The Vicar of Wrexhill Part 59

"Mr. Hetherington! you have heard the awful words spoken by Mr. Augustus Mappleton. Remember, sir, that his repentance and conversion be prayed for at our concluding service this evening, and also in your extempore prayer before sermon on next Sabbath morning."

These words had a very sobering effect on the company, and the whole party made, all things considered, a very orderly exit from the dining-room, not however without Mr. Cartwright finding an opportunity of whispering in the ear of his cousin--

"Now is your time, Stephen, to go into the dressing-room."

CHAPTER XI.

THE "ELOPEMENT."

When the gentlemen reached the lawn, they found it already covered, not only with the company from all the other rooms, but likewise with crowds of people from the Park, who came rushing in through different entrances from all quarters.

In the midst of all this bustle and confusion, however, Mr. Cartwright remembered his engagement with Mr. Stephen Corbold, and, only waiting till he saw that the servants of his house were among the throng, he sought Mrs. Cartwright, and finding, as he expected, her daughter close beside her, whispered in her ear, "Oblige me, dearest Clara! by sending Helen to your dressing-room for a small packet of very important papers which I left on the chimney-piece. I cannot go myself; and there is not a servant to be found."

Mrs. Cartwright immediately spoke the command to Helen, and the vicar had the satisfaction of watching her make her way through the crowd, and enter the window of the drawing-room.

Poor Helen was not happy enough to have enjoyed in any degree the splendid bustle of the day, and the total repose and silence of the house was quite refreshing to her. She pa.s.sed through the drawing-room into the hall, from whence not even the loud buzz of the mult.i.tude without could reach her; and untying her bonnet, and throwing that and her scarf on a slab, she sat down to enjoy for a few moments the cool quiet of the lofty silent room.

At length she reluctantly rose to perform her mother's bidding, walked slowly and languidly up the stairs, along the s.p.a.cious corridor, and into Mrs. Cartwright's dressing-room. This little apartment was no longer the dear familiar scene of maternal fondness that it once was, or Helen might here again have been tempted to sit down for the enjoyment of temporary repose. But, in truth, she no longer loved that dressing-room; and walking straight to the chimney-piece, she took the packet she found there, and turned to retrace her steps.

It was with a start of disagreeable surprise, though hardly of alarm, that she saw Mr. Stephen Corbold standing between her and the door. The persevering impertinence of his addresses had long ago obliged her to decline all communication with him, and it was therefore without appearing to notice him that she now pursued her way towards the door.

But hardly had she made a step towards it, when the odious wretch enclosed her in his arms. She uttered a loud shriek, and by a violent effort disengaged herself; but ere she could reach the door, he had closed, locked it, and put the key in his pocket.

A dreadful sensation of terror now seized upon her; yet even then she remembered that she was in her mother's house, and a feeling of confidence returned.

"You are intoxicated, sir!" said she drawing back from him towards the bell. "But you surely cannot be so mad as to insult me here!"

"I will insult you nowhere, Miss Helen, if you will behave as you ought to do to the man whom Heaven hath chosen for your husband. But as for your ringing the bell, or screeching either, I'll fairly tell you at once, it is of no use. There is not a single human being left in the house but our two selves; so you may as well give me satisfaction at once, and promise to marry me without more trouble, or else, I will make you thankful for the same, without my ever asking you again."

"Open that door, sir, and let me out instantly," said Helen, pale as death, yet still not believing that the monster before her would dare to attempt any outrage. "Even Mr. Cartwright," she added, "would resent any impertinence offered to me under my mother's roof. Let me pa.s.s, sir: believe me, you had better."

"Believe me; I had better not, Miss Helen. You have been playing the fool with me long enough; and as to my cousin Cartwright, he is quite of the same opinion, I a.s.sure you. Charming Helen!" he exclaimed, again stretching out his arms to enclose her, "be only half as kind as you are beautiful, and we shall be the happiest couple in the world!"

"At least, sir, you must let me consult my mother about it," said Helen, contriving to keep the table between them, and believing that he was there only in consequence of his being intoxicated. "Let me ask my mother's consent, Mr. Corbold."

Corbold laughed aloud. "You think me tipsy, my sweet girl; but if I am, trust me it's no more than just to give me courage to teach you your duty. My charming Helen! let go the table, and understand the thing at once. My cousin. Mr. Cartwright is under some obligations to me, and he means to settle them all by giving me a pretty fortune with you; and as he knows that unhappily you are not converted as yet, and have shown yourself not over christian-like in return for my love, it is he himself who invented this scheme of having you sent up here when all the servants were out of the house--and of my being here ready to meet you, and to teach you your duty to him, and to your mother, and to your heavenly father, and to me;--and so now you know all and every thing, and I have got the key of the room in my pocket.--And will you consent to be my wife, beginning from this very minute?"

Dreadful as Helen's terror was, her senses did not leave her; on the contrary, all the strength of her mind seemed to be roused, and her faculties sharpened, by the peril that beset her. She doubted not for a moment that his statement respecting Mr. Cartwright's part in this villany was true, and that she was indeed left in the power of this detested being, with no help but the protection of Heaven and her own courage. She fixed her eye steadily on that of Corbold, and perceived that as he talked, the look of intoxication increased; she therefore skilfully prolonged the conversation by asking him, if indeed she must be his wife, where they were to live, whether her sister f.a.n.n.y might live with them, whether he ever meant to take her to London, and the like; contriving, as she did so, to push the table, which still continued between them, in such a direction as to leave her between it and the door of her mother's bed-chamber. Corbold was evidently losing his head, and appeared aware of it; for he stopped short in his replies and professions of pa.s.sionate love that he was making: and exclaiming with an oath that he would be trifled with no longer, he suddenly thrust the table from between them, and again threw his arms round Helen's waist.

She was not, however, wholly unprepared to receive him. On first approaching the table that had hitherto befriended her, she perceived on it a large vial of spirits of hartshorn: this she had taken possession of, and held firmly in her hand; and at the moment that Corbold bent his audacious head to kiss her, she discharged the whole contents upon his eyes and face, occasioning a degree of blindness and suffocation, that for the moment totally disabled him. He screamed with the sudden pain, and raised his hands to his tortured eyes. Before he removed them, Helen had already pa.s.sed through her mother's bed-room, and was flying by a back staircase to the servants' room below. Without waiting to see if she were pursued, she opened a back door that led into the stable-yard, and, after a moment's consideration, proceeded across it, into a lane which led in one direction to the kitchen gardens, and in the other into the road to Oakley.

Even at that moment Helen had time to remember that if she turned her steps towards the kitchen gardens, she should pa.s.s by a park gate which would immediately lead her to all the safety that the protection of an a.s.sembled mult.i.tude could give. But she remembered also that in a few hours she should again be left in the hands of Mr. Cartwright, and, inwardly uttering a solemn vow that nothing should ever again make her wilfully submit to this, she darted forward, unmindful of her uncovered head, and, with a degree of speed more proportioned to her agitation than her strength, pursued the short cut across the fields to Oakley, and entering the grounds by the gate which led to the lawn, perceived Sir Gilbert, Lady Harrington, and their son, seated on a garden bench, under the shelter of a widely spreading cedar-tree.

Helen knew that she was now safe, and she relaxed her speed, slowly and with tottering steps approaching the friends from whom, notwithstanding their long estrangement, her heart antic.i.p.ated a warm and tender welcome. Yet they did not rise to meet her.

"Perhaps," thought she, "they do not know me;" and it was then she recollected that her hair was hanging dishevelled about her face without hat or cap to shelter it. She was greatly heated, and her breath and strength barely sufficed to bring her within a few yards of the party, when totally exhausted, she sat down upon the turf, and burst into tears.

Colonel Harrington had not written the letter to Helen, which the Vicar of Wrexhill destroyed, without having put both his parents in his confidence. Lady Harrington's fond affection for her G.o.d-daughter, which her enforced absence had in no degree lessened, rendered the avowal of her son's attachment a matter of unmixed joy; and though Sir Gilbert declared that he would as soon stand in the relation of brother to his Satanic Majesty as to Cartwright, he at length gave his apparently sulky consent with perhaps as much real pleasure as his lady herself.

Both the one and the other, however, knew perfectly well that their son would have been an excellent match for Helen, even when her father was alive, and would, as it was supposed, have given her a fortune of forty thousand pounds; and they felt some degree of triumph, neither unamiable nor ungenerous in its nature, at the idea of securing to one at least of poor Mowbray's family a station in society that not even their connexion with Mr. Cartwright could tarnish.

The whole family understood the position of things at the Park too well to be surprised at no answer being sent express to Colonel Harrington's letter, and the following post was waited for with pleasurable though impatient anxiety. But when it arrived without bringing any answer, and another and another followed with no notice taken of a proposal of marriage, which, as Sir Gilbert said, the proudest woman in England might have been glad to accept, the misery of the young man himself, and the anger and indignation of his parents, were about equally vehement.

Considering the opinion entertained by Sir Gilbert of what he was pleased to term Mr. Cartwright's finished character, it is surprising that no idea should even have occurred to him of the possible suppression of this important epistle; but, in truth, the same interpretation of it had suggested itself to the minds of them all. They believed that Helen, from a sense of duty, had submitted the proposal to her mother, and that, forbidden to accept it by the vindictive feelings of the "parvenu priest," she had been weak enough to obey even his commands, to leave the letter unanswered--a degree of timidity, and want of proper feeling, productive of almost equal disappointment to all three.

Impressed with such feelings against her, it is perhaps not very surprising, that neither the heart-stricken lover, nor his offended parents, rose to welcome the approach of poor Helen.

"Some family quarrel, I suppose," said Lady Harrington. "They seem to have turned her out of doors in some haste."

"I will promise her that she shall not now find an entrance into mine,"

said Sir Gilbert. "Perhaps the young lady thinks better of it, and that it may be as well to contradict pa and ma a little for the sake of being Mrs. Harrington. Those who will not when they may, when they will they shall have--" But before Sir Gilbert could finish his stave, Helen Mowbray was stretched upon the turf.

Colonel Harrington, not too well knowing what he did, ran to the spot where she lay, and hardly daring to look at her, stammered out--"Miss Mowbray! Gracious Heaven, how fearfully she changes colour! So red, and now so deadly pale! Speak to me, Helen--What has happened to you?--How comes it that you are here? After----Oh, Helen, open your eyes, and speak to me! Mother! mother! she is very ill!"

Lady Harrington now rose slowly and gloomily from her seat, and walked to the place where Helen lay, her head supported by the arm of Colonel Harrington; every tinge of colour fled from her cheeks, her eyes closed, and no symptom of life remaining, excepting that tears from time to time escaped from beneath her long eyelashes.

It is difficult to see a person one has ever loved, asleep, and yet retain anger towards them; they look so helpless, so innocent, so free from all that could have ever moved our spleen, that not the most eloquent defence that language ever framed could plead their cause so well as that mute slumber. Still more difficult would it be to look at a fair creature in the state in which Helen now lay, and retain any feeling harsher than pity.

"There is something more in all this, William, than we yet understand,"

said Lady Harrington, after gazing silently at Helen for some minutes.

"This poor child has not fainted, her tears prove that; but she is suffering from bodily fatigue and mental misery.--Helen! rouse yourself.

Let us understand each other at once. Why did you not reply to my son William's letter?"

Helen did rouse herself. She opened her eyes, and fixing them on Lady Harrington, while the colour for a moment rapidly revisited her cheeks, she said, in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible, "A letter from Colonel Harrington?--To me?--A letter to me?--I never received it."

"Thank Heaven!" cried Colonel Harrington, springing from the ground, for Helen's head no longer rested on his arm. "Oh! what suffering should we have been spared, if we had done her but the justice to think of this!"

He hastily returned to his father, who, though he had not advanced a step, had risen from his seat, and, to do him justice, was looking towards Helen with great anxiety. "She never received it, sir!" said he, in a voice husky from agitation: "Oh! come to her; soothe her with kindness, my dearest father, and all may yet be happiness amongst us."

"What, Helen!--Helen, my poor girl, are you come to us with some new trouble?--And did you indeed never get William's letter, my dear child?"

The mention of such a letter again dyed Helen's cheeks with blushes; but she raised her eyes to Sir Gilbert's face, with a look that seemed to ask a thousand questions as she replied, "I never received any letter from Colonel Harrington in my life."

"I am devilish glad to hear it, my dear, that's all. So, then, you don't know that----"

"Hold your peace, Sir Knight," said Lady Harrington, interrupting him.--"And you come with me, sweet love. I'll lay my best herbal to that dead leaf, that you are the only one perfectly faultless among us; and that one, two, and three of us deserve to be--I can hardly tell what--in the power of the vicar, I think, for having been so villanous as to suspect you; and worse still, for having lived so close to you without ever having found out whether you were really watched like a state prisoner or not."

"Has the rascal dared----" cried Sir Gilbert, but before he could finish his sentence, Lady Harrington and her son were leading Helen between them towards the house, her ladyship laying a finger on her lip as she pa.s.sed her husband, in token that he was to say no more.

Having reached what Lady Harrington called a place of safety, where, as she said the men could neither come nor hear, she made Helen lay herself upon a sofa, and then said, "Now, my Helen, if you are ill at ease in body, lay there quiet, and try to sleep; but if you are only, or chiefly ill at ease in mind, let your limbs only remain at rest, and relieve yourself and me by telling me every thing that has happened since we parted last."

"It is a long and sad history, my dearest friend," replied Helen, kissing the hand which still held hers, "but I am very anxious that you should know it all; for so only can the action I have committed to-day be excused."

"What action, Helen?--what is it you have done, my child?"