CHAPTER VII.

Son ilusion mis dichas Son realidad mis penas.

It was with difficulty that Algernon and Ellen could fix their eyes upon the paper; every thing swam before them. They read in silence the following letter—with what feelings may be better imagined than described.

“My beloved Wife, my own Ellen,

“You must have been astonished at not hearing from me the result of the desperate attempt to escape from Verdun, of which I informed you. It succeeded! so far, at least, as getting safe out of that horrible dungeon, disguised as one of the mourners at my own funeral, according to the plan I hinted at in my letter by Maitland, and which he promised to describe to you more fully when he reached England. I made my way across the Rhine into Germany; but I found the examinations so very strict, and the officers at the custom-houses so exceedingly suspicious, that I fancied I should be safer if I advanced farther into Germany, and tried to work my way to Hamburgh.

“I was, however, almost immediately seized as a spy. My ignorance of the language was supposed to be a feint, and I was passed on, from authority to authority, from governor to governor, till I believe they began to think me a person of great importance.

“I was at length cast into a prison at this place; and here I have now languished more than four years.

“I did not venture to write to you while wandering in France. All letters being opened, they might have led to my being traced and identified; and from the moment I was in the power of the Germans, I was not allowed the use of pen and paper, lest there might be some hidden meaning in any thing I might despatch to England.

“I have now endured four years of mental anguish, such as man has seldom survived. There hangs a mist over some of the horrible years spent in this abode of misery. The wretches who drove me to desperation, treated me as a madman for resenting their cruelty, and I found myself at one time pinioned in a straight waistcoat!

“Was it not enough to madden a cooler head than mine, to gall a calmer heart than mine, to be thus severed from the creature one adores, to know one’s lovely wife, left lonely and unprotected, in the bloom of youth, amid all the temptations of this corrupt world? Oh, Ellen! I shall go mad if I think of that! But you are virtuous, Ellen!—Yes, yes—if there is virtue in woman it is in you. And yet—five long years of absence! Oh! you will have forgotten me. You cannot have loved me, and me alone, in all these years! Oh God! if you should have loved another! My brain goes round! Be faithful to me, Ellen, as you value my reason, and your own welfare, here and hereafter.

“But I am altered, fearfully altered. I am grown grey; I am twenty years older than when we parted. But I love you, Ellen—I love you with more ardour, more burning, maddening fervour, than when I first bore you in your maiden bloom from the home of your childhood.

“Write to me, my love, my wife, my own, own blessed wife! Your letter will reach me in safety if you inclose it to the new governor, who is a kind-hearted man, and has given me permission to bid you do so. He pities me. He will stand my friend. He promises to forward a petition which I am now drawing up, direct to the Emperor, and a ray of hope has dawned upon me. I may yet return to you, my Ellen, and to my children—

“In life and in death,

“Your adoring husband,

“CHARLES CRESFORD.”

Ellen and Algernon spoke not—moved not. They sat transfixed—they did not venture to raise their eyes to each other. Neither could entertain any doubt of the authenticity of the letter. It would be folly, worse than folly, to utter what neither could believe. They who had been all the world to each other—they whose love had been so pure that angels might have looked down from heaven and smiled upon it—what were they now? They dared not think.

At length Ellen murmured in a low and almost choked voice—

“Is he my husband, Algernon? Does the law say he is my husband?”

“Ellen, do not make me speak my own doom.”

“It is enough,” she said, “and my child is—” she paused for a moment, and after a short struggle, continued,—“is illegitimate!”

He was silent.

“Oh, merciful Heaven!” she screamed, “it cannot be true,” and she started from her seat with a wild look of hope. “It is a dream! Tell me so, Algernon, my own Algernon, my husband, tell me so. Speak to me!” and she threw herself on her knees at his feet, with clasped hands, and beseeching eyes, looking up in his face.

He lifted her from the ground, and whispered,—“We can fly, Ellen. There are other lands than this. There are countries where we may be beyond the reach of British laws, where we may have the clear blue sky of heaven above us, where Nature pours forth her treasures to man with a bounteous hand; where we may live in freedom from the trammels of human institutions, but bound by the most sacred ties—our own vows of eternal constancy, which surely have been registered above.”

“Live with you, as your mistress! No, never, Algernon!” and she drew up her slender form to its full height, and stood the very personification of female purity and dignity. “Never, Algernon! Any thing would be more tolerable than to have you cease to respect me.”

She seemed to have regained her self-command. An almost supernatural strength for a moment inspired her.

“Now what is to be done? What is it our duty to do? But oh! the shame, the dreadful shame, of being exposed to the world as having lived for two years in sin.”

At this moment the voices of the children were heard in the passage; they flung open the door, and came bounding joyously into the room with the wild flowers they had gathered in their walk. The sight of them softened and overcame the mother,—she burst into a flood of tears.

“They are his children,” she exclaimed, “and he will take them from me. I know he will—whichever way I turn fresh horrors surround me!”

The poor little things, astonished at their reception, stood aghast. Mr. Hamilton hastily bade them leave their mother, told them she was not well, and hurried them out of the room.

“Ellen, dearest Ellen,” he said, and approached her. He took her hand, when she started away.

“You must not touch me, Algernon! It is a crime. You say yourself I am his wife, and he is coming home. Algernon,” she said, in a clear, low, sepulchral voice, speaking very slowly, “I cannot be forced to live with him again. No law can compel me to do that. Tell me the law,—let me know the truth.”

“I cannot say exactly; we will inquire. Compose yourself; let us do nothing rashly. Perhaps he may never return,—perhaps he may not live to return; we do not know.”

“But I am not your wife?”

“This letter may still be a forgery.”

“No, no, it is too true! and I am not your wife,” she repeated, with the accent of utter hopelessness.

He stood in silence; he could not say she was. He endured agony equal to her’s, except that he did not feel the guilt and the remorse which were added to all her other sufferings. They remained silent till she could endure it no longer. “Algernon, no law can be so cruel as to separate us: it is impossible. After all, we were lawfully married in a church: no one forbade the banns,—no one answered the awful adjuration, ‘Let him now speak, or ever after hold his peace.’ Yes, we must be lawfully married. We are, are we not? Say so, my own Algernon, my husband?” and she wound herself round him, and looked up in his face with all the winning tenderness she could put into those melting eyes. “I am your wife, your wedded wife, am I not, dearest?” and she tried to smile, a sweet, sad, heart-rending smile.

This was too much for poor Hamilton. He took her in his arms, he pressed her to his bosom. “You are my own Ellen, my life, my love, the joy of my heart; without you life would be intolerable.”

“I am your wife, dearest; say so,—in pity say so!”

“Yes, yes, you are! In spite of ordinances, human and divine, you are; you shall be my wife!”

“No,” she said, slowly shaking her head—“no! if you speak so, then I am not your wife.”

She gradually relaxed her hold, her arms dropped by her side, and she sank into a chair.

He looked on her for a few moments with a fixed gaze of despair, then striking his forehead he rushed out of the room, darted down the stairs, out of the house, and plunged into the most retired part of the park, where he wildly paced the ground, beating his bosom, and almost dashing his head against the trees.

When Ellen saw him hurry from her presence she gave one shriek.

“He is gone!” she cried; “gone—I have lost him for ever!”

In the mean time, the maid, who had heard her master quit the apartment, came to inquire how her mistress felt after her attack of faintness. She was terrified when she saw her countenance. However, her entrance had in some measure the effect of forcing Ellen to rouse herself. She begged her maid to leave her, assuring her she was quite recovered. She rose, and staggered to the window to prevent meeting the eyes of the faithful Stanmore, who had lived with her from the time she first married.

Stanmore respectfully retired, but she was so much alarmed at the state in which she found her mistress, that she went to Mrs. Allenham’s room, to tell her that she feared Mrs. Hamilton was seriously indisposed.

Caroline hastened to her sister, and found her dissolved in tears, which at length flowed copiously. To all Caroline’s questions she answered only by continued weeping, and sobs which succeeded each other so quickly that she could not have uttered, if she had wished to do so.

The fresh air had in some measure restored Mr. Hamilton. He had recovered the powers of his mind. He had reflected that many unforeseen accidents might still prevent the return of Mr. Cresford; that the idea of his being alive, if once noised abroad, would throw a shade over their future lives, even should it eventually prove an unfounded notion. He persuaded himself once more it might be a trick for the purpose of extorting money upon the supposition that he would attempt to bribe the first husband to silence. He was not acquainted with Mr. Cresford’s hand-writing, and his hopes revived. At all events, the report once circulated could not be crushed, and he hastened back to the house, if possible, to calm Ellen, and to bind her to secrecy.

He entered her boudoir just as Mrs. Allenham was trying to extract from her the cause of her distress, when Ellen, springing from her seat, rushed into Algernon’s arms, exclaiming,

“You are not gone for ever. Thank God, I see you again!”

Mrs. Allenham looked on in surprise. Could it be that Ellen and her husband had quarrelled? They whose conjugal felicity had become almost proverbial? Such scenes never occurred between herself and Mr. Allenham! Ellen was as good-tempered as she was; and though Mr. Hamilton was a more high-flown romantic sort of man than Mr. Allenham—not so religious perhaps—not so much in the habit of regulating his feelings by the exact measure of duty, still he was an excellent man, and a good-tempered man. What could it all mean?

However, she felt she could be of little service, and that as Ellen had some one with her who would take care of her, should she again feel unwell, she left them together.

“Compose yourself, dearest Ellen,” Mr. Hamilton said, in a soothing tone; “I have much to say, and you must listen attentively to my arguments.”

“Any thing to hear your voice—to still look upon you,” and she seated herself opposite to him, and fixed her eyes upon him, as if she would drink in every word which fell from his lips, and indelibly fix in her mind every lineament of that face which she was soon no more to see.

“Listen to me. There is a possibility that this letter may not be authentic.”

She shook her head sorrowfully. He continued,

“All things are possible. Then there is more than a possibility, that, if alive, he whose name I cannot bring myself to speak, may never reach England. His health seems to be impaired,—he may sink under his sufferings. If he should never return, why should we have wilfully proclaimed to the world our disgrace?—for disgrace it will be in the eyes of the world, though no guilt is ours.”

“But we should be guilty now, knowing what we do know.”

“We are not quite sure: let us wait for confirmation before we breathe one word concerning this letter to any living being. Remember, that if we were to learn the next day that the poor prisoner had fallen a victim to his miseries, that he was at rest, though we might then be lawfully united, our child, our innocent child, would, by our own imprudence, be proved illegitimate.”

Ellen’s countenance changed: she listened with a persuaded air. Mr. Hamilton resumed,

“We must, for her sake, hide for the present all we feel; we must, if possible, assume a calm exterior, and trust to Providence for the issue.”

“I wish I knew what was right. And yet what you tell me must be so. But I cannot,—I cannot show my face to-day; I am sure if I did, I should betray all.” After a pause, she added, “I will tell you what you must do, Algernon, though it breaks my heart to say so:—you must either allow me to pay my father a visit, or you must yourself go away for a time,—make a tour,—visit the lakes,—go to Scotland. We must not live together, till this dreadful mystery is cleared up, till our fate is ascertained one way or another.”

“What! leave the company we have staying in the house? Impossible, without exciting such observations.”

“They will be gone in three days, and then—then—Yes, it is better to be miserable only, than to be miserable and guilty also!”

“If it is your wish, Ellen, I will leave you. It is best I should be the one to go: if you were to quit this roof it would feel more like a real and final separation.”

“My fainting fit will be an excuse for my not appearing to-day. Indeed I do feel so ill. I could not bear my part in society. To-morrow I will try to do as you wish. I will strive, for the sake of my poor little Agnes.”

The whole of that day was spent by the wretched Ellen in a state of stupefaction. The misfortune which had befallen her was too great and too overwhelming to be completely comprehended. Her overstrained nerves could bear no more, and she sat in a state of comparative calmness. She expressed no wish to see her children, no desire for any thing, and Mrs. Allenham bade the maid remain in the adjoining apartment.

She returned to the company herself, and informed them of her sister’s sudden indisposition. She tried, with all the tact of which she was mistress, to extract from Lady Coverdale whether Mr. Hamilton had ever been subject to starts of temper, but she elicited nothing from her, but a recapitulation of his virtues.