Repentance is a tender sprite;
If aught on earth have heavenly might,
'Tis lodged within her silent tear.
WORDSWORTH.
Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry was not herself aware of all that Lady Lodore had
suffered, or the extent of her sacrifices. She guessed darkly at them,
but it was the detail that rendered them so painful, and, but for their
motive, humiliating to one nursed in luxury, and accustomed to all those
intermediate servitors and circumstances, which stand between the rich
and the bare outside of the working-day world. Cornelia shrunk from the
address of those she did not know, and from the petty acts of daily
life, which had gone on before without her entering into their detail.
Her illness at Newbury had been severe. She was attacked by the scarlet
fever; the doctor had ordered her to be removed from the bustle of the
inn, and a furnished villa had been taken for her, while she could only
give a languid assent to propositions which she understood confusedly.
She was a long time very ill--a long time weak and slowly convalescent.
At length health dawned on her, accompanied by a disposition attuned to
content and a wish for tranquillity. Her residence was retired,
commodious, and pretty; she was pleased with it, she did not wish to
remove, and was glad to procrastinate from day to day any consideration
of the future. Thus it was a long time before the strength of her
thoughts and purposes was renewed, or that she began to think seriously
of where she was, and what she was going to do.
During the half delirium, the disturbed and uncontrollable, but not
unmeaning reveries, of her fever, the idea of visiting Lodore's grave had
haunted her pertinaciously. She had often dreamt of it: at one time the
tomb seemed to rise in a lonely desert; and the dead slept peacefully
beneath sunshine or starlight. At another, storms and howling winds were
around, groans and sighs, mingled with the sound of the tempest, and
menaces and reproaches against her were breathed from the cold marble.
Now her imagination pictured it within the aisles of a magnificent
cathedral; and now again the real scene--the rustic church of Longfield
was vividly present to her mind. She saw the pathway through the green
churchyard--the ruined ivy-mantled tower, which showed how much larger
the edifice had been in former days, near which might be still discerned
on high a niche containing the holy mother and divine child--the
half-defaced porch on which rude monkish imagery was carved--the
time-worn pews, and painted window. She had never entered this church
but once, many, many years ago; and it was strange how in sleep and
fever-troubled reverie, each portion of it presented itself distinctly
and vividly to her imagination. During these perturbed visions, one
other form and voice perpetually recurred. She heard Ethel continually
repeat, "Come! come!" and often her figure flitted round the tomb or sat
beside it. Once, on awakening from a dream, which impressed her deeply
by the importunity and earnestness of her daughter's appeal, she was
forcibly impelled to consider it her duty to obey, and she made a vow
that on recovering from her illness, she would visit her husband's
grave.
Now while pondering on the humiliations and cheerless necessities which
darkened her future, and rousing herself to form some kind of resolution
concerning them, this dream was repeated, and on awakening, the memory
of her forgotten vow renewed itself in her. She dwelt on it with
pleasure. Here was something to be done that was not mere wretchedness
and lonely wandering--something that, connecting her with the past, took
away the sense of desertion and solitude, so hard to bear. In the
morning, at breakfast, it so chanced that she read in the Morning Herald
a little paragraph announcing that Viscount Maristow was entertaining a
party of friends at Maristow Castle, among whom were Mr. and Mrs.
Villiers, and the Hon. Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry. This was a fortunate
coincidence. The dragon ceased for a moment to watch the garden, and she
might avail herself of its absence to visit its treasure unnoticed and
unknown. She put her project into immediate execution. She crossed the
country, passing through London on her way to Longfield--she arrived.
Without delay she fulfilled her purpose. She entered the church and
viewed the tablet, inscribed simply with the name of Lodore, and the date
of his birth and death. The words were few and common-place, but they were
eloquent to her. They told her that the cold decaying shape lay beneath,
which in the pride of life and love had clasped her in its arms as its
own for evermore. Short-lived had been the possession. She had loosened
the tie even while thought and feeling ruled the now insentient
brain--he had been scarcely less dead to her while inhabiting the
distant Illinois, than now that a stone placed above him, gave visible
token of his material presence, and the eternal absence of his immortal
part. Cornelia had never before felt so sensibly that she had been a
wife neglecting her duties, despising a vow she had solemnly pledged,
estranging herself from him, who by religious ordinance, and the laws of
society, alone had privilege to protect and love her. Nor had she before
felt so intimately the change--that she was a widow; that her lover, her
husband, the father of her child, the forsaken, dead Lodore, was indeed
no part of the tissue of life, action, and feeling to which she
belonged.
Solitude and sickness had before awakened many thoughts in her mind, and
she recalled them as she sat beside her dead husband's grave. She looked
into her motives, tried to understand the deceits she had practised on
herself, and to purify her conscience. She meditated on time, that law
of the world, which is so mysterious, and so potent; ruling us
despotically, and yet wholly unappreciated till we think upon it.
Petrarch says, that he was never so young, but that he knew that he was
growing old. Lady Lodore had never thought of this till a few months back;
it seemed to her, that she had never known it until now--that she felt that
she was older--older than the vain and lovely bride of Lodore--than the
haughty high-spirited friend of Casimir Lyzinski. And where was Casimir?
She had never heard of him again, she had scarcely ever thought of him;
he had grown older too--change, the effects of passion or of destiny,
must have visited him also;--they were all embarked on one mighty
stream--Lodore had gained a haven; but the living were still at the
mercy of the vast torrent--whither would it hurry them?
There was a charm in these melancholy and speculative thoughts to the
beautiful exile--for we may be indeed as easily exiled by a few roods of
ground, as by mountains and seas. A strong decree of fate banished
Cornelia from the familiar past, into an unknown and strange present.
Still she clung to the recollection of bygone years, and for the first
time gave way to reflections full of scenes and persons to be seen no
more. The tomb beside which she lingered, was an outward sign of these
past events, and she did not like to lose sight of it so soon. She heard
that Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry was to remain away for a month--so much
time at least was hers. She inquired for lodgings, and was directed to
Dame Nixon's cottage. She was somewhat dismayed at first by its
penurious appearance, but "it would do for a few days;" and she found
that what would serve for a few days, might serve for months.
"Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long."
Most true for
solitary man. It is society that increases his desires. If Lady Lodore had
been visited in her humble dwelling by the least regarded among her
acquaintances, she would have felt keenly its glaring deficiencies. But
although used to luxury, Margaret's cuisine sufficed for herself alone;
the low-roofed rooms were high enough, and the latticed windows which
let in the light of heaven, fulfilled their purpose as well as the
plate-glass and lofty embrasures of a palace.
Lady Lodore was obliged also to consider one other thing, which forms so
large a portion of our meditations in real life--her purse. She found when
settled in the cottage, in the Vale of Bewling, that her stock of money
was reduced to one hundred pounds. She could not cross the country and
establish herself at a distance from London with this sum only. She had
before looked forward to selling her jewels and carriage as to a distant
event, but now she felt that it was the _next_ thing she must do. She
shrunk from it naturally: the very idea of revisiting London--of seeing
its busy shops and streets--once so full of life and its purposes to
her, and in which she would now wander an alien, was inconceivably
saddening; she was willing to put off the necessity as long as possible,
and thus continued to procrastinate her departure from Essex.
Mrs. Fitzhenry returned; but she could neither know nor dream of the
vicinity of her sister-in-law. We are apt to think, when we know nothing
of any one, that no one knows any thing of us; experience can scarcely
teach us, that the reverse of this is often the truth. Seeing only an
old woman in her dotage--and a poor love-sick girl, who knew nothing
beyond the one event which had blasted all her happiness--she never
heard the inhabitants of Longfield mentioned, and believed that she was
equally unheard of by them. Then her indisposition protracted her stay,
and now the mortal illness of the poor woman. For she had become
interested for Margaret and promised to befriend her; and in case of her
grandmother's death, to take her from a spot where every association and
appearance kept open the wounds inflicted by her unfaithful lover.
Time had thus passed on: now sad, now cheerful, she tried to banish
every thought of the future, and to make the occurrences of each day
fill and satisfy her mind. She lived obscurely and humbly, and perhaps
as wisely as mortal may in this mysterious world, where hope is
perpetually followed by disappointment, and action by repentance and
regret. The days succeeded to each other in one unvaried tenor. The
weather was cheerful, the breath of spring animating. She watched the
swelling of the buds--the peeping heads of the crocuses--the opening of
the anemones and wild wind-flowers, and at last, the sweet odour of the
new-born violets, with all the interest created by novelty; not that she
had not observed and watched these things before, with transitory
pleasure, but now the operations of nature filled all her world; the
earth was no longer merely the dwelling place of her acquaintance, the
stage on which the business of society was carried on, but the mother of
life--the temple of God--the beautiful and varied store-house of
bounteous nature.
Dwelling on these ideas, Cornelia often thought of Horatio Saville,
whose conversations, now remembered, were the source whence she drew the
knowledge and poetry of her present reveries. As solitude and nature
grew lovely in her eyes, she yearned yet more fondly for the one who
could embellish all she saw. Yet while her mind needed a companion so
congenial to her present feelings, her heart was fuller of Ethel; her
affection for Saville was a calm though deep-rooted sentiment, resulting
from the conviction, that she should find entire happiness if united to
him, and in an esteem or rather an enthusiastic admiration of his
talents and virtues, that led her to dwell with complacency on the hope,
that he still remembered and loved her: but the human heart is jealous,
and with difficulty admits two emotions of equal force, and her love for
her daughter was the master passion. The instinct of nature spoke
audibly within her; the atoms of her frame seemed alive each one as she
thought of her; often her tears flowed, often her eyes brightened with
gladness when alone, and the beloved image of her beautiful daughter as
she saw her last, smiling amidst penury and indignity, was her dearest
companion by day and night. She alone made her present situation
endurable, and yet separation from her was irksome beyond expression.
Was she never to see or hear of her more? It was very hard: she implored
Providence to change the harsh decree--she longed inexpressibly for one
word that had reference to her--one event, however slight, which should
make her existence palpable.
When Margaret announced Mrs. Fitzhenry, her heart bounded with joy. She
could ask concerning Ethel--hear; her countenance was radiant with
delight, and she really for a moment thought her sister-in-law's visit
was meant in kindness, since so much pleasure was the result. This
conviction had produced the very thing it anticipated. She had given
poor Bessy no time to announce the actual intention with which she came;
she had borne away her sullen mood by force of sweet smiles and sweeter
words; and saw her depart with gladdened spirits, whispering to herself
the fresh hopes and fond emotions which filled her bosom. She walked
back to her little garden and stooped to gather some fresh violets, and
to prop a drooping jonquil heavy with its burthen of sweet blooms. She
inhaled the vernal odours with rapture. "Yes," she thought, "nature is
the refuge and home for women: they have no public career--no aim nor
end beyond their domestic circle; but they can extend that, and make all
the creations of nature their own, to foster and do good to. We
complain, when shut up in cities of the niggard rules of society, which
gives us only the drawing-room or ball-room in which to display our
talents, and which, for ever turning the sympathy of those around us
into envy on the part of women, or what is called love on that of men,
besets our path with dangers or sorrows. But throw aside all vanity, no
longer seek to surpass your own sex, nor to inspire the other with
feelings which are pregnant with disquiet or misery, and which seldom
end in mutual benevolence, turn your steps to the habitation which God
has given as befitting his creatures, contemplate the lovely ornaments
with which he has blessed the earth;--here is no heart-burning nor
calumny; it is better to love, to be of use to one of these flowers,
than to be the admired of the many--the mere puppet of one's own
vanity."
Lady Lodore entered the house; she asked concerning her poor hostess, and
learnt that she slept. For a short time she employed herself with her
embroidery; her thoughts were all awake; and as her fingers created
likenesses of the flowers she loved, several times her eyes filled with
tears as she thought of Ethel, and how happy she could be if her fate
permitted her to cultivate her affection and enjoy her society.
"It is very sad," she thought; "only a few minutes ago my spirits were
buoyant, gladdened as they were by Bessy's visit; but they flag again,
when I think of my loneliness and the unreplying silence of this place.
What is to become of me? I shall remain here: yes; I shall not banish
myself to some inhospitable nook, where I should never hear her name.
But am I not to see her again? Am I to be nothing to her? Is she
satisfied with my absence--and are they all--to whom I am bound by ties
of consanguinity or affection, indifferent to the knowledge of whether I
exist or not? Nothing gives token to them of my life; it is as if the
grave had closed abruptly over me--and had it closed, thus I should have
been mourned, in coldness and neglect."
Again her eyes were suffused; but as she wiped away the blinding tears,
she was recalled from her reflections by the bright rays of the sun
which entered her little room. She threw open the door, stepped out into
the garden--the sun was setting; the atmosphere was calm, and lighted up
by golden beams; the few clouds were dyed in the same splendid hues, the
birds sent forth a joyous song at intervals, and a band of rooks passed
above the little wood, cawing loudly. The air was balmy, the
indescribable freshness of spring was abroad, interpenetrating and
cheerful. Cornelia's melancholy fled as she felt and gave way to its
influence. "God blesses all things," she thought, "and he will also
bless me. Much wrong have I done, but love pure and disinterested is in
my heart, and I shall be repaid. My own sweet Ethel! I have sacrificed
every thing except my life for your sake, and I would add my life to the
gift, could it avail you. I ask but for you and your love. The world has
many blessings, and I have asked for them before, with tears and
anguish, but I give up all now, except you, my child. You are all the
world to me! Will you not come, even now, as I implore Heaven to give
you to me?"
She raised her eyes in prayer, and it seemed as if her wishes were to be
accomplished--surely once in a life God will grant the earnest entreaty
of a loving heart. Cornelia believed that he would, that happiness was
near at hand, and life not all a blank. She heard a rustling among the
trees, a light step;--was it Margaret? She had scarcely asked herself
this question, when the dear object of her every thought and hope was
before her--in her arms;--Ethel had entered from the wood, had seen her
mother, had sprung forward and clasped her to her heart.
"My dear, dear child!"
"Dearest mother!" repeated Ethel, as her eyes were filled with tears of
delight, "why did you go--why conceal yourself? You do not know the
anxiety we have suffered, and how very unhappy your absence has made us.
But I have found you--of all that have gone to seek you, I have found
you; I deserve this reward, for I love you most of all."
Lady Lodore returned her daughter's caresses--and her tears flowed fast for
very joy, and then she turned to Mrs. Fitzhenry, who followed Ethel, but
who had been outspeeded by her in her eagerness. The old lady's face was
beaming with happiness. "Ah, Bessy, you have betrayed me--traitress! I
did not expect this--I do not deserve such excessive happiness."
"You deserve all, and much more than we can any of us bestow," cried
Ethel, "except that your dear generous heart will repay you beyond any
reward we can give, and you will be blest in the happiness we owe to you
alone. Edward is gone far away into Wales in quest of you."
"An Angelica run after by the Paladins," said Lady Lodore, smiling through
her tears.
"Paladins, worthy the name!" replied Ethel. "Horatio is even now on the
salt seas for your sake--he is returning discomfited and hopeless from
his journey of discovery to the Pyrenees--his zeal almost deserved the
reward which I have found, yet who but she, for whom you sacrificed so
much, ought to be the first to thank you? And while we all try to show
you an inexpressible gratitude, ought not I to be the first to see,
first to kiss, first--always the first--to love you?"
CONCLUSION
None, I trust,
Repines at these delights, they are free and harmless:
After distress at sea, the dangers o'er,
Safety and welcomes better taste ashore.
FORD.
Thus the tale of "Lodore" is ended. The person who bore that title by right
of descent, has long slept in peace in the church of his native village.
Neither his own passions, nor those of others, can renew the pulsations
of his heart. "The silver cord is loosed, and the pitcher broken at the
fountain." His life had not been fruitless. The sedulous care and
admirable education he had bestowed on Ethel, would, had he lived, have
compensated to him for his many sufferings, and been a source of pure
and unfading joy to the end. He was not destined in this world to reap
the harvest of his virtues, though his errors had been punished
severely. Still his memory is the presiding genius of his daughter's
life, and the name of Lodore contains for her a spell that dignifies
existence in her own eyes, and incites her to render all her thoughts
and actions such as her beloved father would have approved. It was fated
that the evil which he did should die with him--but the good out-lived
him long, and was a blessing to those whom he loved far better than
himself.
She who received the title on her marriage, henceforth continued her
existence under another; and the wife of Saville, who soon after became
Viscountess Maristow, loses her right to be chronicled in these pages.
So few years indeed are passed since the period to which the last
chapter brought us, that it may be safely announced that Cornelia
Santerre possesses that happiness, through her generosity and devoted
affection, which she had lost through pride and self-exaltation. She
wonders at her past self--and laments the many opportunities she lost
for benefiting others, and proving herself worthy of their attachment.
Her pride is gone, or rather, her pride is now placed in redeeming her
faults. She is humble, knowing how much she was deceived in herself--she
is forgiving, for she feels that she needs forgiveness. She looks on the
track of years she has passed over as wasted, and she wishes to retrieve
their loss. She respects, admires, in some sense it may be said, that
she adores her husband; but even while consenting to be his, and thus
securing her own happiness, she told him that her first duties were
towards Ethel--and that he took a divided heart, over the better part of
which reigned maternal love. Saville, the least egoistic of human
beings, smiled to hear her name that a defect, which was in his eyes her
crowning virtue.
Edward Villiers learnt to prize worldly prosperity at its true value,
and each day blesses the train of circumstances that led him to wed
Ethel, even though poverty and suffering had followed close behind.
Ethel herself might be said to have been always happy. She was incapable
of being impressed by any sorrow, that did not touch her for another's
sake: and while she exerted herself to alleviate the pain endured by
those she loved, she passed on unhurt. Heaven spared her life's most
cruel evils. Death had done its worst when she lost her father. Now,
surrounded by dear friends, and the object of her husband's constant
tenderness, she pursues a tranquil course: which for any one to consider
the most blissful allotted to mortals, they must have a heart like her
own--faithful, affectionate, and generous.
Mrs. Elizabeth Fitzhenry, kind and gentle aunt Bessy, always felt her
heaven clouded while she indulged in her aversion to her sister-in-law.
She is happy now that she is reconciled to Cornelia; strange to say, she
loves her even more than she loves Ethel--she is more intimately
connected in her mind with the memory of Lodore. She often visits her at
Maristow Castle; in the neighbourhood of which Margaret is settled,
being happily married. Colonel Villiers still lives in Paris. He is in a
miserable state of poverty, difficulty, and ill-health. His wife has
deserted him: he neglected and outraged her, and she in a fit of remorse
left him, and returned to nurse her father during a lingering illness,
which is likely to continue to the end of his life, though he shows no
symptoms of immediate decay. He is eager to lavish all his wealth on his
child, if he can be sure that no portion of it is shared by her husband.
With infinite difficulty, and at the cost of many privations, she, with
a true woman's feeling, contrives to send him remittances now and then,
though she receives in return neither thanks nor kindness. He pursues a
course of dissipation in its most degraded form--a wretched hanger-on at
resorts, misnamed of pleasure--gambling while he has any money to
lose--trying to ruin others as he has been ruined.
Thus we have done our duty, in bringing under view, in a brief summary,
the little that there is to tell of the personages who formed the drama
of this tale. One only remains to be mentioned: but it is not in a few
tame lines that we can revert to the varied fate of Fanny Derham. She
continued for some time among her beloved friends, innocent and calm as
she was beautiful and wise; circumstances at last led her away from
them, and she has entered upon life. One who feels so deeply for others,
and yet is so stern a censor over herself--at once so sensitive and so
rigidly conscientious--so single-minded and upright, and yet open as day
to charity and affection, cannot hope to pass from youth to age
unharmed. Deceit, and selfishness, and the whole web of human passion
must envelope her, and occasion her many sorrows; and the unworthiness
of her fellow-creatures inflict infinite pain on her noble heart: still
she cannot be contaminated--she will turn neither to the right nor left,
but pursue her way unflinching; and, in her lofty idea of the dignity of
her nature, in her love of truth and in her integrity, she will find
support and reward in her various fortunes. What the events are, that
have already diversified her existence, cannot now be recounted; and it
would require the gift of prophecy to foretell the conclusion. In after
times these may be told, and the life of Fanny Derham be presented as a
useful lesson, at once to teach what goodness and genius can achieve in
palliating the woes of life, and to encourage those, who would in any
way imitate her, by an example of calumny refuted by patience, errors
rectified by charity, and the passions of our nature purified and
ennobled by an underviating observance of those moral laws on which all
human excellence is founded--a love of truth in ourselves, and a sincere
sympathy with our fellow-creatures.
THE END