Read Ebook: Love After Marriage; and Other Stories of the Heart by Hentz Caroline Lee

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My father was a man of majestic person, and time had scarcely touched his raven locks. His hair was now profusely silvered, and there were lines on his brow which age never furrowed. It was long before I learned all that had transpired during this fearful chasm in my existence, but gradually the truth was revealed. All that I was at first told, was, that my husband and brother lived--then, when it was supposed I had sufficient strength to bear the agitation, this letter from my husband was given me.

"Cecilia, how shall I address you? I will not reproach you, for you have had too bitter a lesson. I would fain have seen you before my departure, but you decline the interview, and perhaps it is well. Should I live to return--Oh! Cecilia, what wretchedness have you brought upon us all! If your alienated heart does not turn from any memento of me, you will read these lines, and I know you will believe them. I have been, as it were, to the very threshold of the presence-chamber of the King of Kings, and am just emerging from the shadows of approaching death. This is the first effort of my feeble hand. Most rash and misjudging woman, what have you done? How madly have I doted on you, how blindly have I worshipped! yet all the devotion of my life, my truth, love and integrity, weighed nothing in the balance with one moment's mystery. I leave my vindication to Alice. She will not deceive you. She will tell you that never did the heart of man throb with a more undivided passion for another than mine for you. She will tell you--but what avails it? You have cast me from you, unvalued and untrusted. Your poor, unhappy brother! his avenging hand sought my life--the life of him who he believed had betrayed his sister's happiness, the wretch almost unworthy of a brave man's resentment. In wresting the weapon from his frenzied grasp, I received an almost deadly wound. His wrath was slaked in my blood. He believes me innocent. He has been to me more than a brother. He will accompany me to another clime, whither I am going, to try the effect of more genial air on my shattered frame. Would to God we could have met before we parted--perhaps for ever. Your father says you have been ill, that you fear the effect of the meeting on both. You have been ill--my ever adored, still tenderly beloved Cecilia, I write not to reproach you. Bitter is the penalty paid for one moment of passion. Had I ever swerved in my affection for you, even in thought, I should deserve all I have suffered. I recall your sadness, your coldness, and averted looks. I now know the cause, and mourn over it. Why did you not confide in me? We might yet have been happy--but the will of God be done. The vessel waits that is to bear us to a transatlantic clime--farewell. Should I return, bearing with me some portion of my former vigour, should your confidence in my love be restored, then, perchance, through the mercy of heaven, two chastened and humble hearts may once more be united on earth. If I am never permitted to revisit my native soil, if I die in a foreign land, know, that, faithful to you to my latest hour, my last thought, prayer, and sigh, will be yours."

The manuscript of Cecilia here abruptly closes. It has fallen to the lot of one who afterwards became the devoted friend of Clinton, to relate the sequel of their melancholy history.

"I will not attempt to describe the grief of the half-distracted father. I never left him till he reached his own home. What a scene of agony awaited him there! The husband and brother, so long absent, were returned, yearning to behold once more that beloved being, whose involuntary sin had been so fearfully expiated. It was Clinton whom I had seen on the vessel's deck. As he afterwards told me, the dazzle of the rays on the water, in that direction, had prevented him from distinguishing the features for ever engraven on his heart. The hoarse sound of the waves swallowed her drowning shriek--onward they bore him, and he saw not the fond arms that would have embraced him, even over that watery chasm. I have witnessed many a scene of sorrow, but never saw I one like this. From the peculiar circumstances that brought us together, I became almost identified with this unhappy family. Clinton was the most interesting man I ever saw. He was a confirmed invalid, never having recovered from the effects of his wound. I never saw a smile upon his face, nor could I ever smile in his presence. He seldom spoke, and never but once did he mention the name of Cecilia. It was one night when he was unusually ill, and I was sitting alone with him in his chamber. He gave me the manuscript for perusal which is here transcribed, an act of confidence he considered due to me, who would have been her saviour. Through the watches of that night he poured into my ear the hoarded agonies of his grief. Never before did I know how deep human sorrow could be, or how holy was that love which clings to the memory of the dead.

THE PARLOUR SERPENT.

Mrs. Wentworth and Miss Hart entered the breakfast-room together, the latter speaking earnestly and in a low confidential tone to the other, whose countenance was slightly discomposed.

"There is nothing that provokes me so much as to hear such remarks," said Miss Hart, "I have no patience to listen to them. Indeed, I think they are made as much to wound my feelings as anything else, for they all know the great affection I have for you."

"But you do not say what the remarks were, that gave you so much pain," answered Mrs. Wentworth. "I would much prefer that you would tell me plainly, than speak in such vague hints. You will not make me angry, for I am entirely indifferent to the opinion of the world."

Now there was not a woman in the world more sensitively alive to censure than Mrs. Wentworth, and in proportion to her sensitiveness, was her anxiety to know the observations of others.

"If you had overheard Miss Bentley and Miss Wheeler talking of you last night as I did," continued Miss Hart, "you would not have believed your own ears. They said they thought it was ridiculous in you to make such a nun of yourself, because Captain Wentworth was absent, and to dress so plain and look so moping. One of them said, you did not dare to visit or receive visiters while he was away, for that you were as much afraid of him as if you were his slave, and that he had made you promise not to stir out of the house, or to invite any company while he was gone."

"Ridiculous!--nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Wentworth, "there never was such an absurd idea. Captain Wentworth never imposed such a restraint upon me, though I know he would rather I would live retired, when he cannot attend me himself in the gay world. It is not despotism, but affection, that prompts the wish, and I am sure I feel no pleasure in dressing, shining, and mingling in society, when he is exposed to danger, and perhaps death, on the far deep sea."

"I know all that, my dear Mrs. Wentworth," replied Miss Hart, insinuatingly, "and so I told them; but how little can a heartless and censorious world judge of the feelings of the refined and the sensitive! It seems to be a general impression that you fear your husband more than you love him, and that this fear keeps you in a kind of bondage to his will. If I were you, I would invite a large party and make it as brilliant as possible, and be myself as gay as possible, and then that will be giving the lie at once to their innuendoes."

"That is exactly the right spirit," answered the delighted Miss Hart; "I am glad you take it in that way. I was afraid your feelings would be wounded, and that is the reason I was so unwilling to tell you."

"What a change there is in Mrs. Wentworth!" observed Miss Bentley to Miss Hart, as they met one morning at the house of a mutual friend. "I never saw any one so transformed in my life. She looks and dresses like the most complete flirt I ever saw; I suspect Captain Wentworth has very good reason to watch her as he does."

Miss Hart shrugged her shoulders and smiled significantly, but did not say anything.

"It must be a very pleasant alteration to you," continued Miss Bentley, "the house seems to be frequented by gentlemen from morning till night. I suppose you have the grace to appropriate their visits to yourself."

Miss Bentley was very careful to repeat the remarks to every one she saw, with as many additions of her own as she pleased, and the unutterable language of the smile and the shrug was added too, to give force to the comments. Mrs. Wentworth, in the mean while, unconscious of the serpent she was nursing in her bosom, suffered herself to be borne along on the current on which she had thoughtlessly embarked, without the power to arrest her progress, or turn back into the quiet channel she had quitted. The arrival of her brother, a gay and handsome young man, gave additional animation to her household, and company flowed in still more continuously. Henry More, the brother of Mrs. Wentworth, was the favourite of every circle in which he moved. With an uncommon flow of spirits, a ready and graceful wit, a fluent and flattering tongue, he mingled in society unaffected by its contrasts, unwounded by its asperities, and unruffled by its contentions. He seemed to revel in the happy consciousness of being able to impart pleasure to all, and was equally willing to receive it. He was delighted to find a fine-looking, amiable girl, an inmate of his sister's dwelling, and immediately addressing her in his accustomed strain of sportive gallantry, found that she not only lent a willing ear, but was well skilled in the same language. Though Miss Hart was still young, she had outlived the romance and credulity of youth. She had a precocious experience and wisdom in the ways of this world. She had seen the affections of many a young man, with a disposition open and ingenuous as Henry's, won through the medium of their vanity, by women, too, who could not boast of attractions equal to her own. She believed that juxtaposition could work miracles, and as long as they were the inmates of the same house, participating in the same pleasures, engaged in the same pursuits, and often perusing the same book, she feared no rival. She rejoiced, too, in the close-drawing socialities of the winter fireside, and delighted when a friendly storm compelled them to find all their enjoyment within their own little circle. Mrs. Wentworth, who had once been cheerful and serene in clouds as well as sunshine, was now subject to fits of despondency and silence. It was only when excited by company, that her eyes were lighted up with animation, and her lips with smiles. She dreaded the reproaches of her husband on his return, for acting so contrary to his wishes, and when she heard the night-gust sweep by her windows, and thought of him exposed to the warring elements, perhaps even then clinging to the drifting wreck, or floating in a watery grave, and recollected the scenes of levity and folly in which she was now constantly acting a part, merely to avoid the censures of the very people she detested and despised, she sighed and wept, and wished she had followed her bosom counsellor, rather than the suggestions of the friend in whom she still confided, and on whose affection she relied with unwavering trust. It was strange, she could hear Miss Hart ridicule others, and join in the laugh; she could sit quietly and see her breathe the subtle venom of slander over the fairest characters, till they blackened and became polluted under her touch, and yet she felt herself as secure as if she were placed on the summit of Mont Blanc, in a region of inaccessible purity and splendour. So blinding is the influence of self-love, pampered by flattery, strengthened by indulgence, and unrestrained by religious principle.

One evening, and it chanced to be the evening of the Sabbath day, Henry sat unusually silent, and Miss Hart thought that his eyes were fixed upon her face with a very deep and peculiar expression--"No," he suddenly exclaimed, "I never saw such a countenance in my life."

"What do you see so remarkable in it?" asked she, laughing, delighted at what she supposed a spontaneous burst of admiration.

"I don't know; I can no more describe it, than one of those soft, fleecy clouds that roll melting away from the face of the moon. But it haunts me like a dream."

Miss Hart modestly cast down her eyes, then turned them towards the moon, which at that moment gleamed with pallid lustre through the window.

"Your imagination is so glowing," replied she, "that it invests, like the moonlight, every object with its own mellow and beautiful tints."

"Jane," continued he, without noticing the compliment to his imagination, and turning to his sister, who was reading intently, "Jane, you must have noticed her--you were at the same church."

"Noticed her!" repeated Miss Hart to herself, in utter dismay; "who can he mean?"

"Noticed who?" said Mrs. Wentworth, laying down her book, "I have not heard a syllable you have been saying."

"Why, that young lady dressed in black, with such a sweet, modest, celestial expression of face. She sat at the right hand of the pulpit, with another lady in mourning, who was very tall and pale."

"What coloured hair and eyes had she?" asked his sister.

"I could no more tell the colour of her eyes, than I could paint yon twinkling star, or her hair either. I only know that they shed a kind of glory over her countenance, and mantled her brow with the softest and most exquisite shades."

"I declare, Henry," cried Mrs. Wentworth, "you are the most extravagant being I ever knew. I don't know whether you are in jest or earnest."

"What do you mean by a methodist?" asked Henry abruptly--"an enthusiast?"

"One who never goes to the theatre, never attends the ballroom, thinks it a sin to laugh, and goes about among poor people to give them doctor's stuff, and read the Bible."

"Well," answered Henry, "I see nothing very appalling in this description. If ever I marry, I have no very great desire that my wife should frequent the theatre or the ballroom. She might admire artificial graces at the one and exhibit them in the other, but the loveliest traits of her sex must fade and wither in the heated atmosphere of both. And I am sure it is a divine office to go about ministering to the wants of the poor and healing the sick. As to the last item, I may not be a proper judge, but I do think a beautiful woman reading the Bible to the afflicted and dying, must be the most angelic object in the universe."

"Why, brother," said Mrs. Wentworth, "what a strange compound you are! Such a rattle-brain as you, moralizing like a second Johnson!"

"I may be a wild rattle-brain, and sport like a thousand others in the waves of fashion, but there is something here, Jane," answered he, laying his hand half seriously, half sportively on his breast, "that tells me that I was created for immortality; that, spendthrift of time, I am still bound for eternity. I have often pictured the future, in my musing hours, and imagined a woman's gentle hand was guiding me in the path that leads to heaven."

Mrs. Wentworth looked at her brother in astonishment. There was something in the solemnity of his expressions that alarmed her, coming from one so gay and apparently thoughtless. Miss Hart was alarmed too, but from a different cause. She thought it time to aim her shaft, and she knew in what course to direct it.

"This Miss Carroll," said she, "whom you admire so much, has lately lost her lover, to whom she was devotedly attached. He was her cousin, and they had been brought up together from childhood, and betrothed from that period. She nursed him during a long sickness, day and night, and many thought she would follow him to the grave, her grief was so great."

"Her lover!" exclaimed Henry, in a mock tragedy tone. "Then it is all over with me--I never would accept the second place in any maiden's heart, even if I could be enshrined there in heaven's crystal. Give me the rose before the sunbeams have exhaled the dew of the morning, or it wears no charms for me."

Miss Hart and Mrs. Wentworth laughed, rallied Henry upon his heroics, and the beautiful stranger was mentioned no more. Miss Hart congratulated herself upon the master stroke by which she had dispelled his enchantment, if indeed it existed at all. She had often heard Henry declare his resolution never to marry a woman who had acknowledged a previous affection, and she seized upon a vague report of Miss Carroll's being in mourning for a cousin who had recently died, and to whom she thought she might possibly be betrothed, and presented it as a positive truth. Finding that Henry's ideas of female perfection were very different from what she had imagined, she was not sorry when an opportunity offered of displaying those domestic virtues, which he so much extolled. One night, when Mrs. Wentworth was prepared to attend a private ball, she expressed her wish to remain at home, declaring that she was weary of dissipation, and preferred reading and meditation. She expected Henry would steal away from the party, and join her in the course of the evening, but her real motive was a violent toothache, which she concealed that she might have the credit of a voluntary act. After Mrs. Wentworth's departure, she bound a handkerchief round her aching jaw, and having found relief from some powerful anodyne, she reclined back on the sofa and fell at last into a deep sleep. The candles burned dim from their long, unsnuffed wicks, and threw a very dubious light through the spacious apartment. She was awakened by a tall, dark figure, bending over her, with outspread arms, as if about to embrace her, and starting up, her first thought was that it was Henry, who had stolen on her solitude, and was about to declare the love she had no doubt he secretly cherished for her. But the figure drew back, with a sudden recoil, when she rose, and uttered her name in a tone of disappointment.

"Captain Wentworth," exclaimed she, "is it you?"

"I beg your pardon," said he, extending his hand cordially towards her, "I thought for a moment it was my wife, my Jane, Mrs. Wentworth--where is she? Is she well? Why do I not see her here?"

"Oh! Captain Wentworth, she had no expectation of your coming so soon. She is perfectly well. She is gone to a quadrille party, and will probably not be at home for several hours--I will send for her directly."

"No, Miss Hart," said he, in a cold and altered voice, "no, I would not shorten her evening's amusement. A quadrille party--I thought she had no taste for such pleasures."

"She seems to enjoy them very much," replied Miss Hart, "and it is very natural she should. She is young and handsome, and very much admired, and in your absence she found her own home comparatively dull."

The captain rose, and walked the room with a sailor's manly stride. His brows were knit, his lips compressed, and his cheek flushed. She saw the iron of jealousy was entering his soul, and she went on mercilessly deepening the wound she had made.

"You will be delighted when you see Mrs. Wentworth--she looks so blooming and lovely. You have reason to be quite proud of your wife--she is the belle of every party and ball-room. I think it is well that you have returned." This she added, with an arch, innocent smile, though she knew every word she uttered penetrated like a dagger, where he was most vulnerable. "How thoughtless I am!" she exclaimed; "you must be weary and hungry--I will order your supper."

"No, no," said he, "I have no appetite--I will not trouble you. Don't disturb yourself on my account--I will amuse myself with a book till she returns."

He sat down and took up a book, but his eyes were fixed moodily on the carpet, and his hands trembled as he unconsciously turned the leaves. Miss Hart suffered occasional agony from her tooth, the more as she had taken off the disfiguring bandage, but she would not retire, anticipating with a kind of savage delight, the unpleasant scene that would ensue on Mrs. Wentworth's return. The clock struck twelve before the carriage stopped at the door. Mrs. Wentworth came lightly into the room, unaccompanied by her brother, her cloak falling from her shoulders, her head uncovered, most fashionably and elegantly dressed. She did not see her husband when she first entered, and throwing her cloak on a chair, exclaimed, "Oh! Miss Hart, I'm so sorry you were not there, we had such a delightful party--the pleasantest of the whole season." Her eye at this moment fell upon her husband, who had risen upon her entrance, but stood back in the shade, without making one step to meet her. With a scream of surprise, joy, and perhaps terror too, she rushed towards him, and threw her arms around him. He suffered her clinging arms to remain round his neck for a moment while he remained as passive as the rock on the seabeat shore when the white foam wreathes and curls over its surface, then drawing back, he looked her steadfastly in the face, with a glance that made her own to quail, and her lip and cheek blanch. She looked down upon her jewelled neck and airy robes, and wished herself clothed in sackcloth and ashes. She began to stammer forth some excuse for her absence, something about his unexpected return, but the sentence died on her lips. The very blood seemed to congeal in her heart, under the influence of his freezing glance.

"Don't say anything, Jane," said he, sternly. "It is better as it is--I had deluded myself with the idea, that in all my dangers and hardships, to which I have exposed myself chiefly for your sake, I had a fond and faithful wife, who pined at my absence and yearned for my return. I was not aware of the new character you had assumed. No," continued he impetuously, entirely forgetful of the presence of Miss Hart "I was not prepared for a welcome like this. I expected to have met a wife--not a flirt, a belle, a vain, false-hearted, deceitful woman." Thus saying, he suddenly left the room, closing the door with a force that made every article of the furniture tremble. Mrs. Wentworth, bursting into hysterical sobs, was about to rush after him, but Miss Hart held her back--"Don't be a fool," said she; "he'll get over it directly-you've done nothing at which he ought to be angry; I had no idea he was such a tyrant."

"He was always kind to me before," sobbed Mrs. Wentworth. "He thinks my heart is weaned from him. Now, I wish I had disregarded the sneer of the world! It can never repay me for the loss of his love."

"My dear Mrs. Wentworth," said Miss Hart, putting her arms soothingly round her, "I feel for you deeply, but I hope you will not reproach yourself unnecessarily, or suffer your husband to suppose you condemn your own conduct. If you do, he will tyrannize over you, through life--what possible harm could there be in your going to a private party with your own brother, when you did not look for his return? You have taken no more liberty than every married lady in the city would have done, and a husband who really loved his wife, would be pleased and gratified that she should be an object of attention and admiration to others. Come, dry up your tears, and exert the pride and spirit every woman of delicacy and sense should exercise on such occasions."

Mrs. Wentworth listened, and the natural pride and waywardness of the human heart strengthening the counsels of her treacherous companion, her sorrow and contrition became merged in resentment. She resolved to return coldness for coldness and scorn for scorn, to seek no reconciliation, nor even to grant it, until he humbly sued for her forgiveness. The husband and wife met at the breakfast-table without speaking. Henry was unusually taciturn, and the whole burthen of keeping up the conversation rested on Miss Hart, who endeavoured to entertain and enliven the whole. Captain Wentworth, who had all the frankness and politeness of a sailor, unbent his stern brow when he addressed her, and it was in so kind a voice, that the tears started into his wife's eyes at the sound. He had no words, no glance for her, from whom he had been parted so long, and whom he had once loved so tenderly. Henry, who had been absorbed in his own reflections, and who had not been present at their first meeting, now noticed the silence of his sister, and the gloom of her husband, and looking from one to the other, first in astonishment, and then in mirth, he exclaimed, "Well, I believe I shall remain a bachelor, if this is a specimen of a matrimonial meeting. Jane looks as if she were doing penance for the sins of her whole life, and Captain Wentworth as if he were about to give a broadside's thunder. What has happened? Miss Hart resembles a beam of sunshine between two clouds."

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