It does much trouble me to live without you:
Our loves and loving souls have been so used
To one household in us.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
The week passed on. It was the month of January, and very cold. A black
frost bound up every thing with ice, and the piercing air congealed the
very blood. Each day Ethel went to see her husband;--each day she had to
encounter Mrs. Derham's intreaties not to go, and the reproaches of
Villiers for coming. Both were unavailing to prevent the daily
pilgrimage. Mrs. Derham sighed heavily when she saw her enter the
ricketty hackney-coach, whose damp lining, gaping windows, and miserable
straw, made it a _cold-bed_ for catarrh--a very temple for the spirit of
winter. Villiers each day besought her to have horses put to their
chariot, if she must come; but Ethel remembered all he had ever said of
expense, and his prognostications of how ill she would be able to endure
the petty, yet galling annoyances of poverty; and she resolved to prove,
that she could cheerfully bear every thing except separation from him.
With this laudable motive to incite her, she tasked her strength too
far. She kept up her spirits to meet him with a cheerful countenance;
and she contrived to conceal the sufferings she endured while they were
together. They got out and walked now and then; and this tended to keep
up the vital warmth. Their course was generally taken over Blackfriars
Bridge; and it was on their return across the river, on whose surface
large masses of ice floated, while a bitter north-east wind swept up,
bearing on its blasts the unthawed breath of the German Ocean, that she
felt the cold enter her heart, and make her head feel dizzy. Still she
could smile, and ask Villiers why he objected to her taking an exercise
even necessary for her health; and repeat again and again, that, bred in
America, an English winter was but a faint reflex of what she had
encountered there, and insist upon being permitted to come on the
following day. These were precious moments in her eyes, worth all the
pain they occasioned,--well worth the struggle she made for the
repetition. Edward's endearing attentions--the knowledge she had that
she was loved--the swelling and earnest affection that warmed her own
heart,--hallowed these hard-earned minutes, and gave her the sweet
pleasure of knowing that she demonstrated, in some slight degree, the
profound and all engrossing attachment which pervaded her entire being.
They parted; and often she arrived nearly senseless at Duke Street, and
once or twice fainted on entering the warm room: but it was not pain she
felt then--the emotions of the soul conquered the sensation of her body,
and pleasure, the intense pleasure of affection, was predominant through
all.
Sunday came again, and brought Villiers to her home. Mrs. Derham took
the opportunity to represent to him the injury that Ethel was doing
herself; and begged him, as he cared for her health, to forbid her
exposing herself to the inclement weather.
"You hear this, Ethel," said Villiers; "and yet you are obstinate. It
this right? What can I urge, what can I do, to prevent this wrong-headed
pertinacity?"
"You use such very hard words," replied Ethel, smiling, "that you
frighten me into believing myself criminal. But so far am I from
conceding, that you only give me courage to say, that I cannot any
longer endure the sad and separate life we lead. It must be changed,
dearest; we must be together."
Villiers was pacing the room impatiently: with an exclamation almost
approaching to anger, he stopped before his wife, to remonstrate and to
reproach. But as he gazed upon her upturned face, fixed so beseechingly
and fondly on him, he fancied that he saw the hues of ill-health
stealing across her cheeks, and thinness displacing the roundness of her
form. A strange emotion flashed across him; a new fear, too terrible
even to be acknowledged to himself, which passed, like the shadow of a
storm, across his anticipations, and filled him with inquietude. His
reprehension was changed to a caress, as he said, "You are right, my
love, quite right; we must not live thus. You are unable to take care of
yourself; and I am very wrong to give up my dearest privilege, of
watching day and night over the welfare of my only treasure. We will be
together, Ethel; if the worst come, it cannot be very bad, while we are
true to each other."
Tears filled the poor girl's eyes--tears of joy and tenderness--at
hearing Edward echo the sentiments she cherished as the most sacred in
the world. For a few minutes, they forgot every thing in the
affectionate kiss, which ratified, as it were, this new law; and then
Edward considered how best he could carry it into effect.
"Gayland," he said, (he was his solicitor,) "has appointed to see me on
Thursday morning, and has good hopes of definitively arranging the
conditions for the loan of the five hundred pounds, which is to enable
us to wait for better things. On Thursday evening, we will leave town.
We will go to some pretty country inn, to wait till I have signed these
papers; and trust to Providence that no ill will arise. We must not be
more than fifteen or twenty miles from London; so that when I am obliged
to go up, I can return again in a few hours. Tell me, sweet, does this
scheme please you?"
Ethel expressed her warmest gratitude; and then Villiers insinuated his
condition, that she should not come to see him in the interval, but
remain, taking care of herself, till, on Thursday afternoon, at six
o'clock, she came, with their chariot, to the northern side of St.
Paul's Churchyard, where he would immediately join her. They might
write, meanwhile: he promised letters as long as if they were to go to
India; and soothed her annoyance with every expression of thankfulness
at her giving up this point. She did give it up, with all the readiness
she could muster; and this increased, as he dwelt upon the enjoyment
they would share, in exchanging foggy, smoky London, for the
ever-pleasing aspect of nature, which, even during frost and snow,
possesses her own charms--her own wonders; and can gratify our senses by
a thousand forms of beauty, which have no existence in a dingy
metropolis.
When the evening hour came for the young pair to separate, their hearts
were cheered by the near prospect of re-union; and a belief that the, to
them, trivial privations of poverty were the only ones they would have
to endure. The thrill of fear which had crossed the mind of Villiers, as
to the health and preservation of his wife, had served to dissipate the
lingering sense of shame and degradation inspired by the penury of their
situation. He felt that there was something better than wealth, and the
attendance of his fellow-creatures; something worse than poverty, and
the world's scorn. Within the fragile form of Ethel, there beat a heart
of more worth than a king's ransom; and its pulsations were ruled by
him. To lose her! What would all that earth can afford, of power or
splendour, appear without her? He pressed her to his bosom, and knew
that his arms encircled all life's worth for him. Never again could he
forget the deep-felt appreciation of her value, which then took root in
his mind; while she, become conscious, by force of sympathy, of the kind
of revolution that was made in his sentiments, felt that the foundations
of her life grew strong, and that her hopes in this world became
stedfast and enduring. Before, a wall of separation, however slight, had
divided them; they had followed a system of conduct independent of each
other, and passed their censure upon the ideas of either. This was over
now--they were one--one sense of right--one feeling of happiness; and
when they parted that night, each felt that they truly possessed the
other; and that by mingling every hope and wish, they had confirmed the
marriage of their hearts.