"I wonder," thought Miss Jervis, "whether I shall ever see them again!"
Three years from this time, Elizabeth found herself in the position she had vaguely anticipated at the outset, but which every day spent in Greece showed her as probable, if not inevitable. These three years brought Falkner to the verge of the death he had gone out to seek. He lay wounded, a prey of the Greek fever, to all appearance about to die; while she watched over him, striving, not only to avert the fatal consequences of disease, but also to combat the desire to die which destroyed him.
In describing Elizabeth's conduct during these three years, it may be thought that the type is presented of ideal and almost unnatural perfection. She was, it is true, a remarkable creature; and unless she had possessed rare and exalted qualities, her history had not afforded a topic for these pages. She was intelligent, warm-hearted, courageous, and sincere. Her lively sense of duty was perhaps her chief peculiarity. It was that which strung to such sweet harmony the other portions of her character. This had been fostered by the circumstances of her life. Her earliest recollection was of her dying parents. Their mutual consolations, the bereaved widow's lament, and her talk of another and a better world, where all would meet again who fulfilled their part virtuously in this world. She had been taught to remember her parents as inheriting the immortal life promised to the just, and to aspire to the same. She had learned, from her mother's example, that there is nothing so beautiful and praiseworthy as the sacrifice of life to the good and happiness of one beloved. She never forgot her debt to Falkner. She felt herself bound to him by stronger than filial ties. A father performs an imperious duty in cherishing his child; but all had been spontaneous benevolence in Falkner. His very faults and passions made his sacrifice the greater, and his generosity the more conspicuous. Elizabeth believed that she could never adequately repay the vast obligation which she was under to him.
Miss Jervis also had conduced to perfectionize her mind by adding to its harmony and justness. Miss Jervis, it is true, might be compared to the rough-handed gardener, whose labours are without elegance, and yet to whose waterings and vigilance the fragrant carnation owes its peculiar tint, and the wax-like camellia its especial variety. It was through her that she had methodised her mind—through her that she had learned to concentrate and prolong her attention, and to devote it to study. She had taught her order and industry—and, without knowing it, she had done more—she had inspired ardour for knowledge, delight in its acquisition, and a glad sense of self-approbation when difficulties were conquered by perseverance; and when, by dint of resolution, ignorance was exchanged for a clear perception of any portion of learning.
It has been said that every clever person is, to a certain degree, mad. By which it is to be understood, that every person whose mind soars above the vulgar, has some exalted and disinterested object in view to which they are ready to sacrifice the common blessings of life. Thus, from the moment that Elizabeth had brought Falkner to consent to her accompanying him to Greece, she had devoted herself to the task, first, of saving his life, if it should be in danger; and, secondly, of reconciling him in the end to prolonged existence. There were many difficulties which presented themselves, since she was unaware of the circumstances that drove him to seek death as a remedy and an atonement; nor had she any desire to pry into her benefactor's secrets: in her own heart, she suspected an overstrained delicacy or generosity of feeling, which exaggerated error, and gave the sting to remorse. But whatever was the occasion of his sufferings, she dedicated herself to their relief; and resolved to educate herself so as to fulfil the task of reconciling him to life, to the best of her ability.
Left at Zante, while he proceeded to join the patriot bands of Greece, she boarded in the house of a respectable family, but lived in the most retired manner possible. Her chief time was spent in study. She read to store her mind—to confirm its fortitude—to elevate its tone. She read, also, to acquire such precepts of philosophy and religion as might best apply to her peculiar task, and to learn those secrets of life and death which Falkner's desire to die had brought so home to her juvenile imagination.
If a time is to be named when the human heart is nearest moral perfection, most alive, and yet most innocent, aspiring to good, without a knowledge of evil, the period at which Elizabeth had arrived—from thirteen to sixteen—is it. Vague forebodings are awakened; a sense of the opening drama of life, unaccompanied with any longing to enter on it—that feeling is reserved for the years that follow; but at fourteen and fifteen we only feel that we are emerging from childhood, and we rejoice, having yet a sense that as yet it is not fitting that we should make one of the real actors on the world's stage. A dreamy, delicious period, when all is unknown; and yet we feel that all is soon to be unveiled. The first pang has not been felt; for we consider childhood's woes (real and frightful as those sometimes are) as puerile, and no longer belonging to us. We look upon the menaced evils of life as a fiction. How can care touch the soul which places its desires beyond low-minded thought? Ingratitude, deceit, treason—these have not yet engendered distrust of others, nor have our own weaknesses and errors planted the thorn of self-disapprobation and regret. Solitude is no evil, for the thoughts are rife with busy visions; and the shadows that flit around and people our reveries have almost the substance and vitality of the actual world.
Elizabeth was no dreamer. Though brought up abstracted from common worldly pursuits, there was something singularly practical about her. She aimed at being useful in all her reveries. This desire was rendered still more fervent by her affection for Falkner—by her fears on his account—by her ardent wish to make life dear to him. All her employments, all her pleasures, referred themselves, as it were, to this primary motive, and were entirely ruled by it.
She portioned out the hours of each day, and adhered steadily to her self-imposed rules. To the early morning's ride succeeded her various studies, of which music, for which she developed a true ear and delicate taste, formed one: one occupation relieved the other; from her dear books she had recourse to her needle, and, bending over her embroidery frame, she meditated on what she read; or, occupied by many conjectures and many airy dreams concerning Falkner, she became absorbed in revery. Sometimes, from the immediate object of these, her memory reverted to the melancholy boy she had seen at Baden. His wild eyes—his haughty glance—his lively solicitude about the animal he had hurt, and uncomplaining fortitude with which he had endured bodily pain, were often present to her. She wished that they had not quitted Baden so suddenly: if they had remained but a few days longer, he might have learned to love them; and even now he might be with Falkner, sharing his dangers, it is true, but also each guarding the other from that rash contempt of life in which they both indulged.
Her whole mind being filled by duties and affection, each day seemed short, yet each was varied. At dawn she rose lightly from her bed, and looked out over the blue sea and rocky shore; she prayed, as she gazed, for the safety of her benefactor; and her thoughts, soaring to her mother in heaven, asked her blessing to descend upon her child. Morning was not so fresh as her, as she met its first sweet breath; and, cantering along the beach, she thought of Falkner—his absence, his toils and dangers—with resignation, mingled with a hope that warmed into an ardent desire to see him again. Surely there is no object so sweet as the young in solitude. In after years—when death has bereaved us of the dearest—when cares, and regrets, and fears, and passions, evil either in their nature or their results, have stained our lives with black, solitude is too sadly peopled to be pleasing; and when we see one of mature years alone, we believe that sadness must be the companion. But the solitary thoughts of the young are glorious dreams—
"Their state,Like to a lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate."
"Their state,Like to a lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate."
To behold this young and lovely girl wandering by the lonely shore, her thoughts her only companions, love for her benefactor her only passion, no touch of earth and its sordid woes about her, it was as if a new Eve, watched over by angels, had been placed in the desecrated land, and the very ground she trod grew into paradise.
Sometimes the day was sadly checkered by bad news brought from the continent of Greece. Sometimes it was rendered joyous by the arrival of a letter from her adored father. Sometimes he was with her, and he, animated by the sense of danger, and the knowledge of his usefulness to the cause he espoused, was eloquent in his narrations, overflowing in his affection to her, and almost happy in the belief that he was atoning for the past. The idea that he should fall in the fields of Greece, and wash out with his heart's blood the dark blot on his name, gave an elevation to his thoughts, a strained and eager courage and fortitude that accorded with his fiery character. He was born to be a soldier; not the military man of modern days, but the hero who exposed his life without fear, and found joy in battle and hard-earned victory, when these were sought and won for a good cause, from the cruel oppressor.
During Falkner's visits to Zante, Elizabeth had been led to remark the faithful attentions of his chief follower, an Albanian Greek. This man had complained to his young mistress of the recklessness with which Falkner exposed himself—of the incredible fatigue he underwent—and his belief that he must ere long fall a victim to his disdain of safety and repose; which, while it augmented the admiration his courage excited, was yet not called for by the circumstances of the times. He would have been termed rash and fool-hardy, but that he maintained a dignified composure throughout, joined to military skill and fertility of resource; and while contempt of life led him invariably to select the post of danger for himself, he was sedulous to preserve the lives of those under his command. His early life had familiarized him with the practices of war. He was a valuable officer; kind to his men, and careful to supply their wants, while he contended for no vain distinctions; and was ready, on all occasions, to undertake such duties as others shrunk from, as leading to certain death.
Elizabeth listened to Vasili's account of his hairbreadth escapes, his toils, and desperate valour, with tearful eyes and an aching heart. "Oh! that I could attach him to life!" she thought. She never complained to him, nor persuaded him to alter his desperate purpose, but redoubled her affectionate attentions. When he left her, after a hurried visit, she did not beseech him to preserve himself; but her tearful eyes, the agony with which she returned his parting embrace, her despondent attitude as his bark left the shore; and, when he returned, her eager joy—her eye lighted up with thankful love—all bespoke emotions that needed no other interpreter, and which often made him half shrink from acting up to the belief he had arrived at, that he ought to die, and that he could only escape worse and ignominious evils by a present and honourable death.
As time passed on—as by the arrival of the forces from Egypt the warfare grew more keen and perilous—as Vasili renewed the sad tale of his perils at each visit, with some added story of lately and narrowly escaped peril—fear began to make too large and engrossing a portion of her daily thoughts. She ceased to take in the ideas as she read—her needle dropped from her hand—and, as she played, the music brought streams of tears from her eyes, to think of the scene of desolation and suffering in which she felt that she should soon be called upon to take a part. There was no help or hope, and she must early learn the woman's first and hardest lesson, to bear in silence the advance of an evil which might be avoided, but for the unconquerable will of another. Almost she could have called her father cruel, had not the remembrance of the misery that drove him to desperation inspired pity, instead of selfish resentment.
He had passed a few days with her, and the intercourse they held had been more intimate and more affectionate than ever. As she grew older, her mind, enriched by cultivation, and developed by the ardour of her attachment, grew more on an equality with his experienced one, than could have been the case in mere childhood. They did not take the usual position of father and child—the instructer and instructed—the commander and the obedient—
"They talked with open heart, and tongueAffectionate and true,A pair of friends."
"They talked with open heart, and tongueAffectionate and true,A pair of friends."
And the inequality which made her depend on him, and caused him to regard her as the creature who was to prolong his existence, as it were, beyond the grave, into which he believed himself to be descending, gave a touch of something melancholy to their sympathy, without which, in this shadowy world, nothing seems beautiful and enduring.
He left her; and his little bark, under press of sail, sped merrily through the waves. She stood to watch—her heart warmed by the recollection of his fervent affection—his attentive kindness. He had ever been brave and generous; but now he had become so sympathizing and gentle, that she hoped that the time was not far off when moral courage would spring from that personal hardihood which is at once so glorious and so fearful. "God shield you, my father!" she thought, "God preserve you, my more than father, for happier thoughts and better days! For the full enjoyment of, and control over, those splendid qualities with which Nature has gifted you!"
Such was the tenour of her thoughts. Enthusiasm mingled with fond solicitude—and thus she continued her anxious watchings. By every opportunity she received brief letters, breathing affection, yet containing no word of self. Sometimes a phrase occurred directing her what to do if anything fatal occurred to him, which startled and pained her; but there was nothing else that spoke of death—nor any allusion to his distaste for life. Autumn was far advanced—the sounds of war were somewhat lulled; and, except in small skirmishing parties, that met and fought under cover of the ravines and woods, all was quiet. Elizabeth felt less fearful than usual. She wrote to ask when Falkner would again visit her; and he, in reply, promised so to do immediately after a meditated attack on a small fortress, the carrying of which was of the first import to the safe quartering of his little troop during the winter. She read this with delight—she solaced herself with the prospect of a speedier and longer visit than usual; with childish thoughtlessness she forgot that the attack on the town was a work of war, and might bring with it the fatal results of mortal struggle.
A few days after, a small, ill-looking letter was put into her hands—it was written in Romaic, and the meaning of its illegible ciphers could only be guessed at by a Greek. It was from Vasili—to tell her, in a few words, that Falkner was lying in a small village, not far from the seacoast, opposite Zante. It mentioned that he had been long suffering from a Greek fever; and having been badly wounded in the late attack, the combined effects of wound and malady left little hopes of recovery; while the fatal moment was hastened by the absence of all medical assistance—the miserable state of the village where he was lying—and the bad air of the country around.
Elizabeth read as if in a dream—the moment, then, had come, the fatal moment which she had often contemplated with terror, and prayed Heaven to avert—she grew pale and trembling; but again in a moment she recalled her presence of mind, and summoned all the resolution she had endeavoured to store up to assist her at this extremity. She went herself to the chief English authority in the island, and obtained an order for a vessel to bring him off—instantly she embarked. She neither wept nor spoke; but sitting on the deck, tearless and pale, she prayed for speed, and that she might not find him dead. A few hours brought her to the desired port. Here a thousand difficulties awaited her—but she was not to be intimidated by all the threatened dangers—and only besought the people about her to admit of no excuses for delay. She was accompanied by an English surgeon and a few attendants. She longed to outspeed them all, and yet she commanded herself to direct everything that was done; nor did her heart quail when a few shot, and the cry of the men about her, spoke of the neighbourhood of the enemy. It proved a false alarm—the shots came from a straggling party of Greeks—salutations were exchanged, and still she pushed on—her only thought was—"Let me but find him alive—and then surely he will live!"
As she passed along, the sallow countenances and wasted figures of the peasants spoke of the frightful ravages of the epidemic by which Falkner was attacked—and the squalidness of the cabins and the filth of the villages were sights to make her heart ache; at length they drew near one which the guide told her was that named by Vasili. On inquiring, they were directed down a sort of lane to a wretched dilapidated dwelling—in the courtyard of which were a party of armed Greeks, gathered together in a sort of ominous silence. This was the abode of Falkner; she alighted—and in a few minutes Vasili presented himself—his face painted with every mark of apprehension and sorrow—he led her on. The house was desolate beyond expression—there was no furniture, no glass in the windows—no token of human habitation beyond the weather-stained walls. She entered the room where her father lay—some mattresses placed on the divan were all his bed; and there was nothing else in the room except a brazier to heat his food. Elizabeth drew near—and gazed in awe and grief. Already he was so changed that she could scarcely know him—his eyes sunk, his cheeks fallen, his brow streaked with pallid hues; a ghastly shadow lay upon his face, the apparent forerunner of death. He had scarcely strength sufficient to raise his hand, and his voice was hollow—yet he smiled when he saw her—and that smile, the last refuge of the soul that informs our clay, and even sometimes survives it, was all his own; it struck her to the heart—and her eyes were dimmed with tears while Vasili cast a wistful glance on her—as much as to say, "I have lost hope!"
"Thank you for coming—yet you ought not to be here," hoarsely murmured the sick man. Elizabeth kissed his hand and brow in answer—and, despite of all her endeavours, the tears fell from her eyes on his sunken cheek; again he smiled. "It is not so bad," he said; "do not weep, I am willing to die! I do not suffer very much, though I am weary of life."
The surgeon was now admitted. He examined the wound, which was of a musket bullet in his side. He dressed it, and administered some potion, from which the patient received instant relief; and then joined the anxious girl, who had retired to another room.
"He is in a very dangerous state," the surgeon remarked, in reply to her anxious looks. "Nothing certain can be pronounced yet. But our first care must be to remove him from this pestiferous place—the fever and wound combined must destroy him. Change of air may produce an amelioration in the former."
With all the energy which was her prominent characteristic, Elizabeth caused a litter to be prepared, horses hired, and everything arranged so that their journey might be commenced at daybreak. Every one went early to rest, to enjoy some repose before the morrow's journey, except Elizabeth; she spent the livelong night watching beside Falkner, marking each change, tortured by the groans that escaped him in his sleep, or the suppressed complaints that fell from his lips—by the restlessness and fever that rendered each moment full of fate. The glimmering and dreary light of the lamp increased even the squalid and bare appearance of the wretched chamber in which he lay; Elizabeth gazed for a moment from the casement to see how moved the stars—and there, without, nature asserted herself—and it was the lovely land of Greece that met her eyes; the southern night reigned in all its beauty—the stars hung refulgent lamps in the transparent ether: the fire-flies darted and wheeled among the olive groves, or rested in the myrtle hedges, flashing intermittingly, and filling for an instant a small space around them with fairy brightness; each form of tree, of rocky fragment, and broken upland, lay in calm and beautiful repose; she turned to the low couch on which lay all her hope—her idolized father; the streaked brow—the nerveless hand—half-open eye, and hard breathing betokened a frightful stage of weakness and suffering.
The scene brought unsought into her mind the lines of the English poet, which so touchingly describes the desolation of Greece—blending the idea of mortal suffering with the long-drawn calamities of that oppressed country. The words, the lines, crowded on her memory; and a chord was struck in her heart as she ejaculated, "No! no, not so! Not the first day of death—not now, or ever!" As she spoke, she dissolved in tears—and, weeping long and bitterly, she became afterward calmer—the rest of her watch passed more peacefully. Even the patient suffered less as night verged into morning.
At an early hour all was ready. Falkner was placed in the litter; and the little party, gladly leaving the precincts of the miserable village, proceeded slowly towards the seashore. Every step was replete with pain and danger. Elizabeth was again all herself. Self-possessed and vigilant, she seemed at once to attain years of experience. No one could remember that it was a girl of sixteen who directed them. Hovering round the litter of the wounded man, and pointing out how best to carry him, so that he might suffer least—as the inequalities of the ground, the heights to climb, and the ravines to cross, made it a task of difficulty. Now and then the report of a musket was heard; sometimes a Greek cap, not unoften mistaken for a turban, peered above the precipice that overlooked the road frequent alarms were given, but she was frightened by none. Her large eyes dilated and darkened as she looked towards the danger pointed out—and she drew nearer the litter, as a lonely mother might to the cradle of her child, when in the stillness of night some ravenous beast intruded on a savage solitude; but she never spoke, except to point out the mistakes she was the first to perceive—or to order the men to proceed lightly, but without fear—nor to allow their progress to be checked by vain alarms.
At length the seashore was gained, and Falkner at last placed on the deck of the vessel, reposing after the torture which, despite every care, the journey had inflicted. Already Elizabeth believed that he was saved—and yet, one glance at his wan face and emaciated figure reawakened every fear. He looked, and all around believed him to be, a dying man.
Arrived at Zante, placed in a cool and pleasant chamber, attended by a skilful surgeon, and watched over by the unsleeping vigilance of Elizabeth, Falkner slowly receded from the shadow of death, whose livid hue had sat upon his countenance. Still health was far. His wound was attended by bad symptoms, and the fever eluded every attempt to dislodge it from his frame. He was but half saved from the grave; emaciated and feeble, his disorder even tried to vanquish his mind; but that resisted with more energy than his prostrate body. The death he had gone out to seek he awaited with courage, yet he no longer expressed an impatience of existence, but struggled to support with manly fortitude at once the inroads of disease and the long-nourished sickness of his soul.
It had been a hard trial to Elizabeth to watch over him, while each day the surgeon's serious face gave no token of hope. But she would not despond, and in the end his recovery was attributed to her careful nursing. She never quitted his apartment except for a few hours' sleep; and, even then, her bed was placed in the chamber adjoining his. If he moved, she was roused and at his side, divining the cause of his uneasiness, and alleviating it. There were other nurses about him, and Vasili, the most faithful of all—but she directed them, and brought that discernment and tact of which a woman only is capable. Her little soft hand smoothed his pillow, or, placed upon his brow, cooled and refreshed him. She scarcely seemed to feel the effects of sleepless nights and watchful days—every minor sensation was merged in the hope and resolution to preserve him.
Several months were passed in a state of the utmost solicitude. At last he grew a little better—the fever intermitted—and the wound gave signs of healing. On the first day that he was moved to an open alcove, and felt some enjoyment from the soft air of evening, all that Elizabeth had gone through was repaid. She sat on a low cushion near; and his thin fingers, now resting on her head, now playing with the ringlets of her hair, gave token, by that caress, that though he was silent and his look abstracted, his thoughts were occupied upon her. At length he said—"Elizabeth, you have again saved my life."
She looked up with a quick, glad look, and her eyes brightened with pleasure.
"You have saved my life twice," he continued; "and through you, it seems, I am destined to live. I will not quarrel again with existence, since it is your gift; I will hope, prolonged as it has been by you, that it will prove beneficial to you. I have but one desire now—it is to be the source of happiness to you."
"Live! dear father, live! and I must be happy!" she exclaimed.
"God grant that it prove so!" he replied, pressing her hand to his lips. "The prayers of such as I too often turn to curses. But you, my own dearest, must be blessed; and as my life is preserved, I must hope that this is done for your sake, and that you will derive some advantage from it."
"Can you doubt it?" said Elizabeth. "Could I ever be consoled if I lost you? I have no other tie on earth—no other friend—nor do I wish for any. Only put aside your cruel thoughts of leaving me for ever, and every blessing is mine."
"Dear, generous, faithful girl! Yet the time will come when I shall not be all in all to you; and then, will not my name—my adoption—prove a stumbling-block to your wishes?"
"How could that happen?" she said. "But do not, dear father, perplex yourself with looking either forward or backward—repose on the present, which has nothing in it to annoy you; or rather, your gallantry—your devotion to the cause of an injured people, must inspire you with feelings of self-gratulation, and speak peace to your troubles. Let the rest of your life pass away as a dream; banish quite those thoughts that have hitherto made you wretched. Your life is saved, despite yourself. Accept existence as an immediate gift from Heaven; and begin life, from this moment, with new hopes, new resolves. Whatever your error was, which you so bitterly repent, it belonged to another state of being. Your remorse, your resignation, has effaced it; or if any evil results remain, you will rather exert yourself to repair them—than uselessly to lament."
"To repair my error—my crime!" cried Falkner, in an altered voice, while a cloud gathered over his face; "no, no! that is impossible! never, till we meet in another life, can I offer reparation to the dead. But I must not think of this now; it is too ungrateful to you to dwell upon thoughts which would deliver me over to the tomb. Yet one thing I would say. I left a short detail in England of the miserable event that must at last destroy me, but it is brief and unsatisfactory. During my midnight watchings in Greece, I prepared a longer account. You know that little rosewood box, which, even when dying, I asked for; it is now close to my bed; the key is here attached to my watch-chain. That box contains the narrative of my crime; when I die, you will read it and judge me."
"Never! never!" exclaimed Elizabeth, earnestly. "Dear father, how cruelly you have tormented yourself by dwelling upon and writing about the past! and do you think that I would ever read accusations against you, the guardian angel of my life, even though written by yourself? Let me bring the box—let me burn the papers—let no word remain to tell of misery you repent, and have atoned for."
Falkner detained her, as she would have gone to execute her purpose. "Not alone for you, my child," he said, "did I write, though hereafter, when you hear me accused, it may be satisfactory to learn the truth from my own hand. But there are others to satisfy—an injured angel to be vindicated—a frightful mystery to be unveiled to the world. I have waited till I should die to fulfil this duty, and still, for your sake, I will wait; for while you love me and bear my name, I will not cover it with obloquy. But if I die, this secret must not die with me. I will say no more now, nor ask any promises: when the time comes, you will understand and submit to the necessity that urged me to disclosure."
"You shall be obeyed, I promise you," she replied. "I will never set my reason above yours, except in asking you to live for the sake of the poor little thing you have preserved."
"Have I preserved you, dearest? I often fear I did wrong in not restoring you to your natural relations. In making you mine, and linking you to my blighted fortunes, I may have prepared unnumbered ills for you. Oh, how sad a riddle is life! we hear of the straight and narrow path of right in youth, and we disdain the precept; and now would I were sitting among the nameless crowd on the common road-side, instead of wandering blindly in this dark desolation; and you—I have brought you with me into the wilderness of error and suffering; it was wrong—it was mere selfishness; yet who could foresee?"
"Talk not of foreseeing," said Elizabeth, soothingly, as she pressed his thin hand to her warm young lips, "think only of the present; you have made me yours for ever—you cannot cast me off without inflicting real pangs of misery, instead of those dreamy ills you speak of. I am happy with you, attending on, being of use to you. What would you more?"
"Perhaps it is so," replied Falkner, "and your good and grateful heart will repay itself for all its sacrifices. I never can. Henceforth I will be guided by you, my Elizabeth. I will no longer think of what I have done, and what yet must be suffered, but wrap up my existence in you; live in your smiles, your hopes, your affections."
This interchange of heartfelt emotions did good to both. Perplexed, nay, tormented by conflicting duties, Falkner was led by her entreaties to dismiss the most painful of his thoughts, and to repose at last on those more healing. The evil and the good of the day he resolved should henceforth be sufficient; his duty towards Elizabeth was a primary one, and he would restrict himself to the performing it.
There is a magic in sympathy, and the heart's overflowing, that we feel as bliss, though we cannot explain it. This sort of joy Elizabeth felt after this conversation with her father. Their hearts had united; they had mingled thought and sensation, and the intimacy of affection that resulted was an ample reward to her for every suffering. She loved her benefactor with inexpressible truth and devotedness, and their entire and full interchange of confidence gave a vivacity to this sentiment, which of itself was happiness.
Though saved from immediate death, Falkner could hardly be called convalescent. His wound did not heal healthily, and the intermitting fever, returning again and again, laid him prostrate after he had acquired a little strength. After a winter full of danger, it was pronounced that the heats of a southern summer would probably prove fatal to him, and that he must be removed without delay to the bracing air of his native country.
Towards the end of the month of April they took their passage to Leghorn. It was a sad departure; the more so that they were obliged to part with their Greek servant, on whose attachment Elizabeth so much depended. Vasili had entered into Falkner's service at the instigation of the Protokleft, or chief of his clan; when the Englishman was obliged to abandon the cause of Greece, and return to his own country, Vasili, though loath and weeping, went back to his native master. The young girl, being left without any attendant on whom she could wholly rely, felt singularly desolate; for as her father lay on the deck, weak from the exertion of being removed, she felt that his life hung by a very slender thread, and she shrank half affrighted from what might ensue to her, friendless and alone.
Her presence of mind and apparent cheerfulness was never, however, diminished by these secret misgivings; and she sat by her father's low couch, and placed her hands in his, speaking encouragingly, while her eyes filled with tears as the rocky shores of Zante became indistinct and vanished.
Their voyage was without any ill accident, except that the warm southeast wind, which favoured their navigation, sensibly weakened the patient; and Elizabeth grew more and more eager to proceed northward. At Leghorn they were detained by a long and vexatious quarantine. The summer had commenced early, with great heats; and the detention of several weeks in the lazaretto nearly brought about what they had left Greece to escape. Falkner grew worse. The seabreezes a little mitigated his sufferings; but life was worn away by repeated struggles, and the most frightful debility threatened his frame with speedy dissolution. How could it be otherwise? He had wished to die. He sought death where it lurked insidiously in the balmy airs of Greece, or met it openly armed against him on the field of battle. Death wielded many weapons; and he was struck by many, and the most dangerous. Elizabeth hoped, in spite of despair; yet, if called away from him, her heart throbbed wildly as she re-entered his apartment; there was no moment when the fear did not assail her, that she might, on a sudden, hear and see that all was over.
An incident happened at this period, to which Elizabeth paid little attention at the time, engrossed as she was by mortal fears. They had been in quarantine about a fortnight, when, one day, there entered the gloomy precincts of the lazaretto a tribe of English people. Such a horde of men, women, and children, as gives foreigners a lively belief that we islanders are all mad, to migrate in this way, with the young and helpless, from comfortable homes, in search of the dangerous and comfortless. This roving band consisted of the eldest son of an English nobleman and his wife—four children, the eldest being six years old—a governess—three nursery-maids, two lady's maids, and a sufficient appendage of men-servants. They had all just arrived from viewing the pyramids of Egypt. The noise and bustle—the servants insisting on making everybody comfortable, where comfort was not—the spreading out of all their own camp apparatus—joined to the seeming indifference of the parties chiefly concerned, and the unconstrained astonishment of the Italians—was very amusing. Lord Cecil, a tall, thin, plain, quiet, aristocratic-looking man of middle age, dropped into the first chair—called for his writing-case—began a letter, and saw and heard nothing that was going on. Lady Cecil—who was not pretty, but lively and elegant—was surrounded by her children—theyseemed so many little angels, with blooming cheeks and golden hair—the youngest cherub slept profoundly amid the din; the others were looking eagerly out for their dinner.
Elizabeth had seen their entrance—she saw them walking in the garden of the lazaretto—one figure, the governess, though disguised by a green shade over her eyes, she recognised—it was Miss Jervis. Desolate and sad as the poor girl was, a familiar face and voice was a cordial drop to comfort her; and Miss Jervis was infinitely delighted to meet her former pupil. She usually looked on those intrusted to her care as a part of the machinery that supported her life; but Elizabeth had become dear to her from the irresistible attraction that hovered round her—arising from her carelessness of self, and her touching sensibility to the sufferings of all around. She had often regretted having left her, and she now expressed this, and even her silence grew into something like talkativeness upon the unexpected meeting. "I am very unlucky," she said; "I would rather, if I could with propriety, live in the meanest lodging in London, than in the grandest tumbledown palace of the East, which people are pleased to call so fine—I am sure they are always dirty and out of order. Lady Glenfell recommended me to Lady Cecil—and, certainly, a more generous and sweet-tempered woman does not exist—and I was very comfortable, living at the Earl of G——'s seat in Hampshire, and having almost all my time to myself. One day, to my misfortune, Lady Cecil made a scheme to travel—to get out of her father-in-law's way, I believe—he is rather a tiresome old man. Lord Cecil does anything she likes. All was arranged, and I really thought I should leave them—I so hated the idea of going abroad again; but Lady Cecil said that I should be quite a treasure, having been everywhere, and knowing so many languages, and that she should have never thought of going, but from my being with her; so, in short, she was very generous, and I could not say no: accordingly, we set out on our travels, and went first to Portugal—where I had never been—and do not know a word of Portuguese; and then through Spain—and Spanish is Greek to me—and worse—for I do know a good deal of Romaic. I am sure I do not know scarcely where we went—but our last journey was to see the pyramids of Egypt—only, unfortunately, I caught the ophthalmia the moment we got to Alexandria, and could never bear to see a ray of light the whole time we were in that country."
As they talked, Lady Cecil came to join her children. She was struck by Elizabeth's beaming and noble countenance, which bore the impress of high thought and elevated sentiments. Her figure, too, had sprung up into womanhood—tall and graceful—there was an elasticity joined to much majesty in all her appearance; not the majesty of assumption, but the stamp of natural grandeur of soul, refined by education, and softened by sympathetic kindness for the meanest thing that breathed. Her dignity did not spring in the slightest degree from self-worship, but simply from a reliance on her own powers and a forgetfulness of every triviality which haunts the petty-minded. No one could chance to see her, without stopping to gaze; and her peculiar circumstances—the affectionate and anxious daughter of a dying man—without friend or support, except her own courage and patience—never daunted, yet always fearfully alive to his danger—rendered her infinitely interesting to one of her own sex. Lady Cecil was introduced to her by Miss Jervis, and was eager to show her kindness. She offered that they should travel together; but as Elizabeth's quarantine was out long before that of the new comers, and she was anxious to reach a more temperate climate, she refused; yet she was thankful, and charmed by the sweetness and cordiality of her new acquaintance.
Lady Cecil was not handsome, but there was something, not exactly amounting to fascination, but infinitely taking in her manner and appearance. Her cheerfulness, good-nature, and high-breeding diffused a grace and a pleasurable easiness over her manners that charmed everybody; good sense and vivacity, never loud nor ever dull, rendered her spirits agreeable. She was apparently the same to everybody; but she well knew how to regulate the inner spirit of her attentions while their surface looked so equal: no one ventured to go beyond her wishes—and where she wished, any one was astonished to find how far they could depend on her sincerity and friendliness. Had Elizabeth's spirit been more free, she had been delighted; as it was, she felt thankful, merely for a kindness that availed her nothing.
Lady Cecil viewed the dying Falkner and his devoted, affectionate daughter with the sincerest compassion; dying she thought him, for he was wasted to a shadow, his cheeks colourless, his hands yellow and thin—he could not stand upright—and when, in the cool of evening, he was carried into the open air, he seemed scarcely able to speak from very feebleness. Elizabeth's face bespoke continual anxiety: her vigilance, her patience, her grief, and her resignation formed a touching picture, which it was impossible to contemplate without admiration. Lady Cecil often tried to win her away from her father's couch, and to give herself a little repose from perpetual attendance; she yielded but for a minute; while she conversed, she assumed cheerfulness—but in a moment after she had glided back and taken her accustomed place at her father's pillow.
At length their prison-gates were opened, and Falkner was borne on board a felucca bound for Genoa. Elizabeth took leave of her new friend, and promised to write, but while she spoke she forgot what she said—for, dreading at each moment the death of her benefactor, she did not dare look forward, and had little heart to go beyond the circle of her immediate, though dreary sensations. A fair wind bore them to Genoa, and Falkner sustained the journey very well: at Genoa they transferred themselves to another vessel, and each mile they gained towards France lightened the fears of Elizabeth. But this portion of their voyage was not destined to be so prosperous They had embarked at night, and had made some way during the first hours; but by noon on the following day they were becalmed; the small vessel—the burning sun—the shocking smells—the want of all comfortable accommodation, combined to bring on a relapse—and again Falkner seemed dying. The very crew were struck with pity; while Elizabeth, wild almost with terror and the impotent wish to save, preserved an outward calm, more shocking almost than shrieks and cries. At evening she caused him to be carried on the deck, and placed on a couch, with a little sort of shed prepared for him there; he was too much debilitated to feel any great degree of relief—there was a ghastly hue settled on his face that seemed gradually sinking into death. Elizabeth's courage almost gave way; there was no physician, no friend; the servants were frightened, the crew pitying, but none could help.
As this sense of desertion grew strong, a despair she had never felt before invaded her; and it was as she thus hung over Falkner's couch, the tears fast gathering in her eyes, and striving to check the convulsive throb that rose in her throat, that a gentle voice said, "Let me place this pillow under your father's head, he will rest more quietly." The voice came as from a guardian angel; she looked up thankfully, the pillow was placed, some drink administered, a sail extended, so as to shield him from the evening sun, and a variety of little attentions paid, which evidently solaced the invalid; and the evening breeze rising as the sun went down, the air grew cool, and he sunk at last into a profound sleep. When night came on, the stranger conjured Elizabeth to take some repose, promising to watch by Falkner. She could not resist the entreaty, which was urged with sincere earnestness; going down, she found a couch had been prepared for her with almost a woman's care by the stranger; and before she slept he knocked at her door to tell her, Falkner having awoke, expressed himself as much easier, and very glad to hear that Elizabeth had retired to rest; after this he had dropped asleep again.
It was a new and pleasant sensation to the lone girl to feel that there was one sharing her task, on whom she might rely. She had scarcely looked at or attended to the stranger while on deck; she only perceived that he was English, and that he was young; but now, in the quiet that preceded her falling asleep, his low, melodious voice sounded sweetly in her ears, and the melancholy and earnest expression of his handsome countenance reminded her of some one she had seen before, probably a Greek; for there was something almost foreign in his olive complexion, his soft, dark eyes, and the air of sentiment mingled with a sort of poetic fervour, that characterized his countenance. With these thoughts Elizabeth fell asleep; and when early in the morning she rose, and made what haste she could to visit the little sort of hut erected for her father on deck, the first person she saw was the stranger, leaning on the bulwark, and looking on the sea with an air of softness and sadness that excited her sympathy. He greeted her with extreme kindness. "Your father is awake, and has inquired for you," he said. Elizabeth, after thanking him, took her accustomed post beside Falkner. He might be better, but he was too weak to make much sign, and one glance at his colourless face renewed all her half forgotten terrors.
Meanwhile the breeze freshened, and the vessel scudded through the blue sparkling waves. The heats of noon, though tempered by the gale, still had a bad effect on Falkner; and when, at about five in the evening—often in the south the hottest portion of the day, the air being thoroughly penetrated by the sun's rays—they arrived at Marseilles, it became a task of some difficulty to remove him. Elizabeth and the stranger had interchanged little talk during the day; but he now came forward to assist in removing him to the boat—acting without question, as if he had been her brother, guessing, as if by instinct, the best thing to be done, and performing all with activity and zeal. Poor Elizabeth, cast on these difficult circumstances, without relation or friend, looked on him as a guardian angel, consulted him freely, and witnessed his exertions in her behalf in a transport of gratitude. He did everything for her, and would sit for hours in the room at the hotel, next to that in which Falkner lay, waiting to hear how he was, and if there was anything to be done. Elizabeth joined him now and then; they were in a manner already intimate, though strangers; he took a lively interest in her anxieties, and she looked towards him for advice and help, relied on his counsels, and was encouraged by his consolations. It was the first time she had felt any friendship or confidence, except in Falkner; but it was impossible not to be won by her new friend's gentleness, and almost feminine delicacy of attention, joined to all a man's activity and readiness to do the thing that was necessary to be done. "I have an adopted father," thought Elizabeth, "and this seems a brother dropped from the clouds." He was of an age to be her brother, but few years older; in all the ardour and grace of early manhood, when developed in one of happy nature unsoiled by the world.
Elizabeth, however, remained but a few days at Marseilles—it was of the first necessity to escape the southern heats, and Falkner was pronounced able to bear the voyage up the Rhone. The stranger showed some sadness at the idea of being left behind. In truth, if Elizabeth was gladdened and comforted by her new friend, he felt double pleasure in the contemplation of her beauty and admirable qualities. No word of self ever passed her lips. All thought, all care, was spent on him she called her father—and the stranger was deeply touched by her demonstrations of filial affection—her total abnegation of every feeling that did not centre in his comfort and recovery. He had been present one evening, though standing apart, when Falkner, awakening from sleep, spoke with regret of the fatigue Elizabeth endured, and the worthlessness of his life compared with all that she went through for his sake. Elizabeth replied at once with such energy of affection, such touching representation of the comfort she derived from his returning health, and such earnest entreaties for him to love life, that the stranger listened as if an angel spoke. Falkner answered, but the remorse that burdened his heart gave something of bitterness to his reply. And her eloquent though gentle solicitations that he would look on life in a better and nobler light—not rashly to leave its duties here to encounter those he knew not of in an existence beyond—and kind intimations, which, exalting his repentance into a virtue, might reconcile him to himself—all this won the listener to a deep and wondering admiration. Not in human form had he ever seen imbodied so much wisdom, and so much, strong yet tender emotion—none but woman could feel thus, but it was beyond woman to speak and to endure as she did. She spoke only just so openly, remembering the stranger's presence, as to cast a veil over her actual relationship to Falkner, whom she called, and wished to have believed to be, her true father.
The fever of the sufferer being abated, a day was fixed for their departure from Marseilles. Their new friend appeared to show some inclination to accompany them in their river navigation as far as Lyons. Elizabeth thanked him with her gladdened eyes; she had felt the want of support, or rather she had experienced the inestimable benefit of being supported during the sad crisis now and then brought about by Falkner's changeful illness; there was something, too, in the stranger very attractive, not the less so for the melancholy which often quenched the latent fire of his nature. That his disposition was really ardent, and even vivacious, many little incidents, when he appeared to forget himself, evinced—nay, sometimes his very gloom merged into sullen savageness, that showed that coldness was not the secret of his frequent fits of abstraction. Once or twice, on these occasions, Elizabeth was reminded, she knew not of whom—but some one she had seen before—till one day it flashed across her; could it be the sullen, solitary boy of Baden! Singularly enough, she did not even know her new friend's name; to those accustomed to foreign servants this will not appear strange; he was their only visiter, and "le monsieur" was sufficient announcement when he arrived. But Elizabeth remembered well that the youth's name was Neville—and, on inquiry, she learned that this also was the appellation of her new acquaintance.
She now regarded him with greater interest. She recalled her girlish wish that he should reside with them, and benefit by the kindness of Falkner—hoping that his sullenness would be softened and his gloom dissipated by the affectionate attentions he would receive. She wished to discover in what degree time and other circumstances had operated to bring about the amelioration she had wished to be an instrument in achieving. He was altered—he was no longer fierce nor sullen—yet he was still melancholy, and still unhappy—and she could discern that as his former mood had been produced by the vehemence of his character fretting against the misfortunes of his lot, so it was by subduing every violence of temper that the change was operated—and she suspected that the causes that originally produced his unhappiness still remained. Yet violence of temper is not a right word to use; his temper was eminently sweet—he had a boiling ardour within—a fervent and a warm heart, which might produce vehemence of feeling, but never asperity of temper. All this Elizabeth remarked—and, as before, she longed to dissipate the melancholy that so evidently clouded his mind; and again she indulged fancies that, if he accompanied them, and was drawn near them, the affection he would receive must dissipate a sadness created by unfortunate circumstances in early youth—but not the growth of a saturnine disposition. She pitied him intensely, for she saw that he was often speechlessly wretched; but she reverenced his self-control, and the manner in which he threw off all his own engrossing feelings to sympathize with and assist her.
They were now soon to depart, and Elizabeth was not quite sure whether Neville was to accompany them—he had gone to the boat to look after some arrangements made for the patient's comfort—and she sat with the invalid, expecting his return. Falkner reclined near a window, clasping her hand, looking on her with fondness, and speaking of all he owed her; and how he would endeavour to repay, by living, and making life a blessing to her. "I shall live," he said; "I feel that this malady will pass away, and I shall live to devote myself to rewarding you for all your anxieties, to dissipating the cloud with which I have so cruelly overshadowed your young life, and to making all the rest sunshine. I will think only of you; all the rest, all that grieves me, and all that I repent, I cast even now into oblivion."
At this moment the stranger entered and drew near. Elizabeth saw him, and said, "And here, dearest father, is another to whom you owe more than you can guess—for kindness to me and the help to you. I do not think I should have preserved you without Mr. Neville."
The young man was standing near the couch, looking on the invalid, and rejoicing in the change for the better that appeared. Falkner turned his eyes on him as Elizabeth spoke, a tremour ran through all his limbs, he grew ghastly pale, and fainted.
An evil change from this time appeared in his state—and the physician was afraid of the journey, attributing his fainting to his inability to bear any excitement; while Falkner, who was before passive, grew eager to depart. "Change of scene and moving will do me good," he said, "so that no one comes near me, no one speaks to me, but Elizabeth."
At one time the idea of Neville's accompanying them was alluded to—he was greatly disturbed—and seriously implored Elizabeth not to allow it. It was rather hard on the poor girl, who found so much support and solace in her new friend's society—but Falkner's slightest wish was with her a law, and she submitted without a murmur, "Do not let me even see him before we go," said Falkner. "Act on this wish, dearest, without hurting his feelings—without betraying to him that I have formed it—it would be an ungracious return for the services he has rendered you—for which I would fain show gratitude; but that cannot be—you alone can repay—do so, as you best may, with thanks—but do not let me see him more."
Elizabeth wondered; and, as a last effort to vanquish his dislike, she said, "Do you know that he is the same boy who interested us so much at Baden?—he is no longer savage as he was then—but I fear that he is as unhappy as ever."
"Too well do I know it," replied Falkner; "do not question me—do not speak to me again of him." He spoke in disjointed sentences—a cold dew stood on his brow—and Elizabeth, who knew that a mysterious wound rankled in his heart, more painful than any physical injury, was eager to calm him. Something, she might wonder; but she thought more of sparing Falkner pain than of satisfying her curiosity, and she mentally resolved never to mention the name of Neville again.
They were to embark at sunrise; in the evening her new friend came to take leave, she having evaded the notion of his accompanying them, and insisted that he should not join them in the morning to assist at their departure. Though she had done this with sweetness, and so much cordiality of manner as prevented his feeling any sort of slight, yet in some sort he guessed that they wished to dismiss him, and this notion added to his melancholy, while some latent feeling made him readily acquiesce in it. Elizabeth was told that he had come, and left Falkner to join him. It was painful to her to take leave—to feel that she should see him no more—and to know that their separation was not merely casual, but occasioned by her father's choice, which hereafter might again and again interfere to separate them. As she entered the room he was leaning against the casement, and looking on the sea which glanced before their windows, still as a lake, blue as the twilight sky that bent over it. It was a July evening—soft, genial, and soothing; but no portion of the gladness of nature was reflected in the countenance of Neville. His large dark eyes seemed two wells of unfathomable sadness. The drooping lids gave them an expression of irresistible softness, which added interest to their melancholy earnestness. His complexion was olive, but so clear that each vein could be discerned. His full and finely-shaped lips bespoke the ardour and sensibility of his disposition; while his slim, youthful form appeared half bending with a weight of thought and sorrow. Elizabeth's heart beat as she came near and stood beside him. Neither spoke; but he took her hand—and they both felt that each regretted the moment of parting too deeply for the mere ceremony of thanks and leave-taking.
"I have grieved," said Neville, as if answering her, though no word had been said, "very much grieved at the idea of seeing you no more; and yet it is for the best, I feel—and am sure. You do not know the usual unhappy tenour of my thoughts, nor the cause I have to look on life as an unwelcome burden. This is no new sentiment—it has been my companion since I was nine years old. At one time, before I knew how to rein and manage it, it was more intolerable than now; as a boy, it drove me to solitude—to abhorrence of the sight of man—to anger against God for creating me. These feelings have passed away; nay, more—I live for a purpose—a sacred purpose, that shall be fulfilled despite of every obstacle—every seeming impossibility. Too often, indeed, the difficulties in my way have made me fear that I should never succeed, and I have desponded; but never, till I saw you, did I know pleasure unconnected with my ultimate object. With you I have been at times taken out of myself; and I have almost forgotten—this must not be. I must resume my burden, nor form one thought beyond the resolution I have made to die, if need be, to secure success."
"You must not speak thus," said Elizabeth, looking at once with pity and admiration on a face expressive of so much sensitive pride and sadness springing from a sense of injury. "If your purpose is a good one, as I must believe that it is, you will either succeed, or receive a compensation from your endeavours equivalent to success. We shall meet again, and I shall see you happier."
"When I am happier," he said, with more than his usual earnestness, "we shall indeed meet—for I will seek you at the farthest end of the globe. Till then, I shrink from seeing any one who interests me—or from renewing sentiments of friendship which had better end here. You are too good and kind not to be made unhappy by the sight of suffering, and I must suffer till my end is accomplished. Even now I regret that I ever saw you—though that feeling springs from a foolish pride. For hereafter you will hear my name—and if you already do not know—you will learn the miserable tale that hangs upon it—you will hear me commiserated; you will learn why—and share the feeling. I would even avoid your pity—judge, then, how loathsome it is to receive that of others; and yet I must bear it, or fly them as I do. This will change. I have the fullest confidence that one day I may throw back on others the slur now cast upon me. This confidence, this full and sanguine trust, has altered me from what I once was; it has changed the impatience, the almost ferocity I felt as a boy, into fortitude and resolution."
"Yes," said Elizabeth, "I remember once I saw you a long time since, when I was a mere girl, at Baden. Were you not there about four years ago? Do you not remember falling with your horse and dislocating your wrist?"
A tracery of strange wild thought came over the countenance of Neville. "Do I remember?" he cried—"yes—and I remember a beautiful girl—and I thought such would have been my sister, and I had not been alone—if fate, if cruel, inexorable, horrible destiny had not deprived me of her as well as all—all that made my childish existence paradise. It is so—and I see you again, whom then my heart called sister—it is strange."
"Did you give me that name?" said Elizabeth. "Ah, if you knew the strange ideas I then had of giving you my father for your friend, instead of one spoken harshly—perhaps unjustly of—"
As she spoke he grew gloomy again—his eyes drooped, and the expression of his face became at first despondent, then proud, and even fierce; it reminded her more forcibly than it had ever done before of the boy of Baden—"It is better as it is," he continued, "much better that you do not share the evil that pursues me; you ought not to be humiliated, pressed down—goaded to hatred and contempt.
"Farewell—I grieve to leave you—yet I feel deeply how it is for the best. Hereafter you will acknowledge your acquaintance with me, when we meet in a happier hour. God preserve you and your dear father, as he will for your sake! Twice we have met—the third time, if sibyls' tales are true, is the test of good or evil in our friendship—till then, farewell."
Thus they parted. Had Elizabeth been free from care with regard to Falkner, she had regretted the separation more, and pondered more over the mysterious wretchedness that darkened the lives of the only two beings, the inner emotions of whose souls had been opened to her. As it was, she returned to watch and fear beside her father's couch—and scarcely to remember that a few minutes before she had been interested by another—so entirely were her feelings absorbed by her affection and solicitude for him.
From this time their homeward journey was more prosperous. They arrived safely at Lyons, and thence proceeded to Basle—to take advantage again of river navigation; the motion of a carriage being so inimical to the invalid. They proceeded down the Rhine to Rotterdam, and crossing the sea, returned at last to England, after an absence of four years.
This journey, though at first begun in terror and danger, grew less hazardous at each mile they traversed towards the North; and while going down the Rhine, Falkner and his adopted daughter spent several tranquil and happy hours—comparing the scenery they saw to other and distant landscapes—and recalling incidents that had occurred many years ago. Falkner exerted himself for Elizabeth's sake—she had suffered so much, and he had inflicted so much anguish upon her while endeavouring to free himself from the burden of life, that he felt remorse at having thus trifled with the deepest emotions of her heart—and anxious to recall the more pleasurable sensations adapted to her age. The listless, yet pleasing feelings attendant on convalescence influenced his mind also—and he enjoyed a peace to which he had long been a stranger.
Elizabeth, it is true, had another source of revery besides that ministered to her by her father. She often thought of Neville; and though he was sad, the remembrance of him was full of pleasure. He had been so kind, so sympathizing, so helpful; besides, there was a poetry in his very gloom that added a charm to every thought spent upon him. She did not only recall his conversation, but conjectured the causes of his sorrow, and felt deeply interested by the mystery that hung about him. So young and so unhappy! And he had been long so—he was more miserable when they saw him roving wildly among the Alsatian hills. What could it mean? She strove to recollect what Miss Jervis mentioned at that time; she remembered only that he had no mother, and that his father was severe and unkind.
Yet why, when nature is so full, of joyousness, when, at the summer season, vegetation basks in beauty and delight, and the very clouds seem to enjoy their aerial abode in upper sky, why should misery find a home in the mind of man? a misery which the balmy winds will not lull, nor the verdant landscape and its winding river dissipate. She thought thus as she saw Falkner reclining apart, a cloud gathered on his brow, his piercing eyes fixed in vacancy, as if it beheld there a heart-moving tragedy; but she was accustomed to his melancholy, she had ever known him as a man of sorrows; he had lived long before she knew him, and the bygone years were filled by events pregnant with wretchedness, nay, if he spoke truth, with guilt. But Neville, the young, the innocent, who had been struck in boyhood through no fault of his own, nor any act in which he bore a part; was there no remedy for him? and would not friendship, and kindness, and the elastic spirit of youth suffice to cure his wound? She remembered that he declared that he had an aim in view, in which he resolved to succeed, and, succeeding, he should be happy: a noble aim doubtless; for his soft eyes lighted joyously up, and his face expressed a glad pride when he prognosticated ultimate triumph. Her heart went with him in his efforts; she prayed earnestly for his success, and was as sure as he that Heaven would favour an object which she felt certain was generous and pure.
A sigh, a half groan from Falkner, called her to his side, while she meditated on these things. Both suffer, she thought; would that some link united them, so that both might find relief in the accomplishment of the same resolves! Little did she think of the real link that existed, mysterious, yet adamantine; that to pray for the success of one was to solicit destruction for the other. A dark veil was before her eyes, totally impervious; nor did she know that the withdrawing it, as was soon to be, would deliver her over to conflicting duties, sad struggles of feeling, and stain her life with the dark hues that now, missing her, blotted the existence of the two upon earth for whom she was most interested.
They arrived in London. Falkner's fever was gone, but his wound was rankling, painful, and even dangerous. The bullet had grazed the bone, and this, at first neglected, and afterward improperly treated, now betrayed symptoms of exfoliation; his sufferings were great—he bore them patiently; he looked on them as an atonement. He had gone out in his remorse to die—he was yet to live, broken and destroyed; and if suffered to live, was it not for Elizabeth's sake! and having bound her fate to his, what right had he to die? The air of London being injurious, and yet it being necessary to continue in the vicinity of the most celebrated surgeons, they took a pleasant villa on Wimbledon Common, situated in the midst of a garden, and presenting to the eye that mixture of neatness, seclusion, and comfort that renders some of our smaller English country-houses so delightful. Elizabeth, despite her wanderings, had a true feminine love of home. She busied herself in adding elegance to their dwelling, by a thousand little arts, which seem nothing, and are everything in giving grace and cheerfulness to an abode.
Their life became tranquil, and a confidence and Friendship existed between them, the source of a thousand pleasant conversations and happy hours. One subject, it is true, was forbidden; the name of Neville was never mentioned; perhaps, on that very account, it assumed more power over Elizabeth's imagination. A casual intercourse with one, however interesting, might have faded into the common light of day, had not the silence enjoined kept him in that indistinct, mysterious darkness so favourable to the processes of the imagination. On every other subject, the so called father and daughter talked with open heart, and Falkner was totally unaware of a secret growth of unspoken interest which had taken root in separation and secrecy.
Elizabeth, accustomed to fear death for one dearest to her, and to contemplate its near approaches so often, had something holy and solemn kneaded into the very elements of her mind, that gave sublimity to her thoughts, resignation to her disposition, and a stirring, inquiring spirit to her conversation, which, separated as they were from the busy and trivial duties of life, took from the monotony and stillness of their existence, by bringing thoughts beyond the world to people the commonplace of each day's routine. Falkner had not much of this; but he had a spirit of observation, a ready memory, and a liveliness of expression and description which corrected her wilder flights, and gave the interest of flesh and blood to her fairy dreams. When they read of the heroes of old, or the creations of the poets, she dwelt on the moral to be deduced, the theories of life and death, religion and virtue, therein displayed; while he compared them to his own experience, criticised their truth, and gave pictures of real human nature, either contrasting with, or resembling, those presented on the written page.
Their lives, thus spent, would have been equable and pleasant, but for the sufferings of Falkner; and as those diminished, another evil arose, in his eyes of far more awful magnitude. They had resided at Wimbledon about a year, when Elizabeth fell ill. Her medical advisers explained her malady as the effect of the extreme nervous excitement she had gone through during the last years, which, borne with a patience and fortitude almost superhuman, had meanwhile undermined her physical strength. This was a mortal blow to Falkner; while with self-absorbed, and, he now felt, criminal pertinacity, he had sought death, he had forgotten the results such acts of his might have on one so dear and innocent. He had thought that when she lost him, Elizabeth would feel a transitory sorrow; while new scenes, another family, and the absence of his griefs, would soon bring comfort. But he lived, and the consequences of his resolve to die fell upon her—she was his victim! there was something maddening in the thought. He looked at her dear face, grown so pale—viewed her wasting form—watched her loss of appetite and nervous tremours with an impatient agony that irritated his wound, and brought back malady on himself.
All that the physicians could order for Elizabeth, was change of air—added to an intimation that an entirely new scene, and a short separation from her father, would be of the utmost benefit. Where could she go? it was not now that she drooped—and trembled at every sound, that he could restore her to her father's family. No time ought to be lost, he was told, and the word consumption mentioned; the deaths of her parents gave a sting to that word, which filled him with terror. Something must be done immediately—what he knew not; and he gazed on his darling, whom he felt that by his own act he had destroyed, with an ardour to save that he felt was impotent, and he writhed beneath the thought.
One morning, while Falkner was brooding over these miserable ideas, and Elizabeth was vainly trying to assume a look of cheerfulness and health, which her languid step and pale cheek belied, a carriage entered their quiet grounds, and a visiter was announced. It was Lady Cecil. Elizabeth had nearly forgotten, nor ever expected to see her again—but that lady, whose mind was at ease at the period of their acquaintance, and who had been charmed by the beauty and virtues of the devoted daughter, had never ceased to determine at some time to seek her, and renew their acquaintance. She, indeed, never expected to see Falkner again, and she often wondered what would be his daughter's fate when he died; she and her family had remained abroad till the present spring, when, being in London, she, by Miss Jervis's assistance, learned that he still lived, and that they were both at Wimbledon.
Lady Cecil was a welcome visiter wherever she went, for there was an atmosphere of cheerful and kindly warmth around her, that never failed to communicate pleasure. Falkner, who had not seen her at Leghorn, and had scarcely heard her name mentioned, was won at once; and when she spoke with ardent praise of Elizabeth, and looked upon her altered appearance with undisguised distress, his heart warmed towards her, and he was ready to ask her assistance in his dilemma. That was offered, however, before it was asked—she heard that change of air was recommended—she guessed that too great anxiety for her father had produced her illness—she felt sure that her own pleasant residence and cheerful family was the best remedy that could be administered.
"I will not be denied," she said, after having made her invitation that both father and daughter should pay her a visit. "You must come to me: Lord Cecil is gone to Ireland for two months, to look after his estate there; and our little Julius being weakly, I could not accompany him. I have taken a house near Hastings—the air is salubrious, the place beautiful—I lead a domestic, quiet life, and I am sure Miss Falkner will soon be well with me."
As her invitation was urged with warmth and sincerity, Falkner did not hesitate to accept it. To a certain degree, he modified it, by begging that Elizabeth should accompany Lady Cecil, in the first place, alone. As the visit was to be for two months, he promised after the first was elapsed to join them. He alleged various reasons for this arrangement; his real one being, that he had gathered from the physicians that they considered a short separation from him as essential to the invalid's recovery. She acceded, for she was anxious to get well, and hoped that the change would restore her. Everything was therefore soon agreed upon; and, two days afterward, the two ladies were on their road to Hastings, where Lady Cecil's family already was—she having come to town with her husband only, who by this time had set out on his Irish tour.
"I feel convinced that three days of my nursing will make you quite well," said Lady Cecil, as they were together in her travelling carriage; "I wish you to look as you did in Italy. One so young, and naturally so healthy, will soon recover strength. You overtasked yourself—and your energetic mind is too strong for your body; but repose, and my care, will restore you. I am sure we shall be very happy—my children are dear little angels, and will entertain you when you like, and never be in your way. I shall be your head nurse—and Miss Jervis, dear odd soul! will act under my orders. The situation of my house is enchanting; and, to add to our family circle, I expect my brother Gerard, whom I am sure you will like. Did I ever mention him to you? perhaps not—but you must like Gerard—and you will delight him. He is serious—nay, to say the truth, sad—but it is a sadness a thousand times more interesting than the gayety of commonplace worldly men. It is a seriousness full of noble thoughts and affectionate feelings. I never knew, I never dreamed, that there was a creature resembling or to be compared to him in the world, till I saw you. You have the same freedom from worldliness—the same noble and elevated ideas—feeling for others, and thinking not of the petty circle of ideas that encompasses and presses down every other mind, so that they cannot see or feel beyond their Lilliputian selves.
"In one thing you do not resemble Gerard. You, though quiet, are cheerful; while he, naturally more vivacious, is melancholy. You look an inquiry, but I cannot tell you the cause of my brother's unhappiness; for his friendship for me, which I highly prize, depends upon my keeping sacredly the promise I have given never to make his sorrows a topic of conversation. All I can say is, that they result from a sensibility, and a delicate pride, which is overstrained, yet which makes me love him ten thousand times more dearly. He is better now than he used to be, and I hope that time and reason will altogether dissipate the vain regrets that imbitter his life. Some new, some strong feeling may one day spring up and scatter the clouds. I pray for this; for though I love him tenderly, and sympathize in his grief, yet I think it excessive and deplorable; and, alas! never to be remedied, though it may be forgotten."