_Marian._ Could you so long be absent?
_Robin._ What a week?
Was that so long?
_Marian._ How long are lovers' weeks,
Do you think, Robin, when they are asunder?
Are they not pris'ners' years?
BEN JONSON.
The day passed on more lightly than Ethel could have hoped; much of it
indeed was gone before she opened her eyes to greet it. Night soon
closed in, and she busied herself with arrangements for the welcome of
her husband. Fanny loved solitude too well herself not to believe that
others shared her taste. She retired therefore when evening commenced.
No sooner was Ethel alone, than every image except Edward's passed out
of her mind. Her heart was bursting with affection. Every other idea and
thought, to use a chemical expression, was held in solution by that
powerful feeling, which mingled and united with every particle of her
soul. She could not write nor read; if she attempted, before she had
finished the shortest sentence, she found that her understanding was
wandering, and she re-read it with no better success. It was as if a
spring, a gush from the fountain of love poured itself in, bearing away
every object which she strove to throw upon the stream of thought, till
its own sweet waters alone filled the channel through which it flowed.
She gave herself up to the bewildering influence, and almost forgot to
count the hours till Edward's expected arrival. At last it was ten
o'clock, and then the sting of impatience and uncertainty was felt. It
appeared to her as if a whole age had passed since she had seen or heard
of him--as if countless events and incalculable changes might have taken
place. She read again and again his note, to assure herself that she
might really expect him: the minutes meanwhile stood still, or were told
heavily by the distinct beating of her heart. The east wind bore to her
ear the sound of the quarters of hours, as they chimed from various
churches. At length eleven, half-past eleven was passed, and the hand of
her watch began to climb slowly upwards toward the zenith, which she
desired so ardently that it should reach. She gazed on the dial-plate,
till she fancied that the pointers did not move; she placed her hands
before her eyes resolutely, and would not look for a long long time;
three minutes had not been travelled over when again she viewed it; she
tried to count her pulse, as a measurement of time; her trembling
fingers refused to press the fluttering artery. At length another
quarter of an hour elapsed, and then the succeeding one hurried on more
speedily. Clock after clock struck; they mingled their various tones, as
the hour of twelve was tolled throughout London. It seemed as if they
would never end. Silence came at last--a brief silence succeeded by a
firm quick step in the street below, and a knock at the door. "Is he not
too soon?" poor fearful Ethel asked herself. But no; and in a moment
after, he was with her, safe in her glad embrace.
Perhaps of the two, Villiers showed himself the most enraptured at this
meeting. He gazed on his sweet wife, followed every motion, and hung
upon her voice, with all the delight of an exile, restored to his
long-lost home. "What a transporting change," he said, "to find myself
with you--to see you in the same room with me--to know again that,
lovely and dear as you are, that you are mine--that I am again
myself--not the miserable dog that has been wandering about all day--a
body without a soul! For a few short hours, at least, Ethel will call me
hers."
"Indeed, indeed, love," she replied, "we will not be separated again."
"We will not even think about that tonight," said Villiers. "The future
is dark and blank, the present as radiant as your own sweet self can
make it."
On the following day--and the following day did come, in spite of
Ethel's wishes, which would have held back the progress of time: it came
and passed away; hour after hour stealing along, till it dwindled to a
mere point. On the following day, they consulted earnestly on what was
to be done. Villiers was greatly averse to Ethel's leaving her present
abode, where every one was so very kind and attentive to her, and he was
sanguine in his hopes of obtaining in the course of the week, just
commenced, a sum, sufficient to carry them to Paris or Brussels, were
they could remain till his affairs were finally arranged, and the
payment of his debts regulated in a way to satisfy his creditors. One
week of absence; Villiers used all his persuasion to induce Ethel to
submit to it. "Where you can be, I can be also," was her answer; and she
listened unconvinced to the detail of the inconveniences which Villiers
pointed out: at last he almost got angry. "I could call you unkind,
Ethel," he said, "not to yield to me."
"I will yield to you," said Ethel, "but you are wrong to ask me."
"Never mind that," replied her husband, "do concede this point, dearest;
if not because it is best that you should, then because I wish it, and
ask it of you. You say that your first desire is to make me happy, and
you pain me exceedingly by your--I had almost said perverseness."
Thus, not convinced, but obedient, Ethel agreed to allow him to depart
alone. She bargained that she should be permitted to come each day in a
hackney coach to a place where he might meet her, and they could spend
an hour or two together. Edward did not like this plan at all, but there
was no remedy. "You are at least resolved," he said, "to spur my
endeavours; I will not rest day or night, till I am enabled to get away
from this vast dungeon."
The hours stole on. Even Edward's buoyant spirits could not bear up
against the sadness of watching the fleeting moments till the one should
come, which must separate him from his wife. "This nice, dear room," he
said, "I am sure I beg its pardon for having despised it so much
formerly--it is not as lofty as a church, nor as grand as a palace, but
it is very snug; and now you are in it, I discern even elegance in its
exceedingly queer tables and chairs. When our carriage broke down on the
Apennines, how glad we should have been if a room like this had risen,
'like an exhalation' for our shelter! Do you remember the barn of a
place we got into there, and our droll bed of the leaves of Indian corn,
which crackled all night long, and awoke us twenty times with the fear
of robbers? Then, indeed, twelve o'clock was not to separate us!"
As he said this he sighed; the hour of eleven was indicated by Ethel's
watch, and still he lingered; but she grew frightened for him, and
forced him to go away, while he besought the delay of but a few minutes.
Ethel exerted herself to endure as well as she could the separation of
the ensuing week. She was not of a repining disposition, yet she found
it very hard to bear. The discomfort to which Villiers was exposed
annoyed her, and the idea that she was not permitted to alleviate it
added to her painful feelings. In her prospect of life every evil was
neutralized when shared--now they were doubled, because the pain of
absence from each other was superadded. She did not yield to her
husband, in her opinion that this was wrong. She was willing to go
anywhere with him, and where he was, she also could be. There could be
no degradation in a wife waiting on the fallen fortunes of her husband.
No debasement can arise from any services dictated by love. It is
despicable to submit to hardship for unworthy and worldly objects, but
every thing that is suffered for the sake of affection, is hallowed by
the disinterested sentiment, and affords triumph and delight to the
willing victim. Sometimes she tried in speech or on paper to express
these feelings, and so by the force of irresistible reasoning to
persuade Edward to permit her to join him; but all argument was weak;
there was something beyond, that no words could express, which was
stronger than any reason in her heart. Who can express the power of
faithful and single-hearted love? As well attempt to define the laws of
life, which occasions a continuity of feeling from the brain to the
extremity of the frame, as try to explain how love can so unite two
souls, as to make each feel maimed and half alive, while divided. A
powerful impulse was perpetually urging Ethel to go--to place herself
near Villiers--to refuse to depart. It was with the most violent
struggles that she overcame the instigation.
She never could forget herself while away from him, or find the
slightest alleviation to her disquietude, except while conversing with
Fanny Derham, or rather while drawing her out, and listening to her, and
wondering at a mechanism of mind so different from her own. Each had
been the favourite daughter of men of superior qualities of mind. They
had been educated by their several fathers with the most sedulous care,
and nothing could be more opposite than the result, except that, indeed,
both made duty the master motive of their actions. Ethel had received,
so to speak, a sexual education. Lord Lodore had formed his ideal of what a
woman ought to be, of what he had wished to find his wife, and sought to
mould his daughter accordingly. Mr. Derham contemplated the duties and
objects befitting an immortal soul, and had educated his child for the
performance of them. The one fashioned his offspring to be the wife of a
frail human being, and instructed her to be yielding, and to make it her
duty to devote herself to his happiness, and to obey his will. The other
sought to guard his from all weakness, to make her complete in herself,
and to render her independent and self-sufficing. Born to poverty as
Fanny was, it was thus only that she could find happiness in rising
above her sphere; and, besides, a sense of pride, surviving his sense of
injury, caused him to wish that his child should set her heart on higher
things, than the distinctions and advantages of riches or rank; so that
if ever brought into collision with his own family, she could look down
with calm superiority on the "low ambition" of the wealthy. While Ethel
made it her happiness and duty to give herself away with unreserved
prodigality to him, whom she thought had every claim to her entire
devotion; Fanny zealously guarded her individuality, and would have
scorned herself could she have been brought to place the treasures of
her soul at the disposal of any power, except those moral laws which it
was her earnest endeavour never to transgress. Religion, reason, and
justice--these were the landmarks of her life. She was kind-hearted,
generous, and true--so also was Ethel; but the one was guided by the
tenderness of her heart, while the other consulted her understanding,
and would have died rather than have acted contrary to its dictates.
To guard Ethel from every contamination, Lord Lodore had secluded her from
all society, and forestalled every circumstance that might bring her into
conjunction with her fellow-creatures. He was equally careful to prevent
her fostering any pride, except that of sex; and never spoke to her as
if she were of an elevated rank: and the communication, however small,
which she necessarily had with the Americans, made such ideas foreign to
her mind. But she was excedingly shy; tremblingly alive to the slightest
repulse; and never perfectly fearless, (morally so, that is), except
when under the shelter of another's care. Fanny's first principle was,
that what she ought to do, that she could do, without hesitation or
regard for obstacles. She had something Quixotic in her nature; or
rather she would have had, if a clear head and some experience, even
young as she was, had not stood in the way of her making any glaring
mistakes; so that her enterprises were never ridiculous; and being
usually successful, could not be called extravagant. For herself, she
needed but her liberty and her books;--for others, she had her time, her
thoughts, her decided and resolute modes of action, all at their
command, whenever she was convinced that they had a just claim upon
them.
It was singular that the resolute and unshrinking Fanny should be the
daughter of Francis Derham; and the timid, retiring Ethel, of his bold
and daring protector. But this is no uncommon case. We feel the evil
results of our own faults, and endeavour to guard our children from
them; forgetful that the opposite extreme has also its peculiar dangers.
Lord Lodore attributed his early misfortunes to the too great freedom he
had enjoyed, or rather to the unlimited scope given to his will, from his
birth. Mr. Derham saw the unhappiness that had sprung from his own
yielding and undecided disposition. The one brought up his child to
dependence; the other taught his to disdain every support, except the
applause of her own conscience. Lodore fostered all the sensibility, all
the softness, of Ethel's feminine and delicat nature; while Fanny's
father strove to harden and confirm a character, in itself singularly
stedfast and upright.
In spite of the great contrast thus exhibited between Ethel and Fanny,
one quality created a good deal of similarity between them. There was in
both a total absence of every factitious sentiment. They acted from
their own hearts--from their own sense of right, without the
intervention of worldly considerations. A feeling of duty ruled all
their actions; and, however excellent a person's dispositions may be, it
yet requires considerable elevation of character never to deviate from
the strict line of honour and integrity.
Fanny's society a little relieved Ethel's solitude: yet that did not
weigh on her; and had she not been the child of her father's earliest
friend, and the companion of past days, she would have been disinclined,
at this period, to cultivate an intimacy with her. She needed no
companion except the thought of Edward, which was never absent from her
mind. But amidst all her affection for her husband, which gained
strength, and, as it were, covered each day a larger portion of her
being, any one associated with the name of Lodore--of her beloved father,
had a magic power to call forth her warmest feelings of interest. Both
ladies repeated to each other what they had heard from their several
parents. Mr. Derham had, among his many lessons of usefulness, descanted
on the generosity and boldness of Fitzhenry, as offering an example to
be followed. And during the last months of Lodore's life, he had
recurred, with passionate fondness, to the memory of his early years,
and painted in glowing colours the delicacy of feeling, the deep sense
of gratitude, and the latent but fervid enthusiasm, which adorned the
character of Francis Derham.