Shall then, in earnest truth,
My careful eyes observe her?
Shall I consume my youth,
And short my time to serve her?
Shall I beyond my strength,
Let passion’s torments prove me,
To hear her say at length
“Away,—I cannot love thee!”
GEORGE WITHER.—A.D. 1588.
Ellen was one morning quietly seated in the back drawing-room which had
been given up to her and her children; the elder ones were employed,
George in reading to his mother, and Caroline in working, seated on a
stool at her feet, while the little Agnes was playing on the floor.
Ellen heard a knock at the door. Every sound made her start. She heard
a loud voice in the passage! A voice! His voice! Yes it was his voice
whom she had so long believed in the grave, uttering in loud and stern
accents, “Show me to Mrs. Cresford,—I must instantly see her,” and he
darted by the servant up the stairs.
“Not into the front room, sir,” the servant called out; “there is
company in the front room! the back room, sir, if you please.”
Cresford burst open the door, and stood before her, pale and haggard.
She did not faint, she did not scream: she had risen from her seat, and
she stood transfixed!
She was as beautiful as ever. Sorrow could but dim her brilliancy,—the
finely chiselled features, the marble brow, the angelic expression, the
feminine dignity, were all there. Cresford gazed in agonized admiration.
“How I have longed for this moment!—this moment, which proves one of
torture! Ellen, Ellen, you never loved me, or you could not have done
what you have done. But I was resolved to see you again.—Yes, if heaven
and hell had conspired against me, I would have gazed upon that face
again.” She hid her face with her hands. “No,” he said, and forcibly
removed them, “I will look upon those features. It was the recollection
of those eyes, of that brow, those lips, which made me cling to life,
while they induced me to hazard it a thousand times to gain another
sight of them; it was to gaze on them that I practised the imposture by
which I escaped from my prison; it was to gaze on them that I preserved
my life, though treated as a spy, a prisoner, and a maniac!”
Ellen shook from head to foot. Fear, simple, deadly fear, absorbed
every other feeling. She spoke not, she struggled not.
“Ellen, do you love me still? Have you thought of me in absence? Have
you wept for me? Is your heart faithful?”
A horrible surmise crossed her. Surely he could not contemplate the
idea of taking her back.—“Do you love me, Ellen?” he repeated, and he
still held her hands.
“I pity you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Do you love me?” and he dashed her hands from him.
“No!” she exclaimed, clasping them earnestly, “No! my whole heart,
soul, and affections are Algernon’s,” and she sank on the floor.
“And do I live to hear you avow your guilt? Shameless, abandoned
creature! You, whom I so worshipped! now, now,—in truth my brain will
madden!” He struck his forehead with his clenched hands. Then looking
round, “These are my children, are they not?—I believed them mine. Yes,
yes, they are mine, and mine they shall be! Come with me, children; you
shall not remain to be contaminated by the example of a creature who
glories in her shame. And this,” he added, and lifted the little Agnes
from the floor, “this, this is _his_ child! Take it,—take it, before
I commit any crime I may repent of!” Ellen rushed to it, tore it from
him, and hugged it to her bosom. “But these are mine!” he continued,
and “these are mine, by every law of nature and of man!” He seized one
in each hand. She flew to him,—she clung round his feet. He looked down
on her in triumph.
“Oh, spare my children! Oh, Charles, have mercy upon me,” and she
desperately held the children who clung round her.
At this moment Captain Wareham, who had heard the tumult, entered,
“Captain Wareham, you see a man who claims his children—his children—by
the law of the land, his! I conclude you will not interfere with the
exercise of my rights as a free-born Englishman.”
Ellen had sunk exhausted and sobbing on the floor, feeling that her
father would protect her, and preserve her children.
“Surely, Mr. Cresford, this is not the manner in which an Englishman,
and a gentleman, would enforce his rights.”
“I have been taunted by that woman with her love for another man, and I
cannot leave my children in her keeping. They must be delivered up to
me.”
“They shall—they shall, Mr. Cresford. I pledge myself that before
evening they shall be sent to you, at any place you may appoint.”
“I am at the hotel opposite, sir, and there I await them within the
next two hours.”
He darted down the stairs, and out of the house.
The terrified children hung round their mother; Captain Wareham
supported her; Caroline—Matilda rushed in. Concealment was no longer
practicable—despair and consternation prevailed through the whole
house. The two Miss Parkses, who had been “the company in the front
drawing-room,” discreetly took their departure, but not before they had
seen and heard enough to be perfectly _au fait_ as to the cause of the
confusion, and, in a quarter-of-an-hour, the fact of Mrs. Hamilton’s
first husband’s return was known in every house in the Close, and in
half-an-hour more throughout the whole town. But one feeling, however,
prevailed—sincere sorrow for the unfortunate Ellen!
Her manners were so gentle, she had not an enemy—her conduct so
irreproachable, that even the slander of a country-town coterie had
never approached her name. Every one felt disposed to be angry with Mr.
Cresford for being alive, and many a parent made use of the event to
impress upon the minds of their children the dreadful consequences of a
deviation from truth, under any circumstances whatsoever.
Why should we return to the scene where Ellen is helplessly kissing
her two elder children, while they are as helplessly hanging around
her? The idea of resistance never for a moment crossed her. The strong
arm of the law she knew could wrest them from her—there was no hope of
touching Cresford’s heart. Ellen thought this was the bitterest drop
of all, in her cup of woe. To be parted from the beings over whose
welfare, bodily and mental, she had so carefully watched; in whom she
had with tender, and patient care, sown the seeds of good, which she
now saw every day bearing fruit according to her most sanguine wishes!
The instinctive bond between mother and child may be equally strong
at all ages; but when, in addition to the natural pang at such a tie
being severed, there is the sorrowful and disappointing prospect of
seeing your labour of love all wasted, and the grief of seeing your
sorrow shared by the innocent sufferers, there can be no anguish more
poignant, more hopeless.
In man there may exist a preference towards the children of the woman
he loves, over those of the woman he has not loved—not so in the
gentler sex. It frequently happens that maternal affection is the more
powerful principle in those who have been disappointed in their hopes
of conjugal happiness. The heart whose tenderness has been repelled
in one quarter, expands and fixes itself in the one other lawful
direction, and Ellen’s love for her elder children fully equalled that
she felt for the child of Algernon.
She has taken her last kiss of them; she has for the last time wrapped
the handkerchiefs close round their throats to defend them from the
chill of the evening; she has for the thousandth time bade them be
good children, and implored them to remember all she has told them
concerning their duty to God, and to their fellow-creatures. Above all,
she made them both promise never to forget to say their prayers, and
added, “never forget to pray for me, my children.”
“No, no, mamma; but we shall see you again soon.”
“We will hope so, my loves—we shall, I trust, meet again, here, or
elsewhere,” and her eyes sought that Heaven to which her spirit longed
to flee, and be at rest.
“We are not always to remain with that pale dark stranger?”
“He is your father, my children. You owe to him the same duty you owe
to me.” But she could not bid them love him, obey him, watch his every
look, and attend to his every word, as they did to hers, for alas!
she remembered but too well what was his violent uncertain temper in
happier days, and she trembled to think to what guardianship their
helpless innocence was committed.
“If strangers,” she added, “should speak slightingly of me,
darlings,—my own dear good children will not believe them. I know they
will not.”
Once more they were locked in a long and close embrace—gradually she
relaxed her hold. Matilda, Caroline, Captain Wareham gently unwound
them from her. The awe-struck children let themselves be quietly
withdrawn, and when Ellen recovered from her swoon, they were with
their father some miles on the road to London.
What were Cresford’s emotions?—Such was the tumult of his soul they
could scarcely be defined. The circumstances under which the children
had been introduced to their father were not such as to inspire them
with filial affection; and, notwithstanding their mother’s parting
injunction, they looked upon him with fear and horror, as the stranger
who had made mamma so unhappy, and had taken them away from her in such
a hurry. They could not the least comprehend what was meant by this
man’s being their father, for they remembered wearing black frocks for
a long time, because their father was dead.
Cresford saw the instinctive terror with which, when he kissed them,
and bade them love him, they shrank from his caresses. With increased
bitterness he exclaimed, “She has taught them to hate me! My own
children hate me,—my wife disowns me! I am an outcast on the face
of the earth! It had been better, a thousand times better for me to
have consumed away the remnant of my existence in my dungeon! There
I had hope!—I could think of my Ellen,—of my children! and fancy the
time might come when I should once more know happiness with them. Oh!
for those visionary days of fancied bliss!—how much better than this
horrible waking certainty of endless misery! But I will be revenged! If
I am miserable, those who have made me so shall not be happy!” And at
that moment he took the resolution of availing himself of every power
which the law placed in his hands, of bringing her, who had caused him
to be the wretch he was, to open and public shame.
The rest of the journey was performed in silence. His heart had been
too long seared by suffering, to open to parental affection. His
children showed none for him; he was not in a state of mind to attempt
to win it by patient kindness, and he felt injured as a father, as
well as a husband. In truth, a calmer, gentler disposition than his
might have had all the milk of human kindness turned to gall, in his
situation. He had most truly loved his wife, and his case was as
pitiable, and as hopeless a one, as can well be imagined. The mental
aberration to which he had slightly alluded, and which had prevented
him for some years from even attempting to make his imprisonment in
Austria known, either to his friends or to the Government, had been
brought on by the vehement and ungoverned nature of his passions;
which, as might be expected, did not meet with the soothing treatment
calculated to allay them, but, on the contrary, with every thing
tending most to inflame and irritate them. The reason which might have
controlled them remained, in some degree, weakened, while the passions
themselves were in full force.
Upon his arrival in London he deposited his children at an hotel, and
sallied forth in search of a lawyer. He walked to Lincoln’s Inn, and
knocked at the first door that presented itself. He was admitted, and
was shown up to a middle-aged, quiet little man, with spectacles upon
his nose.