Such scenes had tempered with a pensive grace
The maiden lustre of that faultless face;
Had hung a sad and dreamlike spell upon
The gliding music of her silver tone,
And shaded the soft soul which loved to lie
In the deep pathos of that volumed eye.--O’Neill; or, The Rebel.
The love thus kindled between them was of no common or
calculating nature: it was vigorous and delicious, and at
times so suddenly intense as to appear to their young hearts
for a moment or so with almost an awful character.--
Inesilla.
The reader will figure to himself a small chamber, in a remote wing of
a large and noble mansion. The walls were covered with sketches whose
extreme delicacy of outline and colouring betrayed the sex of the
artist; a few shelves filled with books supported vases of flowers. A
harp stood neglected at the farther end of the room, and just above
hung the slender prison of one of those golden wanderers from the Canary
Isles which bear to our colder land some of the gentlest music of their
skies and zephyrs. The window, reaching to the ground, was open,
and looked, through the clusters of jessamine and honeysuckle which
surrounded the low veranda, beyond upon thick and frequent copses of
blossoming shrubs, redolent of spring and sparkling in the sunny tears
of a May shower which had only just wept itself away. Embosomed in these
little groves lay plots of flowers, girdled with turf as green as ever
wooed the nightly dances of the fairies; and afar off, through one
artful opening, the eye caught the glittering wanderings of water, on
whose light and smiles the universal happiness of the young year seemed
reflected.
But in that chamber, heedless of all around, and cold to the joy with
which everything else, equally youthful, beautiful, and innocent, seemed
breathing and inspired, sat a very young and lovely female. Her cheek
leaned upon her hand, and large tears flowed fast and burningly over the
small and delicate fingers. The comb that had confined her tresses lay
at her feet, and the high dress which concealed her swelling breast had
been loosened, to give vent to the suffocating and indignant throbbings
which had rebelled against its cincture; all appeared to announce that
bitterness of grief when the mind, as it were, wreaks its scorn upon
the body in its contempt for external seemings, and to proclaim that the
present more subdued and softened sorrow had only succeeded to a burst
far less quiet and uncontrolled. Woe to those who eat the bread of
dependence their tears are wrung from the inmost sources of the heart.
Isabel St. Leger was the only child of a captain in the army who died
in her infancy; her mother had survived him but a few months; and to the
reluctant care and cold affections of a distant and wealthy relation
of the same name the warm-hearted and penniless orphan was consigned.
Major-General Cornelius St. Leger, whose riches had been purchased in
India at the price of his constitution, was of a temper as hot as his
curries, and he wreaked it the more unsparingly on his ward, because the
superior ill-temper of his maiden sister had prevented his giving
vent to it upon her. That sister, Miss Diana St. Leger, was a meagre
gentlewoman of about six feet high, with a loud voice and commanding
aspect. Long in awe of her brother, she rejoiced at heart to find some
one whom she had such right and reason to make in awe of herself; and
from the age of four to that of seventeen Isabel suffered every insult
and every degradation which could be inflicted upon her by the tyranny
of her two protectors. Her spirit, however, was far from being broken
by the rude shocks it received; on the contrary, her mind, gentleness
itself to the kind, rose indignantly against the unjust. It was true
that the sense of wrong did not break forth audibly; for, though
susceptible, Isabel was meek, and her pride was concealed by the outward
softness and feminacy of her temper: but she stole away from those who
had wounded her heart or trampled upon its feelings, and nourished with
secret but passionate tears the memory of the harshness or injustice she
had endured. Yet she was not vindictive: her resentment was a noble
not a debasing feeling; once, when she was yet a child, Miss Diana was
attacked with a fever of the most malignant and infectious kind; her
brother loved himself far too well to risk his safety by attending her;
the servants were too happy to wreak their hatred under the pretence
of obeying their fears; they consequently followed the example of their
master; and Miss Diana St. Leger might have gone down to her ancestors
“unwept, unhonoured, and unsung,” if Isabel had not volunteered and
enforced her attendance. Hour after hour her fairy form flitted around
the sick-chamber; or sat mute and breathless by the feverish bed; she
had neither fear for contagion nor bitterness for past oppression;
everything vanished beneath the one hope of serving, the one
gratification of feeling herself, in the wide waste of creation, not
utterly without use, as she had been hitherto without friends.
Miss St. Leger recovered. “For your recovery, in the first place,” said
the doctor, “you will thank Heaven; in the second, you will thank your
young relation;” and for several days the convalescent did overwhelm the
happy Isabel with her praises and caresses. But this change did not last
long: the chaste Diana had been too spoiled by the prosperity of many
years for the sickness of a single month to effect much good in her
disposition. Her old habits were soon resumed; and though it is probable
that her heart was in reality softened towards the poor Isabel, that
softening by no means extended to her temper. In truth, the brother and
sister were not without affection for one so beautiful and good, but
they had been torturing slaves all their lives, and their affection was,
and could be, but that of a taskmaster or a planter.
But Isabel was the only relation who ever appeared within their walls;
and among the guests with whom the luxurious mansion was crowded, she
passed no less for the heiress than the dependant; to her, therefore,
was offered the homage of many lips and hearts, and if her pride was
perpetually galled and her feelings insulted in private, her vanity (had
that equalled her pride and her feelings in its susceptibility) would
in no slight measure have recompensed her in public. Unhappily, however,
her vanity was the least prominent quality she possessed; and the
compliments of mercenary adulation were not more rejected by her heart
than despised by her understanding.
Yet did she bear within her a deep fund of buried tenderness, and a
mine of girlish and enthusiastic romance,--dangerous gifts to one so
situated, which, while they gave to her secret moments of solitude a
powerful but vague attraction, probably only prepared for her future
years the snare which might betray them into error or the delusion which
would colour them with regret.
Among those whom the ostentatious hospitality of General St. Leger
attracted to his house was one of very different character and
pretensions to the rest. Formed to be unpopular with the generality of
men, the very qualities that made him so were those which principally
fascinate the higher description of women of ancient birth, which
rendered still more displeasing the pride and coldness of his mien; of
talents peculiarly framed to attract interest as well as esteem; of
a deep and somewhat morbid melancholy, which, while it turned from
ordinary ties, inclined yearningly towards passionate affections; of
a temper where romance was only concealed from the many to become more
seductive to the few; unsocial, but benevolent; disliked, but respected;
of the austerest demeanour, but of passions the most fervid, though
the most carefully concealed,--this man united within himself all that
repels the common mass of his species, and all that irresistibly wins
and fascinates the rare and romantic few. To these qualities were added
a carriage and bearing of that high and commanding order which men
mistake for arrogance and pretension, and women overrate in proportion
to its contrast to their own. Something of mystery there was in the
commencement of the deep and eventful love which took place between this
person and Isabel, which I have never been able to learn whatever it
was, it seemed to expedite and heighten the ordinary progress of love;
and when in the dim twilight, beneath the first melancholy smile of
the earliest star, their hearts opened audibly to each other, that
confession had been made silently long since and registered in the
inmost recesses of the soul.
But their passion, which began in prosperity, was soon darkened. Whether
he took offence at the haughtiness of Isabel’s lover, or whether
he desired to retain about him an object which he could torment and
tyrannize over, no sooner did the General discover the attachment of his
young relation than he peremptorily forbade its indulgence, and assumed
so insolent and overbearing an air towards the lover that the latter
felt he could no longer repeat his visits to or even continue his
acquaintance with the nabob.
To add to these adverse circumstances, a relation of the lover, from
whom his expectations had been large, was so enraged, not only at the
insult his cousin had received, but at the very idea of his forming an
alliance with one in so dependent a situation and connected with
such new blood as Isabel St. Leger, that, with that arrogance which
relations, however distant, think themselves authorized to assume, he
enjoined his cousin, upon pain of forfeiture of favour and fortune, to
renounce all idea of so disparaging an alliance. The one thus addressed
was not of a temper patiently to submit to such threats: he answered
them with disdain; and the breach, so dangerous to his pecuniary
interest, was already begun.
So far had the history of our lover proceeded at the time in which we
have introduced Isabel to the reader, and described to him the chamber
to which, in all her troubles and humiliations, she was accustomed to
fly, as to a sad but still unviolated sanctuary of retreat.
The quiet of this asylum was first broken by a slight rustling among
the leaves; but Isabel’s back was turned towards the window, and in
the engrossment of her feelings she heard it not. The thick copse that
darkened the left side of the veranda was pierced, and a man passed
within the covered space, and stood still and silent before the window,
intently gazing upon the figure, which (though the face was turned
from him) betrayed in its proportions that beauty which in his eyes had
neither an equal nor a fault.
The figure of the stranger, though not very tall, was above the ordinary
height, and gracefully rather than robustly formed. He was dressed in
the darkest colours and the simplest fashion, which rendered yet more
striking the nobleness of his mien, as well as the clear and almost
delicate paleness of his complexion; his features were finely and
accurately formed; and had not ill health, long travel, or severe
thought deepened too much the lines of the countenance, and sharpened
its contour, the classic perfection of those features would have
rendered him undeniably and even eminently handsome. As it was, the
paleness and the somewhat worn character of his face, joined to an
expression at first glance rather haughty and repellent, made him lose
in physical what he certainly gained in intellectual beauty. His eyes
were large, deep, and melancholy, and had the hat which now hung over
his brow been removed, it would have displayed a forehead of remarkable
boldness and power.
Altogether, the face was cast in a rare and intellectual mould, and,
if wanting in those more luxuriant attractions common to the age of the
stranger, who could scarcely have attained his twenty-sixth year, it
betokened, at least, that predominance of mind over body which in some
eyes is the most requisite characteristic of masculine beauty.
With a soft and noiseless step, the stranger moved from his station
without the window, and, entering the room, stole towards the spot on
which Isabel was sitting. He leaned over her chair, and his eye rested
upon his own picture, and a letter in his own writing, over which the
tears of the young orphan flowed fast.
A moment more of agitated happiness for one, of unconscious and
continued sadness for the other,--
“‘T is past, her lover’s at her feet.”
And what indeed “was to them the world beside, with all its changes
of time and tide”? Joy, hope, all blissful and bright sensations, lay
mingled, like meeting waters, in one sunny stream of heartfelt and
unfathomable enjoyment; but this passed away, and the remembrance of
bitterness and evil succeeded.
“Oh, Algernon!” said Isabel, in a low voice, “is this your promise?”
“Believe me,” said Mordaunt, for it was indeed he, “I have struggled
long with my feelings, but in vain; and for both our sakes, I rejoice at
the conquest they obtained. I listened only to a deceitful delusion when
I imagined I was obeying the dictates of reason. Ah, dearest, why should
we part for the sake of dubious and distant evils, when the misery of
absence is the most certain, the most unceasing evil we can endure?”
“For your sake, and therefore for mine!” interrupted Isabel, struggling
with her tears. “I am a beggar and an outcast. You must not link your
fate with mine. I could bear, Heaven knows how willingly, poverty and
all its evils for you and with you; but I cannot bring them upon you.”
“Nor will you,” said Mordaunt, passionately, as he covered the hand he
held with his burning kisses. “Have I not enough for both of us? It is
my love, not poverty, that I beseech you to share.”
“No! Algernon, you cannot deceive me; your own estate will be torn from
you by the law: if you marry me, your cousin will not assist you; I, you
know too well, can command nothing; and I shall see you, for whom in
my fond and bright dreams I have presaged everything great and exalted,
buried in an obscurity from which your talents can never rise, and
suffering the pangs of poverty and dependence and humiliation like
my own; and--and--I--should be the wretch who caused you all. Never,
Algernon, never!--I love you too--too well!”
But the effort which wrung forth the determination of the tone in which
these words were uttered was too violent to endure; and, as the full
desolation of her despair crowded fast and dark upon the orphan’s mind,
she sank back upon her chair in very sickness of soul, nor heeded, in
her unconscious misery, that her hand was yet clasped by her lover and
that her head drooped upon his bosom.
“Isabel,” he said, in a low, sweet tone, which to her ear seemed the
concentration of all earthly music,--“Isabel, look up,--my own, my
beloved,--look up and hear me. Perhaps you say truly when you tell me
that the possessions of my house shall melt away from me, and that my
relation will not offer to me the precarious bounty which, even if he
did offer, I would reject; but, dearest, are there not a thousand
paths open to me,--the law, the state, the army?--you are silent,
Isabel,--speak!”
Isabel did not reply, but the soft eyes which rested upon his told, in
their despondency, how little her reason was satisfied by the arguments
he urged.
“Besides,” he continued, “we know not yet whether the law may not decide
in my favour: at all events years may pass before the judgment is given;
those years make the prime and verdure of our lives; let us not waste
them in mourning over blighted hopes and severed hearts; let us snatch
what happiness is yet in our power, nor anticipate, while the heavens
are still bright above us, the burden of the thunder or the cloud.”
Isabel was one of the least selfish and most devoted of human beings,
yet she must be forgiven if at that moment her resolution faltered, and
the overpowering thought of being in reality his forever flashed upon
her mind. It passed from her the moment it was formed; and, rising from
a situation in which the touch of that dear hand and the breath of
those wooing lips endangered the virtue and weakened the strength of her
resolves, she withdrew herself from his grasp, and while she averted her
eyes, which dared not encounter his, she said in a low but firm voice,--
“It is in vain, Algernon; it is in vain. I can be to you nothing but a
blight or burden, nothing but a source of privation and anguish. Think
you that I will be this?--no, I will not darken your fair hopes and
impede your reasonable ambition. Go (and here her voice faltered for a
moment, but soon recovered its tone), go, Algernon, dear Algernon; and
if my foolish heart will not ask you to think of me no more, I can at
least implore you to think of me only as one who would die rather than
cost you a moment of that poverty and debasement, the bitterness of
which she has felt herself, and who for that very reason tears herself
away from you forever.”
“Stay, Isabel, stay!” cried Mordaunt, as he caught hold of her robe,
“give me but one word more, and you shall leave me. Say that if I can
create for myself a new source of independence; if I can carve out a
road where the ambition you erroneously impute to me can be gratified,
as well as the more moderate wishes our station has made natural to us
to form,--say, that if I do this, I may permit myself to hope,--say,
that when I have done it, I may claim you as my own!”
Isabel paused, and turned once more her face towards his own. Her lips
moved, and though the words died within her heart, yet Mordaunt read
well their import in the blushing cheek and the heaving bosom, and the
lips which one ray of hope and comfort was sufficient to kindle into
smiles. He gazed, and all obstacles, all difficulties, disappeared; the
gulf of time seemed passed, and he felt as if already he had earned and
won his reward.
He approached her yet nearer; one kiss on those lips, one pressure
of that thrilling hand, one long, last embrace of that shrinking and
trembling form,--and then, as the door closed upon his view, he felt
that the sunshine of Nature had passed away, and that in the midst of
the laughing and peopled earth he stood in darkness and alone.