Such was the tale presented to the young, enthusiastic, innocent
Elizabeth, unveiling the secret of the life of him whom she revered
above all the world. Her soul was in her eyes as she read, or rather
devoured, page after page, till she arrived at the catastrophe; when a
burst of passionate tears relieved her swelling bosom, and carried away
upon their stream a thousand, trembling, unspeakable fears that had
gathered in wild multitude around her heart. "He is innocent! He, my
benefactor, my father, when he accused himself of murder, spoke, as I
thought, of a consequence, not an act; and if the chief principle of
religion be true, that repentance washes away sin, he is pardoned, and
the crime forgotten. Noble, generous heart! What drops of anguish have
you not shed in atonement! What glorious obsequies you pay your victim.
For she also is acquitted. Gerard's mother is more than innocent. She
was true to him, and to the purest sentiments of nature, to the end;
nay, more, her life was sacrificed to them." And Elizabeth went over in
her mind, as Falkner had often done, the emotions that actuated her to
attempt the dangerous passage across the ford. She fancied her awakening
on the fatal morning, her wild look around. No familiar object met her
view--nor did any friendly voice reassure her; the strange scene and
solitary hut were testimonies that she did not dream, and that she had
really been torn from home and all she loved by a violence she could not
resist. At first she must have listened tremblingly, and fancied her
lover-enemy at hand. But all is still. She rises; she ventures to
examine the strange dwelling to which she has been carried--no human
being presents himself. She quits the threshold of the hut--a familiar
scene is before her eyes, the ocean and the dreary but well-known
shore--the river which she has so often crossed--and among the foldings
of the not distant hills, imbosomed in trees, she sees Dromore, her
tranquil home. She knows that it is but a few miles distant; and while
she fancies her enemy near at hand, yet the hope animates her that she
may cross the stream unseen, and escape. Elizabeth imaged all her hopes
and fears; she seemed to see the hapless lady place her uncertain feet,
her purpose being stanch and unfaltering, within the shallow wave, which
she believed she could traverse in safety; the roar of the advancing
tide was in her ears, the spray dashed round her, and her footing grew
uncertain, as she sought to find her way across the rugged bed of the
river. But she thought only of her child, from whom she had been torn,
and her fears of being, through the deed of violence which had carried
her off, excluded from her home for ever. To arrive at that home was all
her desire. As she advanced she still fixed her eyes on the clustering
woods of Dromore, sleeping stilly in the gray, quiet dawn: and she
risked her life unhesitatingly to gain the sacred shelter. All depended
on her reaching it, quickly and alone; and she was doomed never to see
it more. She advances resolutely, but cautiously. The waves rise
higher--she is in the midst of the stream--her footing becomes more
unsteady--does she look back?--there is no return--her heart proudly
repels the very thought of desiring it. She gathers her garments about
her--she looks right onward--she steps more carefully--the surges buffet
her--they rise higher and higher--the spray is dashed over her head, and
blinds her sight--a false step--she falls--the waters open to ingulf
her--she is borne away. One thought of her Gerard--one prayer to Heaven,
and the human eye can pursue the parting soul no farther. She is lost to
earth--none upon it can any longer claim a portion in her.
But she is innocent. The last word murmured in her last sleep--the last
word human ears heard her utter, was her son's name. To the last she was
all mother; her heart filled with that deep yearning, which a young
mother feels to be the very essence of her life, for the presence of her
child. There is something so beautiful in a young mother's feelings.
Usually a creature to be fostered and protected--taught to look to
another for aid and safety; yet a woman is the undaunted guardian of her
little child. She will expose herself to a thousand dangers to shield
his fragile being from harm. If sickness or injury approach him, her
heart is transfixed by terror: readily, joyfully, she would give her own
blood to sustain him. The world is a hideous desert when she is
threatened to be deprived of him; and when he is near, and she takes him
to the shelter of her bosom, and wraps him in her soft, warm embrace,
she cares for nothing beyond that circle; and his smiles and infantine
caresses are the life of her life. Such a mother was Alithea; and in
Gerard she possessed a son capable of calling forth in its intensity,
and of fully rewarding, her maternal tenderness. What wonder, when she
saw him cast pitilessly down on the road-side--alive or dead she knew
not--the wheel of the carriage that bore her away might have crushed and
destroyed his tender limbs--what wonder that she should be threatened by
instant death, through the excess of her agony? What wonder that,
reviving from death, her first and only thought was to escape--to get
back to him--to clasp him to her heart--never to be severed more?
How glad, and yet how miserable, Gerard would be to read this tale. His
proudest and fondest assertions certified as true, and yet to feel that
he had lost her for ever, whose excellence was proved to be thus
paramount. Elizabeth's reflections now rested on him--and now turned to
Falkner--and now she opened the manuscript again, and read anew--and
then again her heart made its commentary, and she wept and rejoiced; and
longed to comfort her father, and congratulate Neville, all in a breath.
She never thought of herself. This was Elizabeth's peculiarity. She
could be so engrossed by sympathy for others, that she could forget
herself wholly. At length she remembered her father's directions, that
his manuscript should be given to Neville when he called. She had no
thought of disobeying; nor could she help being glad that Gerard's
filial affection should receive its reward, even while she was pained to
think that Falkner should be changed at once into an enemy in her new
friend's eyes. Still her generous nature led her instantly to ally
herself to the weaker side. Neville was triumphant--Falkner humiliated
and fallen; and thus he drew her closer to him, and riveted the chain of
gratitude and fidelity by which she was bound. She had shed many tears
for Alithea's untimely fate; for the virtues and happiness hurried to a
mysterious end--buried in an untold grave. But she had her reward. Long
had she been there, where there is no trouble, no strife--her pure soul
received into the company of kindred angels. Her heroism would now be
known; her actions justified; she would be raised above her sex in
praise; her memory crowned with unfading glory. It was Falkner who
needed the exertion of present service, to forgive and console. He must
be raised from his self-abasement; his despair must be cured. He must
feel that the hour of remorse was past; that of repentance and
forgiveness come. He must be rewarded for all his goodness to her, by
being made to love life for her sake. Neville, whose heart was free from
every base alloy, would enter into these feelings. Content to rescue the
fame of his mother from the injury done it; happy in being assured that
his faithful, filial love had not been mistaken in its reliance, the
first emotion of his generous soul would be to forgive. Yet Elizabeth
fancied that, borne away by his ardour in his mother's cause, he might
altogether pass over and forget the extenuating circumstances that
rendered Falkner worthy of pardon; and she thought it right to accompany
the narrative with an explanatory letter. Thus she wrote:--
"My father has given me these papers for the purpose of transmitting
them to you. I need not tell you that I read them this day for the first
time: that till now I was in total ignorance of the facts they disclose.
"It is most true that I, a little child, stopped his arm as he was about
to destroy himself. Moved by pity for my orphan state, he consented to
live. Is this a crime? Yet I could not reconcile him to life, and he
went to Greece, seeking death. He went there in the pride of life and
health. You saw him at Marseilles; you saw him to-day--the living effigy
of remorse and wo.
"It is hard, at the moment you discover that he was the cause of your
mother's death, to ask your sympathy for his sufferings and high-minded
contrition. I leave you to follow the dictates of your own heart with
regard to him. For myself, attached to him as I am by every sentiment of
affection and gratitude, I am, from this moment, more than ever devoted
to his service, and eager to prove to him my fidelity.
"These words come from myself. My father knows not what I write. He
simply told me to inform you that he should remain here; and if you
desired aught of him, he was ready at your call. He thinks, perhaps, you
may require further explanation--further guidance to your mother's
grave. Oh, secret and obscure as it is, is it not guarded by angels?
Have you not been already led to it?"
She left off abruptly--she heard a ring at the outer gate--the hour had
come--it must be Neville! She placed the papers in the writing-case, and
directing and sealing the letter, gave both to the servant, to be
delivered to him. Scarcely was this done, when suddenly it flashed
across her how the relative situations of Neville and herself were
changed. That morning she had been his chosen friend--into her ear he
poured the history of his hopes and fears--he claimed her sympathy--and
she felt that from her he derived a happiness never felt before. Now he
must regard her as the daughter of his mother's destroyer, and should
she ever see him more? Instinctively she rushed to the highest room of
the house to catch one other glimpse. By the time she reached the
window, the act was fulfilled that changed both their lives--the packet
given. Dimly, in the twilight, she saw a horseman emerge from under the
wall of the garden, and slowly cross the heath; slowly at first, as if
he did not comprehend what had happened, or what he was doing. There is
something that excites unspeakable tenderness when the form of the loved
one is seen, even from far; and Elizabeth, though unaware of the nature
and depth of her sensations, yet felt her heart soften and yearn towards
her friend. A blessing fell from her lips; while the consciousness of
all of doubtful and sad that he must at that moment experience, at being
sent from her door with a written communication only, joined to the
knowledge that each succeeding hour would add to the barriers that
separated them, so overcame her, that when at last he put spurs to his
horse, and was borne out of sight into the thickening twilight, she
burst into a passion of tears, and wept for some time, not knowing what
she did, nor where she was; but feeling that from that hour the colour
of her existence was changed--its golden hue departed--and that patience
and resignation must henceforth take place of gladness and hope.
She roused herself after a few minutes from this sort of trance, and her
thoughts reverted to Falkner. There are few crimes so enormous but that,
when we undertake to analyze their motives, they do not find some excuse
and pardon in the eyes of all except their perpetrators. Sympathy is
more of a deceiver than conscience. The stander-by may dilate on the
force of passion and the power of temptation, but the guilty are not
cheated by such subterfuges; he knows that the still voice within was
articulate to him. He remembers that at the moment of action he felt his
arm checked, his ear warned; he could have stopped, and been innocent.
Perhaps of all the scourges wielded by the dread Eumenides, there is
none so torturing as the consciousness of the wilfulness of the act
deplored. It is a mysterious principle, to be driven out by no
reasonings, no commonplace philosophy. It had eaten into Falkner's soul;
taken sleep from his eyes, strength from his limbs, every healthy and
self-complacent sentiment from his soul.
Elizabeth, however, innocent and good as she was, fancied a thousand
excuses for an act, whose frightful catastrophe was not foreseen.
Falkner called himself a murderer; but, though the untimely death of the
unfortunate Alithea was brought about by his means, so far from being
guilty of the deed, he would have given a thousand lives to save her.
Since her death, she well knew that sleep had not refreshed, nor food
nourished him. He was blighted, turned from all the uses and enjoyments
of life; he desired the repose of the grave; he had sought death; he had
made himself akin to the grim destroyer.
That he had acted wrongly, nay, criminally, Elizabeth acknowledged. But
by how many throes of anguish, by what repentance and sacrifice of all
that life holds dear, had he not expiated the past! Elizabeth longed to
see him again, to tell him how fondly she still loved him, how he was
exalted, not debased, in her eyes; to comfort him with her sympathy,
cherish him with her love. It was true that she did not quite approve of
the present state of his mind; there was too much of pride, too much
despair. But when he found that, instead of scorn, his confession met
with compassion and redoubled affection, his heart would soften, he
would no longer desire to die, so to escape from blame and retribution;
but be content to endure, and teach himself that resignation which is
the noblest and most unattainable temper of mind to which humanity may
aspire.