Adeline Mowbray Part 16

He found Mrs Mowbray with her heart shut up, not softened by sorrow.

The hands once stretched forth with kindness to welcome him, were now stiffly laid one upon the other; and 'How are you, sir?' coldly articulated, was followed by as cold a 'Pray sit down.'

'Why, how ill you look!' exclaimed the doctor.

'I attend more to my feelings than my looks,' with a deep sigh, answered Mrs Mowbray.

'Your feelings are as bad as your looks, I dare say.'

'They are worse, sir,' said Mrs Mowbray piqued.

'There was no need of that,' replied the doctor: 'but I am come to point out to you one way of getting rid of some of your unpleasant feelings:--see, and forgive your daughter.'

Mrs Mowbray started, changed colour, and exclaimed with quickness, 'Is she in England?' but added instantly, 'I have no daughter:--she, who was my child, is my most inveterate foe; she has involved me in disgrace and misery.'

'With a little of your own help she has,' replied the doctor. 'Come, come, my old friend, you have both of you something to forget and forgive; and the sooner you set about it the better. Now do write, and tell Adeline, who is by this time in London, that you forgive her.'

'Never:--after having promised me not to hold converse with that villain without my consent? Had I no other cause of complaint against her;--had she not by her coquettish arts seduced the affections of the man I loved:--never, never would I forgive her having violated the sacred promise which she gave me.'

'A promise,' interrupted the doctor, 'which she would never have violated, had not you first violated that sacred compact which you entered into at her birth.'

'What mean you, sir?'

'I mean, that though a parent does not, at a child's birth, solemnly make a vow to do all in his or her power to promote the happiness of that child,--still, as he has given it birth, he has tacitly bound himself to make it happy. This tacit agreement you broke, when at the age of forty, you, regardless of your daughter's welfare, played the fool and married a pennyless profligate, merely because he had a fine person and a handsome leg.'

Mrs Mowbray was too angry and too agitated to interrupt him, and he went on:

'Well, what was the consequence? The young fellow very naturally preferred the daughter to the mother; and, as he could not have her by fair, was resolved to have her by foul means; and so he--'

'I beg, Dr Norberry,' interrupted Mrs Mowbray in a faint voice, 'that you would spare the disgusting recital.'

'Well, well, I will. Now do consider the dilemma your child was in: she must either elope, or by her presence keep alive a criminal pa.s.sion in her father-in-law, which you sooner or later must discover; and be besides exposed to fresh insults.--Well, Glenmurray by chance happened to be on the spot just as she escaped from that villanous fellow's clutches, and--'

'He is dead, Dr Norberry,' interrupted Mrs Mowbray; 'and you know the old adage, "Do not speak ill of the dead."'

'And a very silly adage it is. I had rather speak ill of the dead than the living, for my part: but let me go on.--Well, love taking the name and habit of prudence and filial piety, (for she thought she consulted your happiness, and not her own,) bade her fly to and with her lover; and now there she is, owing to the pretty books which you let her read, living with him as his mistress, and glorying in it, as if it was a notable praiseworthy action.'

'And you would have me forgive her?'

'Certainly: a fault which both your precepts and conduct occasioned. Not but what the girl has been wrong, terribly wrong:--no one ought to do evil that good may come. You had forbidden her to have any intercourse with Glenmurray; and she therefore knew that disobeying you would make you unhappy--that was a certainty. That fellow's persevering in his attempts, after the fine rebuff which she had given him, was an uncertainty; and she ought to have run the risk of it, and not committed a positive fault to avoid a possible evil. But then hers was a fault which she could not have committed had not you married that--but I forbear. And as to her not being married to Glenmurray, that is no fault of his; and with your consent, he will marry your daughter to-morrow morning. That ever so good, cleanly-hearted a youth should have poked his nose into the filthy mess of eccentric philosophy!'

'Have you done, doctor?' cried Mrs Mowbray haughtily: 'have you said all that Miss Mowbray and you have invented to insult me?'

'Your child send me to insult you!--She!--Adeline!--Why, the poor soul came broken-hearted and post haste from France, when she heard of your misfortunes, to offer her services to console you.'

'She console me?--she, the first occasion of them?--But for her, I might still have indulged the charming delusion, even if it were delusion, that love of me, not of my wealth, induced the man I doted upon to commit a crime to gain possession of me.'

'Why!' hastily interrupted the doctor, 'everyone saw that he loved her long before he married you.'

The storm, long gathering, now burst forth; and rising, with the tears, high colour, and vehement voice of unbridled pa.s.sion, Mrs Mowbray exclaimed, raising her arm and clenching her fist as she spoke, 'And it is being the object of that cruel preference, which I never, never will forgive her!'

The doctor, after e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. 'Whew!' as much as to say 'The murder is out,' instantly took his hat and departed, convinced his labour was vain. 'There,' muttered he as he went down stairs, 'two instances in one day! Ah, ah,--that jealousy is the devil.' He then slowly walked to the hotel, where he expected to find Adeline and Glenmurray.

They had arrived about two hours before; and Adeline in a frame of mind but ill fitted to bear the disappointment which awaited her. For, with the sanguine expectations natural to her age, she had been castle-building as usual; and their journey to London had been rendered a very short one, by the delightful plans, for the future, which she had been forming and imparting to Glenmurray.

'When I consider,' said she, 'the love which my mother has always shown for me, I cannot think it possible that she can persist in renouncing me; and however her respect for the prejudices of the world, a world which she intended to live in at the time of her unfortunate connexion, might make her angry at my acting in defiance of its laws,--now that she herself, from a sense of injury and disgrace, is about to retire from it, she will no longer have a motive to act contrary to the dictates of reason herself, or to wish me to do so.'

'But your ideas of reason and hers may be so different--'

'No. Our practice may be different, but our theory is the same, and I have no doubt but that my mother will now forgive and receive us; and that, living in a romantic solitude, being the whole world to each other, our days will glide away in uninterrupted felicity.'

'And how shall we employ ourselves?' said Glenmurray smiling.

'You shall continue to write for the instruction of your fellow-creatures; while my mother and I shall be employed in endeavouring to improve the situation of the poor around us, and perhaps in educating our children.'

Adeline, when animated by any prospect of happiness, was irresistible: she was really Hope herself, as described by Collins--

'But thou, oh Hope, with eyes so fair, What was thy delighted measure!'

and Glenmurray, as he listened to her, forgot his illness; forgot every thing, but what Adeline chose to imagine. The place of their retreat was fixed upon. It was to be a little village near Falmouth, the scene of their first happiness. The garden was laid out; Mrs Mowbray's library planned; and so completely were they lost in their charming prospects for the future, that every turnpike-man had to wait a longer time than he was accustomed to for his money; and the postillion had driven into London in the way to the hotel, before Adeline recollected that she was, for the first time, in a city which she had long wished most ardently to see.

They had scarcely taken up their abode at the hotel recommended to them by Dr Norberry, when he knocked at the door. Adeline from the window had seen him coming; and sure as she thought herself to be of her mother's forgiveness, she turned sick and faint when the decisive moment was at hand; and, hurrying out of the room, she begged Glenmurray to receive the doctor, and apologize for her absence.

Glenmurray awaited him with a beating heart. He listened to his step on the stairs: it was slow and heavy; unlike that of a benevolent man coming to communicate good news. Glenmurray began immediately to tremble for the peace of Adeline; and, hastily pouring out a gla.s.s of wine, was on the point of drinking it when Dr Norberry entered.

'Give me a gla.s.s,' cried he: 'I want one, I am sure, to recruit my spirits.' Glenmurray in silence complied with his desire. 'Come, I'll give you a toast,' cried the doctor: 'Here is--'

At this moment Adeline entered. She had heard the doctor's last words, and she thought he was going to drink to the reconciliation of her mother and herself; and hastily opening the door she came to receive the good news which awaited her. But, at sight of her, the toast died unfinished on her old friend's lips; he swallowed down the wine in silence, and then taking her hand led her to the sofa.

Adeline's heart began to die within her; and before the doctor, after having taken a pinch of snuff and blowed his nose full three times, was prepared to speak, she was convinced that she had nothing but unwelcome intelligence to receive; and she awaited in trembling expectation an answer to a 'Well, sir,' from Glenmurray, spoken in a tone of fearful emotion.

'No, it is not well, sir,' replied the doctor.

'You have seen my mother?' said Adeline, catching hold of the arm of the sofa for support: and in an instant Glenmurray was by her side.

'I have seen Mrs Mowbray, but not your mother: for I have seen a woman dead to every graceful impulse of maternal affection, and alive only to a selfish sense of rivals.h.i.+p and hatred. My poor child! G.o.d forgive the deluded woman! But I declare she detests you!'

'Detests me?' exclaimed Adeline.

'Yes; she swears that she can never forgive the preference which that vile fellow gave you, and I am convinced that she will keep her word;'

and here the doctor, turning round, saw Adeline lying immoveable in Glenmurray's arms. But she did not long remain so, and with a frantic scream kept repeating the words 'She detests me!' till unable to contend any longer with the acuteness of her feelings, she sunk, sobbing convulsively, exhausted on the bed to which they carried her.

'My good friend, my only friend,' cried Glenmurray, 'what is to be done?

Will she scream again, think you, in that most dreadful and unheard-of manner? For, if she does, I must run out of the house.'

'What, then, she never treated you in this pretty way before, heh?'

'Never, never. Her self-command has always been exemplary.'

'Indeed?--Lucky fellow! My wife and daughters often scream just as loud, on very trifling occasions: but that scream went to my heart; for I well know how to distinguish between the shriek of agony and that of pa.s.sion.'