O my reviving joy! thy quickening presence
Makes the sad night
Sit like a youthful spring upon my blood.
I cannot make thy welcome rich enough
With all the wealth of words.
MIDDLETON.
The boy knocked at the door. A servant-girl opened it. "Does Mr.
Villiers lodge here?" asked the postillion, from his horse.
"Yes," said the girl.
"Open the door quickly, and let me out!" cried Ethel, as her heart beat
fast and loud.
The door was opened--the steps let down--operations tedious beyond
measures, as she thought. She got out, and was in the hall, going up
stairs.
"Mr. Villiers is not at home," said the maid.
Through the low blinds of the parlour window, Mrs. Derham had been
watching what was going on. She heard what her servant said, and now
came out. "Mr. Villiers is not at home," she reiterated; "will you leave
any message?"
"No; I will wait for him. Show me into his room."
"I am afraid that it is locked," answered Mrs. Derham repulsively:
"perhaps you can call again. Who shall I say asked for him?"
"O no!" cried Ethel, "I must wait for him. Will you permit me to wait in
your parlour? I am Mrs. Villiers."
"I beg pardon," said the good woman; "Mrs. Villiers is in the country."
"And so I am," replied Ethel--"at least, so I was this morning. Don't
you see my travelling carriage?--look; you may be sure that I am Mrs.
Villiers."
She took out of her little bag one of Edward's letters, with the perusal
of which she had beguiled much of her way to town. Mrs. Derham looked at
the direction--"The Honourable Mrs. Villiers;"--her countenance
brightened. Mrs. Derham was a little, plump, well-preserved woman of
fifty-four or five. She was kind-hearted, and of course shared the
worship for rank which possesses every heart born within the four seas.
She was now all attention. Villiers's room was open; he was expected
very soon:--"He is so seldom out in an evening: it is very unlucky; but
he must be back directly," said Mrs. Derham, as she showed the way up
the narrow staircase. Ethel reached the landing, and entered a room of
tolerable dimensions, considerably encumbered with litter, which opened
into a smaller room, with a tent bed. A little bit of fire glimmered in
the grate. The whole place looked excessively forlorn and comfortless.
Mrs. Derham bustled about to bestow a little neatness on the room,
saying something of the "untidiness of gentlemen," and "so many lodgers
in the house." Ethel sat down she longed to be alone. There was the
post-boy to be paid, and to be ordered to take the carriage to a
coach-house; and then--Mrs. Derham asked her if she would not have
something to eat: she herself was at tea, and offered a cup, which Ethel
thankfully accepted, acknowledging that she had not eaten since the
morning. Mrs. Derham was shocked. The rank, beauty, and sweet manners of
Ethel had made a conquest, which her extreme youth redoubled. "So young
a lady," she said, "to go about alone: she did not know how to take care
of herself, she was sure. She must have some supper: a roast chicken
should be ready in an hour--by the time Mr. Villiers came in."
"But the tea," said Ethel, smiling; "you will let me have that now?"
Mrs. Derham hurried away on this hint, and the young wife was left
alone. She had been married a year; but there was still a freshness
about her feelings, which gave zest to every change in her wedded life.
"This is where he has been living without me," she thought; "Poor
Edward! it does not look as if he were very comfortable."
She rose from her seat, and began to arrange the books and papers. A
glove of her husband's lay on the table: she kissed it with a glad
feeling of welcome. When the servant came in, she had the fire
replenished--the hearth swept; and in a minute or two, the room had lost
much of its disconsolate appearance. Then, with a continuation of her
feminine love of order she arranged her own dress and hair; giving to
her attire, as much as possible, an at-home appearance. She had just
finished--just sat down, and begun to find the time long--when a quick,
imperative knock at the door, which she recognized at once, made her
heart beat, and her cheek grow pale. She heard a step--a voice--and Mrs.
Derham answer--"Yes, sir; the fire is in--every thing comfortable;"--and
Ethel opened the door, as she spoke, and in an instant was clasped in
her husband's arms.
It was not a moment whose joy could be expressed by words. He had been
miserable during her absence, and had thought of sending for her; but he
looked round his single room, remembered that he was in lodgings, and
gave up his purpose with a bitter murmur: and here she was, uncalled
for, but most welcome: she was here, in her youth, her loveliness, her
sweetness: these were charms; but others more transcendent now attended
on, and invested her;--the sacred tenderness of a wife had led her to
his side; and love, in its most genuine and beautiful shape, shed an
atmosphere of delight and worship about her. Not one circumstance could
alloy the unspeakable bliss of their meeting. Poverty, and its
humiliations, vanished from before the eyes of Villiers; he was
overflowingly rich in the possession of her affections--her presence.
Again and again he thanked her, in broken accents of expressive
transport.
"Nothing in the whole world could make me unhappy now!" he cried; and
Ethel, who had seen his face look elongated and gloomy at the moment he
had entered, felt indeed that Medea, with all her potent herbs, was less
of a magician than she, in the power of infusing the sparkling spirit of
life into one human frame. It was long before either were coherent in
their inquiries and replies. There was nothing, indeed, that either
wished to know. Life, and its purposes, were fulfilled, rounded,
complete, without a flaw. They loved, and were together--together, not
for a transitory moment, but for the whole duration of the eternity of
love, which never could be exhausted in their hearts.
After more than an hour spent in gradually becoming acquainted and
familiar with the transporting change, from separate loneliness to
mutual society and sympathy, the good-natured face of Mrs. Derham showed
itself, to announce that Ethel's supper was ready. These words brought
back to Edward's recollection his wife's journey, and consequent
fatigues: he grew more desirous than Mrs. Derham to feed his poor
famished bird, whose eyes, in spite of the joy that shone in them, began
to look languid, and whose cheek was pale. The little supper-table was
laid, and they sat down together.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu has recorded the pleasure to be reaped
"When we meet with champagne and a chicken at last;"
and perhaps social life
contains no combination so full of enjoyment as a tête-à-tête supper.
_Here_ it was, with its highest zest. They feared no prying eyes--they
knew no ill: it was not a scanty hour of joy snatched from an age of
pain--a single spark illuminating a long blank night. It came after
separation, and possessed, therefore, the charm of novelty; but it was
the prelude to a long reunion--the seal set on their being once again
joined, to go through together each hour of the livelong day. Full of
unutterable thankfulness and gladness, as were the minds of each, there
was, besides,
"A sacred and home-felt delight,
A sober certainty of waking bliss,"
which is the crown and fulfilment of perfect human
happiness. "Imparadised" by each other's presence--no doubt--no fear of
division on the morrow-no dread of untoward event, suspicion, or blame,
clouded the balmy atmosphere which their hearts created around them. No.
Eden was required to enhance their happiness; there needed no
"Crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold;"--
no
"Happy, rural seat, with various view,"
decked with
"Flowers of all hue,"
"All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;"--
nor "cool recess," nor
"Vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove."
In their narrow
abode--their nook of a room, cut off from the world, redolent only of
smoke and fog--their two fond hearts could build up bowers of delight,
and store them with all of ecstasy which the soul of man can know,
without any assistance of eye, or ear, or scent. So rich, and prodigal,
and glorious, in its gifts, is faithful and true-hearted love,--when it
knows the sacrifices which it must make to merit them, and consents
willingly to forego vanity, selfishness, and the exactions of self-will,
in unlimited and unregretted exchange.
Mutual esteem and gratitude sanctified the unreserved sympathy which
made each so happy in the other. Did they love the less for not loving
"in sin and fear?" Far from it. The certainty of being the cause of good
to each other tended to foster the most delicate of all passions, more
than the rougher ministrations of terror, and a knowledge that each was
the occasion of injury to the other. A woman's heart is peculiarly
unfitted to sustain this conflict. Her sensibility gives keenness to her
imagination, and she magnifies every peril, and writhes beneath every
sacrifice which tends to humiliate her in her own eyes. The natural
pride of her sex struggles with her desire to confer happiness, and her
peace is wrecked.
Far different was the happy Ethel's situation--far otherwise were her
thoughts employed than in concealing the pangs of care and shame. The
sense of right adorned the devotion of love. She read approbation in
Edward's eyes, and drew near him in full consciousness of deserving it.
They sat at their supper, and long after, by the cheerful fire, talking
of a thousand things connected with the present and the future--the
long, long future which they were to spend together; and every now and
then their eyes sparkled with the gladness of renewed delight in seeing
each other. "Mine, my own, for ever!"--And was this exultation in
possession to be termed selfish? by no other reasoning surely, than that
used by a cold and meaningless philosophy, which gives this name to
generosity and truth, and all the nobler passions of the soul. They
congratulated themselves on this mutual property, partly because it had
been a free gift one to the other; partly because they looked forward to
the right it ensured to each, of conferring mutual benefits; and partly
through the instinctive love God has implanted for that which, being
ours, is become the better part of ourselves. They were united for
"better and worse," and there was a sacredness in the thought of the
"worse" they might share, which gave a mysterious and celestial charm to
the present "better."