And this the world calls frenzy. But the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift.
What is it but the telescope of truth?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real.
Byron.
It is a misfortune for the historian that he is unable to present events
as they really happened, simultaneously, but must be content to relate
them one after another, thereby unavoidably impressing his reader with a
false idea of the lapse of time. The same morning that Rereworth made
his expedition to Lambeth, Mrs. Pendarrel paid a visit to her daughter
in Cavendish Square. Restless, but languid; dejected, but unforgiving,
she came to vent her querulousness on Mrs. Winston, in complaint and
reproach. She wished also to learn, without showing the desire, what
news had reached town respecting the fugitives. She could not close her
heart entirely against the memory of her child. She liked to hear her
mentioned, even when she answered the intelligence with anger and
contempt. And so she came to Gertrude almost daily, to listen and to
abuse.
She now entered the house, as usual, without ceremony, and proceeded to
the room where she commonly found Mrs. Winston; but on this occasion
Gertrude was not there. Her mother looked listlessly at two or three of
the books upon the table, and wandered into the adjoining apartment,
absent in mind, but disappointed at not seeing her she sought. Here she
lingered a few minutes more, and then passed on into the smaller room,
where, as she well recollected, she had encountered Randolph Trevethlan.
A young lady, sitting with her back to the door, turned as it opened,
and Mrs. Pendarrel immediately recognized Randolph's companion at the
opera, his sister. Helen also remembered the original of her miniature,
and rose from her chair as Esther advanced.
"What!" the last-named lady exclaimed, fixing her keen eyes upon Helen.
"Have I been mocked? Have I been the sport of a paltry conspiracy? Has
my daughter been nursing the thief, and condoling with me upon the
robbery? Fawning upon me with hypocritical lamentations, and sheltering
those who wronged me? For I see it all. It was here the plot was
hatched; here the correspondence was managed; here the flight was
arranged. Did not Gertrude always boast that she would thwart my
schemes? Yet I hardly thought she would go so far as this."
"Madam," Helen ejaculated in great confusion, "madam, you do Mrs.
Winston wrong. She knew nothing of my brother's design. Neither did I.
But let your blame only fall on me, for I was the unconscious means of
its execution."
"Do you dare to answer me, Miss Trevethlan?" Esther asked angrily. "And
what do you here? What does one of your name in the house of one of
mine? Name! What is your name? You have none. What business has one like
you to be here?"
"I am an intruder, madam," Helen answered, the tears rising in her soft
eyes--"I have felt it, and know it. But I came here before this unhappy
matter. The invitation was very kind. We were very poor. I would relieve
my brother."
"Poor! did you say, Miss Trevethlan?" exclaimed Esther. "Yes; and you
will be still poorer before many days are gone! Unhappy? No, no; you did
not think so. The beggar does not call it unhappy when he inveigles away
a rich heiress. But it is a mistake. She has nothing. You will be no
richer for the stolen marriage; neither you nor your brother, Miss
Trevethlan."
"Oh, madam," said Helen in much distress, "I wish you could read in my
heart. You would spare me these reproaches. You do not know how I
deplore what has occurred. The loss of our home, the poverty and sorrow
you speak of, everything I would have endured, rather than my brother
had done this. We want nothing of you, madam, nothing but forgiveness;
and you may spare sarcasms which are undeserved."
"Would your brother ask my forgiveness?" said Mrs. Pendarrel. "Was there
a word of the kind in Mildred's letter? No, Miss Trevethlan; forgiveness
will never be asked, and never be granted. Why; do you not hate me
yourself? You must have learned from infancy to detest my name. Was not
Pendarrel pointed at as the destroyer of Trevethlan? Am not I the author
of the desolation which has fallen upon your head? Truly, Miss
Trevethlan, it might rouse your father's spirit from his grave, to feel
that one of his children dwelt under the roof of one of mine."
"No, madam," Helen exclaimed, almost as vehemently as she was
addressed--"a thousand times no. Not till lately did I know there was
any difference."
"'Tis untrue!" said Esther. "'Tis nonsense. You were born to hate. You
were bequeathed an inheritance of hate. You accepted it. Did not you
send me with scorn from your doors? It was your turn then. It is mine
now. Hate breeds hate."
"And on which side did it begin, if it were so?" Helen asked. "On ours?
Madam, were we not treated as if hatred were indeed our only
inheritance? Was not my brother insulted with an offer of charity? I
speak his mind, and not my own, for I thought the offer was kind. But I
see now that he was right."
"You will be glad to have the offer repeated ere long," said Esther
bitterly.
"You wronged us then, madam," Helen said, "and you wrong us now. We,
alone on the earth, young, mourning the only parent we had ever known,
little likely were we to hate our nearest connections. Was hatred
bequeathed to us? No, madam. I might deem our inherited feelings were
far other, for this portrait was the last companion of our poor father.
They found it upon his heart when he died."
Esther caught the miniature from Helen's hand, and gazed earnestly at it
for some seconds. Then she pressed it to her lips in a kind of ecstacy.
"He loved me to the last," she murmured.
But the transport passed away as rapidly as it came. Melancholy, stern
and dark, fell over Mrs. Pendarrel's brow. She clasped the miniature
upon her bosom.
"Girl," she said, almost in a whisper, "you give me great joy and sorrow
inexpressible. I have been desperately wronged. My life has been a
blank. I cannot change on a sudden. I do not know what to think. Let me
keep this portrait."
And she departed from the room and from the house, leaving Helen
bewildered by a host of perplexing reflections. She remembered what
Randolph said concerning that miniature, but she was unaware of the
promise exacted from him at their father's death-bed. She scarcely
understood in what manner the law-suit had been only the final step in a
career of vengeance. But she felt that she had been grievously insulted,
and she perceived the ambiguity of her situation at Mrs. Winston's. She
resolved on returning to Hampstead without delay.
It was a pity, for she had been an angel of peace to Gertrude. She had
taught the husband and wife to know one another, and the knowledge might
soon become affection. Yet her hostess confessed to herself that the
resolution was correct, even though she was ignorant of the conversation
which had immediately inspired it. She did not so much as attempt to
delay its execution, and the same afternoon found Helen once more an
inmate of Mr. Peach's modest, but pleasant and pretty dwelling.
Comfort followed her there. Rereworth's letter to Polydore Riches came
to revive hope, and to bring oblivion of the affronts and menaces of the
morning. The news exhilarated the chaplain's drooping spirits, and
inclined him to regard the elopement with less severity. And Helen
thought with gratitude of the writer, and perhaps remembered those
readings of Scott and Byron in Mrs. Winston's little drawing-room.
Besides this, the fugitives were now approaching the metropolis, and
might possibly arrive the same night. Here were copious sources of
conversation to fill the evening when the chaplain talked with Helen in
the pleasant parlour, where she had sat during the past winter, and
which had witnessed the extinction of all those hopes, so long and so
fondly cherished at Trevethlan Castle, the day-dreams of Merlin's Cave.
If Mrs. Pendarrel inflicted much pain in her short interview with Helen,
she did not quit it herself unscathed. The sight of her portrait aroused
a thousand recollections, familiar indeed to Esther's hours of reverie,
but never so vividly presented before. She thought of the day when she
permitted that miniature to be taken from her neck. In the morning she
hung it there, not without an idea that it might pass into another's
possession before night. Often had the favour been solicited by the
lover, and as often refused by the coquette. But at last assiduity might
triumph over waywardness. Side by side they strolled over the lawns of
Pendarrel, enjoying converse such as is only derided by the unhappy
wights who have never shared it. There was a secluded little pool,
formed by the rivulet which murmured through the wilderness, surrounded
by flowering shrubs, and over-arched so closely by spreading
forest-trees, that the sunshine scarcely penetrated to the surface of
the water. It was in that bower, under the thickest of the leafy canopy,
that Henry Trevethlan detached the miniature from the chain by which it
hung, and his lips met those of Esther in the first kiss of love. How
well she remembered it now! Every little circumstance, the attitude in
which they stood, the few whispered words, came back to her mind, fresh
as the things of yesterday. A bright-winged butterfly alighted for a
moment upon her wrist, and he called her Psyche, his soul, without whom
he should die. The butterfly rested but a second--was its flight ominous
of what had occurred since? And had he virtually died? Had his
subsequent existence been a mere life in death? Had his soul indeed
remained always with her? So, Esther thought, it would seem. And had he
forgiven the ruin into which he was driven by despair? Had he pardoned
the despair itself, the wreck of all his hopes and feelings, the anguish
which abided with him to the last?
Questions like these passed rapidly through Esther's mind, while she
gazed on the fair young face which once had been her own. Very different
was her aspect now. The round and glowing cheeks had become hollow and
pale. The smooth white forehead was furrowed with the lines of sorrow.
Silver threads mingled with the dark tresses. The eyes, in the miniature
deep and inscrutable, were now wild and bright. The passions of the girl
had been developed in the woman, and had left their trace on every
feature.
And then Esther turned to self-justification. Had she made no atonement?
Had she suffered nothing? Had her heart been unwasted? Resolutely as she
had striven to repress all memory of that early dream, had she succeeded
in the attempt? Was not the lava still hot beneath the foliage which
grew over it? Had not the smouldering fire broken forth anew on the news
of Henry's death? And again she thought she had been hardly used by the
precipitation with which he abandoned her. It was cruel to afford her no
chance of reconciliation. If he might charge her with vanity or
wilfulness, surely she might accuse him of rancour and pride. If the
happiness of her lover had been shattered by the storm, neither had her
own escaped its ravages.
She had endeavoured to forget them in the gratification of her love of
rule, and her eager pursuit of revenge. The first she enjoyed in the
management of her own household, the second in the downfall of
Trevethlan. Ambition and appetite grew with what they fed on. "Pendar'l
and Trevethlan shall own one name." Not till that prediction had been
fulfilled to the letter, and to her own glory, could Esther rest. Her
old lover had departed from the scene; she prolonged the contest with
his children. They increased her ardour by the mode in which they met
her first advances. For a season she seemed to be foiled. But the check
gave new vigour to her never-dying wrath.
And before long the orphans crossed her path. And soon he, the heir of
all his father's pride, encountered her, face to face, as the companion
of her child. She had trembled to think of what that meeting might call
forth. But then she learned the tale, which would fulfil all her desires
to an extent beyond her dreams, and forgot her danger in the exultation
of approaching triumph. Triumph came, but only as the precursor of
defeat; for her enemy, ruined and dishonoured, had suborned the
affection of her daughter, and made her house desolate in the very hour
of victory.
Yes, scandal made merry with the name of Pendarrel. Esther, with all her
rigid discipline, with all her cherished authority, had seen the child,
for whose marriage with another her word was pledged, elude her control,
and steal to a furtive union with the man whom she had been labouring to
bring to want and shame. It was nearly enough to deprive her of her
reason. No time was this to think of forgiveness. She would not believe
that Helen Trevethlan was so innocent as she pretended. The production
of the miniature was a theatrical trick. The picture should revive the
memory of a never-forgiven wrong.
Let the suit then be pressed. Let there be no respite. Let calamity fall
fast and heavy. Let disobedience and presumption meet their just reward.
But where was the agent? Where was he who had pointed out the path of
revenge? What had he said when she last saw him? Better, Esther thought
scornfully, better even that match than this. And what meant his dark
insinuations? Had he not dared to threaten?
Langour crept over the muser. She began to grow aweary of the sun. She
felt as if her self-control were slipping from her grasp. Shadowy fears
beset her. She did not like to be alone. She was glad when her husband
came home from his official duties; and he became seriously alarmed at
her altered demeanour. She seemed to be sinking into a state of
lethargy, which might affect her mind. Mr. Pendarrel sent to beg Mrs.
Winston to come and watch by her mother, who was evidently very ill. And
Gertrude came, but for some time her presence seemed only to irritate
the invalid. It might be observed that from about this day Esther
entirely discontinued her old practice of calling her husband by the
name which he had abandoned to obtain her hand.