“Heart! what’s that?
“Oh, a thing servant-maids have, and break for John the footman.”
If Meredith could have borne off his charming heiress-cousin, his love for Isabella might have gone to the moon, or to any other repository of lost and forgotten things. But, balked in that pursuit, it resumed its empire over him. He passed a feverish, sleepless night, revolving the past, and reconsidering Isabella’s every word and look during their interview of the preceding evening; and finally, he came to a conclusion not unnatural (for few persons give others credit for less of a given infirmity than they themselves possess), that Isabella’s vanity had been wounded by the conviction that she had been, for a time, superseded by Bessie Lee; and that the ground he had thus lost might, by a dexterous manœuvre, be regained. Engrossed with his next move, he appeared at breakfast-table as usual, attentive to his mother, and polite to Lady Anne, who, anxious to express her good-will, was more than ordinarily kind; and Mrs. Meredith concluded that if matters had not gone as far as she had hoped, they were going on swimmingly. The breakfast finished, Lady Anne ran away from her aunt’s annoying devotions to the Linwoods, and Meredith retired to his own room to write, after weighing and sifting each word, the following note to Isabella. He did not send it, however, till he had taken the 384precaution to precede it by a written request to Lady Anne (with whom he had found out too late that honest dealing was far the safest) that she would, on no account—he asked it for her own sake—communicate to any one their parting scene of the preceding evening. His evil star ruled the ascendant, and Lady Anne received the note too late.
To Miss Linwood.
“Montaigne says, and says truly, that ‘toutes passions que se laissent, gouster et digerer ne sont que mediocres;’ but how would he—how shall I characterize a passion which has swallowed up every other passion, desire, and affection of my nature—has grown and thriven upon that which would have seemed fatal to its existence!
“Isabella, these are not hollow phrases; you know they are not; and be not angry at my boldness; I know your heart responds to them, and, though I was stretched on the rack to obtain this knowledge, I thank my tormentors. Yes, by Heaven! I would not exchange that one instant of intoxicating, bewildering joy, when, even in the presence of witnesses, and such witnesses! you confessed you had loved me, for ages of a common existence. Thank Heaven, too, the precious confession was not through the hackneyed medium of words. Such a sentiment is not born in your bosom to die. I judge from my own inferior nature. I have loved on steadily, through absence, coldness, disdain, caprice (pardon me, my proud, my adored Isabella), in spite of the canker and rust of delay after delay; in spite of all the assaults of those temptations to which the young and fortunate are exposed. Can I estimate your heart at a lower rate than my own?
“As to that silly scene last evening, though it stung me at the moment, and goaded me to an unmeaning impertinence, yet, on a review of it, do you not perceive that we were both the dupes of a little dramatic effect? and that there is no reality 385in the matter, except so far as concerns the lost wits of the crazed girl, and the very natural affliction of her well-meaning brother, whose unjust and hasty indignation towards me, being the result of false impressions, I most heartily forgive.
“As to poor Bessie Lee, I can only say, God help her! I am most sincerely sorry for her; but neither you nor I can be surprised that she should be the dupe of her lively imagination, and the victim of her nervous temperament. I ask but one word in reply. Say you will see me at any hour you choose; and, for God’s sake, Isabella, secure our interview from interruption.”
In half an hour, and just as Meredith was sallying forth to allay his restlessness by a walk in the open air, he met his messenger with a note from Miss Linwood. He turned back, entered the unoccupied drawing-room, and read the following:—
“I have received your note, Jasper; I do not reply to it hastily; hours of watchfulness and reflection at the bedside of my friend have given the maturity of years to my present feeling. I have loved you, I confess it now; not by a treacherous blush, but calmly, deliberately, in my own handwriting, without faltering or emotion of any sort. Yes, I have loved you, if a sentiment springing from a most attachable nature, originating in the accidental intercourse of childhood, fostered by pride, nurtured by flattery, and exaggerated by an excited imagination, can be called love.
“I have loved you, if a sentiment struggling with doubt and distrust, seeking for rest and finding none, becoming fainter and fainter in the dawning light of truth, and vanishing, like an exhalation in the full day, can be called love.
“You say truly. Bessie Lee is the dupe of a too lively imagination, and the victim of a nervous temperament. To these you might have added, an exquisitely organized frame, and a conscience 386too susceptible for a creature liable to the mistakes of humanity. Oh, how despicable, how cruel, was the vanity that could risk the happiness of such a creature for its own gratification! I have wept bitterly over her; I should scarcely have pitied her, had she been the unresisting slave and victim of a misplaced and unrequited passion.
“After what I have written, you will perceive that you need neither seek nor avoid an interview with me; that the only emotion you can now excite, is a devout gratitude that our former interviews were interrupted, and circumstances were made strong enough to prevail over my weakness.
“Isabella Linwood.
“P.S.—I have detained my messenger, and opened my note to add, that your cousin has just come in, and with a confidence befitting her frank nature, has communicated to me the farce with which you followed up the tragedy of last evening.”
Meredith felt, what was in truth quite evident, that Isabella Linwood was herself again. He threw the note from him in a paroxysm of vexation, disappointment, and utter and hopeless mortification; and covering his face with his hands, he endured one of those moments that occur even in this life, when the sins, follies, and failures of by-gone years are felt with the vividness and acuteness of the actual and present, and memory and conscience are endued with supernatural energy and retributive power.
What a capacity of penal suffering has the All-wise infused into the moral nature of man, even the weakest!
“The mind is its own place, and in itself,
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
Meredith was roused by the soft fall of a footstep. He started, and saw Helen Ruthven, who had just entered, and 387was in the act of picking up the note he had thrown down. She looked at the superscription, then at Meredith. Her lustrous eyes suffused with tears, and the tears formed into actual drops, and rolled down her cheeks. “Oh, happy, most happy Isabella Linwood!” she exclaimed. Meredith took the note from her and threw it into the fire. Miss Ruthven stared at him, and lifted up her hands with an unfeigned emotion of astonishment. After a moment’s pause, she added, “I still say, most happy Isabella Linwood. And yet, if she cannot estimate the worth of the priceless kingdom she sways, is she most happy? You do not answer me; and you, of all the world, cannot.” Meredith did not reply by word; but Miss Ruthven’s quick eye perceived the cloud clearing from his brow; and she ventured to try the effect of a stronger light. “I cannot comprehend this girl,” she continued; “she is a riddle—an insolvable riddle to me. A passionless mortal seems to me to approach nearer to a monster than to a divinity deserving your idolatry, Meredith. She cannot be the cold, apathetic, statue-like person she appears—”
“And why not, Miss Ruthven?”
“Simply because a passionless being cannot inspire passion—and yet—and yet, if she were a marble statue, your love should have been the Promethean touch to infuse a soul. Pardon me—pity me, if I speak too plainly; there are moments when the heart will burst the barriers of prudence—there are moments of desperation, of self-abandonment. I cannot be bound by those petty axioms and frigid rules that shackle my sex—I cannot weigh my words—I must pour out my heart, even though this prodigality of its treasures ‘naught enriches you, and makes me poor indeed!’”
Helen Ruthven’s broken sentences were linked together by expressive glances and effective pauses. She gave to her words all the force of intonation and emphasis, which produce the effect of polish on metal, making it dazzling, without 388adding an iota to its intrinsic value. Meredith lent a most attentive ear, mentally comparing the while Miss Ruthven’s lavished sensibilities to Isabella’s jealous reserve. He should have discriminated between the generosity that gives what is nothing worth, and the fidelity that watches over an immortal treasure; but vanity wraps itself in impenetrable darkness. He only felt that he was in a labyrinth of which Helen Ruthven held the clew; and that he was in the process of preparation to follow whithersoever she willed to lead him.
We let the curtain fall here; we have no taste for showing off the infirm of our own sex. We were willing to supply some intimations that might be available to our ingenuous and all-believing young male friends; but we would not reveal to our fair and true-hearted readers the flatteries, pretences, false assumptions, and elaborate blandishments, by which a hackneyed woman of the world dupes and beguiles; and at last (obeying the inflexible law of reaping as she sows) pays the penalty of her folly in a life of matrimonial union without affection—a wretched destiny, well fitting those who profane the sanctuary of the affections with hypocritical worship.
While the web is spinning around Meredith, we leave him with the wish that all the Helen Ruthvens in the world may have as fair game as Jasper Meredith.