THE SEARCH.
Three gentlemen are travelling from London on that dreary wintry day.
They occupy the same carriage in the train, but are personally unknown
to each other. Two of them, a lawyer and a railway director, soon break
through the cold reserve which marks an English traveller. A proffered
newspaper, a remark on the weather, and they have launched into the full
tide of conversation on railway speculations, foreign politics, and the
future prospects of the nation.
The third passenger, a grave and silent man, sits in a corner of the
carriage with his hat drawn low over his brow, keeping company only with
his own thoughts, which seem to be of no agreeable nature. The mind of
Effingham—for it is he—is in harmony with the gloomy, wintry scenes
through which he is passing. He has but yesterday arrived from France,
his case having been carried through the bankruptcy court during his
absence. He has this morning had an interview in London with his
daughters and Lady Selina.
Clemence’s decision in regard to the fortune so carefully secured to her
by her husband at the expense of honour and conscience, had wakened a
wild tumult of feeling in the breast of the unhappy bankrupt. Anger,
shame, surprise, not unmingled with secret approbation, had struggled
together in Effingham’s soul. Early impressions had been revived
there—impressions made when his young heart had been guileless as his
son’s was now, when he would have shrunk from dishonour as from a viper,
and have as lief touched glowing metal as a coin not lawfully his own!
It had needed a long apprenticeship to the world to efface these early
impressions, or rather, to render them illegible, by writing above them
the maxims of that wisdom which is foolishness with God. Effingham was
perhaps the more irritated against his wife, because he had sufficient
conscience left to have a secret persuasion that she had only done what
was right—returned that to its lawful possessors which never ought to
have been hers. The difficulty, rather the shame, which he felt in
expressing his feelings on the subject, had prevented him from writing
at all.
It was while still enduring this mental conflict—now accusing Clemence
of romantic folly, now condemning himself on more serious grounds—that
Effingham, on his return from France, had a meeting with Lady Selina. A
visit to Beaumont Street, under existing circumstances, was little
likely to soothe the proud man’s irritated feelings. Lady Selina
neglected nothing that could make him more painfully aware of the change
in the circumstances of his family. She artfully sought to revenge
herself upon Clemence, by bringing that change before the eyes of her
husband, not as the result of his own wild speculations, but as caused
by the obstinate folly of one who presumed to be more scrupulous than
her lord, and who followed her own romantic fancies rather than the
advice of experienced friends. Arabella followed in the track of her
aunt; while Louisa’s drooping looks and tearful eyes did more, perhaps,
than the words of either, to increase Effingham’s displeasure towards
his wife. He set out on his long journey to Cornwall full of bitterness
of spirit, attempting to turn the turbid tide of emotion into any
channel rather than that of self-condemnation.
Effingham remained, therefore, moody and abstracted, while his
companions chatted freely together on subjects of common interest, till
the entrance of the train into a tunnel caused that pause in
conversation which a change from light to sudden darkness usually
produces.
“What was that sound!” exclaimed Effingham.
“The whistle,” shortly replied his next neighbour, immediately resuming
his discourse with the gentleman opposite, while Effingham relapsed into
silence.
“We must be nearly an hour behind time!” observed the lawyer, looking at
his watch by the light of the lamp.
“Impossible to keep to it—state of the roads—never knew such a season!”
was the director’s reply. “You saw the signal as we passed; the rest of
the trains will be stopped; no more travelling till the lines are
cleared.”
“I hear that a stage-coach in the north had actually to be dug out of
the snow,” said the other.
As the observation was uttered, the train burst again into the open
daylight, and in a few minutes more the black, hissing engine was
letting out its steam at the station of M——.
Effingham sprang out of the carriage, and proceeded immediately to make
inquiries as to the direction of Willow Cottage. Hearing that the
distance was not great, and judging that it would be less difficult to
make his way over the snow on foot than in any conveyance, he left his
portmanteau, with directions that it should be forwarded after him, and
set out at once for the cottage.
The snow-shower had ceased, and the wind was on his back, therefore,
though sinking deep at every step, the strong man made his way through
the obstacles which had proved insurmountable to Clemence. His thoughts
were so painfully engaged, that those obstacles were scarcely heeded. On
he pressed with gloomy resolution, making, however, extremely slow
progress, till, on passing a bend of the road, he came in sight of the
little lone cottage.
“It is impossible that Clemence can be living in that miserable hovel;
and yet, by the description, the cottage can be none other than this!”
exclaimed Effingham, surveying the tenement with mingled surprise and
displeasure.
At this point the snow lay so thick on the path, that Effingham found it
very difficult to proceed; but the goal was near, and by main strength
he forced his way over and through the drifted heaps. Suddenly an object
on the road before him arrested his attention. Almost close to
Clemence’s little gate, a horse, which had fallen floundering amongst
the heavy masses, was struggling to his feet; and his rider, whose
shaggy great-coat, almost covered with snow gave him the appearance of a
Siberian bear, was encouraging the efforts of the animal both by voice
and rein. Effingham redoubled his exertions, in order to give aid to the
stranger; but before he could reach the spot, horse and horseman had
risen from the snow.
“Thank you, sir; no harm done!” said the rider to Effingham, patting the
neck of his panting steed. “No danger of broken bones with such a soft
bed to receive us. But I don’t see how I’m ever to get back to M——. It’s
unlucky, for I’ve plenty of patients there anxious enough to see me. I
was sent for in great haste this morning by an old gentleman who lives
some way off. I expected to find him in extremity, and it turned out to
be nothing worse than a fit of the gout! I wish that I’d prescribed him
a three miles’ ride through the snow!” The doctor shook his broad
shoulders and laughed.
“What will you do now?” said Effingham.
“Do! I can neither get backward nor forward, so I suppose I must stay
where I am. Lucky there’s that cottage so near; for though there’s no
sign up that I can see, doubtless I shall find in my extremity ‘good
entertainment for man and beast.’”
“The cottage, sir, is mine,” said Effingham stiffly; then added, with
his natural graceful politeness, “I am sure that whatever accommodation
it may afford will be very much at your service.”
Before the doctor had time to reply to one whose appearance and
demeanour so little corresponded with that of his dwelling, Martha came
running breathlessly to the gate. “O sir, I’m so thankful to see you!”
she exclaimed; “but haven’t you brought back my mistress with you?”
“Here’s a riddle to read!” cried the doctor gaily, turning with a smile
to Effingham; but the husband had caught alarm from the anxious, excited
face of the servant.
“What’s the matter?” he sternly exclaimed.
“Master Vincent is bad with the fever, and mistress—surely, sir, she
sent you here?” added Martha, turning anxiously towards the doctor.
“No, my good girl, I’ve seen no lady.”
“Oh! mercy! mercy!” cried Martha, wringing her hands; “then maybe she
never got through the tunnel!”
“The tunnel!” exclaimed Effingham, with a start of horror; “for mercy’s
sake, girl, explain yourself!”
“Master Vincent is ill, and mistress went herself for the doctor,”
replied the trembling Martha, terrified both by his tone and his eye.
“She could not get on through the snow; I saw her slide down the bank
there; I saw her go into the tunnel.”
The words seemed to sear Effingham’s brain. Without waiting to hear
more, with the gesture of a madman he rushed forward, as if impelled by
irresistible impulse, to fly to the succour of his wife. Then he
suddenly stopped, and called loudly for a torch.
“There’s no torch, but,—but a lantern.”
“Bring it, for the love of Heaven!” cried the miserable husband. The
girl flew to obey, while he stood almost stamping with fierce
impatience, as if every moment of delay were spent on the rack.
“My dear sir,” began the compassionate doctor,—
He was interrupted by Effingham, who said, in a hoarse, excited tone,
“My boy, she says, is ill. Providence has brought you here; see to
him—save him! I—I have a more terrible mission to perform! O God!
preserve my brain from distraction!”
Martha brought the lantern after a brief absence, which seemed to the
husband interminable. He snatched it from her hand, with the question,
which his bloodless lips had hardly the power to articulate, “Did any
train pass after she left this place?”
“Yes; _one_!”
Without uttering another word Effingham sprang forward on his fearful
quest.
The snow displaced on the top of the bank and down its side, and the
scattered flakes on the cutting below, served but as too sure guides. To
plunge down the steep descent was the work of a moment. Effingham was
now upon the line where not two hours previously Clemence had stood and
trembled. The blackness of the opening before him recalled to him, with
a sense of unutterable horror, the cry which had pierced his ear in the
tunnel. Effingham loved his young wife—fondly, passionately loved. If
any emotion of displeasure towards her were remembered in that awful
hour, it was but to intensify the anguish of remorse. He felt himself to
be a wretch marked by the justice of Heaven for the keenest torment that
mortal can bear and live. Loss of fortune, friends, fame—what was all
that to the misery which he might now be doomed to endure! He might find
her—his loved, his beautiful Clemence, the pride of his life, the
treasure of his heart—oh, how he might find her he dared not think. On
he pressed, the dim light from his lantern gleaming on the cold iron
below, the stony walls, the damp, dripping roof; but there was yet no
sign of a human form.
Effingham called aloud. The dreary arches resounded with the much-loved
name; their hollow echoes were the only reply. There! surely there is
some object dimly seen through the gloom,—a dark mass lying straight
before him! With one bound Effingham is beside it, on his knees,
trembling like an aspen, then sobbing like a child! That is no crushed
and mangled form that he clasps; cold, indeed, and still, it lies in his
arms, but there is breath on the lip and pulsation in the heart. “She
lives! God be praised, she lives!”
Yes, she lives; but the miseries and terrors of the past have shattered
the health of Clemence Effingham. Borne by her husband back to the
cottage, for weeks she remains helpless, unconscious, hovering on the
brink of eternity—while the lesson of penitence, submission, humility,
is branded as by fire on the heart of her lord. It is now that the world
appears to Effingham, even as it may appear to us all in the light of
the last great day:—its treasures, dross; its distinctions, bubbles; its
pleasures, a vanishing dream. Now, by the side of his suffering wife,
Effingham prays as he prayed when a boy over the grave of a cherished
parent; he bows at the foot of the Cross, even as the publican bent in
the Temple, feeling himself unworthy so much as to lift up his eyes unto
heaven. Dare he ask that a wife so precious may be spared,—that his
guardian angel may delay her upward flight, to linger yet in a vale of
tears, that she may trace with him, through that dark vale, the strait
path to a promised heaven? The heart of the once proud Effingham is
broken and contrite now; like the lost coin in the parable, that which
was once hidden in the defiling dust of earth is raised again to the
light, and the image and superscription of a heavenly King is found to
be stamped upon it still.
When Clemence awoke from her state of lethargic unconsciousness, the
soft breath of spring came wooingly through the casement, sweet with the
perfume of violets, and musical with the song of birds. Young Vincent,
pale from recent illness, sat at the foot of her bed, watching, with a
face radiant with delight, the first sign of recognition. And whose was
the countenance that bent over her with joy more still, but even more
intense? whose hand so tenderly clasped hers? whose voice breathed her
name in tones of the deepest love? That was a moment whose exquisite
bliss repaid the anguish of the past. The darkness of night had indeed
rolled away,—the dreary winter was ended; Clemence was beginning, even
upon earth, to reap the harvest of light and gladness sown for the
upright in heart, who have not chosen their portion here.
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