Tales and Novels Volume X Part 62

"_Could_ not, ma'am! As if people could not eat if they pleased."

"But if people have no appet.i.te, my dear, I am afraid eating will not do much good."

"I am afraid, my dear aunt, you will not do Miss Stanley much good,"

said Miss Clarendon, shaking her head; "you will only spoil her."

"I am quite spoiled, I believe," said Helen; "you must unspoil me, Esther."

"Not so very easy," said Esther; "but I shall try, for I am a sincere friend."

"I am sure of it," said Helen.

Then what more could be said? Nothing at that time--Helen's look was so sincerely grateful, and "gentle as a lamb," as aunt Pennant observed; and Esther was not a wolf quite--at heart not at all.

Miss Clarendon presently remarked that Miss Stanley really did not seem glad to be better--glad to get well. Helen acknowledged that instead of being glad, she was rather sorry.

"If it had pleased Heaven, I should have been glad to die."

"Nonsense about dying, and worse than nonsense," cried Miss Clarendon, "when you see that it did not please Heaven that you should die--"

"I am content to live," said Helen.

"Content! to be sure you are," said Miss Clarendon. "Is this your thankfulness to Providence?"

"I am resigned--I am thankful--I will try to be more so--but cannot be glad."

General Clarendon's bulletins continued with little variation for some time; they were always to his sister--he never mentioned Beauclerc, but confined himself to the few lines or words necessary to give his promised regular accounts of Mr. Churchill's state, the sum of which continued to be for a length of time: "Much the same."--"Not in immediate danger."--"Cannot be p.r.o.nounced out of danger."

Not very consolatory, Helen felt. "But while there is life, there is hope," as aunt Pennant observed.

"Yes, and fear," said Helen; and her hopes and fears on this subject alternated with fatiguing reiteration, and with a total incapacity of forming any judgment.

Beauclerc's letter of explanation arrived, and other letters came from him from time to time, which, as they were only repet.i.tions of hopes and fears as to Churchill's recovery, and of uncertainty as to what might be his own future fate, only increased Helen's misery; and as even their expressions of devoted attachment could not alter her own determination, while she felt how cruel her continued silence must appear, they only agitated without relieving her mind. Mrs. Pennant sympathised with and soothed her, and knew how to sooth, and how to raise, and to sustain a mind in sorrow, suffering under disappointed affection, and sunk almost to despondency; for aunt Pennant, besides her softness of manner, and her quick intelligent sympathy, had power of consolation of a higher sort, beyond any which this world can give. She was very religious, of a cheerfully religious turn of mind--of that truly Christian spirit which hopeth all things. When she was a child somebody asked her if she was bred up in the fear of the Lord. She said no, but in the love of G.o.d. And so she was, in that love which casteth out fear. And now the mildness of her piety, and the whole tone and manner of her speaking and thinking, reminded Helen of that good dear uncle by whom she had been educated. She listened with affectionate reverence, and she truly and simply said, "You do me good--I think you have done me a great deal of good--and you shall see it." And she did see it afterwards, and Miss Clarendon thought it was her doing, and so her aunt let it pa.s.s, and was only glad the good was done.

The first day Helen went down to the drawing-room, she found there a man who looked, as she thought at first glance, like a tradesman--some person, she supposed, come on business, standing waiting for Miss Clarendon, or Mrs. Pennant. She scarcely looked at him, but pa.s.sed on to the sofa, beside which was a little table set for her, and on it a beautiful work-box, which she began to examine and admire.

"Not nigh so handsome as I could have wished it, then, for you, Miss Helen--I ask pardon, Miss Stanley."

Helen looked up, surprised at hearing herself addressed by one whom she had thought a stranger; but yet she knew the voice, and a reminiscence came across her mind of having seen him somewhere before.

"Old David Price, ma'am. Maybe you forget him, you being a child at that time. But since you grew up, you have been the saving of me and many more----" Stepping quite close to her, he whispered that he had been paid under her goodness's order by Mr. James, along with _the other creditors_ that had been _left_.

Helen by this time recollected who the poor Welshman was--an upholsterer and cabinet-maker, who had been years before employed at the Deanery.

Never having been paid at the time, a very considerable debt had acc.u.mulated, and having neither note nor bond, Price said that he had despaired of ever obtaining the amount of his earnings. He had, however, since the dean's death, been paid in full, and had been able to retire to his native village, which happened to be near Llansillen, and most grateful he was; and as soon as he perceived that he was recognised, his grat.i.tude became better able to express itself. Not well, however, could it make its way out for some time; between crying and laughing, and between two languages, he was at first scarcely intelligible. Whenever much moved, David Price had recourse to his native Welsh, in which he was eloquent; and Mrs. Pennant, on whom, knowing that she understood him, his eyes turned, was good enough to interpret for him. And when once fairly set a-going, there was danger that poor David's garrulous grat.i.tude should flow for ever. But it was all honest; not a word of flattery; and his old face was in a glow and radiant with feeling, and the joy of telling Miss Helen all, how, and about it; particularly concerning the last day when Mr. James paid him, and them, and all of them: that was a day Miss Stanley ought to have seen; pity she could not have witnessed it; it would have done her good to the latest hour of her life. Pity she should never see the faces of many, some poorer they might have been than himself; many richer, that would have been ruined for ever but for her. For his own part, he reckoned himself one of the happiest of them all, in being allowed to see her face to face. And he hoped, as soon as she was able to get out so far--but it was not so far--she would come to see how comfortable he was in his own house. It ended at last in his giving a shove to the work-box on the table, which, though nothing worth otherwise, he knew she could not mislike, on account it was made out of all the samples of wood the dean, her uncle, had given to him in former times.

Notwithstanding the immoderate length of his speeches, and the impossibility he seemed to find of ending his visit, Helen was not much tired. And when she was able to walk so far, Mrs. Pennant took her to see David Price, and in a most comfortable house she found him; and every one in that house, down to the youngest child, gathered round her by degrees, some more, some less shy, but all with grat.i.tude beaming and smiling in their faces. It was delightful to Helen; for there is no human heart so engrossed by sorrow, so over whelmed by disappointment, so closed against hope of happiness, that will not open to the touch of grat.i.tude.

CHAPTER XII.

But there was still in Helen's inmost soul one deceitful hope. She thought she had pulled it up by the roots many times, and the last time completely; but still a little fibre lurked, and still it grew again.

It was the hope that Cecilia would keep that last promise, though at the moment Helen had flung from her the possibility; yet now she took it up again, and she thought it was possible that Cecilia might be true to her word. If her child should be born alive, and if it should be a boy! It became a heart-beating suspense as the time approached, and every day the news might be expected. The post came in but three times a week at Llansillen, and every post day Miss Clarendon repeated her prophecy to her aunt, "You will see, ma'am, the child will be born in good time, and alive. You who have always been so much afraid for Lady Cecilia, will find she has not feeling enough to do her any harm."

In due time came a note from the general. "A boy! child and mother doing well. Give me joy."

The joy to Miss Clarendon was much increased by the triumph, in her own perfectly right opinion. Mrs. Pennant's was pure affectionate joy for the father, and for Lady Cecilia, for whom, all sinner as she was in her niece's eyes, this good soul had compa.s.sion. Helen's anxiety to hear again and again every post was very natural, the aunt thought; quite superfluous, the niece deemed it: Lady Cecilia would do very well, no doubt, she prophesied again, and laughed at the tremor, the eagerness, with which Helen every day asked if there was any letter from Cecilia.

At last one came, the first in her own hand-writing, and it was to Helen herself, and it extinguished all hope. Helen could only articulate, "Oh! Cecilia!" Her emotion, her disappointment, were visible, but unaccountable: she could give no reason for it to Miss Clarendon, whose wondering eye was upon her; nor even to sympathising aunt Pennant could she breathe a word without betraying Cecilia; she was silent, and there was all that day, and many succeeding days, a hopelessness of languor in her whole appearance. There was, as Miss Clarendon termed it, a "backsliding in her recovery," which grieved aunt Pennant, and Helen had to bear imputation of caprice, and of indolence from Miss Clarendon; but even that eye immediately upon her, that eye more severe than ever, had not power to rouse her. Her soul was sunk within, nothing farther to hope; there, was a dead calm, and the stillness and loneliness of Llansillen made that calm almost awful. The life of great excitation which she had led previous to her illness, rendered her more sensible of the change, of the total want of stimulus. The walks to Price's cottage had been repeated, but, though it was a very bright spot, the eye could not always be fixed upon it.

Bodily exertion being more easy to her now than mental, she took long walks, and came in boasting how far she had been, and looking quite exhausted. And Miss Clarendon wondered at her wandering out alone; then she tried to walk with Miss Clarendon, and she was more tired, though the walks were shorter--and that was observed, and was not agreeable either to the observer, or to the observed. Helen endeavoured to make up for it; she followed Miss Clarendon about in all her various occupations, from flower-garden to conservatory, and from conservatory to pheasantry, and to all her pretty cottages, and her schools, and she saw and admired all the good that Esther did so judiciously, and with such extraordinary, such wonderful energy.

"Nothing wonderful in it," Miss Clarendon said: and as she ungraciously rejected praise, however sincere, and required not sympathy, Helen was reduced to be a mere silent, stupid, useless stander-by, and she could not but feel this a little awkward. She tried to interest herself for the poor people in the neighbourhood, but their language was unintelligible to her, and her's to them, and it is hard work trying to make objects for oneself in quite a new place, and with a pre-occupying sorrow in the mind all the time. It was not only hard work to Helen, but it seemed labour in vain--bringing soil by handfulls to a barren rock, where, after all, no plant will take root. Miss Clarendon thought that labour could never be in vain.

One morning, when it must be acknowledged that Helen had been sitting too long in the same position, with her head leaning on her hand, Miss Clarendon in her abrupt voice asked, "How much longer, Helen, do you intend to sit there, doing only what is the worst thing in the world for you--thinking?"

Helen started, and said she feared she had been sitting too long idle.

"If you wish to know how long, I can tell you," said Miss Clarendon; "just one hour and thirteen minutes."

"By the stop watch," said Helen, smiling.

"By my watch," said grave Miss Clarendon; "and in the mean time look at the quant.i.ty of work I have done."

"And done so nicely!" said Helen, looking at it with admiration.

"Oh, do not think to bribe me with admiration; I would rather see you do something yourself than hear you praise my doings."

"If I had anybody to work for. I have so few friends now in the world who would care for anything I could do! But I will try--you shall see, my dear Esther, by and bye."

"By and bye! no, no--now. I cannot bear to see you any longer, in this half-alive, half-dead state."

"I know," said Helen, "that all you say is for my good. I am sure your only object is my happiness."

"Your happiness is not in my power or in your's, but it is in your power to deserve to be happy, by doing what is right--by exerting yourself:--that is my object, for I see you are in danger of being lost in indolence. Now you have the truth and the whole truth."

Many a truth would have come mended from Miss Clarendon's tongue, if it had been uttered in a softer tone, and if she had paid a little more attention to times and seasons: but she held it the sacred duty of sincerity to tell a friend her faults as soon as seen, and without circ.u.mlocution.

The next day Helen set about a drawing. She made it an object to herself, to try to copy a view of the dear Deanery in the same style as several beautiful drawings of Miss Clarendon's. While she looked over her portfolio, several of her old sketches recalled remembrances which made her sigh frequently; Miss Clarendon heard her, and said--"I wish you would cure yourself of that habit of sighing; it is very bad for you."

"I know it," said Helen.

"Despondency is not penitence," continued Esther: "reverie is not reparation."

She felt as desirous as ever to make Helen happy at Llansillen, but she was provoked to find it impossible to do so. Of a strong body herself, capable of great resistance, powerful reaction under disappointment or grief, she could ill make allowance for feebler health and spirits--perhaps feebler character. For great misfortunes she had great sympathy, but she could not enter into the details of lesser sorrows, especially any of the sentimental kind, which she was apt to cla.s.s altogether under the head--"Sorrows of my Lord Plumcake!" an expression which had sovereignly taken her fancy, and which her aunt did not relish, or quite understand.

Mrs. Pennant was, indeed, as complete a contrast to her niece in these points, as nature and habit joined could produce. She was naturally of the most exquisitely sympathetic mimosa-sensibility, shrinking and expanding to the touch of others' joy or woe; and instead of having by long use worn this out, she had preserved it wonderfully fresh in advanced years. But, notwithstanding the contrast and seemingly incompatible difference between this aunt and niece, the foundations of their characters both being good, sound, and true, they lived on together well, and loved each other dearly. They had seldom differed so much on any point as in the present case, as to their treatment of their patient and their guest. Scarcely a day pa.s.sed in which they did not come to some mutual remonstrance; and sometimes when she was by, which was not pleasant to her, as may be imagined. Yet perhaps even these little altercations and annoyances, though they tried Helen's temper or grieved her heart at the moment, were of use to her upon the whole, by drawing her out of herself. Besides, these daily vicissitudes--made by human temper, manner, and character--supplied in some sort the total want of events, and broke the monotony of these tedious months.