Ellen Middleton—A Tale

His hand, which held mine, trembled, and he grew paler still than when I had entered the room. Terrified at his agitation, I lost the last opportunity of retracting, and murmured, "Yes, yes, dearest Edward, I will be your wife. – May God in Heaven bless you, and forgive me!" internally added; "and now that I have set your mind at rest," I said with a forced smile, "I will leave you."

"Leave me!" he rejoined, "now that you have made me happier than words can express! No; don't leave me now, my Ellen, my darling Ellen; whom I have loved since the days of childhood; whom I have watched with an earnest anxiety, that has made me, I will own it now," (he kissed my hand tenderly as he said this,) "often unreasonable – often unjust."

"No, no!" I exclaimed, "that you have never been."

"Yes I have, Ellen," he continued, with earnestness; "though I saw much in your voice, in your countenance, and in your manner, that made me feel I was not indifferent to you; still I was tormented with doubts and with jealousies, which were unworthy of you and of myself. What I now see was only pity and kindness for others, I construed into causes for suspicion: what I now feel was forbearance and delicacy of feeling on your part, I called deceit. I thought you deceitful; I called you deceitful: yet my own heart contradicted me, Ellen: for it would never have loved you, clung to you, as it has done, had you not been true, truer in your changeable moods and unguarded impulses, 'than those that have more cunning to be strange.' No, my dearest, my precious love! if falsehood or deceit had ever stained those dear lips of yours, if they had ever sullied the purity of your spotless nature, my love would have vanished, and my heart hardened against you. The very strength of my own affection pleaded for you, when appearances, or my own jealous feelings, accused you. Will you forgive me, dearest?"

"Forgive you!" I exclaimed, while a choking sob rose in my throat, "God knows – "

"I do not doubt you," he eagerly cried; "I do not ask you to explain or to reassure me. Have I not already acquitted you, and accused myself? I should be a wretch, my Ellen, if, after having received from you the greatest proof of lore which a woman could give, the shadow of a doubt could remain on my mind, of the purity and of the strength of your affection. Do you think, my own love, that I should have suffered you to give me that proof of unexampled devotion, had I not believed and felt that you were then suffering the agony of apprehension, which I had suffered a moment before? that your love was great as mine, and that is saying everything; for I feel now, Ellen, that to lose you would kill me."

I laid my head on his shoulder, and murmured a few words of tenderness in his ear. My heart was swelling, and my head was dizzy. Three times, while he had spoken, I had been on the point of breaking out into vehement denials, and passionate self-accusations; and each time the doctor's warning, confirmed by Edward's tremulous voice and eager hurried manner, so different from his usual composure, checked the words on my lips, and thrust back into my bosom the remorse and shame which overwhelmed me. Yet, in the midst of all this suffering and this shame, there was a joy which, like a meteor in a stormy sky, illuminated at moments the darkness with which it struggled; and, to drown the voice of conscience, I repeated to myself, that in spite of the deceit I had practised under the influence of what I deemed an irresistible fatality, there was truth, there was reality, in the ardent affection which I bore to him whose hand I held, and against whose breast my burning forehead was laid, as if I sought there a refuge from the world, from myself, and from my own upbraiding memory.

After a pause, but in a voice of perfect confidence and tenderness, Edward said to me, "Why would you not marry me three months ago, dearest? Did you think that my love was not great enough, or was yours not yet – ?"

"Oh, no," I interrupted; "such love as mine is not the growth of a few days; but ask me not to explain the waywardness, the strange inconsistency of a character, which you, wise and good as you are, can never perfectly understand."

There passed a slight cloud over Edward's countenance at that moment, but it was only for an instant; and in the gentlest manner he said, "Perhaps I may never quite understand you, Ellen, but I can always trust you. You have always been unlike everybody else, particularly unlike me, with my matter-of-fact stubbornness, and that is probably why you bewitched me against my will; and in spite of all my resolutions," (he added, with a smile,) "I suppose I never have quite understood you; but to admire blindly and ardently what we least understand, is one of the peculiarities of human nature; so you must e'en admit this excuse."

Again he kissed my hand with the fondest affection; and then at my earnest request he suffered me to leave him. Before I went, I told him that while we were staying at the Moores' I was anxious that our engagement should not be openly acknowledged, as in so small a party, and with people whom I knew so little intimately, it was pleasanter to me not to have to talk over the subject. He submitted to my wish, and I left him to go to my own room, and devise there some means of escaping from the difficulties in which I had entangled myself more fatally than ever.

It was not till in the silence of the night I sat alone and undisturbed, that I realised to myself the occurrences of the day, or saw in its full force the importance of what I had done. There I sat, Edward's affianced wife; and any moment after this fact was made public, my persecutor might seek him or Mr. Middleton, and tell them that but for me, Julia would be still alive; and when summoned to deny the foul charge, and confound the vile calumniator, should I say, "Yes, I struck the helpless child in my anger, but I meant not to kill her; I have buried the secret in my heart; day by day I have received her father's blessings, and her mother's kisses, in hypocritical silence. I have listened, Edward, to your words of love; I have promised to be your wife, with a lie in my mouth and deceit in my heart; but now I am found out, and I implore mercy at your hands; and that you will believe me when I say, that I did not mean to kill my cousin;" and may be, (I exclaimed, interrupting myself with a burst of anguish,) may be, he would not believe me! There is no medium in Edward's judgment when truth is concerned; implicit confidence on the one hand, unmitigated condemnation on the other. Oh! how dreadful it would be to meet his eyes, from which love would have vanished, and to feel that no protestations, no appeals, could reach his heart; hardened, as it would be in that hour, against the miserable deceiver who had usurped its tenderness and betrayed its trust.

After an hour of harassing indecision I determined to consult Henry, and sitting down at a table near the open window, I wrote to him the following letter: —

"The last time I saw you, my dear Henry, you gave me reason to hope that I might in future consider you as a friend. You bade me open my heart to you, and seek your aid when new difficulties should beset my path. The moment is come when I must do so, and if you will not, if you cannot, save me, nothing can. I once told you, that I never intended to marry Edward; and, believe me (you know I have ever spoken the truth to you, Henry, even at the risk of rousing your utmost anger); believe me, when I say that then, and even as late as twelve hours ago, such a resolution was the steady purpose of my soul. An involuntary, spontaneous acknowledgment of affection, which escaped me in a moment of imminent peril to him, incurred in rescuing me from a similar peril, was followed by an assumption on his part, that our marriage was to be the natural result of such a confession. My uncle considered it in the same light; and I found myself involved in an engagement, which, in cool blood, I could never have contracted. An attack of illness, resulting from the events of the morning, has since kept Edward in a state which would have made any extraordinary emotion dangerous in the extreme. Against my will, and at the same time, impressing this warning upon me, my aunt took me to him, and in terror for his health, with outward calmness, and inward shame and misgivings, I gave the promise, which must lead to my ruin, unless you can save me. I do not ask your aid, Henry, as a girl who wishes to marry her lover, and frets at the obstacles in her way. No; if at this moment I could cancel the events of this day, and place myself again in the position in which I stood yesterday, I would do so; but, as it is, on cither side, I see nothing now but disgrace and misery; and from these I implore you to rescue me. I do not know how far you have the power to do so. I cannot help thinking that your influence with that terrible woman must be great; hitherto I have doubted your willingness to exert it in my behalf; but, in the circumstances in which I now stand, I feel a strong confidence, that what you can do for me, you will do. I have obtained from Edward, that our engagement shall be kept a secret for a few days, which will give you time to act in my behalf, and to communicate with me on the subject. Obliged to conceal the torturing anxiety of my soul from those about me, miserable in the midst of what ought to be my happiness, I feel some comfort in speaking openly to you, and in looking to you for aid, for consolation, and for sympathy. You know my sufferings; you know my guilt and my innocence, my life's deceit, and my soul's truth. You will pity me; you will help me; and, in this hope, I make my appeal to you.

"E.M."

I debated some time with myself, as to the means of sending this letter unobserved and undetected. After a few minutes of anxious consideration, I recollected that Mrs. Hatton (the companion of my journey to Dorsetshire the year before) was staying with her sister, the wife of a surgeon, in London; and it occurred to me, that, by inclosing it to her, and requesting her to put it herself into Henry's hands, I should attain my object, and expose myself to no risk of discovery, as I could rely upon her discretion, and was certain that she would put only the most benevolent construction on my strange request. I accordingly wrote to her these few lines: —

"My dear Mrs. Hatton,

"As you are the kindest person in the world, I am sure you will not be angry with me for giving you a little trouble. Do me the kindness to take this letter yourself to Henry Lovell, and give it into his own hands; and do not mention to any one that I have entrusted you with this commission, as it would defeat my purpose if it was known that I had written to him, or heard from him, in reply. He will probably entrust you with his answer; and I cannot say how much obliged to you I shall be for undertaking this little commission.

"Yours, dear Mrs. Hatton, very truly,

"E.M."

As I sealed these two letters and directed the cover to Mrs. Hatton, I felt that for the first time I was stooping to positive artifice, and that, too, at the very moment when Edward's words were still ringing in my ears. Disgusted with myself, I threw down my pen; and, turning my flushed cheeks and aching head to the window, I tried to catch the night breeze, which was gently rustling among the leaves of the catalpas. When I went to sleep that night, it was to dream over and over again that I was reading Henry's answer to my letter; sometimes it was such as to drive me to despair; sometimes it exceeded my most sanguine hopes; each time that I awoke I glanced at the table on which mine was lying to convince myself that nothing real had hitherto justified these alternations of fear and hope – that made me feel in the morning as if I had gone through a life of agitation, instead of a few hours of restless sleep.

When my maid came in to call me I told her to put my letter into the post-bag, and sent her to inquire how Edward had passed the night. The answer which she brought me was, that the fever still continued strong, but that Mr. Middleton seemed calmer and more composed than the day before; "more comfortable like," was her expression.

I dressed myself hastily, and finding that my aunt was not yet awake, I went down into the garden, and walked to the spot where my fate had been sealed, for good or for evil I know not yet. As I looked upon the bank where Edward had placed me out of reach of so appalling a danger – as I stood again on that spot where I had seen his blood on the ground – as I knelt against the bench where we had sat together, and hastily murmured over the form of prayer, which I was accustomed to utter more as a sort of charm than as a direct address to God – I felt then that to part with him would be, after all, the worst misfortune that could befall me, and a kind of fierce resolution came over me to struggle to the last – to marry him in spite of all dangers; and even the devil whispered to me at that moment that if denounced and accused I might still deny the charge; accuse my accuser in her turn; charge her with having invented a calumnious lie, and with Henry's aid (which one look, one kind word, from me could command) ride off triumphantly, and defy them all. But as the thought passed through my mind, I shuddered at the rapid strides I was making in falsehood, and felt a horror of myself which I can hardly describe. There was I, kneeling in mock homage before God (that God who had saved both Edward and myself from a fate worse than death), while bad passions were raging in my soul, and thoughts of evil working in my mind.

The posture of prayer, the words which I had mechanically uttered, brought on one of those sudden and unaccountable revulsions of feeling which sometimes succeed the fiercest assaults of the tempter, as if our guardian angel had wrestled with the spirit of evil, and driven him away for the time. I remembered her to whom much was forgiven because she had loved much; and as I thought of that Saviour – that man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, at whose feet she knelt – ay, even while seven foul fiends were struggling in her heart, I longed to kneel before Him too in deep prostration of spirit, and lay all my sorrows, all my sins, all my difficulties, at His sacred feet, bathing them as she did with tears, and wiping them with the hairs of her head. Oh! if in that moment of emotion, in that hour of penitence, I could have gone to one of those, who, ministering at God's altar, and endowed with His commission, have authority from Him to pronounce words of pardon in His name; if the fatal barrier which habit and prejudice so often raise between the priest of God and the erring and overburthened souls committed to his charge, had not in my case existed; if from his lips I could have heard the injunction to forsake all and follow Jesus, and he had added, "Do this and be forgiven," it might have changed my fate. But, as it was, my penitence spent itself in unavailing tears, and my yearnings towards a better course ended in the same bewildering and oft-repeated question, which I could not, dared not, answer to myself, or for myself: "Where lies the path of duty through the intricate maze in which guilt, misfortune, and weakness have so hopelessly entangled me?" Once more I rose from my knees, without any fixed purpose, without any steady resolution; the creature of circumstance, and the sport of events.

As I was walking back to the house, I met Mr. Escourt, who joined me, much to my annoyance. After a trifling remark or two, he, apparently as if by accident, mentioned Henry Lovell; I answered coldly, but was conscious that I coloured; more, however, from the recollection of the part which he himself had acted towards him than from any other reason. He fixed his scrutinising eyes upon me, and evidently remarked that something had moved me.

"He is married, is not he, and to a very beautiful woman?"

"Yes, Mrs. Lovell is very pretty."

"I had heard of his marriage," he continued, "but had doubted the truth of the report, from seeing him so constantly about in the world unaccompanied by a wife."

He looked at me inquiringly; but as I said nothing in answer, he went on: —

"I met them walking one day; and by Jove, if he is of a jealous turn of mind, he does well to shut her up. A more beautiful creature I never set eyes upon. Is she clever?"

This was one of those trifling questions which it is particularly disagreeable to answer, especially when put by a person with whom one wishes to converse as little as possible. Alice was not clever according to the common acceptation of the word; and to explain to a hardened man of the world in what consisted the superiority of her understanding, seemed to me like throwing pearls before swine; but in this I was mistaken; for when I answered, "I cannot exactly say whether she is or not," he immediately replied,

"I think I can guess at your meaning. She has no doubt a mind as fair as her face, but none of the tinsel which we so often take for gold. Is it not so?"

I nodded assent and he continued —

"Is she a saint, that she thus forswears the pomps and vanities of this world?"

"She is, no doubt," I replied, "one of those to whom the world is in the habit of giving the appellation of saints, whatever sense impiety on the one hand, or cant on the other, may attach to that designation."

"In that case," returned Mr. Escourt, "I will e'en take her for my patron saint; hang up her picture in my room, if I can get it; and say, like Romeo, I'll turn, fair saint, idolater to thee!"

As he said these words, I gave this hateful man a look of mingled scorn and disgust. He returned it with a steady gaze of insulting pertinacity, and said —

"Kill me not with a look, fair lady; for though lovely is the light of a dark eye in woman, it is also wondrous strong, and can deal wounds which time may not heal."

"It speaks," I replied, "what time cannot change, nor flattery

avert."

"Indeed," he rejoined, "are its decrees so unchangeable?"

After a pause he continued —

"Mr. Lovell is an excellent husband, is not he? and amiable in all the relations of life? He is your uncle by marriage, I believe? It is touching to see his devotion to you in that character."

The calm insolence with which this was said stung me to the quick, and I answered with vehemence —

"He is at least neither a liar nor a hypocrite; and it would have been well for him had he never fallen in with either."

Not a muscle of Mr. Escourt's face moved; and, with a bland smile, he said —

"Your remark is just, fair depositary of your adopted uncle's secrets. Your descriptions of character are admirable, refined in their conception, and bold in their execution – very bold indeed. This last specimen shall remain engraved in my memory. It fully deserves it."

We had now reached the house; and I entered it with the consciousness, that, in addition to my other difficulties and dangers, I had made myself that morning a deadly enemy.

CHAPTER XVI

"Do you not fear, I will stand between you and danger."

SHAKESPEARE

The tedious hours of the two next days dragged on their weary length through the ordinary course of meals, walks, idle occupation, and unprofitable talk. Everything jarred upon my nerves and irritated my temper during this trying time of suspense. Edward's fever still continued, and though there was nothing positively alarming in it, yet it kept us in a state of anxiety. He was not allowed to get up, and I did not see him; but almost all my time was spent in watching for Mrs. Middleton, who was indefatigable in her attention to him, and who, from hour to hour, brought me messages from him, and accounts of the various fluctuations in his state. When I went into the drawing-room, Rosa's liveliness, Mr. Escourt's mute attitude of defiance, Mr. Manby's tediousness, and Mr. and Mrs. Moore's over-solicitude about everything, in turns worried and bored me.

At the end of the second day, as the time drew near when I might expect to receive Henry's answer, this feverish impatience increased to such a degree that I could hardly bear to be spoken to, or noticed in any way. Each time the house-bell rang I gave a start and a rapid glance towards the door; and each time a servant came in, my heart beat with intense excitement, which each time subsided into that moody heaviness which disappointment brings on. On the third evening since the one I had spent with Edward, I was allowed to go to him for a few minutes; he was much better, but forbidden to exert himself. I found him pale but very calm; he seemed touched with the alternation in my countenance, and implored me not to worry myself, assuring me that he now felt almost quite well, and the day after to-morrow he hoped we should all return to London, announce our marriage, and begin all the preparations for its celebration. This assurance drove me almost frantic, for if, during the next twenty-four hours, I did not hear from Henry, such a proceeding was like plunging blindfold down a precipice. The only resource I could think of was to persuade Mr. Middleton to go to London ourselves on the next day, and as it would be natural that after this week's absence I should visit Alice, thus to contrive to speak to Henry. When I went back into the drawing-room I was assailed by pressing entreaties to sing; and Mr. Middleton's "Come, Ellen, nonsense!" rendered all excuses or refusals on my part quite unavailing. I went to the pianoforte, envying the woman who said to the King of Prussia, when he had put her in prison for breach of engagement, "You can make me cry, but you can't make me sing;" for I was assuredly made to sing, while my heart was quivering with anxiety, and my mind haunted with fears, which would have made solitude and tears bliss in comparison to what I had to go through. I had just begun, at Rosa's request, a French romance, in fourteen stanzas, when the door opened and a servant walked in with a letter in his hand, which he put down on a little table where I had laid my work. To this letter my eyes and all my thoughts were directed; but the excess of impatience made me afraid of interrupting myself and asking for it. I sang on, and each time that I attempted to skip a verse and arrive at the conclusion, Mr. Manby, civilly and assiduously, reminded me of the omission. At last I arrived at the fourteenth stanza, and then positively refusing to sing any more, I gave up my place to Rosa. At that moment Mr. Middleton, who was walking up and down the room, went up to the table where my letter was laid, took it up, looked at the seal, then at the handwriting; after turning it on all sides for a minute or two, while I stood by straining every nerve to appear indifferent, he held it out to me and said, "Who on earth can this be from, Ellen?"

I took it and glanced at the direction – "From Mrs. Hatton," I said; and slipping it carelessly into the inside of my gown, I sat on and worked in silence, listening to the singing till I could find an opportunity of leaving the room unobserved. I flew rather than walked to mine, locked the door, and tearing open the letter read the enclosure it contained with that breathless eagerness which makes us feel as if our eyes were too slow in conveying the sense to our minds.

HENRY'S LETTER

"I will not attempt to describe to you the state of mind into which your letter threw me. It was no doubt carefully worded, and I give you credit for the pains which you evidently took not to wound my feelings. You have at last learnt to know the nature you have to deal with, and you have not, perhaps, bought that knowledge too dearly, by all you have suffered at my hands. Your power over me is a strange one: when I submit to it, I despise myself; when I resist it, I hate myself. I can never now be happy by you, or without you; and in the wreck of all that once was happiness, I cling to some unsubstantial shadows, which, when I grasp them, only mock my utter desolation. Such are those held out by the last lines of your letter. You never wrote truer or more artful words; true as the arrow which strikes to the heart – artful as the skill of the archer who aims it. You are right – I alone know you; I alone can read every turn of your countenance, every emotion of your soul. I know 'your eye's quick flash through its troubled shroud.' I see the dark shade that passes over your spirit, the clouds which sweep over your soul, rising in anger, and melting into tenderness. I alone know the secret of your wild beauty, of your fierce humility, of your transient joys, and of your lasting sorrows. This knowledge, this power is mine, Ellen, and shall be mine to the last day of our lives; and as long as your eyes shall meet mine, as long as your hand shall press mine, in the spirit which dictated those lines of your letter, I shall not be utterly miserable, or altogether without consolation. I shall have one share in your soul which not even Edward can rob me of. And now what shall I say? You foresee it, do you not? Your cheek is flushed with joy, and your breast heaves with triumph. Go, then, and proclaim your marriage. Marry Edward; and when the priest says at the altar, 'Who gives this woman to be married to this man?' think of him who, 'loving you not wisely, but too well,' at the price of his own jealous tortures, of his pride, and of his conscience, opened the way before you. At the price of my conscience I have done this; and now listen to me, Ellen, – I will tell you how. After I had received your letter, and reflected on its contents, till anxiety for you and for your happiness superseded every selfish thought which passion and jealousy awoke, I went to Bromley, where Mrs. Tracy took up her abode again a few months ago. I had hardly had any communication with her since my marriage; and our meeting, as you may well imagine, was anything but cordial. When I opened to her the subject of my visit, she gave way to a burst of anger, in which she vented the long-compressed violence, jealousy, and hatred of her soul. I shudder when I think how often you have been on the brink of what we most have dreaded; twice she had written to Mr. Middleton, and only kept back her letters at the very moment of putting them into the post. She has kept up, by means of her relations, and of her relations' friends, a constant system of espionnage upon me, and had been worked up into a state of violent irritation, by exaggerated reports of my neglect of Alice, and of my devotion to you. Far from listening to me, or giving me the least hope that she would yield to my entreaties, she pronounced the most vehement denunciations against you, and vowed that nothing now should prevent her from exposing you – the murderer of Julia, the hateful rival of Alice. Forgive me, dearest Ellen, that my hand can write such horrible words; but it is necessary that you should know what that terrible woman, as you rightly call her, is capable of saying and of doing, and also to account for the line of conduct which I took in consequence. I suddenly changed my tone, and said to her in the coldest and most determined manner, 'Very well; I leave you to write your letter – to ruin the whole existence of a person who I declare to you is as innocent as yourself of the crime which you impute to her, – to throw into agitation and despair my sister, whom you profess to love, – and to break your promise to me in the most shameful manner. But mark me! while you do this, I go home also, to break a promise not more sacred than yours, – to reveal to Alice, from beginning to end, the whole history of our engagement, and of our marriage; to tell her that you have unjustly accused Ellen Middleton of murder, and irretrievably ruined and destroyed her happiness; to tell her that I once loved Ellen Middleton, that I love her still, and that if such is to be her fate, mine shall be to leave England to-morrow, alone, and for ever.'