In conclusion, I said, "If, on his dying bed, my uncle names me, do not ask him to say 'G.o.d bless her!' but 'G.o.d forgive her.'"

I also wrote to Mrs. Middleton, and when these two letters were gone, I felt relieved.

The state in which I lived during the next few days was strange. In the midst of London I was in perfect solitude.

Rather than forbid the servants to let Henry in, I gave a general order to deny me to every one, without exception.

Early in the morning, I drove into the country for some hours, and the rest of the day I spent in my back drawing-room buried in thought, and alternately giving way to the gloomiest antic.i.p.ations, or the most vague and groundless visions of future happiness.

Every day I sent a servant to inquire after Alice; and the report of her continued to be favourable.

On the third day after Edward's departure, and after Henry had made several fruitless attempts to see me, a letter was brought to me, and I immediately felt it was from him. My first impulse was to seize a cover and enclose it back to him, without a word of explanation; but, on cooler reflection, I determined to write to him.

Edward had not forbidden me to do so; and to explain my present conduct, was the only chance of keeping up that power over him, on which so much depended. I therefore wrote as fellows:--

"The crisis of my fate is come. Henceforward, if I take one more step in the downward course in which I have been so cruelly entangled, I am lost for ever. If you feel any of that regard for me which you have so long professed, I need not make any comments upon the fact which I now disclose to you.

"The notes which at different times I have sent you, and which so fatally misrepresent our relative positions, have been sent to Edward; and this letter, of which I inclose you a copy, is the result. I will not attempt to make you understand what I have suffered--what I suffer. I dare not see you; I dare not receive a letter from you; and yet, before Edward's return, I _must;_ for there is an oath which you once imposed upon me, which must be cancelled--you _must_ absolve me from it, if you do not wish to drive me to despair--to perjury on the one hand, or to a life of hopeless misery on the other.

"Henry! you who have been my best friend, and my worst enemy, have pity upon me. Do not condemn me to fresh remorse--to further struggles--to eternal hypocrisy. Do not write to me any sophistry on this subject; do not try to blind my eyes again; to deceive me to my ruin. If you have the cruelty to steel yourself against my prayers, against my earnest supplications, then leave me to myself; and take with you the consciousness that you have filled up the measure of your iniquities, and heaped upon my head all the miseries which the most savage hatred could devise.

"Would to G.o.d that I could find words to touch you! Would to G.o.d that I could reach your heart! and carry to it the conviction, that you would be happier yourself by giving way to my entreaties, than by maintaining a tyranny which is as criminal as it is cruel.

"By all that you hold sacred, hear me, Henry! In the name of your sister--in the name of your child--hear me! As you would not bring misery upon them, hear me! My whole soul is in this prayer--the fate of my whole life is in its issue--have mercy upon me, as you ever hope for mercy yourself.

"Yours,

"Ellen Middleton."

This was my letter, and day by day I watched and trembled each time that the sound of the bell or a knock at the door roused a hope that its answer might come. During that period I received two short and hurried letters from Edward, dated from the towns where he stopped for an hour or two on his way to Hyeres. The solitude of my life became at last intolerable; I began to feel an impetuous desire to change something in the course of my days; to see some one, to speak to some one, and yet I shrunk from the sight of a common acquaintance, or of a commonplace friend. At last, one morning, a note was brought to me, but the direction was written not by Henry but by Alice. It only contained these words:--

"My dear Ellen,

"I wish to see you, and I beg of you to come to me.

"Yours, Alice Lovell."

I knew not whether Mrs. Tracy was gone--I knew not whether I should see Henry--I was in total ignorance of what this visit might produce: but it was a relief to do something--to change something in the order of my day; and as Edward had not forbidden me to visit Alice, I felt justified in going to her, and prepared to do so. As I arrived at her door and walked up-stairs to her, for the first time I felt a sensation of bodily weakness, which gave me a sudden apprehension that my physical strength was giving way under such protracted mental suffering. The door was opened, and I found Alice alone. As I looked at her I felt one of the severest pangs I had ever yet experienced. Never in my life had I seen anybody so altered.

There was not a single speck of colour in her cheek; her eyes looked unnaturally large, and the black under them was deeply marked She came to meet me, but did not offer to kiss me; she held out her thin pale hand; and, slightly pressing mine, made me sit down by her. She inquired about Mr. Middleton; and after I had answered her questions, there was a pause, which I broke by saying, in a trembling voice, "How is your child, Alice? May I not see him?"

She opened the door of the next room, and showed me the cradle. The child was asleep, and as I gazed upon it the tears which I struggled to repress almost choked me. "He is beautiful," I said.

"Yes, he _is_ beautiful," she murmured, as she knelt down by the cradle. "He _is_ beautiful, but he does not thrive; he is not strong." She took the tiny hand pressed it to her pale lips; and then she rose, and we returned to the drawing-room.

"How you must love him, Alice," I said, with a sigh.

"I do," she answered; and then she put her hand to her forehead, and a sudden flush overspread her face, her brow, her neck. Her breathing was quick; and she added, in a voice of intense emotion, "But if you think I do not love his father, you are mistaken."

"Alice, I never said--I never thought--"

"Oh yes you did, and you were right to think so; for when I married him I loved him as a child, not as a woman loves; but real love and real sorrow came in time, and strength and courage are come with them. Ellen, I love him; and I charge you not to stand between him and me. I suppose I am doing a strange thing now, but it seems to me right. I have none to help me, none to counsel me but my own heart, and the sorrow which has long been secretly buried within it. I married, and the world before me was a blank, but a blank in which the spirit of G.o.d seemed to me to move as it did in the beginning of time, on the face of the waters. All was outside then in my life, inside in my brain in my heart there was nothing but peace and joy--joy that the sky was bright, and the earth gay with flowers in the summer, and white with pure snow in the winter. I _learnt_ what life and love are in the books Henry gave me. I _felt_ what they were the first time I saw him with you. I shut the books--I shut my eyes--I was a coward--I was afraid of my own heart--afraid of the life I saw before me, till strength was given me to encounter it. I saw that mine was Leah's and not Rachael's portion, and I prayed for grace not to shrink from my cup of sorrow. I do not shrink from it now; but, for Henry's sake, for the sake of my child, I must struggle with you and with your strange power, and G.o.d will be with me, Ellen, for you seek to put asunder what He has joined together."

"Alice, Alice, spare me, for I am miserable. Spare me, for your sorrows are no more like my sorrows than the martyr's sufferings resemble the dying criminal's agony. Let me hide my face on your knees--cover me with the them of your garment, and let the tears that fall on my head plead for me to the G.o.d whom you adore, for they are like those which the angels in Heaven shed over a sinner who repents. Pray--pray that his heart may be softened; pray for him, for yourself, for me.

Pray that I may prevail or die; G.o.d forgive me, I dare not die, but I cannot live as I have lived--"

"Ellen, do not talk so wildly. I dare not speak words of hope or of comfort if you do not cast this weakness from you--if you do not struggle with a pa.s.sion begun in sin, and which can only end in destruction."

"Alice, I swear by all that is most sacred,--I swear it as I would on my dying bed,--that I do not love your husband; and that now--"

"Oh, then you have done wickedly! You have never loved him, and yet you have sought his love, and worked on his feelings, till his nature, which was kind, has grown fierce; and his pale cheek has grown paler still. You have never loved him?

and yet you have made him forget every duty and every tie. You have taken his heart from me, from his child, from his home, and you value it not. In wantonness you have taken his love and my happiness away--you have played with it and destroyed it. Oh, Ellen, G.o.d have mercy upon you, for you are very wicked!"

"I have been guilty, I have been wicked, Alice, but not in the way you think. Believe me, there is a mystery in all this which I dare not explain."

"Oh, yes; there has been a mystery in the air we breathe, in the words we have all spoken to each other, in our lives, and in our hearts. My grandmother trembles and turns pale when you are named, or when your carriage drives by in the street; and even now the colour forsakes your cheek, and your lips quiver as I speak of her. Henry married _me_ an ignorant child--as I have learnt since that men wed brides who are rich and n.o.ble, for their rank and for their riches, without loving me or trying to make me love him. He hates Robert Harding and curses him in a low voice when we meet him, and yet he speaks to him civilly, and offers him money which he spurns, and presents which he refuses. You say you do not love Henry, you swear it, and yet day after day you spend hours with him, and when he has been absent from you, you have called him back. You have written to him in secret, and turned pale when your letters have been discovered. Oh, there is a deep and terrible mystery in all this, and we have walked in darkness till we have almost forgotten what light is."

I hid my face in my hands, overcome by the force of Alice's words, and unable to meet the searching power of her glance.

There was a long deep silence between us, and then I rose to go, and said to her as I did so, with my eyes fixed on the ground, "You pray for your enemies, pray for me. You pray for those who suffer in body and in mind--pray for me. You may never learn how right and how wrong you have been to-day; but you cannot be wrong in praying to G.o.d for me, for He has vexed me with all His storms, all His waves have gone over me, and I am well-nigh overwhelmed. My only hope is in the mercy of one who has never yet showed mercy either to you or to me."

I left her, and never again have I seen that angel face, that pale and blighted form, or heard the accents of her low and solemn voice; but if there is a saint who pleads for me on earth, or an angel who intercedes for me in Heaven, it is she whose life I have blighted, and whose heart I have broken.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"Some sadden flash of lightning strike me blind, Or cleave the centre of the earth, that I May living find a sepulchre to swallow Me and my shame together!"

THE GUARDIAN-Ma.s.sINGER.

"So the struck deer, the arrow at his heart, Lies down to die in some sequestered part; There stretched unseen, in coverts hid from day, Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away."

POPE.

I went home, and as I walked into the house I saw a letter in Henry's handwriting lying on the table. I took it, and having locked myself in my dressing-room, I opened it with trembling fingers and read as follows:--

"You do not choose to answer my letters, and I am sent away from your door like a troublesome beggar. My sister is in the deepest affliction, and I vainly inquire of you what accounts you have of her. You are playing a desperate game, if you imagine, by such heartless insults, to rid yourself of my love. They change its nature I own. I get weary of suffering alone, and life is not long enough to waste it in the burning strife and heart-consuming agitations in which we live. There is an end to all things; and if for twenty-four hours longer you trifle with me you will repent it to the day of your death. Have I not told you that the time must come when, if you have not learnt to love me, I shall make you hate me?"

My last letter to Henry had been intercepted; I saw it clearly and with despair, for I had written it with that intensity of supplication, that strength of appeal which must have reached his heart. I had built all my hopes upon it, and now the apparent scorn and unfeelingness of my conduct had brought him to that hard and reckless mood which I most dreaded. I felt that at any cost I must pacify him; and in the explanation I sent him there was more of self-defence than accusation, more entreaty than reproach; I addressed him rather as an injured friend than as a cruel enemy. It was late in the day before I had satisfied myself that the tone of my letter was calculated to soothe and pacify him, and then I dared not trust to chance for its delivery. With an unsteady hand I gave it to the servant, and desired him to deliver it into Mr. Lovell's own hand: and then the night came with its long hours of darkness, of restless sleep and of waking misery.

How was it, that when I woke on the next morning, and felt that the air was heavy and the atmosphere dark, I did not see in it a sign of what that day would bring forth? How was it that when I went into Edward's room, and gazed on every familiar object which seemed to bring his image before me, I did not feel more wretched than usual,--I did not long for his return, or dread it with more intensity than the day before; and when I pressed his picture to my lips, the tears that dimmed my eyes did not flow more bitterly than usual? The post came in; and there were letters for me,--letters from abroad: a black seal was upon one of them; and as I saw it, at once I felt that my uncle was dead. A gush of purer and more sacred sorrow than had ever yet sprung from my eyes or wrung my heart, overcame for a while the selfish fears and sufferings of my soul. But even my grief for him,--the kindest though the sternest of friends,--was not unmixed with dark and bitter a.s.sociations. It was a strange fear that seized me; I was weakened by suffering, and a superst.i.tious dread took possession of me. He was gone, and he had been deceived to the end; he had mourned over his child long and deeply, and had died in ignorance of my share in her death; but now, his disembodied spirit seemed to haunt and accuse me; and that first link which connects us with the unknown world, by the loss of one we love, was to me a dreadful as well as a solemn thought. "His last words," thus wrote my aunt, "his last words were of you; he raised himself with difficulty in his bed, and with a strong effort p.r.o.nounced your name, and then, after another struggle, added, 'Tell her to make Edward happy;'