CHAPTER II.
Shakspeare.
The night was dark and stormy, a circumstance of which most of the revellers amid the dust and noise and glare of the ball-room were, or affected to be, unconscious. True, the proprietor of the coach-and-six had it hinted to him, and departed accordingly; but the fair owner of the clogs danced indefatigably till dawn, without wasting a thought upon the increasing difficulties of her return, and then ran laughing and hopping home, having deposited one of her clumsy protectors stuck deep in the first miry crossing.
But there was one to whom the tempestuous state of the weather during that tedious night added to the dreariness of her situation. Helen found her progress seriously retarded by the severity of the storm. For though Lady Latimer’s servant, spurred to exertion by his mistress’s express injunctions, did all in his power to facilitate their advance, yet as the road they had to travel was a cross country one, it required at each of the inns where they changed horses, no small powers of persuasion to convince the sleepy postboys, harassed and jaded as they and their horses had latterly been by the election, that any one could really wish them on such a night as this to leave their warm beds, and drive ten or fifteen miles.
At each of these unwelcome checks to her impatience, Helen sat motionless, absorbed in her own melancholy thoughts, intently gazing upon the front window, against which the beating rain never ceased to patter, her eye following mechanically the copious streams in which it descended the glass, and equally unconscious of the tears which more silently trickled down her own cheeks.
Her mother had been all in all to her: she had never seemed to have any separate existence from that of her child. As the incidents of her early life now passed rapidly through her mind, with an accuracy and yet a variety which nothing but the concentrated feelings of such a moment could condense into so short a space, she could not recollect any one act of her parent’s which was not dictated by the most anxious, and yet the most judicious regard for her welfare. And she had enjoyed a mother’s affection in all its purity and all its strength, undiluted by division—unalloyed by the slightest dross of self, and yet she had been absent from her during a serious, perhaps a tedious illness, and had thus missed the only occasion, when she might have attempted to repay, though imperfectly, those fond attentions which she had always experienced from her in all the ills of childhood. She might well have thought that the prospect of such a final separation, under such circumstances, would have been incapable of aggravation; but in anguish she now admitted that a most cruel aggravation had been but too successfully attempted, and by whom—she could hardly bear to think.
Oakley’s last words still rung in her ears. She rejected them as the ravings of passion, till her mother’s apparent confirmation forced itself on her recollection. “You from whom I have had no secret.” And was it from him, in whom confidence seemed to have been so unworthily placed, that she must receive the only cureless wound? Mortal separation, even heart-rending as that with which she was threatened, as the common lot of humanity, is not entirely incapable of alleviation—pious resignation may sooth its pangs, till all-healing time has slowly worked out his cure. But how would nature and reason have made their first efforts to assuage the hitherto uncontrollable bursts of grief? By fondly pointing to the spotless memory of her that was gone; and this blessed consolation had been wantonly and abruptly destroyed by him, from whom, least of all, she would have expected such wrong. As the morning advanced, and she approached her destination, these thoughts for the time faded before the more immediate fear that she might have arrived too late.
Mrs. Mordaunt’s dwelling was rather prettily situated on the skirts of a little village. It was of the cottage order; and the garden and little ground about it had all those marks of care and attention which are found when the owner’s first resource is in the works of nature.
It was hence that Helen had derived her earliest recollections. It had been purchased for Mrs. Mordaunt, and had been legally settled on her, though the annuity had not, and was therefore all she possessed independent of Oakley. Helen’s tottering steps, as she descended from the carriage, were supported by old Dorothy, who without administering much further comfort, relieved her anxious doubts as to her mother’s being still alive.
Old Dorothy had been with her mistress as long as Helen could remember, and all her infantine grievances, such as they were, had been confined to the very short and constantly diminishing intervals when her mother’s authority had been transferred to her as her deputy; for nature had not endowed Dorothy with a good temper, and perhaps her limited experience of life had not improved it. The wayward fancies of childhood had therefore often irritated and incensed her. In later days, what had most soured her and excited her spleen, was Helen’s increasing beauty. Whether this arose from her own original deficiency in this respect, or from some other cause, she used always to say: “She know’d nought but mischief comes of your fair skin and your fine form.”
But she showed withal a most invincible, dogged fidelity to her mistress, over whom Helen had early observed that she had no slight degree of influence. She had also always remarked that Dorothy was kinder at a period of calamity or distress, and that not so much from any apparent effort to exert herself more at such times, as that it was a state which appeared best suited to her own habitual frame of mind. It was long therefore since Helen had been so warmly greeted by her as she was upon the present melancholy occasion of her return. As she supported her with one arm, she gently turned the stray hair off her forehead with her other withered hand. Perhaps she was softened and thrown off her guard by her own distress—perhaps the havoc that grief had made in Helen’s beauty caused her to view it with unusual complacency, as she said: “God bless your dear face, it does one good to see it again—how you have been crying! Oh! Miss Mordaunt, to think that you should return when there is no hope left. She has been much worn away within the last week; before that I never found it out: she never complains, you know it’s not her way. I thought to myself that she seemed to grow a bit thinner; but I’ve seen over many and great changes in her, poor lady, in my day, to mind a trifle; and then my eyes are not so sharp as they have been; and I minded it not so much, for that I guessed your being away might make her a bit lonesome, for she needs other company than her own thoughts; and I spoke to her more sharply than I’ve done this many a long year, that she should send for you here, and that she ought to ken well enough you’d get no good gadding where you were; and then she took on so, poor soul, that I was sorry for what I’d said, though I meant it all for the best. And the next day was the first she was over weak to get as far as your garden to tend your flowers. She’d ne’er missed a day since you went, and that she minded worser than any thing, and so she sent for the doctor, and together they settled to have you back.”
By this time they had crossed the garden to the front door, and Helen eagerly inquired whether she should go in at once to her mother, or whether Dorothy had best break her arrival to her.
“Why, I reckon she has just dropped into a sort of dose, for you must know she was rather on the look out for your return all yesterday, and that fretted her into a worse fever. I don’t know how it was, she had her own way of sending to tell you; if she had but left it to me, I’d have had a care there should have been no mistake; but so it was, she kept peering and pining for you all the afternoon, and though it was to be looked for she should not sleep all night, as I told her she might thank herself for managing matters so ill; and so at last she’s gone off into a sort of slumber from sheer weakness.”
Helen seized the opportunity of escaping from the officious old Dorothy, who returned to take the consignment of her things from the carriage, and with a light tread she stole to the door of her mother’s apartment. All seemed perfectly still within. She gently opened the door. There had been no precautions taken to procure the sleep in which her mother’s senses had been overcome. The morning sun shone full upon the bed where Helen’s anxious eyes were directed.
Mrs. Mordaunt’s was a frame where sorrow had preyed upon the substance without defacing the filmy covering. Her clear skin was still free from furrows, though it seemed but to rest upon the bone. Such as she then appeared in that unconscious trance, the interest she must have excited in one less partial than her daughter was beyond that of mere mortal beauty. The hectic spot upon one point of the cheek seemed to touch the long eyelashes which in sleep hung down towards it. Her silken hair, which time and grief had thinned not turned, strayed unconfined over her pale forehead. The expression of her colourless lips was tranquil and free from pain. Her thin transparent hands, more than any thing else, told the tale of approaching dissolution. Around the bloodless fingers of one hand was twined a long lock of Helen’s hair, the other was stretched towards a book of common-prayer which lie open upon the bed. Mrs. Mordaunt’s devotion had never partaken of the character of fanaticism, that mistaken cordial of diseased minds. She thought it best became a sincere penitent to study and practise the plainest precepts of religion, rather than to pride herself upon the gloomy perversion of its most disputed dogmas.
As Helen bent over the still and passionless form, where amid the traces of bodily suffering so much seemed to recall the recollection of recent virtues, so little to confirm the suspicion of former guilt, she felt her throat swelling with a sudden burst of indignation, which being utterly unable to control, she hastily left the room, and then gave vent to the bitter thought: “He has dared to defame her, and to me!”
After she had to a certain degree succeeded in restoring to herself the degree of composure necessary to prepare her for the interview she must soon have with her mother, she attempted to sustain herself by a survey of the well-known contents of their common sitting-room. Every thing was much as she had left it. Her sketch-book, however, which she had put by, was open, as if it had been recently examined. Her birds too had not been neglected, from the appearance of the green food and water in the cages; it seemed as if they must have been replenished no longer ago than the evening before. This was an attention quite out of old Dorothy’s line. It must have been her mother then who had thus employed the moments while she had been, as stated, fretting for her return.
She was soon again summoned to the bed-room. After the first agitation of meeting had subsided, Mrs. Mordaunt raising herself said: “And have you not suffered from cold, my poor child? I could not sleep till the storm had subsided, with the thought that you might be out in it.”
“Think not of me; to find you thus—ill, very ill, I fear,” said Helen, unable to bear the unnatural brilliancy of her mother’s eye, which alarmed her more than any of the symptoms of decay which she had observed whilst she was still asleep.
“His will be done!” said Mrs. Mordaunt; “it is perhaps on many accounts better as it is. Better for you, I mean, which is my only care. You are formed to ornament society. It would have been out of my power to accompany you into the world; you must have observed that I have always avoided society; I have not been without my reasons for it.”
As Mrs. Mordaunt paused, Helen felt a slight shudder, as this conduct of her mother occurred to her in a new light.
She then continued: “I shall never again perhaps be stronger than I am at present, so I may as well now communicate one or two facts with regard to your future circumstances, which it is necessary you should know. It is not much I can bring myself to say, but if I have had, and still have any concealment from you, it is only what an anxious consideration for your happiness has, upon mature deliberation, determined me to pursue.”
“There is one, however,” thought Helen, “from whom she has had no secret;” and she almost dreaded that in what was about to follow she should hear any allusion to that name, which it would previously have gladdened her heart to have heard mentioned with praise by her mother.
“I will not deny that your absence has been painful to me, but I shall at least die with the consciousness that it has been far from useless to you. The sense of obligation must always be irksome, when gratitude is extracted only by the act itself, and does not flow naturally from regard for the benefactor. Judge then of the pleasure I derived from the unsuspicious encomiums you passed upon the character of Mr. Oakley, and the gratification you seemed to derive from the intercourse with so superior a person, when I tell you that it is to his bounty that we have latterly owed the means of subsistence; indeed every thing, except the roof over our heads. I can no otherwise diminish your surprise at my acceptance of such a favour than by saying, that your relationship to a member of his family, from whom he derived his property, gave you a sort of claim in equity to his consideration. But, oh Helen! the manner in which it was done, so feeling and delicate, was so like the fine generous creature you described in your letters!”
Helen dropped her head upon the bed to hide her contending emotions, whilst her mother continued:—
“Had it been otherwise, had his disposition been different, fickle, liable to change, or subject to the influence of the baser passions of our nature, the perplexities of the present moment would have been increased tenfold. I hardly know what I would not have endured rather than my child should have been subject to a sudden shock, such as—but what am I saying? I feel that under any circumstances my strength would not have been equal to any further exertion. And I trust in heaven ’tis better as it is. There is an all-seeing eye which penetrates our most secret thoughts, and Heaven knows that it is only for my child and her sake that I would——” The rest of the sentence hovered trembling on the mother’s lip, but reached not the daughter’s ear.
I must draw a veil over their final separation, which, heart-rending as it would have been even if there had been no necessity for reserve, was aggravated by many pangs which the mother feared to communicate.