Oh, Grief hath changed me since you saw me last;
And careful hours, with Time’s deformed hand,
Have written strange defeatures in my face.
SHAKSPEARE.
The night was dark and stormy, a circumstance of which most of the
revellers amid the dust and noise and glare of the ball-room were, or
affected to be, unconscious. True, the proprietor of the coach-and-six
had it hinted to him, and departed accordingly; but the fair owner of
the clogs danced indefatigably till dawn, without wasting a thought
upon the increasing difficulties of her return, and then ran laughing
and hopping home, having deposited one of her clumsy protectors stuck
deep in the first miry crossing.
But there was one to whom the tempestuous state of the weather during
that tedious night added to the dreariness of her situation. Helen
found her progress seriously retarded by the severity of the storm. For
though Lady Latimer’s servant, spurred to exertion by his mistress’s
express injunctions, did all in his power to facilitate their advance,
yet as the road they had to travel was a cross country one, it required
at each of the inns where they changed horses, no small powers of
persuasion to convince the sleepy postboys, harassed and jaded as they
and their horses had latterly been by the election, that any one could
really wish them on such a night as this to leave their warm beds, and
drive ten or fifteen miles.
At each of these unwelcome checks to her impatience, Helen sat
motionless, absorbed in her own melancholy thoughts, intently gazing
upon the front window, against which the beating rain never ceased to
patter, her eye following mechanically the copious streams in which it
descended the glass, and equally unconscious of the tears which more
silently trickled down her own cheeks.
Her mother had been all in all to her: she had never seemed to have
any separate existence from that of her child. As the incidents of her
early life now passed rapidly through her mind, with an accuracy and
yet a variety which nothing but the concentrated feelings of such a
moment could condense into so short a space, she could not recollect
any one act of her parent’s which was not dictated by the most anxious,
and yet the most judicious regard for her welfare. And she had enjoyed
a mother’s affection in all its purity and all its strength, undiluted
by division--unalloyed by the slightest dross of self, and yet she
had been absent from her during a serious, perhaps a tedious illness,
and had thus missed the only occasion, when she might have attempted
to repay, though imperfectly, those fond attentions which she had
always experienced from her in all the ills of childhood. She might
well have thought that the prospect of such a final separation, under
such circumstances, would have been incapable of aggravation; but in
anguish she now admitted that a most cruel aggravation had been but too
successfully attempted, and by whom--she could hardly bear to think.
Oakley’s last words still rung in her ears. She rejected them as the
ravings of passion, till her mother’s apparent confirmation forced
itself on her recollection. “You from whom I have had no secret.”
And was it from him, in whom confidence seemed to have been so
unworthily placed, that she must receive the only cureless wound?
Mortal separation, even heart-rending as that with which she was
threatened, as the common lot of humanity, is not entirely incapable of
alleviation--pious resignation may sooth its pangs, till all-healing
time has slowly worked out his cure. But how would nature and reason
have made their first efforts to assuage the hitherto uncontrollable
bursts of grief? By fondly pointing to the spotless memory of her that
was gone; and this blessed consolation had been wantonly and abruptly
destroyed by him, from whom, least of all, she would have expected such
wrong. As the morning advanced, and she approached her destination,
these thoughts for the time faded before the more immediate fear that
she might have arrived too late.
Mrs. Mordaunt’s dwelling was rather prettily situated on the skirts
of a little village. It was of the cottage order; and the garden and
little ground about it had all those marks of care and attention which
are found when the owner’s first resource is in the works of nature.
It was hence that Helen had derived her earliest recollections. It
had been purchased for Mrs. Mordaunt, and had been legally settled on
her, though the annuity had not, and was therefore all she possessed
independent of Oakley. Helen’s tottering steps, as she descended from
the carriage, were supported by old Dorothy, who without administering
much further comfort, relieved her anxious doubts as to her mother’s
being still alive.
Old Dorothy had been with her mistress as long as Helen could remember,
and all her infantine grievances, such as they were, had been confined
to the very short and constantly diminishing intervals when her
mother’s authority had been transferred to her as her deputy; for
nature had not endowed Dorothy with a good temper, and perhaps her
limited experience of life had not improved it. The wayward fancies
of childhood had therefore often irritated and incensed her. In later
days, what had most soured her and excited her spleen, was Helen’s
increasing beauty. Whether this arose from her own original deficiency
in this respect, or from some other cause, she used always to say: “She
know’d nought but mischief comes of your fair skin and your fine form.”
“The canker feeds on the fairest rose,
And the brightest eye will soonest close.”
But she showed withal a most invincible, dogged fidelity to her
mistress, over whom Helen had early observed that she had no slight
degree of influence. She had also always remarked that Dorothy was
kinder at a period of calamity or distress, and that not so much from
any apparent effort to exert herself more at such times, as that it
was a state which appeared best suited to her own habitual frame of
mind. It was long therefore since Helen had been so warmly greeted by
her as she was upon the present melancholy occasion of her return. As
she supported her with one arm, she gently turned the stray hair off
her forehead with her other withered hand. Perhaps she was softened
and thrown off her guard by her own distress--perhaps the havoc that
grief had made in Helen’s beauty caused her to view it with unusual
complacency, as she said: “God bless your dear face, it does one good
to see it again--how you have been crying! Oh! Miss Mordaunt, to think
that you should return when there is no hope left. She has been much
worn away within the last week; before that I never found it out: she
never complains, you know it’s not her way. I thought to myself that
she seemed to grow a bit thinner; but I’ve seen over many and great
changes in her, poor lady, in my day, to mind a trifle; and then my
eyes are not so sharp as they have been; and I minded it not so much,
for that I guessed your being away might make her a bit lonesome, for
she needs other company than her own thoughts; and I spoke to her more
sharply than I’ve done this many a long year, that she should send
for you here, and that she ought to ken well enough you’d get no good
gadding where you were; and then she took on so, poor soul, that I was
sorry for what I’d said, though I meant it all for the best. And the
next day was the first she was over weak to get as far as your garden
to tend your flowers. She’d ne’er missed a day since you went, and that
she minded worser than any thing, and so she sent for the doctor, and
together they settled to have you back.”
By this time they had crossed the garden to the front door, and Helen
eagerly inquired whether she should go in at once to her mother, or
whether Dorothy had best break her arrival to her.
“Why, I reckon she has just dropped into a sort of dose, for you must
know she was rather on the look out for your return all yesterday, and
that fretted her into a worse fever. I don’t know how it was, she had
her own way of sending to tell you; if she had but left it to me, I’d
have had a care there should have been no mistake; but so it was, she
kept peering and pining for you all the afternoon, and though it was to
be looked for she should not sleep all night, as I told her she might
thank herself for managing matters so ill; and so at last she’s gone
off into a sort of slumber from sheer weakness.”
Helen seized the opportunity of escaping from the officious old
Dorothy, who returned to take the consignment of her things from the
carriage, and with a light tread she stole to the door of her mother’s
apartment. All seemed perfectly still within. She gently opened the
door. There had been no precautions taken to procure the sleep in which
her mother’s senses had been overcome. The morning sun shone full upon
the bed where Helen’s anxious eyes were directed.
Mrs. Mordaunt’s was a frame where sorrow had preyed upon the substance
without defacing the filmy covering. Her clear skin was still free from
furrows, though it seemed but to rest upon the bone. Such as she then
appeared in that unconscious trance, the interest she must have excited
in one less partial than her daughter was beyond that of mere mortal
beauty. The hectic spot upon one point of the cheek seemed to touch the
long eyelashes which in sleep hung down towards it. Her silken hair,
which time and grief had thinned not turned, strayed unconfined over
her pale forehead. The expression of her colourless lips was tranquil
and free from pain. Her thin transparent hands, more than any thing
else, told the tale of approaching dissolution. Around the bloodless
fingers of one hand was twined a long lock of Helen’s hair, the other
was stretched towards a book of common-prayer which lie open upon the
bed. Mrs. Mordaunt’s devotion had never partaken of the character of
fanaticism, that mistaken cordial of diseased minds. She thought it
best became a sincere penitent to study and practise the plainest
precepts of religion, rather than to pride herself upon the gloomy
perversion of its most disputed dogmas.
As Helen bent over the still and passionless form, where amid the
traces of bodily suffering so much seemed to recall the recollection
of recent virtues, so little to confirm the suspicion of former guilt,
she felt her throat swelling with a sudden burst of indignation, which
being utterly unable to control, she hastily left the room, and then
gave vent to the bitter thought: “_He_ has dared to defame _her_, and
to me!”
After she had to a certain degree succeeded in restoring to herself the
degree of composure necessary to prepare her for the interview she must
soon have with her mother, she attempted to sustain herself by a survey
of the well-known contents of their common sitting-room. Every thing
was much as she had left it. Her sketch-book, however, which she had
put by, was open, as if it had been recently examined. Her birds too
had not been neglected, from the appearance of the green food and water
in the cages; it seemed as if they must have been replenished no longer
ago than the evening before. This was an attention quite out of old
Dorothy’s line. It must have been her mother then who had thus employed
the moments while she had been, as stated, fretting for her return.
She was soon again summoned to the bed-room. After the first agitation
of meeting had subsided, Mrs. Mordaunt raising herself said: “And have
you not suffered from cold, my poor child? I could not sleep till the
storm had subsided, with the thought that you might be out in it.”
“Think not of me; to find you thus--ill, very ill, I fear,” said
Helen, unable to bear the unnatural brilliancy of her mother’s eye,
which alarmed her more than any of the symptoms of decay which she had
observed whilst she was still asleep.
“His will be done!” said Mrs. Mordaunt; “it is perhaps on many accounts
better as it is. Better for you, I mean, which is my only care. You
are formed to ornament society. It would have been out of my power to
accompany you into the world; you must have observed that I have always
avoided society; I have not been without my reasons for it.”
As Mrs. Mordaunt paused, Helen felt a slight shudder, as this conduct
of her mother occurred to her in a new light.
She then continued: “I shall never again perhaps be stronger than I
am at present, so I may as well now communicate one or two facts with
regard to your future circumstances, which it is necessary you should
know. It is not much I can bring myself to say, but if I have had,
and still have any concealment from you, it is only what an anxious
consideration for your happiness has, upon mature deliberation,
determined me to pursue.”
“There is one, however,” thought Helen, “from whom she has had no
secret;” and she almost dreaded that in what was about to follow she
should hear any allusion to that name, which it would previously have
gladdened her heart to have heard mentioned with praise by her mother.
“I will not deny that your absence has been painful to me, but I shall
at least die with the consciousness that it has been far from useless
to you. The sense of obligation must always be irksome, when gratitude
is extracted only by the act itself, and does not flow naturally from
regard for the benefactor. Judge then of the pleasure I derived from
the unsuspicious encomiums you passed upon the character of Mr. Oakley,
and the gratification you seemed to derive from the intercourse with
so superior a person, when I tell you that it is to his bounty that we
have latterly owed the means of subsistence; indeed every thing, except
the roof over our heads. I can no otherwise diminish your surprise at
my acceptance of such a favour than by saying, that your relationship
to a member of his family, from whom he derived his property, gave you
a sort of claim in equity to his consideration. But, oh Helen! the
manner in which it was done, so feeling and delicate, was so like the
fine generous creature you described in your letters!”
Helen dropped her head upon the bed to hide her contending emotions,
whilst her mother continued:--
“Had it been otherwise, had his disposition been different, fickle,
liable to change, or subject to the influence of the baser passions
of our nature, the perplexities of the present moment would have been
increased tenfold. I hardly know what I would not have endured rather
than my child should have been subject to a sudden shock, such as--but
what am I saying? I feel that under any circumstances my strength would
not have been equal to any further exertion. And I trust in heaven ’tis
better as it is. There is an all-seeing eye which penetrates our most
secret thoughts, and Heaven knows that it is only for my child and her
sake that I would----” The rest of the sentence hovered trembling on
the mother’s lip, but reached not the daughter’s ear.
I must draw a veil over their final separation, which, heart-rending as
it would have been even if there had been no necessity for reserve, was
aggravated by many pangs which the mother feared to communicate.