For the right understanding of all that is to follow--strange as it
may appear to the reader, we are only just at the beginning of the
story--it may be necessary to go back to the house of Monsieur
Plessis, and to trace the events of the past day, till we have
brought them exactly down to that precise time Wilton was walking, as
we have described, with a mist around him both moral and physical,
upon the road between High Halstow and Cowley. We must even go beyond
that, and introduce the reader into a lady's bedchamber, on the
morning of that day, as she was dressing herself after the night's
repose; though, indeed, repose it could scarcely be called, for those
bright eyes had closed but for a short period during the darkness,
and anxiety and grief had been the companions of her pillow. Yet it is
not Lady Laura of whom we speak, but of that gentle-looking and
beautiful lady whom we have described as sitting in the saloon of
Plessis's house, shortly before the conspirators assembled there.
Without any of the aids of dress or ornament, she was certainly a very
beautiful being, and as, sitting before the glass, she drew out with
her taper fingers the glossy curls of her rich dark hair, nothing
could be more graceful than the attitudes into which the whole form
was cast. Often as she did so, she would pause and meditate, leaning
her head upon her hand for a moment or two. Sometimes she would raise
her eyes imploringly towards Heaven, and once those eyes became full
of tears. She wiped them away hastily, however, as if angry with
herself for giving way, and then proceeded eagerly with the task of
the toilet.
While she was thus engaged, some one knocked at the door, which she
unlocked, and the next instant, another lady, to whom the reader has
been already introduced, entered the chamber. It was the same person
whom we have called the Lady Helen, in her interview with Wilton
Brown; and there was still in the expression of her countenance that
same look of tender melancholy which is generally left upon the face
by long grief acting upon an amiable heart. It was, indeed, less the
expression of a settled gloom on her own part, than of sympathy with
the sorrows of others, rendered more active by sorrows endured
herself. On the present occasion she had a note in her hand, which
she held out towards the fair girl whom she had interrupted at her
toilet, saying, with a faint smile, "There, Caroline--I hope it may
bring you good news, dear girl." The other took it eagerly, and broke
the seal, with hands that trembled so much that they almost let the
paper drop.
"Oh, Lady Helen," cried the younger lady, while the colour came and
went in her cheek, and her eyes sparkled, and then again nearly
overflowed, "we must, indeed, we must stay over to-day. He says he
will come down to see me this afternoon. Indeed we must stay; for it
is my last chance, Helen dear, my last chance of happiness in life."
"We will stay, of course, Caroline," replied the other; "but I trust,
my poor girl, that if you see him, you will act both wisely and
firmly. Let him not move you to yield any farther than you have done;
left him not move you, my sweet Caroline, to remain in a degrading
and painful state of doubt. Act firmly, and as you proposed but
yesterday, in order, at least, if you do no more, not to be, as it
were, an accomplice in his ill-treatment of yourself."
"Oh no!" replied the other--"oh no! Fear not, dear lady, that I will
deal with him otherwise than firmly. But yet you know he is my
husband, Helen, and I cannot refuse to obey his will, except where he
requires of me a breach of higher duties."
"Ay," replied the Lady Helen. "When he claims you openly as his wife,
Caroline, then he has a right to command, and no one can blame you
for obeying; but he must not take the whole advantage of his
situation as your husband, without giving you the name and station,
or suffering you to assume the character of his wife. Let him now do
you justice in these respects, or else, dear Caroline, leave him!
fly from him! strive to forget him! Look upon yourself as widowed,
and try to bear your sorrow as an infliction from the hand of Heaven,
for having committed this action without your father's knowledge and
consent."
"Oh, Helen!" replied the other, mournfully, "you know my father was
upon the bed of death; you know that Henry was obliged to depart in
three weeks; you know that I loved him, and that if I had parted with
him then, without giving him the hand I had promised, it might have
been years before I saw him again; for then I should have had no
title to seek him as his wife, and the ports of France were not
likely to be opened to him again. Would you have had me agitate my
father at that moment? Could I refuse to be his, under such
circumstances, when I believed every word that he said, when I
thought that if he departed without being my husband, I might not
behold him for many years to come?"
"Forgive me for glancing at the past, poor child," replied her
friend--"I meant not to imply a reproach, Caroline; but all I wish is
to counsel you to firmness. Let not love get the better of your
judgment. But tell him your determination at once, and abide by it
when it is told. If you would ever obtain justice for yourself,
Caroline, now is the moment. He himself will love and respect you
more for it hereafter. He assigns no reason for farther delay; and
his letters, hitherto, have certainly suggested no motives which
could lead either your judgment or your affection to consent to that
which is degrading to yourself. I have seen enough of these things,
Caroline, and I know that they always end in misery."
"Misery!" replied the younger lady, "alas! Helen, what have I to
expect but misery? Oh, Helen, it is not that he does not openly
acknowledge our marriage, and forbids me to proclaim it--it is not
that which makes me unhappy. Heaven knows, were that all, I could
willingly go on without the acknowledgment. I could shut myself from
the day, devote myself to him alone, forswear rank, and station, and
the pleasures of affluence, for nothing but his love; so long that,
knowing I myself was virtuous, I also knew that he continued to love
me well. It is not that, Helen, it is not that; but all which I have
heard assures me, that notwithstanding every vow of amendment, of
changed life, of constant affection towards me, he is faithless to me
in a thousand instances; that his wish of longer concealment
proceeds, not from necessity, but from a libertine spirit; in short,
Helen, that I have been for a week the creature of his pleasure, but
that he never really loved me; that his heart rested with me for an
hour, and has now gone on to others."
As she spoke, she sank again into her chair, and clasping her hands
together as they rested on her knee, fixed her eyes upon the ground
during a moment or two of bitter thought.
The other lady advanced toward her, and after gazing at her for a
minute, she kissed her beautiful brow affectionately, saying,
"Nevertheless, Caroline, he does love you. He is a libertine by
habit, Caroline, I trust not a libertine in heart; and I see in every
line that he writes to you that he loves you still, and always will
love you. It is my belief, dear Caroline, that if you behave well to
him now, firmly, though kindly, gently, though decidedly; if you
yield nothing, either to love, or importunity, or remonstrance, but
tell him that you now bid him farewell for ever if he so chooses it,
and that you will never either see him, or hear from him, or write to
him, till he comes openly as your husband, and gives you the same
vows and assurance of future affection and good conduct that he did
at first--it is my firm conviction, I say, that the love for you
which I see is still strong within him, the only good thing perhaps
in his heart, will bring him back to you at last. Passion may lead
him astray, folly may get the better of reason, evil habits may rule
him for a time; but the memory of your sweetness, and your beauty,
and your firmness, and your gentleness, will come back upon his mind,
even in the society of the gay, the light, and the profligate, and
will seem like a diamond beside false stones."
"Hush, hush, hush!" said the younger lady, blushing deeply--"I must
not hear such praises, Helen: praises that I do not deserve."
"Nay, my dear child, I speak but what I mean," replied the Lady
Helen--"I say that the recollection of you and your young fresh
beauty, and your generous mind, will return to his remembrance, my
Caroline, at all times and in all circumstances, even the most
opposite: in the midst of various enjoyments, in the heated revel,
and in the idle pageant; when lonely in his chamber, when suffering
distress, or pain, or illness; amidst the reverses and the strife, as
well as in the prosperity and the vanities, of the world, he will
remember you and love you still. That memory will be to him as a
sweet tune that we have loved in our youth, the recollection of which
brings with it always visions of the only joys that we have known
without alloy. But still, remember, Caroline, that the condition on
which this is to be obtained, the condition on which his recollection
of you is to be, as it were, a precious antidote to the evils of his
heart, is, that you now act towards him with firmness and with
dignity."
"But suppose, dear lady," said the other, "that he were to ask me to
remain with him, still concealing our marriage. Nay, look not
terrified--I am not going to do it. I have told you how I am going to
act, and, on my honour, I will keep to my determination. I only ask
you what you think would then be the consequences?"
"Destruction both to you and to him," replied the Lady Helen: "he
would never look upon you entirely as his wife, he would never treat
you entirely as such. You would dwell with him almost as a
concubine.--Forgive me, but it must be spoken.--He would grow tired
of your beauty, weary of your society; your virtues would be lost
upon him, because he would see that firmness was not amongst them,
and he would not respect you because you had not respected yourself.
There is something, Caroline, in the state and dignity, if I may so
call it, which surrounds a virtuous married woman, that has a great
effect upon her husband, ay, and a great effect upon herself. There
is not one man, Caroline, out of a million, who has genuine nobility
of heart enough to stand the test of a long concealed private
marriage. I never saw but one, Caroline, and I have mingled with
almost every scene of human life, and seen the world with almost all
its faces. However, here, there can be no cause which should justly
induce you to consent to live with him under such circumstances, and
there are a thousand causes to prevent you from so doing. If you were
to do it, you would lose your respect for yourself, and how then
could you expect that he would retain any for you?"
The conversation was some time protracted in the same tone, and
nearly a whole hour was thus passed ere the younger lady was dressed
and ready to accompany her friend to breakfast.
Monsieur Plessis was there to do the honours of his table, treating
his fair guests not exactly as his equals, but yet behaving not at
all as an Englishman, under such circumstances, could have demeaned
himself He was polite, attentive, deferential; but he was still
Monsieur Plessis in his own house. There can be no doubt that all he
furnished them with was amply paid for; but yet he had an air of
conferring a favour, and indeed felt that he did so when he received
them into his dwelling at all. There was thus an air of gallantry
mingled with his respectfulness, a sweet smile that bent his lips
when he pressed either of them to their food, a courteous and affable
look when he greeted them for the first time that clay, all of which
spoke that Monsieur Plessis felt that he was laying them under an
obligation, and wished to do it in the most graceful manner possible.
The breakfast table was beautifully laid out, with damask linen of
the finest quality, and more silver than was usually displayed at
that day even in families of distinction. Both the ladies seated
themselves; and Plessis was proceeding to recommend some of the most
exquisite chocolate which had ever been brought from Portugal--at
least so he assured them--when the elder lady interrupted its praises
by saying, "Had we not better wait a little, Monsieur Plessis, for
the young lady whom we saw yesterday?"
Plessis, however, put his finger on his large nose, saying, "Her
breakfast will be taken to her in her chamber, Miladi. There are
mysteries in all things, as you well know. Now here you are; and
there are nine or ten gentlemen meet at my house every night, from
whom I am obliged to hide that you are in the place at all. Here is
this young lady, whom, it seems, I should have concealed from you in
the same way: only I could not refuse to let you see her and speak
to her yesterday, in order that you might be kind to her on board the
ship; for she is to go in the ship with you, you know, and she seems
quite helpless, and not accustomed to all these things. When the
worthy gentlemen found that the ship was not to sail last night, they
were in great embarrassment, and charged me strictly not to let her
see any one till the ship sailed; and I find they have put a man to
watch on both sides of the house, so that no one can go out or come
in without being seen. They told me nothing about it; and that was
uncivil; but, however, I must keep her to her own room; for the man
that they left in the house, with my consent, to keep guard over her,
watches sharply also."
The elder lady said nothing, but the colour of the younger heightened
a good deal at this detail, and she started up indignantly as soon as
Plessis had finished, exclaiming, "Nonsense, sir. I never heard of
such a thing!--You, a man of honour and gallantry," she continued,
with a gay smile, such as had once been common to her countenance,
passing over it for a moment--"you, a man of honour and gallantry,
Monsieur Plessis, consenting to see a lady discourteously used and
maltreated in your house, and a stranger put as a spy upon you in
your own dwelling. Fie! For shame! I never heard of such a thing! I
shall go immediately to her, with your compliments, and ask her to
come to breakfast. And let me see if this spy upon you will dare to
stop me."
"Oh no, Miladi," replied Plessis, "he is not a spy upon me; but I
said myself I would have nothing to do with the young lady being
detained; that it was no part of my business, and should not be done
by my people; that they might have the rooms at the west corner of
the house if they liked, but that I would have nothing to do with it.
I beseech you, dear lady," he continued, seeing Caroline moving
towards the door--"I beseech you, do not meddle; for this is a very
dangerous and bad business, and I fear it will end ill, Nay, nay!"
and springing towards the door, he placed himself between it and the
lady, bowing lowly, with his hand upon his heart, and exclaiming,
"Humbly on my knees I kiss your beautiful feet, and beseech you not
to meddle with this bad business."
"A very bad business, indeed," said Caroline; "and it is for that
very reason that I am going to meddle, Monsieur Plessis. Do me the
favour of getting out of my way. I thought you were a man of
gallantry and spirit, Monsieur Plessis.--I am determined; so there is
no use in opposing me."
Plessis shrugged up his shoulders, bowed his head low, and with a
look which said as plainly as any look could say, "I see there is
never any use of opposing a woman," he suffered the fair lady to pass
out, while her friend remained sitting thoughtfully at the table.
The lady whom we have called Caroline walked quietly along one of the
corridors of the house till she came to a spot where a man in the
garb of a sailor was sitting on a large chest, with his elbows on his
two knees, and his chin on his two hands, looking very much wearied
with his watch, and swinging one of his feet backwards and forwards
disconsolately. There was a door farther on, and towards it the lady
walked, but found that it was locked, though the key was on the
outside. The sailor personage had started up as she passed, and then
gazed at her proceedings with no small surprise; but as she laid her
hand upon the lock, he came forward, saying, "Ma'am, what do you want
there?".
"I want," replied the lady, turning round, and looking at him from
head to foot, "I merely to call this young lady to breakfast. Be so
good as to open the door: the lock is rather stiff."
She spoke so completely with the tone of calm authority, that the man
did not even hesitate, but opened the door wide, taking it for
granted that she had some right to enter. The lady was about to go
in; but suddenly a feeling of apprehension seized her, lest the man
should shut the door and lock it upon her also; and pausing in the
doorway, she addressed Lady Laura, who we need scarcely tell the
reader was within,--"I have come to ask you," she said, "if you will
go with me to breakfast."
"Oh gladly, gladly!" cried the poor girl, darting forward, and
holding out her hands to her; and Caroline, drawing one fair arm
through her own, led her onward to the room where she had left the
Lady Helen.
The man paused and hesitated, and then followed the two ladies along
the passage; but before he was near enough to hear what was said,
Caroline had whispered to her companion, "It is already done: I have
had an answer to my note, which went in the same packet, so that the
place of your detention is now certainly known to those who will not
fail to send you aid."
The bright joy that came up in the eyes of Laura might very well have
betrayed to the man who guarded her, had he seen her face, that she
has received more intelligence than his employers could have wished.
He followed, however, at some distance, without taking any notice;
and seeming to think it enough to watch her movements, and prevent
her egress from the house, he seated himself again near the door of
the chamber where breakfast had been prepared, while Laura and her
fair companion entered the room.
They found the Lady Helen and Monsieur Plessis in eager conversation,
the lady having just announced to him her intention of delaying their
departure till another day; and he, who was in fact part proprietor
of the vessel which was to bear them to France, and was actuated by
very different views, urging her eagerly to follow her first
intention of sailing that night. He made representations of all sorts
of dangers and difficulties which were to arise from the delay; the
two ladies were likely to be arrested; he was likely to be ruined;
the master of the ship would sail without them; and in short,
everything was represented as about to happen which could induce them
to take their departure with all speed.
The Lady Helen, however, was resolute. She replied that, from what
she had heard in London, she was convinced there was not the least
chance whatsoever of their even being inquired after, and much less
of their being arrested; that his ruin was only likely to be a
consequence of the arrest, and therefore that was disposed of. Then
again, in regard to the captain of the vessel sailing without them,
she said that was improbable, inasmuch as he would thereby lose the
large sum he was to receive, both for bringing them thither and
taking them back.
Now, though Monsieur Plessis was, in his way, a very courageous and
determined person, who in dealing with his fellow men could take his
own part very vigorously, and, as we have shown, successfully, yet he
was much feebler in the presence of a lady, and on the present
occasion, with three to one, they certainly made him do anything they
liked. The consequence was, that Laura was permitted to spend a great
part of that day with the two accidental tenants of Monsieur
Plessis's house; and not a little comfort, indeed, was that
permission to her.
It was a moment when any society would have been a great consolation
and relief. But there was in the two ladies with whom she was now
associated for the time much more to interest and to please. The
manners of each were of the highest tone; the person of each was
highly pleasing; and when Laura turned to the Lady Helen, and marked
the gentle pensiveness of her beautiful countenance, listened to the
high, pure, noble words that hung upon her lips, and marked the deep
feelings which existed beneath an exterior that people sometimes
thought cold, the remembrance of her own mother rose up before her,
and she felt a sort of clinging yearning towards a being who
resembled her in so many respects.
With the younger lady, too, she had many a thought and many a feeling
in common. Caroline was a few years older than herself, and evidently
more acquainted with the world; but there were deep strong feelings
apparent in every word she uttered--a thoughtfulness (if we may so
express ourselves) which blended with an air of carelessness--a depth
to be seen even through occasional lightness, which was only like a
profound river rippled by a rapid breeze. Each had subjects for
thought; each had more or less matter for grief or apprehension; but
each found relief in the society of the other; and the day passed
over more happily than Laura could have imagined it would have done
in such circumstances.
Towards evening, indeed, she became anxious and apprehensive, for no
attempt to deliver her had, apparently, been made, and she had been
warned that she was to embark for France that night. From this
apprehension, however, the Lady Helen speedily relieved her, by
assuring her that there was no other ship to convey her but that
which was hired to take herself and her young friend to France, and
that they had determined upon putting off their departure till the
succeeding night.
About the same hour, however, Caroline became uneasy and agitated.
She rose often; she looked often at her watch; she gazed out froth
the window; she turned her eyes to the sky; and in the end she
retired for a time to her own chamber, and returned shortly after,
dressed for going out, with a short black cloak, richly trimmed, cast
over her shoulders, and a silk hood, stiffened with whalebone and
deeply fringed with lace, covering her head and the greatest part of
her face.
"Who are you going to take with you, my dear child, to show you the
way?" said the Lady Helen.
"No one, sweet lady," replied the other. "While you were away from me
in London I had plenty of opportunity to explore every path round
this house, and the place is so distinctly marked, that neither he
nor I can mistake it."
Lady Helen looked in her face for a moment with an expression
somewhat sad as well as inquiring; and her beautiful companion, as if
comprehending at once what she meant, advanced quietly towards her,
knelt on the footstool at her feet, and putting her two hands in
hers, she said, "I promise you most solemnly, dearest lady--most
solemnly and firmly do I promise, not to suffer myself to be shaken
in any one of the resolutions which I have taken with your advice."
"Thank you, my child, thank you," cried the elder lady, "thank you
for giving me the prospect, Caroline, of seeing you ultimately happy.
But oh, do not be late, my sweet child. Return to us soon. The
country is in a distracted state--the hour is very late. You see it
is already growing dusk."
"I will return as soon as I can," replied Caroline, and left the
room.
The man who was still on watch in the passage looked at her
attentively, but said nothing; and Plessis, who was at the door
speaking to two ship-boys, said merely, "It is very cold and very
late, madame. I wonder you don't get cold with such late walks."
She made no reply, but went on: and taking one or two turns through
the tortuous lanes in the neighbourhood, arrived at a spot where a
small obelisk, of no very graceful form or great dimensions, planted
in the middle of the road, marked the boundary of four distinct
parishes. She paused there for a moment, and leaned upon the
landmark, as if from fatigue, weakness, or agitation. The light was
now dim, but it was not yet dark; and in a moment or two she saw a
figure appear suddenly in the lane before her.
It advanced rapidly towards her, and she pressed her hand tight upon
her heart. One might have heard it throbbing. The gentleman came on
with a pace like lightning, and held out his hand towards her. She
gave him her hand, but turned away her head; and after gazing on her
for a moment, he drew her gently to his bosom, saying, "One kiss at
least, my Caroline."
She did not refuse it, and he pressed her warmly to his heart. There
was a moment's silence, and then his arms relaxed their hold, and he
exclaimed, "Oh Heaven!"
He then drew her arm within his, and walked on with her.
"Oh, Caroline," he said at length, "would that you did know how I
love you!"
"If I did know, Sherbrooke," she replied, "that you really did love
me, it would make me far, far happier than I am. But how can I
believe it, Sherbrooke? how can I believe it?"
"Is it," he demanded, "is it because I have asked you to conceal our
marriage a little longer? Is it for that reason that you doubt my
love? Is it for that reason that you have come over to England,
risking all and everything, affecting my fate in ways that you have
no idea of? Is it for this, Caroline?"
There was a pause for several minutes, and at length she answered,--
"Not entirely. There may have been many reasons, Sherbrooke, joined
therewith. There were many that I stated in my letters to you. There
were others that you might have imagined. Was it unnatural that I
should wish to see my husband? Was it unnatural I should believe that
he would be glad to see me? As I told you, the circumstances were
changed; my father was dead; I had none to protect me in France; the
Lady Helen was coming to England. When she was gone, I was left quite
alone. But oh, Sherbrooke, tell me, tell me, what cause have I had to
believe that you love me? Have you not neglected me? Have you not
forgotten me? Have you not----"
"Never, never, Caroline!" he cried, vehemently--"in my wildest
follies, in my rashest acts, I have thought of you and loved you. I
have remembered you with affection, and with grief, and with
tenderness. Memory, sad memory, has come upon me in the midst of the
maddest efforts for gaiety, and cast me into a fit of deep, anxious,
sorrowful, repentant, remorseful thought, which I could not shake
off: it seemed as if some vengeful spirit seized upon me for its
prey, and dinned in my ears the name of love and Caroline, till my
heart was nearly broken."
"And the moment after," she said, "what was it, Sherbrooke, that you
did? Did you sit down and write to Caroline, to her who was giving
every thought to you? or did you fly to the side of some gay
coquette, to dissipate such painful thoughts in her society? or did
you fly to worse, Sherbrooke?"
He was silent. "Sherbrooke," she added, after a time, "I wish not to
reproach you. All I wish is to justify myself, and the firm
unchangeable resolution which I have been obliged to take. I have
always tried to close my ears against everything that might make me
think less highly of him I love. But tales would reach me--tales most
painful to hear; and at length I was told that you were absolutely on
the eve of wedding another."
"They told you false!" exclaimed Lord Sherbrooke, wildly and
vehemently--"whoever said so, lied. I have been culpable, and am
culpable, Caroline; but not to that extent. I never dreamed of
wedding her. Did I not know it could not be? But you speak of your
resolutions. Let me know what they are at once! To declare all, I
suppose! Publicly to produce the proofs of our marriage! To announce
to my father, already exasperated against me, that in this, too, I
have offended him! To call down, even upon your own head, the revenge
of a man who has never yet, in life, gone without it! To tell
all--all, in short?"
"No, no, no, Sherbrooke!" she said--"I am going to do none of all
these things. Angry and thwarted, you do not do that justice to your
wife which you ought. You speak, Sherbrooke, as if you did not know
me. I will do none of these things. You do not choose to acknowledge
me as your wife. You are angry at my having come to England. I will
not announce our marriage till the last moment. I will not publish it
till my dying hour, unless I be driven to it by some terrible
circumstance. I will return to France. I will live as the widow of a
man that I have loved. But I will never see you more, Sherbrooke; I
will never hear from you more; I will never write to you more; till
you come openly and straightforwardly to claim me as your wife in the
face of all the world. Whenever you declare me to be your wife, I
will do all the duties of a wife: I will be obedient to your will,
not alone from duty but from love; but till you do acknowledge me as
your wife, you can plead no title to such submission."
"Ah, Caroline," replied Lord Sherbrooke, "you speak well and wisely,
but coldly too. You can easily resign the man that you once loved. It
costs you but little to give him over to his own course; to afford
him no solace, no consolation, no advice; to deprive him of that
communication, which, distant as it was, might have saved him from
many an error. It costs you nothing to pronounce such words as you
have spoken, and to sever our fate for ever."
"It is you that sever it," she replied, in a sad and reproachful
tone. "Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, you do me wrong--you know you do me
wrong--Oh, how great wrong! Do you think I have shed no tears? Do you
think my heart has not been wrung? Do you think my hours have not
passed in anguish, my days in sadness, and my nights in weeping? Oh,
Sherbrooke, since you left me, what has been my fate? To watch for
some weeks the death-bed of a father, from whose mind the light had
already departed; to sorrow over his tomb; to watch the long days for
the coming of my husband--of the husband whom all had doubted, all
had condemned, but my own weak heart, whose vows of amendment I had
believed, to whose entreaties I had yielded, even to that rashest of
all acts, a secret marriage; to find him delay his coming from day to
day, and to see the sun that rose upon me in solitary sadness go down
in grief; to lose the hope that cheered me; to look for his letters
as the next boon; to read them and to weep over them; to remain in
exile, not only from my native land, but also from him to whom I had
given every feeling of my heart, to whom I had yielded all that a
virtuous woman can yield; to remain in a strange court, to which I
had no longer any tie, in which I had no longer any protector; and
every time I heard his name mentioned, to hear it connected with some
tale of scandal, or stigmatized for some new act of vice; and worse,
worse than all, Sherbrooke, to be sought, idly sought, by men that I
despised, or hated, or was indifferent to, and forbade to say the
words which would have ended their pursuit at once, 'I am already a
wife.' Sherbrooke, you have given me months and months of misery
already. I weep not now, even with the thought of parting from you
for ever; but it is, I believe, that the fountain of my tears is
dried up and exhausted. Oh, Sherbrooke, when first I knew you, who
was so blithe and joyous as myself? and now, what have you made me?"
He was much moved, and was about to speak; but she held up her hand
beseechingly, and said, "Let me go on--let me go on. You said it
costs me little to act as I proposed to act. Think, Sherbrooke, think
what it does really cost me. Even were I all selfishness, how bitter
is the part that I have assigned myself to play! To pass my time in
solitude, without the pleasures of youth and gaiety; debarring myself
from all the advantages of an unmarried woman, yet without the name,
the blessings, the station, the dignity, of a wife; voluntarily
depriving myself of every sort of consolation, relinquishing even
hope. But if I am not altogether selfish, Sherbrooke--and you have no
cause to say I am so--if, as you know too well, there is deep, and
permanent, and pure and true affection for you at the bottom of my
heart, judge what the after-hours of life will be, judge what a long
dreary lapse lies before me, between the present instant and the
grave."
Sherbrooke was moved, and again and again he assured her that he
loved her more than any other being upon earth; and the conversation
continued for nearly half an hour longer. He begged her to stay with
him in England, still concealing their marriage; he pressed her in
every way to break her resolution; he urged her, if it were but for
one week, to remain with him, in order to see whether he could not
make arrangements to render their marriage public. But she remembered
her resolution, and held to it firmly, and even rejected that last
proposal, fearing consequences equally dangerous to herself and to
him. Opposition began to make him angry; he entered not into her
reasons; he saw not the strength of her motives; he spoke some harsh
and unkind words, which caused her to weep, and then again he was
grieved at having pained her, and kissed the tears away, and urged
and argued again. Still she remained firm, however, and again he
became irritated.
At the end of half an hour, both Caroline and her husband heard the
sound of feet approaching them on both sides; and though it seemed
that the people who were coming from the direction of Plessis's house
walked lightly and with caution, yet there were evidently many of
them, and Caroline became alarmed for her husband.
"The people are coming from the house, Sherbrooke," she cried--"they
must not, oh, they must not find you here!"
"Why not?" he demanded, sharply.
"Oh, because they are a dangerous and a desperate set," she
said--"bent, I am sure, from what I have heard, upon bloody and
terrible schemes. Me they will let pass, but I fear for you--the very
name of your father would be sufficient to destroy you, with them. We
must part, indeed we must part!"
"And can you, Caroline," he demanded, still lingering, but speaking
in a bitter and irritated tone, angry alike with himself, and her, and
with the interruption--"can you hold to your cold and cruel
resolution, now?"
"I can, I must, Sherbrooke," she replied,--"nothing shall shake me."
"Well, then, be it so!" he answered sharply; and turning away, walked
rapidly up the lane.
Caroline stood, for a single instant, on the spot where he left her;
but then all the feelings with which she had struggled during the
whole of that painful conversation with her husband, seemed to break
loose upon her at once, and over-power her. Her head grew giddy, a
weary faintness seemed to come over her heart, and she sank,
unconscious, on the ground.
The next moment six or seven men came quickly up.
"Here's a woman murdered!" cried one--"and the fellow that did it is
off up the lane."
A few hasty exclamations of surprise and pity followed, and then
another man exclaimed, in a hasty and impatient tone, "Take her up in
your arms, Jim, and bring her along. Perhaps we may find this
Messenger the boy talked of, and the murderer together; but let us
make haste, or we shall lose both."
"Mind," said another, speaking almost at the same time, "don't knock
the Messenger's brains out. We will just take and plant him in the
marsh, tie his arms, and put him up to the arm-pits. The boys will
find him there, when they come to drive back the cattle.--The lady
don't seem quite dead, I think."
"Bring her along! bring her along!" cried another voice--"we shall
miss all, if you are so slow;" and thus speaking, the leader of the
party quickened his pace, while the others, having raised the lady
from the ground, bore her onward towards the end of the lane.