The Weird Of The Wentworths Volume I Part 11

As she bade her father good-night, he pressed her hand, and with tears in his eyes commended her to G.o.d's keeping.

"G.o.d bless you, my afflicted child, and make all work together for your good!"

Ellen's mind whispered "Amen!"

When she was first alone, all the horror of her condition came back with crus.h.i.+ng, overwhelming agony,--she first began to believe its reality.

She threw herself on her couch;--what was it glistened by her?

Something fell,--it was her ring. It had fallen off her finger, and now lay on the carpet. Oh! fatal amulet! prime cause of all this misery!

Ellen's mind, as we have already said, was tinged with romance and superst.i.tion; in this she was not unlike many of her countrymen. This accident, this falling off of her only remembrance, was too strange a coincidence to escape her. It seemed emblematical of her condition,--forsaken by him she loved so well, and now forsaken by his gift. The ring, as it lay there, seemed to say "the last link is broken!" She picked it up; for one moment she thought the precious stones clouded in her gaze--this was doubtless fancy; but what was not fancy was this,--the golden hoop was cracked--broken through, and this was the cause of its slipping off her finger.

"My last friend forsakes me!" said the unhappy girl; "I am truly most miserable!"

For a moment, too, the thought entered her mind of burning this relic now of faithlessness; the words "Hope on" seemed to mock her woe. The fire was there; what prevented her burning it? what stayed her hand from committing it to the flames?

"No," she said, "I won't destroy it; broken as it is--fit emblem of my heart--I will keep it. I may live to see him--I may live to show it to him! he may yet return--may yet live to bind the heart he has broken!

Till then I will keep thee, broken as thou art; when my heart is re-united, so shall be thy circlet!"

With these words she placed the gaud in her bosom, and some good angel whispered "Hope on!"

The thought pa.s.sed away; the bright ray of hope darkened again and again; she threw herself on her bed and wished for death. We know not how long she lay there; soon however her fort.i.tude gave way, a tear started in her eye, another and another, and then came a long paroxysm of grief,--a torrent of tears, a flood after pa.s.sion's storm; but the relief came too quickly. It was like the sudden breaking up of ice in the Northern ocean; like the sudden thaw after a long winter of snow,--prognostic only of a worse storm to come. And so it was with Ellen; the sudden relief given by tears was too much for her mind. For a moment she felt the load gone,--the next, and all came back, and her mind began to wander. She was at the Towers; by her side stood her lover;--he told his love, and asked her hand, and she accepted him. And lo! another lady came--another fair creature--and he left her and smiled on his new flame. She tried to speak, to reproach his infidelity; she could not, she had not the power of utterance; her words were frozen.

Then she heard a wild maniacal laugh--she turned, and saw a demon form scoffing at her woe!--and his face, oh, agony! oh, shame!--his face was L'Estrange's.

She woke--not from sleep, but from this wild vision bred by a troubled mind. Her head ached as if it would split, an awful load seemed to crush her very brain;--was it in a vice? She had thrown herself on her bed, all dressed as she was: she rose,--how giddy she felt! She hastily disrobed herself--she could have fallen all the time: why did she not? A strange power upheld her, and she now sought her couch and tried to think. Oh, G.o.d! was her mind going? She knew something was wrong, but had forgotten what it was; and now she felt chill, and now burning hot, her pulse throbbed, her heart fluttered: what was the matter?--was she ill, dying? She had asked for death,--was it come? She stretched out her hand to ring the bell--where was it?--ah, here it is!--she rung it violently, and overpowered by her exertion, sunk back on her pillow.

Was it a dream again in which she saw her father stand by her bed?--did she really feel him take her hand, and feel her fluttering pulse? No, this was no dream; her father had heard that midnight bell, and rushed to her chamber; he had felt her pulse, and was horror-stricken at its quick and still quickening convulses; still more terrified when he found his daughter knew him not. And he himself hurriedly dressed, and, bidding the servant watch while he was absent, ran for the village doctor.

He came as soon as he could,--but not soon enough to please the anxious father. He came, and saw in a moment she was in a high brain-fever; the disease was raging and burning fiercer every moment, and he had to tell the poor father he could not undertake the case without higher medical attendance.

The first doctors in Edinburgh were summoned; and for one-and-twenty days her father never left her bedside. During the first ten days delirium had wildly triumphed; and in her fits she would often repeat the names of "Wentworth," "L'Estrange." Afterwards, though insensible even to her father, the fever had become less violent, and the patient seemed daily more exhausted.

At length the twenty-first day dawned and the critical hour approached--the crisis came! In one hour it would be known if she recovered, or sunk beneath it.

How anxiously her worn father watched! and when at last the fever lessened, the crisis past, and favourable symptoms were observed, and for the first time the sufferer slept, he fell on his knees at her bedside and thanked heaven for it. Then first too did he consent to court sleep himself.

After a long, death-like sleep, Ellen opened her eyes. She saw her father, who had also had a nap, by her side, and faintly smiled. He took her hand in his own and asked her if she knew him, and told her to press it if she did. She pressed it, faintly indeed, but he felt it. She could not speak, so weakened had the fever left her. Oh! had Lord Wentworth seen his Ellen then!--would he have known her? She was the mere shadow of the beautiful girl into whose hand he had pressed the ring; her eyes were still bright--still unchanged; and her long hair--once had it been doomed--once had the doctor nigh closed the open forfex on her silken tresses, but her father had stayed the ruthless spoiler.

"If she is to die, it cannot save her; if she is to live, why rob her of one tress?"

Thus was her long fair hair spared. But, oh! to have seen her wan face!--to have seen her wasted white arm!--it would have made a faithless lover start to have beheld the wreck of loveliness his perjury had wrought. This was the mere ghost of the beautiful Ellen in her ball-dress!

When the patient became stronger, the first words she whispered to her father were:--

"Where is the ring?"

"It is safe, sweet; I have it."

"I thank you."

These words were few, but very significant. The blow that had caused all was still swelling,--the wound that had unstrung her mind still unforgotten. Time, the restorer, gave back her beauty; and if her cheek was paler, her features more fined down, her bloom more shadowy and more frail--she seemed still lovelier; her beauty seemed to have less of earth--to be of a higher, more heavenly tint! Time, the restorer, gave back her health; but Time, restorer though he be, had not given back her peace of mind; her heart ached yet; the void of lost love was an "aching void" still. But another and greater change had pa.s.sed over Ellen Ravensworth,--her character was softened down, all was now persuasion, softness, kindness, gentleness. Gone the haughty usurpation of authority, gone the love of rule and command, gone the pride of personal charms. Her pride had had a rude rebuff; the lesson to be learned was not lost; she had pa.s.sed through the furnace of sorrow, and had come out thoroughly refined and purified.

She was able ere long to come down stairs, and to set again to her duties; and these she now did with an alacrity,--an earnestness she had never done them with before. No castle-building now!--her greatest castle had fallen, and great was the fall of it! and she would not again lay one stone. Of course, by mutual desire and consent, no allusion was made to the past,--no lip framed the "once familiar word;" and when her father saw how diligently she attended to her duties, and the smile that now and then came back, bright as if glad to be renewed on a face it had so long ceased to lighten,--when he saw all this he fancied the bitterness of woe was pa.s.sed, the first poignancy dulled, and that she would yet forget. Ah! how little he knew Ellen; she might wish to die--but forget, even wish to forget, she could not. The wound was still unhealed; every thought tore it open to bleed afresh: she hugged the grief to her heart; and though it stung her, she pressed it the closer!

But there was another change this disappointment and illness had wrought. Ellen's mother had been a pious mother, and, while she was spared to Ellen, had piously brought her up. The bread cast on the waters was found after many days; the good seed, sown by a praying hand in early years, was still quick,--still full of vitality. It had been sadly choked by the pomps and pleasures of this life; but fire,--the flames of sorrow,--had consumed the thorns and briers, and now it sprung up! Ellen was more attentive in her devotions; more constant and devout at church; more frequently was her Bible a companion to her in her hours of loneliness; and this taught her that it was wrong to brood over affliction,--wrong to give way to sorrow; the trial had been sent for her good, and it was her duty to bear it, and profit by it. She would try and bear it,--try and carry her heavy cross, without murmuring!

Think not from this love had died. Oh, no,--

"on hallowed ground The idol of man's heart was found."

Still the idol of her affections was reared in her heart; still she offered him silent devotion and secret incense; but it was no longer the all-absorbing pa.s.sion; chastened down, subdued, brought under--it was now a sad necessity, no longer a joyous freewill offering!

In about a month Ellen was able to take her first walk; she chose the road along which a few months ago _he_ had driven with her in the sleigh. Then the snow was white--now April's suns.h.i.+ne and showers began to make everything green and spring-like. Ah! the love born amid the snows of winter seemed to have flown with them! To her mind that time had been spring,--now all was winter.

Though Ellen was thus apparently restored in health, strength, and beauty, the lingering traces of the illness had not entirely vanished, and her physicians had recommended a tour on the Continent, selecting Switzerland as the best spot. Her father, too, thought the excitement of a tour abroad, the new scenes, foreign faces and customs, would do more than anything else to banish old griefs from her mind, and drown her sorrow; so he decided on following their advice, and began to prepare for their departure. As there were then no steamboats and railroads, Mr.

Ravensworth decided on travelling by posting, and procured an excellent courier through Mr. Lennox. This courier was to meet them in London, and they determined on travelling thither by the coach that pa.s.sed their door daily. On May day the London coach stopped before Seaview and picked up Mr. Ravensworth and his daughter. Ellen had only time to wave her hand to Johnny and Maude, who stood on the steps, before the four prancing horses dashed off, and whirled her away from her home, and separated her from her brother and sister for the first time in her life.

CHAPTER XI.[D]

"Still those white cliffs faintly glimmer, Still I see my island home."--_Anon._

"Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche--the thunderbolt of snow!"

_Childe Harold._

Only those who have viewed the white cliffs of Albion sink beneath the circ.u.mambient waters, only those who have left Old England on the lee in their out-bound vessel, can fancy the unspeakable emotion, or depict the melancholy feelings with which we first bid our island adieu. We are islanders; all our ideas are severed like our land from other nations; we glory in our insulated position; we glory in our insulated manners; and there breathes not son nor daughter--or if they breathe they deserve not the name of Briton--who does not acutely feel the first severing from home. It is the feeling of the child weaned from the maternal breast--the lover parted from his love--the dying man trembling as he is launched on the sea of futurity; the firm land is gone--the known exchanged for the unknown, or at least dimly shadowed future; above angry skies--beneath unfathomed depths--around faithless waves--and behind the land of our love fast receding, perhaps never to be seen again, or seen when the fire of youth has smouldered low--the energy of youth has been exchanged for the caution of age--and dull reality has shown how vain the dreams of childhood! Looking on the receding sh.o.r.e we feel all our friends are there, and all going away--there all our hopes, our home, our affections. The vessel bears away our mortal frame; the immortal soul lingers behind, nothing can bear it away, nor the heart that is left behind, however far the foot may roam. How full are our feelings, as we ask with the poet,--

"Who shall fill our vacant places?

Who shall sing our songs to-night?"

Such were the feelings of Ellen Ravensworth as the packet which bore them left the quiet harbour of Newhaven, and in one minute plunged into the restless, rolling billows of our channel. Having had to wait for the tide, it was already growing dusk when they weighed anchor; the last embers of dying day tipped the crested waves with an uncertain glimmer, and the crescent moon hung in the only clear break of the sky over the west, from which quarter rather a brisk breeze hurried the yeasty waves past: it was, however, a mild, soft wind, and remarkably warm for the season; so Ellen prevailed on her father to allow her to remain on deck, and catch the last glimpse of her native island. Wrapt in a warm Scotch plaid, in a half-reclining att.i.tude, she leant over the vessel's side, and watched her plough her way with full swelling sails towards France.

Beside her stood her father, talking to the captain, a bluff, kindhearted sailor, who had voyaged over the round world, and was busily engaged in detailing some of his adventures, or, as sailors would say, spinning a long yarn. But Ellen heeded not their conversation; her heart was far away, as from time to time she lifted her blue eyes, moist with tears, on the lessening sh.o.r.es and giant chalk cliffs that loomed ghost-like and mysteriously through the gloaming.

Though Scotch, Ellen had imbibed all the national feelings for those white cliffs, a.s.sociated from earliest times with this country's history;--the same cliffs that beheld the ancient Briton paddle his basket-work coracle,--the same cliffs that twice saw the haughty Roman conqueror Julius Caesar,--that saw the Saxon with fair hair and blue eyes land on the envied isle,--that beheld the fiery Dane,--the proud Norman,--and, later still, the Spanish Armada sail by in false vainglory,--later still the victorious Wellington welcomed home, whilst drums played, "See the conquering hero comes." Though Scotch, Ellen felt towards them a kindred love, as she saw and now lost them again in the murky night, for the first time in her young life. England and Scotland were one now: all petty distinctions were lost--all party failings, all rancour forgotten; it was the same island, the same home; on its dimly-seen sh.o.r.es were centred all her affections; her hopes and fears were all there; her brother and sister; her relatives and friends; her house and home. He, too, was there; he who had so cruelly deserted her; he who had won her heart, and, when tired of it, thrown it away, as the child flings his broken toy. Despite all, she loved, she adored him yet, and to leave him gave the most venomed point to the shaft of affliction.

With heart full to bursting--so full it seemed as if a tight band was drawn round it--and feelings those who have felt them know, but cannot describe, she watched the red harbour-light dip often, and at last sink beneath the bounding surges. And when all was gone, the last lingering link broken, tears all unbidden fast coursed our heroine's cheek, and she scarcely heard her father, who, fearing the effect of the cold night air on his daughter, was anxious to hurry her below.

"It is getting cold, Ellen, dear; had you not better descend to the cabin, now? Captain Hardy and I will a.s.sist you, as the sea is getting pretty rough."

Ellen rose without answering; and, with the jolly captain's help, who was only too glad to give his hand to the Scotch belle, and said many pretty things, praising her as the best sailor he had ever taken across the Channel, reached her berth.

The sea got rougher every minute, and the groaning and creaking of the planks, the shrill whistling of the wind through the cordage, and the occasional shout of the pilot, were sounds sufficient to instil terror into landsmen's minds; but both Mr. Ravensworth and his daughter proved excellent sailors; and Ellen's mind was too busy with other things to bestow more than a pa.s.sing thought on her present situation. Whilst her father, with the captain and two other pa.s.sengers, engaged in a friendly rubber at whist over their grog, she amused herself by listening to the chat of the stewardess, a pretty little Frenchwoman, whose vivacity helped to dispel her sad thoughts, whilst it also gave her an opportunity of testing her powers in French conversation, which, however little it satisfied herself, was declared to be beyond all praise by the Frenchwoman, with her natural politeness. Ellen was, however, a really finished French scholar, and only required a month or two in Paris, as her companion told her, to become quite perfect in p.r.o.nunciation.

In a few hours, after a pleasant though somewhat rough pa.s.sage, the motion of the vessel ceased, and all the pa.s.sengers hurried on deck, and in the gray twilight of the early dawning reached Dieppe. There was nothing peculiarly foreign in the appearance of this place, and, had it not been for the French cries which a.s.sailed our travellers' ears, they might have almost fancied themselves at Newhaven again, so similar was the appearance of the chalk downs. After a cursory examination of pa.s.sports and baggage by the custom-house officers, who did everything in the politest manner, our friends, accompanied by Jean Lacroix, their courier, disembarked, and Ellen stood on foreign land. The porters of the various cafes beset them on all sides, offering to carry monsieur's luggage, and each recommending his own cafe or hotel. Jean, however, was well up to his trade, and, engaging the right man, led his charges to a small cafe on the quay side, where they might breakfast, and then proceed to the post-house, and set out on their journey at once.

The first insight Ellen had into foreign life was not a very flattering one: sour bread, and very indifferent milk and b.u.t.ter, accompanied, however, with excellent coffee, composed their matutinal meal. Jean begged mad'moiselle not to think Dieppe was like Paris.

On their way to the post-house, they pa.s.sed the market-place, where numbers of carts, and peasants in blue vestments, crowded the square; on one side of which stood a fine Gothic cathedral; here, too, Ellen saw a band of soldiers, in their red trousers, blue coats, and red caps. Their full, leg-of-mutton-shaped trousers, slight figures drawn in tightly at the waist, and rapid, undisciplined-looking march, contrasted with the Highland regiments she had been accustomed to, certainly when weighed in the balance of her mind were found wanting. The gay little soldiers seemed to regard her tall figure with equal surprise. Ellen's first insight into the French army was not very encouraging, but Jean a.s.sured her the Cuira.s.siers in Paris were equal to any soldiers in the world.

By this time their travelling carriage was ready, and Ellen was not sorry to turn her back on dirty little Dieppe. The carriage was large and roomy, though not on the easiest springs in the world, drawn by four n.o.ble horses, whose magnificent appearance required no courier to point out as worthy her admiration; and she frankly acknowledged, to Jean's delight, she had seen no post horses at all like them even in Old England.