Adeline Mowbray Part 23

'Thank G.o.d!' cried Adeline, and relapsed into a fainting fit. For it was not decreed that the object of her maternal solicitude should ever be born to reward it. Anxiety and agitation had had a fatal effect on the health of Adeline; and the day after her encounter on the terrace she brought forth a dead child.

As soon as Adeline, languid and disappointed, was able to leave her room, Glenmurray, whom anxiety during her illness had rendered considerably weaker, urged her to let the marriage ceremony be performed immediately. But with her hopes of being a mother vanished her wishes to become a wife, and all her former reasons against marriage recurred in their full force.

In vain did Glenmurray entreat her to keep her lately formed resolution: she still attributed his persuasions to generosity, and the heroic resolve of sacrificing his principles, with the consistency of his character, to her supposed good, and it was a point of honour with her to be as generous in return: consequently the subject was again dropped; nor was it likely to be soon renewed; and anxiety of a more pressing nature disturbed their peace and engrossed their attention. They had been three months at Richmond, and had incurred there a considerable debt; and Glenmurray, not having sufficient money with him to discharge it, drew upon his banker for half the half-year's rents from his estate, which he had just deposited in his hands; when to his unspeakable astonishment he found that the house had stopped payment, and that the princ.i.p.al partner had gone off with the deposits!

Scarcely could the firm mind of Glenmurray support itself under the stroke. He looked forward to the certainty of pa.s.sing the little remainder of his life not only in pain but in poverty, and of seeing increase as fast as his wants the difficulty of supplying them; while the woman of his heart bent in increased agony over his restless couch; for he well knew that to raise money on his estate, or to antic.i.p.ate the next half-year's rents, was impossible, as he had only a life interest in it; and, as he held the fatal letter in his hand, his frame shook with agitation.

'I could not have believed,' cried Adeline, 'that the loss of any sum of money could have so violently affected you.'

'Not the loss of my all! my support during the tedious scenes of illness!'

'Your all!' faltered out Adeline; and when she heard the true state of the case she found her agitation equalled that of Glenmurray, and in hopeless anguish she leaned on the table beside him.

'What is to be done,' said she, 'till the next half-year's rents become due? Where can we procure money?'

'Till the next half-year's rents become due!' replied he, looking at her mournfully: 'I shall not be distressed for money then.'

'No?' answered Adeline (not understanding him): 'our expenses have never yet been more than that sum can supply.'

Glenmurray looked at her, and, seeing how unconscious she was of the certainty of the evil that awaited her, had not the courage to distress her by explaining his meaning; and she went on to ask him what steps he meant to take to raise money.

'My only resource,' said he, 'is dunning a near relation of mine who owes me three hundred pounds: he is now, I believe, able to pay it. He is in Holland, indeed, at present; but he is daily expected in England, and will come to see me here. I have named him to you before, I believe.

His name is Berrendale.'

It was then agreed that Glenmurray should write to Mr Berrendale immediately; and that, to prevent the necessity of incurring a further debt for present provisions and necessaries, some of their books and linen should be sold:--but week after week elapsed, and no letter was received from Mr Berrendale.

Glenmurray grew rapidly worse;--and their landlord was clamorous for his rent;--advice from London also became necessary to quiet Adeline's mind,--though Glenmurray knew that he was past cure: and after she had paid a small sum to quiet the demands of the landlord for a while, she had scarcely enough left to pay a physician: however, she sent for one recommended by Dr Norberry, and by selling a writing-desk inlaid with silver, which she valued because it was the gift of her father, she raised money sufficient for the occasion.

Dr. ---- arrived, but not to speak peace to the mind of Adeline.

She saw, though he did not absolutely say so, that all chance of Glenmurray's recovery was over: and though with the sanguine feelings of nineteen she could 'hope though hope were lost,' when she watched Dr. ----'s countenance as he turned from the bed-side of Glenmurray, she felt the coldness of despair thrill through her frame; and, scarcely able to stand, she followed him into the next room, and awaited his orders with a sort of desperate tranquillity.

After prescribing alleviations of the ill beyond his power to cure, Dr.

---- added that terrible confirmation of the fears of anxious affection.

'Let him have whatever he likes; nothing can hurt him now; and all your endeavours must be to make the remaining hours of his existence as comfortable as you can, by every indulgence possible: and indeed, my dear madam,' he continued, 'you must be prepared for the trial that awaits you.'

'Prepared! did you say?' cried Adeline in the broken voice of tearless and almost phrensied sorrow. 'O G.o.d! if he must die, in mercy let me die with him. If I have sinned,' (here she fell on her knees,) 'surely, surely, the agony of this moment is atonement sufficient.'

Dr. ----, greatly affected, raised her from the ground, and conjured her for the sake of Glenmurray, and that she might not make his last hours miserable, to bear her trial with more fort.i.tude.

'And can you talk of his "last hours" and yet expect me to be composed?--O sir! say but there is one little little gleam of hope for me, and I will be calm.'

'Well,' replied Dr. ----, 'I _may_ be mistaken; Mr Glenmurray is young, and--and--' here his voice faltered, and he was unable to proceed; for the expression of Adeline's countenance, changing as it instantly did from misery to joy,--joy of which he knew the fallacy,--while her eyes were intently fixed on him, was too much for a man of any feeling to support; and when she pressed his hand in the convulsive emotions of her grat.i.tude, he was forced to turn away his head to conceal the starting tear.

'Well, I may be mistaken--Mr Glenmurray is young,' Adeline repeated again and again, as his carriage drove off; and she flew to Glenmurray's bed-side to impart to him the satisfaction which he rejoiced to see her feel, but in which he could not share.

Her recovered security did not, however, last long; the change in Glenmurray grew every day more visible; and to increase her distress, they were forced, to avoid disagreeable altercations, to give the landlord a draft on Mr Berrendale for the sum due to him, and remove to very humble lodgings in a closer part of the town.

Here their misery was a little alleviated by the unexpected receipt of twenty pounds, sent to Glenmurray by a tenant who was in arrears to him, which enabled Adeline to procure Glenmurray every thing that his capricious appet.i.te required; and at his earnest entreaty, in order that she might sometimes venture to leave him, lest her health should suffer, she hired a nurse to a.s.sist her in her attendance upon him.

A hasty letter too was at length received from Mr Berrendale, saying, that he should very soon be in England, and should hasten to Richmond immediately on his landing. The terror of wanting money, therefore, began to subside; but day after day elapsed, and Mr Berrendale came not; and Adeline, being obliged to deny herself almost necessary sustenance that Glenmurray's appet.i.te might be tempted, and his nurse, by the indulgence of hers, kept in good humour, resolved, presuming on the arrival of Mr Berrendale, to write to Dr Norberry and solicit the loan of twenty pounds.

Having done so, she ceased to be alarmed, though she found herself in possession of only three guineas to defray the probable expenses of the ensuing week; and in somewhat less misery than usual, she, at the earnest entreaty of Glenmurray, set out to take a walk.

Scarcely conscious what she did, she strolled through the town, and seeing some fine grapes at the window of a fruiterer, she went in to ask the price of them, knowing how welcome fruit was to the feverish palate of Glenmurray. While the shopman was weighing the grapes, she saw a pine-apple on the counter, and felt a strong wish to carry it home as a more welcome present; but with unspeakable disappointment she heard that the price of it was two guineas--a sum which she could not think herself justified in expending, in the present state of their finances, even to please Glenmurray, especially as he had not expressed a wish for such an indulgence; besides, he liked grapes; and, as medicine, neither of them could be effectual.

It was fortunate for Adeline's feelings that she had not overheard what the mistress of the shop said to her maid as she left it.

'I should have asked another person only a guinea; but as those sort of women never mind what they give, I asked two, and I dare say she will come back for it.'

'I have brought you some grapes,' cried Adeline as she entered Glenmurray's chamber, 'and I would have brought you a pine-apple, but that it was too dear.'

'A pine-apple!' said Glenmurray, languidly turning over the grapes, and with a sort of distaste putting one of them in his mouth, 'a pine-apple!--I wish you had brought it with all my heart! I protest that I feel as if I could eat a whole one.'

'Well,' replied Adeline, 'if you would enjoy it so much, you certainly ought to have it.'

'But the price, my dear girl!--what was it?'

'Only two guineas,' replied Adeline, forcing a smile.

'Two guineas!' exclaimed Glenmurray: 'No,--that is too much to give--I will not indulge my appet.i.te at such a rate--but, take away the grapes--I can't eat them.'

Adeline, disappointed, removed them from his sight; and, to increase her vexation, Glenmurray was continually talking of pine-apples, and in that way that showed how strongly his diseased appet.i.te wished to enjoy the gratification of eating one. At last, unable to bear to see him struggling with an ungratified wish, she told him that she believed they could afford to buy the pine-apple, as she had written to borrow some money of Dr Norberry, to be paid as soon as Mr Berrendale arrived. In a moment the dull eye of Glenmurray lighted up with expectation; and he, who in health was remarkable for self-denial and temperance, scrupled not, overcome by the influence of the fever which consumed him, to gratify his palate at a rate the most extravagant.

Adeline sighed as she contemplated this change effected by illness; and, promising to be back as soon as possible, she proceeded to a shop to dispose of her lace veil, the only ornament which she had retained; and that not from vanity, but because it concealed from the eye of curiosity the sorrow marked on her countenance. But she knew a piece of muslin would do as well; and for two guineas sold a veil worth treble that sum; but it was to give a minute's pleasure to Glenmurray, and that was enough for Adeline.

On her way to the fruiterer's she saw a crowd at the door of a mean-looking house, and in the midst of it she beheld a mulatto woman, the picture of sickness and despair, supporting a young man who seemed ready to faint every moment, but whom a rough-featured man, regardless of his weakness, was trying to force from the grasp of the unhappy woman; while a mulatto boy, known in Richmond by the name of the Tawny Boy, to whom Adeline had often given halfpence in her walks, was crying bitterly, and hiding his face in the poor woman's ap.r.o.n.

Adeline immediately pressed forward to inquire into the cause of a distress only too congenial to her feelings; and as she did so, the tawny boy looked up, and, knowing her immediately, ran eagerly forward to meet her, seeming, though he did not speak, to a.s.sociate with her presence an idea of certain relief.

'Oh! it is only a poor man,' replied an old woman in answer to Adeline's inquiries, 'who can't pay his debts,--and so they are dragging him to prison--that's all.' 'They are dragging him to his death too,' cried a younger woman in a gentle accent; 'for he is only just recovering from a bad fever: and if he goes to jail the bad air will certainly kill him, poor soul!'

'Is that his wife?' said Adeline. 'Yes, and my mammy,' said the tawny boy, looking up in her face, 'and she so ill and sorry.'

'Yes, unhappy creatures,' replied her informant, 'and they have known great trouble; and now, just as they had got a little money together, William fell ill, and in doctor's stuff Savanna (that's the mulatto's name) has spent all the money she had earned, as well as her husband's; and now she is ill herself, and I am sure William's going to jail will kill her. And a hard-hearted, wicked wretch Mr Davis is, to arrest him--that he is--not but what it is his due, I cannot say but it is--but, poor souls! he'll die, and she'll die, and then what will become of their poor little boy?'

The tawny boy all this time was standing, crying, by Adeline's side, and had twisted his fingers in her gown, while her heart sympathized most painfully in the anguish of the mulatto woman. 'What is the amount of the sum for which he is taken up?' said Adeline.

'Oh! trifling: but Mr Davis owes him a grudge, and so will not wait any longer. It is in all only ten pounds; and he says if they will pay part he will wait for the rest; but then he knows they could as well pay all as part.'

Adeline, shocked at the knowledge of a distress which she was not able to remove, was turning away as the woman said this, when she felt that the little boy pulled her gown gently, as if appealing to her generosity; while a surly-looking man, who was the creditor himself, forcing a pa.s.sage through the crowd, said, 'Why, bring him along, and have done with it; here is a fuss to make indeed about that idle dog, and that ugly black toad!'

Adeline till then had not recollected that she was a mulatto; and this speech, reflecting so brutally on her colour,--a circ.u.mstance which made her an object of greater interest to Adeline,--urged her to step forward to their joint relief with an almost irresistible impulse; especially when another man reproached the fellow for his brutality, and added, that he knew them both to be hard-working, deserving persons. But to disappoint Glenmurray of his promised pleasure was impossible; and having put sixpence in the tawny boy's hand, she was hastening to the fruiterer's, when the crowd, who were following William and the mulatto to the jail, whither the bailiffs were dragging rather than leading him, fell back to give air to the poor man, who had fainted on Savanna's shoulder, and seemed on the point of expiring--while she, with an expression of fixed despair, was gazing on his wan cheek.

Adeline thought on Glenmurray's danger, and shuddered as she beheld the scene; she felt it but a too probable antic.i.p.ation of the one in which she might soon be an actor.

At this moment a man observed, 'If he goes to prison he will not live two days, that every one may see;' and the mulatto uttered a shriek of agony.

Adeline felt it to her very soul; and, rushing forward, 'Sir, sir,' she exclaimed to the unfeeling creditor, 'if I were to give you a guinea now, and promise you two more a fortnight hence, would you release this poor man for the present?'