In one of the largest houses of that day in London, and in that
fashionable suburb which lay in the immediate vicinity of the palace,
sat a young lady in deep mourning, weeping bitterly. She was quite
alone in her own room; and the face, once almost ruddy with the hue of
country health, looked now pale and delicate. The wits about the
court, who by any chance had seen her, either at her father's
residence or during a former visit to the court, had not failed to
have their remark, their jest, or their gallant speech upon the
occasion of her altered appearance.
One man, of exceedingly refined taste, declared that she looked far
more lovely since she had cast away what he called that "very vivid
rose," which made her look like a lovely dairy-maid.
Another replied that his lordship was fonder, he believed, of lilies
than of roses.
Another rejoined that these were not lilies, but faded roses; and
another declared that his two noble friends made it out clearly that
the lady had the gift of weeping rose-water for her brother's death,
as it was evidently by the process of distillation she had become so
pale.
Little did any of the gay mockers know all the sources of poor
Margaret's tears. True, she wept much for her brother's death. She had
loved him well, as he had loved her. There had been something in his
frank and generous nature peculiarly attractive to a heart like hers.
Even his rashness, his vehemence, which were occasionally excessive,
were all tempered toward her, and had only the effect of making her
shrinkingly withhold from him the one great secret of her life. The
thought that that secret love might have been the near, or even the
remote cause of her brother's violent death, added double bitterness
to her tears. But this was not all. Margaret wept for her lover as
well as for her brother--wept for the slayer as well as the slain. She
knew, with a certainty that might have made her swear to the fact,
that the provocation must have been great indeed that could induce
Ralph to draw the sword upon her brother Henry; she felt for the
severe struggle which must have taken place in his mind before he
sought the fatal spot. She felt for all that he must have experienced
when their swords crossed and Henry fell. She felt for all he must
have endured in the anguish of his flight, and for all he was still
enduring, wherever he might have sought refuge.
"Remorse and despair, both in one," she said; "these must be his
portion now, poor Ralph: remorse for having taken my brother's life,
and despair for having by his own act placed an impassable bar between
us forever. Oh, yes! whatever they may tell me, I know, I feel he
loves me still. If he have, indeed, trifled for an hour with this
bright and beautiful Hortensia Danvers, when he saw my poor Henry
lying on the grass, all his love for Margaret has returned, I am
certain. No man can forget the love of early years so easily--at least
not Ralph. I know what he will feel, I know what he will think; and
sure I am that no one here, not even myself or my father, will weep
for poor Henry as bitterly as he does."
Oh! abiding confidence of woman's love, what is like thee? No other
passion--no other feeling--no other thought pervades the whole of
being, takes possession of every faculty, clings to the heart, rules
and subjugates the mind, sets reason, and argument, and conviction at
defiance like thee. It must be true love, though not the paltry
passion, the half-indifferent liking, the admiration warmed a little
by propinquity and habit, the convenient, half mercenary, half
ambitious tenderness. None of those lukewarm mixtures of heart and
brain, which stand white-gloved and orange-flowered before the altar
of a fashionable church, and are recorded under the desecrated name of
love, to have that very record blotted out, ere a few short years are
over, by the bitter drops of regret or the burning spots of shame. No,
no; it must be true, full, wholehearted love--the love that gets a
grasp upon the very soul--the love that is immortal as the soul
itself.
And such was Margaret's love for her pool cousin. For him she wept as
much as for her brother Henry; for she felt and knew that his life was
dead if his body lived, and that the fallen man was happier than he
whose existence was prolonged.
At that moment Margaret thought little of herself or of her own future
fate. She was of an unselfish nature; and her first thoughts were
never--as so many's are--of the cares, anxieties, and griefs which the
events of the day might bring upon herself. Imagination would indeed,
from time to time, force upon her some recollection of her own fate
and situation--dim, hovering phantoms, wandering the extreme verge of
thought, but never coming near enough to be tangible. But, for the
time, her feelings rather than her thoughts were alive principally to
the fate of her brother and of her lover. Of her father, it is true,
she thought often and painfully; but his deep grief might have
affected her more, had it been of a character more like her own. But
there was an eager, fiery fierceness in it, with which she could have
no sympathy. He called down curses upon the head of him who had
deprived him of his son; he vowed vengeance--ay, and sought it; and
declared that life only should bound his purposes of revenge.
Margaret, indeed, did not give much credence to such vows. Without
having studied it, without having even thought of it, she knew her
father's character well. It had sunk into her mind, as it were, making
its impress, from infancy upward, more and more deeply every year. She
knew him to be warm-hearted, kind, generous, passionate, somewhat
careless, not without ability, but without consistency, if not
continuity of purpose. She had never seen any passion maintain a long
and powerful influence over him, however vehement might be the
outburst at first. Grief, from which man usually flies the most
eagerly, as his natural enemy--as the enemy of all his desires at
every period of life--had had a greater hold upon him than any other
affection of his mind to which she had ever seen him subject. She
remembered well the period of her mother's death, which had occurred
some five or six years before, and how long afterward a deep, brooding
melancholy had hung over Lord Woodhall, how slow was his return to
cheerfulness, how frequently the fits of gloom would come back. But
even that had passed away, and she doubted not that this present
frantic rage against poor unhappy Ralph would pass away likewise. She
somewhat feared, indeed, what might be the result when the violence of
passion should subside; when that which for the time seemed to bear
away grief upon its fiery wings should sink down either gratified or
wearied out, and leave him alone in sorrow and desolation. Then, she
knew, would be the struggle; then, when he daily saw the empty place
at the table, when he missed the beloved face, when he heard no more
the cheerful voice, when the presence which was sunshine to him, and
the gallant bearing in which he took such a pride, were all found
wanting; when the house looked vacant and lonely, and the meals
cheerless and solitary, and the evenings went by unenlivened, and the
day ended with the knowledge that he was gone--then, she thought, when
her mind turned in that direction, then will sorrow be fully felt in
all its heavy weight; then will the anguish which is now divided by
rage bow him to the earth; and then must be the time for me to
struggle with my own griefs, in order to lighten his. Now it would be
vain to say a word. To oppose his wrath against poor Ralph would be
madness; to offer him consolation, as vain.
From time to time these thoughts came upon her, and, even sad and
bitter as they were, they offered her some relief; for the
others--those I have described before--were so much more intense and
painful, that any thing which led her mind away to other things was a
blessing for the time. She might have looked round all the world for
some surpassing woe, without finding any which could compare in her
heart with that which the death of her brother, by the hand of her
lover, had inflicted. They were both so dear--so unutterably
dear--they were both so linked with every affection, and every memory,
and every hope, that the one, who was dead to all, and the other, who
must be dead to her, left the once flowery landscape of life, which
had lain so lately smiling before her, nothing but a dark, desolate
wilderness. It was like a fair scene just torn by an earthquake, and
bearing not one trace of its former aspect.
It was over such thoughts that she was now weeping, somewhat more than
a fortnight after her brother's death. Her father had gone forth,
still moved by the same fierce desire of vengeance, to move every
power of the court to gratify that burning thirst; for those were days
in which influence and even wealth--money, base, corrupted money--made
the very scales of justice quiver. He had been more harsh and
ferocious that day than usual; he had dwelt upon the particulars of
her poor brother's death with a painful, lingering minuteness, which
tore poor Margaret's heart. He seemed anxious to lash his resentment
to such a pitch that it would bear all before it, and he left the
house declaring that he would bring Ralph to the gallows, or perish.
This scene, as he had walked up and down the room, looking angrily at
the floor, and every now and then stopping to add some bitter or
painful word more, was full in Margaret's mind when she retired to her
own chamber, and there sat down to weep as I have described. It was
one of the darkest hours which had fallen upon her since her brother's
death; for the probability of her lover's being found and taken--being
brought to trial--being condemned--was brought more painfully home to
her heart than it had ever been before. All seemed darkness and
despair around her. What should she do in such a case? she asked
herself. How should she act? Throw herself at her father's feet, and
beseech him to forbear, and be merciful? She knew it was vain--all
vain. She might as well beseech the hurricane. Should she leave him
whom she so dearly loved to perish unseen, unsupported, unconsoled?
She knew her own heart would perish also. Should she fly to him, cast
off all restraint, make her fate with his, interpose between her
father and his vengeance, and say, "Strike him through me?" But her
brother's spirit seemed to stand in the way of the very thought,
crying, "Margaret, Margaret he slew me."
Poor Margaret could but weep; and bitterly, painfully did she weep;
but while the tears were still streaming as rapidly as ever down her
cheeks, there was a light tap at the door, and, without waiting to be
told, her maid entered the room. She was an old and faithful servant,
who had waited many years upon her mother; somewhat stiff, indeed, but
full of love for all the children of the house; one of those old
attached servants of an English household, which are hardly to be
found in any other land. She had wept over the death of poor Master
Henry, as she called him, as bitterly as any one; but she had shared
Margaret's feelings rather than those of the old lord. She had loved
Henry well; but she loved Ralph nearly as well, for she had known him
from the cradle; had known his mother, and every one who had known her
had loved her. Ralph had always, too, shown a great attachment to her.
As a child, he would sit with his arms round her neck, and call her,
in his infant prattle, "his Dody"--her name was Dora Vernon; and the
very first comfort which Margaret had received came from her lips,
very shortly after the fatal news arrived.
"Do not take on so, Mistress Margaret," she said, adhering still to
the term mistress, which was but beginning to decline; "the dead can
never be brought back by weeping; and if your tears are for the
living, as I can't help thinking they be in part, I dare say, if you
knew all, Master Ralph is not so much to blame as you think. I don't
see, for my own part, why the good old lord goes on so madly against
poor Master Ralph. He fought two men in his day himself, and killed
one of them, and he would not have a gentleman refuse to fight, I am
sure, when he was asked. Master Henry, God rest him! was hot and
passionate enough, as you know; and, I dare say, he provoked poor
Ralph more than he could bear. Perhaps he was deceived about
something, and wouldn't listen to reason about it, for he took up
things very hastily, and all things are not as they seem at first; and
I am sure Master Ralph would not give real cause of offense to man or
woman either, for he is as good, and kind, and noble-hearted a lad as
any in all the world. But if people will not listen to reason, and
hear things explained, what can one do? and that was always Master
Henry's way: a word and a blow, and the blow came first."
I have said that this speech, somewhat incoherent as it was, had
comforted Margaret greatly and it gave her comfort in more ways than
one. She remembered the letter which Henry had shown her, and the
impression which it had produced upon her mind; and a doubt, a
thought, a hope that they might both have been deceived--that the
letter was either a fabrication, or might be explained, arose, and
grew stronger and stronger every moment. What right had she to judge
him unheard? she asked herself--what right had Henry? and, knowing the
weakness of her brother's temper, his rashness, and punctiliousness
upon the point of honor, she easily conceived that he actually
compelled Ralph to draw his sword, without listening to any thing he
might say in his own defense.
The sight, therefore, of her good Dora was now pleasant to her; and
she did not even try to wipe away the tears that she was shedding when
she entered, but, holding out her arms to her, leaned her head upon
her shoulder, and wept there.
"There, there, my dear child," said the good woman, "you have been
sorry enough; and don't you be afraid of all that the old lord says.
He'll not do half that he thinks. It's poor, powerless work when old
men begin to swagger. I heard him going on when you were in the
withdrawing-room with him; but he'll do nothing; and I dare to say
that Master Ralph will easily show that he was driven to do what he
did. And now, my bird, wipe your eyes, there's a dear child. Here's a
little saucy boy down stairs wants to see you; he has been out there
over the way for an hour, till the old lord went out, and then he came
over and asked for you. Harrison sent for me, but the lad won't talk
to any one but you, for he has got a letter to deliver into your own
hand, he says--a love-letter, I don't doubt;" and the old woman
laughed a little. "I don't doubt that it's a love-letter, for it isn't
in Master Ralph's hand--that was my hope at first--but it's a great,
sprawling, twisting hand, and the boy's all decked out as fine as a
groat--a sort of page-looking lad, with a band of feathers round his
hat, quite fantastical."
"Send him away," said Margaret, sadly; "I will not see him; I have
naught to do with love-letters, Dora."
"But you can not tell it is a love-letter," replied the waiting-woman;
"that was only my fancy; and, indeed, my dear child, you should see
him, for he won't give it to any body but you; and you can not tell
what it may be about, and it's always right to look at a letter; and
it is but civil."
"Well, bring him up," replied Margaret; "but stay you here, Dora, till
he is gone."
The boy was brought up so rapidly, that, had Margaret been in a very
observing mood, she might have suspected he had not been very far from
the door while the conversation just detailed was passing between her
and her woman; but she only noticed that he came; that he was a
gay-looking boy of some thirteen or fourteen years of age, very much
like what Dora had described; that he asked her carefully, ere he gave
the letter, whether she was Mistress Margaret Woodhall. Her mind was
too much occupied with other thoughts to notice or attend to any thing
more.
She answered his question in the affirmative, took the letter, and
then, gently bowing her head, dismissed the boy, saying, "I will send
my reply, if this should require one."
"Well, I do think," said Dora, "seeing he is so smart a youth, I would
have tried to find out where he came from. Letters do not always tell
who sent them, and--"
"Nonsense--nonsense, Dora!" said Margaret. "I care not whom it comes
from, nor whence it comes;" and, much to the good woman's
inconvenience, she continued to hold the letter unopened in her hand,
gazing upon the ground, and falling gradually into thought.
"Well, really!" exclaimed Dora Vernon, after she had waited some five
minutes; and Margaret, rather startled by the sharpness of the sounds
than clearly understanding their meaning, languidly opened the letter,
and fixed her eye upon the page.
The moment she did so the whole expression of her face altered; her
eyes recovered their brightness, and fixed eagerly on the lines
beneath them; the color mounted up into her cheek; her lip lost its
dejected stillness, and bent into a sweet, hopeful smile; and then, as
if there were magic in the ending lines, she started up, let the paper
drop, and pressed her hand tight upon her heart.
Dora pounced upon the letter in an instant, took it up unchidden or
forbid, and gazed at the words it contained. They were large enough,
Heaven knows; but still her spectacles were habitually needful; and,
retreating a step, for fear her young lady should attempt to stop her,
she mounted them on her nose, and read:
"Fear not, my child," so the letter ran, "fear not! Fate has done its
work with your poor brother. It could not be otherwise. It was doomed
to be so. I warned you, you would have many trials; but fear
not--shrink not. More must yet come; but they will pass away, and
though a multitude of obstacles may seem to stand between you and
happiness, yet shrink not--doubt not! Your fate depends upon yourself.
The stars do not rule, but counsel you. Be firm--be true--be happy!
"Above all, doubt not him who loves you. Trust to tried affection and
long-known truth; and be assured that he who may now seem guilty is
innocent as yourself. He who seems most innocent is guilty. You sent
not to me in the hour of need as I bade you; but I watch over you, and
come to your comfort, even when you seek me not. Be firm and true.
MORABER."
"Goodness gracious! if that is not the wise man in the old tower!"
exclaimed Dora, when she had arrived at the name, and made it out with
some difficulty; "Lord bless me! Mistress Margaret, how can he know
any thing about you?"
Margaret had sunk into her chair again, without an effort to prevent
the good woman from reading the letter; and, in deep thought, made no
reply to the question till Dora had repeated it twice.
"You talked to me much about him, Dora," she replied, at length; "I
went to see him--that is all."
"And never told me a word!" muttered Dora. "Ah, my pretty child, I can
guess, dear one--I can guess, my bird. Well, love sees with his own
eyes; and I say not they are bad ones, though folks call him blind.
He's no bad judge, I wot, though he judges not as old lords and great
people judge. Marry! they would have people men and women of the
world's making, not of God's; but you can't fashion flesh and blood
like a coach or a coat. Nature says shall, and who shall gainsay her?
Love's not a loose cloak to fit every one; and it's a garment which
can but be bought once and won't turn. Don't tear it, my dear, for
patch it you can't; and old Moraber is right, depend upon it--he
always is."
"Pray God he is so now," replied Margaret, fervently; and then,
throwing her arms round Dora, in a wild burst of strong emotion, she
wept again as profusely as ever, but far more happily.
How the heart catches at the least assurance of that which it longs to
believe! Oh, dry and dusty earth of which we are made, how soon is it
fired by the least spark of hope! I remember hearing of that famous
lost Greek fire, how, one time, spilled by accident in the baths of a
great city, no effort could put it out; it burned through theaters and
dwelling-places, through the great church, through its stone pavement,
down to the very graves beneath. And this is Hope, unextinguishable
even into the tomb. Does it end even there? I know not. But beyond is
the first world of reality, where Hope, the wanderer, meets her sister
Joy.
Yes, from so slight and frail an assurance as that of the strange,
wild letter she had just received, Margaret's thought-world was
relighted; the darkness passed in part away; she dared to look
forward; she dared to withdraw her eyes from her brother's tomb; she
boldly said to herself, "Come what may, I will be firm and true."
But, as a consequence of that letter, another comfort, not more
substantial, not more sustaining, but still infinitely great, was
afforded her. Her old servant's words showed her that the secret of
her heart had been penetrated--that no glowing explanation--no timid
hesitation--no word--no sign was needed further--that she had some one
to confide in, some one to counsel and to aid. The counsel might not
be the wisest, the aid not the most powerful, but she stood no longer
alone in the sorrow of her own heart.