suffered me to lead him, unresistingly, to the manse, where we were
received with the greatest kindness and sympathy by the sorrowing
family. There we heard the sad particulars of our loss. Kate had fallen
a victim to consumption some months before; the letter containing the
melancholy news had not reached us. Poor Tom, exhausted by previous
illness, and overcome by the dreadful shock he had experienced, was
obliged to take to his bed. I hastened back to my ship, where I was
detained some weeks. When I returned, Tom was dying. He knew me; and
with a faint smile, and a hardly perceptible pressure of my hand, he
murmured--
"I die happy, Harry. She prayed for me on her death-bed!"
THE COTTAR'S DAUGHTER.
The parties to whom the following tale refers being still, we believe,
alive, we must warn the reader that, though the story be true, the names
employed are fictitious; but we beg also to add, that in this
circumstance alone is the tale indebted to invention.
Young Edington of Wellwood was the son of a gentleman of large fortune,
residing in Roxburghshire; but we shall not say in what particular part
of that district. The noble residence of Wellwood--a huge castellated
pile, rising in the midst of embowering woods and wide-spread lawns of
the smoothest and brightest verdure--sufficiently bespoke the wealth of
its owner; or, if this was not enough to give such assurance, the crowd
of liveried menials that might be seen lounging about its magnificent
portals, together with the splendid equipages that were ever and anon
rolling to and from the lordly mansion, would have carried this
conviction to the mind of the most casual observer.
The presumptive heir to all this grandeur was young Wellwood, who was an
only child. At the period of our story, Harry (for such was his
Christian name) was about four-and-twenty years of age. His education
had been completed at Oxford some three years previous to this; and the
interval had been spent in a tour on the Continent, from which he had
now just returned, to reside some time with his father, before going
abroad, to fill a high official situation, which the latter's great
influence in the political world had procured for him.
Young Wellwood was a man of elegant figure, accomplished, and of
singularly fascinating manners--recommendations of which he too often
availed himself to accomplish very discreditable purposes, as the sequel
of our story will show. He was not naturally of bad dispositions--we
could almost say quite the contrary; nor did he love evil for
its own sake; but his passions were too powerful for his moral
principles--unsupported as these were by any auxiliary resolutions of
his own.
Such, then, was young Edington of Wellwood; and, having thus briefly
sketched his circumstances, situation, and character, we proceed to
advert to the humble heroine of our tale.
At a short distance from Wellwood House, there is a pretty little
village, which we shall take the liberty of calling Springfield. It is
situated in a romantic dell or hollow, and occupies either side of a
broad, clear, but shallow stream, that runs brawling through its very
centre. Steep rocks, and in other places abrupt acclivities covered with
verdure, and the whole overhung with "wild woods thick'ning green," form
the boundaries of the narrow glen in which the village is situated. From
this village, bands of young maidens--daughters of the labouring people
by whom it is inhabited, and of others in poor circumstances--were in
the habit of repairing to Wellwood House every morning during the summer
season for supplies of milk; the excess of the dairy being sold at
little more than a nominal value to every one in the neighbourhood who
chose to apply for it. Amongst the young girls who used to frequent
Wellwood House on this errand was Helen Gardenstone, the daughter of a
poor widow woman who resided in Springfield. She was a girl with an
appearance and manners of a kind rarely to be met with amongst those in
her humble station in life. Her beauty did not lie in the mere glow of
health, or in regularity of feature alone. Both of these, indeed, she
possessed in an eminent degree; but the chief captivations of her truly
lovely countenance were to be found in the peculiar sweetness, grace,
and native dignity of its expression, which the meanness of her
circumstances had been unable to abase. In short, even the style of
Helen Gardenstone's beauty, unaided by fashion, art, or education, as it
was, was such as the daughter of the haughtiest peer of the realm might
have been proud to own. But nature had not expended all her skill and
pains on the countenance alone. She added a figure every way worthy of
its loveliness; a figure whose elegance and fine proportions the simple
but coarse garments she wore might impair, but could not conceal; and
she finished the work by bestowing on this favoured creature a mild,
gentle, and generous disposition; a heart formed for cherishing all the
better qualities of female nature; and a degree of intelligence much
surpassing that usually found amongst those of her years and class. Such
was Helen Gardenstone, the daughter of the widow.
To resume our narrative. It was on a fine summer's morning, at the
period to which our story refers, that Helen's mother came to her
bedside, and, shaking her gently by the shoulder--for she was sound
asleep--said, in a kindly tone--
"Helen, dear, it's time ye were awa to Wellwood for the milk."
Helen opened her bright eyes, smiled in her mother's face, started from
her couch, and was soon ready to perform the morning duty to which she
had been called.
"But I'm thinkin I'm late this mornin, mother," she said, on observing
the advanced appearance of the day.
"Ou, ye're time aneugh, dear," replied her mother; "I didna like to
wauken ye sooner, as ye were up sae late last nicht, and sae sair
fatigued wi' the washin."
"Tuts, mother," rejoined Helen, "that was naething. Ye should hae made
me jump at the usual time. I declare, there they're comin back!" she
abruptly added, having caught a glimpse of some of the village maidens
returning with their pitchers of milk; and with this she hurried out of
the house, with her little tin can, and, tripping lightly over the road,
she soon reached the avenue leading to Wellwood House.
Helen was, indeed, later than usual on this morning; and one consequence
of this was, that she had to go alone--for all those who used to
accompany her had already been to Wellwood, and had returned; another
consequence, and one fraught with much that was deeply interwoven with
the future destiny of the unsuspecting girl--that all the inmates of
Wellwood House were astir, and amongst these young Wellwood himself, who
was sauntering in the avenue that led to the house at the very moment
Helen entered it. They met. Wellwood, who had never happened to see her
before, was struck with her extraordinary beauty. He threw himself in
her way. He addressed her in flattering language. He watched her return
from the house, learned everything from the artless girl regarding her
situation and circumstances; and, from that hour, she engrossed all his
thoughts, and became the sole object to which he devoted the dangerous
powers of fascination which nature had given him, and art had improved.
Nor did he exercise these powers in vain. Helen ultimately fell a victim
to his wiles, and became the prey of the spoiler.
The story of the poor girl's misfortune soon spread abroad. It became
the talk of the village; and many a burning face, and many an agonising
pang, it cost her as she passed along, and heard the sneers, and taunts,
and heartless jests to which that misfortune subjected her.
"The graceless cutty!" said one--and we must here remark that the
merciless persecutions of this kind to which she was exposed proceeded
almost entirely from those of her own sex--"nae better could happen her
wi' her dressin and her airs. No a madam in a' the land could be at
mair pains snoodin her hair than she was."
"Atweel, that's true," said a second; "and see what she has made o't,
the vain, silly thing!"
"Made o't!" exclaimed another of these vulgar and heartless traducers;
"my certie, she'll mak weel o't, I warrant ye. Young Wellwood 'll gie
her silks and satins by the wab, and siller in gowpens. She'll no
want--tak my word for that. We maun toil late and early, cummers, for
our scanty mouthfu, and our bits o' duds; while the like o' her eats and
drinks o' the best, without ever fylin her fingers."
"This'll bring doun her pride, I'm thinkin," said a fourth. "I aye
thocht she wad hae a fa', and was ne'er owre fond o' oor Mary gaun wi'
her. Folk speak o' her beauty; but, for my part, I never could see ony
beauty about her."
"Nor me either," chimed in a fifth; "I aye thocht her a puir, glaikit,
silly-looking thing."
Much of such conversation as this the poor unfortunate girl frequently
overheard; and much more of a similar kind was said which she did not
hear. In short, there was not one, at least of her own sex, who
expressed the smallest sympathy for her unhappy condition, or felt for
her misfortune--not one who attempted to soothe her sorrows, or to
lighten the burden of the poor girl's miseries--not one to treat her
error with the lenity which their own liability to deviate from the
straight path of moral rectitude ought to have inspired:--no, the poor
girl's persecutors seemed to think that the abuse and defamation of her
character shed an additional lustre on their own, and that, by her fall,
they themselves were exalted. Strangers were they to the god-like
sentiments expressed by him who says--
"Teach me to feel another's wo,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
Such mercy show to me."
When we said, however, that there was not one who felt for poor Helen's
unhappy situation, we ought to have made a single exception. There was
_one_ who felt for her, and that most acutely. This one was her mother.
The widow sorrowed, indeed, over the fall of her child, and many a
bitter tear unseen did it cost her--but she pitied and forgave.
"Dinna mourn that way, my puir lassie," she would say, when she found
Helen, as she often did, weeping in secret. "God 'll gie ye strength to
bear up wi' your sorrows. He tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, Helen,
and e'en will He saften the grief in which your young heart is steeped.
Though a' the warld should abuse ye, Helen, and desert ye, and scorn ye,
your mother's arms and your mother's bosom will aye be open to receive
ye; for weel do I ken, though everybody else should be blin' to't, that,
for a' that has happened, ye're guileless, Helen, and far mair sinned
against than sinning."
The uniform kindness of her mother, and the charitable and
Christian-like spirit in which she treated her erring daughter, greatly
consoled the unfortunate girl under her affliction, and was the means of
saving her, for a time, at any rate, from utter despair--we have said
for a time only, because it was ultimately unequal to support poor
Helen's spirit against the sneers of an unfeeling world. Returning home
one evening from a place at a little distance, where she had been on an
errand of her mother's, Helen overheard, from amongst a group of women,
some such conversation regarding her as we have already quoted; but more
severe things still were said on this occasion than we have recorded,
and, amongst these, the last and worst name which can be given to the
erring of her sex was applied to her. Helen heard the horrifying word;
and no sooner had it reached her ear, than a sense of self-debasement,
of shame, and despair, which she had never felt so acutely before,
seized upon her, and nearly deprived her of her reason. The ground
seemed to reel under her feet, and it was with the utmost difficulty she
was able to make out her mother's house. Her walk was unsteady, and she
was pale as death when she entered.
"Mercy on me, Helen! what's the matter?" exclaimed her mother, running,
in the utmost alarm, to the bed, on which the latter had flung herself,
in an agony of shame and horror, the moment she had entered the house.
"What's the matter, Helen?" repeated the latter, in a soothing tone.
"Has onybody been using you ill?" she inquired; for she knew that her
unfortunate daughter was often exposed to such insult and abuse as we
have already noticed.
"O mother! mother! I can stand this nae langer," was the indirect, but
sufficiently intelligible, reply of the weeping girl, who, with her face
buried in the bedclothes, was now sobbing her heart out. "I can stand it
nae langer. I canna live, mother--I canna live under this load o' shame
and reproach. I ken I am a guilty and a sinfu creature; but, oh! will
they no hae mercy on me, and leave me to the punishment o' my ain
thochts and feelings? Is there nae compassion in them, nae pity, nae
charity, that they will thus continue to persecute me wi' their
merciless tongues? I hae offended my God; but, I'm sure, I hae never
offended them in thocht, word, or deed; and why, then, will they drive
me to distraction this way? I canna live under it, mother--I canna live
under it!" again exclaimed the unfortunate girl.
"They can hae but little o' the milk o' human kindness in their bosoms,
Helen, that wad add a pang to them ye are already endurin, my poor
lassie," said her mother, leaning over her with the utmost tenderness
and affection. "They surely canna be mothers themsels that wad do a
thing sae cruel and unfeelin. I'm sure it wad melt the heart o' a
whunstane to look on that puir wae-begone face o' yours. But never mind
them, Helen, dear--keep up your heart. Guid has come before noo oot o'
evil; and there's nae sayin what may be in store for you yet."
To this attempt at consolation Helen made no reply; but that night--and
it was a wild and a wet one--she left her mother's house, stealing out
while she slept; and, when morning came, she had not returned, and no
one knew whither she had gone. Days, weeks, and months passed away, and
still Helen Gardenstone came not, nor was any trace of her discovered;
but it came at length to be generally believed that the poor deluded and
distracted girl had terminated her miseries by committing suicide--that
she had buried her sorrows in the waters of the Molendinar--the name of
the stream or river that ran through the village, and which had many
deep pools both below and above it.
These were, indeed, actually searched for her body, but to no purpose;
though this was accounted for by the circumstance of the river's having
been much swollen at the time of Helen's disappearance, by several
previous days' rain. The body, then, was conjectured to have been
carried down to the sea.
The report of Helen's sudden disappearance, together with rumours of the
supposed catastrophe which it involved, soon reached young Wellwood;
and, libertine as he was, the appalling intelligence plunged him into
the deepest distress. When first informed of it, he grew deadly pale,
and would fain have disbelieved the horrid tale, which made him
virtually and morally, though not legally, poor Helen's murderer. But,
when he found he could no longer doubt the truth of the rumour, remorse
and contrition seized him, and, for some days thereafter, he confined
himself to his room on pretence of sudden indisposition, to conceal the
distraction of his mind, which wholly unfitted him to mingle in
society.
The vision of Helen, invested with all the personal beauty and mental
innocence in which she had first met his sight, appeared before him
during the feverish reveries of the day, and in the disturbed slumbers
of the night. Anon, the scene would change, and the dead form of the
victim of his lawless passion would stand before him, bearing all the
horrid marks of the peculiar death she had died--her face rigid and
ghastly pale--her wet dishevelled hair hanging wildly around it; and her
clothes drenched with the waters in which her miseries had been
terminated. Such were the harrowing pictures which the disturbed
imagination and guilty soul of young Wellwood summoned before his mental
eye, to madden and distract him. In time, however, these dreadful
visions began to abate, both in frequency and force, and he was
gradually enabled to take his place again in society; but a settled
melancholy was now visible on his countenance--for the fatal catastrophe
of poor Helen's death, though latterly less vividly present to him than
at first, still pressed upon his spirits with a weight and constancy
that produced a very marked change on his general demeanour.
Soon after the period to which we have now brought our story, Wellwood
proceeded to the place of his destination abroad, to occupy the official
situation which his father's influence had procured for him. Here he
remained for two years, when some business connected with the duties of
his appointment called him to London. One of the first persons on whom
he called, on his arrival in the metropolis, was a gentleman of the name
of Middleton--a young man of fortune, and of excessively dissipated
habits, whom he had known at Oxford, and who had been the companion of
all his debaucheries (and they were frequent and deep) during his
residence at that seat of learning. In this last respect young Wellwood
was now somewhat improved; but it was otherwise with his old friend, who
still pursued, with unabated vigour and unsated appetite, the wild
career of dissipation in which Wellwood had so far accompanied him. The
renewal of their acquaintance on this occasion terminated in the renewal
of the scenes at Oxford; and, led on by his companion, Harry largely
indulged in all the fashionable excesses of the capital. These excesses,
however, even with all the outrageous mirth and jollity with which they
were associated, could not restore to him the peace of mind he had lost,
nor even banish from his countenance that expression of melancholy to
which it had now become habituated, and which did not escape his friend
Middleton, who frequently urged him to tell him the cause of it; but for
some time Wellwood evaded the inquiry. At length, however, the secret
was wrung from him.
"I say, now, Harry," said Middleton to him one evening, as they sat
together over a bottle of wine, "won't you tell us how you came by that
Puritanical face of yours. It's not the one you used to wear at Oxford,
I'll be sworn, and where you have picked it up I can't imagine; but it
certainly does become you amazingly. That melancholy gives you quite a
sentimental air. Couldn't you help me to a touch of it? I think it would
improve me vastly."
"Middleton," replied Wellwood, gravely, "I wish you may never have such
cause as I have, both to look and to think seriously; and, in order that
you may judge for yourself whether I have not good reason, I _will_ now
inform you of the cause of that melancholy which has so frequently
attracted your notice, and has so much excited your curiosity." Having
said this, Wellwood proceeded to tell his friend of the dismal story of
Helen Gardenstone; and, when he had concluded, "Worlds on worlds," he
exclaimed, energetically, "would I give, Middleton, were I possessed of
them, to restore that sweet unfortunate girl again to life; and these,
ten times told, would I part with, to be relieved of the guilt of having
wronged her."
To the melancholy tale of Helen's death, and to the repentant
exclamations with which it was wound up, Middleton replied with a loud
laugh.
"And is this all?" he cried out. "Is this the cause of that most
lachrymose countenance of yours, Harry? Shame, shame, man! I thought you
were a fellow of more spirit, a man of more mettle, than to be affected
by such a very trifling affair as that. Why, how the deuce could you
help the silly wench drowning herself? You did not push her into the
water. Tuts, man! fill up your glass, and think no more of it; and now,
'pon my soul, Harry," he continued, "that I know the cause of your
dismal phiz, and find it to be a matter of moonshine, I'll cut you for
ever, if you don't, after this night, hold up your head, and look like a
man. There, fill up," he said, pushing the bottle, from which he had
just helped himself largely, towards his companion, who, without making
any remark on what had just been addressed to him, seized it with
avidity, and, as if in desperation, poured out and swallowed an entire
tumbler of the liquor it contained.
We need not follow out the scene. The night terminated, as it usually
did with those boon companions, in a deep debauch; but it was ultimately
marked by an event for which the reader will be as little prepared as
Wellwood was. On returning to his lodgings, accompanied by Middleton,
who slept at the same hotel, at an early hour of the morning--and a
bitterly cold and snowy one it was, for it was the depth of winter--the
two friends, as they came shouting and bawling along, under the
influence of the wine they had drunk, were attracted by seeing four or
five persons gathered together on the street, and evidently surrounding
some object of interest.
"I say, Harry, let's see what this is?" said Middleton; "perhaps we may
knock some sport out of it."
"Why, I don't mind," replied the former; "but doubtless it's some
drunken or starving wretch, enjoying the cool night air."
"Why, what's the matter here?" said Middleton, bustling into the middle
of the assemblage, followed by Wellwood.
"Vy, it's a young voman and a child as is a-starving, and has never a
home to go to," said one of the bystanders. And such, indeed, was the
truth.
A miserable being--not, however, in her attire, which, though bespeaking
poverty, was yet clean, whole, and even decent--was seen sitting on the
steps of a stair, seemingly in the last stage of exhaustion, with a
child, a boy of about two years of age, closely wrapped up in her cloak,
and strained to her bosom, to protect it from the piercing cold of the
night.
"My good woman," said Middleton, stooping down close to her--for even he
was affected by the piteous sight--"where are you from?"
"I'm frae Scotland, sir," was the reply, in a voice of singular
sweetness, but evidently enfeebled by suffering.
Wellwood caught in an instant the dialect of his native land; and he did
not hear it without emotion--neither were the soft musical tones of the
voice lost upon him. They resembled, strongly resembled, those of one
whom he dared not even think of; and these circumstances combined,
instantly excited in him a deep interest in the unhappy being before
him. He now also approached her, and, taking her kindly by the hand, was
about to address her in soothing language, looking at the same time
closely to her face, when, without saying what he intended, or indeed
saying anything, he slowly raised himself again from the stooping
posture to which he had had recourse, his face as pale as death, and
trembling violently in every limb. In the next instant, he staggered as
if he would have fallen. Middleton ran to support him, and, thinking he
had been seized with some sudden illness, slowly led him to the distance
of a few paces from the persons assembled round the destitute female.
"What's the matter? what's the matter, Harry?" said the former, on their
getting out of hearing of any one. "My troth, but you do look ill,
Wellwood!"
"_That_," replied the latter, in a sepulchral voice, and with a look
that increased the alarm of his companion--"_that_," he said, pointing
to the spot where the unhappy woman sat, and without noticing
Middleton's inquiry, "is no being of flesh and blood. It is a vexed
spirit, Middleton, come to haunt me for the injuries I did it when in
the body--come to destroy my peace, and to realise the horrid dreams of
my guilt. It is--it is, Middleton"--and he gasped for breath as he
spoke--"the spirit of Helen Gardenstone."