The Mother's Recompense, Volume 1

"I cannot sleep till I have, mamma, indeed I cannot. I ought to have left it for him before I quitted Airslie, but I could then think of nothing but the ardent longing to see you, to hear your voice again; let me write now."

And believing her words were true, that in all probability she would not sleep while that letter was on her mind, Mrs. Hamilton made no further objection, and rose to place the inkstand and portfolio on a table near her. Caroline remained still kneeling, and by her attitude Mrs. Hamilton fancied was engaged in secret prayer; her tears were checked as she rose, and it was with firmness she walked to the table and drew a seat beside it. Anxiously for a few minutes did her mother watch her as she wrote. At first her hand appeared to tremble, but a successful effort conquered that emotion, and the increasing flush upon her cheek alone proclaimed the agitation of her mind. So deeply was she engrossed in her painful task, that she did not observe her mother had left the room, and remained absent for a few minutes, returning, however, before she had finished her letter. Without looking up, she placed the paper in Mrs. Hamilton's hands, and, leaning her arms on the table, buried her face in her hands.

Mrs. Hamilton folded the letter in perfect silence; but then taking the hand of her daughter from her eyes, she pressed it in hers, and said, in a voice of deep emotion—

"I am satisfied, my child. Let this letter be directed and sealed with your own hand, and the name of Lord Alphingham shall never again pass my lips. It is enough that duty and affection have triumphed over his intentions. I know not all the evil that might have been yours had he succeeded, but you are restored to me, and may God forgive him as freely as I do."

With a steady hand Caroline directed and placed her own seal to the letter; and then, exhausted by the agitation of that evening, she leaned her throbbing head against her mother.

"Caroline, my child!" exclaimed a deep and saddened voice beside her. She started, and looking up, beheld her father, who had been gazing at her an unobserved spectator for the last half hour.

"Forgive me, dearest father. Oh, let me not sleep to-night without your forgiveness. Mamma will not cast me from her heart; she has blessed me, and I have injured her even more than you. Papa, dear papa, oh, speak to me but one word of fondness!" she entreated, as her father drew her to his bosom, and as she ceased, mingled his blessing and forgiveness in that warm embrace.

It was late, so late, that the early morn was beginning to gild the horizon before Mrs. Hamilton had seen her agitated child placed in bed, and persuaded her to compose her spirits and invite sleep. Fondly her mother watched beside her till the grey dawn had penetrated within the room; and then perceiving that calm, sleep had come at length, she retired to her own apartment. There sinking on her knees, her overcharged heart found blessed relief in pouring forth to Heaven its fervent thanksgiving for that great mercy vouchsafed her in the restoration of her child. The anguish of the past, the suffering of the present were alike forgotten, in the thought that Caroline's affection and confidence were again restored to her. The veil had at length been removed from her eyes. Annie's character was revealed before her and the sorrowful and repentant girl had once more sought for sympathy in the bosom of her mother. She now felt that mother was her truest friend, and a glow of sweet and soothing pleasure stole over Mrs. Hamilton's mind at this conviction. Caroline had said it was the recollection of her mother's care, devotion, and love that had stayed her, ere it was too late. She could not banish from her heart the duty therein so long and carefully implanted; the principles of religion, of virtue, shaken as they had been in that painful moment of indecision, had preserved her from misery. Often, very often, Mrs. Hamilton had felt disheartened, almost despairing in her task, during both the childhood and youth of Caroline, but now her recompense was apparent. Had she not persevered, had she been indolent or careless in the discharge of her duty, had she left the care of that child to strangers, who would never have thus studied or guided so difficult a disposition, there would have been naught to bid her pause. She would have done as others too often do, and fearful indeed would have been her chastisement. Now, what were all Mrs. Hamilton's self-conquering struggles, all the pain she had suffered, compared with the exquisite happiness of feeling that her care had preserved her child, and she knew not as yet from what depth of wretchedness? Fervent was the gratitude for that grace which had permitted her to guide her child aright; and as she recalled the heartfelt approbation of her conduct, which her beloved husband had gratefully expressed, happiness filled her heart, and many, very many might have envied that noble woman her feelings, as she laid her head on her pillow that night, when sleep only hushed the still lingering thanksgiving on her lips.

It may be well here briefly to relate all that had passed at Airslie, from the moment we left Caroline imploring pardon and guidance from Him, to whom she had never appealed in vain, to that when she so suddenly appeared in company with the Duchess in Berkeley Square. To accede to Lord Alphingham's wishes, she felt was no longer possible, but how to avoid him was a matter of still greater difficulty. To accompany the Duchess and thus elude him, she could not, for she felt neither her strength nor spirits could sustain her through the whole of that festive night. Each minute as it passed increased the fever of her brain, at length in despair she determined on the conduct with which we are already acquainted. As soon as the last carriage had rolled from the door she summoned Allison, the Duchess's own maid, and in accents that painfully betrayed the agitation within, implored her to procure her a carriage and fleet horses, as circumstances had occurred which obliged her instantly to return to town. She besought her neither to question her nor to speak of her sudden resolution to any one, as the note she would leave behind for her Grace would fully explain all. Allison remained for some few minutes gazing on the agitated girl, in motionless astonishment.

"Return to London at such a time of night, and alone," she rather allowed to drop from her lips than said, after a long pause.

"Oh, would to heaven some one would go with me! but I know none whom I can ask," Caroline replied, in a tone of anguish, and seizing Allison's hand, again and again implored her assistance. Briefly she promised to do all she could for her, and left her, not to do her bidding by seeking some conveyance, but to report the strange request and still more alarming manner of Caroline to her Grace; who, for some secret reason, which her daughters and friends in vain endeavoured to solve, had at the very last moment declared her intention of not accompanying them, and wishing them, with the utmost kindness, a pleasant evening, commissioned Lady Lucy and her eldest brother, who had lately joined them, to supply her place in their own party, and tender her excuses to the noble master of the fête. The simple truth was, that the penetration of the Duchess had observed and detected from the very first the manoeuvres of Lord Alphingham and Caroline.

The former, as may have already been discovered, was one of those against whom her prejudice was very strong. With her own free will, Lord Alphingham would never have visited at her house, although she was never heard to breathe one word to his disadvantage; especially invited he never was, and in heart she was much annoyed at her husband's marked preference and encouragement of his society. She had observed her friend Mrs. Hamilton's coldness towards him; and as much as she admired the conduct of the mother, so she sometimes found herself mistrusting the studied air and guarded reserve with which Caroline ever treated the Viscount. The sudden change in Mr. Hamilton's manner had also struck her, and therefore, when Alphingham joined her coterie, not once did she ever fail in the jealous watchfulness with which she regarded him and Caroline. Rendered suspicious by all that she had observed, Caroline's determination not to join the party that evening had increased her uneasiness to a degree that almost amounted to alarm, and that very instant her resolution was fixed to remain at Airslie. She desired Allison not to mention her intention of remaining to Miss Hamilton, but to inform her minutely of all that passed during the evening; and her astonishment was almost as great as her domestic's had been when Caroline's desire was related to her.

It wanted but one half hour to the time appointed by the Viscount, and Caroline still sat in a state of anxiety and suspense, which tortured her almost to frenzy. Unable to bear it longer, her hand was on the bell once more to summon Allison, when the lock of the door turned, and starting forwards, the words, "Is all ready—have you succeeded?" were arrested on her lips by the appearance of the Duchess herself, who, closing the door, stood gazing on the terrified girl with a glance of severity and command few could have met unmoved. Scarcely conscious of what she did, Caroline started back, and, sinking on a stool at the farthest end of the room, covered her face with her hands.

"May I know with what intent Miss Hamilton is about to withdraw herself from my roof and my protection?" she demanded, in those brief yet searching tones she ever used when displeased. "What reason she can allege for this unceremonious departure from a house where she has ever been regarded as one of its most favoured inmates? Your mother trusted you to my care, and on your duty to her I demand an answer." She continued, after a brief pause, in which Caroline neither moved nor spoke, "Where would you go at this unseasonable hour?"

"Home to my mother," murmured the unhappy girl, in a voice almost inarticulate.

"Home!" repeated her Grace, in a bitterly satirical tone. "Strange, that you should thus suddenly desire to return. Were you not the child of those to whom equivocation is unknown, I might well doubt that tale;—home, and wherefore?"

"To save myself from the effects of my own sinful folly—my own infatuated madness," replied Caroline, summoning with a strong effort all the energy of her character, and with a vehemence that flushed her pallid cheek with crimson. "In this at least I am sincere, though in all else I deserve no longer to be regarded as the child of such noble-minded beings as are my parents. Spurn me from you as you will, this is no moment for equivocation and delay. I have deceived your Grace. I was about to bring down shame upon your house, to cause your indignant displeasure, my parents anguish, myself but endless remorseful misery. To save all this, I would return home to implore the forgiveness, the protection of my parents; they alone can guard me from myself. Oh, if you ever loved my mother," she continued, starting up with agony, as the hour of nine chimed on her ear, "send some one with me, and let me go home. Half an hour more," and her voice grew almost inarticulate with suppressed emotion, "and it may be too late. Mother, mother, if I could but see you once again!"

"Before, as the wife or the victim of the Right Honourable Lord Alphingham, you fly from her for ever, and thus reward her cares, her love, her prayers, wretched and deceiving girl," sternly and slowly the Duchess said, as she rapidly yet with her usual majesty paced the room, and laid her hand heavily on Caroline's shoulder, as she sat bowed down with shame before her. "Deny it not; it was thus you would bring down shame on my home; thus create agony for your devoted parents; thus prove your gratitude, love, obedience, by wrenching every tie asunder. Oh, shame, shame! If this be the fruit of such tender cares, such careful training, oh, where shall we seek for honour and integrity—in what heart find virtue? And why not consummate your sin? why pause ere your noble and virtuous resolution was put in force? why hesitate in the accomplishment of your designs? Why not fly with your honourable lover, and thus wring the fond hearts of your parents at once to the utmost? Why retract now, when it will be only to delude again? Miserable and deluded girl, what new whim has caused this sudden change? Wherefore wait till it be too late to repent—to persuade us that you are an unwilling abettor and assistant in this man's schemes? Go, fly with him; it were better to reconcile your indulgent mother to an eternal separation, than that she should take you once more to her heart, and be again deceived. Go, your secret is safe. How dare you speak of inflicting misery on your parents? Must not hypocrisy lurk in every word, when wilfully, recklessly, you have already abused their confidence and insulted their love? much more you cannot do." She paused, as if in expectation of a reply, but none came. Caroline's breaking heart had lost that proud spirit which, a few days before, would have called a haughty answer from her lips. She writhed beneath those stern unpitying accents, which perhaps in such a moment of remorseful agony might have been spared, but she replied not; and, after a brief silence, the Duchess again spoke.

"Caroline, answer me. What has caused this sudden change in your intentions? What has chanced between you and Lord Alphingham to demand this sudden longing for home? What impulse bids you thus elude him?"

"The memory of my mother's love," and Caroline raised her head, and pushing back her disordered hair, gazed upon the face of the Duchess with an expression of suffering few could have looked upon unmoved. "You are right, I have deceived my too indulgent parents, I have abused their confidence, insulted their love; but I cannot, oh, I cannot still those principles within me which they have implanted. In my hours of maddening folly I remembered them not; I believed they had gone from me for ever, and I should be happy. They have returned to torture me, to tell me that as the wife of Lord Alphingham, without the blessing of my parents, I shall be wretched. I have brought down endless misery on myself—that matters not; but oh, I will not cause them further suffering. I will no longer wring the heart of my gentle mother, who has so often prayed for her erring child. Too late, perhaps, I have determined, but the wife of Lord Alphingham I will never be; but his character is still dear to me, and I entreat your Grace not to withdraw your favour from him. He alone is not to blame, I also am culpable, for I acknowledge the encouragement I have given him. My character for integrity is gone, but his is still unstained."

"Fear not for him, my favour he has never had; but my honour is too dear to me for such an affair as this to pass my lips. Let him continue the courted, the spoiled, the flattered child of fashion he has ever been. I regard him not. Let him run his course rejoicing, it matters not to me." She rang the bell as she spoke, and slowly and silently paced the room till Allison obeyed the summons. "Desire James to put four swift horses to the chariot. Important business calls me instantly to London; bid him use dispatch, every moment is precious."

Allison departed, and the Duchess continued pacing the apartment till she returned, announcing the carriage as ready. A very few minutes sufficed for their personal preparations, for the Duchess to give peremptory orders to her trusty Allison to keep her departure a profound secret, as she should return before her guests were stirring the next morning, and herself account for Miss Hamilton's sudden return home. Few words were sufficient for Allison, who was in all respects well fitted for the situation she held near a person of the Duchess of Rothbury's character; and the carriage rolled rapidly from Airslie.

Not another word passed between the travelling companions. In feverish agitation on the part of Caroline, in cold, unbending sternness on that of the Duchess, their journey passed. To the imagination of the former, the roll of the carriage-wheels was the sound of pursuing horses; in every turn of the road her fevered fancy beheld the figure of Lord Alphingham: at one time glaring on her in reproachful bitterness, at another, in mockery, derision, satire; and when she closed her eyes, those visions still tormented, nor did they depart till she felt her mother's arm around her, her gentle voice pronounce her name.

True to her determination, the Duchess left London as early as six the following day, and, as usual, was the first within the breakfast-room, and little could her friends imagine that since they had left her the preceding evening she had made a journey to London and back. Caroline's indisposition, which had been evident for several days, although she had not complained till the day before, easily accounted for her return home, although the exact time of her doing so was known to none save her Grace herself; and even if surprise had been created, it would speedily have passed away in the whirl of amusements which surrounded them. But the courted, the admired, the fascinating Viscount no longer joined the festive group. His friend Sir Walter Courtenay accounted for and excused his absence, by stating that Lord Alphingham had received a disagreeable letter from an agent of his in Scotland, which demanded his instant presence; that he intended passing through London, thence proceed to the North, where, in all probability, he should await the hunting season, being engaged to join a large circle of noble friends.

It would be useless to linger on the impotent fury of Lord Alphingham when he discovered his well-conceived plans were utterly frustrated, and that his intended victim had eluded him, under the stern guardianship of the Duchess of Rothbury. In the first bitter moment of disappointment, he refused to accuse Caroline of any share in it, but believed their plans had been, by some unforeseen circumstance, discovered, and she had been forced to return home. If such were the case, he vowed to withdraw her from such galling slavery; he swore by some means to make her his own. But when her letter reached him, when he had perused its contents, and marked that not one word gave evidence of agitation of mind or unsteadiness of purpose, the current of his feelings changed. He cursed his own mad folly for thus seeking one, in whom from the first he might have seen there was no spirit, no quality suited to be his partner in a fashionable world; he vowed to think no more of a weak, capricious fool, so he now termed the girl he had fancied that he loved. As may readily be imagined, he felt his self love very deeply wounded by the complete frustration of his intentions, and being incapable of appreciating the better principles which had fortunately actuated the resolve of Caroline, a spirit of revenge entered his heart. He crushed the letter in his hand, and paced the room in fury, and would have torn it to atoms, when the thought struck him, that by enclosing the letter to the confidant and adviser of his plans regarding Caroline, he might save himself the mortification of relating his defeat, and revenge himself effectually by exposing her to ridicule and contempt.

He wrote therefore a few concise lines, regretting, in a slightly satirical style, that Miss Grahame should have been so deceived with regard to the views and feelings of her friend Miss Hamilton, and referring her to the enclosed letter for all further explanation.

Annie received this packet at the time she was in daily expectation of the triumph of her schemes, the gratification of her dislike for the being whose gentle admonitions she so much resented, which had been dictated by Mrs. Hamilton's wish to increase the happiness of her parents and herself. Lord Alphingham had regularly informed her of all his intentions, and though Caroline had for some time entirely ceased to write, yet she suspected nothing like defeat. Already she secretly indulged in triumph, already anticipated the moment when every malignant wish would be fulfilled, and she should see the proud, cold, disdainful Mrs. Hamilton bowed down beneath the conduct of her child, humbled to the dust by the reflections which would be cast upon her when the elopement of Caroline should be made public; at that very time the letter of Lord Alphingham arrived, and told her of defeat, complete, irremediable. Scorn, bitter scorn curled her lip, as she glanced over Caroline's epistle, thus dishonourably transmitted for her perusal. Severe disappointment was for the time her portion, and yet, amid all these violent emotions, attendant on one of her disposition, there was one of a very different nature mingling with them, one that, while she resolved if she could not mortify Mrs. Hamilton as she had intended, she would yet do so by insinuations against Caroline's character, whenever she had an opportunity; would bid her rejoice, strangely rejoice, that she was not the wife of Lord Alphingham, that he was still free. While she looked forward to that letter announcing the union of the Viscount and Caroline, as placing the final seal on her triumphant schemes, we may well doubt if even that enjoyment, the exultations in the sufferings of another, would have stilled the anguish of her own heart, and permitted her to triumph as she intended to have done, when the man she loved was the husband of another. It was even so, though rendered by prejudice almost insensible to anything but her hatred of Mrs. Hamilton.

Annie had not associated so intimately with Lord Alphingham without feeling the effect of his many fascinations; and, therefore, though both provoked and disappointed at this unlooked-for failure of her schemes, she was better enabled to overcome them. Resolving to leave her designs against the peace of Caroline and her mother henceforth to chance, all her energies were now put in action for the attainment of one grand object, to so work upon the disappointed Viscount as herself to take the place in his favour which Caroline had occupied. Her reply to his letter, which he had earnestly requested might enclose Caroline's, and be forwarded to him in London, was guarded, but artfully tending to inflame his indignation against Caroline; suppressing her own opinion on the subject, and exciting admiration of herself, and perhaps gratitude for her untiring sympathy in his welfare, which she ably contrived should breathe despondingly throughout. As that important affair, she added, was thus unhappily over, their correspondence she felt ought to cease, and she begged Lord Alphingham would write to her no more. She had braved remark when the happiness of two in whom she was so deeply interested was at stake; but as in that she had been disappointed, pain as it was for her to be the one to check a correspondence which could not fail to give her pleasure, being with one so enlightened, and in every way so superior as Lord Alphingham, she insisted that no more letters should pass between them. She gained her point; the Viscount wondered how he could ever be so blind as to prefer Caroline to her, and her words added weight to his resolution, to annoy the former by devoted attentions to Miss Grahame, and, if it suited his interests, make the latter his wife.

The interviews Lord Alphingham contrived to have with Miss Grahame, before he retired to Scotland, which he did not do for a fortnight after his rejection, strengthened the intentions of both. The Viscount found new charms in the reserve and agitation which now marked Annie's behaviour, in the faint voice and well-concealed intelligence, that however she might sympathise in his vexation, for herself she could not regret his freedom. All this, though they were scarcely ever alone, formed a perfect understanding between them, and quickly banished the image of Caroline from the vain and fickle-minded Alphingham.

Wishing to keep up her pretended friendship for Caroline, that she might the more effectually wound her, and not believing the sentiments of the misguided girl were changed towards her also, Annie called at Berkeley Square a very few days after Caroline's return, and she had become acquainted with all that had passed. No one was visible in the drawing-room; the young men, she knew, had both arrived from college, but the house was destitute of that air of cheerfulness and glee which generally attended their return. Some little time she waited with impatient displeasure, which did not lessen when, on hearing the door open, she beheld, not Caroline but Mrs. Hamilton herself, her cheek pale, as if from some internal suffering, but with even more than her wonted dignity both in mien and step, and for a moment Annie struggled in vain to speak with the eagerness with which she intended to have inquired for Caroline; before the mild yet penetrating glance of Mrs. Hamilton even her self-possession appeared about to abandon her. She felt lowered, humbled in her presence, and it was this, perhaps, this very sense of inferiority, which had ever heightened dislike.