Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XV Part 14

On the following morning, when he and Middleton met--

"Well, Harry," said the latter, "what's to be done now? What has been the result of your night's reflections regarding Helen? What do you now propose doing with her?"

"I propose to marry her, Middleton," replied Wellwood, gravely. "It is the least thing I can do in reparation of the injury I have done her--the misery and scorn I have entailed on her; and besides, Middleton," he went on, "I should be perjured in the face of Heaven if I did not, for I swore a sacred and binding oath that I should make her mine; and it was by trusting to that oath that poor Helen fell."

"Ha! ha!--a particular good joke, Harry," exclaimed Middleton; "and----"

"No joke whatever, Middleton," said Wellwood, interrupting him; "I am in serious earnest. I will do the girl the only justice now in my power. I will do what my heart and my conscience tell me is right in this matter, and defy the sneers of a selfish and censorious world. On this I am firmly determined, let the consequences be what they may. My mind is made up, Middleton."

"You're mad, Harry," said the latter, now becoming serious in his turn, on seeing that his friend was really in earnest--"absolutely and absurdly mad."

"It may be so, Middleton," replied Wellwood, calmly. "That is a point I will not dispute with you; but I am nevertheless firmly resolved to do what I have said. I will take my poor little boy to my bosom, and his mother shall become lady of Wellwood. It is all the reparation I can make her, and it shall be made. Will you a.s.sist me in going through with this romantic business, Middleton?" he added, smiling.

"Why, Harry," replied the latter, "I certainly should not like to desert you in a time of need; but----"

"No buts, Middleton," interrupted his friend. "Will you, or will you not?"

"Why, then, if you _are_ resolved, Harry, on this desperate, and, I must call it, singularly absurd step, I will," rejoined Middleton. "But what will your father say to it?"

"Why, from him, certainly, my marriage must, far a time, at any rate, be concealed; but of this more afterwards. In the meantime, will you go to Helen, and tell her that an old acquaintance desires to see her; and conduct her hither?"

Middleton readily undertook the mission, and departed to execute it. In a minute afterwards he returned, leading in Helen by the hand. On seeing Wellwood, she uttered a piercing shriek, and fainted in the arms of Middleton, her little boy clinging to her in all the terror of childish affright. Wellwood rushed to her a.s.sistance, and, in the tenderest and most soothing language he could command, endeavoured to restore her to consciousness. This of itself gradually returned, and a scene followed which we will not attempt to describe. Wellwood, pressing Helen to his bosom, told the bewildered but delighted girl that it was his intention to repair the injury he had done her, by offering her his hand. He next flew to his boy, took him up in his arms, bathed him with his tears, and bestowed upon him, while he caressed him, every tender epithet he could think of.

Our story is now coming naturally to a close; and we will not prolong it by any unnecessary or extraneous details. In three days after this, Helen--having been previously provided with everything suitable to the rank in life to which she was thus suddenly and most unexpectedly promoted from the lowest depths of wretchedness and dest.i.tution--became the wife of Henry Edington, Esq. of Wellwood. In three days more, Mr Edington received intelligence of his father's sudden demise, which rendered it necessary that he should proceed instantly to Wellwood. In this journey his wife and child accompanied him; and the next appearance of Helen Gardenstone in her native village was in a splendid carriage, as the lady of Wellwood, in which character she subsequently acquired an extensive reputation for benevolence, and for the practice of every social virtue. Helen, in short, became an exemplary wife, and conferred on her husband, who continued to regard her with unabated affection till the day of his death, all the happiness of which the marriage state is capable.

THE SURGEON'S TALES.

THE CASE OF EVIDENCE.

The following narrative was given to me by the executors of Miss Ballingal, whom I attended for a short time previous to her death:--

I shall not now, I hope, be long upon the face of this earth. It is sinful to wish to die; but, when the spirit is weary of the trials of this evil world, and the body broken, and the bones stricken to their dried marrow with pains, surely a poor mortal may indulge the wish, that G.o.d's time of release may not be postponed beyond the power of bearing the weight of life. My years, if mentioned, would not, perhaps, appear to be many; but _age_, in the sense in which I take it, cannot be calculated by circ.u.mvolutions of the sun. There is an age of the spirit independently of that of the body; and to calculate that, we must have a measure of the effects of misfortune, and pain, and injury, on nerves toned in all the keys that rise in gradation, from the sensations of creatures a little above the brutes, to the sensibilities of individuals a little lower than the angels. In this view, I am indeed aged as the sons of Levi; for my soul, like the people of Pharaoh, has been smitten with boils and blains, by the poisoned bite of the serpent tongue of civilisation. The spirit of the Indian under his plantain-tree, lives till the body is sick of it; and with a mistaken humanity, he is exposed in the desert, that the wants of the flesh may kill the spirit that yearns to live, and to rejoice again in the return of the seasons, with their fruits and flowers; but the spirit of civilised man or woman is often dead long before the mortal tenement exhibits any decay; for, though spotted fever and limping palsy have pa.s.sed on, and touched not the flesh, the spirit has been visited by plagues a thousand times more deadly, that rise from the refinements of civilised life. It is these that have made me aged, and weary of remaining longer here; and I am not doubtful that, when I record what I have suffered from two causes--first, my own--yes, I affirm it--my own goodness; and, secondly, the evils inherent in the state of society in which we live--every one will acknowledge that I have little more to wait for on this side of time, and that the sooner I am dissolved, the better it may be for myself, and those who sympathise in griefs that death alone can alleviate.

Brought up in the manse of C----, by a pious father, the clergyman of the parish, a learned man--and by a mother, a woman of many virtues, who wished her daughter to be as good as herself--I enjoyed all the advantages of breeding and education; which, if turned to good account, make the ornaments of society. I cannot, and never will, admit that these advantages were lost upon me, though they have tended to make me miserable. I was accounted fair; and I believe that my beauty--a gift so much valued--has had also a share, and no inconsiderable one, in the production of the peculiar evils under which I have suffered, and still suffer. I was--what none knew so well as myself--sensitive to a degree bordering on diseased irritability; but my sensitiveness was of that higher kind, which, courting and receiving impressions and impulses from virtuous thoughts and elevated feelings, tends to elevate rather than depress. The fine culture I received from my father, co-operating with my refined sensibilities, produced in me the most exquisitely minute perceptions of moral good and evil; so that I came to have the same delicate feeling of the graceful or the distorted in morals, that some _born_ musicians are said to possess in regard to the tones of harmony in the world of sounds. This is not self-praise--it is truth wrung out of me; for, though possessed of many qualities which might have nourished vanity, the disrelish I ever felt of the exhibitions of a vain spirit in others would have been effectual in quelling my own, even if I had had any to quell, which a.s.suredly I never had. I believe that the strong view in which morals were presented to me by the precepts of my father, would have operated to the production of a fine and healthy effect in one formed for the busy world; but in me, who seemed to have been formed with a connate, aspen-like, trembling sensitiveness of the traces of good and evil, his instructions, continued from day to day, and enforced by the power of his own example and that of my sainted mother, tended to give my original perceptions so strong and holy a sanction, that, at a very early period, I had become a kind of worshipper of good. Virtue has a lovely aspect to all, even to those who tremble at her beauty, from the contrast of their own ugliness; religion has the power of making her more beautiful; and systems of morals, clothed in fine language, are effective in training many hearts to a high love of this emanation from G.o.d. But I was, and I am yet, different from any individual whose moral perceptions are merely strengthened by these aids. I do not know if I make myself intelligible, but I myself feel the distinction I wish to impress: morals were to me that species of pa.s.sion which in many exhibits itself only more perceptibly in regard to some other object--such as poetry, painting, sculpture, or music--with perhaps this difference, that while these natural _illuminati_ are merely annoyed by an exhibition of distortion, I was pained--sorely, miserably pained--by vice, in whatever form it was exhibited to me. I was not contented with the ordinary appearances of purity. The jealousy-offering was ever in my hand; and I was always sighing to see it waving before the G.o.ddess, and offered upon the altar of virtue. I looked upon the individual in whom the "water that causes the curse" became bitter, as a creature who was rotten, and had become a curse among the people.

Entertaining these sentiments, I loved to expatiate upon the beauties of my favourite subject, with a glow of eloquence that struck even the G.o.dly visiters of the manse with surprise and admiration. I often, also, in my visits among my father's parishioners, exhibited the same warm enthusiasm, couching my sentiments in the gorgeous clothing of a young fancy enamoured of a deified personification of what I conceived to be the only true good and the only true beauty upon earth. But I was no apostle under the influence of a proselytising spirit; for I only visited the virtuous, because I loved them, and those of an evil reputation I avoided with a thrilling horror, as creatures diseased and dangerous to approach. Those who believed me a religious enthusiast--and there were many who entertained that opinion of me--knew nothing of my real nature; for, though my father's precepts had had all due effect upon me, religion, far from being the origin of my feelings, lent merely a sanction to them, showing the final cause of my enthusiastic views, and turning them to that account in the contemplation of an after world, that ought to have been at all times their end and object. I was rather a lover of virtue for its beauty: my feeling was an impa.s.sioned taste, luxuriating on every virtuous act, and dwelling with inexpressible delight on every cultivator of my favourite subject. A consequence of this was the horror of vicious persons, which I possessed to a degree that made my father suspect that my pa.s.sion was not the religious one, which is unavoidably accompanied with pity for the misguided votary of sin, and a straining effort to reclaim him to the paths of virtue. He was to a certain extent right; but I question much if, with all his learning, he possessed knowledge enough of the various peculiarities of human nature, to enable him to a.n.a.lyse my character, or to understand the peculiarities of one under the dominion of a pa.s.sion for ethics.

I was, moreover, of a remarkably tender const.i.tution of body--the consequence of early weakness, as well, perhaps, as of that irritable temperament which fed and was nourished in turn by the high-strung sensibilities of my spirit. Up to the age of fifteen, I was subject to a species of fit, or nervous syncope; and I always found that, after an attack of these enervating prostrations of my physical powers, my mind recurred to my favourite subject with greater keenness, supplying my excited fancy with brilliant images of virtuous sacrifices, such as I had read of in the old cla.s.sic authors, which I could read in the original; and these, again, swelled my heart, lighted my eye, and lent an eloquence to my tongue, which dwelt on the daring of Mutius, the sacrifice of Lucretia, the heroism of Brutus, the friendship of Damon, and the determination of Virginius. Exhausted by the swell of emotions produced by these subjects, I fell back upon the quieter, but no less delicious, theme of a Howard's philanthropy; and ended with the contemplation of those instances of private charity which had come under my own eye. I never felt happier than when in these moods; and my mother, who knew my pa.s.sion, contributed to its gratification, by directing me to such recorded examples of worth as she knew where to find among my father's books.

Possessed of these views and feelings, so unsuitable to the cold maxims of the world, and with a weak and irritable const.i.tution, I was ill prepared for the loss which was now, when I was in my twentieth year, impending over me--the death of both my parents, who, attacked by the same disease--some putrid species of typhus--died within a week of each other, leaving me, their only child, as much unprovided for in regard to worldly wants, as I was unfitted for making up the deficiency by my personal exertions. My father left nothing but the furniture in the manse, which was all required to pay up some advances of stipend which had been made to him by several of the heritors, and which the extreme scantiness of his income necessitated him to have recourse to. I was a beggar, imbued with notions to make the people of the world admire and pity, and gifted with a countenance so beautiful (why need I spare the vain word, when I now admit that age and pain have made me ugly?), that, with art, might have realised a fortune, or, with folly, might have ruined me. I sought the protection of a spendthrift uncle and a good aunt--the latter resident in the town of Stirling, an old lady of fortune, a Mrs Greville, who admired my principles, and possessed generosity enough to enable her to offer to repay the pleasures of my companionship by her house and her friendship. My tender frame, operated upon by the intense grief I had felt in the loss of my parents, sustained a shock which would have proved fatal to me, if the a.s.suasive attentions of that angelic being had not contributed to the recovery of my health. Her protection was much, her kindness valuable; but above all was I blessed in the possession of a friend who reduced to practice, though she could not _feel_ as I felt, the principles of virtue I had so long cherished with the fondness of a ruling pa.s.sion. But my situation was now changed. In my father's manse I saw little of the world; but what came under my observation was congenial to my mind, and gratified my feelings by the exhibition of goodness as well of deed as of sentiment. The evil I saw was out-of-doors, and I eschewed it as a serpent which would beguile by the spiral turns of its insidious lines of beauty, and the shining hues of the colours of false loveliness. In our society at home, or in the houses of the parishioners, it never came under my experience, except by the report of crimes which grated on my irritable feelings, and pained me to a much greater extent than people of ordinary sensibilities may well comprehend. In my new residence, I was necessitated to mix with the world. My aunt saw much company, composed of the mixed inhabitants of the town, and I accompanied her to various parties where the _fashionable_ vices were cultivated, as all fashionable things are, with an affected contempt of honest plainness and unadorned simplicity.

Though my aunt was herself a good woman, and admired the high-coloured, and, it may be, unnatural views I took of human life, she never understood the secret parts of my mental const.i.tution, but took me simply for one who entertained a somewhat strong sense of the beauty of a good life, and who therefore could mix with society of acknowledged honesty as the world goes, without allowing the frailty of human nature to interfere with my own views, and far less with my comfort and peace of mind. My beauty made her proud of me; and I was soon introduced to scenes which stirred all the antipathies that, as the result of my past modes of thinking and feeling, lay strong within my heart, and ready to be called forth by a departure in others from the rules of life I had so long loved. The first view I got of the mysteries of card-playing--in the house of Captain Semple, of Tennet, who lived in town, only a few doors removed from where I lived--produced an effect of pain upon me similar to that which Mozart declared he felt when his harmony was lost in discordance. They played for what they called high stakes; and there was exhibited, on a lesser scale, the keen avaricious eye, the forced, choking laugh, the lying smile, the trembling hand, and burning brow of the gambler of the London grade. The whole family engaged in this play.

I recollect, at this distant period, the effect produced upon me by the agonised countenance of the beautiful Catherine Semple, the eldest daughter, when she lost a high stake, and yet turned the expression of the worst look of the devil into a smile far more hideous than that which it concealed. Nor was the effect less painful that was produced upon my high-wrought sensibilities by the cruel triumph that burned in the beautiful blue eye of Esther her sister, who had pocketed the hard-won earnings of a poor surgeon, and seemed to feed on the poisoned garbage of his depression and disappointment. The face of her mother, who looked on, partook alternately of the expression of those of her daughters; and while I, a stranger, beheld with pain the first principles of goodness subverted, and the fairest samples of G.o.d's creatures penetrated to the core by the worst feelings of our fallen nature, she, their parent, sympathised with a daughter's deceit and revenge, or gloried in her triumph over what might be the approaches of ruin to a fallen creature. I went home after that exhibition dispirited and miserable; the chords of the moral harp, that had so long responded to the sweet sounds of a virtue imagined, felt, and dreamed of, as a beatific vision, were disrupted and torn asunder; and I imagined that the individuals who had thus laid upon it their sacrilegious hands were worthy of a hatred unqualified by pity, as destroyers of the most beautiful fabric ever erected by G.o.d's love. These were not the gloomy views of the monastic ascetic, or the religious enthusiast--for I was neither. I was, indeed, peculiarly formed; but I knew not my peculiarity, and even now I could scarcely abate one ray of the effulgence that, if you please, blinded me to the fact.i.tious virtues of the _juste milieu_ of a bad world's morality.

Some nights afterwards, I accompanied my aunt to the house of Mrs Ball, also a neighbour, and one who could afford to live in a style that, in such a town as Stirling, might be conceived to be high. She had a daughter, Anne, and a son, George, an attorney, both accomplished and handsome, and wearing on their faces the external appearances of simplicity and goodness. The recollections of Semple's family were still busy with my heart, and I trembled to approach another a.s.semblage of fashionable people. I was placed in the midst of a large tea _coterie_, and expected to hear a conversation suited to the views of human life I so fondly cherished. Stories of generosity, of age a.s.suaged, bereavement ameliorated, want supplied, and hunger and nakedness fed and clothed, must, I thought, issue from such a quiet-looking a.s.semblage of people, brought together apparently for no other purpose than to promote the cause of their own happiness, which surely might be best done by contemplating the means of the happiness of others. Having had one of my fits in the fore part of the day, I was more irritable than usual; but having got, in some measure, quit of the pain produced by the moral discordance that had, some days before, grated so painfully on my weak nerves, I expected to be able to join in a conversation which could not fail to embrace a part of my favourite theme. I was again destined to be made miserable. I was placed in the midst of a species of moral cannibals, who preyed ruthlessly and jestingly on the misfortunes and miseries of their fellow-creatures. Pecuniary embarra.s.sments, matrimonial disagreements, detections of dishonesty, elopements, infidelities--everything that might render an individual worthy of pity or hatred--was treated in the same tone of concealed satisfaction. The burst of loud laughter followed on the heels of the whine of hollow sympathy; the sneer mixed its cutting sarcasm with the lying tribute to suffering worth; and through all, over all, in all, there was the spirit of evil, in its worst, its ugliest form, rejoicing--secretly, no doubt, but not the less certainly--in the defection of mortals from G.o.d's law, and their devarication from my standard of moral beauty.

I experience a difficulty now, though then it would have been easy for me to describe what I felt on the occasion of this new display of this, to me, the ugliest parts of the hated system of evil which prevails in the world. The beautiful visions I had formed in my day-dreams, and which I had cherished as the source of my greatest happiness, appeared to me to have little or no relation to earth, or to earth's inhabitants; and a gloomy melancholy stole over me, and retained the dominion of my mind, in spite of every effort to shake it off. I endeavoured to make my feelings understood by Mrs Greville; but she, though partic.i.p.ant in my views of moral perfection, could not comprehend why the turpitude of men should have the effect of making a good person incapable of enjoying what was truly virtuous in nature, and far less why it should produce a gloomy misery in those who were themselves truly good. What people cannot comprehend, they sometimes state to others, for the sake of a.s.sistance to their understandings; and my aunt, in the openness of her heart, stated my peculiarities to some friends, who coloured them to suit their fancies, and then communicated them to the families of the Semples, the b.a.l.l.s, and several others. My views, as I afterwards learned, were considered by these people as an impeachment of their morals; and I was set down as an arch-hypocrite, who wished to rear a character for goodness on the ruin of the reputation of others. The state of despondency into which I fell, precipitated me into a succession of my old nervous fits, and it was not for some time that I was again prevailed upon to visit the scenes where my feelings were exposed to such causes of laceration; but when I did again accompany my friend in her accustomed visits, I found that I had become unwelcome: oblique sneers, short, cutting taunts, and pointed insinuations, were directed against me; and though I then knew nothing of the cause, I felt, with that trembling sensitiveness which was peculiar to me, the poignancy of the poison of a hatred that was scarcely attempted to be concealed.

In the little intercourse I had as yet had with the new world of sad reality into which I had entered, I had heard the characters of good people so fearfully belied and reviled, that I attributed the painful treatment I thus received to the same malevolent spirit that dictated the malicious scandal which seemed to penetrate almost every family I had yet visited. I inquired for no cause in myself; for I had done or said nothing to create merited individual hatred. It was the working of the same spirit of evil that generally prevailed, extended to me, a poor orphan, living on the dependence of a kind relation. It was one thing to see evil done towards others, and to feel it applied to one's-self; and the pain I formerly felt was increased by the dread that I might yet be thrown upon that world which presented to me such fearful indications of cruelty and vice. It will soon be seen whether it was my good or evil fortune, at this gloomy period, to meet with one who appeared really to understand the const.i.tution of my mind, to appreciate the exalted views I entertained of virtue, and to sympathise with me in the pain produced by the discordance between the actual state of society and what I so fondly wished it to be. Augustus Merling, proprietor of a fine property called the Park, yielding him about 1500 a-year, and who lived, for a great part of the year, in town with his widowed mother, visited my aunt, and often saw me. I have said I was possessed of much beauty, and the fact is undoubted; but there was still about me that aspen-like sensitiveness, derived from the nervous attacks to which I was enslaved, operating on a mind of originally fine structure, that the very look of man or woman, if boldly thrown upon me, whether from curiosity or confidence, made me shrink intuitively, and look confused or abashed; and I never could conceive that all the beauty I possessed could make amends for or overcome the prejudices against me originating in that cause. I was in this respect, however, entirely wrong. My sensitiveness gave me an interest in the eyes of Augustus, who, the moment he saw me, was so struck with the beauty of my face, and that very shrinking of my manner, that he inquired at Mrs Greville every particular concerning me; and got such an account as, he himself afterwards confessed, increased his curiosity by the mystic obscurity in which my aunt's inability to understand me had wrapped all the peculiar attributes of my mind. He had felt some antic.i.p.ative impression of a sympathy between our thoughts and feelings; and our intercourse--for he sought me the more fervently the more I retired from him--soon satisfied him he was right in his estimate of my character. I am certain he understood me thoroughly, and I believe he was the only individual I had yet met who fathomed the mysteries of a heart only too good and pure for the world in which we live. But, if I was surprised and pleased with this, what may be conceived to be my feelings, when I at last found, in a beautiful youth of fortune, the very moral counterpart of myself, with all my exalted views of my beloved and cherished goodness and moral loveliness! Often as the pen of poet has been employed in the description of the feelings of mortals under the influence of the tender pa.s.sion, sublimed by the elevating power of virtuous purity, I am satisfied that small approach has been made to the reality of the love that soon bound me and Augustus together as creatures made after the same model, and yet different from all mankind. If other matters did not hurry me forward, I could exhibit the thrilling details of a bliss which is thought to be peculiar to the regions above. I would only be afraid that the a.n.a.lysis would require to be carried so deep into the attenuated fibres of const.i.tutions so seldom seen and so little understood, that I would be charged with my imputed error of applying unearthly visions to things of earthly mould. Love has become a by-word, because it is too often mixed with the impurities of vulgar natures; but such love as ours might tend to elevate and throw over the rapt fancies of imaginative beings a forecast of that exquisite bliss which awaits mankind in the regions of heaven.

But, even in this sweet dream, the evil of the world was destined to follow me. I had taken from two ladies the object of their love or ambition. Catherine Semple and Anne Ball, whom I have already mentioned, had been severally intended by their mothers as the wife of Augustus--a match to which the young rivals themselves were as much inclined as their mothers, as well from the personal qualities of Augustus, as from his wealth and property. I was hated by these ladies before as a hypocrite. I was now the successful rival apparently destined to blast all the cherished hopes of their love or ambition--and yet guiltless of even the thought of the earthly and debased feelings of what is known as rivalship. Our love was soon known to both the families, chiefly through the medium of George Ball, who acted as the man of business of Mrs Greville, and in that capacity was often a visiter at the house. The effect of the intelligence was intense and stirring; and, through the simple medium of my aunt, I heard myself denounced as one who carried virtue on my face and tongue; simulated nervous sensibility, to give effect to my affected distaste of vice; and who yet bore within my bosom, for a heart, the poisonous c.o.c.katrice, whose eggs were the guile and deceit that work more evil in the world than open-faced, unblushing vice. These statements were corroborated by what I myself saw; for when I again met the young ladies--and it was more by chance than intention--I was struck by the intensity with which they, even in the presence of others, expressed by look and manner the hatred they carried in their hearts against me, guiltless as I was of thought or deed inimical to them or any other mortal on earth. The enmity thus flared upon me, with such strength of feeling, was experienced in the height of the delicious dream of love in which I was entranced; and, softened and mellowed as I was with the sweet enjoyment of the actual experience in Augustus of the visions of perfection I had so devotedly cherished, I felt again, and in an increased degree, the pain which the workings of evil seemed fated to produce in me.

About the same time, another source of uneasiness rose at my side, in the person of George Ball. Whether actuated by love, or interest, or both, I know not--but I afterwards had reason to suppose he wished Augustus detached from me, to be free for his sister--this individual took the opportunity of my aunt's absence, and made, on his knees, warm professions of attachment to me. He declared that he was dying for me, and implored me to give him a test of his affection. I looked at him and trembled. He it was who had reported the affection of me and Augustus, and, with the knowledge that I loved and was beloved by another, he thus attempted to burst the bonds of a holy and elevated connection--to make me ungrateful, perfidious, and base; and to render him in whom all my happiness was centred miserable and wretched. My frame of mind was too delicate for indignation; a slow creeping feeling of loathing was the form in which the contemplation of evil produced an effect on me, and the sickening influence seldom failed in reducing me, for a time, to gloom and nervousness. I cannot describe my conduct on the occasion of this new discovery of the workings of the prevailing demon; but I believe that I hurried from the apartment with such an expression of my feelings depicted upon my countenance, as must have told him, more eloquently than words, the disgust he had roused in me, and the pain with which I was penetrated. The former he might understand, the latter was beyond the reach of his intelligence.

I found an a.s.suagement of these evils in the bosom of Augustus, where lay the microcosm, that pure moral world I delighted to contemplate; but the illness of Mrs Greville, which shortly after supervened, called upon me to exercise actively those virtues of grat.i.tude and kindness which formed a part of the scheme of my morality. Night and day I waited upon my benefactress, with the fondness of affection, and the fidelity and unwearied steadfastness of principle. Between her and my Augustus my time was pa.s.sed; and I know not whether I felt more satisfaction in the theoretical contemplation I enjoyed along with him, of the beauties of a good life, than in the practical application of our views to the amelioration of my aunt's feelings in her illness, and to the contribution to her ease and satisfaction. Yet all my a.s.siduity seemed to be of little avail; she gradually grew worse; and there seemed to come over her, at times, sorrowful antic.i.p.ations of what might befall me, in the event of her death, mixed with, if not suggested by, recollections of the manner in which I had been treated by the families whose daughters aspired to the hand of Augustus. These thoughts were busy with her one day, and she had sent for George Ball to make her will. Before he came, she was visited by the mother of Augustus; and before the latter departed, Miss Catherine Semple and Miss Anne Ball also came. I sat by her bedside, watching, through tears of sympathy, every indication of pain or solicitude. It was a strange meeting, and presented an opportunity for a declaration of sentiment on the part of my aunt, that, ill as she was, she could not let escape.

"Martha," she said, looking in my face, and taking my hand into hers, "oh, that I possessed the virtues of your clear, untainted mind!--for then I should be prepared to meet the bright beams of that light of heavenly glory which searches to purify, and shines to enlighten, and bless, and make happy. Your trial may be now, or rather when I am gone; but your triumph will come when you are as I now am. People have tried to injure you" (she looked steadfastly at the two young ladies); "but, if Mrs Merling remains your friend, the viper-tongue of scandal or reproach cannot touch you. The terms on which you stand with Augustus I know, though I never can be able to comprehend all the beauty of your mutual views and sentiments on that subject which is gradually opening upon me by the medium of a light from above. You have rivals" (looking again at the two young ladies); "but they are bold mortals who would dispute the victory with angels."

These words came to me like the "fountain which was opened to the house of David," for it banished from me many fears; but to Catherine Semple and Anne Ball they were as adders' tongues; and the eliminated poison, indigested, was thrown out upon me by every expression of hatred they could call up into their countenances. Mrs Merling was silent, but looked upon me with that sweetness which resulted from those angelic views of heaven-born goodness she had communicated to Augustus. That look was to me an ample panoply against the scorching, revengeful fire of the eyes of my rivals, who, having expended all the force of their malevolence by the side of their prostrate and apparently dying friend, departed in wrath. In a short time, a servant came from George Ball, and stated that he was from home, and would not return till next day. My aunt appeared disconcerted by the intelligence, but said she would not employ another, as he alone knew the state of her affairs. Mrs Merling kissed me, and told me to be of good heart, for that, while she loved her Augustus, she must continue to love me, who was his counterpart, and therefore (she added, with a soft smile) more of heaven than of earth.

She departed, stating that she would return in the evening, to ascertain how my aunt then was. These a.s.surances of friendship I required to sustain me amidst this trying scene; for my old complaint had been exhibiting an activity among my nerves, which shook me to the heart, and predisposed me for the pain of the endurance of enmity on the one side, and the solicitude of a friendship, on the eve of being ended for ever, on the other. I was sitting convulsed by conflicting emotions, with my hand on my forehead, when Mrs Greville again spoke.

"I feel worse, my beloved Martha," she said, "and am solicitous about the return of George Ball. I would send for another, but that I would so much prefer my usual man of business. So far, at least, I can insure your safety, my love, in the event of anything happening to me before his return. Hand me that box that lies on the top of my escritoire."

I complied, by fetching and laying the box on the bed. My aunt took a key that lay under her pillow, and, opening the secretary, exhibited a great number of jewels, which she had got on the death of her husband, who had been a jeweller on a great extent in London, and left her the treasure as her share of his fortune. Some of these she had disposed of, and laid out the proceeds in the purchase of heritable property, on the rents of which she lived; and the remainder, along with an inventory, written in her own hand, she had deposited in the box, of which she had always taken the greatest care. There were other valuable articles besides the jewels in the box; her t.i.tle-deeds were there, and some bank-cheques, for money she had saved out of her rents. She lifted up two or three pearl-necklaces, and other articles, to enable her to get to a string of diamonds, apparently of great value.

"These," she said, "were valued by James" (so she always spoke of her husband) "at four thousand pounds. They were intended as the portion of my little Agnes, who died only one week before her father. Who has a better right to them than you, my dear Martha?--take them, and along with them the necklaces, which I think are worth a hundred guineas each. The loose jewels in this interior box you may also take; they are of no great value, but they will suit you as articles of dress, when you become the wife of Augustus Merling. Take and place them all in your own trunk. If I get better, I will trust to your returning them to me _without a request on my part_, and the inventory may be left here, to show what you have got. When George Ball comes, I shall make him put a clause in my will, to accord with this act and my sentiments."

She then locked the box, and I, with tears of grat.i.tude in my eyes, went and placed the jewels in my trunk, and returned to the bed of my benefactress.

"You must look to your treasure, Martha," she continued. "I have guarded it well, having had occasion to doubt the honesty of Magdalene" (the maid-servant), "who, I fear, knew too well what that box contained. I missed a beautiful brooch last year, and would have discharged her, but that I had no evidence against her. Look well to the key of your trunk."

I could not reply to these statements of my aunt. My heart was full, and my tongue would not express the feelings of grat.i.tude with which I was penetrated; but she understood me, and was content. Shortly afterwards, she said she felt worse, and I despatched Magdalene for Mrs Merling, who came within half-an-hour, accompanied by Augustus, who sat in an antechamber, anxious to see me. The first look that Mrs Merling directed to her old friend detected the symptoms of approaching death, and she communicated to me secretly the melancholy information. She seemed anxious about the attorney; but the situation in which I, who would be benefited by the will, and her son, who was so near, stood in relation to each other, produced a delicacy which prevented her from showing any anxiety on the subject. The medical man, who came soon after, held out to us a very faint hope, and even hinted that he himself was surprised at the sudden change that had taken place upon her. The unfavourable symptoms increased towards night, and the intelligence of her illness brought Mrs Ball, to get her curiosity satisfied, and her feelings of humanity excited. She had been informed by her daughter of what had taken place in the forenoon, and had scarcely entered, when she alluded, in a sneering tone, to Augustus, whom she had seen in the anteroom as she pa.s.sed. We sat round the bed of my dear relative, who began to exhibit symptoms of a wandering state of mind--a circ.u.mstance less noticed by the others than by me; and having heard that Augustus was in the house, she requested to see him. I ran for him--he came and bent himself over the sick-bed, to administer some of the soothing sentiments of a mind replete with the balm of "the spirit of grace and supplications" which was poured on the house of David. She asked him to be seated, and, raising a little her body, she pointed to the box, which stood on the top of the escritoire, and wished it brought to her, that she might give Augustus a ring as a keepsake. Mrs Merling, who sat next to it, obeyed the request, and brought the box. With trembling hands the patient sought for the key, and having found it, tried to insert it in the lock; but she was unable, and Mrs Merling a.s.sisted her. The box was opened, and my aunt, now in a state of delirium, ran a wild eye over its contents, and, raising her hands to heaven, cried--

"Where are my jewels? I have been robbed. Wretches, tell me where are those jewels which I have guarded for twenty years?"

The excitement was fatal--she fell back, and expired. The confusion which followed this sudden and as yet unexpected event drowned for a time the effect resulting from the extraordinary exclamation. The women were busy in various ways, and Augustus ran to support me, who at first, staggered by the exclamations, was rendered senseless by what so immediately followed. I swooned in his arms, and, when I recovered, found myself in my own parlour, with Mrs Ball leaning over me. Augustus, alarmed by the length of time I remained insensible, had hastened away for the doctor, and left me to the tender mercies of the mother of my rival. When I looked up, the first object that met my eyes was my trunk, where were deposited the jewels I had got gifted to me by my aunt; and, by the power of a.s.sociation, I heard ringing in my ears the words, "I have been robbed." The air seemed thick, from the impediment which my swelling heart offered to my powers of respiration, and, holding out my hand, I pushed away her who held me. The resistance offered to my hands directed my attention to the face of Mrs Ball, who, smiling, with a cutting satire, which spoke her suspicions--

"Who robbed your aunt, Miss Martha?" inquired she. "Why did you faint when she mentioned the loss of her jewels?"

"Ha!" answered I, with an exclamation, rubbing my forehead, and still searching in my mind for a full recollection of all that had taken place; "I wish my aunt to explain, in presence of Mrs Merling, and you, and Augustus, her extraordinary words. Come, come--let us go to her--she must explain, she must free me of the imputation."

"Your aunt is dead, young woman; you saw her die," she replied, with more bitter irony. "You have not yet recovered yourself. It was her death-bed confession. Why did it shake you so? _You_ never can be suspected."

In an instant the full truth flashed upon me, and I saw that the death of my aunt precluded all hope of getting her statement recalled. I felt a horrible load upon my heart, and gasped for breath. The thought that I had _already_ allowed to pa.s.s the proper opportunity of stating the truth burned my brain with the pain of a seething iron. The force of truth was strong in me, and I struggled at this late period to tell all that had occurred; but, when I looked up in the face of my malicious tormentor, I could not speak, and I now felt that those sensibilities which made me so exquisitely alive to the sense of virtue had become my enemies. The thought of being suspected--and my confession that the jewels were in my trunk would amount almost to a conviction--seemed worse than death in its direst form; yet I essayed again and again to tell the truth, and still I failed to p.r.o.nounce one intelligible word of explanation. Mrs Ball, finding me recovered, left me, as she said, with her accustomed satire, to the attentions of Augustus Merling, who at that moment entered the room with the surgeon. He was delighted to see me recovered, and asked me, in tones that sounded in my ears more grating than risped iron, how I felt. I answered, with difficulty, that I was better. The doctor gave me some stimulant, and he and Augustus sat down by my side, talking on the subject of the sudden change that had taken place in my aunt's disease, which no one had thought fatal. I sat silent, and expected every moment that Augustus would have mentioned something regarding the statement made by my aunt in reference to her jewels; but he never approached the subject--a circ.u.mstance which seemed to me extraordinary; for it was impossible, I thought, that so striking an incident could have escaped his memory; and as the presence of the doctor could form no reason (but rather the opposite) against a recurrence to the subject in his presence, I thought I had grounds for supposing that my presence formed the cause. The moment this thought entered my mind, I shook throughout my whole system. The question rose incessantly upon me, Why does my presence prevent him from disclosing so startling and important a circ.u.mstance? The answer appeared plain and simple--Because he suspects me. At the time these thoughts were pa.s.sing through my mind, my eye caught again my trunk, and I now saw very plainly, from the position of the key, which, having been handled carelessly, was hanging from the keyhole, that some one had been there.

I recollected that, when my aunt grew worse, I ran to her, and left the key in the lock, and now suspected that Mrs Ball had opened it while I was in a state of insensibility. As I fixed my eye on the trunk, I heard Augustus stop in the middle of a sentence; and, turning upon him a timid, furtive glance, I thought I saw him look at me earnestly, with a different expression of countenance from any I had ever yet seen him a.s.sume. The doctor seemed to notice the break in the conversation, and to take it as a hint to retire, which he did almost immediately, to the great increase of my misery. I was now left alone with Augustus, and my whole mind became, as it were, concentrated in my ear, to hear him break the subject which had become so awfully interesting to me. I was silent, and he, too, apparently, was inclined to be gloomy--a state of mind so inconsistent with the usual habitudes of a spirit ever in the contemplation of the fair side of human nature, that I looked upon it as inauspicious. I had forgotten entirely--so completely was my mind absorbed by the frightful subject before me--that he might respect the sorrow incident to my situation, and hold it too sacred for an abrupt and officious condolence. At length the soft accents of sympathy stole from his lips; and had they been as "the ointment of spikenard," they would have aggravated my pain; for he avoided--it appeared to me studiously--all reference to the conduct of my aunt. I knew not what words to use in my inane replies; and the more studiously he seemed to avoid the subject, the more difficult, the more certainly impossible, I felt the task of approaching it myself. I felt now, more heavily than when in the presence of Mrs Ball, the weight of the _time_ that had already been allowed to elapse without an explanation; and every minute that pa.s.sed added to it immeasurably. My aunt's statement, standing alone, was powerful, almost insuperable; but, joined to the lapse of time between the charge and the denial--for what could it be now but a denial?--it would appear to be proof strong as holy writ. All this I felt with such soul-prostrating effect, that every effort I made to broach the subject was strangled in my throat, by the sympathetic power of a heart loaded with the shame of a suspicion that _never_ could be disproved. In addition to all this, what I had already suffered had produced indications of a coming accession of my nervous affections; and thus overcome by shame, terror, and physical debility, I sat beside my comforter as one in whose ears are knelling the strokes of the hour of execution.

Augustus rose to depart; and, at this moment, his mother, who had been occupied dressing the dead body, came in to ascertain how I was. She looked wistfully at me as I sat pale and trembling, and I thought I saw her motion to Augustus to leave us together. He went out, and shortly after, my fit came upon me, and retained me in its ruthless grasp for a considerable period. I never had recovered from an attack to a perception of such realities as were now before me; and the more conscious I became, the more dreadful seemed my condition. My first thoughts were directed to the speech of Mrs Merling; and I soon found that she too avoided making the slightest allusion to my aunt's death-bed declaration. If the circ.u.mstance was strange in Augustus, it was more so in his mother, a female, not so apt to be forgetful of a matter where curiosity might have been expected to be roused to the highest pitch. I was now more and more convinced that both acted from a sense of delicacy towards me, on whom the whole weight of the suspicion of my aunt's declaration doubtless rested. I felt the same load on my breast as before--the same difficulty to approach the fearful subject; but now my energies were overcome by another cause, for the moment I began to struggle with myself, with a view to overcome the choking impediment presented to a declaration, I was attacked by my nervous ailment, and laid senseless in the arms of my friend. This occurred several times within an hour, at the end of which period--with the fatal secret still in my bosom--I was so overcome with misery and pain, that I was obliged to be consigned to my night-couch.

I lay for several days in a state of weakness, which was continued by occasional attacks of my complaint, by the weight of the peculiar misery with which I was affected, and, by the disturbing effects of horrid dreams, the consequence of the states of both my mind and body. These last a.s.sumed often the character of nightmare, in which the form of my aunt was always (though dreadfully distorted) apparent among others; but, dreadful as these were, I would have borne all their weight, and endured all their agony, rather than have suffered what always awaited me when I succeeded in wrenching my consciousness out of the grasp of the nocturnal fiend. Mrs Merling attended me, and Augustus was incessant in his requests to know how I was. My aunt was, in the meantime, buried; and Mrs Merling, who communicated to me the intelligence, seated herself by my bedside, with the view, apparently, of opening to me some subject that lay near her heart. I looked at her and trembled.

"Martha," said she, "I am going to speak to you on a subject of great delicacy; and it is because I know you are possessed of as much good sense as generous feeling, that I will take the liberty of doing it after the manner of a friend."