Discipline

What this intelligence was, I saw that she hesitated to announce. Her hesitation alarmed me, for I was obliged to infer from it, that she had news to communicate which concerned me yet more nearly than the desertion of Lord Frederick. Already in a state of irritation which admitted not of cool enquiry, I mixed my scornful expressions of indifference as to the conduct of my renegado lover, with breathless, half-uttered questions of its cause. 'Indeed, Miss Percy,' stammered Lady St Edmunds, 'it is a very – very disagreeable office which Lord Frederick has thought fit to lay upon me. To be sure, every one is liable to misfortune, and I dare say you will show that you can bear it with proper spirit. Your father – but you tremble – you had better swallow a little wine.'

'What of my father?' I exclaimed; and with an impatience which burst through all restraints, I snatched the letter from her hands; and, in spite of her endeavours to prevent me, glanced over its contents. I have accidentally preserved this specimen of modern sentiment, and shall here transcribe it: —

'My dear St E., – The Percys are blown to the devil. The old one has failed for near a million. By the luckiest chance upon earth, I heard of it not five minutes before I was to set out. See what a narrow escape I have had from blowing out my own brains. I would have despatched Hodson sooner, but waited to make sure of the fact. I shall set about Darnel immediately – a confounded exchange, for the Percy was certainly the finest girl in London. By the by, make the best story you can for me. I know she likes me, for all her wincing; and I shall need some little private comfort, if I marry that ugly thing Darnel.

    'Yours ever,
    'F. De Burgh.

'You need not quake for your five thousand – Darnel will bite at once.'

The amazement with which I read this letter instantly gave place to doubts of the misfortune which it announced. I had been so accustomed to rest secure in the possession of splendid affluence, that a sudden reverse appeared incredible. It occurred to me that some groundless report must have misled Lord Frederick, who was thus outwitted by his own avarice. But, when I reached the close of his sentimental billet, scorn and indignation overpowered every other feeling. 'The luckiest chance!' I exclaimed. 'Well may he call it so! Oh what a wretch have I escaped! What a complication of all that is basest and vilest! – No!' said I, detaining with a disdainful smile the letter, which Lady St Edmunds reached her hand to receive, 'No! this I will keep, as a memorial of the disinterestedness of man, and the "passionate temperament" of Lord Frederick de Burgh. Now, I suppose your Ladyship will not object to returning instantly to town.'

Lady St Edmunds, who actually seemed to quail beneath my eye, made no objection to this proposal; but followed in silence, as I haughtily led the way to the carriage. We entered, and it drove rapidly homewards.

My thoughts again recurring to the letter, another light now flashed upon me; and a stronger burst of resentment swelled my heart. 'This epistle,' I suddenly exclaimed, 'is a master-teacher. It shows me the sincerity of friends, as well as the tenderness of lovers. Where was your boasted friendship, Lady St Edmunds? – where was your common humanity, when you took advantage of a foolish pity – a mistaken sense of honour – to lure me into a marriage with that heartless earth-worm? Me, whom you pretended to love, – me, whom in common justice and gratitude – ' The remembrance of all my affection for this treacherous friend choked my voice, and forced bitter – bitter tears to my eyes; but pride, with a strong effort, suppressed the gentler feeling, and I turned scornfully from the futile excuses and denials of my false counsellor.

Resentment, however, at length began to give place to apprehension, when I reflected upon the decisive terms in which Lord Frederick announced my father's ruin, and the certainty which he must have attained of the fact, before he could have determined finally to relinquish his pursuit. Some circumstances tended to confirm his assertion. I now recollected the letter which my father had read with such evident emotion; and his unusual absence in the morning, before the customary hours of business. I vainly endeavoured to balance against these his late boast of his immense possessions, and the improbability of a wreck so sudden.

In spite of myself, an anxious dread fell upon me. My knees trembled; my face now glowed with a hurried flush; and now a cold shudder ran through my limbs. But disdaining to expose my alarm to her who had betrayed my security, I proudly struggled with my anguish, affecting a careless disbelief of my misfortune, and an easy scorn of the summer friendships which had fled from its very name. I even strove to jest upon Lord Frederick's premature desertion, bursting at times into wild hysterical laughter.

The duration of our journey seemed endless; yet when I came within sight of my father's house, I would have given a universe to delay the certainty of what I feared. Every breath became almost a sob, – every movement convulsive, while, in the agony of suppressed emotion, I fixed my straining eyes upon my home, as if they could have penetrated into the souls of its inhabitants. The carriage stopped; and, scarcely hearing Lady St Edmunds' polite excuse for not entering the house of mourning, I sprang towards the door.

It was long ere my repeated summons was answered. 'Has my father enquired for me?' I hastily demanded, as I entered.

'No, ma'am, – he never spoke.'

'Is he at home?'

'Mr Percy is – is in the house, ma'am, but – ' The man paused, and his face wore a ghastly expression of horror.

A dark and shapeless dread rushed across my mind; but the cup was already full, and I could bear no more. I sunk down in strong convulsions.

And must I recall those hours of horror? – Must I bare, one by one, the wounds which no time can heal? – Must I retrace, step by step, the fearful way which led me to the very verge of madness?

Could I but escape one horrible picture, I would meet, without recoiling, the remembrance of the rest. But it must not be. To make my melancholy tale intelligible, the arrow must once more enter into my soul, and the truth be told, though it palsy the hand that writes it.

A long forgetfulness was varied only by dim recollections, which came and went like the fitful dreams of delirium. My first distinct impression of the past was formed, when, awaking as if from a deep sleep, I found myself alone in my chamber. My flight, – the humiliation which it had brought upon me, – the treachery of my friend, – the prospect of ruin, all stood at once before me.

My soul, already wounded by affection abused, felt the deserted loneliness in which I was left as a confirmation of the dreaded evil. Juliet Arnold, the companion of my pleasures, came to my thoughts, and her absence stung me like neglect. 'All, all have forsaken me,' thought I. 'Yet there is one heart still open to me. My father will love me still. My father will take me to his breast. And if I must hear the worst, I will hear it from him who has never betrayed me, – who will never cast me off.'

With thoughts like these I quitted my bed, and stole feebly towards my father's apartment. The lights which were wont to blaze cheerfully, – the attendants who used to crowd the halls, – were vanished. A dark twilight faintly showed my way. A strange and dreary silence reigned around me.

I entered my father's chamber. A red glare from the sky gave it a dismal increase of light. Upon a couch lay a form that seemed my father's. The face I saw not. A cloth frightfully stained with blood – No! – It cannot be told.

CHAPTER XV

– And yet I breathed!
But not the breath of human life!
A serpent round my heart was wreathed,
And stung my every thought to strife.
Alike all time! Abhorred all place!
Shuddering I shrunk from nature's face,
Where every line that charmed before,
The blackness of my bosom wore.

    Lord Byron.
From long and dangerous faintings, I revived almost to frenzy. I shed no tears. These are the expression of a milder form of suffering. One horrible image filled my soul; one sense of anguish so strong, so terrible, that every other feeling, – every faculty of mind and body was benumbed in its grasp. Vainly did my awful duties summon me to their performance. I was incapable of action, almost of thought. My eye wandered over surrounding objects, but saw them not. The words which were spoken to me conveyed no meaning to my mind.

At length the form of my early friend seemed to flit before me. She spoke; and though I could not follow the meaning of her words, the sounds were those of kindness. The familiar voice, long associated with so many kindly thoughts, reached the heart, waking a milder tone of feeling; and resting my throbbing head upon her breast, I found relief in a passionate burst of tears. Little did I think how small was the share which friendship or compassion could claim in this visit of my friend to the house of mourning! Little did I guess that its chief motive was to rescue the gifts of my prodigality from being confounded with the property of a bankrupt!

She did not long remain with me; for friends more sympathising than she are soon weary of witnessing the unrestrained indulgence of grief. Yet she did not leave me abruptly. She was too much accustomed to follow the smooth path of conciliation, that she continued to pursue it even when it no longer promised advantage; and she satisfied me with some plausible excuse for going, and with a promise of speedy return.

The tears which for many hours I continued to shed relieved my oppressed spirit; and by degrees I awoke to a full sense of my altered state. From the proudest security of affluence, – from a fearless confidence in myself, and in all around me, one fatal stroke had dashed me for ever. A darker storm had burst upon me, and wrought a ruin more deep, more irretrievable. That tie, which not the hardest heart resigns without pain, had been torn from mine with force sudden and terrible; and a pang unutterable had been added to that misfortune which turns love, and reverence, and gratitude into anguish. What could be added to those horrors, except that conscience should rise in her fury to remind me that, when my presence might have soothed my father's sorrows, I had been absent with an injurious purpose; and that the arrows of misfortune had been rendered mortal by the rebellion of his child? This last incurable pang the mercy of Heaven has saved me. I learned that my father died ignorant of my intended flight.

Miss Arnold, I found, had quitted our house for that of her brother, as soon as our last and worst disaster was discovered by the domestics. Of all the summer friends who had amused my prosperity, not one approached to comfort my affliction. Even my servants, chosen without regard to their moral character, and treated with reference to its improvement; corrupted by the example of dissipation; undisciplined and uninstructed, – repaid the neglect of my domestic duties by a hardened carelessness of my wants and will. After the first transports of grief had subsided, I observed this desertion; and I felt it with all the jealousy of misfortune. Not three days were passed since a crowd of obsequious attendants had anticipated my commands; now I could scarcely obtain even the slight service which real necessity required.

The remains of my unfortunate father still lay near me; and, unable to overcome my horror of passing the chamber of death, I remained entirely secluded in my apartment. The first intruder upon this seclusion was the person who came to seal my father's repositories of papers and money. Having performed his office elsewhere, he entered my apartment with little ceremony; and, telling me that he understood my father had intrusted me with jewels of value, informed me, that it was necessary to prevent access to them for the present. Accustomed as I was to receive all outward testimonies of respect, the intrusion of a stranger at such a time appeared to me a savage outrage. I was ignorant of all the forms of business; and his errand assumed the nature of the most insulting suspicion. Had all the jewels of the earth lain at my feet he might have borne them away unresisted by me; but the proud spirit which grief had bowed almost to the dust roused itself at once to repel insult; and, pointing to the casket, I haughtily commanded him to do his office quickly and begone. By this sally of impatience, a few trinkets of value which I might have justly claimed as my own were lost to me, being contained in the casket which I thus suffered to be appropriated.

Insulted as I thought, and persecuted in my only place of refuge, I became desirous to quit my dismal abode. I imagined, that whatever impropriety there might be in the continuance of Juliet's residence in my desolate habitation, there could be no reason to deter me from taking refuge with my friend; – my gentle, my affectionate friend, who had ever rejoiced in my prosperity, and gloried in my accomplishments, and loved even my faults. Checking the tears which gushed from my eyes at the thought that a father's roof must shelter me no more, I announced my intention to my friend in a short billet: – 'Come to me, dearest Juliet,' I said, 'come and take me from this house of misery, I only stipulate, that you will not ask me to join your brother's family circle. I wish to see no human being except yourself, – for who is there left me to love but you? – Your own Ellen Percy.'

The servant whom I despatched with this note brought back for answer, that Miss Arnold was not at home. I had been accustomed to find every one, but especially Miss Arnold, ever ready to attend my pleasure; and even the easiest lessons of patience were yet new to the spoiled child of prosperity. My little disappointment was aggravated by the captiousness with which the unfortunate watch for instances of coldness and neglect. 'Not at home! Ah,' thought I, 'what pleasure should I have found in idle visiting or amusement, while she was wretched?' Still I never doubted, that the very hour of her return would bring her to welcome and to comfort her desolate friend. I waited impatiently, – listened to every sound; and started at every footstep which echoed through my dreary dwelling. But the cheerless evening closed in, and brought no friend. I passed the hours, now in framing her excuse, now in reproaching her unkindness, till the night was far spent; then laid my weary head upon my pillow, and wept myself to sleep.

The morning came, and I rose early, that I might be ready to accompany my friend without delay. But I took my comfortless meal alone. Alone I passed the hour in which Juliet and I had been accustomed to plan the pastime of the day. The hour came at which my gay equipage was wont to attend our call. Just then I heard a carriage stop at the door, and my sad heart gave one feeble throb of pleasure; for I doubted not that Juliet was come. It was the hearse which came to bear my father to his grave. – Juliet, and all things but my lost father, were for a time forgotten.

But as the paroxysm of sorrow subsided, I again became sensible to this unkind delay. My billet had now been so long despatched without obtaining a reply even of cold civility, that I began to doubt the faithfulness of my messenger, I refused to believe that my note had ever reached Miss Arnold; and I endeavoured to shut my eyes against the indifference which even in that case was implied in her leaving me so long to solitary affliction. I was going once more to summon the bearer of my melancholy billet, that I might renew my enquiries in regard to its delivery, when the long expected answer was at length brought to me. I impatiently tore it open, anxious to learn what strong necessity had compelled my friend to substitute for her own presence this colder form of welcome. No welcome, even of the coldest form, was there. With many expressions of condolence, and some even of affection, she informed me of her sorrow 'that she could not receive my visit. I must be aware,' she said, 'that one whose good name was her only dowry should guard the frail treasure with double care. Grieved as she was to wound me, she was obliged to say, that the publicity of my elopement appeared to her brother an insuperable bar to the continuance of our intimacy. Resistance to his will,' she said, 'was impossible, even if that will had been less reasonable than, with grief, she confessed it to be. But though she must withhold all outward demonstrations of regard, she would ever remain my grateful and obedient servant.'

I sat motionless as the dead, whilst I deciphered these inhuman words. The icebolt had struck me to the heart. For a time I was stunned by the blow, and a dull stupor overpowered all recollection. Then, suddenly the anguish of abused affection, – the iron fangs of ingratitude, – entered into my soul; and all that grief, and all that indignation can inflict, burst in bitterness upon the wounded spirit. I gazed wildly on the cruel billet, while, twisting it in the grasp of agony, I wrenched it to atoms; then, raising to heaven an eye of blasphemy, I dared to insult the Father of Mercies with a cry for vengeance.

But the transport of passion quickly subsided into despair. I threw myself upon the ground; longing that the earth would open and shelter me from the baseness of mankind. I closed my eyes, and wished in bitterness of soul that it were for ever. Sometimes, as memory recalled some kinder endearment of my ill-requited affection, I would start as beneath the sudden stab of murder; then bow again my miserable head, and remain in the stillness of the grave.

No ray of consolation cheered me. The world, which had so lately appeared bright with pleasure, – the worthy habitation of beings benevolent and happy, was now involved in the gloom, and peopled with the unsightly shapes of darkness. While my mind glanced towards the selfishness of Lord Frederick, and the treachery of Lady St Edmunds, – while it dwelt upon the desertion of her who, for seven years, had shared my heart and all else that I had to bestow, the human kind appeared to me tainted with the malignity of fiends, and I alone born to be the victim of their craft, – the sport of their cruelty!

How often has the same merciless aspersion been cast upon their fellow-creatures by those who, like me, have repelled the friendship of the virtuous? How often, and how unjustly, do they who choose their associate for the hour of sunshine, complain when he shrinks from the bitter blast? Oh that my severe experience could warn unwary beings like myself! Oh that they would learn from my fate to shun the fellowship of the unprincipled! Even common reason may teach them to despair of awakening real regard in her whom infinite benefits cannot attach, – nor infinite excellence delight, – nor infinite forgiveness constrain. She wants the very stamina of generous affection; and is destined to wind her way through all the heartless schemes and cowardly apostasies of selfishness.

From the stupor of despair, I was roused by the entrance of the stranger who had before intruded. In the jealous reserve of an anguish too mighty to be profaned by exposure, I rose from my dejected posture; and, with frozen steadiness, enquired, 'what new indignity I had now to bear?' The stranger, awed as it seemed by something in my look and manner, informed me, not without respectful hesitation, that he was commissioned by the creditors to tell me I know not what of forms and rights, of willingness to allow me all reasonable accommodation, and such property as I might justly claim, and to remind me of the propriety of appointing a friend to watch over my further interests. One word only of the speech was fitted to arrest my attention. 'Friend!' I repeated, with a smile such as wrings the heart more than floods of womanly tears. 'Any one may do the office of a friend! Ay, even one of those kindly souls who drove my father to desperation, – who refused him the poor boon of delay, when delay might have retrieved all! Any of them can insult and renounce me. This is the modern office of a friend, is it not?'

The stranger, gazing on me with astonishment, proceeded to request, that I would name an early day for removing from my present habitation; since the creditors only waited for my departure, to dismiss the servants, and to bring my father's house, with all that it contained, to public sale. He added, that he was commissioned by them to present me with a small sum for my immediate occasions.

To be thus forcibly expelled from the home, where, till now, I could command; to be offered as an alms a pittance from funds which I had considered as my hereditary right; to be driven forth to the cold world with all my wounds yet bleeding, stung me as instances of severe injustice and oppression. My spirit, sore with recent injury, writhed under the rude touch. Already goaded almost to frenzy, I told the stranger, that 'had I recollected the rights of his employers, I would not have owed the shelter even of a single night to those whose barbarous exactions had destroyed my father; nor would I ever be indebted to their charity, so long as the humanity of the laws would bestow a little earth to cover me.'

I pulled the bell violently, and gave orders that a hackney-coach should be procured for me. It came almost immediately; and, without uttering another word, – without raising my eyes, – without one expression of feeling, except the convulsive shudderings of my frame, and the cold drops that stood upon my forehead, I passed the apartment where my father perished, – the spot where my mother poured upon me her last blessing, – and cast myself upon the wide world without a friend or home.

I ordered the carriage to an obscure street in the city; a narrow, dark, and airless lane. I had once in my life been obliged to pass through it, and it had impressed my mind as a scene of all that is dismal in poverty and confinement. This very impression made me now choose it for my abode; and I felt a strange and dreary satisfaction in adding this consummation to the horrors of my fate. As the carriage proceeded, I became sensible to the extreme disorder of my frame. Noise and motion were torture to nerves already in the highest state of irritation. Fever throbbed in every vein, and red flashes of light seemed to glare before my heavy eyes. A hope stole upon my mind that all was near a close. I felt a gloomy satisfaction in the thought, that surely my death would reach the heart of my false friend; that surely when she knew that I had found refuge in the grave from calumny and unkindness, she would wish that she had spared me the deadly pang; and would lament that she had doubled the burden which weighed me to the earth.

When the carriage reached the place of its destination, the coachman again applied to me for instructions; and I directed him to stop at any house where lodgings could be obtained. After several ineffectual enquiries, he drew up to the door of a miserable shop, where he was told that a single room was to be hired. 'Would you please to look into my little place yourself, madam?' said a decent-looking woman, who advanced to meet me. 'It is clean, though it be small, and I should be very happy that it would suit.'

'Any thing will suit me,' answered I.

'You, ma'am!' cried the woman in a tone of extreme surprise; then placing herself just opposite to me, she seemed hesitating whether or not she should allow me to pass. Indeed the contrast of my appearance with the accommodation which I sought might well have awakened suspicion. My mourning, in the choice of which I had taken no share, was in material the most expensive, and in form of the highest fashion. The wildness of despair was probably impressed on my countenance; and my tall figure, lately so light and so elastic, bent under sickness and dejection. The woman surveyed me with a curiosity, which in better days I would have ill endured; but perceiving me ready to sink to the ground, she relaxed her scrutiny, while she offered me a seat, which I eagerly accepted. She then went to the door, upon pretence of desiring the coachman to wait till I should ascertain whether her lodgings were such as I approved; and they entered on a conversation in which I heard my own name repeated. When she returned to me, she poured forth a torrent of words, the meaning of which I was unable to follow, but which seemed intended to apologise for some suspicion. Never imagining that my character could be the cause of hesitation, I fancied that the poor woman doubted of my ability to pay for my accommodation; and drawing out my purse, I put into her hands all that remained of an affluence which had so lately been the envy of thousands. 'It is but a little,' said I, 'but it will outlast me.'