Chapter XI

Nor deem who to that bliss aspire,
Must win their way through blood and fire;
The writhings of the wounded heart
Are fiercer than the foeman’s dart.
THE CHRISTIAN YEAR.

Speak gently to the erring, know
They must have toiled in vain;
Perchance, unkindness made them so,
Oh! win them back again.

“There’s a letter for you, ma’am; little Harry James from the lodge brought it here an hour ago, and wished me to trouble you with it; but I told him it could be nothing but a begging letter, and that he had better not bring begging letters up at this time of night. It’s quite impossible,” the speaker added, with a vehemence which implied a little curiosity, or else distrust of her own words, “that it can be anything but a begging letter.”

This was the communication made to Camilla by her maid, when she came at night to undress her worn and wearied mistress.

“Give it me,” Camilla said, faintly.

The maid gave it into her trembling hand, and watched with curiosity the deep blush that spread over her cheek and neck and brow, as she received it.

“I think it’s Mr. De Grey as makes the people beg,” she remarked; “they never used to be poor till he came here.”

“Didn’t they?” Camilla said, unconsciously, her eyes resting on the letter, which she did not dare to open.

“Won’t you read your letter, ma’am? I dare say that little troublesome boy will be calling for an answer before the cock crows in the morning.”

“If he does, tell him there is none,” Camilla replied, rousing herself, and she threw, with some violence, the letter to a table at a distance.

But the movement rather agitated than stilled her mind, and after a moment she got up from the chair on which she had seated herself, and said, “That will do, Anna, never mind my hair, I cannot bear your brushing it to-night; my head aches. Good night, you may go.”

“But I haven’t unfastened your dress, ma’am.”

“Never mind, I can do it myself. Don’t be tiresome,” she exclaimed, with a little stamp of her foot, as Anna stood reluctant to resign her office; “I never will be undressed again, if you stay when I don’t want you.”

A slight smile passed over the lips of her attendant, but she was accustomed to little ebullitions of childish caprice in her young mistress, and though certainly curious as to the contents of the letter, and though a rumour had once reached her ears that the handsome young man from the sea-side had been seen in the neighbourhood of Clare Abbey, she had no real suspicion; and after worrying Camilla by making several unnecessary arrangements in the room, and very unnecessarily asking at what time she should call her on the following morning, she departed.

The door closed, and without approaching the table on which the letter lay, Camilla sat down. Now that she was free to read it, she trembled to read it. Fears and terrors passed before her mind, dread of coming temptation. Once, with a sudden movement of resolution she laid her hand on the letter, and walked with it steadily to the fire, but there the bright light shone on the well-known hand, and then she paused, and then came penitence for the hardness of her heart, and then,--the letter was opened and read.

“I do not reproach you, for I have no right. I know what you would
have sacrificed for me; would that our lots could be reversed, that
mine might be the sacrifice. I do not write to reproach, but for
this only, before I bid you for ever, farewell,--before you cast
from you a love that would have guarded and blest your existence,
to say, _think of me again_. All remains as once you suffered it
to be; there I stand this night, unable to resign, unwilling to
doubt you,--to the last moment of hope, faithful to you. Camilla,
my own promised Camilla, can you forget?

“Yet if one doubt is in your mind ... farewell. I would have nothing
at the cost of your happiness. I write hurriedly. I have not time
nor desire to attempt to move you; if it must be so, farewell; and
may God for ever guard and bless you, and give you a love worthier
than mine.
“F. H.”

Some minds are affected by ardent and passionate expressions; some--and these are the imaginative ones--by a style of restrained feeling,--under the veil of guarded words their own vivid fancies picturing misery, love, reproach, or whatever the case may be, more forcibly than ever passion’s words could speak. There was not much in Camilla’s letter, but it spoke much to her mind.

She read it without a movement or a sound. It caused no passion of sorrow, no outbreak of tears. Immoveable she read it, immoveable she laid it down. Her resolution was taken. Come what might, she must away.

Let none judge her harshly. There are moments of strong temptation in which deeds are done, which, looking backwards and forwards, the mind shrinks from and remembers with horror,--moments when the conscience leaves its throne, when the light of Heaven is darkened, when

“The frightened, hesitating soul
Gives her eternal heritage of bliss
For one triumphant crime.”

They come not to those--rarely, perhaps _never_ come--who have walked unswerving in the light of a true conscience, turning from the suggestions of evil, as in very deed from the voice of a tempting fiend: but let crooked ways once be entered--let the magic circle where temptations reign be ventured in though but a step--and they may come, these moments of darkness,--temptations with overpowering weight, with resistless force--how soon none can tell. The first steps are ever free--there comes a moment, and it is an awful thought, when freedom is, or appears to be, lost.

Such a moment was come to Camilla. A spell was upon her, and she had no power to break it. There was neither present nor future, neither friend, father, brother, counsellor in the world. One object only lured her on, and blinded her eyes, and there was nought besides.

She sat immoveable without thought or feeling, till the appointed hour drew near. She rose then, and looked out into the night. The moon was shining brilliantly, and the dark trees and shrubs that surrounded the house cast their shapeless and fantastic shadows upon the silvery earth. It was a scene of beauty and yet of awe, but neither awe nor beauty carried an impression to her brain. She began hastily to prepare--no thought in her mind--no consciousness of the act she was about to do--no recollection of all she would leave behind--no picture of all that lay before her. She attempted no explanation of her conduct, sought for no token of remembrance,--no last look was taken of the room inhabited from childhood, the scene of early joy, of late sorrow. She was as calm, as composed, as passionless, as if every heartstring was turned to stone.

So she made herself ready--so she left her room--so stealthily she crept along the corridor, the brilliant moonbeams slanting in to direct her steps. So passionless she passed along till she reached her brother’s door; an involuntary movement there made her pause,--a tremble, a shivering, passed over and convulsed her frame,--there feeling began to return, in the body first, and then a dull kind of feeling in her mind. She laid her hand upon the handle of the door; she _must_ gaze on him once more; she had no power to say more than this.

After an instant’s consideration, her hand was withdrawn, and she crept softly back to another entrance. There was an outer room in which the old housekeeper slept, and the door between the two rooms being generally open, she would be enabled, with less danger of disturbing Reginald, to accomplish her purpose. This outer room she entered and passed through it unperceived. Nurses have acute senses, even in sleep, for the one object that requires their care, but are proverbially deaf to all besides. A touch of Reginald’s bell would at any moment have awakened the old woman from her deepest sleep, but the opening and closing of the door, and Camilla’s footsteps on the creaking floor, passed unheard.

The inner door was closed, though it was not shut, and Camilla paused when she reached it to listen. A voice fell upon her ear, a voice as of one in agony. She withdrew her hand, leant her head forward, withheld even her breath, to hear. The voice was the voice of prayer,--but such a tone, and such a prayer! Not the calm strong Reginald, soaring in spirit above the pressure of his hopeless fate, smiling above his pain; but the voice of one weighed down with anguish, bowed well nigh in despair. He prayed, not to attain to heights of holiness, not for power to bless the hand that chastened him, but simply he asked for power _to bear_,--to suffer still, and not to murmur, to endure, and not to rebel,--he prayed for mercy, because even this submission he could not attain.

Such were the sounds, in broken words, in gasping tones, that fell upon the startled ear of the sister who was forsaking him in his misery.

One moment she listened; the next, heedless of consequences, a veiled and shrouded figure knelt at the foot of the bed.

“Forgive me,” she cried, “forgive me;--oh! Reginald, forgive.”

“Camilla!” he said, fearfully.

“Oh! Reginald, why was I never to know, why was I never to comfort you? Why did you cast me off, and make me think you could not feel even your own misery?”

“Camilla,” he said again, in the same whispered, fearful tone, “what is this? how came you here?”

She raised her head from his bed, and looked at him. It was the face of one who had gone through great tribulation--the bright lamp fell on his wan cheek, on his knitted brow, on his hair hanging damp and matted upon his temples--large drops hung round his eyes, and tremulous movements still quivered on his lips. She gazed, awestruck--her own misery, which she had thought insupportable, paled and grew dim before that “mighty agony.”

“Oh! Reginald,” she said again, and again hid her face upon his bed.

But he was recovering himself. With a few struggles, he regained his usual composure, and, stretching out his hand, said, calmly, “Come nearer, Camilla.”

“I dare not,” she cried, weeping bitterly, “till you have forgiven me.”

“Camilla!” he exclaimed, shuddering and agitatedly, “have my fears--has my dreadful presentiment come true?”

“It has, it has!” she said, bowing down her head with shame before him; but the next moment, “no, no; it has not--it never shall;” and, rising from her knees, with a kind of passionate disgust, she cast her bonnet and cloak upon the ground.

“Come nearer, Camilla,” her brother repeated, and there was a tone of grave and calm authority in his voice which she dared not withstand.

She obeyed, calmed, but trembling.

“Now, sit down and tell me all--all, Camilla: I must know all.”

And again obediently she seated herself by his bedside, and began her narrative.

It was simply and truthfully told. The facts were stated, and the condition of mind that produced them, without excuses, without comment, without attempt at extenuation. Suddenly her conduct,--its long course of error,--stood revealed in its true colours;--suddenly she saw that misery, however great, alters not the character of guilt.

Reginald listened, with his eyes fixed upon her countenance--listened steadily, without sound or movement; but when the narrative was concluded, he turned his face away, and, while an expression of intense anguish convulsed his features, he murmured, “It meets me still--my pride, my pride! You ask me to forgive you,” he continued, after a short silence, again turning towards his sister. “Ah! Camilla, it is you who have to forgive. I have been wrapt in myself, in my own suffering; the pride of submission has led me astray. I would not that you--that any one should know, that _I_ could not bear--that I shrank from my body’s pain, my mind’s misery. I have been full of my proud self, and have had no room to think of you, dearest Camilla, and your blighted life.” And softer, humbler tears than ever, from childhood upwards, he had shed, strayed penitently from his trembling eyelids.

“And do you love me, then?” she said, laying her head on his pillow; “and do you suffer, and will you let me comfort you? and will you forgive me for my madness and my wickedness? and shall we be happy again as we used to be?”

He drew her towards him, and kissed her silently. The errors of others as well as our own are great teachers. The wanderings of his young sister taught him, with a fulness which nothing, perhaps, besides could have done, the deep root of the evil in his own heart. But his own confessions were for silence; he spoke them not then.

“You must go now, Camilla,” he said, after a moment’s thought, recovering all his self-possession; “Watson must not find you and these things,” glancing with a hasty expression at her scattered walking dress; “here--go to bed and to sleep, and to-morrow we will speak of this again.”

She got up humbly and obediently, and collected her things together. She read the thoughts in his mind, the shame she had caused to his lofty nature: she was humbled to the dust.

“Camilla,” he called, as she was slowly leaving the room.

She approached his bed again, and stood with downcast eyes before him.

He held out his hand, and while he took hers, looking fixedly at her, said, “Thank God, Camilla, before you sleep, for having saved you from a sorrow which would, I well know, have embittered your whole life. If you had forsaken us, I feel it, I should have died!”

She raised her eyes with a glance of penitence and sorrow, which words could not have spoken--which she did not dare to speak--then gently and noiselessly crept from the room.

* * * * *

On the afternoon of the following day, Ernest sat as usual by Reginald’s bedside. No allusion to what had passed was made on either side. Ernest observed, that Reginald was more than commonly silent; that he listened to his reading without comment; that an expression of more than usual depression was on his countenance, and he wondered if any confession had been made; but nothing was said.

Suddenly there was a low tap at the door, and Camilla slowly entered. Ernest rose from his seat, but something in her appearance kept him still, and he waited _her_ greeting, instead of meeting her as he would commonly have done with his own.

She crossed the room with hesitating steps and downcast eyes, but till she reached him, her pale cheek gained no tint of colour. She paused when she stood before him and held out her hand, and then the blood slowly and gradually mounted, till it was visible in the very roots of her hair, in the very tips of her fingers.

“Did you pray for the weak-hearted last night, Mr. De Grey?” she said, in a low voice.

“I did,” he replied earnestly, gazing upon her drooping figure with a tenderness so deep, that even in _his_ heart it seemed like a new sensation.

“Then perhaps you saved me,” she said, turning from him, and seating herself on a low chair by Reginald’s couch,--“saved me from breaking Reginald’s heart and my own also, I forgot your warning, I broke my promise, I forgot my duty, and Reginald and my home--I was saved, but I am wretched, and guilty, and miserable.”

Her head sank on her brother’s bed--her long golden curls, which had used to float so joyously in the wind, lay streaming loosely and dishevelled around her. Her attitude was the picture of dejection and humility.

Urged by an impulse which he did not pause to consider, nor attempt to resist, Ernest approached her, and stooped over her; and laying his hand upon her bowed and humbled head, slowly and reverently spoke that blessing, which has been appointed for the especial consolation of the hours of suffering and penitence:

“_Unto God’s gracious mercy and protection I commit thee. The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious to thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon, and give thee peace, both now and evermore._”

He ceased, and seated himself for an instant by the bedside--then rising again, and silently returning the affectionate pressure of the hand Reginald held out to him, he left the room.

It is sometimes given to single actions, even perhaps involuntary ones, to acquire a force, a dignity, a meaning, far beyond their original intention--to become in some sort sacraments, sealing a state of mind that has gone before, signing a state of mind that is to follow.

This simple action of Ernest’s, this simple assumption of authority, had something of this nature. If hitherto his office had not been respected, if the influence of his sacred calling had not been allowed as it should have been, the fault was his own, and not Camilla’s. Her mind was peculiarly formed to reverence and respect what she felt to be above her--but Ernest, from the moment of their first acquaintance, had placed himself beneath her feet;--he had made himself the slave of her caprice, had suffered himself to be guided by her whims and fancies, not indeed to any actions incompatible with his duty, yet to such a life of forgetfulness, as made his sins of omission many in number. His truth, his principle, his many virtues, she did truly reverence from her heart; but she did not feel, it was impossible that she could feel, that he was other than a being tied and bound with earthliness like herself.

In the restraint which Ernest of late had imposed on himself--in the deepened seriousness and self-collectedness of his manner, even in the estrangement between them, a new state of things had been growing up; but it had grown imperceptibly, neither were fully conscious of it; it needed some action, perhaps, to give it a definite form--such an action as he had then performed;--in a moment their situations appeared to be reversed, his position to have righted itself--his character to have acquired the influence and authority which his office, age and experience should naturally have given him over a young and thoughtless girl.

And, more than this--as Ernest walked alone he felt, with a bound of the heart, that an object long striven for was attained. Suddenly his struggles seemed to be over--his conscience at rest; he seemed to have gained the right to watch over her--the power, undoubting of his motive, to approach her; to share her sorrow, to comfort, to bless, to guide. Self--selfish hopes and fears seemed to have passed away.