause, or anybody’s cause. I merely mean to say, that I am very sorry for you, whether your wife did ever receive the letter you wrote to her, or whether she did not.”
“She did receive it—she must have received it; and, if she did not, she should have waited for some more positive and certain information of my death than common report!”
“Very true, Mr. Cresford—quite true, sir; yet, if you had been dead, it would not have been easy for you to write her word you were dead, though she might have expected to hear from you that you were alive.”
“Is there justice for me in the laws of my country, or is there not?” repeated Cresford sternly.
“Certainly, sir. In this country there is justice for everybody.”
“Then how am I to seek redress? In what court?”
“Why, if by redress you mean revenge, that is to be obtained by prosecuting your wife for bigamy, in which case the trial would take place at the assizes of the county in which the marriage ceremony was performed: but, under the circumstances of the case under which the crime of bigamy was committed, I conclude, that if she quits the roof of her second husband——”
“He is not her husband, sir; I am her husband, and I will prove it. She, the immaculate—the refined—who seemed to shrink from my love as too impassioned—she shall be proved to have been living in sin with another man!”
“Does she still reside with Mr.——I beg your pardon, what was the name you mentioned?”
“Hamilton—Hamilton is his name—and curses on it!” exclaimed Cresford, goaded to madness by the cool and methodical manner of the lawyer, who, though a lawyer, was an honest straightforward man, with plain manners and a good heart.
“Does she still reside with Mr. Hamilton?”
“No! she is with her father. She had not the face to live on with Hamilton when she knew I was alive, and on my way home.”
“And your children, sir, does she make any difficulty about sending them to you?”
“No! I brought them away with me yesterday.”
“Then I do not exactly understand what redress you seek at the arm of the law.”
The clear head, and the kind heart of the lawyer, made him begin to see that, although a most singular and lamentable case, it was one in which all parties were more deserving of pity than of blame, and it seemed to him that the poor woman had acted as well as she could under the unfortunate circumstances.
“Have you and Mrs. Cresford had an interview since your return, and in what manner did she comport herself?”
“I saw her yesterday. I saw her in all her loveliness—I could almost have forgotten every thing—for the moment it was such rapture to gaze on her again; when she told me, in so many words, that her whole heart and soul were his—my rival’s.”
“Poor woman!” ejaculated Mr. M‘Leod.
“And is it she whom you pity? Am I doomed to be scorned and persecuted by the whole human race? To be hated by all who are bound to me by the nearest and dearest ties? Are even strangers to take part against me? But I will have revenge, if I cannot have sympathy. I will be feared, if I cannot be loved. I would fain be loved; it was my nature to love, and to wish for love in return.” His voice softened, and the tears swam in his eyes. “But I have never been loved—no, she never did love me! He had her first affections—her whole affections! Oh, how those words ring in my ears!”
Mr. M‘Leod was moved by his expressions of wretchedness, and rising from his seat, he took his hand kindly.
“Though I am a stranger to you, sir, I pity you most sincerely,” he said, “and I wish I could persuade you to look more calmly on the case.”
“Can you—will you assist me?”
“Explain to me in what mode you wish for my assistance.”
“Will you undertake the prosecution of Ellen Cresford for bigamy?”
“Why, I must consider a little about it. I am an odd sort of fellow, and though I am a lawyer, I have a corner of conscience,” and Mr. M‘Leod smiled. Cresford hated him for being able to smile. “I do not engage in any thing till I know a little more about the matter. I am very well off in the world, and I do not want to make money, by causing my fellow-creatures to be more unhappy than they need be. I can’t tell what I might do if I was poor; but, thank God, I can afford to dismiss a client, if I think that no good can come of gaining his cause.”
“Then you dismiss me, Mr. M‘Leod?”
“I do not justly say that; but I should like to know how truly your wife believed you were dead and buried, and whether she had got acquainted with the other gentleman before she heard the news of your death, and a few more such questions; for it runs in my head, that though your case is a hard one, hers may be a hard one too; and that the best thing you could both do, would be to let each other alone, and bear your misfortunes as well as you can.”
“It is easy enough to preach forbearance, and patience, and submission, and resignation. You would not find them quite so easy to practise. I did not come to you, Mr. M‘Leod, for ghostly counsel! I came to you for professional advice. Thus much I have ascertained, that the offence will be tried at the county assizes, and the punishment——?”
“Mercy upon me, sir! You do not really wish your wife to be transported, when you deceived her with a false report of your death! I will have nothing to say to the matter, Mr. Cresford. You may find another solicitor, who is sharper set for a job than I am.”
Cresford seized his hat, and muttering between his teeth, “Friend and foe, stranger and the wife of my bosom,—all leagued against me!” he made a slight bow to the honest lawyer, and again found himself jostled in the busy throng of London.
One thing, however, he had ascertained,—that the prosecution would take place at her native town, and he felt a certain pleasure in the idea that she would be held up to disgrace there, among the very people who knew he was the betrayed and the detested husband. Those who were aware of the humiliating situation in which he was placed, would be witnesses of his revenge.