It was to a wife and daughters such as these that he was returning, with the benevolent wish of interesting them for the guilty Adeline.
'So, Dr Norberry, you are come back at last!' was his first salutation, 'and what does the creature say for herself?'
'The creature!—Your fellow-creature, my dear, says very little—grief is not wordy.'
'Grief!—So then she is unhappy, is she?' cries Miss Norberry; 'I am monstrous glad of it.'
The doctor started; and an oath nearly escaped his lips. He did say, 'Why, zounds, Jane!'—but then he added, in a softer tone, 'Why do you rejoice in a poor girl's affliction?'
'Because I think it is for the good of her soul.'
'Good girl!' replied the father:—'Jane, (seizing her hand,) may your soul never need such a medicine!'
'It never will,' said her mother proudly: 'she has been differently brought up.'
'She has been well brought up, you might have added,' observed the doctor, 'had modesty permitted it. Mrs Mowbray, poor woman, had good intentions; but she was too flighty. Had Adeline, my children, had such a mother as yours, she would have been like you.'
'But not half so handsome,' interrupted the mother in a low voice.
'But as our faults and our virtues, my dear, depend so much on the care and instruction of others, we should look with pity, as well as aversion on the faults of those less fortunate in instructors than we have been.'
'Certainly;—very true,' said Mrs Norberry, flattered and affected by this compliment from her husband: 'but you know, James Norberry,' laying her hand on his, 'I always told you you overrated Mrs Mowbray; and that she was but a dawdle after all.'
'You always did, my good woman,' replied he, raising her hand to his lips.
'But you men think yourselves much wiser than we are!'
'We do so,' replied the doctor.
The tone was equivocal—Mrs Norberry felt it to be so, and looked up in his face.—The doctor understood the look: it was one of doubt and inquiry; and, as it was his interest to sooth her in order to carry his point, he exclaimed, 'We men are, indeed, too apt to pride ourselves in our supposed superior wisdom: but I, you will own, my dear, have always done your sex justice; and you in particular.'
'You have been a good husband indeed, James Norberry,' replied his wife in a faltering voice; 'and I believe you to be, to every one, a just and honourable man.'
'And I dare say, dame, I do no more than justice to you, when I think you will approve and further a plan for Adeline Mowbray's good, which I am going to propose to you.'
Mrs Norberry withdrew her hand; but returning it again:—'To be sure, my dear,' she cried. 'Any thing you wish; that is, if I see right to—'
'I will explain myself,' continued the doctor gently.
'I have promised this poor girl to endeavour to bring about a reconciliation between her and her mother; but though Adeline wishes to receive her pardon on any terms, and even, if it be required, to renounce her lover, I fear Mrs Mowbray is too much incensed against her, to see or forgive her.'
'Hard-hearted woman!' cried Mrs Norberry.
'Cruel, indeed!' cried her daughters.
'But a mother ought to be severe, very severe, on such occasions, young ladies,' hastily added Mrs Norberry: 'but go on, my dear.'
'Now it is but too probable,' continued the doctor, 'that Glenmurray will not live long, and then this young creature will be left to struggle unprotected with the difficulties of her situation; and who knows but that she may, from poverty, and the want of a protector, be tempted to continue in the paths of vice?'
'Well, Dr Norberry, and what then?—Who or what is to prevent it?—You know we have three children to provide for; and I am a young woman as yet.'
'True, Hannah,' giving her a kiss, 'and a very pretty woman too.'
'Well, my dear love, anything we can do with prudence I am ready to do; I can say no more.'
'You have said enough,' cried the doctor exultingly; 'then hear my plan: Adeline shall, in the event of Glenmurray's death, which though not certain seems likely—to be sure, I did not inquire into the nature of his nocturnal perspirations, his expectoration, and so forth—'
'Dear papa, you are so professional!' affectedly exclaimed his youngest daughter.
'Well, child, I have done; and to return to my subject—if Glenmurray lives or dies, I think it advisable that Adeline should go into retirement to lie-in. And where can she be better than in my little cottage now empty, within a four-miles ride of our house? If she wants protection, I can protect her; and if she wants money before her mother forgives her, you can give it to her.'
'Indeed, papa,' cried both the girls, 'we shall not grudge it.'
The doctor started from his chair, and embraced his daughters with joy mixed with wonder; for he knew they had always disliked Adeline.—True; but then, she was prosperous, and their superior. Little minds love to bestow protection; and it was easy to be generous to the fallen Adeline Mowbray: had her happiness continued, so would their hatred.
'Then it is a settled point, is it not dame?' asked the doctor, chucking his wife under the chin; when, to his great surprise and consternation, she threw his hand indignantly from her, and vociferated, 'She shall never live within a ride of our house, I can assure you, Dr Norberry.'
The doctor was petrified into silence, and the girls could only articulate 'La! mamma?' But what could produce this sudden and violent change? Nothing but a simple and natural operation of the human mind. Though a very kind husband, and an indulgent father, Dr Norberry was suspected, though unjustly, of being a very gallant man: and some of Mrs Norberry's good-natured friends had occasionally hinted to her their sorrow at hearing such and such reports; reports which were indeed destitute of foundation; but which served to excite suspicions in the mind of the tenacious Mrs Norberry. And what more likely to re-awaken them than the young and frail Adeline Mowbray living in a cottage of her husband's, protected, supported, and visited by him! The moment this idea occurred, its influence was unconquerable; and with a voice and manner of determined hostility she made known her resolves in consequence of it.
After a pause of dismay and astonishment, the doctor cried, 'Dame, what have you gotten in your head? What, all on a sudden, has had such an ugly effect on you?'
'Second thoughts are best, doctor; and I now feel that it would be highly improper for you, with daughters grown up, to receive with such marked kindness a single young woman at a cottage of yours, who is going to lie-in.'
'But, my dear, it is a different case, when I do it to keep her out of the way of further harm.'
'That is more than I know, Dr Norberry,' replied the wife bridling, and fanning herself.
'Whew!' whistled the doctor; and then addressing his daughters, 'Girls, you had better go to bed; it grows late.'
The young ladies obeyed; but first hung round their mother's neck, as they bade her good night, and hoped she would not be so cruel to the poor deluded Adeline.
Mrs Norberry angrily shook them off, with a peevish—'Get along, girls.' The doctor cordially kissed, and bade God bless them; while the door closed and left the loving couple alone.
What passed, it were tedious to repeat: suffice that after a long altercation, continued even after they were retired to rest, the doctor found his wife, on this subject, incapable of listening to reason, and that, as a finishing stroke, she exclaimed, 'It does not signify talking, Dr Norberry, while I have my senses, and can see into a mill-stone a little, the hussey shall never come near us.'
The doctor sighed deeply; turned himself round, not to sleep but to think, and rose the next morning to go in search of Mrs Mowbray, dreading the interview which he was afterwards to have with Adeline; for he did not expect to succeed in his application to her mother, and he could not now soften his intelligence with a 'but,' as he intended. 'True,' he meant to have said to her, 'your mother will not receive you; but if you ever want a home or a place of retirement, I have a cottage, and so forth.'
'Pshaw!' cried the doctor to himself, as these thoughts came across him on the road, and made him hastily let down the front window of the post-chaise for air.
'Did your honour speak?' cries the post-boy.
'Not I. But can't you drive faster and be hanged to you?'
The boy whipped his horses.—The doctor then found that it was up hill—down went the glass again:—'Hold, you brute, why do you not see it is up hill?' For find fault he must; and with his wife he could not, or dared not, even in fancy.
'Dear me! Why, your honour bade me put it on.'
'Devilishly obedient,' muttered the doctor: 'I wish every one was like you in that respect.'—And in a state of mind not the pleasantest possible the doctor drove into town, and to the hotel where Mrs Mowbray was to be found.
Dr Norberry was certainly now not in a humour to sooth any woman whom he thought in the wrong, except his wife; and, whether from carelessness or design, he did not, unfortunately for Adeline, manage the self-love of her unhappy mother.
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 passion 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 passion, 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 ejaculating '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 glass of wine, was on the point of drinking it when Dr Norberry entered.
'Give me a glass,' 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 rivalship and hatred. My poor child! God 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 passion.'
When Adeline recovered, she ardently conjured Dr Norberry to procure her an interview with her mother; contending that it was absolutely impossible to suppose, that the sight of a child so long and tenderly loved should not renew a little of her now dormant affection.
'But you were her rival, as well as her child; remember that. However, you look so ill, that now, if ever, she will forgive you, I think: therefore I will go back to Mrs Mowbray; and while I am there do you come, ask for me, and follow the servant into the room.'
'I will,' replied Adeline: and leaning on the arm of her lover, she slowly followed the doctor to her mother's hotel.
'This is the most awful moment of my life,' said Adeline.
'And the most anxious one of mine,' replied Glenmurray. 'If Mrs Mowbray forgives you, it will be probably on condition that—'
'Whatever be the conditions, I must accept them,' said Adeline.
'True,' returned Glenmurray, wiping the cold dews of weakness from his forehead: 'but no matter—at any rate, I should not have been with you long.'
Adeline, with a look of agony, pressed the arm she held to her bosom.
Glenmurray's heart smote him immediately—he felt he had been ungenerous; and, while the hectic of a moment passed across his cheek, he added, 'But I do not do myself justice in saying so. I believe my best chance of recovery is the certainty of your being easy. Let me but see you happy, and so disinterested is my affection, as I have often told you, that I shall cheerfully assent to any thing that may ensure your happiness.'
'And can you think,' answered Adeline, 'that my happiness can be independent of yours? Do you not see that I am only trying to prepare my mind for being called upon to surrender my inclinations to my duty?'
At this moment they found themselves at the door of the hotel. Neither of them spoke; the moment of trial was come; and both were unable to encounter it firmly. At last Adeline grasped her lover's hand, bade him wait for her at the end of the street, and with some degree of firmness she entered the vestibule, and asked for Dr Norberry.
Dr Norberry, meanwhile, with the best intentions in the world, had but ill prepared Mrs Mowbray's mind for the intended visit. He had again talked to her of her daughter; and urged the propriety of forgiving her; but he had at the same time renewed his animadversions on her own conduct.
'You know not, Dr Norberry,' observed Mrs Mowbray, 'the pains I took with the education of that girl; and I expected to be repaid for it by being styled the happiest as well as best of mothers.'
'And so you would, perhaps, had you not wished to be a wife as well as mother.'
'No more on that subject, sir,' haughtily returned Mrs Mowbray.—'Yes,—Adeline was indeed my joy, my pride.'
'Aye, and pride will have a fall; and a pretty tumble yours has had, to be sure, my old friend; and it has broke its knees—never to be sound again.'
At this unpropitious moment 'a lady to Dr Norberry' was announced, and Adeline tottered into the room.
'What strange intrusion is this?' cried Mrs Mowbray: 'who is this woman?'
Adeline threw back her veil, and falling on her knees, stretched out her arms in an attitude of entreaty: speak she could not, but her countenance was sufficiently expressive of her meaning; and her pale sunk cheek spoke forcibly to the heart of her mother.—At this moment, when a struggle which might have ended favourably for Adeline was taking place in the mind of Mrs Mowbray, Dr Norberry injudiciously exclaimed,
'There,—there she is! Look at her, poor soul! There is little fear, I think, of her ever rivalling you again.'
At these words Mrs Mowbray darted an angry look at the doctor, and desired him to take away that woman; who came, no doubt instigated by him, to insult her.
'Take her away,' she said, 'and never let me see her again.'
'O my mother, hear me, in pity hear me!' exclaimed Adeline.
'As it is for the last time, I will hear you,' replied Mrs Mowbray; 'for never, no never will I behold you more! Hear me vow—'
'Mother, for mercy's sake, make not a vow so terrible!' cried Adeline, gathering courage from despair, and approaching her: 'I have grievously erred, and will cheerfully devote the rest of my life to endeavour, by the most submissive obedience and attention, to atone for my past guilt.'
'Atone for it! Impossible; for the misery which I owe to you, no submission, no future conduct can make me amends. Away! I say: your presence conjures up recollections which distract me, and I solemnly swear—'
'Hold, hold, if you have any mercy in your nature,' cried Adeline almost frantic: 'this is, I feel but too sensibly, the most awful and important moment of my life: on the result of this interview depends my future happiness or misery. Hear me, O my mother! You, who can so easily resolve to tear the heart of a child that adores you, hear me! reflect that, if you vow to abandon me for ever, you blast all the happiness and prospects of my life; and at nineteen 'tis hard to be deprived of happiness for ever. True, I may not long survive the anguish of being renounced by my mother, a mother whom I love with even enthusiastic fondness; but then could you ever know peace again with the conviction of having caused my death? Oh! no, Save then yourself and me from these miseries, by forgiving my past errors, and deigning sometimes to see and converse with me!'
The eager and animated volubility with which Adeline spoke made it impossible to interrupt her, even had Mrs Mowbray been inclined to do so: but she was not; nor, when Adeline had done speaking, could she find in her heart to break silence.
It was evident to Dr Norberry that Mrs Mowbray's countenance expressed a degree of softness which augured well for her daughter; and, as if conscious that it did so, she covered her face suddenly with her handkerchief.
'Now then is the time,' thought the doctor. 'Go nearer her, my child,' said he in a low voice to Adeline, 'embrace her knees.'
Adeline rose, and approached Mrs Mowbray; she seized her hand, she pressed it to her lips. Mrs Mowbray's bosom heaved violently: she almost returned the pressure of Adeline's hand.
'Victory, victory!' muttered the doctor to himself, cutting a caper behind Mrs Mowbray's chair.
Mrs Mowbray took the handkerchief from her face.
'My mother, my dear mother! look on me, look on me with kindness only one moment, and only say that you do not hate me!'
Mrs Mowbray turned round and fixed her eyes on Adeline with a look of kindness, and Adeline's began to sparkle with delight; when, as she threw back her cloak, which, hanging over her arm, embarrassed her as she knelt to embrace her mother's knees, Mrs Mowbray's eyes glanced from her face to her shape.
In an instant the fierceness of her look returned: 'Shame to thy race, disgrace to thy family!' she exclaimed, spurning her kneeling child from her: 'and canst thou, while conscious of carrying in thy bosom the proof of thy infamy, dare to solicit and expect my pardon?—Hence! ere I load thee with maledictions.'
Adeline wrapped her cloak round her, and sunk terrified and desponding to the ground.
'Why, what a ridiculous caprice is this!' cried the doctor. 'Is it a greater crime to be in a family way, than to live with a man as his mistress?—You knew your daughter had done the last: therefore it is nonsense to be so affected at the former.—Come, come, forget and forgive!'
'Never: and if you do not leave the house with her this moment, I will not stay in it. My injuries are so great that they cannot admit forgiveness.'
'What a horrible, unforgiving spirit yours must be!' cried Dr Norberry: 'and after all, I tell you again, that Adeline has something to forgive and forget too; and she sets you an example of Christian charity in coming hither to console and comfort you, poor forsaken woman as you are!'
'Forsaken!' exclaimed Mrs Mowbray: 'aye; why, and for whom, was I forsaken? There's the pang! and yet you wonder that I cannot instantly forgive and receive the woman who injured me where I was most vulnerable.'
'O my mother!' cried Adeline, almost indignantly, 'and can that wretch, though dead, still have power to influence my fate in this dreadful manner? and can you still regret the loss of the affection of that man whose addresses were a disgrace to you?'
At these unguarded words, and too just reproaches, Mrs Mowbray lost all self-command; and, in a voice almost inarticulate with rage, exclaimed:—'I loved that wretch, as you are pleased to call him. I gloried in the addresses which you are pleased to call my disgrace. But he loved you—he left me for you—and on your account he made me endure the pangs of being forsaken and despised by the man whom I adored. Then mark my words: I solemnly swear,' dropping on her knees as she spoke, 'by all my hopes of happiness hereafter, that until you shall have experienced the anguish of having lost the man whom you adore, tillyoushall have been as wretched in love, and as disgraced in the eye of the world, as I have been, I never will see you more, or pardon your many sins against me—No—not even were you on your death-bed. Yet, no; I am wrong there—Yes; on your death-bed,' she added, her voice faltering as she spoke, and passion giving way in a degree to the dictates of returning nature,—'Yes, there; there I should—I should forgive you.'
'Then I feel that you will forgive me soon,' faintly articulated Adeline sinking on the ground; while Mrs Mowbray was leaving the room, and Dr Norberry was standing motionless with horror, from the rash oath which he had just heard. But Adeline's fall aroused him from his stupor.
'For pity's sake, do not go and leave your daughter dying!' cried he: 'your vow does not forbid you to continue to see her now.' Mrs Mowbray turned back, and started with horror at beholding the countenance of Adeline.
'Is she really dying?' cried she eagerly, 'and have I killed her?' These words, spoken in a faltering tone, and with a look of anxiety, seemed to recall the fleeting spirit of Adeline. She looked up at her mother, a sort of smile quivered on her lip; and faintly articulating 'I am better,' she burst into a convulsive flood of tears, and laid her head on the bosom of her compassionate friend.
'She will do now,' cried he exultingly to Mrs Mowbray: 'You need alarm yourself no longer.'
But alarm was perhaps a feeling of enjoyment, to the sensations which then took possession of Mrs Mowbray. The apparent danger of Adeline had awakened her long dormant tenderness: but she had just bound herself by an oath not to give way to it, except under circumstances the most unwelcome and affecting, and had therefore embittered her future days with remorse and unavailing regret.—For some minutes she stood looking wildly and mournfully on Adeline, longing to clasp her to her bosom, and pronounce her pardon, but not daring to violate her oath. At length, 'I cannot bear this torment,' she exclaimed, and rushed out of the room: and when in another apartment, she recollected, and uttered a scream of agony as she did so, that she had seen Adeline probably for the last time; for, voluntarily, she was now to see her no more.
The same recollections occurred to Adeline; and as the door closed on her mother, she raised herself up, and looked eagerly to catch the last glimpse of her gown, as the door shut it from her sight. 'Let us go away directly now,' said she, 'for the air of this room is not good for me.'
The doctor, affected beyond measure at the expression of quiet despair with which she spoke, went out to order a coach; and Adeline instantly rose, and kissed with fond devotion the chair on which her mother had sat. Suddenly she heard a deep sigh—it came from the next room—perhaps it came from her mother; perhaps she could still see her again: and with cautious step she knelt down and looked through the key-hole of the door.
She did see her mother once more. Mrs Mowbray was lying on the bed, beating the ground with her foot, and sighing as if her heart would break.
'O that I dare go in to her!' said Adeline to herself: 'but I can at least bid her farewell here.' She then put her mouth to the aperture, and exclaimed, 'Mother, dearest mother! since we meet now for the last time—' (Mrs Mowbray started from the bed) 'let me thank you for all the affection, all the kindness which you lavished on me during eighteen happy years. I shall never cease to love and pray for you.' (Mrs Mowbray sobbed aloud.) 'Perhaps, you will some day or other think you have been harsh to me, and may wish that you had not taken so cruel a vow.' (Mrs Mowbray beat her breast in agony: the moment of repentance was already come.) 'It may therefore be a comfort to you at such moments to know, that I sincerely, and from the bottom of my heart, forgive this rash action:—and now, my dearest mother, hear my parting prayers for your happiness!'
At this moment a noise in the next room convinced Adeline that her mother had fallen down in a fainting fit, and the doctor entered the room.
'What have I done?' she exclaimed. 'Go to her this instant.'—He obeyed. Raising up Mrs Mowbray in his arms, he laid her on the bed, while Adeline bent over her in silent anguish, with all the sorrow of filial anxiety. But when the remedies which Dr Norberry administered began to take effect, she exclaimed, 'For the last time! Cruel, but most dear mother!' and pressed her head to her bosom, and kissed her pale lips with almost frantic emotion.
Mrs Mowbray opened her eyes; they met those of Adeline and instantly closed again.
'She has looked at me for the last time,' said Adeline; 'and now this one kiss, my mother, and farewell for ever!' So saying she rushed out of the room, and did not stop till she reached the coach, which Glenmurray had called, and springing into it, was received into the arms of Glenmurray.
'You, are my all now,' said she. 'You have long been mine,' replied he: but respecting the anguish and disappointment depicted on her countenance, he forbore to ask for an explanation; and resting her pale cheek on his bosom, they reached the inn in silence.
Adeline had walked up and down the room a number of times, had as often looked out of the window, before Dr Norberry, whom she had been anxiously expecting and looking for, made his appearance. 'Thank God, you are come at last!' said she, seizing his hand as he entered.
'I left Mrs Mowbray,' replied he, 'much better both in mind and body.'
'A blessed hearing! replied Adeline.
'And you, my child, how are you?' asked the doctor affectionately.
'I know not yet,' answered Adeline mournfully: 'as yet I am stunned by the blow which I have received; but pray tell me what has passed between you and my mother since we left the hotel.'
'What has passed?' cried Dr Norberry, starting from his chair, taking two hasty strides across the room, pulling up the cape of his coat, and muttering an oath between his shut teeth—'Why, this passed:—The deluded woman renounced her daughter; and her friend, her old and faithful friend, has renounced her.'
'Oh! my poor mother!' exclaimed Adeline.
'Girl! girl! don't be foolish,' replied the doctor; 'keep your pity for more deserving objects; and, as the wisest thing you can do, endeavour to forget your mother.'
'Forget her! Never.'
'Well, well, you will be wiser in time; and now you shall hear all that passed. When she recovered entirely, and found that you were gone, she gave way to an agony of sorrow, such as I never before witnessed; for I believe that I never beheld before the agony of remorse.'
'My poor mother!' cried Adeline, again bursting into tears.
'What! again!' exclaimed the doctor. (Adeline motioned to him to go on, and he continued.) 'At sight of this, I was weak enough to pity her; and, with the greatest simplicity, I told her, that I was glad to see that she felt penitent for her conduct, since penitence paved the way to amendment; when, to my great surprise, all the vanished fierceness and haughtiness of her look returned, and she told me, that so far from repenting she approved of her conduct; and that remorse had no share in her sorrow; that she wept from consciousness of misery inflicted by the faults of others, not her own.'
'Oh! Dr Norberry,' cried Adeline reproachfully, 'I doubt, by awakening her pride, you destroyed the tenderness returning towards me.'
'May be so. However, so much the better; for anger is a less painful state of mind to endure than that of remorse: and while she thinks herself only injured and aggrieved, she will be less unhappy.'
'Then,' continued Adeline in a faltering voice, 'I care not how long she hates me.'
Dr Norberry looked at Adeline a moment with tears in his eyes, and evidently gulped down a rising sob, 'Good child! good child!' he at length articulated. 'But she'll forget and forgive all in time, I do not doubt.'
'Impossible: remember her oath.'
'And do you really suppose that she will think herself bound to keep so silly and rash an oath; an oath made in the heat of passion?'
'Undoubtedly I do; and I know, that were she to break it, she would never be otherwise than wretched all her life after. Therefore, unless Glenmurray forsakes me (she added, trying to smile archly as she spoke), and this I am not happy enough to expect, I look on our separation in this world to be eternal.'
'You do?—Then, poor devil! how miserable she will be, when her present resentment shall subside! Well; when that time comes I may perhaps see her again,' added the doctor, gulping again.
'Heaven bless you for that intention!' cried Adeline. 'But how could you ever have the heart to renounce her?'
'Girl! you are almost as provoking as your mother. Why, how could I have the heart to do otherwise, when she whitewashed herself and blackened you? To be sure, it did cause me a twinge or two to do it; and had she been an iota less haughty, I should have turned back and said, "Kiss and be friends again." But she seemed so provokingly anxious to get rid of me, and waved me with her hand to the door in such a tragedy queen sort of a manner, that, having told her very civilly to go to the devil her own way, I gulped down a sort of a tender choking in my throat, and made as rapid an exit as possible. And now another trial awaits me. I came to town, at some inconvenience to myself, to try to do you service. I have failed, and I have now no further business here: so we must part, and I know not when we shall meet again. For I rarely leave home, and may not see you again for years.'
'Indeed!' exclaimed Adeline, 'Surely,' looking at Glenmurray, 'we might settle in Dr Norberry's neighbourhood?'
Glenmurray said nothing, but looked at the doctor; who seemed confused, and was silent.
'Look ye, my dear girl,' said he at length: 'the idea of your settling near me occurred to me, but—' here he took two hasty strides across the room—'in short, that's an impossible thing; so I beg you to think no more about it. If, indeed, you mean to marry Mr Glenmurray—'
'Which I shall not do,' replied Adeline coldly.
'There again, now!' cried the doctor pettishly: 'you, in your way, are quite as obstinate and ridiculous as your mother. However, I hope you will know better in time. But it grows late—'tis time I should be in my chaise, and I hear it driving up. Mr Glenmurray,' continued he in an altered tone of voice, 'to your care and your tenderness I leave this poor child; and, zounds, man! if you will but burn your books before her face, and swear they are stuff, why, 'sdeath, I say, I would come to town on purpose to do you homage.—Adeline, my child, God bless you! I have loved you from your infancy, and I wish, from my soul, that I left you in a better situation. But you will write to me, heh?'
'Undoubtedly.'
'Well, one kiss:—don't be jealous, Glenmurray. Your hand, man.—Woons, what a hand! My dear fellow, take care of yourself, for that poor child's sake: get the advice which I recommended, and good air.' A rising sob interrupted him—he hemmed it off, and ran into his chaise.
'Now then,' said Adeline, her tears dropping fast as she spoke, 'now, then, we are alone in the world; henceforward we must be all to each other.'
'Is the idea a painful one, Adeline?' replied Glenmurray reproachfully.
'Not so,' returned Adeline, 'Still I can't yet forget that I had a mother, and a kind one too.'
'And may have again.'
'Impossible:—there is a vow in heaven against it. No—My plans for future happiness must be laid unmindful and independent of her. They must have you and your happiness for their sole object; I must live for you alone: and you,' added she in a faltering voice, 'must live for me.'
'I will live as long as I can,' replied Glenmurray sighing, 'and as one step towards it I shall keep early hours: so to rest, dear Adeline, and let us forget our sorrows as soon as possible.'
The next morning Adeline's and Glenmurray's first care was to determine on their future residence. It was desirable that it should be at a sufficient distance from London, to deserve the name and have the conveniences of a country abode, yet sufficiently near it for Glenmurray to have the advice of a London physician if necessary.
'Suppose we fix at Richmond?' said Glenmurray: and Adeline, to whom the idea of dwelling on a spot at once so classical and beautiful was most welcome, joyfully consented; and in a few days they were settled there in a pleasant but expensive lodging.
But here, as when abroad, Glenmurray occasionally saw old acquaintances, many of whom were willing to renew their intercourse with him for the sake of being introduced to Adeline; and who, from a knowledge of her situation, presumed to pay her that sort of homage, which, though not understood by her, gave pangs unutterable to the delicate mind of Glenmurray. 'Were she my wife, they dared not pay her such marked attention,' said he to himself; and again, as delicately as he could, he urged Adeline to sacrifice her principles to the prejudices of society.
'I thought,' replied Adeline gravely, 'that, as we lived for each other, we might act independent of society, and serve it by our example even against its will.'
Glenmurray was silent.—He did not like to own how painful and mischievous he found in practice the principles which he admired in theory—and Adeline continued:
'Believe me, Glenmurray, ours is the very situation calculated to urge us on in the pursuit of truth. We are answerable to no one for our conduct; and we can make any experiments in morals that we choose. I am wholly at a loss to comprehend why you persist in urging me to marry you. Take care, my dear Glenmurray—the high respect I bear your character was shaken a little by your fighting a duel in defiance of your principles; and your eagerness to marry, in further defiance of them, may weaken my esteem, if not my love.'
Adeline smiled as she said this: but Glenmurray thought she spoke more in earnest than she was willing to allow; and, alarmed at the threat, he only answered, 'You know it is for your sake merely that I speak,' and dropped the subject; secretly resolving, however, that he would not walk with Adeline in the fashionable promenades, at the hours commonly spent there by the beau monde.
But, in spite of this precaution, they could not escape the assiduities of some gay men of fashion, who knew Glenmurray and admired his companion; and Adeline at length suspected that Glenmurray was jealous. But in this she wronged him; it was not the attention paid her, but the nature of it, that disturbed him. Nor is it to be wondered at that Adeline herself was eager to avoid the public walks, when it is known that one of her admirers at Richmond was the Colonel Mordaunt whom she had become acquainted with at Bath.
Colonel Mordaunt, 'curst with every granted prayer,' was just beginning to feel the tedium of life, when he saw Adeline unexpectedly at Richmond; and though he felt shocked at first, at beholding her in so different a situation from that in which he had first beheld her, still that very situation, by holding forth to him a prospect of being favoured by her in his turn, revived his admiration with more than its original violence, and he resolved to be, if possible, the lover of Adeline, after Glenmurray should have fallen a victim, as he had no doubt but he would, to his dangerous illness.
But the opportunities which he had of seeing her suddenly ceased. She no longer frequented the public walks; and him, though he suspected it not, she most studiously avoided; for she could not bear to behold the alteration in his manner when be addressed her, an alteration perhaps unknown to himself. True, it was not insulting; but Adeline, who had admired him too much at Bath not to have examined with minute attention the almost timid expression of his countenance, and the respectfulness of his manner when he addressed her, shrunk abashed from the ardent and impassioned expression with which he now met her—an expression which Adeline used to call 'looking like Sir Patrick;' and which indicated even to her inexperience, that the admiration which he then felt was of a nature less pure and flattering than the one which she excited before; and though in her own eyes she appeared as worthy of respect as ever, she was forced to own even to herself, that persons in general would be of a contrary opinion.
But in vain did she resolve to walk very early in a morning only, being fully persuaded that she should then meet with no one. Colonel Mordaunt was as wakeful as she was; and being convinced that she walked during some part of the day, and probably early in a morning, he resolved to watch near the door of her lodgings, in hopes to obtain an hour's conversation with her. The consequence was, that he saw Adeline one morning walk pensively alone, down the shady road that leads from the terrace to Petersham.
This opportunity was not to be overlooked; and he overtook and accosted her with such an expression of pleasure on his countenance, as was sufficient to alarm the now suspicious delicacy of Adeline; and, conscious as she was that Glenmurray beheld Colonel Mordaunt's attentions with pain, a deep blush overspread her cheek at his approach, while her eyes were timidly cast down.
Colonel Mordaunt saw her emotion, and attributed it to a cause flattering to his vanity; it even encouraged him to seize her hand; and, while he openly congratulated himself on his good fortune in meeting her alone, he presumed to press her hand to his lips. Adeline indignantly withdrew it, and replied very coldly to his inquiries concerning her health.
'But where have you hidden yourself lately?' cried he.—'O Miss Mowbray! loveliest and, I may add, most beloved of women, how have I longed to see you alone, and pour out my whole soul to you!'
Adeline answered this rhapsody by a look of astonishment only—being silent from disgust and consternation,—while involuntarily she quickened her pace, as if wishing to avoid him.
'O hear me, and hear me patiently!' he resumed. 'You must have noticed the effect which your charms produced on me at Bath; and may I dare to add that my attentions then did not seem displeasing to you?'
'Sir!' interrupted Adeline, sighing deeply, 'my situation is now changed; and—'
'It is so, I thank Fortune that it is so,' replied Colonel Mordaunt; 'and I am happy to say, it is changed by no crime of mine.' (Here Adeline started and turned pale.) 'But I were unworthy all chance of happiness, were I to pass by the seeming opportunity of being blest, which the alteration to which you allude holds forth to me.'
Here he paused, as if in embarrassment, but Adeline was unable to interrupt him.
'Miss Mowbray,' he at length continued, 'I am told that you are not on good terms with your mother; nay, I have heard that she has renounced you; may I presume to ask if this be true?'
'It is,' answered Adeline trembling with emotion.
'Then, as before long it is probable that you will be without—without a protector—' (Adeline turned round and fixed her eyes wildly upon him.) 'To be sure,' continued he, avoiding her steadfast gaze, 'I could wish to call you mine this moment; but, unhappy as you appear to be in your present situation, I know, unlike many women circumstanced as you are, you are too generous and noble-minded to be capable of forsaking in his last illness the man whom in his happier moments you have honoured with your love.' As he said this, Adeline, her lips parched with agitation, and breathing short, caught hold of his arm; and pressing her cold hand, he went on: 'Therefore, I will not venture even to wish to be honoured with a kind look from you till Mr Glenmurray is removed to a happier world. But then, dearest of women, you whom I loved without hope of possessing you, and whom now I dote upon to madness, I conjure you to admit my visits, and let my attentions prevail on you to accept my protection, and allow me to devote the remainder of my days to love and you!'
'Merciful Heaven!' exclaimed Adeline, clasping her hands together, 'to what insults am I reserved!'
'Insults!' echoed Colonel Mordaunt.
'Yes, Sir,' replied Adeline: 'you have insulted me, grossly insulted me, and know not the woman whom you have tortured to the very soul.'
'Hear me, hear me, Miss Mowbray!' exclaimed Colonel Mordaunt, almost as much agitated as herself: 'by heaven I meant not to insult you! and perhaps I—perhaps I have been misinformed—No! Yes, yes, it must be so; your indignation proves that I have—You are, no doubt—and on my knees I implore your pardon—you are the wife of Mr Glenmurray.'
'And suppose I amnothis wife,' cried Adeline, 'is it then given to a wife only to be secure from being insulted by offers horrible to the delicacy, and wounding to the sensibility, like those which I have heard from you?' But before Colonel Mordaunt could reply, Adeline's thoughts had reverted to what he had said of Glenmurray's certain danger; and, unable to bear this confirmation of her fears, with the speed of phrensy she ran towards home, and did not stop till she was in sight of her lodging, and the still closed curtain of her apartment met her view.
'He is still sleeping, then,' she exclaimed, 'and I have time to recover myself, and endeavour to hide from him the emotion of which I could not tell the reason.' So saying, she softly entered the house, and by the time Glenmurray rose she had regained her composure. Still there was a look of anxiety on her fine countenance, which could not escape the penetrating eye of love.
'Why are you so grave this morning?' said Glenmurray, as Adeline seated herself at the breakfast table:—'I feel much better and more cheerful to-day.'
'But are you, indeed, better?' replied Adeline, fixing her tearful eyes on him.
'Or I much deceive myself,' said Glenmurray.
'Thank Heaven!' devoutly replied Adeline. 'I thought—I thought—' Here tears choked her utterance, and Glenmurray drew from her a confession of her anxious fears for him, though she prudently resolved not to agitate him by telling him of the rencontre with Colonel Mordaunt.
But when the continued assurances of Glenmurray that he was better, and the animation of his countenance, had in a degree removed her fears for his life, she had leisure to revert to another source of uneasiness, and to dwell on the insult which she had experienced from Colonel Mordaunt's offer of protection.
'How strange and irrational,' thought Adeline, 'are the prejudices of society! Because an idle ceremony has not been muttered over me at the altar, I am liable to be thought a woman of vicious inclinations, and to be exposed to the most daring insults.'
As these reflections occurred to her, she could scarcely help regretting that her principles would not allow her delicacy and virtue to be placed under the sacred shelter bestowed by that ceremony which she was pleased to call idle. And she was not long without experiencing still further hardships from the situation in which she had persisted so obstinately to remain. Their establishment consisted of a footman and a maid servant; but the latter had of late been so remiss in the performance of her duties, and so impertinent when reproved for her faults, that Adeline was obliged to give her warning.
'Warning, indeed!' replied the girl: 'a mighty hardship, truly! I can promise you I did not mean to stay long; it is no such favour to live with a kept miss; and if you come to that, I think I am as good as you.'
Shocked, surprised, and unable to answer, Adeline took refuge in her room. Never before had she been accosted by her inferiors without respectful attention; and now, owing to her situation, even a servant-maid thought herself authorised to insult her, and to raise herself to her level!
'But surely,' said Adeline mentally, 'I ought to reason with her, and try to convince her that I am in reality as virtuous as if I were Glenmurray's wife, instead of his mistress.'
Accordingly she went back into the kitchen; but her resolution failed her when she found the footman there, listening with a broad grin on his countenance to the relation which Mary was giving him of the 'fine trimming' which she had given 'madam.'
Scarcely did the presence of Adeline interrupt or restrain her; but at last she turned round and said, 'And, pray, have you got anything to say to me?'
'Nothing more now,' meekly replied Adeline, 'unless you will follow me to my chamber.'
'With all my heart,' cried the girl; and Adeline returned to her own room.
'I wish, Mary, to set you right,' said Adeline, 'with respect to my situation. You called me, I think, a kept miss, and seemed to think ill of me.'
'Why, to be sure, ma'am,' replied Mary, a little alarmed—'every body says you are a kept lady, and so I made no bones of saying so; but I am sure if so be you are not so, why I ax pardon.'
'But what do you mean by the term kept lady?'
'Why, a lady who lives with a man without being married to him, I take it; and that I take to be your case, ain't it, I pray?'
Adeline blushed and was silent:—it certainly was her case. However, she took courage and went on.
'But mistresses, or kept ladies in general, are women of bad character, and would live with any man; but I never loved, nor ever shall love, any man but Mr Glenmurray. I look on myself as his wife in the sight of God; nor will I quit him till death shall separate us.'
'Then if so be that you don't want to change, I think you might as well be married to him.'
Adeline was again silent for a moment, but continued—
'Mr Glenmurray would marry me to-morrow, if I chose.'
'Indeed! Well, if master is inclined to make an honest woman of you, you had better take him at his word, I think.'
'Gracious heaven!' cried Adeline, 'what an expression! Why will you persist to confound me with those deluded women who are victims of their own weakness?'
'As to that,' replied Mary, 'you talk too fine for me; but a fact is a fact—are you or are you not my master's wife?'
'I am not.'
'Why then you are his mistress, and a kept lady to all intents and purposes: so what signifies argufying the matter? I lived with a kept madam before; and she was as good as you, for aught I know.'
Adeline, shocked and disappointed, told her she might leave the room.
'I am going,' pertly answered Mary, 'and to seek for a place; but I must beg that you will not own you are no better than you should be, when a lady comes to ask my character; for then perhaps I should not get any one to take me. I shall call you Mrs Glenmurray.'
'But I shall not callmyselfso,' replied Adeline. 'I will not say what is not true, on any account.'
'There now, there's spite! and yet you pretend to call yourself a gentlewoman, and to be better than other kept ladies! Why, you are not worthy to tie the shoestrings of my last mistress—she did not mind telling a lie rather than lose a poor servant a place; and she called herself a married woman rather than hurt me.'
'Neither she nor you, then,' replied Adeline gravely, 'were sensible of what great importance a strict adherence to veracity is, to the interests of society. I am;—and for the sake of mankind I will always tell the truth.'
'You had better tell one innocent lie for mine,' replied the girl pertly. 'I dare to say the world will neither know nor care anything about it: and I can tell you I shall expect you will.'
So saying she shut the door with violence, leaving Adeline mournfully musing on the distress attending on her situation, and even disposed to question the propriety of remaining in it.
The inquietude of her mind, as usual, showed itself in her countenance, and involved her in another difficulty: to make Glenmurray uneasy by an avowal of what had passed between her and Mary was impossible; yet how could she conceal it from him? And while she was deliberating on this point, Glenmurray entered the room, and tenderly inquired what had so evidently disturbed her.
'Nothing of any consequence,' she faltered out, and burst into tears.
'Could "nothing of consequence" produce such emotion?' answered Glenmurray.
'But I am ashamed to own the cause of my uneasiness.'
'Ashamed to own it to me, Adeline? To be sure, you have a great deal to fear from my severity!' said he, faintly smiling.
Adeline for a moment resolved to tell him the whole truth; but fearful of throwing him into a degree of agitation hurtful to his weak frame, she, who had the moment before so nobly supported the necessity of a strict adherence to truth, condescended to equivocate and evade; and turning away her head, while a conscious blush overspread her cheek, she replied, 'You know that I look forward with anxiety and uneasiness to the time of my approaching confinement.'
Glenmurray believed her; and overcome by some painful feelings, which fears for himself and anxiety for her occasioned him, he silently pressed her to his bosom; and, choked with contending emotions, returned to his own apartment.
'And I have stooped to the meanness of disguising the truth!' cried Adeline, clasping her hands convulsively together: 'surely, surely, there must be something radically wrong in a situation which exposes one to such a variety of degradations!'
Mary, meanwhile, had gone in search of a place; and having found the lady to whom she had been advised to offer herself, at home, she returned to tell Adeline that Mrs Pemberton would call in half an hour to inquire her character. The half-hour, an anxious one to Adeline, having elapsed, a lady knocked at the door, and inquired, in Adeline's hearing for Mrs Glenmurray.
'Tell the lady,' cried Adeline immediately from the top of the staircase, 'that Miss Mowbray will wait on her directly.' The footman obeyed, and Mrs Pemberton was ushered into the parlour: and now, for the first time in her life, Adeline trembled to approach a stranger; for the first time she was going to appear before a fellow-creature, conscious she was become an object of scorn, and, though an enthusiast for virtue, would be considered as a votary of vice. But it was a mortification which she must submit to undergo; and hastily throwing a large shawl over her shoulders, to hide her figure as much as possible, with a trembling hand she opened the door, and found herself in the dreaded presence of Mrs Pemberton.
Nor was she at all re-assured when she found that lady dressed in the neat, modest garb of a strict Quaker—a garb which creates an immediate idea in the mind, of more than common rigidness of principles and sanctity of conduct in the wearer of it. Adeline curtsied in silence.
Mrs Pemberton bowed her head courteously; then, with a countenance of great sweetness, and a voice calculated to inspire confidence, said, 'I believe thy name is Mowbray; but I came to see Mrs Glenmurray; and as on these occasions I always wish to confer with the principal, wouldst thou, if it be not inconvenient, ask the mistress of Mary to let me see her?'
'I am myself the mistress of Mary,' replied Adeline in a faint voice.
'I ask thine excuse,' answered Mrs Pemberton, re-seating herself: 'as thou art Mrs Glenmurray, thou art the person I wanted to see.'
Here Adeline changed colour, overcome with the consciousness that she ought to undeceive her, and the sense of the difficulty of doing so.
'But thou art very pale, and seemest uneasy,' continued the gentle Quaker—'I hope thy husband is not worse?'
'Mr Glenmurray, but not my husband,' said Adeline, 'is better to-day.'
'Art thou not married?' asked Mrs Pemberton with quickness.
'I am not.'
'And yet thou livest with the gentleman I named, and art the person whom Mary called Mrs Glenmurray!'
'I am,' replied Adeline, her paleness yielding to a deep crimson, and her eyes filling with tears.
Mrs Pemberton sat for a minute in silence; then rising with an air of cold dignity, 'I fear thy servant is not likely to suit me,' she observed, 'and I will not detain thee any longer.'
'She can be an excellent servant,' faltered out Adeline.
'Very likely—but there are objections.' So saying she reached the door: but as she passed Adeline she stopped, interested and affected by the mournful expression of her countenance, and the visible effort she made to retain her tears.
Adeline saw, and felt humbled at the compassion which her countenance expressed: to be an object of pity was as mortifying as to be an object of scorn, and she turned her eyes on Mrs Pemberton with a look of proud indignation: but they met those of Mrs Pemberton fixed on her with a look of such benevolence, that her anger was instantly subdued; and it occurred to her that she might make the benevolent compassion visible in Mrs Pemberton's countenance serviceable to her discarded servant.
'Stay, madam,' she cried, as Mrs Pemberton was about to leave the room, 'allow me a moment's conversation with you.'
Mrs Pemberton, with an eagerness which she suddenly endeavoured to check, returned to her seat.
'I suspect,' said Adeline, (gathering courage from the conscious kindness of her motive,) 'that your objection to take Mary Warner into your service proceeds wholly from the situation of her present mistress.'
'Thou judgest rightly,' was Mrs Pemberton's answer.
'Nor do I wonder,' continued Adeline, 'that you make this objection, when I consider the present prejudices of society.'
'Prejudices!' softly exclaimed the benevolent Quaker.
Adeline faintly smiled, and went on—'But surely you will allow, that in a family quiet and secluded as ours, and in daily contemplation of an union uninterrupted, faithful, and virtuous, and possessing all the sacredness of marriage, though without the name, it is not likely that the young woman in question should have imbibed any vicious habits or principles?'
'But in contemplating thy union itself, she has lived in the contemplation of vice; and thou wilt own, that, by having given it an air of respectability, thou hast only made it more dangerous.'
'On this point,' cried Adeline, 'I see we must disagree—I shall therefore, without further preamble, inform you, madam, that Mary, aware of the difficulty of procuring a service, if it were known that she had lived with a kept mistress, as the phrase is,' (here an indignant blush overspread the face of Adeline,) 'desired me to call myself the wife of Glenmurray: but this, from my abhorrence of all falsehood, I peremptorily refused.'
'And thou didst well,' exclaimed Mrs Pemberton, 'and I respect thy resolution.'
'But my sincerity will, I fear, prevent the poor girl's obtaining other reputable places; and I, alas! am not rich enough to make her amends for the injury which my conscience forces me to do her. But if you, madam, could be prevailed upon to take her into your family, even for a short time only, to wipe away the disgrace which her living with me has brought upon her—'
'Why can she not remain with thee?' asked Mrs Pemberton hastily.
'Because she neglected her duty, and, when reproved for it, replied in very injurious language.'
'Presuming probably on thy way of life?'
'I must confess that she has reproached me with it.'
'And this was all her fault?'
'It was:—she can be an excellent servant.'
'Thou hast said enough; thy conscience shall not have the additional burthen to bear, of having deprived a poor girl of her maintenance—I will take her.'
'A thousand thanks to you,' replied Adeline: 'you have removed a weight off my mind; but my conscience, has none to bear.'
'No?' returned Mrs Pemberton: 'dost thou deem thy conduct blameless in the eyes of that Being whom thou hast just blessed?'
'As far as my connexion with Mr Glenmurray is concerned, I do.'
'Indeed?'
'Nay, doubt me not—believe me that I never wantonly violate the truth; and that even an evasion, which I, for the first time in my life, was guilty of to-day, has given me a pang to which I will not again expose myself.'
'And yet, inconsistent beings as we are,' cried Mrs Pemberton, 'straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel, what is the guilt of the evasion which weighs on thy mind, compared to that of living, as thou dost, in an illicit commerce? Surely, surely, thine heart accuses thee; for thy face bespeaks uneasiness, and thou wilt listen to the whispers of penitence, and leave, ere long, the man who has betrayed thee.'
'The man who has betrayed me! Mr Glenmurray is no betrayer—he is one of the best of human beings. No, madam: if I had acceded to his wishes, I should long ago have been his wife, but, from a conviction of the folly of marriage, I have preferred living with him without the performance of a ceremony which, in the eye of reason, can confer neither honour nor happiness.'
'Poor thing!' exclaimed Mrs Pemberton, rising as she spoke, 'I understand thee now—Thou art one of the enlightened, as they call themselves—Thou art one of those wise in their own conceit, who, disregarding the customs of ages, and the dictates of experience, set up their own opinions against the hallowed institutions of men and the will of the Most High.'
'Can you blame me,' interrupted Adeline, 'for acting according to what I think right?'
'But hast thou well studied the subject on which thou hast decided? Yet, alas! to thee how vain must be the voice of admonition!' (she continued, her countenance kindling into strong expression as she spoke)—'From the poor victim of passion and persuasion, penitence and amendment might be rationally expected; and she, from the path of frailty, might turn again to that of virtue: but for one like thee, glorying in thine iniquity, and erring, not from the too tender heart, but the vain-glorious head,—for thee there is, I fear, no blessed return to the right way; and I, who would have tarried with thee even in the house of sin, to have reclaimed thee, penitent, now hasten from thee, and for ever—firm as thou art in guilt.'
As she said this she reached the door; while Adeline, affected by her emotion, and distressed by her language, stood silent and almost abashed before her.