he had gone deranged. "It's a _bona fide_ human being, I warrant you,
Harry, and I'll bring you proof of that directly." Saying this, he ran
to the object of his friend's terror, and inquired her name. She gave
it. Middleton was confounded--he hastened back to Wellwood, and, as he
approached him, "By Heaven, Harry!" he said, "you are so far right--the
woman's name is really Helen Gardenstone."
Regardless of the situation in which he was, and equally so of those who
might witness the strong expression of feeling which he meditated,
Wellwood instantly dropped on his knees, and, in one brief sentence of
mingled piety and joy, thanked God that he was not altogether the guilty
wretch that he had conceived himself to be; for he now felt assured
that, whatever might have been the train of circumstances that had led
to this singular occurrence, the person whom he had thus found a
houseless and destitute wanderer on the streets of the metropolis was,
indeed, no other than Helen Gardenstone.
On recovering a little from the tumultuous feelings which had at first
overwhelmed him, Wellwood's next thought was how to succour the
unfortunate girl and _his_ child, as he had no doubt it was. The first
idea which occurred to him on this point was to have Helen instantly
conveyed to his hotel--and on this idea he subsequently acted; but,
thinking the present neither a fit time nor place to discover himself to
her, or to give her an opportunity of recognising him, he deputed the
task to his friend Middleton, who readily undertook it, whilst he
himself kept aloof. On reaching the inn, Wellwood retired to his own
apartment, while Middleton saw to the comforts of his unfortunate
charge. These provided for, he rejoined his friend, whom he found
wrapped in profound meditation, with his elbow resting on a table.
"Well, Harry," he said, on entering the apartment, "this is a devilish
queer affair, an't it? But, in the name of all that's perplexing, what
do you propose doing now?"
"I'll tell you all about that in the morning, Middleton," replied
Wellwood, gravely, "after I shall have slept on it. In the meantime, I
thank you for your attention to the poor girl."
"Faith, to tell you a truth, Harry," rejoined Middleton, "I would have
done as much, and a great deal more, too, on her own account, let alone
yours; for she's certainly as pretty a girl as ever I clapped eye upon.
A gentle, beautiful creature 'tis, Harry. But what the deuce are you to
do with her, again say I."
"Why, I have not quite made up my mind on that subject," said Wellwood;
"but I'll think of it, and we'll see what the morning brings forth."
Saying this, he retired to his own sleeping-apartment, where he spent
half the night in thinking what should be his next proceeding with
regard to Helen; and the result of his cogitations on this subject was a
resolution of a very extraordinary kind.
On the following morning, when he and Middleton met--
"Well, Harry," said the latter, "what's to be done now? What has been
the result of your night's reflections regarding Helen? What do you now
propose doing with her?"
"I propose to marry her, Middleton," replied Wellwood, gravely. "It is
the least thing I can do in reparation of the injury I have done
her--the misery and scorn I have entailed on her; and besides,
Middleton," he went on, "I should be perjured in the face of Heaven if I
did not, for I swore a sacred and binding oath that I should make her
mine; and it was by trusting to that oath that poor Helen fell."
"Ha! ha!--a particular good joke, Harry," exclaimed Middleton; "and----"
"No joke whatever, Middleton," said Wellwood, interrupting him; "I am in
serious earnest. I will do the girl the only justice now in my power. I
will do what my heart and my conscience tell me is right in this matter,
and defy the sneers of a selfish and censorious world. On this I am
firmly determined, let the consequences be what they may. My mind is
made up, Middleton."
"You're mad, Harry," said the latter, now becoming serious in his turn,
on seeing that his friend was really in earnest--"absolutely and
absurdly mad."
"It may be so, Middleton," replied Wellwood, calmly. "That is a point I
will not dispute with you; but I am nevertheless firmly resolved to do
what I have said. I will take my poor little boy to my bosom, and his
mother shall become lady of Wellwood. It is all the reparation I can
make her, and it shall be made. Will you assist me in going through with
this romantic business, Middleton?" he added, smiling.
"Why, Harry," replied the latter, "I certainly should not like to desert
you in a time of need; but----"
"No buts, Middleton," interrupted his friend. "Will you, or will you
not?"
"Why, then, if you _are_ resolved, Harry, on this desperate, and, I must
call it, singularly absurd step, I will," rejoined Middleton. "But what
will your father say to it?"
"Why, from him, certainly, my marriage must, far a time, at any rate, be
concealed; but of this more afterwards. In the meantime, will you go to
Helen, and tell her that an old acquaintance desires to see her; and
conduct her hither?"
Middleton readily undertook the mission, and departed to execute it. In
a minute afterwards he returned, leading in Helen by the hand. On seeing
Wellwood, she uttered a piercing shriek, and fainted in the arms of
Middleton, her little boy clinging to her in all the terror of childish
affright. Wellwood rushed to her assistance, and, in the tenderest and
most soothing language he could command, endeavoured to restore her to
consciousness. This of itself gradually returned, and a scene followed
which we will not attempt to describe. Wellwood, pressing Helen to his
bosom, told the bewildered but delighted girl that it was his intention
to repair the injury he had done her, by offering her his hand. He next
flew to his boy, took him up in his arms, bathed him with his tears, and
bestowed upon him, while he caressed him, every tender epithet he could
think of.
Our story is now coming naturally to a close; and we will not prolong it
by any unnecessary or extraneous details. In three days after this,
Helen--having been previously provided with everything suitable to the
rank in life to which she was thus suddenly and most unexpectedly
promoted from the lowest depths of wretchedness and destitution--became
the wife of Henry Edington, Esq. of Wellwood. In three days more, Mr
Edington received intelligence of his father's sudden demise, which
rendered it necessary that he should proceed instantly to Wellwood. In
this journey his wife and child accompanied him; and the next appearance
of Helen Gardenstone in her native village was in a splendid carriage,
as the lady of Wellwood, in which character she subsequently acquired an
extensive reputation for benevolence, and for the practice of every
social virtue. Helen, in short, became an exemplary wife, and conferred
on her husband, who continued to regard her with unabated affection till
the day of his death, all the happiness of which the marriage state is
capable.
THE SURGEON'S TALES.
THE CASE OF EVIDENCE.
The following narrative was given to me by the executors of Miss
Ballingal, whom I attended for a short time previous to her death:--
I shall not now, I hope, be long upon the face of this earth. It is
sinful to wish to die; but, when the spirit is weary of the trials of
this evil world, and the body broken, and the bones stricken to their
dried marrow with pains, surely a poor mortal may indulge the wish, that
God's time of release may not be postponed beyond the power of bearing
the weight of life. My years, if mentioned, would not, perhaps, appear
to be many; but _age_, in the sense in which I take it, cannot be
calculated by circumvolutions of the sun. There is an age of the spirit
independently of that of the body; and to calculate that, we must have a
measure of the effects of misfortune, and pain, and injury, on nerves
toned in all the keys that rise in gradation, from the sensations of
creatures a little above the brutes, to the sensibilities of individuals
a little lower than the angels. In this view, I am indeed aged as the
sons of Levi; for my soul, like the people of Pharaoh, has been smitten
with boils and blains, by the poisoned bite of the serpent tongue of
civilisation. The spirit of the Indian under his plantain-tree, lives
till the body is sick of it; and with a mistaken humanity, he is exposed
in the desert, that the wants of the flesh may kill the spirit that
yearns to live, and to rejoice again in the return of the seasons, with
their fruits and flowers; but the spirit of civilised man or woman is
often dead long before the mortal tenement exhibits any decay; for,
though spotted fever and limping palsy have passed on, and touched not
the flesh, the spirit has been visited by plagues a thousand times more
deadly, that rise from the refinements of civilised life. It is these
that have made me aged, and weary of remaining longer here; and I am not
doubtful that, when I record what I have suffered from two
causes--first, my own--yes, I affirm it--my own goodness; and, secondly,
the evils inherent in the state of society in which we live--every one
will acknowledge that I have little more to wait for on this side of
time, and that the sooner I am dissolved, the better it may be for
myself, and those who sympathise in griefs that death alone can
alleviate.
Brought up in the manse of C----, by a pious father, the clergyman of
the parish, a learned man--and by a mother, a woman of many virtues, who
wished her daughter to be as good as herself--I enjoyed all the
advantages of breeding and education; which, if turned to good account,
make the ornaments of society. I cannot, and never will, admit that
these advantages were lost upon me, though they have tended to make me
miserable. I was accounted fair; and I believe that my beauty--a gift so
much valued--has had also a share, and no inconsiderable one, in the
production of the peculiar evils under which I have suffered, and still
suffer. I was--what none knew so well as myself--sensitive to a degree
bordering on diseased irritability; but my sensitiveness was of that
higher kind, which, courting and receiving impressions and impulses from
virtuous thoughts and elevated feelings, tends to elevate rather than
depress. The fine culture I received from my father, co-operating with
my refined sensibilities, produced in me the most exquisitely minute
perceptions of moral good and evil; so that I came to have the same
delicate feeling of the graceful or the distorted in morals, that some
_born_ musicians are said to possess in regard to the tones of harmony
in the world of sounds. This is not self-praise--it is truth wrung out
of me; for, though possessed of many qualities which might have
nourished vanity, the disrelish I ever felt of the exhibitions of a vain
spirit in others would have been effectual in quelling my own, even if I
had had any to quell, which assuredly I never had. I believe that the
strong view in which morals were presented to me by the precepts of my
father, would have operated to the production of a fine and healthy
effect in one formed for the busy world; but in me, who seemed to have
been formed with a connate, aspen-like, trembling sensitiveness of the
traces of good and evil, his instructions, continued from day to day,
and enforced by the power of his own example and that of my sainted
mother, tended to give my original perceptions so strong and holy a
sanction, that, at a very early period, I had become a kind of
worshipper of good. Virtue has a lovely aspect to all, even to those who
tremble at her beauty, from the contrast of their own ugliness; religion
has the power of making her more beautiful; and systems of morals,
clothed in fine language, are effective in training many hearts to a
high love of this emanation from God. But I was, and I am yet, different
from any individual whose moral perceptions are merely strengthened by
these aids. I do not know if I make myself intelligible, but I myself
feel the distinction I wish to impress: morals were to me that species
of passion which in many exhibits itself only more perceptibly in regard
to some other object--such as poetry, painting, sculpture, or
music--with perhaps this difference, that while these natural
_illuminati_ are merely annoyed by an exhibition of distortion, I was
pained--sorely, miserably pained--by vice, in whatever form it was
exhibited to me. I was not contented with the ordinary appearances of
purity. The jealousy-offering was ever in my hand; and I was always
sighing to see it waving before the goddess, and offered upon the altar
of virtue. I looked upon the individual in whom the "water that causes
the curse" became bitter, as a creature who was rotten, and had become a
curse among the people.
Entertaining these sentiments, I loved to expatiate upon the beauties of
my favourite subject, with a glow of eloquence that struck even the
godly visiters of the manse with surprise and admiration. I often, also,
in my visits among my father's parishioners, exhibited the same warm
enthusiasm, couching my sentiments in the gorgeous clothing of a young
fancy enamoured of a deified personification of what I conceived to be
the only true good and the only true beauty upon earth. But I was no
apostle under the influence of a proselytising spirit; for I only
visited the virtuous, because I loved them, and those of an evil
reputation I avoided with a thrilling horror, as creatures diseased and
dangerous to approach. Those who believed me a religious enthusiast--and
there were many who entertained that opinion of me--knew nothing of my
real nature; for, though my father's precepts had had all due effect
upon me, religion, far from being the origin of my feelings, lent merely
a sanction to them, showing the final cause of my enthusiastic views,
and turning them to that account in the contemplation of an after world,
that ought to have been at all times their end and object. I was rather
a lover of virtue for its beauty: my feeling was an impassioned taste,
luxuriating on every virtuous act, and dwelling with inexpressible
delight on every cultivator of my favourite subject. A consequence of
this was the horror of vicious persons, which I possessed to a degree
that made my father suspect that my passion was not the religious one,
which is unavoidably accompanied with pity for the misguided votary of
sin, and a straining effort to reclaim him to the paths of virtue. He
was to a certain extent right; but I question much if, with all his
learning, he possessed knowledge enough of the various peculiarities of
human nature, to enable him to analyse my character, or to understand
the peculiarities of one under the dominion of a passion for ethics.
I was, moreover, of a remarkably tender constitution of body--the
consequence of early weakness, as well, perhaps, as of that irritable
temperament which fed and was nourished in turn by the high-strung
sensibilities of my spirit. Up to the age of fifteen, I was subject to a
species of fit, or nervous syncope; and I always found that, after an
attack of these enervating prostrations of my physical powers, my mind
recurred to my favourite subject with greater keenness, supplying my
excited fancy with brilliant images of virtuous sacrifices, such as I
had read of in the old classic authors, which I could read in the
original; and these, again, swelled my heart, lighted my eye, and lent
an eloquence to my tongue, which dwelt on the daring of Mutius, the
sacrifice of Lucretia, the heroism of Brutus, the friendship of Damon,
and the determination of Virginius. Exhausted by the swell of emotions
produced by these subjects, I fell back upon the quieter, but no less
delicious, theme of a Howard's philanthropy; and ended with the
contemplation of those instances of private charity which had come under
my own eye. I never felt happier than when in these moods; and my
mother, who knew my passion, contributed to its gratification, by
directing me to such recorded examples of worth as she knew where to
find among my father's books.
Possessed of these views and feelings, so unsuitable to the cold maxims
of the world, and with a weak and irritable constitution, I was ill
prepared for the loss which was now, when I was in my twentieth year,
impending over me--the death of both my parents, who, attacked by the
same disease--some putrid species of typhus--died within a week of each
other, leaving me, their only child, as much unprovided for in regard to
worldly wants, as I was unfitted for making up the deficiency by my
personal exertions. My father left nothing but the furniture in the
manse, which was all required to pay up some advances of stipend which
had been made to him by several of the heritors, and which the extreme
scantiness of his income necessitated him to have recourse to. I was a
beggar, imbued with notions to make the people of the world admire and
pity, and gifted with a countenance so beautiful (why need I spare the
vain word, when I now admit that age and pain have made me ugly?), that,
with art, might have realised a fortune, or, with folly, might have
ruined me. I sought the protection of a spendthrift uncle and a good
aunt--the latter resident in the town of Stirling, an old lady of
fortune, a Mrs Greville, who admired my principles, and possessed
generosity enough to enable her to offer to repay the pleasures of my
companionship by her house and her friendship. My tender frame, operated
upon by the intense grief I had felt in the loss of my parents,
sustained a shock which would have proved fatal to me, if the assuasive
attentions of that angelic being had not contributed to the recovery of
my health. Her protection was much, her kindness valuable; but above all
was I blessed in the possession of a friend who reduced to practice,
though she could not _feel_ as I felt, the principles of virtue I had so
long cherished with the fondness of a ruling passion. But my situation
was now changed. In my father's manse I saw little of the world; but
what came under my observation was congenial to my mind, and gratified
my feelings by the exhibition of goodness as well of deed as of
sentiment. The evil I saw was out-of-doors, and I eschewed it as a
serpent which would beguile by the spiral turns of its insidious lines
of beauty, and the shining hues of the colours of false loveliness. In
our society at home, or in the houses of the parishioners, it never came
under my experience, except by the report of crimes which grated on my
irritable feelings, and pained me to a much greater extent than people
of ordinary sensibilities may well comprehend. In my new residence, I
was necessitated to mix with the world. My aunt saw much company,
composed of the mixed inhabitants of the town, and I accompanied her to
various parties where the _fashionable_ vices were cultivated, as all
fashionable things are, with an affected contempt of honest plainness
and unadorned simplicity.
Though my aunt was herself a good woman, and admired the high-coloured,
and, it may be, unnatural views I took of human life, she never
understood the secret parts of my mental constitution, but took me
simply for one who entertained a somewhat strong sense of the beauty of
a good life, and who therefore could mix with society of acknowledged
honesty as the world goes, without allowing the frailty of human nature
to interfere with my own views, and far less with my comfort and peace
of mind. My beauty made her proud of me; and I was soon introduced to
scenes which stirred all the antipathies that, as the result of my past
modes of thinking and feeling, lay strong within my heart, and ready to
be called forth by a departure in others from the rules of life I had so
long loved. The first view I got of the mysteries of card-playing--in
the house of Captain Semple, of Tennet, who lived in town, only a few
doors removed from where I lived--produced an effect of pain upon me
similar to that which Mozart declared he felt when his harmony was lost
in discordance. They played for what they called high stakes; and there
was exhibited, on a lesser scale, the keen avaricious eye, the forced,
choking laugh, the lying smile, the trembling hand, and burning brow of
the gambler of the London grade. The whole family engaged in this play.
I recollect, at this distant period, the effect produced upon me by the
agonised countenance of the beautiful Catherine Semple, the eldest
daughter, when she lost a high stake, and yet turned the expression of
the worst look of the devil into a smile far more hideous than that
which it concealed. Nor was the effect less painful that was produced
upon my high-wrought sensibilities by the cruel triumph that burned in
the beautiful blue eye of Esther her sister, who had pocketed the
hard-won earnings of a poor surgeon, and seemed to feed on the poisoned
garbage of his depression and disappointment. The face of her mother,
who looked on, partook alternately of the expression of those of her
daughters; and while I, a stranger, beheld with pain the first
principles of goodness subverted, and the fairest samples of God's
creatures penetrated to the core by the worst feelings of our fallen
nature, she, their parent, sympathised with a daughter's deceit and
revenge, or gloried in her triumph over what might be the approaches of
ruin to a fallen creature. I went home after that exhibition dispirited
and miserable; the chords of the moral harp, that had so long responded
to the sweet sounds of a virtue imagined, felt, and dreamed of, as a
beatific vision, were disrupted and torn asunder; and I imagined that
the individuals who had thus laid upon it their sacrilegious hands were
worthy of a hatred unqualified by pity, as destroyers of the most
beautiful fabric ever erected by God's love. These were not the gloomy
views of the monastic ascetic, or the religious enthusiast--for I was
neither. I was, indeed, peculiarly formed; but I knew not my
peculiarity, and even now I could scarcely abate one ray of the
effulgence that, if you please, blinded me to the factitious virtues of
the _juste milieu_ of a bad world's morality.
Some nights afterwards, I accompanied my aunt to the house of Mrs Ball,
also a neighbour, and one who could afford to live in a style that, in
such a town as Stirling, might be conceived to be high. She had a
daughter, Anne, and a son, George, an attorney, both accomplished and
handsome, and wearing on their faces the external appearances of
simplicity and goodness. The recollections of Semple's family were still
busy with my heart, and I trembled to approach another assemblage of
fashionable people. I was placed in the midst of a large tea _coterie_,
and expected to hear a conversation suited to the views of human life I
so fondly cherished. Stories of generosity, of age assuaged, bereavement
ameliorated, want supplied, and hunger and nakedness fed and clothed,
must, I thought, issue from such a quiet-looking assemblage of people,
brought together apparently for no other purpose than to promote the
cause of their own happiness, which surely might be best done by
contemplating the means of the happiness of others. Having had one of my
fits in the fore part of the day, I was more irritable than usual; but
having got, in some measure, quit of the pain produced by the moral
discordance that had, some days before, grated so painfully on my weak
nerves, I expected to be able to join in a conversation which could not
fail to embrace a part of my favourite theme. I was again destined to be
made miserable. I was placed in the midst of a species of moral
cannibals, who preyed ruthlessly and jestingly on the misfortunes and
miseries of their fellow-creatures. Pecuniary embarrassments,
matrimonial disagreements, detections of dishonesty, elopements,
infidelities--everything that might render an individual worthy of pity
or hatred--was treated in the same tone of concealed satisfaction. The
burst of loud laughter followed on the heels of the whine of hollow
sympathy; the sneer mixed its cutting sarcasm with the lying tribute to
suffering worth; and through all, over all, in all, there was the spirit
of evil, in its worst, its ugliest form, rejoicing--secretly, no doubt,
but not the less certainly--in the defection of mortals from God's law,
and their devarication from my standard of moral beauty.