A Wife's Duty Part 24

Oh! the waywardness of the human heart; or, was it only the waywardness of mine? Now that I found my husband was anxious to return to me, I felt less anxious for the re-union; and having gained my point, I began to consider with more severity the faults which I was called upon to overlook; and though I had reclaimed my wanderer, I began to consider whether the reward was equal to the pains bestowed. And also I felt a little mortified to find De Walden so willing to effect our union, and so active in his endeavours to further it. These obliquities of feeling were, however, only temporary; and I had actually written to Pendarves, by the advice of De Walden, a.s.suring him, all was so much forgiven and forgotten, that I was prepared to quit Paris with him, and go with him the world over--when the most dreadful intelligence reached me! even at this hour I cannot recall that moment without agony. I must lay down my pen--

Pendarves continued to resist the repeated importunities of La Beauvais to visit her; but at length she sent a friend to tell him she was dying, and trusted he would not refuse to bid her farewell.--Pendarves could not, dared not refuse to answer this appeal to his feelings, and he repaired to her hotel; in which, though he knew it not, she was maintained by one of the new Members of the Convention, whom she had inveigled to marry her according to the laws of the republic. When he arrived, he found her scarcely indisposed; and reproaching her severely with her treachery, he told her that all her artifices were vain; that his heart had always been his wife's though circ.u.mstances had enabled her to lure him from me; that now I had shone upon him in the moments of danger more brightly than ever; and that he conjured her to forget a guilty man, who, though never likely perhaps to be happy again with the woman he adored, yet still preferred his present solitary but guiltless situation to all the intoxicating hours which he had pa.s.sed with _her_.

La Beauvais, who really loved him, was overcome with this solemn renunciation, and fell back in a sort of hysterical affection on the couch; and while he held her hand, and was bathing her temples with essences, her husband rushed in, and exclaiming, "Villain, defend yourself!" he gave a pistol into the hand of Pendarves; then firing himself, the ball took effect; and while De Walden was waiting his return at his lodgings to give him my letter of recall and of forgiving love, he was carried thither a bleeding and a dying man! But he was conscious; and while Juan, who called by accident, remained with him, De Walden came to break the dread event to me, and bear me to the couch of the sufferer.

He was holding my letter to his heart.

"It has healed every wound there," said he, "except those by conscience made; and it shall lie there till all is over."

Silent, stunned, I threw myself beside him, and joined my cold cheek to his.

"O Helen! and is it thus we meet? Is _this_ our re-union?"

"Live! do but live," cried I, in a burst of salutary tears; "and you shall find how dearly I love you still; and we shall be so happy!--happier than ever!"

He shook his head mournfully, and said he did not deserve to live, and to be so happy; and he humbly bowed to that chastising hand which, when he had escaped punishment for real errors, made him fall the victim of an imaginary one.

The surgeons now came to examine the wound a second time, and confirmed their previous sentence, that the wound was mortal; on which he desired to be left alone with me, and I was able to suppress my feelings that I might sooth his during this overwhelming interview.

These moments are some of the dearest and most sacred in the stores of memory--but I shall not detail them; suffice that I was able, in default of better aid, to cheer the death-bed of the beloved sufferer, and breathe over him, from the lips of agonizing tenderness, the faltering but fervent prayer.

That duty done, my fort.i.tude was exhausted, I saw before me, not the erring husband--the being who had blighted my youth by anxiety, and wounded all the dearest feelings of my soul; but the playfellow of my childhood, the idolized object of my youthful heart, and the husband of my virgin affections! and I was going to lose him! and he lay pale and bleeding before me! and his last fond lingering look of unutterable love was now about to close on me for ever!

"She has forgiven me!" he faltered out; "and Oh! mayst Thou forgive my trespa.s.ses against thee!--Helen! it is sweet and consoling, my only love, to die here," said he, laying his cheek upon my bosom:--and he spoke no more!

Alas! I could not have the sad consolation, when I recovered my recollection, to carry his body to England, to repose by those dear ones already in the grave; but I do not regret it now. Since then, the hands of piety have planted the rough soil in which he was laid; flowers bloom around his grave; and when five years ago I visited Paris, with my own hands I strewed his simple tomb with flowers that spring from the now hallowed soil around.

Object of my earliest and my fondest love never, no never, have forgotten thee! nor can I ever forget! But, like one of the shades of Ossian, thou comest over my soul, brightly arrayed in the beams of thy loveliness; but all around thee is dark with mists and storms!

To conclude.--I have only to add, that after two years of seclusion, and I may say of sorrow, and one of that dryness and desolation of the heart, when it seems as if it could love no more, that painful feeling vanished, and I became the willing bride of De Walden; that my beloved uncle lived to see me the happy mother of two children; and that my aunt gossips, advises and quotes, as well and as constantly as usual; that on the death of his uncle and his mother, my husband and I came to reside entirely in England; that Lord Charles Belmour, with a broken const.i.tution and a shattered fortune, was glad at last to marry for a nurse and a dower, and took to wife a first cousin who had loved him for years,--a woman who had sense enough to overlook his faults in his good qualities, and temper enough to bear with the former; and he grows every day more happy, more amiable, and more in love with marriage.

For myself, I own with humble thankfulness the vastness of the blessings I enjoy; and though I cannot repent that I married the husband of my own choice, I confess I have never been so truly happy as with the husband of my mother's:--for though I feel that it is often delightful to forgive a husband's errors, she, and she alone, is truly to be envied, whose husband has no errors to forgive.

THE END.