CHAPTER XXIV.

"Some sadden flash of lightning strike me blind,

Or cleave the centre of the earth, that I

May living find a sepulchre to swallow

Me and my shame together!"

THE GUARDIAN-MASSINGER.

"So the struck deer, the arrow at his heart,

Lies down to die in some sequestered part;

There stretched unseen, in coverts hid from day,

Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away."

POPE.

I went home, and as I walked into the house I saw a letter in

Henry's handwriting lying on the table. I took it, and having

locked myself in my dressing-room, I opened it with trembling

fingers and read as follows:--

"You do not choose to answer my letters, and I am sent away

from your door like a troublesome beggar. My sister is in the

deepest affliction, and I vainly inquire of you what accounts

you have of her. You are playing a desperate game, if you

imagine, by such heartless insults, to rid yourself of my

love. They change its nature I own. I get weary of suffering

alone, and life is not long enough to waste it in the burning

strife and heart-consuming agitations in which we live. There

is an end to all things; and if for twenty-four hours longer

you trifle with me you will repent it to the day of your

death. Have I not told you that the time must come when, if

you have not learnt to love me, I shall make you hate me?"

My last letter to Henry had been intercepted; I saw it clearly

and with despair, for I had written it with that intensity of

supplication, that strength of appeal which must have reached

his heart. I had built all my hopes upon it, and now the

apparent scorn and unfeelingness of my conduct had brought him

to that hard and reckless mood which I most dreaded. I felt

that at any cost I must pacify him; and in the explanation I

sent him there was more of self-defence than accusation, more

entreaty than reproach; I addressed him rather as an injured

friend than as a cruel enemy. It was late in the day before I

had satisfied myself that the tone of my letter was calculated

to soothe and pacify him, and then I dared not trust to chance

for its delivery. With an unsteady hand I gave it to the

servant, and desired him to deliver it into Mr. Lovell's own

hand: and then the night came with its long hours of darkness,

of restless sleep and of waking misery.

How was it, that when I woke on the next morning, and felt

that the air was heavy and the atmosphere dark, I did not see

in it a sign of what that day would bring forth? How was it

that when I went into Edward's room, and gazed on every

familiar object which seemed to bring his image before me, I

did not feel more wretched than usual,--I did not long for his

return, or dread it with more intensity than the day before;

and when I pressed his picture to my lips, the tears that

dimmed my eyes did not flow more bitterly than usual? The post

came in; and there were letters for me,--letters from abroad:

a black seal was upon one of them; and as I saw it, at once I

felt that my uncle was dead. A gush of purer and more sacred

sorrow than had ever yet sprung from my eyes or wrung my

heart, overcame for a while the selfish fears and sufferings

of my soul. But even my grief for him,--the kindest though the

sternest of friends,--was not unmixed with dark and bitter

associations. It was a strange fear that seized me; I was

weakened by suffering, and a superstitious dread took

possession of me. He was gone, and he had been deceived to the

end; he had mourned over his child long and deeply, and had

died in ignorance of my share in her death; but now, his

disembodied spirit seemed to haunt and accuse me; and that

first link which connects us with the unknown world, by the

loss of one we love, was to me a dreadful as well as a solemn

thought. "His last words," thus wrote my aunt, "his last words

were of you; he raised himself with difficulty in his bed, and

with a strong effort pronounced your name, and then, after

another struggle, added, 'Tell her to make Edward happy;'

after this, he held my hand in his for a few minutes; once he

pressed it, a change came over his face, and then he died in

perfect peace. Oh, my Ellen, to die must be a dark and

dreadful thing to those who have lived without God in the

world! but to die as he did is not terrible; for his life had

been void of offence, and irreproachable, as far as a human

being's can be, and his death was indeed the death of the

righteous." Edward, a voice from the grave calls upon me to

make you happy. Where are you; that I may be at your feet and

fulfil that dying charge? Where are you, that I too may die in

peace, nor close my eyes for ever without a word of pity or of

pardon from you?

Twice I read over my aunt's letter, and then I opened

Edward's. He had not reached Hyeres before my uncle's death:

and had met Mrs. Middleton on her way back to England: he was

travelling home with her, and meant to precede her by a few

days to London, which he intended to reach by the twenty-third

of the month. He said she was powerfully and deeply affected

by the loss she had sustained; but that she was calm and

composed, and only intensely anxious to be with me again. He

said he had received my letter, and concluded his with an

earnest request that I would take care of my health. I might

then expect him in two days;--I should see him again whom my

soul worshipped,--him whom I loved with a strength of passion

and a fervour of devotion which absorbed every feeling of my

heart;--and yet no faithless wife, no guilty woman, ever

looked to the return, or anticipated the presence, of the

husband she had betrayed, with more nervous terror, or more

deep depression, than I did Edward's.

His letter was in my hand, and I was gazing intently upon it,

when the door opened, and Henry came in. The blood forsook my

cheek, and I gasped for breath. Mr. Middleton's death--his

sister's grief--his pale and haggard expression of

countenance--a vague hope that he was come, at last, to set me

free forever--kept me silent and subdued. He sat down opposite

to me, and said, "I have forced my way in, and brought you

this letter."

Glancing at the table, he added, "You have received the last

account, I see. Has my sister written to you?"

I could not speak, but I took her fetter and put it into his

hands. He read it, and then laid it down with a deep sigh.

"He used me hardly, and hated the sight of me; but I respected

him, and would fain have seen his life prolonged for Mary's

sake."

There was a long pause after this; we were afraid of each

other, and of what each might say next. It was now three weeks

since we had met; an eternal separation was at hand; it rested

with Henry to decide how we should part. Would he break the

chain with which he had bound me? or would he leave upon me

for ever the mark of my abhorred slavery? I stood before him,

and fixed my eyes upon him.

"Henry, the moment is come when we must part."

"Part!" he exclaimed. "Do you think I am come to part with

you? Do you imagine that I will leave you and Edward--whom I

now hate as much as I once loved him--to exult over my

despair, and to banish me from your house after mine has been

tamed into a hell--"

"What words do you dare to utter? Do not blaspheme. Your house

is sanctified by the presence of an angel."

"It is haunted by a fiend, Ellen,--that woman who betrayed

us,--that woman who, in one of her paroxysms of rage, broke

open my desk, and drew from it those fatal letters which she

sent to Edward in the vain hope of separating us for ever. She

it was who intercepted and destroyed the letter you wrote to

me a fortnight ago; and she had the audacity to admit this

iniquity, when last night I charged her with it. She gloried

in the act, and cast back in my teeth the reproaches I

addressed to her. Then, in my fury, I spoke out. I tore aside

the veil from Alice's eyes. I broke my promises. I told the

mother of my child why, and how, I had married her. I saw her

tremble with horror, and turn from me with shuddering

aversion, when I proclaimed in her pure ears my guilty passion

for you, and my resolution, strong as death, never to give you

up. I have broken every tie; I have renounced every duty; and

now you _must_ be mine--you _shall_ be mine. I have long been

your slave, but I knew it must come to this at last. You have

struggled in vain; you cannot escape me. My love must be the

bane of your life or its joy--its ruin or its glory; and

unrequited as it has been, it yet has stood, and will stand,

between you and your husband to the day of your death, and

turn your wedded joys into deadly poisons."

"Your power is gone--your threats are vain; I defy your

vengeance; I scorn your hatred. Denounce me to the world and

to Edward. Tell them all that it was not love, but terror that

made me tremble before you. Tell them that you have tortured

me, and that I have writhed in agonies under your secret

power. Tell them that my soul has been wrung, that my heart

has been bruised. Tell them that you have changed my nature

and made me what I am; and then let Edward, and the world, and

Heaven itself, judge between you and me."

"You defy my vengeance? You scorn my hatred? Am I not _here_,

weak and imprudent woman? Have you not written to me letters

of frantic entreaty? Have you not broken the commands of your

despotic and jealous husband? You have not been wise in your

anger, or prudent in your wrath."

"You have no power against me if I confess the whole truth to

Edward,--if I kneel at his feet--"

"And perjure yourself!"

"Oh, talk not to me of perjury,--talk not to me of crime. You

have steeped yourself in guilt and iniquity; and be my sin

what it may, upon _your_ head it shall rest if you drive me to

this act,--if you refuse to release me--"

A dreadful smile curled Henry's lip; and he said, with a

sneer, "What an admirably got-up story this will be for

Edward! It is a pity you did not think of it sooner. It would

have appeared more plausible than it will _now_ do. An

accidental homicide, carefully suppressed for four years, and

confessed, at last, for the purpose of accounting for our

intimacy! Your husband will admire the fertility of your

powers of invention, which, by the way, he seems, from the

tenor of his letter, to be pretty well acquainted with."

"Henry, your malice, your wickedness, _cannot_ extend as far

as this. You are not a demon; and it would be diabolical to

refuse your testimony to my confession; besides, there are

other witnesses--"

"In _your_ interest, no doubt," retorted Henry with another

sneer. "I shall certainly not admit that I allowed Edward to

marry a woman whom I saw with my own eyes murder his cousin."

"Murder! murder my cousin! Is it you that speak? Is it I who

hear you? Are there no limits--merciful Heaven!--are there no

limits to this man's wickedness?"

"There are no limits to despair. I struggle for life and

death. You think of nothing but the misery you suffer. You

have no mercy for that which you inflict. If I give way to you

now, I lose you for ever, and--"

He stopped and hid his face in his hands; his breast heaved

with convulsive emotion. I felt he was softened, and I flung

myself on my knees before him.

"You lose your victim, but you gain a friend, who, though she

may never see you, will bless you every day of her life; and,

as she kneels in penitence before God, will mix your name with

hers in every prayer she breathes."

I clasped my hands in supplication, and sought to read into

his soul.

"Never to see you?--never to hear your voice?--No, no--you

_must_ love me,--you _shall_ love me; and even if you hate me

you shall be mine. Your fierce beauty, your pride, your scorn,

have not subdued me; nor shall your streaming eyes and

trembling accents avail you now. I love you more passionately

in your grief than in your pride; and, prostrate before me, I

adore you as I never adored you before. I could kill you if at

this moment you named Edward; and the curse of a broken oath,

the mysterious guilt of perjury, be upon your soul if you play

me false, and place the last barrier of separation between

yourself and me."

"Oh, do not go with such words in your mouth;--do not leave

such a curse behind you: it will fall upon your own head, and

follow you to your death-bed. Henry! cling to your feet!--I

implore your mercy--"

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Was it the angel of death?--was it the vision of judgment that

passed before me? Was it Edward I saw?--and did I live over

that hour? I must have seen him--for never since that day, in

dreams or in thought, have I beheld him without that dreadful

expression which haunts and pursues me. It deprived me of my

senses then--it has been killing me ever since.

When I came to myself, I was in my own room, and all the women

in the house were about me; they looked frightened and

curious, and spoke to each other in a low voice.

"Who is in the house? Who is here?" I asked with a trembling

voice.

"There's nobody here, Ma'am; Mr. Middleton is gone out; and

the carriage, which had driven to the door, is gone to the

Clarendon Hotel."

"Give me my bonnet and shawl. Make haste."

I attempted to get up, but my strength failed me.

"Bring me some wine directly."

I drank a large glassful and stood up. As I was tying on my

bonnet with trembling hands, a servant knocked at the door,

and put a letter into my maid's hand. I turned faint at the

sight of it, but took it from her and bade her leave me.

There are moments which we live through, but which we cannot

speak of. I read these words; I read them every day:--

"This is the last communication I shall ever make to you. I

shall not return to my house till you have left it. I will

never see you again, or hear your name pronounced, as long as

I live. Your own fortune, and any allowance you may desire out

of mine, will be remitted to you by my solicitors in the

manner you will direct; should you address any letters to me,

they will be returned to you unopened."

I did not faint again; I did not shed a single tear; a

dreadful weight oppressed my limbs and checked my breathing;

the source of tears was dried up within me; I groaned in

spirit; I expected nothing; I hoped nothing. I did not dare to

take a step forward; my eyes were fixed on those words, "Leave

my house for ever. I never will see you again." If I stirred,

it was to go for ever! and it could not be; it must not be. I

had not seen him for the last time; life was not over with me;

I was not condemned to that death of the soul, and endless

separation; nor sentenced to a living grave, with a heart

still throbbing with ardent and passionate affection.

Would no one help me? Would no one have mercy upon me? Was

there no voice that he would listen to,--no appeal that would

reach him? There _was_ one whom I had wronged; but whose image

rose before me in that hour of despair; there was one whom I

would seek, and who would plead for me, with Edward on earth,

and with God in Heaven. I would go to her, and if _her_ cold,

pale hands were laid upon my burning brow, if _her_ voice,

like a moist, refreshing wind, passed through the fiery

furnace of my affliction, I should not die but live--I should

weep at her feet, not writhe and agonise alone.

I rose from my knees; I smoothed my hair, and drew my shawl

round me. I had lost my gloves, and opened a drawer to look

for them; the only pair I could find was one which Edward had

made me put aside because he disliked their colour. What his

letter had not done,--what the horrible sufferings of the last

hour had not done,--this trifling circumstance did. I cried

bitterly; and the pressure on my brain subsided. I walked

rapidly through the hall, and as the porter opened the door,

he stopped me and said, "Shall not John go with you, Ma'am?" I

shook my head and darted on; but before he had closed the

door, I came back to say, "I shall be home again in an hour."

Why did I do so? Oh, because in its anguish the heart is weak,

and I needed to tell myself that I was not going for ever.

To walk through the crowded streets, with a horrible grief in

one's heart, and a dizzy aching in one's head; to push by

happy, careless, busy creatures, and have a dreadful question

shoot across one's brain of eternity,--of infinity,--which is

answered by nothing but a vague though acute sense of

suffering;--to meet the vacant stare, or the bow of

recognition, when the head is splitting and the heart

breaking;--who is there that has known all this? _I have;_ and

dreams have not pictured anything worse; though mine have been

dreadful enough!

I walked fast; but the flagstones seemed to extend under my

feet, and each carriage that whirled along, might be bearing

Edward away. Once a travelling chariot dashed past me; I

uttered a faint cry, and rushed towards it; the bystanders

looked round in astonishment, and, as it turned the corner, I

saw Mr. Escourt's face; he smiled and bowed.

I reached the house at last, and rang the bell. I waited long,

and the maid who opened the door stared at me in silence. I

ran by her, and up the narrow stairs. She followed me and laid

hold of my arm, "You cannot see her; the child is dead," I

staggered, and leant against the wall; before me, pale as a

sheet, but with eyes which flashed fire, like an apparition,

stood Mrs. Tracy; her withered features were convulsed, and

the sound of her voice was horrible.

"Darken not these doors with your presence; the curse of Cain

is upon you; his mark in on your forehead; and the vengeance

of Heaven shall overtake you! The voice of the murdered child

calls it down upon you from her watery grave! The last

convulsive struggle of the babe who died this morning cries

out against you! Ay, tremble and turn pale, and fall upon your

knees, for your turn shall come at last! You shall weep, who

have made others weep! You shall be trampled upon, who have

trampled upon others! Your husband shall discard you! your

vile lover shall forsake you; and when my child--when my Alice

is dead--"

"Dead! Alice! Good God! Is _Alice_ in danger?"

"In danger! Did you think that--betrayed, insulted, forsaken,

with a child at her breast, and a dagger in her heart--my

flower, my treasure, my child, would live? You have murdered

her! Go, go to Henry Lovell, tell him that his child is dead,

that his wife is dying; and the curse of a bereaved mother,

the agonies of long lingering years of remorse, the hatred of

life, and the terror of death, be upon you both! And may the

Almighty, to whom vengeance belongs, pour down upon your

guilty heads the full vials of His wrath!"

I closed my eyes, and murmured "God forbid." When I opened

them again, she was gone: the maid was holding the street-door

open, and I walked out of the house. As I got into the street

I grew dizzy, and caught hold of the railing. A hand was

stretched out to me, and supported me for an instant. I

recovered myself, and saw that it was Robert Harding on whom I

was leaning. I started back, and looked into his face with

wild affright. "Shall I call a coach for you?" he said,

gently. I bowed my head in assent, and he went to fetch one.

When it came, he let down the step and put me in. As he did

so, I pointed to the window and said, "Will she die?"

"God only knows that," he answered in a gruff voice. "You seem

like to die too; and well you may!"

I bade the coachman drive me home; and all the way I repeated

to myself in a low voice--_home_, _home;_ and when we reached

it, I hardly dared to enter again that house from which Edward

had banished me. The porter put into my hand some notes and

letters. I took them, and, for the last time, went up to my

own room. It was getting dark, and I rang for candles. I

looked at the letters in my hand with a sort of vague

groundless hope, that something in them might alter the

dreadful certainty of my fate. The servant swept the hearth,

and put on fresh coals, and then asked, "Do you expect Mr.

Middleton home to dinner, Ma'am?"

I could not say no; I could not speak; I shook my head, and

made a sign to him to go; and when the door was closed upon

him, I flung myself with my face on the ground, and wept in

anguish of spirit.

Then, for the first time, I asked myself what I should do,

where I should go. To speak to any one I had ever known

before, to justify myself to any one but to Edward, to leave

his house for that of any friend or acquaintance, was

impossible. Condemned and discarded by him, I had no other

thought, but as a wounded animal to creep to some corner of

the world, and die there in silence.

I glanced at the letters before me; one was an invitation for

the Wednesday in the following week. My name and Edward's were

joined together, as they _never_ would be again. The details

of that every-day happiness of life, which was for ever

destroyed, rose before me; and my heart rebelled against its

fate, and murmured against God. I opened the next; it was from

Henry. The image of his dying and childless wife was before

me; and I shuddered as I read these lines:

"Your character is gone, your reputation is lost, you are for

ever parted from Edward. Nothing remains to you now but the

proffered devotion of my whole life. I have not returned to my

detested home since the last scene that drove me from it, and

never shall again. As long as you live I shall be at your

side; wherever you go I shall follow you. There is a wild joy

in my heart, for our destiny is accomplished; and henceforward

we must be all in all to each other. Ellen, idol of my soul,

you shall be mine. The excess of my love must win back love at

last. Write me one line; tell me where you go; what you do.

Life has not strength, language has not words, for this

tumultuous fever of agitation, for this hour of love and

terror, of anguish and of joy."

I tore open the next letter, and read as follows:

"My blessed child, I shall see you to-morrow, and I can feel

_almost_ happy in that prospect. You and Edward occupied your

uncle's last thoughts; and on you both he pronounced his last

blessing. The sight of your mutual happiness, your devotion to

each other, will seem to me a tribute to his memory, and a

consolation to my own sorrows. Edward has been as a son to me

in my affliction, and I like to think that in you he possesses

the greatest blessing that my grateful tenderness could desire

for him.

"I wish I could feel happy about Henry and Alice; I had hoped

that the birth of their child would have made him more

domestic, and drawn them more closely together; but, except a

few hurried lines in which he announced the fact to me, and

another short letter since, I have heard nothing from him; and

I have received a strange one from her grandmother. She

insists upon seeing me immediately on my return to England,

and speaks of communicating some dreadful secret to me. If I

did not think her mad, this would frighten me; but her

language and conduct ever since the marriage have been so

strange, that I suspect she must be out of her mind. I shall

go to Henry's house at once on my arrival to-morrow; and by

the middle of the day I hope to be once more with you, my

beloved and precious child. The past is sad, the future is

gloomy; I have many fears and disquietudes; but _you_ are my

light in darkness, my bird of peace amid the storms of life;

and in your happiness I shall forget my own sorrows. Give my

best love to dearest Edward.

"Ever your most affectionate,

"M. M."

The cup was full at last; I was drinking it to the dregs; what

wonder if it turned my brain? Banished for ever by

Edward--persecuted by Henry's fatal passion--denounced to Mrs.

Middleton--accused of murder--what was I doing here? Could I

not walk out, and, in the black cold depths of the river,

still for ever the passionate beating of that heart which had

throbbed so long? Could I not swallow poison; and, in the

agonies of deaths send for Edward?

Death! No; I dared not die! I was afraid to die: but I would

seek a living grave. I would fly from the face of those who

loved, and of those who hated me.

Edward had forbidden my name to be uttered before him. Never

again should it be uttered as the name of a living creature. I

would take another, and bury myself in a seclusion where I

might linger through the increasing symptoms of that illness

which, during the last few days, I had detected and recognised

by the hectic spots on my cheeks, by a racking cough, and

nightly sweats. There I should live alone, suffer alone, and

die alone; and when the record of my death, if recorded at

all, should casually meet the eyes of those who once loved me,

it would pass unnoticed; and my own name, my fatal name, if

ever pronounced by them, would sound as the knell of blighted

joys--of hopes gone by--as the memory of a mysterious shame,

and of a nameless sorrow.

My eyes turned accidentally to a painting of the Cathedral

at --, which hung over the chimney-piece in my room. A

superstitious and nervous fancy took possession of me. I felt

as if my fate directed me there. I turned my eyes away, and

tried to _think_, but could not. A vague terror pursued me;

and still, as I fixed my eyes on this picture, I felt as if

_there_, among those solemn arches, in those dim aisles, I

should be _safe_. I felt as if a mountain would be removed

from my breast as soon as I had reached a place where my name

and my fate were unknown. _There_, Henry would not pursue me;

_there_, I should never be told that Alice was dead, and that

I had destroyed her; _there_, I should never hear that Mrs.

Middleton had learnt to hate me; there, she would never ask me

what I had done with her child; and miles and miles would lie

between me and _him_, whom I so hopelessly loved, and so

wildly feared.

The hours went by, and each time the clock struck I startled

with affright; but I grew calmer as the night advanced; I had

something to do, for my strange vague fancy was changed into a

settled resolve.

I fetched a small portmanteau, and put into it some linen and

some money, Edward's miniature, and a small prayer-book, which

he had once given to me. My cough was dreadful, and shook me

to pieces; but I listened to its hollow sound with a terrible

joy; and as I counted the bank-notes in my pocket-book, I

wrote with a pencil on the back of the last--"For my burial."

The clock struck five, and I put on my bonnet and my cloak.

The light was faintly dawning. I opened with a trembling hand

the door of the adjoining room, and unclosed the shutters, to

look once and for the last time on Edward's full-length

picture. The light was so faint, and my swelled and burning

eyes were so dim, that I could hardly discern its features,

and I saw nothing before me but the vision of that dreadful

moment when I last beheld him, I knelt before it, and breathed

a prayer for _him_, which will be heard at the throne of

Grace, if prayers can avail from the lips of those who cannot,

and dare not, pray for themselves.

A noise in the room above my head startled and hurried me. I

took up the portmanteau in my room, and carried it with

difficulty down the stairs; I reached the hall door, and

pushed it open--I closed it behind me; and, if ever there was

a pang which baffles description--if ever there was an act

which resembles suicide, in all but the apparent suspension of

agony which death seems to yield, it was mine, when I closed

that door; and, with a weakened frame, an aching head, and a

broken heart, dragged myself with difficulty along the street,

and stood shivering and burning at once, to wait till the

first hackney-coach appeared on the stand.

I called one, and drove to the place from which I had seen

that the stage-coaches set off. I saw the name of--on one of

them, and secured a place. An hour afterwards we started; and,

as I drove out of London, it was snowing hard.

After a few hours' travelling, the burning fever which had

supported me, subsided: and the horrible solitude of the

future appalled me. Nothing like a hope before me--nothing but

the cold chill of despair in my heart--nothing but strange

voices and faces about me. A dark, heavy, speechless grief

weighed like lead on my soul, but wrought like fire in my

brain.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Late that night I reached this place.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

From that moment to this, a night of horror has gathered

around me. No tidings have reached, no enemy has pursued, no

friend has discovered me. I am alone, and I am dying. I watch

day by day the progress of the disease which is killing mc. In

reckless despair I accelerate its progress; and then I tremble

and shudder at the approach of death. I drag myself to the

cathedral, and in its awful silence, or in the low chaunting

of the choir, I find a soothing power, which acts at times as

a spell over the dark visions and secret terrors of my soul.

But I cannot pray when others pray. My brain is confused, and

my spirit weary. I cannot kneel in mockery before God, while

my soul rebels against Him. The voices of the dead and of the

dying mingle with the rise and fall of the organ. Sometimes a

note vibrates on my ear like a death-cry--the sound of rushing

waters besets me--the curse of Cain follows me, and his words

of complaint are ever upon my lips--"My punishment is greater

than I can bear!"

Is there no balm for such sorrows? No refuge for such despair?

Tell me, ye who know; for verily, my soul is in great agony,

and there is none to comfort me! I am passing through the

Valley of the Shadow of Death, and God is not with me!

CONCLUSION.

"What angel shall

Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive

Unless her prayers, whom Heaven delights to hear

And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath

Of greatest Justice."

SHAKESPEARE.

"Love her, Angelo,

I have confessed her, and I know her virtue."

SHAKESPEARE.

"Une vie a bien faire uniquement passee

D'innocence, d'amour, d'espoir, de purete,

Tant d'aspirations vers son Dieu repetees,

Tant de foi dans la mort, tant de vertus jetees

En gage a l'Immortalite.

"Tant de nuits sans sommeil pour veiller la souffrance,

Tant de pain retranche pour nourrir l'Indigence;

Tant de pleurs toujours prets a s'unir a des pleurs,

Tant de soupirs brulans vers une autre patrie,

Et tant de patience, a porter une vie,

Dont la Couronne etait ailleurs."

LAMARTINE.

On a cold evening in February, Mrs. Middleton was sitting

alone in the library of Elmsley Priory; the wind was howling

round the old house in that mournful key which stirs up in the

soul a vague emotion; the roaring of the swollen torrent was

audible, and the low distant barking of the keeper's dogs

chimed in with it. Mrs. Middleton was dressed in the deep

mourning of a widow. She was not more than forty, and yet her

hair was prematurely grey, and the heavy listlessness with

which one of her hands hung by her side, and the other struck

repeatedly and unconsciously the table on which she leant,

told that the spring within was broken, and that suffering,

and not time, had done its work upon her.

An embroidering-frame was near her, and after a while she drew

it to herself and began to work. When she had made a few

stitches she let the needle fall, and her head sank upon the

support of the frame, and there she remained buried in thought

till the door at the end of the library was softly opened. She

looked up eagerly, and gazed in silence on the beautiful being

who was approaching her, and who after kissing her on the

forehead sat down near her, and employed herself with the work

she had given up.

And that lovely vision, what was she like? What did that pale

smooth brow, those earnest eyes, that bloodless cheek, and

delicate form resemble? A lily shattered by the storm; a dove

scared from her nest, but faithful in her fear. An expression

wholly at variance with the features that wear it, is a

startling thing. Tears in the eyes of an old and iron-featured

man; laughter on a pale and dying face; care and deep-seated

sorrow in the round lineaments of childhood, make us wonder

and grieve; but more at variance than any of these was the

expression of Alice Lovell's beautiful features with the

character they seemed made to bear. Intense and anxious

watchfulness marked it now, a tremulous quiver shook her hand

as she drew the threads through the canvas; and though her

large eyes were calm, and her attitude composed, the least

sound made her start.

"How is he now?" inquired Mrs. Middleton in a voice scarcely

above a whisper.

"Sleeping, thank God, and quietly too. Oh, Mrs. Middleton,

hope is strong within me yet, and strength will be given us

never to forsake him."

"Hope! strength! Alice, where are they to be found?"

Alice pointed to the sky and then to her own heart, and said,

"_There_ and _here_. In quietness and in confidence shall be

our strength." After a pause she resumed, "You were with him

some time to-day, did he speak to you?"

Mrs. Middleton grew paler still at this question, and bowed

her head in assent.

"What did he say?" continued Alice. "Oh, do not spare

_me!_--do not think of _me!_ What did _he_ say?"

Mrs. Middleton joined her hands together and exclaimed,

"'Where is she? Where is she?' was what he said. Again and

again he repeated these words in a tone of indescribable

anguish, and I was almost thankful when his mind wandered

again, and I could leave his dreadful question unanswered.

Alice, my child, I am so weak, and you are so strong in your

faith, in your hope, in your boundless charity, that I must

give way before you, and for once ask you in mercy to let me

speak of _her_. I could kneel on her grave and pray to be

resigned; but now as it is I grow wild with terror--"

"Oh, let us speak of her, and let us pray for her; let us

never have another secret fear, another unspoken terror. Let

us pray that in this world she may still be blessed, or in a

better she may have been mercifully received."

"You do not understand me yet, Alice. _He_ does. The same

horrible fear has darted through his mind, darkened and

clouded as it is. Her own deed; her own hand,... Alice, you

never guessed the extent of his misery or of mine."

"Never guessed it, Mrs. Middleton? I have been with him in his

hours of fierce delirium; I have been with him when he has

taken me for _her_, and addressed to me words which have made

my blood run cold; words of guilty love and of horrible

remorse. I have lived between you and him during these days of

darkness and agony. I have seen your hope die, and your terror

grow; and do I not know what your fear is?--Suicide! Yes, let

me speak the word at once, let me dive into your inmost

thoughts, and let me carry consolation even into that

extremity of misery. Who can declare the point where despair

becomes _madness?_ Who shall judge? Who shall condemn? Who can

tell the secret things of the soul save the God who made it?

He has set no limits to our prayers; and shall we say to His

mercy, so far shalt thou go and no further?"

They knelt together, those two women; they poured forth their

souls in prayer, and when they rose from their knees, and the

elder of them leant her forehead against the breast of the

younger and wept in silence, she blessed her in her heart; and

she was right to bless her, for nobly and tenderly had Alice

Lovell borne her part through the heavy trials that had

assailed her. We heard of her last on the bed of sickness, and

death was drawing near to her; but youth, and strength of body

and mind carried her through, and when she rose from her couch

of weakness and of pain, it was to hurry to the bed-side of

the husband who had forsaken her, and who, after some days of

agonised search after the victim of his relentless passion,

maddened by the conviction that he had destroyed her, and

haunted by an indescribable remorse, had lost in a brain fever

all consciousness save of some intolerable anguish, and of

that endless remorse. For many days he hovered between life

and death, while his pale wife stood by his side and held his

burning hand in hers; even while he raved in dreadful delirium

of his love and his despair, and with frantic cries called

upon the grave to give up its dead. She was indeed a

ministering angel in that house of mourning, for there was

another fierce but now subdued spirit, who without daring to

approach the bed of suffering, was undergoing all the anguish

of the blow she had struck, and which had recoiled upon

herself. It was a fearful sight to see that old woman crying

like a child over the ruin she had made, wringing her hands in

despair, and with straining eyes and blanched cheeks,

listening at the door of the room where the being, whom she

had nursed as a child, and idolised as a man, whose passions

she had fostered, whose life she had saved and embittered, to

whom she had confided her child, and whom she had at last

ruined by her blind and furious revenge, was raving, cursing,

and dying. Between them stood that child whom she had

sacrificed, and he had betrayed. With words of peace and of

holy confidence, passing from one to the other, Alice spoke of

hope and pardon, and turned the agony of the aged sufferer

into penitence. By degrees she learnt from her lips all the

secrets of her soul. From her she gathered the knowledge of

that dark cloud which had hung over Ellen's life, and while

she trembled and wept, in her heart there rose (as Mrs.

Middleton had said) an immense pity, a boundless charity. Day

by day she watched and prayed by Henry's side, and at last

discerned a ray of light through the gloom. The fever left

him, and one day that she had supported his head for several

weary hours, he opened his languid eyes and said, "Alice, is

it you?"

She pressed upon his cheek a kiss, like a mother's to a

rescued child; but when he whispered in her ear the terrible

question on which his life and his reason depended, her face

was as pale as his, and her tears fell like rain-drops on his

brow. Gradually his strength returned, but still at times his

mind wandered. For hours he would remain with his eyes fixed

on vacancy, and his lips would move as if unconsciously, and

form the fatal words of inquiry which never received an

answer. Sometimes he took Alice for Ellen, and kneeling at her

feet he, would implore her pardon, and curse and upbraid

himself as her murderer and destroyer. With heroic patience,

but with a sickening heart and a shuddering frame she listened

to these ravings, and met his wild and involuntary confessions

with a silent appeal to Heaven for mercy for him, and for

strength for herself.

After a while she went with him to Elmsley, and there

continued her work of love and endurance. Her strength seemed

to increase with the demands upon it. Mrs. Middleton's broken

spirit, and helpless despondency, needed her support almost as

much as Henry's weakened mind. Her grandmother had returned to

the cottage at Bridman, and nothing cheered the solitude of

that melancholy abode, but the occasional visits of that angel

who moved amidst all these various sufferings and dark

associations like a messenger of peace. It was as a hard task,

and many a martyr's palm has perchance been more easily won.

She became identified with all their sorrows--almost with the

remorse she witnessed; perhaps she suffered more than any of

them, for she knew more than any one else of that terrible

history which had driven Henry to madness, and Ellen (as she

supposed) to self-destruction. Through her grandmother's tardy

and unavailing misgivings, she learnt the details of that

obstinate belief in the lost Ellen's guilt which had led her

to hate and persecute her. She heard from her lips how that

sentiment had grown into a passion when fostered by a bitter

and burning resentment; how, under the influence of that

feeling, she had one night made her way into the house at

Elmsley at dusk, with the intention of upbraiding Henry, and

denouncing Ellen. She had found her alone, and asleep before

the organ on which she had been playing. A savage hatred

filled her soul, and she bent over that sleeping form with a

fierce impulse to revenge upon her at once the death of Julia,

and Henry's desertion of her own child. Conscience and terror

alike checked her uplifted arm; she withdrew in silence, but

left behind her the first of that series of mysterious

threats, by which she haunted the mind, and scared the peace

of that wretched and deeply-tried being. She confessed to

Alice how she had employed and excited Robert Harding to act

the part of a spy, to dodge the steps and watch the actions of

her faithless husband, and of the unhappy object of his fatal

passion. A superstitious belief in a mysterious call to

denounce and to visit the crime she had witnessed, constantly

counteracted by the influence which Henry possessed over her,

and an intense anxiety for the innocent girl she had committed

to his reckless hands, had kept her in a state of mind

bordering on distraction. Harding was one of those men, who,

dogged and obstinate in one respect, was weak and manageable

in all others. He blindly followed her dictates, as long as

she persuaded him that her aim was to protect or to avenge

Alice, whom he loved with an instinctive, faithful, and humble

devotion. He shared her hatred of Ellen, and on the day of her

marriage had mixed with the crowd at the church door, and

thrust into her hand that warning which had been so awfully

realised. At the time of the election at--, he had watched

from the gallery where he stood, with a strange mixture of

grief and rage, Alice's altered countenance, and her husband's

open and shameless devotion to her rival. He had in his

possession one of those letters which Mrs. Tracy had so often

written and then recalled; he resolved to deliver it at once,

and thus bring sudden disgrace and misery upon that guilty

pair whose destiny was in his hands. When he had done the

deed, and retired to his solitary abode at Bridman, he felt

frightened at what he had hazarded, and trembled like a child

at the idea of Mrs. Tracy's anger. It was, therefore, a relief

to him when Henry sought him out, and humbled himself before

him. He was released from an awful responsibility, and

returned to his post, supported by his aunt's bounty, obedient

to her orders, and with a dog-like, self-denying fidelity,

ready to die at Alice's feet, to kill her husband, or to save

his life at the expense of his own, according as he was told

that _she_ willed it--that _she_ required it. During the time

he was in Mr. Escourt's service he might have been betrayed

into more active steps, had he not detected, with a keen and

instinctive jealousy, the motive which dictated his patron's

sharp investigations, and the object he had in view; which,

with a singular mixture of cunning and honesty, he contrived

to defeat.

Mrs. Tracy described to Alice, in tones and with looks that

made her shudder, how her spirit was moved, even at the altar

where Ellen's ill-omened marriage was solemnised, to denounce

that pale, stern bride as a homicide, and to proclaim aloud

that the trembling hand which one man bestowed, and another

received, with such loving trust, was stained with blood. She

had risen to speak; the words were upon her lips:

"Phrenzy to her heart was given,

To speak the malison of Heaven,"

when she met the full and glaring force of Henry's flashing

eyes. She could not withstand their dark and dreadful power;

Alice, her helpless child, was by his side, and she sunk back

in her seat, overcome and subdued. On the day of Alice's

confinement her hopes had been raised, and her heart softened,

by some indications of sensibility on Henry's part. The

reaction was violent when he returned after an absence of

several hours, which she knew had been devoted to Ellen. She

reproached and upbraided him, and he answered her by a

careless and brutal avowal of the nature of his feelings, and

he left the house again at dinner-time without even visiting

his wife. Then in her fury she resolved at all risks to

separate him from Ellen; she broke open his desk, where she

found notes which excited her hatred and anger to such a

degree that she determined to send them at once to Edward

Middleton, and thus place an eternal barrier between the

guilty pair. The result of that fatal act she now deplored

with a ceaseless and bitter sorrow, and day after day, with

tears and groans, entreated the forgiveness of her

thrice-injured child. Patiently and mercifully did Alice listen

to that misguided and unhappy woman's confessions; she

abstained by a reproachful look or a severe word from heaping

fresh misery on that aged and humbled head, but she pondered

over these things in silence; and when she returned to Henry's

side and he held out his hand to greet her, hers was cold and

nervous, and her heart sunk within her as she fished her eyes

on his, and in their wild and restless expression read that

fearful retribution which sometimes falls on those who have

walked in their own ways, and defied the justice of an

Almighty Judge, till the light that was in them has become

darkness, and His awful vengeance has overtaken them. Great

indeed was that darkness in Henry Lovell's case--greater still

from the light that had once been in him. Sparks of genius,

touches of feeling, relics of the high capabilities of mind

that had once been his, flashed through the night of his soul,

and made its present darkness more sadly visible.

Alas, for all that God gives and man destroys! Alas, for all

that might be and is not! Genius and intellect, which should

subdue and regenerate worlds, and with noble thoughts, and

words of fire, carry the truth from one hemisphere to the

other--where are ye? What do ye? Consumed upon the altar of a

withering selfishness--cramped and debased by the bonds of a

narrow scepticism--man has prostituted you to vile uses.

Slaves of his passions, and ministers of evil, He has made

you;--and where God had said, "Let there be light," has too

often answered, "Let there be darkness."

Henry's gloomy and wayward depression increased every day,

although his intellect was not wholly obscured; but at the

times that it was clearest, he seemed to suffer more than

during its hours of partial aberration. He gave way less than

at first to fits of violent irritation; the terrible

expressions he used to utter, and the murmurs and curses which

rose to his lips with such frightful bitterness, were at an

end. He even ceased to ask that fatal question with which he

had been wont to torture his wife and sister; he listened in

silence to what they said, and once made a faint attempt to

smile when Alice spoke cheerfully to him. He often gazed on

her in silence, and watched her intently as she moved about

the room. Once, when she was sitting at her work opposite to

him, she heard him say, in a low voice, "_Notre Dame de bon

secours_." She looked up with tears in her eyes; he rose

wildly, and cried, "Your tears shall not avail you;" and then

he turned away, and did not speak for some hours.

One morning that the sun was shining brightly, and the mild

air forestalled the spring, Alice had thrown open a window

that looked upon the flower-garden. A bird was chirping a few

shrill notes near it; and Henry listened to them with an

appearance of pleasure. When the bird flew away, he went to

the window, and gazed earnestly on some early spring flowers,

which were just coming into blossom. Alice opened a book on

the table, and read aloud the following lines:--

"Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies.

Bathed in soft airs and fed with dew,

What more of magic in you lies

To fill the hearths fond view?

In childhood's sports, companions gay

In sorrow, on life's downward way,

How soothing! In our last decay.

Memorials prompt and true."

Henry held out his hand for the book, and read over these

lines in silence; he then glanced at the title-page,

shuddered, and flung it from him. Alice picked it up, and

looked anxiously at him.

"Was not Dr. Dodd hung for forgery?" he exclaimed. She turned

very pale. He saw it; and said, "You need not be frightened

now. I am not _mad_. In that very book I _forged_ the first

link of that infernal chain with which I bound and destroyed

her."

Alice knelt by him, and whispered--

"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as

snow."

He drew fiercely back, and cried--

"There may be mercy for others; there can be none for me. Look

into your Bible, you will see in it what I have done. Turned

her body and her soul into hell! God alone should do _that_.

_I_ have done it. Alice, if you believe, you must tremble. Ay,

the devils do so too. Poor angel! God has turned thee into an

earthly hell. Pure spirit! chained to a fiend, thy fiery trial

draws to an end."

He sank back into his chair, and muttered--

"The worm that never dies. Ay, I understand it now."

One day that Alice had been walking before breakfast, and was

returning home with that heaviness of step, and abstraction

from outward things, which prolonged and acute mental

suffering produces, the porter's wife stopped her as she

passed the lodge, to tell her that half an hour before a

gentleman had come to the gate in a post-chaise, and had

expressed an anxious desire to see her; that on finding she

was out, he had hesitated a moment as to what he should do,

but that at last he had stepped into the lodge, and written a

letter, which he had desired her to deliver to Mrs. Lovell as

soon as she returned. Alice took it with a mixture of fear and

curiosity. The only conjecture she could form was, that it

came from Edward Middleton. The unbroken solitude in which he

had lived--the obstinate silence which he had maintained when

Mrs. Middleton once ventured to address a few lines to him,

imploring him to aid her in the search of his guilty but

unfortunate wife--made her break the seal of this letter with

nervous anxiety.

She glanced at the signature, and, at once relieved and

disappointed, she saw it was not from him, and then read as

follows:--

"Madam,

"As one who, in his ministry, has received from dying lips a

solemn confession--as a man who has witnessed a deep

repentance, and a great affliction, I address you.

"There is one who has been for a while as if she had been dead

to you and yours, but who is yet alive, although her life is

passing away like a morning cloud. In His name, who never

broke the bruised reed, I ask you to smooth her pillow, and to

bring peace and pardon to that weary spirit. She has made the

sacrifice of her life to God; and her only desire is to be

forgiven by those whom she has trespassed against, and to

forgive those who have trespassed against her. I dare not say

more. Just, it is hardly possible that you _can_ be; merciful,

I am certain that you _will_ be. Mrs. Edward Middleton is

at --; she is in the last stage of a rapid consumption, and

before many days are gone by, her spirit will have returned to

the God who gave it. She has confessed to me the sins and the

sorrows of her short and troubled life. One heavy trial she

has been spared, in the knowledge that your life, Madam, has

been saved; and if she could receive from you, from her aunt,

and, above all, from the husband whom she has offended, a

token of forgiveness, her life might still close (I use her

own expression) 'with one untroubled hour.' I heard her murmur

these last words to herself, as, out of a nosegay, which had

been in kindness sent her, she selected a passionflower, the

sight of which affected her strangely.

"I have undertaken this journey for the sole purpose of

informing you of Mrs. Middleton's present residence. I shall

await your answer at the inn at Elmsley. My reason for

addressing this letter to you, Madam, was the fear of causing

Mrs. William Middleton too sudden an emotion in her present

state of health. To your hand I commit the task, and I pray

that you may be guided and blessed in the performance of it.

"William Lacy."

Alice had begun to read this letter as she was walking towards

the house; but as soon as she had read the few first lines,

and that the sense of them burst upon her, she staggered to a

bench, and a great faintness came over her. She read on,

however; and, as the letter ended with that prayer for her

which had been so fervently put up, she closed her eyes for an

instant, and said _Amen_ with her whole heart.

The letter had rolled at her feet, and as she stooped for it,

her husband suddenly joined her. He picked it up, and asked

whence it came. She trembled and turned pale. He saw it, and

guessed it all. He seized her hands, and looked wildly into

her face--

"Is she alive?"

"She is, Henry, she is."

He fell with his face to the ground, and for the first time in

his life his soul spoke to God.

When he arose he was very pale, but he took the letter from

Alice's hand, and read it through in silence. "Not dead, but

dying!" He hid his face in his hands and wept convulsively.

"Alice," he cried at last, as his wife bent over him in

speechless sympathy, "Alice, my guardian angel! never forsake

me--never leave me! Teach me to live; teach me to die; teach

me to see _her_ die, and not to blaspheme and to curse. Put

your hand on my forehead, and drive away the dreadful thoughts

that come over me... She is dying; she is alone: what are we

doing here? Alice, I must see this man, this priest; quick,

quick--send him to me; there is no time to lose."

There was a wildness in Henry's countenance and manner which

alarmed Alice. She walked fast with him to the house, and

despatched a groom to the inn with an earnest entreaty to Mr.

Lacy that he would come to them directly. She then went to

Mrs. Middleton, and, with tenderness and caution, informed her

of that glad, mournful news, which relieved her worst fears,

only by summoning her to the death-bed of that Ellen whom she

so passionately loved, and whose name vibrated in her ear, and

thrilled through her heart, with a strange and undying power.

She rose as from a deep sleep, and prepared to go to her; but

there was no gladness in the revival of her fainting spirit,

and no hope in the pilgrimage before her.

An hour afterwards Henry Lovell received Mr. Lacy in his room.

He had spoken kindly and tenderly to Mrs. Middleton. When

Alice met him, overcome by the sense of all that they two

alone as yet knew and felt, and by an instinctive dread of the

interview about to take place with Henry, she fell on her

knees before him; he laid his hand upon her head, and said in

a voice which trembled with emotion--

"The blessing of an old man be upon you, my daughter; and may

the God whose servant I am never forsake you in life or in

death."

Alice rose and fixed her earnest eyes on Mr. Lacy's venerable

countenance, and said slowly and solemnly--

"You have brought us tidings of mournful joy, and you will

carry back with you tidings of peace and of hope to poor

Ellen's dying spirit. Oh, Mr. Lacy, have you not a blessing to

leave behind you? Have you no words of peace to speak to him,

even to him who is now waiting for you? I know not in what

spirit he will receive you. Dark shades sweep over his soul,

and his sufferings are terrible. He is recovering slowly from

a brain fever--"

Henry opened the door of the adjoining room. The colour of his

face was changed; he looked quite unlike himself; and Alice

started at the strange sound of his voice, when he said, "Do

not detain Mr. Lacy, Alice: my time is short, and I have much

to say to him."

Mr. Lacy followed him into his study; he shut the door, and

begged him to sit down. He looked at him steadily for a

minute, and then said--

"You know all my history?"

"Some parts of it," Mr. Lacy replied.

"You know, then, that you speak to a man who has destroyed, by

a series of iniquitous persecutions, a woman whom he so

devotedly loved that even now--"

"Mr. Lovell, I am not come here to listen to the avowal of an

unholy passion; I am come to bring you that forgiveness which

you so much need, and to claim from you a confession--"

"Stop, Mr. Lacy; you must listen to me, or you will drive me

mad," said Henry, with a terrible laugh, "and then what

confession will you get? Listen to me. I love Ellen Middleton

so passionately, that were I not dying myself, I could not

even now do her justice. Though two hours ago I fancied I

could have given my existence only to know her alive and in

her husband's arms, even though I might never see her again,

yet _now_--_now_ that I have heard of her,--that I see you who

have seen her face and heard her voice, the dreadful struggles

I go through only leave me life and sense enough to prove to

you that I was in my right mind when I wrote _this_."

He held out a letter to Mr. Lacy, who took it in silence.

"Take that letter to Edward Middleton, Mr. Lacy; you may read

it first yourself. If, when he reads it, he forgives his wife

and curses me, I shall be satisfied. Tell him, then, that I am

mad or dead; I shall be so by that time. When you see _her_

again, tell her not to look so pale, or stare so wildly when I

dream of her; tell her not to hang over me, or stand by my

bedside and moan so piteously. Did you say she was dead?"

"No; she is dying; and she is prepared to die; she prays, she

hopes, she submits, and God will receive her, for His mercy is

infinite."

"A ministering angel she will then be, while I lie howling! A

gulf between us! What am I thinking of? Where have I read

that? There is something very wrong _here!_ I beg your pardon,

Mr. Lacy, I will not detain you a moment more. Perhaps you

will be so kind as to let me know the result of your interview

with Edward Middleton? and give my love to Ellen; I shall call

upon her to-morrow."

There was something so horrible in the familiar tone with

which these last words were spoken, that Mr. Lacy shuddered,

and breathed a mental prayer for the wretched man whose senses

seemed to have failed him after the strong and persevering

effort he had made to collect them for one important object.

In a few brief words he warned Alice, as he left him, of the

wild and sudden manner in which their conversation had been

broken off, and strongly urged her to send for instant medical

advice. She did so; and after taking leave of him, and

murmuring in an almost inaudible voice the words, "Pray for

us!" she returned to her post with that sinking of heart, and

strength of spirit, which those only know who feel acutely,

and never give way. She did not inform Mrs. Middleton of the

alarming symptoms which indicated the return of what they most

dreaded. She would not, by rousing her fears, detain her from

the death-bed of Henry's victim; she sent her there, as to a

mournful refuge from the terrors she herself anticipated. When

she had seen her take her departure, she knelt alone for a few

minutes in her room before a picture of the Crucifixion, which

hung there; she offered to God, in a few brief words, the

agony she was about to endure; and then, with a steady step

and a calm countenance, she walked into the room where Henry

was, and sat down quietly to her work at a small distance from

him. She saw by his eye and his countenance that he was

struggling with the delirious fever which was coming upon him;

and while she kept her hand near the bell, which at an

instant's notice was to be answered, and her eye upon the

avenue through which she could see the doctor arrive, she

spoke now and then in a quiet tone, and gently and firmly

answered the wild questions he addressed to her. Once he

called loudly and fiercely for music; he muttered something

about David and his harp; he bade her drive the evil spirit

from him; he began to speak rapidly and incoherently, and to

chafe at her silence. She could not play; she had never sung

to him before; for the first time, she did. Her voice was

pure, and sweet, and loud; it rose in the silence of that

twilight hour with a strange and awful harmony. She sang the

airs of those sacred chaunts which fall on the ear like

dreamings of eternity. Two old servants who were in the

outward room fell on their knees and listened. For more than

an hour that solemn, mournful song continued; it thrilled

through their very souls, and affected them more deeply than

the most passionate cries of grief or of terror could have

done. It only ceased when the doctor arrived; and Henry was

persuaded, in a moment of gloomy and indifferent abstraction,

to retire to bed, and yield himself to his care. But no

remedies, no treatment availed to check the progress of the

fever, which increased every hour, and which was accompanied

by the fiercest delirium, and the most frantic ravings. His

struggles were fearful: his attempts at self-destruction

frequent; three men could hardly hold him down. Towards

morning, in one of those paroxysms of delirious fury, he broke

a blood-vessel, and Alice, who had never left his bed-side,

was covered with blood. She stirred not even then; she saw in

the doctor's face that the danger was imminent; for the

prostration of strength which followed the accident was sudden

and awful; and one of those indescribable changes which

announce the approach of dissolution was apparent. She

whispered to one of the servants to send for the clergyman,

and then she knelt by the bed-side and gazed with an agonising

intensity on Henry's deathly pale face. His eyes were closed

in the helplessness of utter exhaustion, and his breath hardly

dimmed the mirror that was held to his lips. After a few

minutes of that nameless anguish which thought dares not dwell

upon, nor words describe, she saw his eyes open and turn to

her with an expression of intense inquiry, full of the

consciousness of death, of the sense of a coming eternity, and

of that question, deferred too long, and asked too late, "What

shall I do to be saved?"

She bent over him in speechless sorrow; his dying eyes caught

sight of the cross which hung from her neck; she saw it; she

held it to his lips, and whispered, "None ever perished at His

feet."

He heard her; and his lips moved, and his hand grasped hers;

he looked at her, raised his eyes to Heaven,--and he died.

On that murmured prayer, on that expiring glance, she built

hopes which we may not scan,--which we dare not judge. We dare

not break the bruised but not broken reed on which she leant,

nor quench the uncertain light which its memory threw upon the

remaining years of her earthly pilgrimage.

When the clergyman arrived, he found her still on her knees by

the bed of death, still covered with the blood of her dead

husband. He has often since said, that when she rose from her

knees, and silently held out her hand to him, it was with a

reverence mingled with awe that he took it. He felt (this was

his expression) that she had drawn very near to God in the

prayers which she had poured forth in that chamber of death,

during its first and solemn hour of silence and of loneliness.

It was an irksome and trying task which Mr. Lacy, from a sense

of duty, and of profound interest and pity, had undertaken;

and the part of it which he most dreaded was now at hand. For

those he had left behind, he felt the sincerest compassion,

and for Alice, the highest admiration. When he had drawn near

to Elmsley, he had formed beforehand a tolerably just idea of

the situation and state of mind of its inmates. He had

expected to find a woman bowed down with grief, worn out with

sorrow, and by her side another, more like an angelic than a

human being, and such were those he had seen. He had expected

to find a man with a mind weakened, torn by a keen remorse,

and still struggling with unconquered passions; he had heard

with his own ears the confirmation of his anticipations, and

he had left him, sinking under that delirious agony which he

had struggled with long, and mastered for one moment, but

which had subdued him at last. He had sent one of these

sufferers to the bed-side of his dying penitent, and had left

the others in God's hands, and had prayed earnestly for them,

as he foresaw the dark and troubled scenes on which they were

entering. But now, as he travelled from Elmsley to Hillscombe,

he felt quite uncertain as to the character, and the state of

mind, of the man whom he was seeking. Ellen's journal had

given him a clear idea of every individual connected with her

history save of that husband whom she had so loved, so feared,

and so offended. Whether a strong principle of duty, or an

implacable strength of resentment characterised him, he could

not exactly discern; and he felt the difficulty of obtruding

himself, a perfect stranger, into those sorrows which dignity,

or pride, wounded affection, or stern implacability, had

shrouded from every eye, and buried in that solitude which he

was now on the point of disturbing.

With intense anxiety and curiosity he opened the letter which

Henry Lovell had placed in his hands; and, according to his

permission, proceeded to read it.

"This letter will be placed in your hands by a clergyman, who

will at the same time inform you that I am dying, and that, as

a dying man, I solemnly address you, and charge you to read

the whole of this letter. Your wife is not dead; and on my

death-bed I desire to do her that justice which I withheld

from her so long, while she vainly sought for it at my hands.

I have loved her passionately and for years; and if she had

returned my affection, she would not be dying now of a broken

heart, and I should not be on the brink of madness. Do not

imagine that I am mad _now_. I am in the full possession of my

senses; and if I could, or dared, thank God for anything, it

would be for this interval of reason, which allows me to

declare, with all the force of a death-bed assertion, that the

woman, whom you have turned out of your house as my mistress,

is as pure as she was on the fatal day when we both first saw

her; and loves you with a passion which has made the misery of

my life, which has baffled every effort I made to destroy her

virtue, and which she dies of at last, blessing you, and

hating me as a woman; but, perhaps, forgiving me as a

Christian. Not quite three years ago, a dreadful accident, an

extraordinary train of circumstances, threw her into my power.

I saw her in a fit of almost childish passion strike her

cousin Julia; the child was standing in a dangerous position,

her foot slipped, and she fell down the cliff; you know the

rest; had you known it sooner you might now be the happy

husband of the woman whom I adore. _You_ too will know the

meaning of those horrible words _too late_, which I have

repeated to her in malice, and to myself in despair, till I

feel as if they would ring in my ears through an eternity of

misery. She wanted courage, she wanted opportunity, to accuse

herself of the involuntary act which resembled murder in its

results, and which, in the secret cogitations of her restless

soul, and excited imagination, assumed a form of guilt and of

terror which nothing could efface. _I_ kept her secret! I

forced Mrs. Tracy, (Alice's grandmother,) who was in my room,

on some matters of business at the time, to keep it too. I

devoted myself to my victim; I watched her continually; I read

each emotion of her soul; I soothed her terrors; I flattered

her; I made her believe, by a series of artful contrivances,

that _you_ were the possessor of her secret, and thus sought,

by fear, by distrust, by every pang which that belief

occasioned, to crush that passion, the dawn of which I had

detected with rage and despair. Under that impression, she saw

you depart with a resigned and sullen indifference; and for

some months I thought myself, if not loved, at least liked, to

a degree which justified my hopes and my designs. They were

cruelly disappointed;--a fatal engagement, an entanglement in

which guilt and folly had involved me, prevented my offering

myself to her in any way but that of urging her to a secret

marriage, which I proposed on the score of her uncle's

implacable opposition. She steadily refused to yield to my

passionate entreaties, and we parted with threats and

upbraidings on my part, and contempt and defiance on hers. I

was, of course, banished from Elmsley, and soon afterwards,

for the purpose of saving myself from a threatened and

disgraceful exposure, of a nature needless now to detail, I

made a victim of that gentle and perfect Alice, who has almost

as much reason as Ellen herself to curse the day on which I

crossed her path. When I met the latter again, in London, some

time after my marriage, I began to use that power which

accident had given me. She had then found out that you were

not, as she had imagined, aware of the event which had so

fearfully blighted her peace. I then avowed myself the

possessor of her secret; and alternately as a friend and as a

foe--by devotion one while, and by threats another--I forced

her to endure my presence,--to tolerate the expression of a

passion, against which her heart revolted, but which she dared

not peremptorily repel. I employed every art which cunning can

devise to entangle and to bind her. In Mrs. Tracy's knowledge

of her secret, and violent enmity against her, I held an

engine which I skilfully turned to my purpose. I bound her by

an oath never to reveal to you the history of Julia's death.

She pronounced it; but even while she protested that she would

never marry you, she declared to me, with the accents of

intense passion, that though she had refused, she adored you,

and that she would rather die at your feet, than live by my

side.

"After betraying her feelings in a moment of extraordinary

agitation, she found herself almost involuntarily engaged to

you; she wrote to me, and threw herself on my mercy. My

feelings and my conduct, at that time, appear strange to

myself. I was excluded from her uncle's house, and that

intercourse with her, which was dearer to me than existence,

was interrupted and thwarted in every way. By one effort, one

great sacrifice, I regained her confidence, and re-established

myself in that forfeited intimacy, at the same time that I

bound her by fresh ties of fear and obligation. Perhaps I was

also touched by her terrible situation: but be that as it may,

I _allowed_ her to marry you; and by some concessions on my

own part to her inveterate enemy, that old woman,--whose

vindictive malice has ruined and undone us all,--I bought her

silence, and once more shielded Ellen from disgrace and

exposure.

"I need not go into further details. You now can trace for

yourself the whole course of my relentless persecution, and of

her long and bitter struggles. From first to last,--from the

hour she pledged her faith to you at the altar, to that in

which you surprised her at my feet,--she has been true to you.

I say it even now, with jealous rage; for the fierce love with

which I have loved her is still smouldering in my breast, and

will only die when I die; I say it with the agony of death in

my soul,--with the vision of an approaching eternity before

me,--she has been true to you: she has loved you as I loved

her; and when she clung to my feet, and vainly sued for mercy

at my hands, it was to implore that I would suffer her to

reveal the truth to you, the acknowledgment of which might

then have saved her. She is dying now, and I have not long to

live. She has never loved me, and I have loved her,--and I am

sometimes mad--not _now_. If you do not believe me, send for

the woman who saw her strike the child. Speak to Robert

Harding. Curse _me_, and forgive _her_. Alice has forgiven me.

Shall you forgive Ellen, and go to her?

"I have nothing more to say, and I sit writing to you as if

the end of all things was at hand.

"Henry Lovell."

With a deep-drawn sigh, and a steady gaze on the calm pure sky

before him, Mr. Lacy folded and put up this letter. During the

rest of his short journey he meditated in silence, on the

sorrows he had left behind him, and those he was going in

search of; and as he fixed his eyes on the blue and boundless

arch over his head, his lips unconsciously repeated that

sublime passage in the prophecies of Isaiah:--"My thoughts are

not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the

Lord; for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my

ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your

thoughts."

On his arrival at the lodge of the park at Hillscombe, his

inquiries after Mr. Middleton were answered by a positive

assurance that he was not at home; and it was only after

stating that the business he was come upon was of the highest

importance, that he could induce the porter to dispatch a note

from himself to Mr. Middleton, requesting an immediate

interview, and reminding him of some circumstances connected

with his late uncle, which gave him an especial claim upon his

regard and respect. After a while, the servant returned, and

requested Mr. Lacy to proceed to the house. As he drove

through those grounds,--as he entered that house, the scene of

poor Ellen's brief dream of happiness--as he prepared to meet

her husband, he felt nearly overcome by his anxiety for the

result of this important interview.

He was shown into the library, and at the end of a few minutes

Edward Middleton came in, and, requesting him to be seated,

alluded briefly to the circumstances which Mr. Lacy had

mentioned, and begged to be informed as to the object of his

visit. As Mr. Lacy looked on the pale stern countenance before

him, and in its inflexible expression, and deeply-marked

lines, read all he feared, he murmured to himself,

"Unrelenting;" and his heart sunk within him.

"I am come here, Mr. Middleton, to perform a great duty, and

to clear up a great mystery. As a minister of God, I claim

from you a patient hearing, and that you will read a letter

which I bring to you from one death-bed, and hearken to a

dying appeal from another."

"Sir, I respect your character, and I revere your office; but

if what you have to say relates to me, and not to yourself,

let us break off this conversation at once. There are

subjects, there are names which I never suffer any human being

to allude to before me; and the sacred character which you

bear, gives you no right to force them upon me."

"It has given me the right to receive from your dying wife a

confession--"

Mr. Lacy stopped and hesitated; a convulsive emotion had

passed over Edward's face, and he turned frightfully pale; but

in an instant his features resumed their iron rigidity, and he

waved his hand impatiently. "And it gives me the right,"

continued Mr. Lacy, "to tell you that you are committing a

fearful injustice; that you are under a fatal delusion."

"She will die, then, as she has lived!" exclaimed Edward with

violence. "She has lied, then, to God, as well as to me."

"Beware! beware," returned Mr. Lacy, "how you speak of one

whom God has absolved,--whom He will receive; for He shows

great mercy where man has none."

"There are crimes," rejoined Edward, fiercely,--"there are

crimes which God may forgive but which man cannot."

He glanced at the letter which Mr. Lacy held; and, as he

recognised the handwriting, the blood rushed violently to his

face, and then forsaking it, left it as pale as ashes.

"Is _he_ dead?" he asked, faintly, as he pointed to it.

"Life and reason are both forsaking him; but by a last effort,

he gathered strength to write what you _must_ read. You must

read it; for a voice from the grave calls upon you to do so.

You must read it; for your wife is dying, and she must be

justified in your eyes; she must be forgiven by you, before

her spirit returns to Him who gave it. Listen to me, listen to

me, Mr. Middleton: as you fear God, and hope for Heaven, it is

not the cause of a faithless life I plead; it is that of a

deeply-injured and much-belied woman; she has sinned, indeed,

but not against you. God has, through my mouth, absolved

her,--at His altar He has received her; and shall you, whom she

has loved too much--too fondly--too tremblingly,--with a

worship due to Him alone; shall you refuse her that hearing

which, with dying accents, she craves,--that justice which, in

her name, I demand from you?"

"God forgive me!" cried Edward, wildly; "God forgive me! for I

cannot forgive her. She has made her peace with Heaven, you

say. So be it, then,--let her die in peace. She has told you

that she loved me? Did she tell you how I loved, how I

worshipped her?--What is the punishment for those who betray,

if those who are betrayed suffer as I have done! She has told

you she is innocent; she has told you she is belied: has she

told you that I found her prostrate at the feet of that man,

who you say is now mad and dying?--that man, who it has almost

maddened me not to kill,--whom it has almost killed me to

spare--Go, go, Mr. Lacy!--pray for her--pray with her; but do

not ask _me_ to forgive her."

"Have you not heard me, Mr. Middleton? Have you not understood

me? I repeat to you, solemnly and earnestly, with all the

conviction that a minute acquaintance with the sad history of

her life can give, that your wife is not guilty of the crime

which you impute to her; and that she has only loved you too

passionately; only feared you too much. The pride, the

sternness of your character, acted fatally upon a nature like

hers. Beware, that, even now, God does not look down upon you

both, and judge _you_ the betrayer, and _her_ the betrayed.

_One_ hour's indulgence, _one_ moment's confidence, might have

brought her to your feet, to confess, not a crime, but a fact,

'which has been a covering to her eyes all the days of her

life;' an accident which, in a fatal hour of weakness, she

concealed; an accident which threw her into the power of those

who, in hatred, or under the impulse of a guilty passion,

sought to blight her peace, and ruin her virtue. That love

which you doubt, in the place of a higher principle, saved her

from guilt, and only left her a prey to the most protracted

agony. Read this letter--it is from the man who vainly sought

to gain her love, by wringing her heart--read this

journal--read this confession of many sins, of many fears, of

much sorrow; but own, as you read it, that her love to you was

wonderful, and passing the common love of woman; and then come

to forgive, and be forgiven, ere God takes to himself the

being whom you once swore at the altar to keep, to comfort,

and to cherish, until death parted you."

Edward Middleton made no answer to this solemn address. He

appeared stunned and bewildered. He stretched out his hand in

silence for the papers which Mr. Lacy held;--he wrung his

hand, and took leave of him. He watched his carriage out of

sight, and then locked the door, and remained alone for many

hours.

A fearful communing with himself took place that night. He was

a calm and a stern man; but bursts of passion shook his frame,

and terrible words sprung from his lips, in the solitude of

that night's watch; and tears, those dreadful tears which

nothing but agony wrings from manhood's eye, fell on the pages

before him. Who can tell what he suffered?--who can tell how

he struggled? what curses rose to his lips?--what mental

prayers recalled them?--what fierce anger burned within

him?--what returning tenderness overcame him?

At seven o'clock the following morning, an express from

Elmsley brought the intelligence of Henry Lovell's death. An

hour afterwards Edward Middleton was on his way to the

cathedral town of--.

It was on a mild day, as the sun was shining brightly on the

leafless groves of Hillscombe, its slanting rays gilding the

lawn on which the house stood, that a carriage drove slowly up

the avenue. When it stopped at the door, and the step was let

down, Edward Middleton sprang out, lifted his wife in his

arms, and carried her into the library.

Once before, a few months ago, he had led her into that room

his bride--his idol--his flower of beauty--the pride of his

soul. Now, he had brought her back to it to die--for there was

death in that marble forehead; death in those painfully bright

eyes; death in those transparent hands which held his; in that

hollow voice, which murmured, as he laid that weak frame and

weary head on the pillowed couch--"Home, home once more!"

He had sought her--he had found her dying--he had taken her in

his arms--he had pressed upon her fevered lips such kisses as

their hours of hope and of joy had never known--he had hoped

against hope. When she had clasped her thin weak arms round

his neck, and whispered, "Take me home, Edward, to die;" he

had answered in the words of Scripture, "Thou Shalt not die,

but live!"

And, verily, in her deep love's excess, she found a short

renewal of life. She gathered strength to rise from her bed of

weakness and of pain, and, with her head on his bosom, and her

hand in his, to breathe again the free air of Heaven, and gaze

with a languid eye on those beauties of earth and sky, which

have such a deep meaning, such a strange effect, on those who

are about to die.

For she must die!--she feels it--she knows it--but not as once

she thought to die; unreconciled to God, unforgiven by man.

Her weary pilgrimage is drawing to a close; but the light of

Heaven dawns upon it now.

She has a great duty to perform, and perform it she will; for

she has learnt that the cross which saves us in eternity must

be taken up on earth; and that without sacrifice there is no

peace for the soul.

She has called Edward to her side; she has mentally prayed

that strength may be given her for the trial at hand; she has

said to herself, "The scene, his tears, his passion, his soul

will too deeply move;" and she has charged him, with solemn

earnestness, to leave her for some hours to herself, and then

to return and bless the remaining days of that life he cannot

save.

She remained alone; and deep and intense were the prayers she

poured forth, as she waited for those she had sent for; those

whom she had summoned around her in that solemn hour.

She had never looked so beautiful in her days of pride and

health, as now, on her bed of sickness and sorrow, of

penitence and peace. Yea, of peace; for, although the

approaching hour was one of pain and trial; ay, and of shame

too, yet her way was clear before her, and she turned not now

her head aside from the cup of sorrow and of humiliation, but

steadily prepared to drink it to the dregs.

When she saw Mrs. Middleton, the mother of her childhood, the

friend of her youth; the friend who had lately sought her with

a message of peace, when she had forsaken, and been forsaken

by all the world, when she remembered what she had to tell

her, her soul well-nigh fainted within her; but she held out

her hand in silence, and prayed more earnestly.

When Alice, the widowed, the childless Alice, entered the

room; when their eyes met, she opened her arms. Oh, what

depths of mysterious feeling, of unutterable memories, of

silent aspirations, were crowded in that embrace. O language,

where is your strength? O words, your power, compared with the

mute communion of such an hour?

But all are not assembled yet; and Ellen's eyes are fixed on

the door with earnest expectation; and when it opened, and she

saw Mr. Lacy, her guide, her friend; he who by his sacred

ministry had prepared her for death, she turned paler than

before, for he was not alone--an aged woman followed him, and

gazed upon her with a strange and bewildered expression. There

was a moment's deep silence, and then Ellen, turning

successively to each of them, addressed them thus:--

"You who have been to me all tenderness--you who have been to

me just and merciful, with a justice and a mercy more than

human; you whom God made His instrument to bring me through

much sorrow unto repentance; and you through whose means He

brought me back to Himself, listen to me, and hearken to my

dying words. Mrs. Middleton, you had a child, and you lost

her; my hand, unwittingly, unknowingly (so help me God! as I

speak the truth)--_my_ hand was the instrument of her death;

it was lifted up in anger but not in malice, and that anger

has been visited upon me by a fearful punishment, which, like

the mark which was set on Cain's brow, has followed me all my

days since, and has brought me to an early grave. Can you

forgive me? Oh yes, by that hand which I grasp--by these tears

which fall on my brow, and which wash away that fiery mark

which has branded _it so long_, you do forgive me--you say of

me what our Saviour said of his murderers, 'God forgive her,

she knew not what she did.' And now," she continued after a

pause, during which there was no sound in that room but

stifled sobs, "and now let me take a solemn leave of you all;

let me ask for your prayers, for my end is at hand."

Mrs. Tracy knelt by Ellen's bed-side, and said, in hardly

articulate tones, "Pray for us when you are in Heaven."

"God bless you," answered Ellen, faintly, and closed her eyes.

After an instant she opened them again, and turning to Mr.

Lacy, she said, in a voice of the deepest emotion, "Oh, Mr.

Lacy, is it not merciful that death has been so sent to me as

to allow me time to rise up on my knees, and to cry, 'Lord

have mercy upon me?'" She was seized with a sudden faintness,

and sunk back on the bed exhausted.

All withdrew in silence except Mrs. Middleton, who, with

clasped hands and streaming eyes, kept watch by the pale

sufferer as she slept. She hardly realised to herself the

truth of what Ellen had said; she could form but one idea,

feel but one conviction--this cherished, this idolised being,

was to die. Death had done its work with all she loved; she

had before borne up against grief; now, for the first time,

she resigned herself; out of the deep she called upon God, and

in the horror, in the pity, in the unconquerable tenderness

which vaguely filled her bewildered soul, she learnt "to cease

from man and turn to God." She dared not _think_, and so she

only prayed.

When Edward returned that day, he found his wife weaker than

ever, but calmer still than she had yet been. She received him

with a smile which pierced through his soul. The fearful truth

broke slowly upon him that he _must_ lose her: that the days

of trembling hope and fear, which he had gone through, since

he had taken her back to his heart, must give way to that

desolating certainty--to that inevitable anguish against which

the feelings rebel while the understanding acquiesces. There

was no secret between them now; they knew they must part; and

her remaining days were spent in a long and deep farewell. She

was more resigned than he was--she was nearer Heaven; she had

suffered and struggled, and through much tribulation had

reached the haven at last; life's last wave had carried her to

the shores of eternity, and death for her bruised heart had a

balm, for her weary spirit a rest, which life could never

yield. She gazed upon him hour after hour, and her very soul

seemed to speak out of her dying eyes;

"And it seemed as the harps of the skies had rung.

And the airs of Heaven played round her tongue,"

as she spoke of that death which had lost its sting--of that

grave which had lost its victory; for in the might of her

earthly love--in the ardour of her living faith, she discerned

the shortness of time, the fulness of eternity; life seemed to

her now but a little span, and she could say in the spirit of

David, "I may not stay with thee, but thou wilt come to me."

Edward, the strong, the stern, the self-relying Edward,

suffered more. His faith was as firm, but his hopes were less

vivid; a vague remorse agitated him; Mr. Lacy's words to him

on the day of their first interview had sown a seed of

self-reproach in his heart which had wrought painfully since.

Had not her face been so divinely serene, and her spirit so

full of hope and of peace that it tempered the agony of his,

he would have been still more miserable. Life, which to her

appeared short, seemed to him so long; the path he was to

tread so lonely; the hope he was to cherish so distant; the

world as it is, so dreary; the world to come, so mysterious.

One day that she seemed a little better, a shade stronger,

than usual, he passionately kissed her pale cheek, and

whispered, "You will not leave me, Ellen,--you will not die?"

"I _cannot_ live," she answered; "Edward, dearest, I ought not

to live, I have suffered too much, too acutely, to raise my

head again, and meet what all must meet with in this world of

sin and of sorrow. Believe me, Edward, my lot has been wisely

ordered. I bless God, who in his boundless mercy has gently

laid me down to die here at your side, your hand in mine, your

words of love in my ears; they will follow me to the last, and

'When my failing lips grow dumb--when thought and memory

flee,' the consciousness that you are near me will remain, and

I shall die as I have lived--no, no, not as I have lived--my

life has been dreadful, and my death is not."

She hid her eyes with her thin transparent hands, and a slight

contraction for an instant wrinkled her brow. The vision of

past sufferings had risen up before her; she remembered what

she had gone through and trembled. But as she turned towards

Edward the expression of mute anguish in his face affected her

suddenly and deeply. She threw her arms around his neck, and

cried, "I would stay if I could, Edward, but it is too late;

the spring is broken, the light is quenched: we must part for

a while."

"O God! O God!" murmured Edward, as he clasped his hands in an

agony of grief and supplication. "Thou didst give her to me,

and I cast her away from me. I was blind and had no mercy; now

I see, and my misery is complete. Thy ways are just, but Thy

judgments are dreadful!"

"But in the midst of them, my own, He remembers mercy. He has

tried us. He has proved us. He has marked out for each of us

our way to Heaven. Mine is short, for He saw my weakness.

Yours may be long and arduous, for He knows you strong; but

both will meet in the end. With one Lord, one Faith, one Hope,

I die. With the same Lord, with the same Faith, with the same

Hope, you will live. There is a blessed communion, in which we

both believe, between those who rest in Heaven, and those who

struggle on earth. You will pray for me when I am gone; I will

pray for you where I go. At the altar, think of me, as if

kneeling mysteriously at your side. Give me a secret chamber

in your soul, where my spirit may meet yours, when you retire

from the world to commune with God and be still; and when

death comes at last to you, as it is now coming to me, think

of this hour, think of one so sinful and so weak, passing with

a strength not her own, through its dark portal in peace, and

God be with you then, my beloved, as He is now with me."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Her prayer was heard in the hour of trial; when he lost all

earthly hope, and felt himself of all men the most miserable,

God was with him. When, two days later, she murmured in his

ear, as he was supporting her head against his breast,

"Read the prayers for dying," he read with a swelling heart

and an unsteady voice, and at the end of each she faintly

said, _Amen_. When he came to the last, no _Amen_ was uttered

on earth; the light was gone; the soul was fled; he was alone;

and if God had _not_ been with him then, he would indeed have

been desolate and utterly forsaken, for he had few

connections, few friends; he never opened his heart to any

one, and in his grief he hid himself from the eyes of men, and

communed with his own soul. God was with him during the first

hours of agonising grief; during long days of gloom and silent

loneliness; during years of calm sorrow, and quiet exertion,

in which he did much good, and learnt that lesson which

affliction teaches, "In all things to be more resigned than

blest;" and when he dies He will be with him still, for He

never forsakes in death those who have served Him in life. He

travelled for a few years, and then returned to Hillscombe,

where he lived much alone. Once, five years after Ellen's

death, while he was calling on Mrs. Moore, at Hampstead, he

accidentally met Mr. Escourt, who slightly bowed to him and

left the room. Edward turned deadly pale; and that night he

had to struggle long and deeply with himself, before he could

utter the most solemn sentence in the Lord's Prayer. With Mr.

Lacy he formed a strict intimacy, which lasted as long as the

life of that venerable man.

Mrs. Middleton never returned to Elmsley; and spent her

remaining days in one of those beautiful and quiet spots on

the coast of Devonshire. The sight and sound of the sea

soothed and quieted the restless nervousness from which she

suffered. She would sit for hours on the shore and watch

attentively the advancing and receding of the tide, or the

fishermen's children playing on the sand at her feet.

"How much that woman must have suffered," was the remark often

made by strangers as they passed by her, and observed the

expression of her face.

Once a little scene occurred which excited some attention in

the by-standers. A pretty little girl, whom Mrs. Middleton had

often noticed and caressed, was playing near her with another

child. They quarrelled, and in her anger the little girl

struck her playmate, who fell on the ground.

A loud and wild cry burst from Mrs. Middleton's lips; she laid

hold of the child, and in a hoarse and trembling voice

exclaimed, "You know not what you do! you know not what you

do!"

Abashed and terrified, the child looked at her and began to

cry. She never forgot that scene, nor the words of the pale

lady in black, who so loved the sea and its loud roar, and who

had started so violently and shrieked so wildly, when she had

struck her playfellow.

Of Alice! What shall I say of Alice? What did she once say of

her favourite flower, her type and her emblem, for it bore in

its bosom the Cross and the Crown of Thorns, and it was pure

and spotless as those that

"Won Eve's matron smile in the world's opening glow."

She said it had done what God had sent it into the world to

do. It had given her buds in the spring, and flowers in the

summer; thoughts of joy in health, thoughts of peace in

sickness, thoughts of God and of Christ always. Alice has gone

and done likewise. She goes about doing good. She weeps with

those who weep, she rejoices with those who rejoice, she feeds

the hungry, she clothes the naked, she visits the sick and

those in prison, she teaches the ignorant, she prays for the

guilty. Into the haunts of misery, into the abodes of despair,

she goes; and speaks of peace where peace has never been, and

of hope to those in whose ears the words sound strangely.

"When the ear hears her it blesses her; when the eye sees her

it gives witness to her; and the blessings of those who are

ready to perish come upon her. She is eyes to the blind, and

feet to the lame, a mother to the fatherless, and to those who

have none to help them."

Morning and evening she kneels in church, and, like Anna,

serves the Lord with fastings and with prayers. There she

takes up the cross in the morning, bears it through the day,

and returns at night to give thanks, and press it to her bosom

with all its thorns and all its sharpness.

Is she happy? I have studied her face; I have watched her

life; I have seen her pray by a death-bed; I have heard her

sing to herself as she sat at work in her room; I have seen

her play with joyous children; I have seen her weave garlands

of bright flowers, but then I saw her lay them on a grave--and

I dare not say she is happy; but I know she is of those who,

if they mourn, shall be comforted; who, if they sow in tears,

shall reap in joy; and I remember that a sword pierced through

the soul of her whom all generations call blessed.

There is a man who goes every day to the same church, who

sometimes supports an aged woman, and leads her gently to the

bench where Alice sits; who kneels himself at a distance, and

listens to the sound of her voice, as she utters the

responses. This is Robert Harding; he visits the poor she

visits; he hears the blessings they pour upon her; he talks of

her to Mrs. Tracy; and he hopes that the time will come, when

he may conceal his love so well, that she will speak to him

familiarly again, as in the days of their childhood.

As time went by, its soothing effect told upon these mourners;

those sorrows which had at first driven them to solitude as a

refuse, when their acuteness was past, drew them together

again. That mute sympathy which the heart can scarcely value

during the first bitterness of its grief, became to each of

them a source of consolation. Mrs. Middleton was to Edward and

to Alice an object of tender solicitude. How often _he_ felt

that when they spoke together of things indifferent, or

listened to music, or looked upon the beauties of nature, the

same thought was in their minds, the same image before their

eyes. On these occasions she sometimes pressed his hand in

silence, and both felt, without saying it, that their treasure

was in Heaven.

In Mrs. Middleton's features, in the tone of her voice, in the

expression of her face, Alice found a resemblance to the

husband of her youth, which gave her an interest in her eyes

which no other human being could have had; and in the tender

and earnest affection which united them, both found their

highest earthly comfort. They had learnt--one, after striving

for it long and vainly,--the other, on the threshold of

life,--that happiness is not the portion of earth; but they

looked beyond it; and found, in the meantime, that each

returning day, even to the deepest mourner, brings new

blessings in the shape

"Of perils past, of sins forgiven,

Of thoughts of God, and hopes of Heaven."

THE END.

PRINTED BY BERNH. TAUCHNITZ JUN.

Typographical errors silently corrected:

Chapter 4: =inlcined to= replaced by =inclined to=

Chapter 5: =Middleton, You must speak= replaced by =Midleton.

You must speak=

Chapter 5: =up all may courage= replaced by =up all my

courage=

Chapter 8: =I ventured to approch= replaced by =I ventured to

approach=

Chapter 8: =This book was the "Christan Year;"= replaced by

=This book was the "Christian Year;"=

Chapter 8: =hetwixt you and me= replaced by =betwixt you and

me=

Chapter 10: =to say before Alice: that= replaced by =to say

before Alice that=

Chapter 10: =escape a repetiton= replaced by =escape a

repetition=

Chapter 12: ="Don 't lie to me, Henry= replaced by

="'Don 't lie to me, Henry=

Chapter 12: =and and had charged her to keep= replaced by

a=nd had charged her to keep=

Chapter 13: =interupt= replaced by =interrupt=

Chapter 13: =we shoud have been here long= replaced by =we

should have been here long=

Chapter 13: =now for a fews days= replaced by =now for a few

days=

Chapter 17: =the orignal cause= replaced by =the original

cause=

Chapter 17: =this is a glorius opportunity= replaced by

=this is a glorious opportunity=

Chapter 18: =as I acquisced= replaced by =as I acquiesced=

Chapter 18: =a dilirious dream of joy= replaced by =a

delirious dream of joy=

Chapter 19: =something in weaknes= replaced by =something in

weakness=

Chapter 20: =bnt last month= replaced by =but last month=

Chapter 22: =exlaimed Sir Edmund= replaced by =exclaimed Sir

Edmund=

Chapter 24: =what I should do.= replaced by =what I should

do,=

Chapter 24: =Eward, dearest= replaced by =Edward, dearest=

End of Project Gutenberg's Ellen Middleton--A Tale, by Georgiana Fullerton