Arthur Mervyn Part 46

Move on, my quill! wait not for my guidance. Reanimated with thy master's spirit, all airy light! A heyday rapture! A mounting impulse sways him: lifts him from the earth.

I must, cost what it will, rein in this upward-pulling, forward-going--what shall I call it? But there are times, and now is one of them, when words are poor.

It will not do--down this hill, up that steep; through this thicket, over that hedge--I have _laboured_ to fatigue myself: to reconcile me to repose; to lolling on a sofa; to poring over a book, to any thing that might win for my heart a respite from these throbs; to deceive me into a few _tolerable_ moments of forgetfulness.

Let me see; they tell me this is Monday night. Only three days yet to come! If thus restless to-day; if my heart thus bounds till its mansion scarcely can hold it, what must be my state to-morrow! What next day!

What as the hour hastens on; as the sun descends; as my hand touches hers in sign of wedded unity, of love without interval; of concord without end!

I must quell these tumults. They will disable me else. They will wear out all my strength. They will drain away life itself. But who could have thought! So soon! Not three months since I first set eyes upon her.

Not three weeks since our plighted love, and only three days to terminate suspense and give me _all_.

I must compel myself to quiet; to sleep. I must find some refuge from antic.i.p.ations so excruciating. All extremes are agonies. A joy like this is too big for this narrow tenement. I must thrust it forth; I must bar and bolt it out for a time, or these frail walls will burst asunder.

The pen is a pacifier. It checks the mind's career; it circ.u.mscribes her wanderings. It traces out and compels us to adhere to one path. It ever was my friend. Often it has blunted my vexations; hushed my stormy pa.s.sions; turned my peevishness to soothing; my fierce revenge to heart-dissolving pity.

Perhaps it will befriend me now. It may temper my impetuous wishes; lull my intoxication; and render my happiness supportable; and, indeed, it has produced partly this effect already. My blood, within the few minutes thus employed, flows with less destructive rapidity. My thoughts range themselves in less disorder. And, now that the conquest is effected, what shall I say? I must continue at the pen, or shall immediately relapse.

What shall I say? Let me look back upon the steps that led me hither.

Let me recount the preliminaries. I cannot do better.

And first as to Achsa Fielding,--to describe this woman.

To recount, in brief, so much of her history as has come to my knowledge will best account for that zeal, almost to idolatry, with which she has, ever since I thoroughly knew her, been regarded by me.

Never saw I one to whom the term _lovely_ more truly belonged. And yet in stature she is too low; in complexion dark and almost sallow; and her eyes, though black and of piercing l.u.s.tre, have a cast which I cannot well explain. It lessens without destroying their l.u.s.tre and their force to charm; but all personal defects are outweighed by her heart and her intellect. There is the secret of her power to entrance the soul of the listener and beholder. It is not only when she sings that her utterance is musical. It is not only when the occasion is urgent and the topic momentous that her eloquence is rich and flowing. They are always so.

I had vowed to love her and serve her, and been her frequent visitant, long before I was acquainted with her past life. I had casually picked up some intelligence, from others, or from her own remarks. I knew very soon that she was English by birth, and had been only a year and a half in America; that she had scarcely pa.s.sed her twenty-fifth year, and was still embellished with all the graces of youth; that she had been a wife; but was uninformed whether the knot had been untied by death or divorce; that she possessed considerable, and even splendid, fortune; but the exact amount, and all besides these particulars, were unknown to me till some time after our acquaintance was begun.

One evening she had been talking very earnestly on the influence annexed, in Great Britain, to birth, and had given me some examples of this influence. Meanwhile my eyes were fixed steadfastly on hers. The peculiarity in their expression never before affected me so strongly. A vague resemblance to something seen elsewhere, on the same day, occurred, and occasioned me to exclaim, suddenly, in a pause of her discourse,--

"As I live, my good mamma, those eyes of yours have told me a secret. I almost think they spoke to me; and I am not less amazed at the strangeness than at the distinctness of their story."

"And, pr'ythee, what have they said?"

"Perhaps I was mistaken. I might have been deceived by a fancied voice, or have confounded one word with another near akin to it; but let me die if I did not think they said that you were--_a Jew_."

At this sound, her features were instantly veiled with the deepest sorrow and confusion. She put her hand to her eyes, the tears started, and she sobbed. My surprise at this effect of my words was equal to my contrition. I besought her to pardon me for having thus unknowingly alarmed and grieved her.

After she had regained some composure, she said, "You have not offended, Arthur. Your surmise was just and natural, and could not always have escaped you. Connected with that word are many sources of anguish, which time has not, and never will, dry up; and the less I think of past events the less will my peace be disturbed. I was desirous that you should know nothing of me but what you see; nothing but the present and the future, merely that no allusions might occur in our conversation which will call up sorrows and regrets that will avail nothing.

"I now perceive the folly of endeavouring to keep you in ignorance, and shall therefore, once for all, inform you of what has befallen me, that your inquiries and suggestions may be made and fully satisfied at once, and your curiosity have no motive for calling back my thoughts to what I ardently desire to bury in oblivion.

"My father was indeed a _Jew_, and one of the most opulent of his nation in London,--a Portuguese by birth, but came to London when a boy. He had few of the moral or external qualities of Jews; for I suppose there is some justice in the obloquy that follows them so closely. He was frugal without meanness, and cautious in his dealings, without extortion. I need not fear to say this, for it was the general voice.

"Me, an only child, and, of course, the darling of my parents, they trained up in the most liberal manner. My education was purely English.

I learned the same things and of the same masters with my neighbours.

Except frequenting their church and repeating their creed, and partaking of the same food, I saw no difference between them and me. Hence I grew more indifferent, perhaps, than was proper, to the distinctions of religion. They were never enforced upon me. No pains were taken to fill me with scruples and antipathies. They never stood, as I may say, upon the threshold. They were often thought upon, but were vague and easily eluded or forgotten.

"Hence it was that my heart too readily admitted impressions that more zeal and more parental caution would have saved me from. They could scarcely be avoided, as my society was wholly English, and my youth, my education, and my father's wealth made me an object of much attention.

And the same causes that lulled to sleep my own watchfulness had the same effect upon that of others. To regret or to praise this remissness is now too late. Certain it is, that my destiny, and not a happy destiny, was fixed by it.

"The fruit of this remissness was a pa.s.sion for one who fully returned it. Almost as young as I, who was only sixteen; he knew as little as myself what obstacles the difference of our births was likely to raise between us. His father, Sir Ralph Fielding, a man n.o.bly born, high in office, splendidly allied, could not be expected to consent to the marriage of his eldest son, in such green youth, to the daughter of an alien, a Portuguese, a Jew; but these impediments were not seen by my ignorance, and were overlooked by the youth's pa.s.sion.

"But, strange to tell, what common prudence would have so confidently predicted did not happen. Sir Ralph had a numerous family, likely to be still more so; had but slender patrimony; the income of his offices nearly made up his all. The young man was headstrong, impetuous, and would probably disregard the inclinations of his family. Yet the father would not consent but on one condition,--that of my admission to the English Church.

"No very strenuous opposition to these terms could be expected from me.

At so thoughtless an age, with an education so unfavourable to religious impressions; swayed, likewise, by the strongest of human pa.s.sions; made somewhat impatient, by the company I kept, of the disrepute and scorn to which the Jewish nation are everywhere condemned, I could not be expected to be very averse to the scheme.

"My fears as to what my father's decision would be were soon at an end.

He loved his child too well to thwart her wishes in so essential a point. Finding in me no scruples, no unwillingness, he thought it absurd to be scrupulous for me. My own heart having abjured my religion, it was absurd to make any difficulty about a formal renunciation. These were his avowed reasons for concurrence, but time showed that he had probably other reasons, founded, indeed, in his regard for my happiness, but such as, if they had been known, would probably have strengthened into invincible the reluctance of my lover's family.

"No marriage was ever attended with happier presages. The numerous relations of my husband admitted me with the utmost cordiality among them. My father's tenderness was unabated by this change, and those humiliations to which I had before been exposed were now no more; and every tie was strengthened, at the end of a year, by the feelings of a _mother_. I had need, indeed, to know a season of happiness, that I might be fitted to endure the sad reverses that succeeded. One after the other my disasters came, each one more heavy than the last, and in such swift succession that they hardly left me time to breathe.

"I had scarcely left my chamber, I had scarcely recovered my usual health, and was able to press with true fervour the new and precious gift to my bosom, when melancholy tidings came. I was in the country, at the seat of my father-in-law, when the messenger arrived.

"A shocking tale it was! and told abruptly, with every unpitying aggravation. I hinted to you once my father's death. The _kind_ of death--oh! my friend! It was horrible. He was then a placid, venerable old man; though many symptoms of disquiet had long before been discovered by my mother's watchful tenderness. Yet none could suspect him capable of such a deed; for none, so carefully had he conducted his affairs, suspected the havoc that mischance had made of his property.

"I, that had so much reason to love my father,--I will leave you to imagine how I was affected by a catastrophe so dreadful, so unlooked-for. Much less could I suspect the cause of his despair; yet he had foreseen his ruin before my marriage; had resolved to defer it, for his daughter's and his wife's sake, as long as possible, but had still determined not to survive the day that should reduce him to indigence.

The desperate act was thus preconcerted--thus deliberate.

"The true state of his affairs was laid open by his death. The failure of great mercantile houses at Frankfort and Liege was the cause of his disasters.

"Thus were my prospects shut in. That wealth which, no doubt, furnished the chief inducement with my husband's family to concur in his choice, was now suddenly exchanged for poverty.

"Bred up, as I had been, in pomp and luxury; conscious that my wealth was my chief security from the contempt of the proud and bigoted, and my chief t.i.tle to the station to which I had been raised, and which I the more delighted in because it enabled me to confer so great obligations on my husband,--what reverse could be harder than this, and how much bitterness was added by it to the grief occasioned by the violent death of my father!

"Yet loss of fortune, though it mortified my pride, did not prove my worst calamity. Perhaps it was scarcely to be ranked with evils, since it furnished a touchstone by which my husband's affections were to be tried; especially as the issue of the trial was auspicious; for my misfortune seemed only to heighten the interest which my character had made for me in the hearts of all that knew me. The paternal regards of Sir Ralph had always been tender, but that tenderness seemed now to be redoubled.

"New events made this consolation still more necessary. My unhappy mother!--She was nearer to the dreadful scene when it happened; had no surviving object to beguile her sorrow; was rendered, by long habit, more dependent upon fortune than her child.

"A melancholy, always mute, was the first effect upon my mother. Nothing could charm her eye, or her ear. Sweet sounds that she once loved, and especially when her darling child was the warbler, were heard no longer.

How, with streaming eyes, have I sat and watched the dear lady, and endeavoured to catch her eye, to rouse her attention!--But I must not think of these things.

"But even this distress was little in comparison with what was to come.

A frenzy thus mute, motionless, and vacant, was succeeded by fits, talkative, outrageous, requiring incessant superintendence, restraint, and even violence.

"Why led you me thus back to my sad remembrances? Excuse me for the present. I will tell you the rest some other time; to-morrow."

To-morrow, accordingly, my friend resumed her story.

"Let me now make an end," said she, "of my mournful narrative, and never, I charge you, do any thing to revive it again.

"Deep as was my despondency, occasioned by these calamities, I was not dest.i.tute of some joy. My husband and my child were lovely and affectionate. In their caresses, in their welfare, I found peace; and might still have found it, had there not been----. But why should I open afresh wounds which time has imperfectly closed? But the story must some time be told to you, and the sooner it is told and dismissed to forgetfulness the better.

"My ill fate led me into company with a woman too well known in the idle and dissipated circles. Her character was not unknown to me. There was nothing in her features or air to obviate disadvantageous prepossessions. I sought not her intercourse; I rather shunned it, as unpleasing and discreditable, but she would not be repulsed.

Self-invited, she made herself my frequent guest; took unsolicited part in my concerns; did me many kind offices; and, at length, in spite of my counter-inclination, won upon my sympathy and grat.i.tude.

"No one in the world, did I fondly think, had I less reason to fear than Mrs. Waring. Her character excited not the slightest apprehension for my own safety. She was upwards of forty, nowise remarkable for grace or beauty; tawdry in her dress; accustomed to render more conspicuous the traces of age by her attempts to hide them; the mother of a numerous family, with a mind but slenderly cultivated; always careful to save appearances; studiously preserving distance with my husband, and he, like myself, enduring rather than wis.h.i.+ng her society. What could I fear from the arts of such a one?

"But alas! the woman had consummate address. Patience, too, that nothing could tire. Watchfulness that none could detect. Insinuation the wiliest and most subtle. Thus wound she herself into my affections, by an unexampled perseverance in seeming kindness; by tender confidence; by artful glosses of past misconduct; by self-rebukes and feigned contritions.