_Jul._ Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night;
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say--it lightens. Sweet, good night!
This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Good night--good night! as sweet repose and rest
Come to thy heart as that within my breast!
_Rom_. Oh! wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?
_Jul._ What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?
_Rom_. The exchange of thy love’s faithful vow for mine.
_Jul_. I gave thee mine before thou didst request it.
Shakspere.
So Hugh. Riversdale had returned home to England.
How did it come to pass?
The paragraph in the _Times_ correctly detailed what had happened to him
on his voyage out up to the moment of placing him insensible on board
the “Ripon.”
What followed may be given in a few words.
He was borne to his berth, where he was immediately attended by two or
three doctors, who, in addition to the regular medical officer, happened
to be on board on their way out to India. He was speedily resuscitated,
though not restored to consciousness, and eventually he became so ill
that he was landed, under advice, at Malta, for it was considered that
to prosecute his journey to India while so prostrated would only be to
ensure his death.
Here he lay in a hospital, hovering on the confines of death; in the
event of recovery the probabilities were great that insanity would take,
during the remainder of his future life, the place of reason.
Events, however, frequently falsify predictions and upset the most
careful calculations. A crisis in his illness arrived--passed--left him
miserably weak, but with clear, sentient reasoning powers.
His uncle had read the paragraph in the newspaper, and having
encountered it without preparation, it shocked him inexpressibly. It
erased out of his heart many hard, cold, and worldly conceits and maxims
of which he had made principles, and it placed gentler emotions there:
feelings and intentions far more in accordance with the Divine precepts
than had ever before had a place in his bosom.
He had no child, had never been married, and was enormously wealthy.
“Hugh is my own flesh and blood,” he said, in communing with himself
upon this event. “I will treat him as my son: there is enough for him
and me, and for the future we will live happily together. I will go to
his mother at once.”
He did so, there to learn that Hugh’s indisposition to go to India and
his act of folly were the consequences of love.
“He shall have the girl, if gold will buy her,” he exclaimed, with
determined emphasis.
Mrs. Riversdale shook her head, but remained silent. She it was who,
prevailed upon by the earnest entreaties of Hugh, was at Southampton to
meet Helen if she had complied with the request of her son and joined
him there.
The uncle, now bent upon Hugh’s happiness as a project, was not to be
checked by Mrs. Riversdale’s despondent action, but entered into
plans for its accomplishment with all the keenness of a commercial
speculation. He feared to ask too much of Mrs. Riversdale, because he
desired to hear nothing likely to check his enterprise, for such he made
it. He therefore, as a preliminary step, despatched a messenger to bring
Hugh home. He instructed him to stop at Malta, and to make inquiries
respecting him, as it was not improbable he might have landed there to
recruit his strength ere he went on to India.
There were some letters for Hugh which had arrived after his departure
from London, and his uncle sent them by the messenger--a confidential
clerk in the establishment--one who was personally attached to Hugh.
On the arrival of the messenger at Malta he quickly found young
Riversdale, and executed his mission with a skill and a tact which
had the most beneficial influence on the speedy restoration of Hugh to
convalescence.
But what most called the latter’s recently feeble powers into stronger
action, was an extraordinary letter which he received from a college
friend, who at the Edinburgh University, where Hugh had been educated,
was his chum.
This friend, destined for the church, was ordained before they parted,
to seek his own path in life.
The letter ran thus--
“_My dear friend Hugh,--I have most grievously, most momentously wronged
you. I am aghast as I reflect upon what may be the consequences of an
act intended only as a foolish amusement. Let me explain, and deal with
me afterwards as gently in your thoughts as you may find it in your
heart to do.
“You will remember at Christmas last we spent the holidays in the
Highlands. We passed a week snowed up at the dwelling of the Ramsays,
at Inverkeale. Other visitors were placed in the same predicament as
ourselves. Among the guests were the Grahames, whom you had met before.
One of that family, a girl of singular beauty, of wild spirits, as she
ivas proud in demeanour, attracted much of your attention, and you were
frequently rallied upon the disposition you evinced for her. Oh!
unhappy circumstance. Oh! idle folly, which reflects only in the hour of
repentance!
“Hugh Riversdale, remember that in one of the wild sallies of mirth, in
which you to ere both called upon to endure a storm of raillery, it was
laughingly proposed by a mirthful maiden present, that you should be
wedded to Miss Grahame. Giving way to the frantic merriment by which you
were both surrounded, you assented, and I was called upon to perform
the ceremony. Without reflecting upon my most unpardonable and wicked
imprudence, I undertook the office. Mark the terrible result.
“The marriage service was fully performed by me, an ordained priest.
I omitted no portion. You both made the proper responses. You placed
a wedding ring, obtained from a married lady, upon the finger of
the thoughtless girl who confronted you, and fulfilled all the
requirements of the contract--even to the drawing up of a certificate,
which both signed, and which I now hold in my possession.
“At the time it was thought as much a piece of idle play as an acted
charade. Alas! it is no such thing. Hugh Riversdale, Helen Grahame is
your wife. In the sight of God you are married, and may form no other
contract. It is true some legal forms were omitted, but that does not
absolve you from the consequences of a joke which has become dread
earnest. I leave to you the task of communicating with Miss Grahame; but
if I do not hear from you on the expiration of a week from the date of
your receipt of this note, I shall communicate with Mr. Grahame. I was
guilty of the act of joining you in jest--but in the eyes of Heaven it
was an act of marriage. Earnest reflection has impressed upon me the
imperative necessity of doing my utmost to prevent aught sundering those
whom God hath joined._”
The letter contained many further expressions of sorrow and penitence,
and offered--if Hugh was still attached to Miss Grahame, and anything
stood in the way of their re-union--to do his utmost to smoothe it away.
“I estimate marriage as a sacrament,” he said, “and hold no divorce
valid on earth but death.”
The feelings of Hugh Riversdale, on reading this communication, may be
imagined. His stay in Malta was brief after this.
On his return to England his uncle made him a gentleman--that is to say,
in one acceptation of the term; for he invested for him a very large sum
of money, and thus presented him with a most handsome income, conveying
and securing it to him and to his heirs for ever; because, having heard
from him his love-story, he was resolved he should be in a position,
when he claimed Helen Grahame, which was equal to her own.
Hugh, however, to his distraction, found, on immediate and anxious
inquiry, that Helen had quitted her home under somewhat mysterious
circumstances, and it was not known whither by any one whom he had
questioned. He set a close watch upon her father’s house, and hunted in
every direction for her without success, until the eventful night upon
which she returned home.
He had full faith in the probability of her re-appearance in her
father’s house; he had the most sanguine hopes that he should prevail
upon her to quit it, and join him, never more to part. He provided a
boat and a carriage, with fleet horses, should flight be necessary, and
we have seen how he had occasion to use them.
He bore Helen’s inanimate form to his own house, and placed her in
charge of his mother, while he went in quest of medical assistance.
Helen was aroused from her long insensibility to exhibit only raving
delirium; a violent attack of brain fever followed, and, when the
violence of this had passed, she settled down into a state of low, dull
insanity.
From the moment Hugh had taken her away to the hour that she recovered
sufficient strength to be conveyed to one of the mildest parts of
Devonshire, she had not once recognised him, nor uttered a sentence
by which he could form a clue to her object in leaving home, or the
evidently delicate state of health in which he found her. He was pained,
saddened, almost broken-hearted, on finding that at the moment the cup
of bliss was unexpectedly raised to his lips, it was likely to be dashed
from them, either by the continuance of her aberration of intellect, or
by her early death. There were faint hopes that, by the recovery of her
health, her mind might be restored, but those hopes were faint indeed;
and, under advice, he determined to try the effect of the soft air of
Madeira. So he left England with her.
It can now be understood why she did not return to Lotte to claim her
child.
In the meanwhile, explanations, secret and confidential, had taken
place between Lotte and her brother. The former, though she religiously
preserved Helen Grahame’s secret, quite gave her brother to understand
that she was able to meet him without a blush upon her cheek, raised
there by any sense of a blot upon her fair fame; and he was content to
believe this, without pressing upon her any prying questions which would
have embarrassed her to answer. She learned from him, however, that he
had seen Evangeline Grahame several times. He was, therefore, able to
inform her of Helen’s sudden appearance at her father’s house, of her
subsequent disappearance with some strange man, who, having felled
Lester Vane to the ground, when he endeavoured to intercept their
flight, had borne her away. In spite of all attempts to discover them,
they had not been heard of since.
Lotte, despite the aspect that Helen’s conduct wore, had faith in her
still. She had many opportunities of judging her nature during the time
that they had lived together; and though she could not help observing
many defects in her composition, she was able to detect that they were
more the result of a fostered pride and false education than any real
failing or flaw in a true nobility of spirit. Of course, she was
unable to fathom the cause for her absence and her silence, but she was
convinced that she should see her again, and that, too, at the earliest
moment the mother could command the opportunity to rejoin her child.
So she continued carefully to tend it, to cherish and fondle it, as
though it were her own.
What rosy cheeks she had! what a soft, beaming expression lighted up
her humid eyes! and what a pretty smile curled her small lips, as she
thought, when pressing this little creature to her bosom, during the
first period of its charge, that some day she might have as pretty a
treasure to hold up to the fond kiss of the man she loved! But since her
last interview with Mark Wilton, that thought, if it presented itself,
was hastily dismissed with a tearful sigh.
She never expected to see him more, and she consigned to the tomb of
other once-cherished hopes the visionary imaginings she had for a
time so fondly conjured up, in spite of the jeers of her common sense,
respecting him.
Yet he came again to see her, as before, unbidden; and, as before,
unexpectedly.
Hal Vivian had seen him, and had listened quietly to a violent and
incoherent string of complaints, observations, reproaches and charges
against Lotte Clinton, from his lips; and when he had exhausted his
subject, he reasoned with him quietly. He elicited from him that he had
never made even an advance to Lotte beyond the limits of courtesy, and
that she had, therefore, no right to divine or to perceive that he had
formed a strong attachment for her; and that he had neither claim
to interfere in her affairs, nor right to utter one harsh epithet
respecting her. Hal thereupon told him firmly, that holding her in his
high esteem--for he believed her character to be as noble as her nature
was pure--he would not suffer any one, not even his nearest relative or
dearest friend, to repeat, in his hearing, one word defamatory to her
good name.
Mark, despite his own suspicions, his uneasy and unhappy forebodings
and speculations, heard Vivian speak thus confidently with inward
satisfaction; and having incoherently assented to all he advanced, with
some lingering misgivings, he thought it perhaps would be as well if
he never saw her more, and under that impression he went--direct to her
abode, and again presented himself before her.
He found her at work--ever at work--but as his eye ran rapidly round the
apartment, he detected the absence of the child. He cared not where it
was, so that it was not where he held an interview with her.
Lotte was, indeed, surprised to see him enter; her heart commenced
beating violently, and perhaps her cheeks and lips turned a little pale,
but she did not betray any other emotion; on the contrary, she was
very cold and distant in her manner, giving him somewhat decidedly to
understand that his presence was an unlooked-for intrusion.
He bit his lips and felt angry--he thought she ought to have been glad
to see him again, and he drew himself stiffly up. All he had arranged
to say fled at once from his memory, and he felt himself completely in a
false position.
As he did not speak, and Lotte thought she had waited long enough for
him to commence, she inquired of him, in a voice slightly tremulous,
the object of his visit. This she did in such a tone that it vibrated
through his frame, and he replied instantly--
“I have felt, Miss Clinton, since our last interview, that I have a duty
to perform to you. I have an apology to offer, and an acknowledgment to
make. Our last meeting was very unsatisfactory”--he paused.
“To me!” ejaculated Lotte, thoughtfully.
“And to me!” he subjoined.
There was another pause, then he proceeded--
“I am impelled to say that, at our last interview, I, by implication,
challenged you with conduct which I have since reason to believe was, on
my part, a rash and hasty proceeding.”
“Rash and hasty, sir!” echoed Lotte, excitedly; “it was cruelly unjust.”
A gleam of satisfaction brightened Mark’s eyes, as she uttered those
words, and he said, earnestly--
“Oh, Miss Clinton, do but assure me, solemnly, that I aspersed you
unjustly in my words, and in my thoughts. You will, indeed, relieve a
heavy burden from my heart.”
“Sir!” said Lotte, her voice once more trembling, “I have a sense of
self-respect too acute to do anything of the kind. You know but little
of me; I therefore forgive your harsh and unwarranted impressions, but
I cannot, and will not, stoop to defend a fair name which never yet has
deserved reproach.”
There was a proud nobleness in her mien, a clear unwavering expression
of her eye, and as she concluded an unfaltering tone in her words which
instantly carried conviction to Mark’s heart.
“Miss Clinton,” he responded, with considerable earnestness, “I believe
you--from my soul I believe you. I do not know how sufficiently to
reproach myself, or how urgently enough to plead to you to pardon my
ungenerous and ignoble conduct to you when last we met. Upon my knees
I will implore you to forgive me, for I now feel keenly how wantonly I
insulted you, how inhumanly I wronged you.”
Lotte, with a beaming face, held out her hand.
“You did in truth wrong me,” she said, with a sweet smile, “but the best
of us at times form erroneous impressions. Let us no more remember what
has passed and never speak of it again.”
He took her hand and pressed it to his heart and, though she struggled a
little to withdraw it, to his lips, and imprinted a passionate kiss upon
it.
“Dear Miss Clinton,” he said, when he released her hand, “we must speak
of it again, for at least I must offer an explanation of the cause of
my behaviour, or else appear in your eyes little better than an
incomprehensible madman.”
“No--oh, no!” laughed Lotte: “indeed, I am satisfied that you were
troubled with some strange hallucination then, which has disappeared
now, and I am quite content.”
“But I am not!” he said gravely.
“No?” she rejoined, in a tone of inquiry and with some little surprise.
“No?” he answered; and then added, with ardent warmth, “it is useless to
disguise the true state of my feelings towards you. I love you, Lotte--I
love you passionately, truthfully, and devotedly. I----”
He seemed for the moment as though the intensity of his feelings would
choke him.
Lotte fell back a step, and the colour fled from her cheek. All in the
room appeared to become dim to her eyes, and Mark’s form to grow hazy
and indistinct.
He fell upon one knee before her, and caught her hand.
“Oh, Lotte!” he cried, “you can now understand how my heart was rent
asunder when I came here, hopeful to gain your heart, and found you, as
I believed, in the possession of another.”
“Pray rise, Mr. Wilton. Do not kneel to me; you distress me--indeed,
indeed you do!” she exclaimed in a low tone, the last word becoming
inaudible.
Mark rose up. He saw that she appeared faint and seemed tottering. It
is not wonderful that he should slide gently his arm around that small
waist, which never had been lovingly encircled by the arm of man before.
She was faint and full of tears, so the arm remained where it had been
placed; and, somehow, her head rested upon his breast, while large
glittering drops fell from her eyes to the ground.
Oh, the bliss of that moment! Never before in her life had she
experienced any emotion equalling that exquisite felicity.
It was natural that the same impulse which drew Lotte to Mark’s breast
should dictate to him to hold back, for an instant, that pretty head,
and to press his lips upon her forehead.
It was Lotte’s first love-kiss.
She broke from him, startled, affrighted; ran, like a terrified fawn, to
a chair, upon which she sank sobbing.
Mark followed her, and bent over her.
“Lotte,” he whispered, gently, in her ear, “do not weep, my own sweet
little girl; I cannot bear to see you in tears. I love you, as I have
confessed to you, fondly and dearly, and I would make you my own little
wife, if you will have me.”
Lotte still wept, but it was with an intensity of happiness to which
previously she had been an entire stranger.
Oh, those day dreams! those visions of Paradise, in which she had
indulged to wake out of only with a sigh.
Were they, after all, to be realized, and should she really and truly
have for her very own that handsome, manly fellow, now pleading his suit
in her ear?
The vision was one of happiness to her indeed.
But she woke up from it. Her common sense presented itself coldly and
gravely before her; it held up a mirror to her, in which she saw at a
glance their respective social positions, and she saw that what she had
just heard with such trembling delight was, after all, a dream, only to
be added to others which had been dissipated.
She rose up, and turned her face towards him, bending upon him her now
timid gaze.
“I must not listen to you, Mr. ‘Wilton,” she said, in a low, sad tone.
“No?” he cried, in a startled tone; “why not? You love another, Lotte,
is that why?” he asked, excitedly.
She shook her head gently.
“No,” she replied.
He uttered an audible sigh of relief.
“That is glad tidings!” he ejaculated, with evident satisfaction, and
added--“Before we proceed farther--before you say to me aught which
may be unsatisfactory in my ears--let us, dear, dear Lotte, come to a
decided understanding with each other. I love you, oh! so dearly. You
have confessed to me you love no other man----”
“My brother!” said Lotte, archly--serious as she was at heart, she could
not forbear the observation.
He waved his hand impatiently.
“Oh, Lotte! tell me, do you--at least, I should say, do you think you
could be brought at some future time to love me?”
“Do not ask me, pray do not,” said Lotte, seriously and earnestly, in
reply.
“Why not?” he asked, with surprise.
“Because,” she answered, “you have gone too far already for your
own peace, and--I--I wish you to see--what you have overlooked--the
difference between your position and mine.”
“What difference, Lotte?” he asked, almost sharply. “You are well born,
of a long line of ancestry--so your sister has told me--you are now
wealthy, and will be richer still; I am but a humble needlewoman,
poor, my only dowry a pure name. You see I cannot be admitted into your
family, or, if I were, it might be to meet with disdainful looks, and to
hear, perhaps, contemptuous remarks which would break my heart. It will,
therefore, be better that we should part now. I shall always think of
you kindly, and--and----”
She could get no further, and placed her handkerchief before her eyes
to conceal the emotion which the image of parting with him for ever
created.
Mark waved his hand impetuously and stamped his foot impatiently.
“Lotte,” he said, “leave me to be the judge of what constitutes the
difference in our social position. Mine, as yours, is the accident of
birth, and in taking you to my bosom, your social condition can have no
weight with me. In my hearing none will dare utter a derogatory word or
bend a haughty look at my choice. Those who attempt it may be wealthy
and purse-proud, but they would be so mean in soul I would not mix with
them, and I should return their contempt with interest. I need, Lotte,
a pure mind and a loving, faithful heart, to companion me through
life, because my future happiness will be wholly dependent upon those
qualities. I have mixed with many grades of people, and lived through
some wild scenes, and I am somewhat unsettled in my nature. I require
a gentle counsellor, one fond enough of me to make my home to me the
centre of paradise on earth, while I endeavour to make her life as free
from care and as full of unalloyed happiness as it is possible for such
an one as myself to accomplish. You, Lotte, are the pure and loving
woman upon whom my heart settles like the dove on the ark; mere worldly
distinctions I despise. You have centred in your sweet self all I desire
to possess.”
“I am very grateful to you, Mr. Wilton,” she responded.
He interrupted her.
“Mark! my name is Mark! do call me Mark!” he exclaimed earnestly.
It was strange to see how his fond eyes brought the colour in her
cheeks. She smiled, but yet it was a saddened smile.
“I am grateful,” she repeated, “for your kindness, but you have failed
to convince me that an alliance between us will be what is termed a
fitting match. Your father----”
“Lotte! Lotte!” he interposed, “only answer me this. Could you be happy
with me as my wife, irrespective of the considerations you suggest?”
She hesitated to answer, and cast her eyes upon the ground.
Once more he stole his arm about her waist, and bent his lips to her
ear.
“Answer, Lotte, dearest; do not be cold or cruel to me. Could you be
happy, if you were my wife?”
She turned her eyes full of tenderness upon his, and in the rich tones
of a fall heart said--
“I could, indeed, Mark; in truth I could.”
“And love me, Lotte?”
“And love you, Mark; fondly, tenderly, dearly--very, very dearly.”
He pressed her to his heart.
“I ask no more,” he replied, with deep emotion. “We will settle the
social distinctions after we are married.”
That night before he parted with her, he obtained from her a conditional
assent to be his. The condition imposed by her was, that his father and
his sister should give their consent to the union, and receive her as
became the position of the wife of the eldest born of the house.
Mark placed the fulfilment of that condition in the rosiest light, and
left her to depart for home on the following morning.
He arrived at his destination at a most critical moment in his father’s
life.