termed a man of the world. There was in his nature a gentleness, a
sweetness, a winning sensibility, allied to talent and personal
distinction, that gave weight to his simplest expressions, and excited
sympathy for all his emotions. His younger cousin, his junior by several
years, was attached to him by the tenderest sentiments—secret long—but
they were now betrothed to each other—a lovely, happy pair. She looked
inquiringly, but he turned away. “No more of this,” he said, and, giving
a swifter impulse to their boat, they speedily reached the shore,
landed, and walked through the long extent of Chapel Wood. It was dark
night before they met their carriage at Bishopsgate.
A week or two after, Horace received letters to call him to a distant
part of the country. A few days before his departure, he requested his
cousin to walk with him. They bent their steps across several meadows to
Old Windsor Churchyard. At first he did not deviate from the usual path;
and as they went they talked cheerfully—gaily. The beauteous sunny day
might well exhilarate them; the dancing waves sped onwards at their
feet; the country church lifted its rustic spire into the bright pure
sky. There was nothing in their conversation that could induce his
cousin to think that Neville had led her hither for any saddening
purpose; but when they were about to quit the churchyard, Horace, as if
he had suddenly recollected himself, turned from the path, crossed the
greensward, and paused beside a grave near the river. No stone was there
to commemorate the being who reposed beneath—it was thickly grown with
grass, starred by a luxuriant growth of humble daisies: a few dead
leaves, a broken bramble twig, defaced its neatness. Neville removed
these, and then said, “Juliet, I commit this sacred spot to your keeping
while I am away.”
“There is no monument,” he continued; “for her commands were implicitly
obeyed by the two beings to whom she addressed them. One day another may
lie near, and his name will be her epitaph. I do not mean myself,” he
said, half-smiling at the terror his cousin’s countenance expressed;
“but promise me, Juliet, to preserve this grave from every violation. I
do not wish to sadden you by the story; yet, if I have excited your
interest, I will satisfy it; but not now—not here.”
It was not till the following day, when, in company with her sister,
they again visited Virginia Water, that, seated under the shadow of its
pines, whose melodious swinging in the wind breathed unearthly harmony,
Neville, unasked, commenced his story.
“I was sent to Eton at eleven years of age. I will not dwell upon my
sufferings there; I would hardly refer to them, did they not make a part
of my present narration. I was a fag to a hard taskmaster; every labour
he could invent—and the youthful tyrant was ingenious—he devised for my
annoyance; early and late, I was forced to be in attendance, to the
neglect of my school duties, so incurring punishment. There were worse
things to bear than these: it was his delight to put me to shame, and,
finding that I had too much of my mother in my blood,—to endeavour to
compel me to acts of cruelty from which my nature revolted,—I refused to
obey. Speak of West Indian slavery! I hope things may be better now; in
my days, the tender years of aristocratic childhood were yielded up to a
capricious, unrelenting, cruel bondage, far beyond the measured
despotism of Jamaica.
“One day—I had been two years at school, and was nearly thirteen—my
tyrant, I will give him no other name, issued a command, in the
wantonness of power, for me to destroy a poor little bullfinch I had
tamed and caged. In a hapless hour he found it in my room, and was
indignant that I should dare to appropriate a single pleasure. I
refused, stubbornly, dauntlessly, though the consequence of my
disobedience was immediate and terrible. At this moment a message came
from my tormentor’s tutor—his father had arrived. ‘Well, old lad,’ he
cried, ‘I shall pay you off some day!’ Seizing my pet at the same time,
he wrung its neck, threw it at my feet, and, with a laugh of derision,
quitted the room.
“Never before—never may I again feel the same swelling, boiling fury in
my bursting heart;—the sight of my nursling expiring at my feet—my
desire of vengeance—my impotence, created a Vesuvius within me, that no
tears flowed to quench. Could I have uttered—acted—my passion, it would
have been less torturous: it was so when I burst into a torrent of abuse
and imprecation. My vocabulary—it must have been a choice collection—was
supplied by him against whom it was levelled. But words were air. I
desired to give more substantial proof of my resentment—I destroyed
everything in the room belonging to him; I tore them to pieces, I
stamped on them, crushed them with more than childish strength. My last
act was to seize a timepiece, on which my tyrant infinitely prided
himself, and to dash it to the ground. The sight of this, as it lay
shattered at my feet, recalled me to my senses, and something like an
emotion of fear allayed the tumult in my heart. I began to meditate an
escape: I got out of the house, ran down a lane, and across some
meadows, far out of bounds, above Eton. I was seen by an elder boy, a
friend of my tormentor. He called to me, thinking at first that I was
performing some errand for him; but seeing that I _shirked_, he repeated
his ‘_Come up!_’ in an authoritative voice. It put wings to my heels; he
did not deem it necessary to pursue. But I grow tedious, my dear Juliet;
enough that fears the most intense, of punishment both from my masters
and the upper boys, made me resolve to run away. I reached the banks of
the Thames, tied my clothes over my head, swam across, and, traversing
several fields, entered Windsor Forest, with a vague childish feeling of
being able to hide myself for ever in the unexplored obscurity of its
immeasurable wilds. It was early autumn; the weather was mild, even
warm; the forest oaks yet showed no sign of winter change, though the
fern beneath wore a yellowy tinge. I got within Chapel Wood; I fed upon
chestnuts and beechnuts; I continued to hide myself from the gamekeepers
and woodmen. I lived thus two days.
“But chestnuts and beechnuts were sorry fare to a growing lad of
thirteen years old. A day’s rain occurred, and I began to think myself
the most unfortunate boy on record. I had a distant, obscure idea of
starvation: I thought of the Children in the Wood, of their leafy
shroud, gift of the pious robin; this brought my poor bullfinch to my
mind, and tears streamed in torrents down my cheeks. I thought of my
father and mother; of you, then my little baby cousin and playmate; and
I cried with renewed fervour, till, quite exhausted, I curled myself up
under a huge oak among some dry leaves, the relics of a hundred summers,
and fell asleep.
“I ramble on in my narration as if I had a story to tell; yet I have
little except a portrait—a sketch—to present, for your amusement or
interest. When I awoke, the first object that met my opening eyes was a
little foot, delicately clad in silk and soft kid. I looked up in
dismay, expecting to behold some gaily dressed appendage to this
indication of high-bred elegance; but I saw a girl, perhaps seventeen,
simply clad in a dark cotton dress, her face shaded by a large, very
coarse straw hat; she was pale even to marmoreal whiteness; her
chestnut-coloured hair was parted in plain tresses across a brow which
wore traces of extreme suffering; her eyes were blue, full, large,
melancholy, often even suffused with tears; but her mouth had an
infantine sweetness and innocence in its expression, that softened the
otherwise sad expression of her countenance.
“She spoke to me. I was too hungry, too exhausted, too unhappy, to
resist her kindness, and gladly permitted her to lead me to her home. We
passed out of the wood by some broken palings on to Bishopsgate Heath,
and after no long walk arrived at her habitation. It was a solitary,
dreary-looking cottage; the palings were in disrepair, the garden waste,
the lattices unadorned by flowers or creepers; within, all was neat, but
sombre, and even mean. The diminutiveness of a cottage requires an
appearance of cheerfulness and elegance to make it pleasing; the bare
floor,—clean, it is true,—the rush chairs, deal table, checked curtains
of this cot, were beneath even a peasant’s rusticity; yet it was the
dwelling of my lovely guide, whose little white hand, delicately gloved,
contrasted with her unadorned attire, as did her gentle self with the
clumsy appurtenances of her too humble dwelling.
“Poor child! she had meant entirely to hide her origin, to degrade
herself to a peasant’s state, and little thought that she for ever
betrayed herself by the strangest incongruities. Thus, the arrangements
of her table were mean, her fare meagre for a hermit; but the linen was
matchlessly fine, and wax lights stood in candlesticks which a beggar
would almost have disdained to own. But I talk of circumstances I
observed afterwards; then I was chiefly aware of the plentiful breakfast
she caused her single attendant, a young girl, to place before me, and
of the sweet soothing voice of my hostess, which spoke a kindness with
which lately I had been little conversant. When my hunger was appeased,
she drew my story from me, encouraged me to write to my father, and kept
me at her abode till, after a few days, I returned to school pardoned.
No long time elapsed before I got into the upper forms, and my woful
slavery ended.
“Whenever I was able, I visited my disguised nymph. I no longer
associated with my schoolfellows; their diversions, their pursuits
appeared vulgar and stupid to me; I had but one object in view—to
accomplish my lessons, and to steal to the cottage of Ellen Burnet.
“Do not look grave, love! true, others as young as I then was have
loved, and I might also; but not Ellen. Her profound, her intense
melancholy, sister to despair—her serious, sad discourse—her mind,
estranged from all worldly concerns, forbade that; but there was an
enchantment in her sorrow, a fascination in her converse, that lifted me
above commonplace existence; she created a magic circle, which I entered
as holy ground: it was not akin to heaven, for grief was the presiding
spirit; but there was an exaltation of sentiment, an enthusiasm, a view
beyond the grave, which made it unearthly, singular, wild, enthralling.
You have often observed that I strangely differ from all other men; I
mingle with them, make one in their occupations and diversions, but I
have a portion of my being sacred from them:—a living well, sealed up
from their contamination, lies deep in my heart—it is of little use, but
there it is; Ellen opened the spring, and it has flowed ever since.
“Of what did she talk? She recited no past adventures, alluded to no
past intercourse with friend or relative; she spoke of the various woes
that wait on humanity, on the intricate mazes of life, on the miseries
of passion, of love, remorse, and death, and that which we may hope or
fear beyond the tomb; she spoke of the sensation of wretchedness alive
in her own broken heart, and then she grew fearfully eloquent, till,
suddenly pausing, she reproached herself for making me familiar with
such wordless misery. ‘I do you harm,’ she often said; ‘I unfit you for
society; I have tried, seeing you thrown upon yonder distorted miniature
of a bad world, to estrange you from its evil contagion; I fear that I
shall be the cause of greater harm to you than could spring from
association with your fellow-creatures in the ordinary course of things.
This is not well—avoid the stricken deer.’
“There were darker shades in the picture than those which I have already
developed. Ellen was more miserable than the imagination of one like
you, dear girl, unacquainted with woe, can portray. Sometimes she gave
words to her despair—it was so great as to confuse the boundary between
physical and mental sensation—and every pulsation of her heart was a
throb of pain. She has suddenly broken off in talking of her sorrows,
with a cry of agony—bidding me leave her—hiding her face on her arms,
shivering with the anguish some thought awoke. The idea that chiefly
haunted her, though she earnestly endeavoured to put it aside, was
self-destruction—to snap the silver cord that bound together so much
grace, wisdom, and sweetness—to rob the world of a creation made to be
its ornament. Sometimes her piety checked her; oftener a sense of
unendurable suffering made her brood with pleasure over the dread
resolve. She spoke of it to me as being wicked; yet I often fancied this
was done rather to prevent her example from being of ill effect to me,
than from any conviction that the Father of all would regard angrily the
last act of His miserable child. Once she had prepared the mortal
beverage; it was on the table before her when I entered; she did not
deny its nature, she did not attempt to justify herself; she only
besought me not to hate her, and to soothe by my kindness her last
moments.—‘I cannot live!’ was all her explanation, all her excuse; and
it was spoken with such fervent wretchedness that it seemed wrong to
attempt to persuade her to prolong the sense of pain. I did not act like
a boy; I wonder I did not; I made one simple request, to which she
instantly acceded, that she should walk with me to this Belvidere. It
was a glorious sunset; beauty and the spirit of love breathed in the
wind, and hovered over the softened hues of the landscape. ‘Look,
Ellen,’ I cried, ‘if only such loveliness of nature existed, it were
worth living for!’
“‘True, if a latent feeling did not blot this glorious scene with murky
shadows. Beauty is as we see it—my eyes view all things deformed and
evil.’ She closed them as she said this; but, young and sensitive, the
visitings of the soft breeze already began to minister consolation.
‘Dearest Ellen,’ I continued, ‘what do I not owe to you? I am your boy,
your pupil; I might have gone on blindly as others do, but you opened my
eyes; you have given me a sense of the just, the good, the beautiful—and
have you done this merely for my misfortune? If you leave me, what can
become of me?’ The last words came from my heart, and tears gushed from
my eyes. ‘Do not leave me, Ellen,’ I said; ‘I cannot live without
you—and I cannot die, for I have a mother—a father.’ She turned quickly
round, saying, ‘You are blessed sufficiently.’ Her voice struck me as
unnatural; she grew deadly pale as she spoke, and was obliged to sit
down. Still I clung to her, prayed, cried; till she—I had never seen her
shed a tear before—burst into passionate weeping. After this she seemed
to forget her resolve. We returned by moonlight, and our talk was even
more calm and cheerful than usual. When in her cottage, I poured away
the fatal draught. Her ‘good-night’ bore with it no traces of her late
agitation; and the next day she said, ‘I have thoughtlessly, even
wickedly, created a new duty to myself, even at a time when I had
forsworn all; but I will be true to it. Pardon me for making you
familiar with emotions and scenes so dire; I will behave better—I will
preserve myself if I can, till the link between us is loosened, or
broken, and I am free again.’
“One little incident alone occurred during our intercourse that appeared
at all to connect her with the world. Sometimes I brought her a
newspaper, for those were stirring times; and though, before I knew her,
she had forgotten all except the world her own heart enclosed, yet, to
please me, she would talk of Napoleon—Russia, from whence the emperor
now returned overthrown—and the prospect of his final defeat. The paper
lay one day on her table; some words caught her eye; she bent eagerly
down to read them, and her bosom heaved with violent palpitation; but
she subdued herself, and after a few moments told me to take the paper
away. Then, indeed, I did feel an emotion of even impertinent
inquisitiveness; I found nothing to satisfy it—though afterwards I
became aware that it contained a singular advertisement, saying, ‘If
these lines meet the eye of any one of the passengers who were on board
the _St. Mary_, bound for Liverpool from Barbadoes, which sailed on the
third of May last, and was destroyed by fire in the high seas, a part of
the crew only having been saved by his Majesty’s frigate the
_Bellerophon_, they are entreated to communicate with the advertiser;
and if any one be acquainted with the particulars of the Hon. Miss
Eversham’s fate and present abode, they are earnestly requested to
disclose them, directing to L. E., Stratton Street, Park Lane.’
“It was after this event, as winter came on, that symptoms of decided
ill-health declared themselves in the delicate frame of my poor Ellen. I
have often suspected that, without positively attempting her life, she
did many things that tended to abridge it and to produce mortal disease.
Now, when really ill, she refused all medical attendance; but she got
better again, and I thought her nearly well when I saw her for the last
time, before going home for the Christmas holidays. Her manner was full
of affection: she relied, she said, on the continuation of my
friendship; she made me promise never to forget her, though she refused
to write to me, and forbade any letters from me.
“Even now I see her standing at her humble doorway. If an appearance of
illness and suffering can ever he termed lovely, it was in her. Still
she was to be viewed as the wreck of beauty. What must she not have been
in happier days, with her angel expression of face, her nymph-like
figure, her voice, whose tones were music? ‘So young—so lost!’ was the
sentiment that burst even from me, a young lad, as I waved my hand to
her as a last adieu. She hardly looked more than fifteen, but none could
doubt that her very soul was impressed by the sad lines of sorrow that
rested so unceasingly on her fair brow. Away from her, her figure for
ever floated before my eyes;—I put my hands before them, still she was
there: my day, my night dreams were filled by my recollections of her.
“During the winter holidays, on a fine soft day, I went out to hunt:
you, dear Juliet, will remember the sad catastrophe; I fell and broke my
leg. The only person who saw me fall was a young man who rode one of the
most beautiful horses I ever saw, and I believe it was by watching him
as he took a leap, that I incurred my disaster: he dismounted, and was
at my side in a minute. My own animal had fled; he called his; it obeyed
his voice; with ease he lifted my light figure on to the saddle,
contriving to support my leg, and so conducted me a short distance to a
lodge situated in the woody recesses of Elmore Park, the seat of the
Earl of D——, whose second son my preserver was. He was my sole nurse for
a day or two, and during the whole of my illness passed many hours of
each day by my bedside. As I lay gazing on him, while he read to me, or
talked, narrating a thousand stranger adventures which had occurred
during his service in the Peninsula, I thought—is it for ever to be my
fate to fall in with the highly gifted and excessively unhappy?
“The immediate neighbour of Lewis’ family was Lord Eversham. He had
married in very early youth, and became a widower young. After this
misfortune, which passed like a deadly blight over his prospects and
possessions, leaving the gay view utterly sterile and bare, he left his
surviving infant daughter under the care of Lewis’ mother, and travelled
for many years in far distant lands. He returned when Clarice was about
ten, a lovely sweet child, the pride and delight of all connected with
her. Lord Eversham, on his return—he was then hardly more than
thirty—devoted himself to her education. They were never separate: he
was a good musician, and she became a proficient under his tutoring.
They rode—walked—read together. When a father is all that a father may
be, the sentiments of filial piety, entire dependence, and perfect
confidence being united, the love of a daughter is one of the deepest
and strongest, as it is the purest passion of which our natures are
capable. Clarice worshipped her parent, who came, during the transition
from mere childhood to the period when reflection and observation
awaken, to adorn a commonplace existence with all the brilliant adjuncts
which enlightened and devoted affection can bestow. He appeared to her
like an especial gift of Providence, a guardian angel—but far dearer, as
being akin to her own nature. She grew, under his eye, in loveliness and
refinement both of intellect and heart. These feelings were not
divided—almost strengthened, by the engagement that had taken place
between her and Lewis:—Lewis was destined for the army, and, after a few
years’ service, they were to be united.
“It is hard, when all is fair and tranquil, when the world, opening
before the ardent gaze of youth, looks like a well-kept demesne,
unencumbered by let or hindrance for the annoyance of the young
traveller, that we should voluntarily stray into desert wilds and
tempest-visited districts. Lewis Elmore was ordered to Spain; and, at
the same time, Lord Eversham found it necessary to visit some estates he
possessed in Barbadoes. He was not sorry to revisit a scene, which had
dwelt in his memory as an earthly paradise, nor to show to his daughter
a new and strange world, so to form her understanding and enlarge her
mind. They were to return in three months, and departed as on a summer
tour. Clarice was glad that, while her lover gathered experience and
knowledge in a distant land, she should not remain in idleness; she was
glad that there would be some diversion for her anxiety during his
perilous absence; and in every way she enjoyed the idea of travelling
with her beloved father, who would fill every hour, and adorn every new
scene, with pleasure and delight. They sailed. Clarice wrote home, with
enthusiastic expressions of rapture and delight, from Madeira:—yet,
without her father, she said, the fair scene had been blank to her. More
than half her letter was filled by the expressions of her gratitude and
affection for her adored and revered parent. While he, in his, with
fewer words, perhaps, but with no less energy, spoke of his satisfaction
in her improvement, his pride in her beauty, and his grateful sense of
her love and kindness.
“Such were they, a matchless example of happiness in the dearest
connection in life, as resulting from the exercise of their reciprocal
duties and affections. A father and daughter; the one all care,
gentleness, and sympathy, consecrating his life for her happiness; the
other fond, duteous, grateful:—such had they been,—and where were they
now,—the noble, kind, respected parent, and the beloved and loving
child! They had departed from England as on a pleasure voyage down an
inland stream; but the ruthless car of destiny had overtaken them on
their unsuspecting way, crushing them under its heavy wheels—scattering
love, hope, and joy as the bellowing avalanche overwhelms and grinds to
mere spray the streamlet of the valley. They were gone; but whither?
Mystery hung over the fate of the most helpless victim; and my friend’s
anxiety was, to penetrate the clouds that hid poor Clarice from his
sight.