Ethel Churchill/Chapter 112
CHAPTER XXXVI.
A REQUEST.
Trace the young poet's fate
Fresh from his solitude—the child of dreams,
His heart upon his lip, he seeks the world
To find him fame and fortune, as if life
Were like a fairy tale. His song has led
The way before him; flatteries fill his ear,
And he seems happy in so many friends.
What marvel if he somewhat overrate
His talents and his state!
"She sleeps now heavily, nor will she waken for some hours; every thing depends upon that awakening," said the physician.
"You have, then, hopes?" asked Ethel.
"That the body," replied the other, "may recover; but not the mind. Young lady, it would be wrong to deceive you; Lady Marchmont is, I fear, irrecoverably insane."
She leant against the bed, pale, sick with the shock of his words; yet mingled with a strange and fearful relief. Insanity, with no further cause, would account for Henrietta's frantic ravings; and when she thought how gifted, how clever she was, it seemed impossible that such a mind could pass away in a single night. She hoped; she could not help hoping.
When the physician went away, she approached the bed, and gazed upon Henrietta sleeping. How wan, and how attenuated was that beautiful face! the cheek fell in, with a complete hollow; and the black eye-lashes, as they rested upon it, only served to show still more forcibly its deadly whiteness.
She had been restless at first; and some of the silvery gray hair fell over the forehead. Ethel put it softly back, and started to feel how the hot pulses throbbed beneath her touch. She carefully drew the curtains; and, leaving orders to be sent for should there be the slightest change, returned home.
It was a great relief to her oppressed spirits to find that her grandmother had an old friend come to pass the day with her, so the Cassandra was left in repose for that morning at least. She sought the little chamber peculiarly appropriated to her own use; and, seating herself by the window, sank into a sad and listless reverie.
It is a mood whose "profitless dejection" there are few among us but what have known. It is the result of the overstrained nerves, the worn-out frame—something of bodily weakness must mingle with it. We turn away from the future, we are too desponding to look forward. Every sorrow of the past seems to rise up, not only as a recollection of suffering, but as if each were an omen of what is to come. We feel as if even to wish were a folly; or, worse, a tempting of fate. We have no confidence in our own good fortune; it seems as if the mere fact of wishing were enough to have that wish denied. A fretful discontent gnaws at the heart, the worse for being ashamed to confess it.
But Ethel soon felt the error of giving way to this utter discouragement: she made it a duty to struggle against it. She rose from her seat; and, flinging open the casement, strove to divert her attention by looking out upon the river. She turned hastily away; she had no sympathy with the sunshine—the movement—the seeming cheerfulness of the world below. She took up her work, but that was no mental stimulus; she laid it down, and, going to her little bookcase, took down the first book that came to hand.
It was a favourite volume which she opened—"Fugitive Poems, by Walter Maynard." She had always taken an interest in one whom she had known from earliest childhood; and of late the melancholy in herself had harmonised with that which was the chief characteristic of his writings. She soon became interested: her sadness took a softer tone: for now it seemed understood, and met with tender pity. And this is the dearest privilege of the poet—to soothe the sorrowing, and to excite the languid hour; to renovate exhausted nature, by awakening it with the spiritual and the elevated; and bringing around our common hours shadows from those more divine.
Ethel was, however, interrupted by the appearance of her maid bringing her chocolate, and a message, that a young person below was very anxious to see her.
"Show her up immediately," was Miss Churchill's reply, who was, however, a little startled when she found that her visitor was her former attendant, Lavinia Fenton. But her first glance at the young actress was enough: she was pale, thin, and the trace of tears were yet recent on her cheeks. She had been very wrong to leave her mistress as she had done; and to Ethel's quiet and secluded habits her having gone on the stage seemed absolutely awful; but she was obviously suffering; and the only question was, how that suffering could be assisted?
Ethel approached her kindly, and made her sit down and take some refreshment, before she would even ask her what was her present business.
"I do not come on my own account," exclaimed Lavinia, eagerly: "believe me, Miss Churchill, I remember all your former kindness, and know too well the difference between us, not to know the best way I can mark my sense of it, is never to come near you."
"Oh, Lavinia!" exclaimed her young mistress; "how could you leave us? we used to be so fond of each other! surely I shall be able to prevail upon you to leave your present mode of life. Tell me, what can we do for you?"
"Nothing," said the girl, touched to the very heart by Ethel's kindness; "I could not come to you if I had been starving in the streets. Now I do not come for myself."
"On whose account, then?" exclaimed her listener.
Lavinia hesitated, she had persuaded herself into her visit; the whole way she had invented speeches, she had quite settled how to meet any possible objection; but now her voice failed her, her frame shook with strong emotion, and it was some moments before she could reply.
"Ah, madam! I wish you could have witnessed the scene which I have just left. I am come from the death-bed, in hopes that you will grant the last earthly wish which seems to haunt it."
"Could you doubt one moment that I should?" interrupted Ethel: "only tell me what it is?"
"Do you remember," asked the actress, "Walter Maynard?”
"Do I remember him!" exclaimed Ethel, her eye unconsciously falling on the volume which she had just been reading, and which still lay open on the table,—"It would, indeed, be difficult to forget him."
The quick glance of the actress followed her look. "Ah!" said she, "you have been reading his works: he will write no more beautiful verses to you; for he is dying—dying, too, in miserable want!"
"My God!" cried Ethel, springing from her seat, "let us go to him!—what can we do? Let me find my grandmother!"
Lavinia gently detained her. "Walter Maynard," continued she, "is far beyond all human help; his days—ay, his very hours are numbered: but you may fling over them one last gleam of human happiness."
"I!" cried Ethel.
"You—you whom he has loved so long, so truly! You saw it not, you thought only of another; but Walter Maynard loved your very shadow; and such have you been to him through life."
Ethel stood breathless with surprise; she looked back to Walter with the affectionate regard which lingers around one whom we have known in early life, and have never seen since. Of late, her imagination had dwelt upon him with that picturesque interest with which we are apt to invest the writer whose pages appeal to our feelings.
Lavinia saw her emotion, and added, "Not that your name ever passed his lips; save in the muttered wish of this morning, he never spoke of you. If you could see him now—so changed, so pale—you would pity him."
"Pity him!" exclaimed Ethel, no longer able to suppress her tears.
"You will come, then?" asked the actress.
"Yes, the instant I have spoken to my grandmother;" and, ringing the bell, desired that her chair might be sent round immediately.
"It is a long way off," said Lavinia, "and I must hurry away. I always dread what may have happened during my absence."
"Is he so very ill?" interrupted Ethel.
"Lady, he is dying," replied the other. Then, laying the address, with written directions, on the table, she hurried away, leaving her young mistress in a state of the most painful agitation.
Ethel could scarcely believe, after the actress had left her, but what she had been in a dream. "Good heavens!" exclaimed she, "what a precious thing love is! what a gift of all hope, all happiness, into the power of another!—and yet, how often is it bestowed in vain! wasted, utterly and cruelly wasted! Well, if he loved me, there has been a sad and bitter sympathy between us. Can he have been more wretched than I have been?" and, covering her face with her hands, she gave way to a passionate burst of weeping.
It was so long before she recovered, that her chair was ready first: and, startled at the announcement, she hastened to ask her grandmother's permission for her visit. It was instantly granted; for Mrs. Churchill had always liked Walter, and had taken a personal satisfaction in his literary success. It was a compliment to her discernment. If ever we forgive another's celebrity, it is when it fulfils our own prophecy. But to have him, who had been a little child playing at her feet, dying in desolation and misery, roused every kindly feeling.
She hurried Ethel to put on her cloak, and saw herself to the packing up of a basket; containing one or two medicines in which she placed implicit faith, and a note from herself, begging him to come at once to her house to be nursed.
The bustle over, a glow of self-satisfaction in spite of her sorrow, diffusing itself; and, taking one of his volumes, she went to her own chair, and soon found herself shedding tears over the strange mixture of real and ideal misery.