The Mother's Recompense, Volume 1

Seldom, if ever, had Mrs. Hamilton seen her husband so disturbed; for some little time she remained with him, and succeeded partly in soothing his natural displeasure. She then left him to compose her own troubled and disappointed feelings ere she desired the presence of her child. Meanwhile, as the happy Emmeline went to prepare her little packet for her dear old nurse, the thought suddenly arose that St. Eval had sent his remembrances and adieus to Ellen only, he had not mentioned Caroline; and unsophisticated as she was, this struck her as something very strange, and she was not long in connecting this circumstance with his sudden departure. Wild, sportive, and innocent as Emmeline was, she yet possessed a depth of reflection and clearness of perception, which those who only knew her casually might not have expected. She had marked with extreme pleasure that which she believed the mutual attachment of St. Eval and her sister; and with her ready fancy ever at work, had indulged very often in airy visions, in which she beheld Caroline Countess St. Eval, and mistress of that beautiful estate in Cornwall, which she had heard Mrs. Hamilton say had been presented by the Marquis of Malvern to his son on his twenty-first birthday. Emmeline had indulged these fancies, and noticed the conduct of Caroline and St. Eval till she really believed their union would take place. She had been so delighted at the receipt of Mary's letter, that she had no time to remember the young Earl's departure; but when she was alone, that truth suddenly flashed across her mind, and another strange incident, though at the time she had not remarked it, when she had said as her brother she would remember him, he had repeated, with startling emphasis, "as her friend." "What could it all mean?" she thought. "Caroline cannot have rejected him? No, that is quite impossible. My sister would surely not be such a practised coquette. I must seek her and have the mystery solved. Surely she will be sorry St. Eval leaves us so soon."

Emmeline hastened first to Ellen, begging her to pack up the little packet for Mrs. Langford, for she knew such an opportunity would be as acceptable to her cousin as to herself; for Ellen never forgot the humble kindness and prompt attention she had received from the widow during her long and tedious illness; and by little offerings, and what the good woman still more valued, by a few kind and playful lines, which ever accompanied them, she endeavoured to prove her sense of Widow Langford's conduct.

In five minutes more Emmeline was in her sister's room. Caroline was partly dressed as if for a morning drive, and her attendant leaving just as her sister entered. She looked pale and more fatigued than usual, from the gaiety of the preceding night. Happy she certainly did not look, and forgetting in that sight the indignation which the very supposition of coquetry in her sister had excited, Emmeline gently approached her, and kissing her cheek, said fondly—

"What is the matter, dear Caroline? You look ill, wearied, and even melancholy. Did you dance more than usual last night?"

"No," replied Caroline; "I believe not. I do not think I am more tired than usual. But what do you come for, Emmeline? Some reason must bring you here, for you are generally hard at work at this time of the day."

"My wits have been so disturbed by Mary's letter, that I have been unable to settle to anything," replied her sister, laughing; "and to add to their disturbance, I have just heard something so strange, that I could not resist coming to tell you."

"Of what nature?"

"St. Eval leaves London to-day for Castle Malvern, and next week quits England. Now is not that extraordinary?"

Caroline became suddenly flushed with crimson, which quickly receding, left her even paler than before.

"She is innocent," thought Emmeline. "She loves him. St. Eval must have behaved ill to her; and yet he certainly looked more sinned against than sinning."

"To-day: does he leave to-day?" Caroline said, at length, speaking, it appeared, with effort, and turning to avoid her sister's glance.

"In little more than an hour's time; but I am sorry I told you, dear Caroline, if the news has pained you."

"Pained me," repeated her sister, with returning haughtiness; "what can you mean, Emmeline? Lord St. Eval is nothing to me."

"Nothing!" repeated the astonished girl. "Caroline, you are incomprehensible. Why did you treat him with such marked attention if you cared nothing for him?"

"For a very simple reason; because it gave me pleasure to prove that it was in my power to do that for which other girls have tried in vain—compel the proud lordly St. Eval to bow to a woman's will." Pride had returned again. She felt the pleasure of triumphant power, and her eyes sparkled and her cheek again flushed, but with a different emotion to that she had felt before.

"Do you mean, then, that you have never loved him, and merely sported with his feelings, for your own amusement? Caroline, I will not believe it. You could not have acted with such cruelty; you do love him, but you reject my confidence. I do not ask you to confide in me, though I did hope I should have been your chosen friend; but I beseech, I implore you, Caroline, only to say that you are jesting. You do love him."

"You are mistaken, Emmeline, never more so in your life. I have refused his offered hand; if you wish my confidence on this subject, I give it you. As he is a favourite of yours, I do not doubt your preserving his secret inviolate. I might have been Countess of St. Eval, but my end was accomplished, and I dismissed my devoted cavalier."

"And can you, dare you jest on such a subject?" exclaimed Emmeline, indignantly. "Is it possible you can have wilfully acted thus? sported with the feelings of such a man as St. Eval, laughed at his pain, called forth his love to gratify your desire of power? Caroline, shame on you!"

"I am not in the habit of being schooled as to right and wrong by a younger sister, nor will I put up with it now, Emmeline. I never interfere with your conduct, and therefore you will, if you please, do the same with me. I am not responsible to you for my actions, nor shall I ever be," replied Caroline, with cold yet angry pride.

"But I will speak, when I know you have acted contrary to those principles mamma has ever endeavoured to instill into us both," replied Emmeline, still indignantly; "and you are and have been ever welcome to remonstrate with me. I am not so weak as I once was, fearful to speak my sentiments even when I knew them to be right. You have acted shamefully, cruelly, Caroline, and I will tell you what I think, angry as it may make you."

A haughty and contemptuous answer rose to Caroline's lips, but she was prevented giving it utterance by the entrance of Martyn, her mother's maid, with her lady's commands that Miss Hamilton should attend her in the boudoir.

"How provoking!" she exclaimed. "I expect Annie to call for me every minute, and mamma will perhaps detain me half an hour;" and most unwillingly she obeyed the summons.

"Annie," repeated Emmeline, when her sister had left the room, "Annie—this is her work; if my sister had not been thus intimate with her she never would have acted in this manner." And so disturbed was the gentle girl at this confirmation of her fears, that it was some little time before she could recover sufficient serenity to rejoin Ellen in arranging the widow's packet.

Mrs. Langford had the charge of Oakwood during the absence of the family, and Mrs. Hamilton, recollecting some affairs concerning the village schools she wished the widow to attend to, was writing her directions as Caroline entered, much to the latter's increased annoyance, as her mother's business with her would thus be retarded, and every minute drew the time of Annie's appointment nearer. She could scarcely conceal her impatience, and did venture to beg her mother to tell her what she required.

"Your attention, Caroline, for a time," she replied, so coldly, that her daughter felt instantly something was wrong, though what she guessed not, for she knew not that St. Eval had obtained the sanction of her parents for his addresses; and she little imagined he could have anything to do with the displeasure she saw so clearly marked.

"You will wait, if you please, till I have finished writing, as this cannot be delayed. Lord St. Eval leaves town in a very short time, and I send this by him."

"Lord St. Eval," thought Caroline, suddenly becoming alarmed, "surely mamma and papa know nothing of his offer."

A few minutes passed in silence, which was broken by the sound of carriage-wheels stopping at the door, and Robert almost instantly after entered with Miss Grahame's love, saying she could not wait a minute, and hoped Miss Hamilton was ready.

"Miss Grahame!" repeated Mrs. Hamilton, in an accent of surprise, before Caroline had time to make any answer; "Caroline, why have you not mentioned this engagement? You do not generally make appointments without at least consulting me, if you no longer think it necessary to request my permission. Where are you going with Annie?"

"To Oxford Street, I believe," she answered carelessly, to conceal her rising indignation at this interference of her mother.

"If you require anything there, you can go with me by and bye. Robert, give my compliments to Miss Grahame, and say from me, Miss Hamilton is particularly engaged with me at present, and therefore cannot keep her engagement to-day. Return here as soon as you have delivered my message."

"Mother!" burst from Caroline's lips, in an accent of uncontrollable anger, as soon as the servant had left the room; but with a strong effort she checked herself, and hastily walked to the window.

An expression of extreme pain passed across her mother's features as she looked towards her, but she took no notice till Robert had returned, and had been dismissed with her note to be given to Emmeline to transmit with hers.

"Caroline," she then said, with dignity, yet perhaps less coldly than before, "if you will give me your attention for a short time, you will learn the cause of my displeasure, which is perhaps at present incomprehensible, unless, indeed, your own conscience has already reproached you; but before I commence on any other subject, I must request that you will make no more appointments with Miss Grahame without my permission. This is not the first time you have done so; I have not noticed it previously, because I thought your own good sense would have told you that you were acting wrong, and contrary to those principles of candour I believed you to possess."

"You were always prejudiced against Annie," answered Caroline, with rising anger, for she had quite determined not to sit silent while her mother spoke, cost what it might.

"I am not speaking of Annie, Caroline, but to you. The change in your conduct since you have become thus intimate with her, might indeed justify my prejudice, but on that I am not now dwelling. I do not consider Miss Malison a fit chaperon for my daughter, and therefore I desire you will not again join her in her drives."

"Every other girl of my station has the privilege of at least choosing her own companions without animadversion," replied Caroline, indignantly, "and in the simple thing of making appointments without interference it is hard that I alone am to be an exception."

"If you look around the circle in which I visit intimately, Caroline, you will find that did you act according to your own wishes, you would stand more alone than were you to regard mine. I have done wrong in ever allowing you to be as intimate with Miss Grahame as you are. You looked surprised and angry when I mentioned the change that had taken place in your conduct."

"I had sufficient reason for surprise," replied Caroline, impatiently, "I was not aware that my character was so weak, as to turn and change with every new acquaintance."

"Are you then the same girl you were at Oakwood?" demanded Mrs. Hamilton, gravely yet sadly.

A sudden pang of conscience smote the heart of the mistaken girl at these words, a sob rose choking in her throat, and she longed to have given vent to the tears which pride, anger, and remorse were summoning, but she would not, and answered according to those evil whisperings, which before she had only indulged in secret.

"If I am changed," she answered passionately, "it is because neither you nor papa are the same. At Oakwood I was free, I had full liberty to act, speak, think as I pleased, while here a chain is thrown around my simplest action; my very words are turned into weapons against me; my friendship disapproved of, and in that at least surely I may have liberty to choose for myself."

"You have," replied Mrs. Hamilton mildly. "I complain not, Caroline, of the pain you have inflicted upon me, in so completely withdrawing your confidence and friendship, to bestow them upon a young girl. I control not your affection, but it is my duty, and I will obey it, to warn you when I see your favourite companion likely to lead you wrong. Had your every thought and feeling been open to my inspection as at Oakwood, would you have trifled as you have with the most sacred feelings of a fellow-creature? would you have called forth love by every winning art, by marked preference to reject it, when acknowledged, with scorn, with triumph ill concealed? would you have sported thus with a heart whose affections would do honour to the favoured one on whom they were bestowed? would you have cast aside in this manner all that integrity and honour I hoped and believed were your own? Caroline, you have disappointed and deceived your parents; you have blighted their fondest hopes, and destroyed, sinfully destroyed, the peace of a noble, virtuous, excellent young man, who loved you with all the deep fervour of an enthusiastic soul. To have beheld him your husband would have fulfilled every wish, every hope entertained by your father and myself. I would have intrusted your happiness to his care without one doubt arising within me; and you have spurned his offer, rejected him without reason, without regret, without sympathy for his wounded and disappointed feelings, without giving him one hope that in time his affection might be returned. Caroline, why have you thus decidedly rejected him? what is there in the young man you see to bid you tremble for your future happiness?"

Caroline answered not; she had leaned her arms on the cushion of the couch, and buried her face upon them, while her mother spoke, and Mrs. Hamilton in vain waited for her reply.

"Caroline," she continued, in a tone of such appealing affection, it seemed strange that it touched not the heart of her child, "Caroline, I will not intrude on your confidence, but one question I must ask, and I implore you to answer me truly—do you love another?"

Still Caroline spoke not, moved not. Her mother continued, "If you do, why should you hide it from me, your own mother, Caroline? You believe my conduct changed towards you, but you have condemned me without proof. You have abandoned my sympathy—shrunk from my love. Try me now, my sweet child; if you love another, confess it, and we will do what we can to make that love happy; if it be returned, why should you conceal it? and if it be not, Caroline, my child, will you refuse even the poor comfort your mother can bestow?"

She spoke in vain; but could she have read her daughter's heart at that moment, maternal affection might not have been so deeply pained as it was by this strange silence. Regret, deep, though unavailing, had been Caroline's portion, from the moment she had reflected soberly on her rejection of St. Eval. She recalled his every word, his looks of respectful yet ardent admiration, and she wept at that infatuation which had bade her act as she had done; and then his look of controlled contempt stung her to the quick. He meant not, perhaps, that his glance should have so clearly denoted that she had sunk in his estimation, it did not at the moment, but it did when in solitude she recalled it, and she felt that she deserved it. In vain in those moments did she struggle to call up the vision of Lord Alphingham, his words of love, his looks of even more fervid passion, his image would not rise to banish that of St. Eval; and if Caroline had not still been blinded by the influence and arguments of Annie, had she given her own good sense one half-hour's uncontrolled dominion, she would have discovered, that if love had secretly and unsuspiciously entered her heart, it was not for Lord Alphingham. Had she really loved him, she could not have resisted the fond appeal of her mother; but to express in words all the confused and indefinable emotions then filling her heart was impossible. She continued for several minutes silent, and Mrs. Hamilton felt too deeply pained and disappointed to speak again. Her daughter had spoken to her that morning as she had seldom done even in her childhood. Then her mother could look forward to years of reason and maturity for the improvement of those errors; now others had arisen, and if her control were once so entirely thrown aside, could she ever regain sufficient influence to lead her right. Seldom had Caroline's conduct given her so much pain as in the disclosures and events of that morning.

"Is it absolutely necessary," Caroline at length said, summoning, as her aunt Eleanor had often done, pride to drown the whisperings of conscience, "that I must love another, because I rejected Lord St. Eval? In such an important step as marriage, I should imagine my own inclinations were the first to be consulted. It would be strange indeed, if, after all I have heard you say on the evil of forcing young women to marry, that you should compel your own child to accept the first offer she received."

"You do me injustice, Caroline," replied her mother, controlling with an effort natural displeasure; "St. Eval would not accept an unwilling bride, nor after what has passed would your father and myself deem you worthy to become his wife."

"Then long may this paragon of excellence remain away," replied Caroline, with indignant haughtiness kindling in every feature. "I have no wish ever to associate again with one by whose side I am deemed so unworthy, even by my parents."

"Those who love you best, Caroline, are ever the first to behold and deplore your faults. Have you acted honourably? have you done worthily in exciting love merely to give pain, to amuse and gratify your own love of power?"

"I have done no more than other girls do with impunity, without even notice; and surely that which is so generally practised cannot demand such severe censure as you bestow on it."

"And therefore you would make custom an excuse for sin, Caroline. Would you have spoken thus a few months since? would you have questioned the justice of your mother's sentences? and yet you say you are not changed. Is it any excuse for a wrong action, because others do it? Had you been differently instructed it might be, but not when from your earliest years I have endeavoured to reason with, and to convince you of the sin of coquetry, to which from a child you have been inclined. You have acted more sinfully than many whose coquetry has been more general. You devoted yourself to one alone, encouraged, flattered, because you saw he was already attracted, instead of adhering to that distant behaviour which would have at once told him you could feel no more for him than as a friend. You would have prevented future suffering, by banishing from the first all secret hopes; but no, you wished to prove you could accomplish more than others, by captivating one so reserved and superior as St. Eval. Do not interrupt me by a denial, Caroline, for you dare not deliberately say such was not your motive. That noble integrity which I have so long believed your own, you have exiled from your heart. Your entire conduct towards St. Eval has been one continued falsehood, and are you then worthy to be united to one who is truth, honour, nobleness itself? Had you loved another, your rejection of this young man might have been excused, but not your behaviour towards him; for that not one good reason can be brought forward in excuse. I am speaking severely, Caroline, and perhaps my every word may alienate your confidence and affection still farther from me; but my duty shall be done, painful as it may be both to yourself and me. I cannot speak tamely on a subject in which the future character and welfare of my child are concerned. I can no longer trust in your integrity. Spite of your change in manner and in feeling towards me, I still confided in your unsullied honour; that I can no longer do, you have forfeited my confidence, Caroline, and not until I see a total change of conduct can you ever hope to regain it. That perhaps will not grieve you, as it would once have done; but unless you redeem your character," she continued "the serious displeasure of both your father and myself will be yours, and we shall, in all probability, find some means of withdrawing you from the society which has been so injurious to the purity of your character. Whatever others may do, it is your duty to act according to the principles of your parents, and not to those of others; and therefore, for the future, I desire you will abide by my criterion of right and wrong, and not by the misleading laws of custom. When you have conquered the irritation and anger which my words have occasioned, you may perhaps agree to the justice of what I have said, till then I do not expect it; but whether your reason approves of it or not, I desire your implicit obedience. If you have anything you desire to do, you may leave me, Caroline, I do not wish to detain you any longer."

In silence, too sullen to give any hope of a repentant feeling or judgment, convinced, Caroline had listened to her mother's words. They were indeed unusually severe; but her manner from the beginning of that interview could not have lessened the displeasure which she already felt. We have known Mrs. Hamilton from the commencement of her career, when as a girl not older than Caroline herself, she mingled with the world, and we cannot fail to have perceived her detestation of the fashionable sin of coquetry. The remembrance of Eleanor and all the evils she entailed upon herself by the indulgence of that sinful fault, were still vividly acute, and cost what it might, both to herself and, who was dearer still, her child, she would do her duty, and endeavour to turn her from the evil path. She saw that Caroline was in no mood for gentle words and tenderness to have any effect, and therefore, though at variance as it was to her nature, she spoke with some severity and her usual unwavering decision. She could read no promise of amendment or contrition in those haughty and sullen features, but she urged no more, for it might only exasperate and lead her farther from conviction.

For some few minutes Caroline remained in that same posture. Evil passions of varied nature suddenly appeared to gain ascendancy in that innately noble heart, and prevented all expressions that might have soothed her mother's solicitude. Hastily rising, without a word, she abruptly left the room, and retired to her own, where she gave vent to a brief but passionate flood of tears, but they cooled not the fever of her brain; her haughty spirit revolted from her mother's just severity.

"To be scolded, threatened, desired to obey, like a child, an infant; what girl of my age would bear it tamely? Well might Annie say I was a slave, not permitted to act or even think according to my own discretion; well might she say no other mother behaved to her daughters as mine; to be kept in complete thraldom; to be threatened, if I do not behave better, to be removed from the scenes I so much love, buried again at home I suppose; is it a wonder I am changed? Is it strange that I should no longer feel for mamma as formerly? and even Emmeline must condemn me, call me to account for my actions, and my intimacy with Annie is made a subject of reproach; but if I do not see her as often as before, I can write, thank heaven, and at least her sympathy and affection will be mine."

Such was the tenor of her secret thoughts, and she followed them up by writing to her friend a lengthened and heightened description of all that had occurred that morning, dwelling long and indignantly on what she termed the cruel and unjust severity of her mother, and imploring, as such confidential letters generally did, Annie's secrecy and sympathy. The epistle was despatched, and quickly answered, in a style which, as might be imagined, increased all Caroline's feelings of indignation towards her parents, and bade her rely still more confidingly on her false friend, who, she taught herself to believe, was almost the only person who really cared for her best interests.