A Woman's Love Part 4

That is a discovery which I have long made."

"And since when have you _yourself_ made it, dear Helen?" said he, with that saucy smile of his which you have often said was irresistible.

"These four years, at least," I answered, trying to avoid his eyes.

"Do not fib, Helen," was his impertinent reply.

"You make Helen blush, my dear son."

"So much the better; she never looks so beautiful as when she blushes, and I dare say some little time hence, we shall have some English Priam exclaiming of this modern Helen--

'No wonder, Britons, that such heavenly charms For ten long years have set the world in arms!'

While _I_ shall sit and sing--

'Ah, Chloris! could I now but sit As unconcern'd as when Thy infant beauty could beget Nor happiness nor pain!'"

I was now so pleased, so confounded--yet so happy, that I knew not where to look or how to behave; but remembering that the "best part of valour is discretion," I fled from the danger I could not face, and had just presence of mind enough to run away.

"What is the matter with Helen?" cried Seymour, when I was gone. "Is she angry?"

"No," replied Lady Helen, more skilled in the nature of woman's feelings; "she is only conscious of being too well pleased--that's all;"

and from that time--had not Seymour left us the next day--the chances are that we should soon have become lovers.

I, meanwhile, had gone into my own chamber, where I found my mother. I threw myself into her arms, without saying a word, and hid my blushes and my tears in her bosom. My mother, untold, knew those tears were not tears of sorrow, and soon drew from me a part of the truth; for I told her Seymour had been so full of his compliments that I came away.

During the course of that day, Seymour was continually exclaiming, "How provoking it is, that I should be forced to go away just now!"

"Ah!" cried I, pertly enough, and insincerely too, "what will poor Miss Salter do?" This was the name of one of the ladies with whom he had fancied himself charmed.

"Miss Salter!

'I think not of Miss Salter---- My fancy has no image now but--'"

Here my mother rather pettishly interrupted him.

"I think, for Miss Salter's sake, young man, it is well you are going, as you certainly took great pains to make her think you admired her; and I must say, I am no friend to coquetry, be it in man or woman."

"Nor I," said Lady Helen; "and I trust the next time my son makes love, he will do it with his whole heart, and not mistake the illusions of fancy for the dictates of attachment."

"I trust so too, my dear mother," he replied, "and that the object will be one whom you approve."

The next morning he set off, and every thing at first seemed a blank to me. He wrote frequently during the first weeks of his residence at Oxford, but my mother discouraged my answering his letters, and he soon grew remiss in his correspondence even with Lady Helen, who found that his allowance, though handsome, was insufficient for his wants, and suspected that the life must be dissipated which required such an exorbitant expenditure. My mother knew that it was so; why she imparted what she heard to her friend, I cannot tell, because it made Lady Helen unhappy, and she wrote to her son in the language of expostulation. I was vexed to find that my mother gave such implicit credence to the stories of Seymour's errors, as the accounts might be exaggerated; and when I had once admitted that he was the victim of misrepresentation, pity for Seymour added force to my attachment.

It seemed a very long time to me till the next vacation came; but Seymour pa.s.sed it in London, at his grandfather's; my mother was glad, but I was disappointed. Nor did he come down into the country till half of the long vacation was expired; and after he had spent a week with Lady Helen, my mother took me to pay a visit to a relation of her's. In vain Lady Helen remonstrated, and Seymour entreated; she replied she had put off her journey in the expectation of seeing him in June, and she could no longer delay her visit. He sighed, looked conscious and confused, and forbore to urge her again.

My mother was certainly right in thus resolving; for she knew, though I did not, that Lady Helen had communicated to him her views and wishes with regard to me; and she left home with a firmness and decision of manner which promised ill for the success of her hopes.

When we came back, Seymour was returned to Oxford. The following Christmas, Lady Helen, whose health seemed evidently declining, went to London for the advice of physicians, and Seymour attended her home; but he only stayed a week, as he was under an engagement, he said, to accompany some friends abroad. He departed, however, with evident dejection and reluctance, and seemed while with us to enjoy the quiet of our domestic scenes; but as his actions were not regulated by a steady principle of _right_, and under the restraint of moral and religious obligation, no sooner was he removed from our purifying influence, than he became again the follower of pleasure, while as he was driven backward and forward upon the ocean of the world, my image, which his poor mother thought would save him from temptation, appeared to him only as a beacon at a distance to remind him of that sh.o.r.e of safety which the waves forbad him, however much he wished it, to approach. During the next term, and in spite of his dissipation, Seymour obtained a prize for writing the best prose essay; and he sent it to his mother just after some very unfavourable accounts of the society which he frequented in London, had reached her, and had been only too strongly confirmed by my mother's secret informant. These reports had not been communicated to me, but I happened to be present when Lady Helen received two copies of the essay, accompanied by a letter, in which he begged that his dearest friend Helen, would not only accept, but do him the favour to criticise the little production which he had sent, as he knew no one whose praise he should so highly value, or to whose censures he should pay greater attention. Methinks I still see the delight yet gleaming mournfully through tears, which beamed from Lady Helen's countenance when she received the essay and read the letter. Alas! that renewed and increased brightness was but too like the flame of an expiring taper.

"My dear Julia!" cried she to my mother, in a voice almost inarticulate with emotion, "what a foolish thing is a fond mother's heart! Now it is all fear, and now all hope; now it is broken, and now healed again. This boy, this dear, naughty good boy! it was but yesterday I cried for his weakness, and now I cry for his strength."

"No one, I believe, ever doubted your son's talents," said my mother coldly, and I thought crossly.

"True," replied Lady Helen meekly; "and this prize, I own, is not proof of amended conduct."

"I know not," cried I eagerly, "what fault poor Seymour has committed; but of this I am sure, that if he was so very idle as ill-natured people say he is, he could not have found time to write for a prize, and still less have been able to gain it."

"Thank you, my dearest girl, for being my poor boy's advocate; for what you say is very just: and Seymour shall know how kindly you took his part."

"I must beg he may not know," said my mother, angrily.

"Indeed!" answered Lady Helen mournfully. "But I cannot now blame your change of feeling on this subject, for I myself should hesitate to give my daughter to a youth such as Seymour is said to be."

I now turned round, and looked at Lady Helen with so alarmed and inquiring a countenance, that she could not withstand the appeal. She took my hand, and said--

"Yes, Helen, your mother and I had pledged our words to each other, to do all in our power to promote a union between my son and you, and to cherish every symptom in you of a mutual attachment; but now, owing to some too well-founded reports, I fear, of his faulty conduct, she wishes to retract her promise; and here, as one of my last acts and deeds, (for I feel that I shall not be with you long,) I solemnly give her back that promise in your presence! declaring to you, my beloved child, that unless your mother thinks Seymour deserving of you, I cannot wish you to be his wife; and that it will be my parting injunction to you, Helen, never, never to marry an immoral man."

Lady Helen had scarcely said this, while I listened with downcast eyes, when my mother threw herself into her arms, sobbing out convulsively, "My own dear generous friend! for your sake I will try to think well of your son, and to believe he will reform--only don't talk of dying; I can't bear _that_!"

"But I wish to prepare you for it."

"Prepare, Helen! prepare. Do you think anything can make me endure the idea of losing you? Oh! it will be losing all I ever loved a second time!"

Lady Helen shook her head, but did not speak; for she knew that her friend must soon undergo this dreaded trial--and _she_, too, felt that for _some_ blows there is no such thing as _preparation_.

The night that followed was the first of real agonizing sorrow which I had ever known. I had heard that Seymour was believed, even by his own mother, to be unworthy of me, and that mine was decidedly averse to that union which she had originally made the first desire of my heart; I had also heard from Lady Helen's own lips a solemn a.s.surance that she was dying.

At my time of life, however, the spirits are never long depressed, especially by an uncertain and remote sorrow; but as a captive b.u.t.terfly, when the pressure on its wings is removed, flutters them again in air, with all their glittering dyes and buoyancy uninjured, so do the spirits of youth quickly resume their brilliancy and their elasticity.

When I rose the next morning, I was _sure_ that Lady Helen would _recover_; I was sure that Seymour would _reform_, even if the reports concerning him were _not_ exaggerated; and I was also sure that some time or other I should be his wife.

But, alas! Lady Helen had not spoken from momentary dejection, and still less from the ungenerous wish to excite interest and alarm in the hearts that tenderly loved her: she spoke from her deep conviction--a conviction only too well founded.

In less than two months, she was attacked by fever and inflammation of the brain, such as had before seized her on the death of her husband.

She had, however, lucid intervals; and though my mother and myself felt our hearts wrung by her delirious ravings--during which she called upon her son's name in the most affecting language--still we suffered more, when, on recovering her senses, she asked for this darling son, and we were obliged to reply that he was not yet arrived.

And where--oh! where was he, at a moment like that? We knew not.

As soon as Lady Helen's attack was judged to be a dangerous one, my mother wrote to him at Oxford, desiring him to set off immediately, or he might come too late; and as Oxford was only a ten hours' journey from home, he might have been with us the next morning, had he been at college. It was also term time; but yet he came _not_, though on such an occasion, leave of absence was easily to be obtained. My mother was too angry to be as wretched as I was at this distressing circ.u.mstance--for indignation often swallows up every other feeling, and once she hinted to me that he must have received the letter, and that mere idle neglect kept him away; but the poor invalid, who, unsuspected by us, overheard our conversation, exclaimed--

"No, Julia; whatever are his other faults, my poor boy loves me--tenderly loves me; and even from a sick-bed he would hasten to his dying mother. Oh no! he has never received your letter--he is not in college."

"Then where is he? In college he ought to be."

"True, Julia; but he is young and thoughtless, and we ought to remember that we were so _once ourselves_. We ought not to have run away from our parents--yet we _did_ so, Julia."

"We did, indeed," cried my mother, abashed and silenced.