Bessie now acted with an irresistible energy. “This way,” said she, leading Meredith into the room she had quitted—“come all of you in here,” glancing her eye from Meredith to Isabella and Eliot, but without manifesting the slightest surprise or emotion of any sort at seeing them, but simply saying, with a smile of satisfaction, as she shut the door and threw off her cloak, “I expected this—I knew it would be so. In visions by day, and dreams by night, I always saw you together.”
It was a minute before Eliot could command his voice for utterance. He folded his arms around Bessie, and murmured, “My sister!—my dear sister!”
She drew back, and placing her hands on his shoulders and smiling, said, “Tears, Eliot, tears! Oh, shame, when this is the proudest, happiest moment of your sister’s life!”
“Is she mad?” asked Meredith of Isabella.
Bessie’s ear caught his last word. “Mad!” she repeated—“I think all the world is mad; but I alone am not! I have heard that whom the gods would destroy they first make mad; men and angels have been employed to save me from destruction.”
“It is idle to stay here to listen to these ravings,” said Meredith, in a low voice, to Miss Linwood; and he was about to make his escape, when Isabella interposed: “Stay for a moment, I entreat you,” she said; “she has been very 368eager to see you, and it is sometimes of use to gratify these humours.”
In the meantime Eliot, his heart burning within him at his sister’s being gazed at as a spectacle by that man of all the world from whose eye he would have sheltered her, was persuading her, as he would a wayward child, to leave the apartment. She resisted his importunities with a sort of gentle pity for his blindness, and a perfect assurance that she was guided by light from Heaven. “Dear Eliot,” she said, “you know not what you ask of me. For this hour my life has been prolonged, my strength miraculously sustained. You have all been assembled here—you, Eliot, because a brother should sustain his sister, share her honour, and partake her happiness; Jasper Meredith to receive back those charms and spells by which my too willing spirit was bound; and you, Isabella Linwood, to see how, in my better mind, I yield him to you.”
She took from her bosom a small ivory box, and opening it, she said, advancing to Meredith, and showing him a withered rose-bud, “Do you remember this? You plucked it from a little bush that almost dipped its leaves in that cold spring on the hill-side—do you remember? It was a hot summer’s afternoon, and you had been reading poetry to me; you said there was a delicate praise in the sweet breath of flowers that suited me, and some silly thing you said, Jasper, that you should not, of wishing yourself a flower that you might breathe the incense that you were not at liberty to speak; and then you taught me the Persian language of flowers. I kept this little bud: it faded, but was still sweet. Alas!—alas! I cherished it for its Persian meaning.” Her reminiscence seemed too vivid, her voice faltered, and her eye fell from its fixed gaze on Meredith; but suddenly her countenance brightened, and she turned to Isabella, who stood by the mantelpiece resting her throbbing head on her hand, and added, “Take it, Isabella, it is a true symbol to you.”
369Eliot for the first time turned his eye from his sister, and even at that moment of anguish a thrill of joy shot through every vein when he saw Isabella take the bud, pull apart its shrivelled leaves, and throw them from her. Meredith stood leaning against the wall, his arms folded, and his lips curled into a smile that was intended to express scornful unconcern. He might have expressed it, he might possibly have felt it towards Bessie Lee; but when he saw Isabella throw away the bud, when he met the indignant glance of her eye flashing through the tears that suffused it, a livid paleness spread around his mouth, and that feature, the most expressive and truest organ of the soul, betrayed his inward conflict. He snatched his hat to leave the room; Bessie laid her hand on his arm: “Oh, do not go; I shall be cast back into my former wretchedness if you go now.”
“Stay, sir,” said Eliot; “my sister shall not be crossed.”
“With all my heart; I have not the slightest objection to playing out my dumb show between vapouring and craziness.”
“Villain!” exclaimed Eliot—the young men exchanged glances of fire. Bessie placed herself between them, and stretching out her arms, laid a hand on the breast of each, as if to keep them apart.—“Now this is unkind—unkind in both of you. I have come such a long and wearisome journey to make peace for all of us; and if you will but let me finish my task, I shall lay me down and sleep—for ever, I think.”
Eliot pressed her burning hand to his lips. “My poor, dear sister,” he said, “I will not speak another word, if I die in the effort to keep silence.”
“Thanks, dear Eliot,” she replied; and putting both her arms around his neck, she added, in a whisper, “do not be angry if he again call me crazy; there be many that have called me so—they mistake inspiration for madness, you know.” Never was Eliot’s self-command so tested; and retiring 370to the farthest part of the room, he stood with knit brows and compressed lips, looking and feeling like a man stretched on the rack, while Bessie pursued her fancied mission. “Do you remember this chain?” she asked, as she opened a bit of paper, and let fall a gold chain over Meredith’s arm. He started as if he were stung. “It cannot harm you,” she said, faintly smiling, as she noticed his recoiling. “This was the charm.” She smoothed the paper envelope. “As often as I looked at it, the feeling with which I first read it shot through my heart—strange, for there does not seem much in it.” She murmured the words pencilled by Meredith on the envelope,
“‘Can she who weaves electric chains to bind the heart,
Refuse the golden links that boast no mystic art?’
“Oh, well do I remember,” she cast up her eyes as one does who is retracing the past, “the night you gave me this; Eliot was in Boston; mother was—I don’t remember where, and we had been all the evening sitting on the porch. The honey-suckles and white roses were in bloom, and the moon shone in through their leaves. It was then you first spoke of your mother in England, and you said much of the happy destiny of those who were not shackled by pride and avarice; and when you went away, you pressed my hand to your heart, and put this little packet in it. Yet” (turning to Isabella) “he never said he loved me. It was only my over-credulous fancy. Take it, Isabella; it belongs to you, who really weave the chain that binds the heart.”
Meredith seized the chain as she stretched out her hand, and crushed it under his foot. Bessie looked from him to Isabella, and seemed for a moment puzzled; then said, acquiescingly, “Ah, it’s all well; symbols do not make nor change realities. This little brooch,” she continued, steadily pursuing her purpose, and taking from the box an old-fashioned 371brooch, in the shape of a forget-me-not, “I think was powerless. What need had I of a forget-me-not, when memory devoured every faculty of my being? No, there was no charm in the forget-me-not; but oh, this little pencil,” she took from the box the end of a lead pencil, “with which we copied and scribbled poetry together. How many thoughts has this little instrument unlocked—what feelings has it touched—what affections have hovered over its point, and gone thrilling back through the heart! You must certainly take this, Isabella, for there is yet a wonderful power in this magical little pencil—it can make such revelations.”
“Dear Bessie, I have no revelations to make.”
“Is my task finished?” asked Meredith.
“Not yet—not quite yet—be patient—patience is a great help; I have found it so. Do you remember this?” She held up before Meredith a tress of her own fair hair, tied with a raven lock of his in a true-love knot. “Ah, Isabella, I know very well it was not maidenly of me to tie this; I knew it then, and I begged it of him with many tears, did I not, Jasper? but I kept it—that was wrong too. Now, Mr. Meredith, you will help me to untie it?”
“Pardon me; I have no skill in such matters.”
“Ah, is it easier to tie than to untie a true-love knot? Alas, alas! I have found it so. But you m
ust help me. My head is growing dizzy, and I am so faint here!” She laid her hand on her heart. “It must be parted—dear Isabella, you will help me—you can untie a true-love’s knot?”
“I can sever it,” said Isabella, with an emphasis that went to the heart of more than one that heard her. She took a pair of scissors from the table, and cut the knot. The black lock fell on the floor; the pretty tress of Bessie’s hair curled around her finger:—“I will keep this for ever, my sweet Bessie,” she said; “the memorial of innocence, and purity, and much-abused trust.”
372“Oh, I did not mean that—I did not mean that, Isabella. Surely I have not accused him; I told you he never said he loved me. I am not angry with him—you must not be. You cannot be long, if you love him; and surely you do love him.”
“Indeed, indeed I do not.”
“Isabella Linwood! you have loved him.” She threw one arm around Isabella’s neck, and looked with a piercing gaze in her face. Isabella would at this moment have given worlds to have answered with truth—“No, never!” She would have given her life to have repressed the treacherous blood, that, rushing to her neck, cheeks, and temples, answered unequivocally Bessie’s ill-timed question.
Meredith’s eye was riveted to her face, and the transition from the humiliation, the utter abasement of the moment before, to the undeniable and manifested certainty that he had been loved by the all-exacting, the unattainable Isabella Linwood, was more than he could bear, without expressing his exultation. “I thank you, Bessie Lee,” he cried; “this triumph is worth all I have endured from your raving and silly drivelling. Your silent confession, Miss Linwood, is satisfactory, full, and plain enough; but it has come a thought too late. Good-evening to you—a fair good-night to you, sir. I advise you to take care that your sister sleep more and dream less.”
There is undoubtedly a pleasure, transient it may be, but real it is, in the gratification of the baser passions. Meredith was a self-idolater; and at the very moment when his divinity was prostrate, it had been revived by the sweetest, the most unexpected incense. No wonder he was intoxicated. How long his delirium lasted, and what were its effects, are still to be seen. His parting taunt was lost on those he left behind.
Bessie believed that her mission was fulfilled and ended. The artificial strength which, while she received it as the direct gift of Heaven, her highly-wrought imagination had supplied, was exhausted. As Meredith closed the door, she 373turned to Eliot, and locking her arms around him, gazed at him with an expression of natural tenderness, that can only be imagined by those who have been so fortunate as to see Fanny Kemble’s exquisite personation of Ophelia; and who remember (who could forget it?) her action at the end of the flower-scene, when reason and nature seeming to over-power her wild fancies, she throws her arms around Laertes’s neck, and with one flash of her all-speaking eyes, makes every chord of the heart vibrate.
The light soon faded from Bessie’s face, and she lay as helpless as an infant in her brother’s arms. Isabella hastened to Mrs. Archer; and Eliot, left alone and quite unmanned, poured out his heart over this victim of vanity and heartlessness.
Mrs. Archer was prompt and efficient in her kindness. Bessie was conveyed to bed, and Eliot assured that every thing should be done for her that human tenderness and vigilance could do. After obtaining a promise from Mrs. Archer that she would write a letter to his mother, and forward it with some despatches which he knew were to be sent to Boston on the following day; and after having arranged matters for secret visits to his sister, he left her, fervently thanking God for the kind care that watched over her flickering lamp of life.
Shall we follow Eliot Lee to his hiding-place? shall we betray his secret meditations? shall we show the golden thread that ran through their dark web? shall we confess, that amid the anxieties (some understood by our readers, and some yet unexplained) that lowered over him, a star seemed to have risen above his horizon? Yes—we dare confess it; for a little reflection rebuked his presumption, and he exclaimed, “What is it to me if she be free?”
Isabella passed the night in watching with Mrs. Archer over her unconscious little friend; and as she gazed on her meek brow, on the beautiful features that were stamped 374with truth and tenderness, her indignation rose against him who, for the poor gratification of his miserable vanity, could meanly steal away the treasure of her affections—that most precious boon, given to feed the lamp of life, and light the way to heaven.
Mrs. Archer, at this crisis, felt much like one who, having seen a rich domain relieved, by the sudden interposition of Providence, from a pernicious intruder, is impatient to see it in possession of a lawful proprietor. It was womanly and natural, that when she and Isabella were watching at Bessie’s bedside, she should descant on Eliot—should recall his tenderness and gentleness to Bessie, and the true heroism with which, for her sake, he repressed the indignation that was ready to burst on Meredith. Mrs. Archer thought Isabella listened languidly, and assented coldly. She told her so. “Dear aunt Mary,” she replied, “my mind is absorbed in a delicious, devout sense of escape. From my childhood I have been in thraldom—groping in mist. Now I stand in a clear light—I see objects in their true colours—I am mistress of myself, and am, as far as relates to myself, perfectly happy. Some other time we will talk over what your friend said, and did, and did not do, and admire it to your heart’s content. Now I am entirely selfish; I have but one idea—but one sensation!” Mrs. Archer was satisfied.
375CHAPTER XXXIV.
“Chi puo dir com’ egli arde é in picciol fuoco.”
Meredith left Mrs. Archer’s in a state of feverish excitement. He paced up and down the street, trying by projects for the future to drive away the memory of the past. The thought of his degradation before Isabella Linwood was insupportable; and the recollection that Eliot Lee had bestowed the stinging epithet of villain on him in her presence, roused his strongest passions and stimulated him to revenge. He turned his steps towards Sir Henry Clinton’s. “I shall but do a common duty,” he said, “in giving information that a rebel officer, high in Washington’s favour, is in disguise in the city—I shall, indeed, be summarily avenged, if Tryon should requite on Lee’s head the death of Palmer.” The man to whom his thoughts adverted was he in relation to whom Putnam had addressed to Tryon the famous laconic note.
“Sir,—Nathan Palmer, a lieutenant in the service of your king, has been taken in my camp as a spy, condemned as a spy, and will be hung as a spy.
“P.S.—He has been hanged.”
The thought of such a catastrophe changed Meredith’s purpose. He had no taste for tragedy. He believed that Eliot’s visit to the city had relation only to Bessie, and shrinking from adding such an item to his account with her as the betrayal 376of her natural protector, he turned back and retraced his way homeward, meditating a retaliation better suited than revenge to his shallow character. Passions flow from deep sources. Meredith’s relations with Isabella were far more interesting to him than the life or death of Eliot Lee, or his poor sister; and in trying to devise some balm for his wounded vanity, he hit upon an expedient on which he immediately resolved. This alluring expedient was none else than an immediate engagement with Lady Anne Seton; which, being antedated but by a few hours, would demonstrate to Isabella Linwood that he, and not she, had first thrown off the shackles; and would leave for ever rankling in her proud bosom the tormenting recollection that she had involuntarily confessed she loved him, as he had tauntingly said, “a thought too late.”
His decision made, he hastened home, dwelling with the most soothing complacency on his recent meeting with his cousin on the banks of the Hudson, and smiling as he thought how delighted she would be at his profiting by her hint, in thus soon offering to be joint tenant of her love-built American cottage.
“Where is my cousin?” he asked, as he entered the drawing-room, and found his mother sitting alone.
“Where she eternally is,” replied his mother, throwing down her book and eyeglass, and risi
ng with the air of one who has borne a vexation till it is no longer supportable; “it is the most inexplicable infatuation; the girl seems absolutely bewitched by Isabella Linwood.”
“But Miss Linwood is not at home this evening. I left her at her aunt Archer’s.”
“At Mrs. Archer’s?—you were with her there, Jasper?”
Meredith replied smiling, and without attempting to evade his mother’s probing eye, “Yes, I was there, but much against my will, for I had hoped to pass this evening with you and my cousin.”
377“Thank you, my son, thank you. I flattered myself that all was settled in your mind—definitively settled—when you so gallantly assured Anne that you soon should be ‘irretrievably in love,’ leaving her to supply the little hiatus which no girl, in like case, would fail to fill with her own name. And now I will be perfectly frank with you, Jasper—indeed, if there is any thing on which I pride myself, it is frankness. You understood the intimation in the Italian stanza I gave you from the carriage this afternoon?” Meredith bowed. “It conveyed a little history in a few words, my son; I have simply aimed to be ‘la stella,’ by which you, a wise and skilful ‘nocchiero,’ should, taking advantage of fair winds and favourable tides, guide your vessel into port. But why speak in figures when we perfectly understand one another? Our dear little Anne—a sweet attractive creature, is she not?—was left to my guardianship, or rather matronship, for your poor uncle was so very thoughtless as to vest me with no authority to control her fortune, or her choice of a husband.”
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