Ethel Churchill/Chapter 34
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CONFIDENCE.
I feel the presence of my own despair;
It darkens round me palpable and vast.
I gave my heart unconsciously; it filled
With love as flowers are filled with early dew,
And with the light of morning.
*****
If he be false, he who appeared so true,
Can there be any further truth in life,
When falsehood wears such seeming?
Sir Jasper started from his seat; absorbed in his letter, he had not perceived the alteration in Ethel's face, and the noise of her fall was the first thing that drew his attention. At once he felt what was the cause—the marriage he had so unconsciously communicated—and he stood for an instant lost in thought. But he was too much of a chemist not to have remedies at hand, and he raised the inanimate form tenderly, as if it had been his own beloved child, and laid her on the couch. A few minutes sufficed to restore her to life, and also to consciousness. Slowly her scattered senses returned; she gazed on Sir Jasper, but her eye wandered round with an unsatisfied gaze; at last it rested on the letter, which had fallen on the ground.
"It is all true," muttered she, with a faint shudder. She pressed her hands firmly together, but the effort was vain, and she burst into a violent flood of tears. "Forgive me," she exclaimed, "I ought to wait till I get home; but I am wretched, very wretched."
The kind old man did not even attempt to speak; he knew too well the vanity of consolation, to mock her with it; but he took her hand gently, and his own eyes glittered with unusual moisture. An hour before, or an hour after, and Ethel would have locked her secret deep in her inmost heart; but now misery mastered timidity, and it was a relief to speak. Moreover, there was such encouragement in Sir Jasper's gentle and voiceless sympathy.
"I am sure that he did love me," exclaimed she: "young as I am, my heart tells me the truth. Ah, no, it has deceived me! There is no truth in any thing."
"Were you, then, engaged to Mr. Courtenaye?" said Sir Jasper, who asked the question solely to give her an opportunity of expressing the emotion it was too much to restrain.
"He told me he loved me," replied Ethel, in a tone of hopeless dejection, which went to her companion's heart.
"My poor child," said he, "I can urge nothing to comfort you. It will not soften your suffering to know how common it is"
"Common!" exclaimed she.
"Ay, common—too common. Life has many dreams; all sweet, and all fugitive; but love is the sweetest and most fugitive of all. I know nothing of Mr. Courtenaye; but I can perceive enough of this affair to see that he is one of those who, for a moment's selfish gratification, or for the yet meaner love of gratified vanity, will excite the deepest feelings, and trifle with the dearest hopes of all who trust them!"
"It is not possible!" said his listener, almost inaudibly, as Norbourne's open brow, and simple, yet earnest manner, arose on her recollection. His falsehood was too evident, yet she could not bear to hear another say it. It seemed as if she had scarcely believed it, till confirmed by Sir Jasper. All in her mind was confusion; still the paramount sense that predominated over all others, was the bitter conviction of his unworthiness. Any thing but that she could have borne; but to find realised in him all she had ever heard of man's crime and cruelty, darkened the whole world: all belief in goodness had suddenly departed. Still, till Sir Jasper spoke, she felt rather as if labouring under a frightful dream than conscious of a frightful reality. She remained for a few moments in gloomy silence, when the entrance of a servant, with wood for the fire, roused her from her stupor. How strangely do the common domestic events, things of constant and hourly recurrence, jar upon the over-excited nerves! It seems to mock our inward misery to see all but the pulses of our own beating heart, go on so calmly and uniformly. There is an exaggeration in sorrow, which would fain demand universal sympathy: it does not find it, and the sorrow sinks the deeper.
"I am very late," exclaimed Ethel, starting up, and drawing her hood over her face: "dear, dear sir, I will thank you for your kindness to-morrow."
"God bless you, my poor child; but will you take a servant with you—you are not well enough to go home by yourself?"
"I am better alone: it is not five minutes' walk," said Ethel, eagerly.
Sir Jasper let her depart without further remonstrance; he sympathised with the feverish mood that craved the indulgence of solitude; he knew its worth. Ethel hurried along the well known path, haunted by so many remembrances. She started from them: she felt as if she must drop, did she pause for a single moment. Never had she made such haste before: and yet it seemed an age before she gained her little chamber; once there, she flung herself on her bed, and gave way to the sorrow with which she no longer struggled. Who among you has not felt the relief that it is, after constraint on some overwhelming misery, to reach the loneliness of your own room, and there yield to the passionate weeping you cannot repress? Ethel, was very young, and unaccustomed to grief; her feelings were in all their first freshness; and to such, forgetfulness seems impossible: but the body sinks under the mind, and nature can endure but a portion of suffering. Ethel cried like a child; and, like a child, cried herself to sleep.
There was a strange contrast between that cheerful chamber and its occupant. Every thing around denoted quiet, comfort, and glad and innocent tastes: the walls were of white wainscot, and hung with drawings; bookshelves fastened with rose-coloured riband, and in two recesses were stands of old china, where shepherds, shepherdesses, and sheep, predominated. An open spinnet was in one corner, and in the other an embroidery-frame, whose half-finished flowers spoke of recent employment. In each of the windows was a beaupot, and the roses were fresh, as if still on their native bough: and in one of the window-seats was a volume of Sir Philip Sydney's "Arcadia:" a few myrtle leaves were scattered on the yet unclosed page, a graceful mark to find the place where the youthful reader had brooded over visions of truth and love, already vanished, like the freshness of those leaves, strewed, as if they were flung on the shroud of departed hope.
The casements were open, and looked on one of the fairest aspects of the garden; and the murmur of branches brought a sense of repose, and a faint perfume that grew every moment sweeter. The sun had set, and a soft purple haze clothed the distance; but a few rosy tints yet floated on the horizon, far from the colourless moon, whose pale crescent, pure and lucid as pearl, had just arisen: one single star was on the sky, tremulous and clear, belonging to other worlds— ah, surely, less troubled than ours! It rose just above where Ethel was sleeping, the only agitated thing in all that fair and calm scene: she lay with her head on her arm, and tears
Seem'd but the natural melting of its snow,
as the flushed cheek pressed upon it. Her long bright tresses had escaped from all confinement, and lay around her in rich confused masses, but giving that air of desolation which nothing marks in a woman so strongly as her neglected hair. Her eyes were closed, but the soft eyelids were swelled and red, and the eyelashes yet glittered with tears; a spot of burning red was on either cheek, but the rest of the face was pale; and, even in slumber, the muscles of the mouth quivered. Her breathing was difficult—how unlike its usual hushed and regular sweetness—while every now and then her whole frame was shaken by a quick convulsive sob. Terrible, indeed, is such sleep; but more terrible its awaking. At first we rouse forgetful; but conscious of something, we know not what. The head is raised with a sudden start, only to drop heavily on the pillow from whence rest is banished in an instant. The eyes close again, but not to sleep; we seek only to shut out the light from which we sicken. But the inward sorrow rises only the more distinct: all is remembered, not a pang is spared; and the very rest given to the body only renders its sense of suffering more acute. Misery has many bitter moments; but, I believe, the first awakening after any great sorrow is the one of its most utter agony. How will it ever be possible to get through the long, the coming day? I envy those who have never asked the question.