An Oldport Romance
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Thomas Wentworth Higginson >> An Oldport Romance
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Hope bore Emilia into the light and purity and warmth, while
Malbone was shut out into the darkness and the chill. The only
two things to which he clung on earth, the two women between
whom his unsteady heart had vibrated, and both whose lives had
been tortured by its vacillation, went away from his sight
together, the one victim bearing the other victim in her arms.
Never any more while he lived would either of them be his
again; and had Dante known it for his last glimpse of things
immortal when the two lovers floated away from him in their sad
embrace, he would have had no such sense of utter banishment as
had Malbone then.
XVIII.
HOPE'S VIGIL.
HAD Emilia chosen out of life's whole armory of weapons the
means of disarming Hope, she could have found nothing so
effectual as nature had supplied in her unconsciousness.
Helplessness conquers. There was a quality in Emilia which
would have always produced something very like antagonism in
Hope, had she not been her sister. Had the ungoverned girl now
been able to utter one word of reproach, had her eyes flashed
one look of defiance, had her hand made one triumphant or angry
gesture, perhaps all Hope's outraged womanhood would have
coldly nerved itself against her. But it was another thing to
see those soft eyes closed, those delicate hands powerless,
those pleading lips sealed; to see her extended in graceful
helplessness, while all the concentrated drama of emotion
revolved around her unheeded, as around Cordelia dead. In what
realms was that child's mind seeking comfort; through what thin
air of dreams did that restless heart beat its pinions; in what
other sphere did that untamed nature wander, while shame and
sorrow waited for its awakening in this?
Hope knelt upon the floor, still too much strained and
bewildered for tears or even prayer, a little way from Emilia.
Once having laid down the unconscious form, it seemed for a
moment as if she could no more touch it than she could lay her
hand amid flames. A gap of miles, of centuries, of solar
systems, seemed to separate these two young girls, alone within
the same chamber, with the same stern secret to keep, and so
near that the hem of their garments almost touched each other
on the soft carpet. Hope felt a terrible hardness closing over
her heart. What right had this cruel creature, with her fatal
witcheries, to come between two persons who might have been so
wholly happy? What sorrow would be saved, what shame, perhaps,
be averted, should those sweet beguiling eyes never open, and
that perfidious voice never deceive any more? Why tend the
life of one who would leave the whole world happier, purer,
freer, if she were dead?
In a tumult of thought, Hope went and sat half-unconsciously by
the window. There was nothing to be seen except the steady
beacon of the light-house and a pale-green glimmer, like an
earthly star, from an anchored vessel. The night wind came
softly in, soothing her with a touch like a mother's, in its
grateful coolness. The air seemed full of half-vibrations,
sub-noises, that crowded it as completely as do the insect
sounds of midsummer; yet she could only distinguish the ripple
beneath her feet, and the rote on the distant beach, and the
busy wash of waters against every shore and islet of the bay.
The mist was thick around her, but she knew that above it hung
the sleepless stars, and the fancy came over her that perhaps
the whole vast interval, from ocean up to sky, might be densely
filled with the disembodied souls of her departed human
kindred, waiting to see how she would endure that path of grief
in which their steps had gone before. "It may be from this
influence," she vaguely mused within herself, "that the ocean
derives its endless song of sorrow. Perhaps we shall know the
meaning when we understand that of the stars, and of our own
sad lives."
She rose again and went to the bedside. It all seemed like a
dream, and she was able to look at Emilia's existence and at
her own and at all else, as if it were a great way off; as we
watch the stars and know that no speculations of ours can reach
those who there live or die untouched. Here beside her lay one
who was dead, yet living, in her temporary trance, and to what
would she wake, when it should end? This young creature had
been sent into the world so fresh, so beautiful, so richly
gifted; everything about her physical organization was so
delicate and lovely; she had seemed like heliotrope, like a
tube-rose in her purity and her passion (who was it said, "No
heart is pure that is not passionate"?); and here was the end!
Nothing external could have placed her where she was, no
violence, no outrage, no evil of another's doing, could have
reached her real life without her own consent; and now what
kind of existence, what career, what possibility of happiness
remained? Why could not God in his mercy take her, and give
her to his holiest angels for schooling, ere it was yet too
late?
Hope went and sat by the window once more. Her thoughts still
clung heavily around one thought, as the white fog clung round
the house. Where should she see any light? What opening for
extrication, unless, indeed, Emilia should die? There could be
no harm in that thought, for she knew it was not to be, and
that the swoon would not last much longer. Who could devise
anything? No one. There was nothing. Almost always in
perplexities there is some thread by resolutely holding to
which one escapes at last. Here there was none. There could
probably be no concealment, certainly no explanation. In a few
days John Lambert would return, and then the storm must break.
He was probably a stern, jealous man, whose very dulness, once
aroused, would be more formidable than if he had possessed
keener perceptions.
Still her thoughts did not dwell on Philip. He was simply a
part of that dull mass of pain that beset her and made her
feel, as she had felt when drowning, that her heart had left
her breast and nothing but will remained. She felt now, as
then, the capacity to act with more than her accustomed
resolution, though all that was within her seemed boiling up
into her brain. As for Philip, all seemed a mere negation;
there was a vacuum where his place had been. At most the
thought of him came to her as some strange, vague thrill of
added torture, penetrating her soul and then passing; just as
ever and anon there came the sound of the fog-whistle on
Brenton's Reef, miles away, piercing the dull air with its
shrill and desolate wail, then dying into silence.
What a hopeless cloud lay upon them all forever,--upon Kate,
upon Harry, upon their whole house! Then there was John
Lambert; how could they keep it from him? how could they tell
him? Who could predict what he would say? Would he take the
worst and coarsest view of his young wife's mad action or the
mildest? Would he be strong or weak; and what would be
weakness, and what strength, in a position so strange? Would
he put Emilia from him, send her out in the world desolate, her
soul stained but by one wrong passion, yet with her reputation
blighted as if there were no good in her? Could he be asked to
shield and protect her, or what would become of her? She was
legally a wife, and could only be separated from him through
convicted shame.
Then, if separated, she could only marry Philip. Hope nerved
herself to think of that, and it cost less effort than she
expected.
There seemed a numbness on that side, instead of pain. But
granting that he loved Emilia ever so deeply, was he a man to
surrender his life and his ease and his fair name, in a
hopeless effort to remove the ban that the world would place on
her. Hope knew he would not; knew that even the simple-hearted
and straightforward Harry would be far more capable of such
heroism than the sentimental Malbone. Here the pang suddenly
struck her; she was not so numb, after all!
As the leaves beside the window drooped motionless in the dank
air, so her mind drooped into a settled depression. She pitied
herself,--that lowest ebb of melancholy self-consciousness. She
went back to Emilia, and, seating herself, studied every line
of the girl's face, the soft texture of her hair, the veining
of her eyelids. They were so lovely, she felt a sort of
physical impulse to kiss them, as if they belonged to some
utter stranger, whom she might be nursing in a hospital. Emilia
looked as innocent as when Hope had tended her in the cradle.
What is there, Hope thought, in sleep, in trance, and in death,
that removes all harsh or disturbing impressions, and leaves
only the most delicate and purest traits? Does the mind
wander, and does an angel keep its place? Or is there really
no sin but in thought, and are our sleeping thoughts incapable
of sin? Perhaps even when we dream of doing wrong, the dream
comes in a shape so lovely and misleading that we never
recognize it for evil, and it makes no stain. Are our lives
ever so pure as our dreams?
This thought somehow smote across her conscience, always so
strong, and stirred it into a kind of spasm of introspection.
"How selfish have I, too, been!" she thought. "I saw only what
I wished to see, did only what I preferred. Loving Philip"
(for the sudden self-reproach left her free to think of him),
"I could not see that I was separating him from one whom he
might perhaps have truly loved. If he made me blind, may he
not easily have bewildered her, and have been himself
bewildered? How I tried to force myself upon him, too!
Ungenerous, unwomanly! What am I, that I should judge another?"
She threw herself on her knees at the bedside.
Still Emilia slept, but now she stirred her head in the
slightest possible way, so that a single tress of silken hair
slipped from its companions, and lay across her face. It was a
faint sign that the trance was waning; the slight pressure
disturbed her nerves, and her lips trembled once or twice, as
if to relieve themselves of the soft annoyance. Hope watched
her in a vague, distant way, took note of the minutest motion,
yet as if some vast weight hung upon her own limbs and made all
interference impossible. Still there was a fascination of
sympathy in dwelling on that atom of discomfort, that tiny
suffering, which she alone could remove. The very vastness of
this tragedy that hung about the house made it an inexpressible
relief to her to turn and concentrate her thoughts for a moment
on this slight distress, so easily ended.
Strange, by what slender threads our lives are knitted to each
other! Here was one who had taken Hope's whole existence in her
hands, crushed it, and thrown it away. Hope had soberly said
to herself, just before, that death would be better than life
for her young sister. Yet now it moved her beyond endurance to
see that fair form troubled, even while unconscious, by a
feather's weight of pain; and all the lifelong habit of
tenderness resumed in a moment its sway.
She approached her fingers to the offending tress, very slowly,
half withholding them at the very last, as if the touch would
burn her. She was almost surprised that it did not. She looked
to see if it did not hurt Emilia. But it now seemed as if the
slumbering girl enjoyed the caressing contact of the smooth
fingers, and turned her head, almost imperceptibly, to meet
them. This was more than Hope could bear. It was as if that
slight motion were a puncture to relieve her overburdened
heart; a thousand thoughts swept over her,--of their father, of
her sister's childhood, of her years of absent expectation; she
thought how young the girl was, how fascinating, how
passionate, how tempted; all this swept across her in a great
wave of nervous reaction, and when Emilia returned to
consciousness, she was lying in her sister's arms, her face
bathed in Hope's tears.
XIX.
DE PROFUNDIS.
THIS was the history of Emilia's concealed visits to Malbone.
One week after her marriage, in a crisis of agony, Emilia took
up her pen, dipped it in fire, and wrote thus to him:--
"Philip Malbone, why did nobody ever tell me what marriage is
where there is no love? This man who calls himself my husband
is no worse, I suppose, than other men. It is only for being
what is called by that name that I abhor him. Good God! what
am I to do? It was not for money that I married him,--that you
know very well; I cared no more for his money than for himself.
I thought it was the only way to save Hope. She has been very
good to me, and perhaps I should love her, if I could love
anybody. Now I have done what will only make more misery, for I
cannot bear it. Philip, I am alone in this wide world, except
for you. Tell me what to do. I will haunt you till you die,
unless you tell me. Answer this, or I will write again."
Terrified by this letter, absolutely powerless to guide the
life with which he had so desperately entangled himself, Philip
let one day pass without answering, and that evening he found
Emilia at his door, she having glided unnoticed up the main
stairway. She was so excited, it was equally dangerous to send
her away or to admit her, and he drew her in, darkening the
windows and locking the door. On the whole, it was not so bad
as he expected; at least, there was less violence and more
despair. She covered her face with her hands, and writhed in
anguish, when she said that she had utterly degraded herself by
this loveless marriage. She scarcely mentioned her husband.
She made no complaint of him, and even spoke of him as
generous. It seemed as if this made it worse, and as if she
would be happier if she could expend herself in hating him. She
spoke of him rather as a mere witness to some shame for which
she herself was responsible; bearing him no malice, but
tortured by the thought that he should exist.
Then she turned on Malbone. "Philip, why did you ever
interfere with my life? I should have been very happy with
Antoine if you had let me marry him, for I never should have
known what it was to love you. Oh! I wish he were here now,
even he,--any one who loved me truly, and whom I could love
only a little. I would go away with such a person anywhere, and
never trouble you and Hope any more. What shall I do? Philip,
you might tell me what to do. Once you told me always to come
to you."
"What can you do?" he asked gloomily, in return.
"I cannot imagine," she said, with a desolate look, more
pitiable than passion, on her young face. "I wish to save
Hope, and to save my--to save Mr. Lambert. Philip, you do not
love me. I do not call it love. There is no passion in your
veins; it is only a sort of sympathetic selfishness. Hope is
infinitely better than you are, and I believe she is more
capable of loving. I began by hating her, but if she loves you
as I think she does, she has treated me more generously than
ever one woman treated another. For she could not look at me
and not know that I loved you. I did love you. O Philip, tell
me what to do!"
Such beauty in anguish, the thrill of the possession of such
love, the possibility of soothing by tenderness the wild mood
which he could not meet by counsel,--it would have taken a
stronger or less sympathetic nature than Malbone's to endure
all this. It swept him away; this revival of passion was
irresistible. When her pent-up feeling was once uttered, she
turned to his love as a fancied salvation. It was a terrible
remedy. She had never looked more beautiful, and yet she seemed
to have grown old at once; her very caresses appeared to burn.
She lingered and lingered, and still he kept her there; and
when it was no longer possible for her to go without disturbing
the house, he led her to a secret spiral stairway, which went
from attic to cellar of that stately old mansion, and which
opened by one or more doors on each landing, as his keen eye
had found out. Descending this, he went forth with her into the
dark and silent night. The mist hung around the house; the wet
leaves fluttered and fell upon their cheeks; the water lapped
desolately against the pier. Philip found a carriage and sent
her back to Mrs. Meredith's, where she was staying during the
brief absence of John Lambert.
These concealed meetings, once begun, became an absorbing
excitement. She came several times, staying half an hour, an
hour, two hours. They were together long enough for suffering,
never long enough for soothing. It was a poor substitute for
happiness. Each time she came, Malbone wished that she might
never go or never return. His warier nature was feverish with
solicitude and with self-reproach; he liked the excitement of
slight risks, but this was far too intense, the vibrations too
extreme. She, on the other hand, rode triumphant over waves of
passion which cowed him. He dared not exclude her; he dared
not continue to admit her; he dared not free himself; he could
not be happy. The privacy of the concealed stairway saved them
from outward dangers, but not from inward fears. Their
interviews were first blissful, then anxious, then sad, then
stormy. It was at the end of such a storm that Emilia had
passed into one of those deathly calms which belonged to her
physical temperament; and it was under these circumstances that
Hope had followed Philip to the door.
XX.
AUNT JANE TO THE RESCUE.
THE thing that saves us from insanity during great grief is
that there is usually something to do, and the mind composes
itself to the mechanical task of adjusting the details. Hope
dared not look forward an inch into the future; that way
madness lay. Fortunately, it was plain what must come
first,--to keep the whole thing within their own walls, and
therefore to make some explanation to Mrs. Meredith, whose
servants had doubtless been kept up all night awaiting Emilia.
Profoundly perplexed what to say or not to say to her, Hope
longed with her whole soul for an adviser. Harry and Kate were
both away, and besides, she shrank from darkening their young
lives as hers had been darkened. She resolved to seek counsel
in the one person who most thoroughly distrusted Emilia,--Aunt
Jane.
This lady was in a particularly happy mood that day. Emilia,
who did all kinds of fine needle-work exquisitely, had just
embroidered for Aunt Jane some pillow-cases. The original
suggestion came from Hope, but it never cost Emilia anything to
keep a secret, and she had presented the gift very sweetly, as
if it were a thought of her own. Aunt Jane, who with all her
penetration as to facts was often very guileless as to motives,
was thoroughly touched by the humility and the embroidery.
"All last night," she said, "I kept waking up, and thinking
about Christian charity and my pillow-cases."
It was, therefore, a very favorable day for Hope's
consultation, though it was nearly noon before her aunt was
visible, perhaps because it took so long to make up her bed
with the new adornments.
Hope said frankly to Aunt Jane that there were some
circumstances about which she should rather not be questioned,
but that Emilia had come there the previous night from the
ball, had been seized with one of her peculiar attacks, and had
stayed all night. Aunt Jane kept her eyes steadily fixed on
Hope's sad face, and, when the tale was ended, drew her down
and kissed her lips.
"Now tell me, dear," she said; "what comes first?"
"The first thing is," said Hope, "to have Emilia's absence
explained to Mrs. Meredith in some such way that she will think
no more of it, and not talk about it."
"Certainly," said Aunt Jane. "There is but one way to do that.
I will call on her myself."
"You, auntie?" said Hope.
"Yes, I," said her aunt. "I have owed her a call for five
years. It is the only thing that will excite her so much as to
put all else out of her head."
"O auntie!" said Hope, greatly relieved, "if you only would!
But ought you really to go out? It is almost raining."
"I shall go," said Aunt Jane, decisively, "if it rains little
boys!"
"But will not Mrs. Meredith wonder--?" began Hope.
"That is one advantage," interrupted her aunt, "of being an
absurd old woman. Nobody ever wonders at anything I do, or
else it is that they never stop wondering."
She sent Ruth erelong to order the horses. Hope collected her
various wrappers, and Ruth, returning, got her mistress into a
state of preparation.
"If I might say one thing more," Hope whispered.
"Certainly," said her aunt. "Ruth, go to my chamber, and get
me a pin."
"What kind of a pin, ma'am?" asked that meek handmaiden, from
the doorway.
"What a question!" said her indignant mistress. "Any kind. The
common pin of North America. Now, Hope?" as the door closed.
"I think it better, auntie," said Hope, "that Philip should not
stay here longer at present. You can truly say that the house
is full, and--"
"I have just had a note from him," said Aunt Jane severely. "He
has gone to lodge at the hotel. What next?"
"Aunt Jane," said Hope, looking her full in the face, "I have
not the slightest idea what to do next."
("The next thing for me," thought her aunt, "is to have a
little plain speech with that misguided child upstairs.")
"I can see no way out," pursued Hope.
"Darling!" said Aunt Jane, with a voice full of womanly
sweetness, "there is always a way out, or else the world would
have stopped long ago. Perhaps it would have been better if it
had stopped, but you see it has not. All we can do is, to live
on and try our best."
She bade Hope leave Emilia to her, and furthermore stipulated
that Hope should go to her pupils as usual, that afternoon, as
it was their last lesson. The young girl shrank from the
effort, but the elder lady was inflexible. She had her own
purpose in it. Hope once out of the way, Aunt Jane could deal
with Emilia.
No human being, when met face to face with Aunt Jane, had ever
failed to yield up to her the whole truth she sought. Emilia
was on that day no exception. She was prostrate, languid,
humble, denied nothing, was ready to concede every point but
one. Never, while she lived, would she dwell beneath John
Lambert's roof again. She had left it impulsively, she
admitted, scarce knowing what she did. But she would never
return there to live. She would go once more and see that all
was in order for Mr. Lambert, both in the house and on board
the yacht, where they were to have taken up their abode for a
time. There were new servants in the house, a new captain on
the yacht; she would trust Mr. Lambert's comfort to none of
them; she would do her full duty. Duty! the more utterly she
felt herself to be gliding away from him forever, the more
pains she was ready to lavish in doing these nothings well.
About every insignificant article he owned she seemed to feel
the most scrupulous and wife-like responsibility; while she yet
knew that all she had was to him nothing, compared with the
possession of herself; and it was the thought of this last
ownership that drove her to despair.
Sweet and plaintive as the child's face was, it had a glimmer
of wildness and a hunted look, that baffled Aunt Jane a little,
and compelled her to temporize. She consented that Emilia
should go to her own house, on condition that she would not see
Philip,--which was readily and even eagerly promised,--and that
Hope should spend the night with Emilia, which proposal was
ardently accepted.
It occurred to Aunt Jane that nothing better could happen than
for John Lambert, on returning, to find his wife at home; and
to secure this result, if possible, she telegraphed to him to
come at once.
Meantime Hope gave her inevitable music-lesson, so absorbed in
her own thoughts that it was all as mechanical as the
metronome. As she came out upon the Avenue for the walk home,
she saw a group of people from a gardener's house, who had
collected beside a muddy crossing, where a team of cart-horses
had refused to stir. Presently they sprang forward with a
great jerk, and a little Irish child was thrown beneath the
wheel. Hope sprang forward to grasp the child, and the wheel
struck her also; but she escaped with a dress torn and smeared,
while the cart passed over the little girl's arm, breaking it
in two places. She screamed and then grew faint, as Hope lifted
her. The mother received the burden with a wail of anguish;
the other Irishwomen pressed around her with the dense and
suffocating sympathy of their nation. Hope bade one and another
run for a physician, but nobody stirred. There was no surgical
aid within a mile or more. Hope looked round in despair, then
glanced at her own disordered garments.
"As sure as you live!" shouted a well-known voice from a
carriage which had stopped behind them. "If that isn't Hope
what's-her-name, wish I may never! Here's a lark! Let me come
there!" And the speaker pushed through the crowd.
"Miss Ingleside," said Hope, decisively, "this child's arm is
broken. There is nobody to go for a physician. Except for the
condition I am in, I would ask you to take me there at once in
your carriage; but as it is--"
"As it is, I must ask you, hey?" said Blanche, finishing the
sentence. "Of course. No mistake. Sans dire. Jones, junior,
this lady will join us. Don't look so scared, man. Are you
anxious about your cushions or your reputation?"
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