Emmeline Part 42

Emmeline could not, however, obtain even a momentary forgetfulness. Tho'

she could not repent her attention to the unhappy Lady Adelina, she was yet sensible of her indiscretion in having put herself into the situation she was now in; the cruel, unfeeling world would, she feared, condemn her; and of it's reflections she could not think without pain.

But her heart, her generous sympathizing heart, more than acquitted--it repaid her.

Towards the middle of the night, Lady Adelina, who had made two or three faint efforts to speak, sighed, and again in faint murmurs attempted to explain herself. Emmeline started up and eagerly listened; and in a low whisper heard her ask for her child.

Emmeline ordered it instantly to be brought; and those eyes which had so lately seemed closed for ever, were opened in search of this beloved object: then, as if satisfied in beholding it living and well, they closed again, while she imprinted a kiss on it's little hand. She then asked for Emmeline; who, delighted with this apparent amendment, prevailed on her to take what had been ordered for her. She appeared still better in a few moments, but was yet extremely languid.

'I have had a dreadful dream, my Emmeline,' said she, at length--'a long and dreadful dream! But it is gone--you are here; my poor little boy too is well; and this alarming vision will I hope haunt me no more.'

Emmeline, who feared that the dream was indeed a reality, exhorted her to think only of her recovery; of which, added she cheerfully, we have no longer any doubt.

'Comfortable and consoling angel!' sighed Lady Adelina--'your presence is surely safety. Do not leave me!'

Emmeline promised not to quit the room; and elate with hopes of her friend's speedy restoration to health, fell herself into a tranquil and refreshing slumber.

On awakening the next morning, she found Lady Adelina much better; but still, whenever she spoke, dwelling on her supposed dream, and sometimes talking with that incoherence which had for some weeks before so greatly alarmed her. Her own dread of meeting G.o.dolphin was by no means lessened; and to prevent an immediate interview, she dispatched to him a note.

'Sir,

'I am happy in having it in my power to a.s.sure you that our dear patient is much better. But as uninterrupted tranquillity is absolutely necessary, that, and other considerations, induce me to beg you will forbear coming hither to day. You may depend on having hourly intelligence, and that we shall be desirous of the pleasure of seeing you when the safety of my friend admits it.

I have the honour to be, Sir, your most humble servant, EMMELINE MOWBRAY.'

_Sept._ 20,17--.

To this note, Mr. G.o.dolphin answered--

'If Miss Mowbray will only allow me to wait on her for one moment in the parlour, I will not again trespa.s.s on her time till I have her own permission.

W. G.'

This request, Emmeline was obliged, with whatever reluctance, to comply with. She therefore sent a verbal acquiescence; and repaired to the bed-side of Lady Adelina, who had asked for her.

'Will you pardon my folly, my dear Emmeline,' said she languidly--'but I cannot be easy till I have told you what a strange idea has seized me. I seemed, last night, I know not at what time, to be suddenly awakened by a voice which loudly repeated the name of Trelawny. Startled by the sound, I thought I undrew the curtain, and saw my brother William, who stood looking angrily on me. I felt greatly terrified; and growing extremely sick, I lost the vision. But now again it's recollection harra.s.ses my imagination; and the image of my brother, sterner, and with a ruder aspect than he was wont to wear, still seems present before me.

Oh! he was accustomed to be all goodness and gentleness, and to love his poor Adelina. But now he too will throw me from him--he too will detest and despise me--Or perhaps,' continued she, after a short pause--'perhaps he is dead. I am not superst.i.tious--but this dream pursues me.'

Emmeline, who had hoped that the very terror of this sudden interview had obliterated it's remembrance, said every thing she thought likely to quiet her mind, and to persuade her that the uneasy images represented in her imperfect slumbers were merely the effect of her weakness and perturbed spirits.

The impression, however, was too strong to be effaced by arguments. It still hung heavy on her heart, irritated the fever which had before been only slight, and deprived her almost entirely of sleep; or if she slept, she again fancied herself awakened by her brother, angrily repeating the name of Trelawny.

Sometimes, starting in terror from these feverish dreams, she called on her brother to pardon and pity her; sometimes in piercing accents deplored his death, and sometimes besought him to spare Fitz-Edward.

These incoherences were particularly distressing; as names were often heard by the attendants which Emmeline hoped to have concealed; and it was hardly possible longer to deceive the physician and apothecary who attended her.

With an uneasy heart, and a countenance pensively expressive of it's feelings, she went down to receive Captain G.o.dolphin in the parlour.

'I fear, Miss Mowbray,' said he, as soon as they were seated, 'you will think me too ready to take advantage of your goodness. But there is that appearance of candour and compa.s.sion about you, that I determined rather to trust to your goodness for pardon, than to remain longer in a state of suspense about my sister, which I have already found most insupportable. In the note you honoured me with to day you say she is better. Is she then out of danger? Has she proper advice?'

'She has the best advice, Sir. I cannot, however, say that she is out of danger, but'--She hesitated, and knew not how to proceed.

'But--you hope, rather than believe, she will recover,' cried G.o.dolphin eagerly.

'I both hope it and believe it. Mr. G.o.dolphin, you yesterday did me the honour to suppose I had been fortunate enough to be of some service to Lady Adelina; suffer me to take advantage of a supposition so flattering, and to claim a sort of right to ask in my turn a favour.'

'Surely I shall consider it as an honour to receive, and as happiness to obey, any command of Miss Mowbray's.'

'Promise me then to observe the same silence in regard to your sister as I asked of you last night. Trust me with her safety, and believe it will not be neglected. But you must neither speak of her to others, or question me about her.'

'Good G.o.d! from whence can arise the necessity for these precautions!

What dreadful obscurity surrounds her! What am I to fear? What am I to suppose?'

'You will not, then,' said Emmeline, gravely--'you will not oblige me, by desisting from all questions 'till this trifling restraint can be taken off?'

'I will, I do promise to be guided wholly by you; and to bear, however difficult it may be, the suspense, the frightful suspense in which I must remain. Tell me, however, that Adelina is not in immediate danger.

But, but' added he, as if recollecting himself, 'may I not apply for information on that head to her physician?'

'Not for the world!' answered Emmeline, with unguarded quickness--'not for the world!'

'Not for the world!'--repeated G.o.dolphin, with an accent of astonishment. 'Heaven and earth! But I have promised to ask nothing--I must obey--and will now release you, Madam.'

G.o.dolphin then took his leave; and Emmeline, whose heart had throbbed violently throughout this dialogue, sat down alone to compose and recollect herself. She saw, that to keep G.o.dolphin many days ignorant of the truth would be impossible: and from the eager anxiety of his questions, she feared that all the horrors Lady Adelina's troubled imagination had represented would be realized--apprehensions, which seemed armed with new terror since she had seen and conversed with this William G.o.dolphin, of whose excellent heart and n.o.ble spirit she had before heard so much both from Lady Adelina and Fitz-Edward, and whose appearance seemed to confirm the favourable impression those accounts had given her.

G.o.dolphin, who was now about five and twenty, had pa.s.sed the greatest part of his life at sea. The various climates he had visited had deprived his complexion of much of it's English freshness; but his face was animated by dark eyes full of intelligence and spirit; his hair, generally carelessly dressed, was remarkably fine, and his person tall, light, and graceful, yet so commanding, that whoever saw him immediately and involuntarily felt their admiration mingled with respect. His whole figure was such as brought to the mind ideas of the race of heroes from which he was descended; his voice was particularly grateful to the ear, and his address appeared to Emmeline to be a fortunate compound of the insinuating softness of Fitz-Edward with the fire and vivacity of Delamere. Of this, however, she could inadequately judge, as he was now under such depression of spirits: and however pleasing he appeared, Emmeline, who conceived herself absolutely engaged to Delamere, thought of him only as the brother of Lady Adelina; yet insensibly she felt herself more than ever interested for the event of his hearing how little Fitz-Edward had deserved the warm friendship he had felt for him.

And her thoughts dwelling perpetually on that subject, magnified the painful circ.u.mstances of the approaching eclairciss.e.m.e.n; while her fears for Lady Adelina's life, who continued to languish in a low fever with frequent delirium, so harra.s.sed and oppressed her, that her own health was visibly affected. But without attending to it, she pa.s.sed all her hours in anxiously watching the turns of Lady Adelina's disorder; or, when she could for a moment escape, in giving vent to her full heart by weeping over the little infant, whose birth, so similar to her own, seemed to render it to her a more interesting and affecting object. She lamented the evils to which it might be exposed; tho' of a s.e.x which would prevent it's encountering the same species of sorrow as that which had embittered her own life. Of her friendless and desolate situation, she was never more sensible than now. She felt herself more unhappy than she had ever yet been; and would probably have sunk under her extreme uneasiness, had not the arrival of Mrs. Stafford, at the end of three days, relieved her from many of her fears and apprehensions.

CHAPTER V

Mrs. Stafford no sooner heard from Emmeline that G.o.dolphin was yet ignorant of the true reason of Lady Adelina's concealment, than she saw the necessity of immediately explaining it; and this task, however painful, she without hesitation undertook.

He was therefore summoned to their lodgings by a note from Emmeline, who on his arrival introduced him to Mrs. Stafford, and left them together; when, with as much tenderness as possible, and mingling with the mortifying detail many representations of the necessity there was for his conquering his resentment, she at length concluded it; watching anxiously the changes in G.o.dolphin's countenance, which sometimes expressed only pity and affection for his sister, sometimes rage and indignation against Fitz-Edward.

Both the brothers of Lady Adelina had been accustomed to consider her with peculiar fondness. The unfortunate circ.u.mstance of her losing her mother immediately after her birth, seemed to have given her a melancholy t.i.tle to their tenderness; and the resemblance she bore to that dear mother, whom they both remembered, and on whose memory their father dwelt with undiminished regret, endeared her to them still more.

To these united claims on the heart and the protection of William G.o.dolphin, another was added equally forcible, in a letter written by his father with the trembling hand of anxious solicitude, when he felt himself dying, and when, looking back with lingering affection on the children of her whom he hoped soon to rejoin, he saw with anguish his youngest daughter liable from her situation to deviate into indiscretion, and surrounded by the numberless dangers which attend on a young and beautiful woman, whose husband has neither talents to attach her affections or judgment to direct her actions. Lord Westhaven, conscious of her hazardous circ.u.mstances, and feeling in his last moments the keenest anguish, in knowing that his mistaken care had exposed her to them, hoped, by interesting both her brothers to watch over her, that he should obviate the dangers he apprehended. He had therefore, in all their conversations, recommended her to his eldest son; and as he was not happy enough to embrace the younger before he died, had addressed to him a last letter on the same subject.

Such were the powerful ties that bound Mr. G.o.dolphin to love and defend Lady Adelina with more than a brother's fondness. Hastening therefore to obey the dying injunctions of his father, and in the hope of rendering the life of this beloved sister, if not happy, at least honourable and contented, he had heard, that she had clandestinely absented herself from her family, and after a long search had found her abandoned to remorse and despair; her reputation blasted; her health ruined; her intellects disordered; and all by the perfidy of a man, in whom he, from long friendship, and his sister, from family connection, had placed unbounded confidence.

Tho' G.o.dolphin had one of the best tempers in the world--a temper which the roughness of those among whom he lived had only served to soften and humanize, and which was immovable by the usual accidents that ruffle others, yet he had also in a great excess all those keen feelings, which fill a heart of extreme sensibility; added to a courage, that in the hour of danger had been proved to be as cool as it was undaunted. Of him might be said what was the glorious praise of immortal Bayard--that he was '_sans peur et sans reproche_;'[1] and educated with a high sense of honour himself, as well as possessing a heart calculated to enjoy, and a hand to defend, the unblemished dignity of his family, all his pa.s.sions were roused and awakened by the injury it had sustained from Fitz-Edward, and he beheld him as a monster whom it was infamy to forgive. Hardly therefore had Mrs. Stafford concluded her distressing recital, than, as if commanding himself by a violent effort, he thanked her warmly yet incoherently for her unexampled goodness to his sister, recommended her still to her generous care, and the friendship of Miss Mowbray, and without any threat against Fitz-Edward, or even a comment on what he had heard, arose to depart. But Mrs. Stafford, more alarmed by this determined tho' quiet resentment and by the expression of his countenance than if he had burst into exclamations and menaces, perceived that the crisis was now come when he must either be persuaded to conquer his just resentment, or by giving it way destroy, while he attempted to revenge, the fame of his sister.

She besought him therefore to sit down a moment; and when he had done so, she told him, that if he really thought himself under any obligations to Miss Mowbray or to her for the services they had been so fortunate as to render Lady Adelina, his making all they had been doing ineffectual, would be a most mortifying return; and such must be the case, if he rashly flew to seek vengeance on Fitz-Edward: 'for that you have such a design,' continued she, 'I have no doubt; allow me, however, to suppose that I have, by doing your sister some good offices, acquired a right to speak of her affairs.'

'Surely,' answered Mr. G.o.dolphin, 'you have; and surely I must hear with respect and attention, tho' possibly not with conviction, every opinion with which you may honour me.'