Emmeline Part 50

Tho' he had sworn in bitterness of heart to drive for ever from it this perfidious and fatal beauty, it seemed as if forgetting his resolution, he had in this intelligence received a new injury. He still fancied that she should have told him of her design to quit England, without recollecting that he had given her no opportunity to speak to him at all.

Again he felt his anger towards Fitz-Edward animated almost to madness; and again impatiently sought to hasten a meeting when he might discuss with him all the mischief he had sustained.

Lord Clancarryl coming for a few days to Dublin, found there letters from Lord Montreville, in which his Lords.h.i.+p bespoke for his son the acquaintance of the Clancarryl family. Desirous of shewing every attention to a young man so nearly connected with his wife's family, by the marriage of her brother, Lord Westhaven, to his youngest sister, and related also to himself, Lord Clancarryl immediately sought Delamere; and was surprised to find, that instead of receiving his advances with warmth or even with politeness, he hardly returned them with common civility, and seemed to attend to nothing that was said. The first pause in the conversation, however, Delamere took advantage of to enquire after Colonel Fitz-Edward.

'My brother,' answered Lord Clancarryl, 'left us only three days ago.'

'For London, my Lord?'

'No; he is gone with two other friends on a kind of pleasurable tour.--They hired a sloop at Cork to take them to France.'

'To France!' exclaimed Delamere--'Mr. Fitz-Edward gone to France?'

'Yes,' replied Lord Clancarryl, somewhat wondering at the surprise Delamere expressed--'and I promoted the plan as much as I could; for poor George is, I am afraid, in a bad state of health; his looks and his spirits are not what they used to be. Chearful company, and this little tour, may I hope restore them. But how happens it that he knew not, Sir, of your return? He was persuaded you were still abroad; and expressed some pleasure at the thoughts of meeting you when you least expected it.'

'No, no, my Lord,' cried Delamere, in a voice rendered almost inarticulate by contending pa.s.sions--'his hope was not to meet _me_. He is gone with far other designs.'

'What designs, Lord Delamere?' gravely asked Lord Clancarryl.

'My Lord,' answered Delamere, recollecting himself, 'I mean not to trouble you on this matter. I have some business to adjust with Mr.

Fitz-Edward; and since he is not here, have only to request of your Lords.h.i.+p information when he returns, or whither a letter may follow him?'

'Sir,' returned Lord Clancarryl with great gravity, 'I believe I can answer for Colonel Fitz-Edward's readiness to settle _any business_ you may desire to adjust with him; and I wish, since there is _business_ between ye, that I could name the time when you are likely to meet him.

All, however, I can decidedly say is, that he intends going to Paris, but that his stay in France will not exceed five or six weeks in the whole; and that such letters as I may have occasion to send, are to be addressed to the care of Monsieur de Guisnon, banker, at Paris.'

Delamere having received this intelligence, took a cold leave; and Lord Clancarryl, who had before heard much of his impetuous temper and defective education, was piqued at his distant manner, and returned to his house in the country without making any farther effort to cultivate his friends.h.i.+p.

Debating whether he should follow Fitz-Edward to France or wait his return to Ireland, Delamere remained, torn with jealousy and distracted by delay. He was convinced beyond a doubt, that Fitz-Edward had met Emmeline in France by her own appointment. 'But let them not,' cried he--'let them not hope to escape me! Let them not suppose I will relinquish my purpose 'till I have punished their infamy or cease to feel it!--Oh, Emmeline! Emmeline! is it for this I pursued--for this I won thee!'

The violence of those emotions he felt after Lord Clancarryl's departure, subsided only because he had no one to listen to, no one to answer him. He determined, as Lord Clancarryl seemed so certain of his brother's return in the course of six weeks, to wait in Ireland 'till the end of that period, since there was but little probability of his meeting him if he pursued him to France. He concluded that wherever Emmeline was, Fitz-Edward might be found also; but the residence of Emmeline he knew not, nor could he bear a moment to think that he might see them together.

The violence of his resentment, far from declining, seemed to resist all the checks it's gratification received, and to burn with acc.u.mulated fury. His nights brought only tormenting dreams; his days only a repet.i.tion of unavailing anguish.

He had several acquaintances among young men of fas.h.i.+on at Dublin. With them he sometimes a.s.sociated; and tried to forget his uneasiness in the pleasures of the table; and sometimes he shunned them entirely, and shut himself up to indulge his disquiet.

In the mean time, Lady Clancarryl was extremely mortified at the account her husband gave her of Delamere's behaviour. She knew that her brother, Lord Westhaven, would be highly gratified by any attention shewn to the family of his wife; particularly to a brother to whom Lady Westhaven was so much attached. She therefore entreated her Lord to overlook Delamere's petulance, and renew the invitation he had given him to Lough Carryl. But his Lords.h.i.+p, disgusted with the reception he had before met with, laughed, and desired her to try whether _her_ civilities would be more graciously accepted. Lady Clancarryl therefore took the trouble to go herself to Dublin: where she so pressingly insisted on Delamere's pa.s.sing a fortnight with them, that he could not evade the invitation without declaring his animosity against Fitz-Edward, and his resolution to demand satisfaction--a declaration which could not fail of rendering his purpose abortive. He returned, therefore, to Lough Carryl with her Ladys.h.i.+p; meaning to stay only a few days, and feeling hurt at being thus compelled to become the inmate of a family into which he might so soon carry grief and resentment.

G.o.dolphin, after his return to the Isle of Wight, abandoned himself more than ever to the indulgence of his pa.s.sion. He soothed yet encreased his melancholy by poetry and music; and Lady Adelina for some time contributed to nourish feelings too much in unison with her own. He now no longer affected to conceal from her his attachment to her lovely friend; but to her only it was known. Her voice, and exquisite taste, he loved to employ in singing the verses he made; and he would sit hours by her _piano forte_ to hear repeated one of the many sonnets he had written on her who occupied all his thoughts.

SONNET

When welcome slumber sets my spirit free Forth to fict.i.tious happiness it flies, And where Elysian bowers of bliss arise I seem, my Emmeline--to meet with thee!

Ah! Fancy then, dissolving human ties, Gives me the wishes of my soul to see; Tears of fond pity fill thy softened eyes; In heavenly harmony--our hearts agree.

Alas! these joys are mine in dreams alone, When cruel Reason abdicates her throne!

Her harsh return condemns me to complain Thro' life unpitied, unrelieved, unknown.

And, as the dear delusions leave my brain, She bids the truth recur--with aggravated pain.

But Lady Adelina herself at length grew uneasy at beholding the progress of this unhappy pa.s.sion. His mind seemed to have lost all it's strength, and to be incapable of making even an effort to shake off an affection which his honour would not allow him to attempt rendering successful.

His spirits, affected by the listless solitude in which he lived, were sunk into hopeless despondence; and his sister was every day more alarmed, not only for his peace but for his life. She therefore tried to make him determine to quit her, for a short abode in London; but to do that he absolutely refused. Lord Clancarryl had long pressed him to go to Ireland: he had not seen his eldest sister for some years; and ardently wished to embrace her and her children. But Fitz-Edward was at her house; and to meet Fitz-Edward was impossible. Lady Clancarryl, deceived by a plausible story, which had been framed to account for Lady Adelina's absence, was, as well as her Lord, entirely ignorant of the share Fitz-Edward had in it: they believed it to have been occasioned solely by her antipathy to Trelawny, and her fear lest her relations should insist on her again residing with him; and it was necessary that nothing should be said to undeceive them.

G.o.dolphin had therefore been obliged to form several excuses to account for his declining the pressing invitations he received; and he found that his eldest sister was already much hurt by his apparent neglect. In one of her last letters, she had mentioned that Fitz-Edward was gone to France; and Lady Adelina pointed out to G.o.dolphin several pa.s.sages which convinced him he had given pain by his long absence to his beloved Camilla, and prevailed upon him to go to Ireland. He arrived therefore at Lough Carryl two days after his sister had returned thither with Lord Delamere.

CHAPTER XII

Mr. G.o.dolphin was extremely surprised to find, in Ireland, Delamere, the happy Delamere! who he supposed had long since been with Emmeline, waiting the fortunate hour that was to unite them for ever. A very few weeks now remained of the year which he had promised to remain unmarried; yet instead of his being ready to attend his bride to England, to claim in the face of the world his father's consent, he was lingering in another country, where he appeared to have come only to indulge dejection; for he frequently fled from society, and when he was in it, forgot himself in gloomy reveries.

n.o.body knew why he came to Ireland, unless to satisfy a curiosity of which nothing appeared to remain; yet he still continued there; and as Lord and Lady Clancarryl were now used to his singular humour, they never enquired into it's cause; while he, flattered by the regard of two persons so amiable and respectable, suffered not his enmity to Fitz-Edward to interfere with the satisfaction he sometimes took in their society; tho' he oftener past the day almost entirely alone.

G.o.dolphin could not repress the anxious curiosity he felt, to know what, at this period, could separate lovers whose union appeared so certain.

But this curiosity he had no means of satisfying. Lady Clancarryl had heard nothing of his engagement, or any hint of his approaching marriage; and tho' he was on all other topics, when he entered at all into conversation, remarkably open and unguarded, he spoke not, in company, of any thing that related to himself.

He seemed, however, to seek a closer intimacy with G.o.dolphin, whose excellent character he had often heard, and whose appearance and conversation confirmed all that had been reported in his favour.

G.o.dolphin neither courted him or evaded his advances; but could not help looking with astonishment on a man, who on the point of being the husband of the most lovely woman on earth, could saunter in a country where he appeared to have neither attachments or satisfaction. Sometimes he almost ventured to hope that their engagement was dissolved: but then recollecting that Lady Adelina had a.s.sured him the promise of Emmeline was still uncancelled, he checked so flattering an illusion, and returned again to uncertainty and despondence.

On the third day after G.o.dolphin's arrival, Delamere, who intended to go back to Dublin the following morning save one, joined Lady Clancarryl and her brother in the drawing-room immediately after dinner.

G.o.dolphin, on account of the expected return of Fitz-Edward, had determined to make only a short stay at Lough Carryl. He wished to carry with him to his own house, portraits of his sister and her children; and was expressing to her this wish--'I should like to have them,' said he, 'in a large miniature; the same size as one I have of Adelina.'

'Have you then a portrait of Adelina,' enquired Lady Clancarryl, 'and have not yet shewn it me?'

'I have,' answered G.o.dolphin; 'but my sister likes not that it should be seen. It is very like her _now_, but has little resemblance to her former pictures. This is painted by a young lady, her friend.' He then took it out of his pocket, and gave it to Lady Clancarryl.

'And is Adelina so thin and pale,' asked her Ladys.h.i.+p, 'as she is here represented?'

'More so,' answered G.o.dolphin.

'She is then greatly changed.--Yet the eyes and features, and the whole air of the countenance, I should immediately have acknowledged.'

Continuing to look pensively at the picture, she added, 'Tis charmingly coloured; and might represent a very lovely and penitent Magdalen. The black veil, and tearful eye, are beautifully touched. But why did you indulge her in this melancholy taste?'

G.o.dolphin, excessively hurt at this, speech, answered mournfully--'Poor Adelina, you know, has had little reason to be gay.'

Delamere, who during this conversation seemed lost in his own reflections, now suddenly advanced, and desired Lady Clancarryl would favour him with a sight of the picture. He took it to a candle; and looking steadily on it, was struck with the lightness of the drawing, which extremely resembled the portraits Emmeline was accustomed to make; tho' this was more highly finished than any he had yet seen of her's.

Without being able to account for his idea, since nothing was more likely than that the drawing of two persons might resemble each other, he looked at the back of the picture, which was of gold; and in the centre a small oval crystal contained the words _Em. Mowbray_, in hair, and under it the name of _Adelina Trelawny_. It was indeed a memorial of Emmeline's affection to her friend; and the name was in her own hair;--a circ.u.mstance that made it as dear to G.o.dolphin as the likeness it bore to his sister: and the whole was rendered in his eyes inestimable, by it's being painted by herself. Delamere, astonished and pained he knew not why, determined to hear from G.o.dolphin himself the name of the paintress: returning it to him, he said--'A lady, you say, Sir, drew it.

May I ask her name?'

G.o.dolphin, now first aware of the indiscretion he had committed, and flattering himself that the chrystal had not been inspected, answered with an affectation of pleasantry--'Oh! I believe it is a secret between my sister and her friend which I have no right to reveal; and to tell you the truth I teized Adelina to give me the picture, and obtained it only on condition of not shewing it.'

Delamere, who had so often sworn to forget her, still fancied he had a right to be exclusively acquainted with all that related to Emmeline. He felt himself piqued by this evasion, and answered somewhat quickly--'I know the drawing, Sir; it is done by Miss Mowbray.'

G.o.dolphin was then compelled to answer 'that it was.'