Home Influence Part 36

"And my uncle--" said Edward, hesitatingly.

"Must be told; but I will answer for him that he will be neither harsh nor unjust, nor even severe. I will write to him myself, and trust to convince him that your repentance, and resolution are sufficiently sincere, to permit you a second trial, without referring to Sir Edward.

You have done nothing to expel you from your profession; but it depends on yourself to become truly worthy of its n.o.ble service."

There was much in the sad tale he had heard to give hope, and Mr. Howard longed to impart its comfort to Mrs. Hamilton; but he felt she could not listen. While day after day pa.s.sed, and the poor sufferer for another's errors lay hovering between life and death, reason so utterly suspended, that even when the violent agony of the first seven days and nights had subsided into lethargic stupors, alternating with such quiet submission and gentle words, that, had it not been for their wandering sense, one might have fancied intellect returning; still reason was absent--and, though none said it aloud, the fear would gain dominion, that health might return, but not the mind. The first advice had been procured--what was distance, even then, to wealth?--every remedy resorted to. Her luxuriant hair cut close, and ice itself applied to cool that burning, throbbing pain; but all had seemed vain, till its cessation, at the end of seven days, somewhat renewed Mr. Maitland's hope.

Not one tear had Mrs. Hamilton shed, and so excessive had been her fatigue, that Miss Harcourt and her children trembled for her; conjuring her, for their sakes, for her husband's, to take repose. Mr. Maitland's argument, that when Ellen recovered her senses (which he a.s.sured her now he had little doubt she would eventually), she would need the soothing comfort of her presence still more than she could then, and her strength must fail before that--if she so exhausted it--carried more weight than all the rest; and her daughters had the inexpressible relief of finding that when, in compliance with their tearful entreaties, she did lie down, she slept, and slept refres.h.i.+ngly, for nature was exhausted. There was much of comfort in those days of trial, which Mrs. Hamilton fully realized, when Ellen's convalescence permitted her to recall it, though at the time it seemed unnoticed. That Caroline's strong mind and good heart should urge her to do every thing in her power to save her mother trouble, even to entreat Ellis and Morris to show her, and let her attend to the weekly duties with them, and accomplish them so earnestly and well, that both these faithful domestics were astonished and delighted, was not surprising; for hers was a character to display its better qualities in such emergencies. But that Emmeline should so effectually rouse herself from the overwhelming grief, which had at first a.s.sailed her at Ellen's fearful sufferings and great danger, as to be a comfort alike to her mother and Edward, and a.s.sist Caroline whenever she could, even trying to be hopeful and cheerful for others'

sakes, till she actually became so, _was_ so unexpected, from the grief she had indulged in when she parted from her father, that it did surprise. To be in the room with Ellen had so affected her at first, that she became pale, and so evidently terrified, that Mrs. Hamilton half desired her not to come, especially as she could do no good; and Mrs. Greville and Mary had tried to prevail on her to stay with them, but she would not hear of it.

"If I can do no good, can neither help mamma in nursing Ellen, nor do as Caroline does, I can, at least, try to comfort poor Edward, and I will not leave him. If I am so weak as not to be able to endure anxiety and sorrow without showing it, it shall not conquer me. No, no, dear Mary; come and see me as often as you like, but I can not leave home till mamma and Ellen and we are all happy again!"

And she did devote herself to Edward, and so successfully--with her gentle sympathy with his grief, her tender feeling toward his faults, her conviction of her father's forgiveness, her una.s.suming but heart-breathing piety, which, without one word unduly introduced of a subject so holy, for she felt herself much too lowly and ignorant to approach it--yet always led up his thoughts to G.o.d, and from one so young, so humble, and, in general, so joyous, had still greater effect in confirming his returning religious hope, than had his teachers been only those who were older and wiser than himself. However miserable he might be before she came, he looked to her society, her eloquence, as comfort and hope; and soon perceiving this, she was encouraged to go on, though quite astonished--for she could not imagine what she had done to deserve such commendation--when Mr. Howard, one day meeting her alone, took both her hands in his, and with even unusual fervor bade G.o.d bless her!--for young, lowly as she was, she not only comforted the erring, but raised and strengthened the penitent's trembling faith and hope.

Poor Edward! harder than all seemed to him his aunt's silence. He knew his sister entirely engrossed her--ill as Ellen was, it could not be otherwise; but he pa.s.sionately longed only for one word from her: that she forgave him the misery she was enduring. Not aware that such was his feeling, conscious herself that her sole feeling toward him was pity, not anger, and looking to herself alone as the cause of her poor child's sufferings, she did not think for a moment that he could imagine her never referring to his confession originated in displeasure.

Ten or twelve days had so pa.s.sed, when one afternoon, completely exhausted with two nights' watchfulness--for though nurse Langford and f.a.n.n.y were in constant attendance on Ellen, she could not rest if she heard that harrowing cry for her, even though her presence brought no comfort--she went to lie down for a few hours on a couch in her dressing-room. Caroline had taken a book, though with not much inclination to read, to sit by her, and watch that her sleep should not be disturbed. How in those moments of quiet did she long for her father!

feeling intuitively how much heavier was her mother's trial without his loved support. He had been written to by them all since Edward's confession. Mrs. Hamilton had done so in Ellen's room, only to beseech him to write forgivingly, forbearingly, to the unhappy cause of all. She did not dare breathe her feelings, even on paper, to him, convinced that if she did so, control must give way, and she was powerless at once; but her husband knew her so well that every suppression of individual emotion betrayed more forcibly than the most earnest words, all she was enduring.

Caroline had kept her affectionate vigil nearly two hours, when Edward's voice whispered, "Miss Harcourt wants you, dear Caroline; let me take your place, I will be quite as watchful as yourself; only let me stay here, you do not know the comfort it will be."

To resist his look of pleading wretchedness was impossible. She left him, and Edward drawing a low stool to the foot of the couch, as if not daring to occupy his cousin's seat, which was close by the pillow, gazed on the mild, gentle features of his aunt, as in their deep repose they showed still clearer the traces of anxiety and sorrow, and felt more keenly than ever the full amount of misery, which his errors and their fatal concealment had created. "Why is it," he thought, "that man can not bear the punishment of his faults without causing the innocent, the good, to suffer also?" And his heart seemed to answer, "Because by those very social ties, the strong impulses of love for one another, which would save others from woe, we may be preserved and redeemed from vice again, and yet again, when, were man alone the sufferer, vice would be stronger than remorse, and never be redeemed."

Mrs. Hamilton woke with that painful start which long watchfulness always occasions, and missing Caroline, yet feeling as if she were not alone, her eyes speedily fixed themselves in some surprise on the figure of her nephew, who, unable to bear the thoughts the sight of her exhaustion produced, had bent his head upon the couch. Inexpressibly touched, and glad of the opportunity to speak to him alone, she called him to her, and there was something in the tone that encouraged him to fling himself on his knees by her side, and sob like an infant, saying, almost inarticulately--

"Can you, will you, ever forgive me, aunt Emmeline? Your silence has almost broken my heart, for it seemed to say you never could; and when I look at my poor Ellen, and see how I have changed this happy home into sorrow and gloom and sin, for it is all my work--mine, whom you have loved, treated, trusted, as a son--I feel you can not forgive me; I ought to go from you; I have no right to pollute your home."

"Hush, Edward! do not give utterance or indulgence to any such thoughts.

My poor unhappy boy! your errors have brought such fearful chastis.e.m.e.nt from the hand of G.o.d himself, it is not for me to treat you harshly. May His mercy avert yet severer trial! I will not hear your story now; you are too agitated to tell it, and I am not at this moment strong enough to hear it. I am satisfied that you have confided all to Mr. Howard, and will be guided by him. Only tell me how came you first to apply to Ellen? Did the thought never strike you, that in sending relief to you, she might be exposing herself to inconvenience or displeasure? Was there no consideration due to her?"

"I never seemed to think of her, except as glad and willing to help me, at whatever cost to herself," was his reply. "I feel now the cruel selfishness of the belief--but, oh, aunt Emmeline, it was fostered in me from my earliest childhood, grew with my growth, increased with my years, received strength and meaning from my poor mother's utter neglect of her, and too indulgent thought for me. I never thought so till now, now that I know all my poor sister's meek and gentle worth, and it makes me still more miserable. I never could think her my equal; never could fancy she could have a will or wish apart from mine, and I can not trace the commencement of the feeling. Oh! if we had been but treated alike! but taught to so love each other, as to think of each other's happiness above our own, as you taught my cousins!"

"Do you know any thing of the promise to which poor Ellen so constantly refers?" inquired Mrs. Hamilton, after gently soothing his painful agitation.

He did not; but acknowledged that from the time they had become inmates of Oakwood, Ellen had constantly saved him from punishment by bearing the penalty of his faults; recalling numerous incidents, trifling in themselves, but which had always perplexed Mrs. Hamilton, as evincing such strange contradictions in Ellen's childish character, and none more so than the disobedience which we related in our second part, and which Edward's avowal of having himself moved the flower-stand, now so clearly explained. He said, too, that Mr. Howard had thought it necessary, for Ellen's perfect justification, to examine her letters and papers, but that all his appeals to her had been destroyed but one--his last fatal inclosure, the exact contents of which he had so utterly forgotten, written, as they were, in a moment of madness, that he shuddered himself as he read it. He placed the paper in Mrs. Hamilton's hand, conjuring her not to recall her forgiveness when she read it; but she must see it, it was the only amends he could make his poor Ellen, to exculpate her fully. Was it any wonder it had almost driven her wild? or that she should have scarcely known the means she adopted to send him the relief, which, as he deserved, had never reached him.

Mrs. Hamilton read the letter, and as thought after thought rose to her mind, connecting, defining, explaining Ellen's conduct from her fifteenth birthday, the day she received it, to the discovery of her sin, and her devoted silence afterward, trifling incidents which she had forgotten returned to add their weight of evidence, and increase almost to agony her self-reproach, for not seeing the whole before, and acting differently. She remembered now Ellen's procrastination in writing to Edward, the illness which followed, and could well understand her dread lest the finding the notes should be traced to that day, and so throw a suspicion on her brother, and her consequent firmness in refusing to state the day she had found them.

That long interview was one of inexpressible comfort to Edward; but though his unfeigned repentance and full confession gave his aunt hope for him, it did but increase her individual trial, as she returned to Ellen's couch, and listened to wanderings only too painfully explained by the tale she had heard.

CHAPTER X.

MISTAKEN IMPRESSIONS ERADICATED.

It was the seventeenth day of Ellen's illness, and for six-and-thirty hours she had slept profoundly, waking only at very long intervals, just sufficiently to swallow a few drops of port wine, which Mr. Maitland had ordered to be administered if she woke, and sunk to sleep again. It was that deep, still, almost fearful repose, for it is so like death, which we can scarcely satisfy ourselves is life, except by holding a gla.s.s at intervals to the lips, to trace if indeed it receive the moisture of the breath. And nurse Langford, Mrs. Hamilton, and Edward had, through these long hours, watched and scarcely stirred. For they knew that on her waking hung hope or misery, return of intellect, or its confirmed suspension. Mr. Maitland had particularly wished Edward to be with her when she recovered her senses, that his presence might seem as natural as either of her cousins; but he warned him that the least display of agitation on his part, or reference to the past, in her exhausted state, might be fatal to her. It was quite the evening. Widow Langford had lighted the lamp, and sat down by the fire, scarcely able to breathe freely, from the intensity of her hope that Ellen would recover. And if such were her feelings, what were Edward's and Mrs. Hamilton's? The former was kneeling on the right of the bed, his eyes alternately fixed on his sister, and buried in the coverlid. Mrs. Hamilton was on the opposite side, close to Ellen's pillow, the curtain drawn so far back, that the least change on the patient's countenance was discernible. Hour after hour had so pa.s.sed, the chimes that told their flight were scarcely heard by those anxious watchers. It was about eight o'clock, when a slight movement in Ellen made her aunt's heart so throb, as almost to deprive her of breath; her eyes unclosed, and a smile, such as Mrs. Hamilton had not seen for weeks, nay, months, circled her lips.

"Dear aunt, have I been ill? It seems such a long, long time since I have seen you, and my head feels so strange, so light; and this room, it is my own, I know, but I feel as if it did not belong to me, somehow. Do make my head clear, I can not think at all."

"Do not try to think yet, darling. You have been very, very ill, and to endeavor to think might hurt you. Strength will soon return now, I hope, and then your head will be quite clear again," returned Mrs. Hamilton, quietly and caressingly, though she so trembled with the change from sickening dread to certain hope, that she herself scarcely knew how she spoke at all.

"But what made me so ill, aunt? I feel as if it were some great pain; I can not remember any thing clearly, but yet it seems as if I had been very unhappy--and that--that you did not love me any more. Did any thing make me ill? Was it really so?"

"That I did not love you, my Ellen! Indeed, that was only fancy. You were very unhappy, as we were all, for Edward did not come as soon as we expected him, and the storms were very dreadful, and we feared his s.h.i.+p might have been wrecked, or cast ash.o.r.e, somewhere very far off, where we could not hear of him; and when you saw him, and knew he was safe, the anxiety and pain you had undergone, made you ill; you know a little thing will do that, dearest."

"But is he really safe, aunt Emmeline? Where is he?"

"Close by you, love. He has been as watchful and anxious a nurse as I have been. Poor fellow, you have given him a sad welcome, but you must make up for it, by-and-by."

Ellen looked languidly, yet eagerly round, as her aunt spoke, and her gaze fixed itself on her brother, who was struggling violently to suppress the emotion which, at the sound of her voice, in connected words, nearly overpowered him; and still more so, when Ellen said, more eagerly than she had yet spoken--

"Dear Edward! come and kiss me, and do not look so sad. I shall soon get well."

He bent over her, and kissed her repeatedly, trying in vain to say something, but he felt so choked, he could not; and Ellen held his hand, and looked earnestly, searchingly in his face, as if trying painfully to define the vague thoughts and memories which seemed all connected with him and with pain, but which would not take a distinct form. Her eye wandered from him for a moment to nurse Langford, who had come to the foot of the bed, and that seemed another face connected with the blank past, and then it fixed itself again on Edward, and her pale face so worked with the effort of thought, that Mrs. Hamilton became alarmed.

She saw, too, that Edward was growing paler and paler, and trembled for the continuance of his control. Taking Ellen's hand gently from his, and arranging her pillow at the same time, so as to turn her face rather from him, she said, playfully--

"You have looked at Edward long enough, Ellen, to be quite sure he is safe at home. So now I shall be jealous if you give him any more of your attention and neglect me; you must take some nourishment, and try to go to sleep again, for I must not have you try your strength too much."

"If I could but remember clearly," answered Ellen, sadly; "it is all so vague--so dark--but I do not think it was only because he did not come, that made me so unhappy."

"You are not going to be disobedient, dearest," replied Mrs. Hamilton, firmly, though fondly, as she hastily signed to Edward to leave the room, which he most thankfully did, never stopping till he reached his own, and tried to thank G.o.d for His great mercy, but could only sob. "I told you not to think, because to do so might r.e.t.a.r.d return of strength, and indeed you must try and obey me; you know I am very peremptory sometimes." And the fond kiss with which she enforced the command seemed to satisfy Ellen, whose natural submissiveness, combined with excessive physical weakness, caused her to obey at once, and not attempt to think any more. She took the required nourishment with returning appet.i.te, and soon afterward fell quietly and happily to sleep again, her aunt's hand closely clasped in hers.

From that day, all fear of disordered intellect departed, and, gradually, the extreme exhaustion gave way before Mr. Maitland's judicious treatment. Strength, indeed, returned so slowly and almost imperceptibly, that it was necessary to count improvement by weeks, not days. And when, six weeks after her first seizure, she was thought well enough to be carried to Mrs. Hamilton's dressing-room, and laid on a couch there, it was a source of grat.i.tude and rejoicing to all. But Mr.

Maitland and Mrs. Hamilton soon saw, with intense anxiety, that with physical strength, memory and thought had both fully returned, and that their consequence was a depression so deep, as effectually to r.e.t.a.r.d her perfect recovery. She seemed to shrink from all attention, all kindness, as utterly undeserved, even from her cousins. She would look at Edward for half an hour together, with an expression of suffering that made the heart actually ache. At times she would receive Mrs. Hamilton's caressing and judicious tenderness as if it were her only comfort, at others, shrink from it, as if she had no right to it.

"This will never do," Mr. Maitland said, about ten days after Ellen's removal into her daily quarters, and finding she was losing ground; "there is something on her mind, which must be removed, even if to do so, you refer to the past. She remembers it all too clearly, I fear, so our not alluding to it does no good. You must be the physician in this case, my dear Mrs. Hamilton, for I am powerless."

But though she quite agreed with him, how to approach such a very painful subject required no little consideration; but, as is very often the case, chance does that on which we have expended so much thought.

One afternoon Ellen lay so still, so pale, on her couch, that Mrs.

Hamilton bent over her to listen if she breathed, saying as she did so, almost unconsciously--

"My poor Ellen, when shall I have the comfort of seeing you well and happy again?"

Ellen hastily unclosed her eyes, for she was not asleep--it had been only the stupor of painfully-engrossing thought, rendering her insensible to all outward things, but her aunt's voice aroused her, and it seemed an inexpressible relief to feel they were quite alone. Trying to rise, and clasping her hands, she said, in a tone of strong excitement--

"Oh, aunt Emmeline, how can I be happy--how can I be well--when I think--think--that if it had not been for my sin, and the misery it brought on me, Edward might be safe still? no one need have known his errors. I tried to save--and--and I have only betrayed, and made him wretched. All I suffered was for nothing, worse than nothing!"

"Thank G.o.d, you have spoken, my dear child! I felt as if I dared not introduce the subject; but now that you have yourself, I think I shall be able, if indeed you will listen to me patiently, Ellen, to disperse the painful mists, that are still pressing so heavily on this poor little heart and brain," she said, fondly, though seriously, as she put her arm round Ellen, to support her as she sat up. "I do not tell you it is not a natural feeling, my love, but it is a wrong one. Had your sin, in consideration of its being, as I am now convinced it was, wholly involuntary--for in the fearful state of mind Edward's desperate letter occasioned, you could not have known or thought of any thing, but that relief seemed sent to your hand--had it on that account been permitted so far to succeed, as to give him the aid he demanded, and never have been traced to you, it would have confirmed him in the path of guilt and error, and poisoned your happiness forever. When you recall the agony, almost madness you felt, while burdened with the consciousness of such an act, how could you have borne it, if it had continued through months, perhaps years? You shudder; yet this must have been the case, and Edward would have persisted in error, if your sin had been permitted to succeed. Its detection, and the sufferings thence springing, terrible as they have been to you, my poor child, have saved him; and will, I trust, only bring securer happiness to you."

"Saved him!" repeated Ellen, half starting up, and scarcely hearing the last words--"saved Edward!"

"Yes, dearest, by leading him to a full confession, and giving him not only the inexpressible comfort of such a proceeding, but permitting him to see, that great and disappointing as his errors are, they can be conquered. They are not of the irremediable, guilt-confirming nature, that he was taught to suppose them for Harding's own most guilty ends, and so giving him hope and resolution to amend, which a belief that amendment is impossible, entirely frustrates. Do not fear for Edward, my own love; he will give you as much pride and comfort as he has anxiety and grief; and you, under G.o.d's mercy, will have been the cause. It is a hard lesson to learn, and yet, Ellen, I think one day, when you can look back more calmly on the last few months, you will acknowledge with me, that great as your sufferings have been, they were sent in love both to him and to you."

"If they have saved him--saved him from a continuance in error, and so made him happy!--Oh, aunt Emmeline, I can think so now, and I will try to bear the rest? but why," she added, growing more excited, "oh, why have you been so good, so kind? Why did you not continue cold and distant? I could bear it better, then."