At length, then, you are to be mine--you have consented to fly with me.
In three days we shall leave this country, and have no home--no world but
in each other. We will go, my Emily, to those golden lands where Nature,
the only companion we will suffer, woos us, like a mother, to find our
asylum in her breast; where the breezes are languid beneath the passion
of the voluptuous skies; and where the purple light that invests all
things with its glory is only less tender and consecrating than the
spirit which we bring. Is there not, my Emily, in the external nature
which reigns over creation, and that human nature centred in ourselves,
some secret and undefinable intelligence and attraction? Are not the
impressions of the former as spells over the passions of the later? and
in gazing upon the loveliness around us, do we not gather, as it were,
and store within our hearts, an increase of the yearning and desire of
love? What can we demand from earth but its solitudes--what from heaven
but its unpolluted air? All that others would ask from either, we can
find in ourselves. Wealth--honour--happiness--every object of ambition
or desire, exist not for us without the circle of our arms! But the
bower that surrounds us shall not be unworthy of your beauty or our love.
Amidst the myrtle and the vine, and the valleys where the summer sleeps
and "the rivers that murmur the memories and the legends of old amidst
the hills and the glossy glades," and the silver fountains, still as
beautiful as if the Nymph and Spirit yet held and decorated an earthly
home; amidst these we will make the couch of our bridals, and the moon of
Italian skies shall keep watch on our repose.
Emily!--Emily!--how I love to repeat and to linger over that beautiful
name! If to see, to address, and, more than all, to touch you, has been
a rapture, what word can I find in the vocabulary of happiness to express
the realisation of that hope which now burns within me--to mingle our
youth together into one stream, wheresoever it flows; to respire the same
breath; to be almost blent in the same existence; to grow, as it were, on
one stem, and knit into a single life the feelings, the wishes, the being
of both!
To-night I shall see you again: let one day more intervene, and--I cannot
conclude the sentence. As I have written, the tumultuous happiness of
hope has come over me to confuse and overwhelm everything else. At this
moment my pulse riots with fever; the room swims before my eyes;
everything is indistinct and jarring--a chaos of emotions. Oh! that
happiness should ever have such excess!
When Emily received and laid this letter to her heart, she felt nothing
in common with the spirit which it breathed. With that quick transition
and inconstancy of feeling connmon in women, and which is as frequently
their safety as their peril, her mind had already repented of the
weakness of the last evening, and relapsed into the irresolution and
bitterness of her former remorse. Never had there been in the human
breast a stronger contest between conscience and passion;--if, indeed,
the extreme softness (notwithstanding its power) of Emily's attachment
could be called passion it was rather a love that had refined by the
increase of its own strength; it contained nothing but the primary guilt
of conceiving it, which that order of angels, whose nature is love, would
have sought to purify away. To see him, to live with him, to count the
variations of his countenance and voice, to touch his hand at moments
when waking, and watch over his slumbers when he slept--this was the
essence of her wishes, and constituted the limit to her desires. Against
the temptations of the present was opposed the whole history of the past.
Her mind wandered from each to each, wavering and wretched, as the
impulse of the moment impelled it. Hers was not, indeed, a strong
character; her education and habits had weakened, while they rendered
more feminine and delicate, a nature originally too soft. Every
recollection of former purity called to her with the loud voice of duty,
as a warning from the great guilt she was about to incur; and whenever
she thought of her child--that centre of fond and sinless sensations,
where once she had so wholly garnered up her heart--her feelings melted
at once from the object which had so wildly held them riveted as by a
spell, to dissolve and lose themselves in the great and sacred fountain
of a mother's love.
When Falkland came that evening, she was sitting at a corner of the
saloon, apparently occupied in reading, but her eyes were fixed upon her
boy, whom Mrs. St. John was endeavouring at the opposite end of the room
to amuse. The child, who was fond of Falkland, came up to him as he
entered: Falkland stooped to kiss him; and Mrs. St. John said, in a low
voice which just reached his ear, "Judas, too, kissed before he
betrayed." Falkland's colour changed: he felt the sting the words were
intended to convey. On that child, now so innocently caressing him, he
was indeed about to inflict a disgrace and injury the most sensible and
irremediable in his power. But who ever indulges reflection in passion?
He banished the remorse from his mind as instantaneously as it arose;
and, seating himself by Emily, endeavoured to inspire her with a portion
of the joy and hope which animated himself. Mrs. St. John watched them
with a jealous and anxious eye: she had already seen how useless had been
her former attempt to arm Emily's conscience effectually against her
lover; but she resolved at least to renew the impression she had then
made. The danger was imminent, and any remedy must be prompt; and it was
something to protract, even if she could not finally break off, an union
against which were arrayed all the angry feelings of jealousy, as well as
the better affections of the friend. Emily's eye was already brightening
beneath the words that Falkland whispered in her ear, when Mrs. St. John
approached her. She placed herself on a chair beside them, and unmindful
of Falkland's bent and angry brow, attempted to create a general and
commonplace conversation. Lady Margaret had invited two or three people
in the neighbourhood; and when these came in, music and cards were
resorted to immediately, with that English politesse, which takes the
earliest opportunity to show that the conversation of our friends is the
last thing for which we have invited them. But Mrs. St. John never left
the lovers; and at last, when Falkland, in despair at her obstinacy,
arose to join the card-table, she said, "Pray, Mr. Falkland, were you not
intimate at one time with * * * * , who eloped with Lady * * *?" "I knew
him but slightly," said Falkland; and then added, with a sneer, "the only
times I ever met him were at your house." Mrs. St. John, without
noticing the sarcasm, continued:--"What an unfortunate affair that
proved! They were very much attached to one another in early life--the
only excuse, perhaps for a woman's breaking her subsequent vows. They
eloped. The remainder of their history is briefly told: it is that of
all who forfeit everything for passion, and forget that of everything it
is the briefest in duration. He who had sacrificed his honour for her,
sacrificed her also as lightly for another. She could not bear his
infidelity; and how could she reproach him? In the very act of yielding
to, she had become unworthy of, his love. She did not reproach him--she
died of a broken heart! I saw her just before her death, for I was
distantly related to her, and I could not forsake her utterly even in her
sin. She then spoke to me only of the child by her former marriage, whom
she had left in the years when it most needed her care: she questioned me
of its health--its education--its very growth: the minutest thing was not
beneath her inquiry. His tidings were all that brought back to her mind
'the redolence of joy and spring.' I brought that child to her one day:
he at least had never forgotten her. How bitterly both wept when they
were separated! and she--poor, poor Ellen--an hour after their separation
was no more!" There was a pause for a few minutes. Emily was deeply
affected. Mrs. St. John had anticipated the effect she had produced, and
concerted the method to increase it. "It is singular," she resumed,
"that, the evening before her elopement, some verses were sent to her
anonymously--I do not think, Emily, that you have ever seen them. Shall
I sing them to you now?" and, without waiting for a reply, she placed
herself at the piano; and with a low but sweet voice, greatly aided in
effect by the extreme feeling of her manner, she sang the following
verses:
1.
And wilt thou leave that happy home,
Where once it was so sweet to live?
Ah! think, before thou seek'st to roam,
What safer shelter Guilt can give!
2.
The Bird may rove, and still regain
With spotless wings, her wonted rest,
But home, once lost, is ne'er again
Restored to Woman's erring breast!
3.
If wandering o'er a world of flowers,
The heart at times would ask repose;
But thou wouldst lose the only bowers
Of rest amid a world of woes.
4.
Recall thy youth's unsullied vow
The past which on thee smile so fair;
Then turn from thence to picture now
The frowns thy future fate must wear!
5.
No hour, no hope, can bring relief
To her who hides a blighted name;
For hearts unbow'd by stormiest _grief_
Will break beneath one breeze of _shame_!
6.
And when thy child's deserted years
Amid life's early woes are thrown,
Shall menial bosoms soothe the tears
That should be shed on thine alone?
7.
When on thy name his lips shall call,
(That tender name, the earliest taught!)
Thou wouldst not Shame and Sin were all
The memories link'd around its thought!
8.
If Sickness haunt his infant bed,
Ah! what could then replace thy care?
Could hireling steps as gently tread
As if a Mother's soul was there?
9.
Enough! 'tis not too late to shun
The bitter draught thyself wouldst fill;
The latest link is not undone
Thy bark is in the haven still.
10.
If doom'd to grief through life thou art,
'Tis thine at least unstain'd to die!
Oh! better break at once thy heart
Than rend it from its holiest tie!
It were vain to attempt describing Emily's feelings when the song ceased.
The scene floated before her eyes indistinct and dark. The violence of
the emotions she attempted to conceal pressed upon her almost to choking.
She rose, looked at Falkland with one look of such anguish and despair
that it froze his very heart, and left the room without uttering a word.
A moment more--they heard a noise--a fall. They rushed out--Emily was
stretched on the ground, apparently lifeless. She had broken a
blood-vessel