The World's Greatest Books - Volume 5 Part 30

Dorriforth heard this, standing silently by, with a manly scorn upon his countenance; but on Miss Milner's struggling to release her hand, which Lord Frederick was devouring with kisses, with an instantaneous impulse he rushed forward and struck him a violent blow in the face. Then, leading her to her own chamber, covered with shame and confusion for what he had done, he fell on his knees before her, and earnestly "entreated her forgiveness for the indelicacy he had been guilty of in her presence."

To see her guardian at her feet struck her with a sense of impropriety as if she had seen a parent there. All agitation and emotion, she implored him to rise, and, with a thousand protestations, declared "that she thought the rashness of his action was the highest proof of his regard for her."

Finding that Lord Frederick had gone when he had resigned the care of his ward to Miss Woodley, Dorriforth returned to his own apartment with a bosom torn by excruciating sensations. He had departed from his sacred character, and the dignity of his profession and sentiments; he had treated with unpardonable insult a young n.o.bleman whose only offence was love; he had offended and filled with horror a beautiful young woman whom it was his duty to protect from those brutal manners to which he himself had exposed her.

The outcome of this incident was a duel, to prevent which Miss Milner deceived him by confessing a pa.s.sion for Lord Frederick, although to Miss Woodley she avowed the real truth, that it was Dorriforth she loved.

"Do you suppose I love Lord Frederick? Do you suppose I _can_ love him?

Oh, fly, and prevent my guardian from telling him this untruth! This duel is horrible even beyond anything else! Oh, Miss Woodley, pity the agonies of my heart, my heart by nature sincere, when such are the fatal propensities it cherishes that I must submit to the grossest falsehoods rather than reveal the truth! Are you so blind," she exclaimed, "as to believe I do not care for Mr. Dorriforth? Oh, Miss Woodley, I love him with all the pa.s.sion of a woman, and with all the tenderness of a wife!"

"Silence!" cried Miss Woodley, struck with horror. Yet, amidst all her grief and abhorrence, pity was still predominant, and, seeing her friend's misery, she did all she could to comfort her. But she was resolved that she should leave home, and, on pain of revealing her secret to Mr. Dorriforth, induced her to pay a visit of indefinite length to her friends at Bath.

There, in the melancholy that possessed her, Miss Woodley's letters alone gave her consolation. In a short time her health became impaired; she was once in imminent danger, and during her delirium incessantly repeated her guardian's name. Miss Woodley journeyed to her at once, and so did Dorriforth, who, through the death of his cousin, Lord Elmwood, had acquired his t.i.tle and estates. On this account he had received a dispensation from his vow of celibacy, and was enjoined to marry. His ward felt a pleasure so exquisite on hearing this that the agitation of mind and person brought with it the sensation of exquisite pain; but, to her cruel grief, she found that he was, on the advice of his friends, already paying his addresses to Miss Fenton.

As if a poniard had thrust her to the heart, she writhed under this unexpected stroke; she felt, and she expressed anguish. Lord Elmwood was alarmed and shocked. But later, when, in his perplexity concerning his ward's marriage, he induced Miss Woodley to tell him on whom Miss Milner's choice was fixed, his vehemence filled her with alarm.

"For G.o.d's sake, take care what you are doing! You are destroying my prospects of futurity, you are making this world too dear to me! I am transported by the tidings you have revealed--and yet, perhaps, I had better not have heard them!" he exclaimed. And then, to prevent further question, he hastened out of the room.

Within a few days he was her professed lover--she, the happiest of human beings--Miss Woodley partaking in the joy. Mr. Sandford alone lamented with the deepest concern that Miss Fenton had been supplanted--and supplanted by Miss Milner.

Yet Miss Fenton was perhaps affected least of any by the change; she received everything with the same insipid smile of approbation, and the same cold indifference.

_III.--A Fatal Experiment_

Lost in the maze of happiness that surrounded her, Miss Milner oftentimes asked her heart, "Are not my charms even more invincible than I ever believed them to be? Dorriforth, the grave, the pious, the anchorite Dorriforth, by their force is animated to all the ardour of the most impa.s.sioned lover; while the proud priest, the austere guardian, is humbled, if I but frown, into the veriest slave of love." She then asked: "Why did I not keep him longer in suspense? He could not have loved me more, I believe, but my power over him might have been greater still. I am the happiest of women in the affection he has proved to me, but I wonder if it would exist under ill-treatment? If it would not, he still does not love me as I wish to be loved; if it would, my triumph, my felicity, would be enhanced."

Thus the dear-bought experiment of being loved in spite of her faults--a glory proud women ever aspire to--was, at present, the ambition of Miss Milner. She, who, as Dorriforth's ward had ever been gentle, and always obedient, became as a mistress, sometimes haughty, always insolent. He was surprised, but the novelty pleased him. Miss Milner, whom he tenderly loved, could put on no change that did not seem to become her.

But at last her attempt to rouse his jealousy by again encouraging Lord Frederick hurt him beyond measure. In a letter releasing her from her engagement to him, and announcing his immediate departure for a long Continental tour, he begged her for the short time they were to remain together not to insult him with an open preference for another. By complying with this request she would give him to believe that she thought he had, at least, faithfully discharged some part of his duty.

She was struck to despair. Pride alone kept her from revealing her anguish, though her death should be the immediate consequence! But Sandford, who had hitherto been most inimical to her, on the evening before Lord Elmwood's departure showed at last some kindness by entreating her to breakfast with them the following morning. There she sat silent, unable to eat, unable to speak, unable to move, until the moment for parting came. Then, unable to repress her tears as heretofore, as Elmwood took her hand in his, she suffered them to fall in torrents.

"What is all this?" cried Sandford, going up to them in anger.

They neither of them replied, or changed their situation.

"Separate this moment!" cried Sandford. "Or resolve to be separated only by--death! Lord Elmwood, do you love this woman?"

"More than my life!" he replied, with the most heartfelt accents.

He then turned to Miss Milner.

"Can you say the same by him?"

She spread her hands over her eyes, and exclaimed, "Oh, heavens!"

"I believe you can say so," returned Sandford. "And in the name of G.o.d, and your own happiness, since this is the state of you both, let me put it out of your power to part?"

On which he opened his book and--married them.

Nevertheless, on that joyful day which restored her lost lover to her hopes again, even on that very day after the ceremony was over, Miss Milner--with all the fears, the superst.i.tion of her s.e.x--felt an excruciating shock when, looking on the ring Lord Elmwood had put upon her finger in haste, she perceived it was a mourning-ring.

_IV.--Outcasts_

Alas! in seventeen years the beautiful, beloved Miss Milner was no longer beautiful, no longer beloved, no longer virtuous.

Dorriforth, the pious, the good, the tender Dorriforth, was become a hard-hearted tyrant.

Miss Woodley had grown old, but less with years than grief.

The boy Harry Rushbrook had become a man and the apparent heir of Lord Elmwood's fortune, while his own daughter, his only child by his once-adored Miss Milner, he refused ever to see again, in vengeance to her mother's crime.

Sandford alone remained much as heretofore.

Lady Elmwood was a loved and loving bride seventeen years ago; now she lay on her death-bed. At thirty-five "her course was run." After four years of perfect happiness, Lord Elmwood was obliged to leave his wife and child while he went to visit his large estates in the West Indies.

His voyage was tedious, his return delayed by serious illness, which a too cautious fear of her uneasiness prompted him to conceal. He was away three years.

It was no other than Lord Frederick Lawnly to whom Lady Elmwood sacrificed her own and her husband's future peace; she did not, however, elope with her paramour, but escaped to shelter herself in the most dreary retreat, where she partook of no comfort but the still unremitting friendship of Miss Woodley. Even her child she left behind, that she might be under her father's protection. Conceive, then, how sharp her agony was on beholding the child sent after her as the perpetual outcast of its father. Lord Elmwood's love to his wife had been extravagant--the effect of his hate was the same. Once more he met Lord Frederick in a duel, the effect of which was to leave his adversary so defaced with scars as never again to endanger the honour of a husband. He was himself dangerously wounded, yet nothing but the a.s.surance that his opponent was slain could tear him from the field.

Now, after ten years of exile, the once gay, volatile Miss Milner lay dying with but one request to make--that her daughter should not suffer for her sin. Sandford was with her; by all the influence he ever had over Lord Elmwood, by his prayers, by his tears, he promised to implore him to own his child. She could only smile her thanks, but she was sufficiently sensible of his words to make a sign as if she wished to embrace him; but, finding life leaving her fast, with a struggle she clung to her child, and died in her arms.

_V.--His Daughter's Happiness_

Yet all that her mother's last appeal could obtain for the hapless Matilda, not as her child, but as the granddaughter of Mr. Milner, was the shelter of her father's roof on condition that she avoided his sight. When by accident or design he ever saw or heard from her, that moment his compliance with her mother's request ceased, and he abandoned her once more. Still, the joy of being, even in so remote a way, under her father's care, was extreme for her, though it was tempered with jealousy of Rushbrook--a feeling which even her n.o.ble heart could not completely quell--jealousy which was shared on her account by both Miss Woodley and Mr. Sandford, and frequently made them unjust to Harry, whom they regarded as an interloper.

But his pa.s.sionate grat.i.tude to Lady Elmwood, by whose entreaties he had been restored to his uncle's favour, had made him adore her daughter with an equal pa.s.sion. He gazed with wonder at his uncle's insensibility to his own happiness, and would gladly have led him to the jewel he cast away, though even his own expulsion should be the fatal consequence.

At last, by accident, Lord Elmwood returned unexpectedly home when Matilda was descending the staircase, and, in her affright, she fell motionless into her father's arms. He caught her, as by the same impulse he would have caught anyone falling for want of aid. Yet, when he found her in his arms, he still held her there--gazed on her attentively--and pressed her to his bosom.

At length, trying to escape the snare into which he had been led, he was going to leave her on the spot where she fell, when her eyes opened, and she uttered, "Save me!" Her voice unmanned him. His long-restraining tears now burst forth, and, seeing her relapsing into the swoon, he called out eagerly to recall her. Her name did not, however, come to his recollection--nor any name but this--"Miss Milner, dear Miss Milner."

The sound did not awaken her; and now again he wished to leave her in this senseless state, that not remembering what had pa.s.sed, she might escape the punishment.

But at this instant his steward pa.s.sed, and into his hands he delivered his apparently dead child, his face agitated with shame, with pity, with anger, with paternal tenderness. On her recovery she was sent to a neighbouring farm, not more than thirty miles away, her father having given orders that it should be so.

Then a libertine lover of Lady Matilda's, finding her no longer under her father's protection, resolved to abduct her, and by raising an alarm of fire, caused all the inhabitants of the farmhouse to open the doors, when two men rushed in, and, with the plea of saving her from the flames, carried her away. News of this being taken to her father, he at once set out in pursuit, and reached her in her last agony of despair, folding her in his arms with the unrestrained fondness of a parent.

It was now the middle of November; and yet, as Matilda pa.s.sed along, never to her did the sun shine so bright as upon this morning; never did her imagination comprehend that the human heart could feel happiness true and genuine as hers!

Rushbrook had been detained at Elmwood during all this time, more from the persuasions, nay, prayers, of Sandford than the commands of Lord Elmwood. His uncle's summons for him to join them in town was, therefore, received with delight. Yet his joy was tempered by finding that it was to propose a matrimonial alliance that his uncle had sent for him; after a thousand fears, much confusion, and embarra.s.sment, he at length frankly confessed his "heart was engaged, and had been so, long before his uncle offered to direct his choice."

On hearing on whom he had set his affections, Lord Elmwood immediately left the room for the apartment where Sandford, Miss Woodley, and Matilda were sitting, and cried with an angry voice, and with his countenance disordered, "Rushbrook has offended me beyond pardon. Go, Sandford, and tell him this instant to quit my house, and never dare to return."