“Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung,
With feigning voice, verses of feigning love;
And stolen the impression of her fantasy,
With bracelets of thy hair—rings, gawds, conceits,
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats, messengers
Of strong prevailment in unhardened youth.”
It will be remembered that Isabella, at her aunt’s summons, had gone to her house. She met Mrs. Archer at her street door. Her face spoke of startling intelligence before she uttered it. “My dear Belle,” she said, “I have the strangest news for you. I went to your father’s while you were out; and just as my foot was on your door-step, a man drove up in a wagon with a girl as pale as death—such a face! The moment he stopped she sprang from the wagon. At once I knew her, and exclaimed, ‘Bessie Lee!’”
“Bessie Lee! Gracious Heaven!”
“Yes; she asked eagerly if you were at home. I perceived the inconvenience—the impossibility of your taking care of her in the present state of your family. I felt anxious to do any thing and every thing for the sister of young Lee; I therefore told her you were not at home, but she could see you at my house; and I persuaded her to come home with me.”
“Dear Bessie! can it be possible that she is here?”
“Yes, I have left her in that room. Her attendant told me that she arrived this morning at Kingsbridge, with a decent 364man and woman, who had passports from La Fayette, and a letter from him to the commander of that post, commending the unfortunate person to his humanity, and entreating him to convey her, under a proper escort, to Mr. Linwood’s.”
“Poor Bessie! Heaven has miraculously guided her into the best hands. How does she appear?”
“With scarcely enough of mortality to shield her troubled spirit; fluttering and gentle as a stricken dove—pale, unnaturally, deadly pale—a startling brightness in her deep blue eye—her cheeks sunken; but still her features preserve the exquisite symmetry we used to think so beautiful, when a pensive, quiet little girl, she stole round after you like a shadow. And her voice, oh Belle, you cannot hear it without tears. She is mild and submissive; but restless, and excessively impatient to see you and Jasper Meredith. Twice she has come to the door to go out in search of him. I have ordered the blinds closed, and the candles lighted, to make it appear darker without than it really is. I could only quiet her by the assurance that I would send for him immediately.”
“Have you done so?”
“No; I have waited to consult you.”
The house Mrs. Archer occupied was of the common construction of the best houses of that day, being double, the two front apartments separated by a wide hall, a drawing-room in the rear, and a narrow cross-passage opening into a carriage-way to the yard. A few moments before Isabella arrived, a person had knocked at the door and asked to see Mrs. Archer; and being told that she was particularly engaged, he asked to be shown to a room where he might await her convenience, as he had business of importance with her. He was accordingly shown into an apartment opposite to that occupied at the moment by Mrs. Archer and Bessie.
There he found the blind children, Ned and Lizzy, so absorbed in a game of chess, that although he went near 365them, and overlooked them, they seemed just conscious of his presence, but not in the least disturbed by it. They went on playing and managing their game with almost as much facility as if they had their eyesight, till after a closely-fought battle Lizzy declared a checkmate. Ned (only not superior to all the chess-players we have ever seen) was nettled by his unexpected defeat, and gave vent to his vexation by saying, “Anyhow, Miss Lizzy, you would not have beaten if I had not thought it was my knight, instead of yours, on number four.”
“Oh, Ned!”
“You would not; you know I always get puzzled about the knights—I always said it was the only fault in the chessmen—I always said I wished Captain Lee had made them more different.”
“That fault is easily rectified,” said the looker-on.
“Captain Lee!” exclaimed Ned, whose memory was true to a voice once heard, and who never, in any circumstances, could have forgotten the sound of Eliot’s voice.
“Hush, my dear little fellow, for Heaven’s sake, hush!” cried Eliot, aware of the imprudence he had committed; but it was too late.
Ned’s feelings were as susceptible as his hearing. He impetuously sprang forward, and opening the door into the entry, where Mrs. Archer had just uttered the last sentence we reported of her conversation with Isabella, he cried out, “Oh, mamma, Captain Lee is here!”
Eliot involuntarily doffed his fox-skin cap, and advanced to them. Both ladies most cordially gave him their hands at the same moment, while their brows clouded with the thoughts of the sad tidings they had to communicate. Conscious of the precarious position he occupied, he naturally interpreted the concern so evident on their faces as the expression of a benevolent interest in his safety. “Do not be alarmed, ladies,” he said; “I have nothing to fear if my little friends here be quiet; 366and that I am certain they will be, when they know my life depends on my remaining unknown.”
“Oh, what have I done?” exclaimed Ned, bursting into tears; but he was soon soothed by Eliot’s assurances that no harm as yet was done.
Mrs. Archer withdrew the children, while Miss Linwood communicated to Eliot, as briefly as possible, the arrival and condition of his sister; and he, rather relieved than distressed by the information, told her that his deepest interest in coming to the city was the hope of obtaining some tidings of the poor wanderer. They then consulted how and when they had best present themselves before her; and it was decided that Miss Linwood should first go into the apartment, and prepare her to see Eliot.
Eliot retreated, and stood still and breathless to catch the first sound of Bessie’s voice; but he heard nothing but the exclamation, “She is not here!” Eliot sprang forward. The door of the apartment which led into the side passage and the outer door were both open, and Eliot, forgetful of every thing but his sister, was rushing into the street, when Bessie entered the street door with Jasper Meredith! Impelled by her ruling purpose to see Meredith, she had, on her first discovery of the side passage, escaped into the street, where the first person she encountered was he whose image had so long been present to her, that seeing him with her bodily organ seemed to make no new impression, nor even to increase the vividness of the image stamped on her memory. She had thrown on her cloak, but had nothing on her head; and her hair fell in its natural fair curls over her face and neck. Singular as it was for the delicate, timid Bessie to appear in this guise in the public street, or to appear there at all, and much as he was startled by her faded, stricken form, the truth did not at once occur to Meredith. The wildness of her eye was subdued in the dim twilight; she spoke in her accustomed quiet 367manner; and after answering to his first inquiry that she was perfectly well now, she begged him to go into Mrs. Archer’s with her, as she had something there to restore to him. He endeavoured to put her off with a commonplace evasion—“he was engaged now, would come some other time,” &c., but she was not to be eluded; and seeing some acquaintances approaching, whose observation he did not care to encounter, he ascended Mrs. Archer’s steps, and found himself in the presence of those whom he would have wished most to avoid; but there was no retreat.
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 must 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.