TWO WORDS.
“Teach me to love and to forgive,
Exact my own defects to scan,
What others are to feel,—and know myself a man!”
GRAY.
“To lose thee! oh! to lose thee,—to live on
And see the sun, not thee! will the sun shine—
Will the birds sing—flowers bloom, when thou art gone?
Desolate! desolate!”
BULWER’S KING ARTHUR.
“Oh, I was sure that you would come,—quite sure! And Ida—my own precious
Ida!” The poor young girl clung to her sister as if they had been parted
for years.
“My husband!” exclaimed Annabella, trembling lest terrible news should
await her.
“He is much the same, but—”
“Where is he—I will fly to him; I—”
“My dear madam,” said the low voice of a stranger, as a tall, bald
gentleman in black came forth from the interior of the cottage, with his
finger raised to his lip, “may I request that no sound be uttered—my
patient is in a state of high fever.”
“I will quietly glide up to his room—”
“If, as I suppose, I have the honour of addressing the Countess of
Dashleigh, I trust that she will pardon my strictly forbidding any one
but Mr. Aumerle and the nurse from entering the chamber of the earl.”
“I am his wife!” murmured Annabella hoarsely.
“It is impossible,” said Dr. G——, “that you should meet without a degree
of excitement which might endanger the life or the reason of my patient.
The earl is in excellent hands; his friend, and the skilful attendant
whom I have provided, will watch him night and day. If any new face were
to be seen, I would not be answerable for the consequences.”
Dr. G—— had, of course, read “The Precipice and the Peer,” and naturally
concluded that its authoress was the last person who could with impunity
be admitted into the sick-room of the excited and fevered patient. From
the physician’s decision there was no appeal, though to Annabella it
appeared an intolerable sentence of banishment from the place to which
both duty and affection called her. Always ready to rush to a conclusion,
the unhappy wife was convinced that it was the just resentment of
Dashleigh against her, that rendered her of all beings in the world the
one whose presence he could not endure. Utterly prostrate and helpless
in her sorrow, the countess left to Ida all care for the arrangements of
the night. To herself it was nothing where she slept, or whether she ever
should sleep again; she was like a flower so crushed and bruised that it
will never more unfold its petals to the sun.
The rude cottage of the fisherman offered wretched accommodation for so
large a party. The earl occupied one of the two little bed-rooms which
were reached by a ladder-like staircase; in the other—an apartment not
ten feet square, with bare rafters, sloping roof, and single-paned window
engrained with dust and sea salt, and incapable of being opened—the
countess and her cousins passed the night. The gentlemen had to content
themselves with the bare floor of the kitchen below, redolent of the
scent of fish, and garlanded with nets and tackle,—an accommodation which
they shared with their rough, weather-beaten, but hospitable host.
Annabella and Ida were so much exhausted by previous excitement, fatigue,
and want of rest, that even in the miserable hovel they might have
slept deeply and long, had it not been for the sounds from the next
room, almost as distinctly heard through the slight partition as if the
apartments had been one. It was agony to the countess to hear the moans
of the fevered sufferer, or the wild words uttered in delirium. Ida
passed the night in vain endeavours to soothe and calm a wounded spirit,
while the weary Mabel peacefully slumbered beside them, unconscious of
what was passing around. It was almost as great a relief to Ida as to her
afflicted cousin when the morning broke at length, and welcome silence on
the other side of the partition told that the sufferer had sunk to rest.
Augustine Aumerle, after watching for hours at the bedside of the earl,
whom he alone had any power to soothe in the paroxysms of his terrible
malady, now resigned his post to the nurse, and descending the steep,
narrow staircase, went forth to calm and refresh his spirit by a brief
walk on the shore of the sea,—that sea in which he had so lately expected
to find a grave. As he stood gazing on the bright expanse of waters, and
enjoying the fresh morning breeze that, as it rippled the surface of the
sea, also brought back the hue of health to his pale and careworn cheek,
he was joined by Lawrence Aumerle.
Kindly greeting was exchanged between the brothers; questions were
asked and replies were given, and then a silence succeeded. Something
seemed pressing on the heart of each, to which the lip would not give
ready utterance. Augustine was the first to speak, but he did so without
looking at his brother; he rather seemed to be watching the sea-bird that
lightly floated on the wave.
“Lawrence, you remember the evening when we conversed together in your
study?”
“I have often thought of it since.”
“And so have I,” said Augustine; “I thought of it when I believed
that there was but one step between me and death,—when I expected in
a brief space to be in that world where we shall know even as we
are known,—where ours will not be the wild guess, but the absolute
certainty,—not the wild grasping at the shadow, but the laying hold on
the substance of truth.”
Lawrence fixed his eyes anxiously upon his brother, but did not interrupt
him by a word.
“You said that experience is the growth of time. Lawrence, I have, then,
lived an age in the last forty hours. A wide view of both heaven and
earth is gained from the terrible height that I reached!”
“Common experience is the growth of time,” said the vicar; “but spiritual
experience—”
“Give it in the words of inspiration,” interrupted Augustine; “I shall
no longer ask you to put aside that solemn evidence, even for a moment.
_Tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience._”
“_And experience, hope_;” cried the vicar. “Oh, my brother!—that blessed
hope shed abroad in the heart by the knowledge that Christ _died for the
ungodly_, that hope that alone _maketh not ashamed_, is it—oh! is it your
own?”
Augustine silently pressed the hand that had been unconsciously extended
towards him; it was his only reply to the question. Without another
sentence being uttered the brothers turned their steps in the direction
of the cottage. But while pacing the shingley beach, Augustine was
mentally subscribing to the confession of one of the brightest geniuses
of earth,—that he had hitherto been but as a child gathering pebbles
on the shore of the great ocean of truth; while the vicar was raising
to God, from the depths of a grateful heart, a thanksgiving for prayer
answered at the very time when, and through the very trial by which his
earthly happiness had appeared crushed and destroyed! He was proving, as
so many saints have proved, that—
“God’s purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower!”
As no object could be answered by the prolonged stay of Mr. Aumerle and
Mabel in the over-crowded cottage, they departed on that day for their
home. The countess could not endure to quit the spot, and Ida remained
to bear her company, while Augustine resumed his watch by his suffering
friend.
Day after day the once proud Earl of Dashleigh lay on a pallet-bed in
the fisherman’s rude hovel, mind and body alike prostrated by the fever
induced by the fearful trials which he had endured. He was passing indeed
through a burning fiery furnace, but its flame was consuming the dross
which had largely mixed with a nobler metal. When the powers of good and
evil contend together for the dominion over a human soul, it is as in the
battles of earth; dark and painful traces are often left behind of the
conflict, conquest is not attained without suffering. Never, perhaps, is
the strife more painful than when the enemy to be subdued is pride! Then
how often a merciful Providence sends humiliation, anguish, disgrace,
first to rouse the soul to a sense of its danger, and then to aid it in
the perilous war! From how much of suffering is exempted the _meek and
quiet spirit_ that has calmly laid down the shackles of pride, not left
them till some loving yet terrible dispensation should wrench them away
from the bleeding soul!
Annabella was deeply humbled; there was some danger that depression
might with her sink into hopeless despondency. Her ardent and volatile
disposition was ever prone to extremes, and she could not believe it
possible that her proud lord could ever forgive one who had wounded his
dignity so deeply,—one whose indiscretion had so nearly cost him his
life! The forced inaction to which she had to submit greatly increased
the trial to Annabella. If it had been possible for her to have done or
suffered anything in order to repair the evil that she had wrought, she
would have contemplated its effects with less overwhelming remorse. Had
the countess belonged to the Church of Rome, she would have wasted her
strength with fasting, lacerated her flesh by the scourge, or gone on
some painful pilgrimage in the hope of redeeming her fault. As it was,
she had to sit still—useless, helpless, receiving from time to time
tidings of her husband’s varying state from the lips of ministering
strangers! Annabella’s spirit might have altogether sunk under the
lengthened trial, but for the support of Ida’s calmer and more chastened
spirit, which had itself found its stay on the Rock of Ages.
On the sixth day of Dashleigh’s illness, his wife received from her
home a small packet, containing the little pocket-book which had been
her own earliest gift to her betrothed. The beautiful remembrance had
been accidentally discovered at no great distance from the letter which
Mabel had dropped; but its comparative weight had made it fall with an
impetus that had half imbedded it in the sod. Easily identified by the
coronet and name upon the shield, which marked it as the property of the
unfortunate nobleman, with whose fate the county was ringing, it had been
forwarded to Dashleigh Hall, and thence—still stained and clotted with
dust and mud—it had been sent on by her servants to the countess.
Annabella gazed on the book for some moments without daring to unfasten
the clasp. The sight of that little gift brought with it a crowd of
recollections of the time when wedded life had lain before fancy’s eye as
a bright, golden-clasped book, on whose yet blank pages hope, pleasure,
and love, would trace nothing but sentences of joy! Why was it that the
leaves of that life had been blistered and blotted with tears,—that the
gold had been tarnished, the beauty marred, and that the once joyous
bride now dreaded even to look upon what that book might contain!
“Open it for me, Ida, dearest,” murmured Annabella faintly; “I tremble
to behold what his fingers may have traced in that terrible hour!”
Ida silently obeyed, kneeling at the side of her unhappy cousin, whose
cold hand rested upon her shoulder. Ida turned slowly leaf after leaf.
There were various memoranda in the book, evidently written at an earlier
period—addresses of friends, names of books, engagements for days long
passed. Little of interest or importance could attach to entries such
as these. But almost at the end of the book, on a page otherwise blank,
appeared two words in pencil, traced evidently by a hand that had shaken
from weakness, excitement, or emotion. The words were barely legible, but
such as they were Ida with tremulous eagerness pointed them out to her
friend. Annabella caught the book from her hand, pressed it convulsively
to her lips, and while her eyes overflowed with tears and her heart with
thanksgiving, repeated again and again the two blessed words which spoke
_forgiveness_ and _peace_!
Even while the young wife’s tears were still flowing, a gentle tap was
heard at the door. Ida went and unclosed it; there was a low whispering
sound, and then the maiden returned to her cousin with a gentle smile on
her face as she said, laying her hand on that of the countess, “It is my
uncle, dearest; he comes to bring you good tidings. The earl is greatly
better,—has been speaking to him,—has been questioning him of you; he
knows—”
“Knows that I am here!” exclaimed Annabella, starting eagerly from her
seat.
“Yes, and wishes to see you,—nay, dearest, nay, you must be calm,—for his
sake you must still this wild excitement! Remember that he is still very
weak,—remember the danger of a relapse!”
“I am quite calm,” replied the young countess, collecting herself by a
strong effort, though her quivering voice still betrayed her emotion; “I
will do nothing to agitate my lord,—he shall not even hear a word from
my lips,—but oh! the bliss if I may once—but once hear from his those
precious words, _forgiveness_ and _peace_!”
With soft, noiseless step she glided to the low rough-hewn door which
opened into the room of her husband. Gently Annabella pushed it ajar,
and entered with a throbbing heart, and a mien as reverential and timid
as if she were approaching some solemn fane. That low dark room, with
uncarpeted floor, unpapered walls, furniture coarse and scanty contained
what she now felt was all the world to her.
No human friend intruded his presence on the sacredness of that scene
which ever after, to the memory of Annabella, hallowed that fisherman’s
hut. When the penitent wife knelt in lowly contrition by the pallet of
a husband so narrowly rescued from the jaws of the grave, and listened
breathlessly to the feeble accents which told her that the past was
cancelled,—that she was dear as ever to him still, angels may have looked
on rejoicing as upon a prodigal’s return, for no looming shadow darkened
the holy radiance of returning peace and love, no discord jarred on the
harmony of wedded souls,—the demon of pride was not there!