Chapter XXX (2)

“When with these feelings was united the anxiety of maternal ambition for her son, who might be raised to a noble inheritance, or sunk to comparative mediocrity by his choice, the result may be easily guessed; and the widow Sandal, once determined on the end, felt little scruple about the means. Want and envy had given her an unslakeable appetite for the restored splendours of her former state; and false religion had taught her every shade and penumbra of hypocrisy, every meanness of artifice, every obliquity of insinuation. In her varied life she had known the good, and chosen the evil. The widow Sandal was now determined to interpose an insurmountable obstruction to their union. * * * * * * * *

“Mrs Ann still flattered herself that the secret of Sir Roger’s will was suppressed. She saw the intense and disruptable feeling that seemed to mark John and Elinor for each other; and, with a feeling half-borrowed from magnanimity, half from romance, (for Mrs Ann had been fond of the high-toned romances of her day), she looked forward to the felicity of their union as being little disturbed by the loss of land and lordship,--of the immense revenues,--and the far-descended titles of the Mortimer family.

“Highly as she prized these distinctions, dear to every noble mind, she prized still more highly the union of devoted hearts and congenial spirits, who, trampling on the golden apples that were flung in their path, pressed forward with unremitting ardour for the prize of felicity.

“The wedding-day of John and Elinor was fixed,--the bridal clothes were made,--the noble and numerous friends summoned,--the Castle hall decorated, the bells of the parish church ringing out a loud and merry peal, and the blue-coated serving men adorned with favours, and employed in garnishing the wassail bowl, which was doomed by many a thirsty eye to be often drained and often replenished. Mrs Ann herself took with her own hands, from an ample chest of ebony, a robe of velvet and satin, which she had worn at the court of James the First, on the marriage of the princess Elizabeth with the prince palatine, of whom the former, to borrow the language of a contemporary writer, had “brided and bridled it so well, and indeed became herself so handsomely,” that Mrs Ann, as she arrayed herself, thought she saw the splendid vision of the royal bridal float before her faded eyes in dim but gorgeous pageantry once more. The heiress, too, attired herself splendidly, but it was observed, that her beautiful cheek was paler than even that of the bride, and the smile which held a fixed unjoyous station on her features all that morning, seemed more like the effort of resolution than the expression of felicity. The widow Sandal had betrayed considerable agitation, and quitted the Castle at an early hour. The bridegroom had not yet appeared, and the company, after having in vain for some time awaited his arrival, set out for the church, where they supposed he was impatiently expecting them.

“The cavalcade was magnificent and numerous--the dignity and consequence of the Mortimer family had assembled all who had aspired to the distinction of their acquaintance, and such was then the feudal grandeur attendant on the nuptials of a high-descended family, that relatives, however remote in blood or in local distance, collected for sixty miles in every direction around the Castle, and presented a “host of friends, gorgeously arrayed and attended on that eventful morning.”

“Most of the company, even including the females, were mounted on horseback, and this, by apparently increasing the number of the procession, added to its tumultuous magnificence. There were some cumbrous vehicles, misnomed carriages, of a fashion indescribably inconvenient, but gorgeously gilded and painted,--and the Cupids on the pannels had been re-touched for the occasion. The bride was lifted on her palfrey by two peers,--Margaret rode beside her gallantly attended,--and Mrs Ann, who once more saw nobles contending for her withered hand, and adjusting her silken rein, felt the long-faded glories of her family revive, and led the van of the pompous procession with as much dignity of demeanour, and as much glow of faded beauty, once eminent and resistless, as if she still followed the gorgeous nuptial progress of the princess palatine. They arrived at the church,--the bride, the relatives, the splendid company, the minister--all but the bridegroom, were there. There was a long painful silence. Several gentlemen of the bridal party rode rapidly out in every direction in which it was thought probable to meet him,--the clergyman stood at the altar, till, weary of standing, he retired. The crowd from the neighbouring villages, combined with the numerous attendants, filled the church-yard. Their acclamations were incessant,--the heat and distraction became intolerable, and Elinor begged for a few moments to be allowed to retire to the vestry.

“There was a casement window which opened on the road, and Mrs Ann supported the bride as she tottered towards it, attempting to loose her wimple, and veil of costly lace. As Elinor approached the casement, the thundering hoofs of a horse at full speed shook the road. Elinor looked up mechanically,--the rider was John Sandal,--he cast a look of horror at the pale bride, and plunging his desperate spurs deeper, disappeared in a moment. * * * * *

“A year after this event, two figures were seen to walk, or rather wander, almost every evening, in the neighbourhood of a small hamlet in a remote part of Yorkshire. The vicinage was picturesque and attractive, but these figures seemed to move amid the scenery like beings, who, if they still retained eyes for nature, had lost all heart for it. That wan and attenuated form, so young, yet so withered, whose dark eyes emit a fearful light amid features chill and white as those of a statue, and the young graces of whose form seem to have been nipt like those of a lily that bloomed too soon in spring, and was destroyed by the frost of the treacherous season, whose whispers had first invited it to bud,--that is Elinor Mortimer,--and that figure that walks beside her, so stiff and rectangular, that it seems as its motion was regulated by mechanism, whose sharp eyes are directed so straight forward, that they see neither tree on the right hand, or glade on the left, or heaven above, or earth beneath, or any thing but a dim vision of mystic theology for ever before them, which is aptly reflected in their cold contemplative light, that is the Puritan maiden sister of her mother, with whom Elinor had fixed her residence. Her dress is arranged with as much precision as if a mathematician had calculated the angles of every fold,--every pin’s point knows its place, and does its duty--the plaits of her round-eared cap do not permit one hair to appear on her narrow forehead, and her large hood, adjusted after the fashion in which it was worn by the godly sisters, who rode out to meet Prynne on his return from the pillory, lends a deeper shade to her rigid features,--a wretched-looking lacquey is carrying a huge clasped bible after her, in the mode in which she remembered to have seen Lady Lambert and Lady Desborough march to prayer, attended by their pages, while she proudly followed in their train, distinguished as the sister of that godly man and powerful preacher of the word, Sandal. From the day of her disappointed nuptials, Elinor, with that insulted feeling of maiden pride, which not even the anguish of her broken heart could suppress, had felt an unappeaseable anxiety to quit the scene of her disgrace and her misfortune. It was vainly opposed by her aunt and Margaret, who, horror-struck at the event of those disastrous nuptials, and wholly unconscious of the cause, had implored her, with all the energy of affection, to fix her residence at the Castle, within whose walls they pledged themselves he who had abandoned her should never be permitted to place his foot. Elinor answered the impassioned importunities, only by eager and clinging pressures of her cold hands, and by tears which trembled on her eye-lids, without the power to fall.--“Nay, stay with us,” said the kind and noble-hearted Margaret, “you shall not leave us!” And she pressed the hands of her kinswoman, with that cordial touch that gives a welcome as much to the heart as to the home of the inviter.--“Dearest cousin,” said Elinor, answering, for the first time, this affectionate appeal with a faint and ghastly smile--“I have so many enemies within these walls, that I can no longer encounter them with safety to my life.”--“Enemies!” repeated Margaret.--“Yes, dearest cousin--there is not a spot where _he_ trod--not a prospect on which he has gazed--not an echo which has repeated the sound of his voice,--that does not send daggers through my heart, which those who wish me to live would not willingly see infixed any longer.” To the emphatic agony with which these words were uttered, Margaret had nothing to reply but with tears; and Elinor set out on her journey to the relative of her mother, a rigid Puritan, who resided in Yorkshire.

“As the carriage was ordered for her departure, Mrs Ann, supported by her female attendants, stood on the draw-bridge to take leave of her niece, with solemn and affectionate courtesy. Margaret wept bitterly, and aloud, as she stood at a casement, and waved her hand to Elinor. Her aunt never shed a tear, till out of the presence of the domestics,--but when all was over,--“she entered into her chamber, and wept there.”

“When her carriage had driven some miles from the Castle, a servant on a fleet horse followed it at full speed with Elinor’s lute, which had been forgotten,--it was offered to her, and after viewing it for some moments with a look in which memory struggled with grief, she ordered its strings to be broken on the spot, and proceeded on her journey.

“The retreat to which Elinor had retired, did not afford her the tranquillity she expected. Thus, change of place always deceives us with the tantalizing hope of relief, as we toss on the feverish bed of life.

“She went in a faint expectation of the revival of her religious feelings--she went to wed, amid the solitude and desert where she had first known him, the immortal bridegroom, who would never desert her as the mortal one had done,--but she did not find him there--the voice of God was no longer heard in the garden--either her religious sensibility had abated, or those from whom she first received the impression, had no longer power to renew it, or perhaps the heart which has exhausted itself on a mortal object, does not find its powers soon recruited to meet the image of celestial beneficence, and exchange at once the visible for the invisible,--the felt and present, for the future and the unknown.

“Elinor returned to the residence of her mother’s family in the hope of renewing former images, but she found only the words that had conveyed those ideas, and she looked around in vain for the impressions they had once suggested. When we thus come to feel that _all_ has been illusion, even on the most solemn subjects,--that the future world seems to be deserting us along with the present, and that our own hearts, with all their treachery, have done us no more wrong than the false impressions which we have received from our religious instructors, we are like the deity in the painting of the great Italian artist, extending one hand to the sun, and the other to the moon, but touching neither. Elinor had imagined or hoped, that the language of her aunt would have revived her habitual associations--she was disappointed. It is true no pains were spared--when Elinor wished to read, she was furnished amply with the Westminster Confession, or Prynne’s Histriomastrix; or if she wished for lighter pages, for the Belles Lettres of Puritanism, there were John Bunyan’s Holy War, or the life of Mr Badman. If she closed the book in despair at the insensibility of her untouched heart, she was invited to a godly conference, where the non-conformist ministers, who had been, in the language of the day, extinguished under the Bartholomew bushel(8), met to give the precious word in season to the scattered fold of the Lord. Elinor knelt and wept too at these meetings; but, while her form was prostrated before the Deity, her tears fell for one whom she dared not name. When, in incontroulable agony, she sought, like Joseph, where she might weep unobserved and unrestrained, and rushed into the narrow garden that skirted the cottage of her aunt, and wept there, she was followed by the quiet, sedate figure, moving at the rate of an inch in a minute, who offered her for her consolation, the newly published and difficultly obtained work of Marshall on Sanctification.

(8) Anachronism--n’importe.

“Elinor, accustomed too much to that fatal excitement of the heart, which renders all other excitement as faint and feeble as the air of heaven to one who has been inhaling the potent inebriation of the strongest perfumes, wondered how this being, so abstracted, cold, and unearthly, could tolerate her motionless existence. She rose at a fixed hour,--at a fixed hour she prayed,--at a fixed hour received the godly friends who visited her, and whose existence was as monotonous and apathetic as her own,--at a fixed hour she dined,--and at a fixed hour she prayed again, and then retired,--yet she prayed without unction, and fed without appetite, and retired to rest without the least inclination to sleep. Her life was mere mechanism, but the machine was so well wound up, that it appeared to have some quiet consciousness and sullen satisfaction in its movements.

“Elinor struggled in vain for the renewal of this life of cold mediocrity,--she thirsted for it as one who, in the deserts of Afric, expiring for want of water, would wish for the moment to be an inmate of Lapland, to drink of their eternal snows,--yet at that moment wonders how its inhabitants can live among SNOW. She saw a being far inferior to herself in mental power,--of feelings that hardly deserved the name--_tranquil_, and wondered that she herself was wretched.--Alas! she did not know, that the heartless and unimaginative are those alone who entitle themselves to the comforts of life, and who can alone enjoy them. A cold and sluggish mediocrity in their occupations or their amusements, is all they require--pleasure has with them no meaning but the exemption from actual suffering, nor do they annex any idea to pain but the immediate infliction of corporeal suffering, or of external calamity--the source of pain or pleasure is never found in their _hearts_--while those who have profound feelings scarce ever look elsewhere for either. So much the worse for them,--the being reduced to providing for the necessities of human life, and being satisfied when that provision is made, is perhaps the best condition of human life--beyond that, all is the dream of insanity, or the agony of disappointment. Far better the dull and dusky winter’s day, whose gloom, if it never abates, never increases,--(and to which we lift up an eye of listlessness, in which there is no apprehension of future and added terrors),--to the glorious fierceness of the summer’s day, whose sun sets amid purple and gold,--while, panting under its parting beams, we see the clouds collecting in the darkening East, and view the armies of heaven on their march, whose thunders are to break our rest, and whose lightnings may crumble us to ashes. * * * * *

“Elinor strove hard with her fate,--the strength of her intellect had been much developed since her residence at Mortimer Castle, and there also the energies of her heart had been developed fatally. How dreadful is the conflict of superior intellect and a burning heart, with the perfect mediocrity of the characters and circumstances they are generally doomed to live with! The battering-rams play against wool-bags,--the lightnings glance on ice, hiss, and are extinguished. The greater strength we exhibit, we feel we are more and more paralyzed by the weakness of our enemies,--our very energy becomes our bitterest enemy, as it fights in vain against the impregnable fortress of total vacuity! It is in vain we assail a foe who neither knows our language or uses our weapons. Elinor gave it up,--yet still she struggled with her own feelings; and perhaps the conflict which she now undertook was the hardest of all. She had received her first religious impressions under the roof of her Puritanic aunt, and, true or false, they had been so vivid, that she was anxious to revive them. When the heart is robbed of its first-born, there is nothing it will not try to adopt. Elinor remembered a very affecting scene that had occurred in her childhood, beneath the roof where she now resided.

“An old non-conformist minister, a very Saint John for sanctity of life, and simplicity of manners, had been seized by a magistrate while giving the word of consolation to a few of his flock who had met at the cottage of her aunt.

“The old man had supplicated for a moment’s delay on the part of the civil power, and its officers, by an unusual effort of toleration or of humanity, complied. Turning to his congregation, who, amid the tumult of the arrest, had never risen from their knees, and only changed the voice of supplication from praying with their pastor, to praying for him,--he quoted to them that beautiful passage from the prophet Malachi, which appears to give such delightful encouragement to the spiritual intercourse of Christians,--“Then they that feared the Lord, spoke often to one another, and the Lord heard it,” &c. As he spoke, the old man was dragged away by some rougher hands, and died soon after in confinement.

“On the young imagination of Elinor, this scene was indelibly written. Amid the magnificence of Mortimer Castle, it had never been effaced or obscured, and now she tried to make herself in love with the sounds and the scene that had so deeply touched her infant heart.

“Resolute in her purposes, she spared no pains to excite this reminiscence of religion,--it was her last resource. Like the wife of Phineas, she struggled to bear an heir of the soul, even while she named him _Ichabod_,--and felt the glory was departed. She went to the narrow apartment,--she seated herself in the very chair that venerable man occupied when he was torn from it, and his departure appeared to her like that of an ascending prophet. She would _then_ have caught the folds of his mantle, and mounted with him, even though his flight had led to prison and to death. She tried, by repeating his last words, to produce the same effect they had once had on her heart, and wept in indescribable agony at feeling those words had no meaning now for her. When life and passion have thus rejected us, the backward steps we are compelled to tread towards the path we have wandered from, are ten thousand times more torturing and arduous than those we have exhausted in their pursuit. Hope then supported our hands every step we took. Remorse and disappointment scourge us back, and every step is tinged with tears or with blood; and well it is for the pilgrim if that blood is drained from his heart, for then--his pilgrimage will be sooner terminated. * * * * * *

“At times Elinor, who had forgotten neither the language or habits of her former existence, would speak in a manner that gave her Puritanic relative hopes that, according to the language of the times, “the root of the matter was in her,”--and when the old lady, in confidence of her returning orthodoxy, discussed long and learnedly on the election and perseverance of the saints, the listener would startle her by a burst of feeling, that seemed to her aunt more like the ravings of a demoniac, than the language of a human being,--especially one who had from her youth known the Scriptures. She would say, “Dearest aunt, I am not insensible of what you say; from a child, (thanks to your care), I have known the holy scriptures. I _have_ felt the power of religion. At a latter period I have experienced all the enjoyments of an intellectual existence. Surrounded by splendour, I have conversed with enlarged minds,--I have seen all that life can shew me,--I have lived with the mean and the rich,--the spiritual in their poverty, and the worldly-minded in their grandeur,--I have deeply drank of the cup which both modes of existence held to my lip,--and at this moment I swear to you,--_one moment of heart_,--one dream such as once I dreamed, (and thought I should never awake from), is worth all the existence that the earthly-minded lavish on this world, and those who mystify expend on the next!”--“Unfortunate wretch! and undone for everlasting!” cried the terrified Calvinist, lifting up her hands,--“Cease, cease,” said Elinor with that dignity which grief alone can give,--“If I have indeed devoted to an earthly love that which is due to God alone, is not my punishment certain in a future state? Has it not already commenced here? May not then all reproaches be spared when we are suffering more than human enmity can wish us,--when our very existence is a bitterer reproach to us than malignity can utter?”--As she spoke, she added, wiping a cold tear from her wasted cheek, “My stroke is heavier than my groaning!”

“At other times she appeared to listen to the language of the Puritan preachers (for all were preachers who frequented the house) with some appearance of attention, and then, rushing from them without any conviction but that of despair, exclaimed in her haste, “All men are liars!” Thus it fares with those who wish to make an instant transition from one world to another,--it is impossible,--the cold wave interposes--for ever interposes, between the wilderness and the land of promise--and we may as soon expect to tread the threshold which parts life and death without pain, as to cross the interval which separates two modes of existence so distinct as those of passion and religion, without struggles of the soul inexpressible--without groanings which cannot be uttered.

“To these struggles there was soon to be an addition. Letters at this period circulated very slowly, and were written only on important occasions. Within a very short period, Elinor received two letters by express from Mortimer Castle, written by her cousin Margaret. The first announced the arrival of John Sandal at the Castle,--the second, the death of Mrs Ann,--the postscriptums of both contained certain mysterious hints relative to the interruption of the marriage,--intimations that the cause was known only to the writer, to Sandal and to his mother,--and entreaties that Elinor would return to the Castle, and partake of the _sisterly_ love with which Margaret and John Sandal would be glad to receive her. The letters dropt from her hand as she received them,--of John Sandal she had never ceased to think, but she had never ceased to wish not to think,--and his name even now gave her a pang which she could neither utter or suppress, and which burst forth in an involuntary shriek, that seemed like the last string that breaks in the exquisite and too-highly strung instrument of the human heart.

“Over the account of Mrs Ann’s death, she lingered with that fearful feeling that a young adventurer experiences, who sees a noble vessel set out before him on a voyage of discovery, and wishes, while lingering in harbour himself, that he was already at the shore where _it_ has arrived, and tasted of its repose, and participated in its treasures.

“Mrs Ann’s death had not been unworthy of that life of magnanimity and high heroic feeling which had marked every hour of her mortal existence--she had espoused the cause of the rejected Elinor, and sworn in the chapel of Mortimer Castle, while Margaret knelt beside, never to admit within its walls the deserter of his betrothed bride.

“On a dim autumnal evening, when Mrs Ann, with fading sight but undiminished feeling, was poring over some of Lady Russel’s letters in manuscript, and, to relieve her eyes, sometimes glanced on the manuscript of Nelson’s Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England,--it was announced to her that a Cavalier (the servants well knew the charm of that name to the ear of the ancient loyalist) had crossed the draw-bridge, entered the hall, and was advancing to the apartment where she sat. “Let him be admitted,” was her answer, and rising from her chair, which was so lofty and so spacious, that as she lifted herself from it to greet the stranger with a courtly reception, her form appeared like a spectre rising from an ancient monument,--she stood facing the entrance--at that entrance appeared John Sandal. She bent forwards for a moment, but her eyes, bright and piercing, still recognized him in a moment.

“Back!--back!”--exclaimed the stately ancestress, waving him off with her withered hand--“Back!--profane not this floor with another step!”--“Hear me, madam, for one moment--suffer me to address you, even on my knees--I pay the homage to your rank and relationship--misunderstand it not as an acknowledgement of guilt on my part!”

“Mrs Ann’s features at this action underwent a slight contraction--a short spasmodic affection. “Rise, Sir--rise,” she said--“and say what you have to say--but utter it, Sir, at the door whose threshold you are unworthy to tread.”

“John Sandal rose from his knees, and pointed instinctively as he rose to the portrait of Sir Roger Mortimer, to whom he bore a striking resemblance. Mrs Ann acknowledged the appeal--she advanced a few steps on the oaken floor--she stood erect for a moment, and then, pointing with a dignity of action which no pencil could embody to the portrait, seemed to consider her attitude as a valid and eloquent answer--it said--he to whose resemblance you point, and claim protection from, never like you dishonoured these walls by an act of baseness--of heartless treachery! Betrayer!--look to his portrait! Her expression had in it something of the sublime--the next moment a strong spasm contracted her features--she attempted to speak, but her lips no longer obeyed her--she seemed to speak, but was not heard even by herself. She stood for a moment before John Sandal in that rigid immoveable attitude that says, “Advance not another step at your peril--insult not the portraits of your ancestors--insult not their living representative, by another step of intrusion!” As she spoke thus, (for her attitude spoke), a stronger spasm contracted her features. She attempted to move--the same rigid constriction extended to her limbs; and, waving her prohibitory arm still, as if in defiance at once of the approach of death and of her rejected kinsman, she dropt at his feet. * * * * * *

“She did not long survive the interview, nor did she ever recover the use of speech. Her powerful intellect was, however, unimpaired; and to the last she expressed herself most intelligibly by action, as determined not to hear a word explanatory of Sandal’s conduct. This explanation was therefore made to Margaret, who, though much shocked and agitated at the first disclosure, seemed afterwards perfectly reconciled to it. * * * * * * * *

“Shortly after the receipt of these letters, Elinor took a sudden, but perhaps not singular resolution,--she determined to set out immediately for Mortimer Castle. It was not her weariness of the withering life, the αβιωτος βιος she lived at her Puritanic aunt’s--it was not the wish to enjoy again the stately and splendid ceremonial of Mortimer Castle, contrasted with the frugal fare and monastic rigour of the cottage in Yorkshire--it was not even the wish for that change of place that always flatters us with change of circumstance, as if we did not carry our own hearts with us wherever we go, and might not therefore be sure that an innate and eroding ulcer must be our companion from the Pole to the Equator--it was not this, but a whisper half unheard, yet believed, (just in proportion as it was inaudible and incredible), that murmured from the bottom of her credulous heart, ‘Go--and _perhaps_’--

“Elinor set out on her journey, and after having performed it with fewer difficulties than can be imagined, considering the state of the roads, and the modes of travelling in the year 1667 or thereabouts, she arrived in the vicinity of Mortimer Castle. It was a scene of reminiscence to her,--her heart throbbed audibly as the carriage stopped at a Gothic gate, through which there was a walk between two rows of lofty elms. She alighted, and to the request of the servant who followed her, that he might be permitted to shew her the way through a path entangled by the intersecting roots of the trees, and dim with twilight, she answered only by her tears. She waved him off, and advanced on foot and alone. She remembered, from the bottom of her soul, how she had once wandered amid that very grove with John Sandal--how his smile had shed a richer light on the landscape, than even the purple smile of the dying day-light. She thought of that smile, and lingered to catch it amid the rich and burning hues flung by the fading light on the many-tinted boles of the ancient trees. The trees were there--and the light was there--but his smile, that once eclipsed the sun-light, was there no longer!

“She advanced alone--the lofty avenue of trees still retained its magnificent depth of shade, and gorgeous colouring of trunk and leaf. She sought among them for that which she had once felt--and God and nature alone are conscious of the agony with which we demand from them the object which we are conscious was once consecrated to our hearts, and which we now require of both in vain! God withholds,--and Nature denies them!

“As Elinor with trembling steps advanced towards the Castle, she saw the funeral scutcheon which Mrs Margaret, in honour of her grand-aunt, had caused to be affixed over the principal tower since her decease, with the same heraldric decorum as if the last male of the Mortimer family were extinct. Elinor looked up, and many thoughts rushed on her heart.--“There is one departed,” she thought, “whose mind was always fixed on glorious thoughts--the most exalted actions of humanity, or the sublime associations of eternity! Her noble heart had room but for two illustrious guests--the love of God, and the love of her country. They tarried with her to the last, for they found the abode worthy of them; and when they parted, the inmate found the mansion untenantable any longer--the soul fled with its glorious visitors to heaven! My treacherous heart welcomed another inmate, and how has he repaid its hospitality?--By leaving the mansion in ruins!” As she spoke thus, she approached the entrance of the Castle.

“In the spacious hall she was received by Margaret Mortimer with the embrace of rooted affection, and by John Sandal, who advanced after the first enthusiasm of meeting was over, with that calm and brother-like good-will, from which there was--nothing to be hoped. There was the same heavenly smile, the same clasp of the hand, the same tender and almost feminine expression of anxiety for her safety--even Margaret herself, who must have felt, and who did feel the perils of the long journey, did not enter into them with that circumstantiality, or appear to sympathize with them so vividly, or, when the tale of toil and travel was told, appear to urge the necessity of speedy retirement, with such solicitude as did John Sandal. Elinor, faint and gasping, grasped the hands of both, and by an involuntary motion locked both together. The widow Sandal was present--she shewed much agitation at the appearance of Elinor; but when she saw this extraordinary and spontaneous movement, it was observed she smiled.

“Soon after, Elinor retired to the apartment she had formerly occupied. By the affectionate and delicate prevoyance of Margaret, the furniture had all been changed--there was nothing to remind her of former days, except her heart. She sat for some time reflecting on her reception, and hope died within her heart as she thought of it. The strongest expression of aversion or disdain would not have been so withering.

“It is certain that the fiercest passions may be exchanged for their widest extremes in a time incredibly short, and by means the most incalculable. Within the narrow circle of a day, enemies may embrace, and lovers may hate,--but, in the course of centuries, pure complacency and cordial good-will never can be exalted into passion. The wretched Elinor felt this,--and feeling it, knew that all was lost.

“She had now, for many days, to undergo the torture of complacent and fraternal affection from the man she loved,--and perhaps a keener torture was never endured. To feel hands that we long to press to our burning hearts, touch ours with cool and pulseless tranquillity--to see eyes in whose light we live, throw on us a cold but smiling beam, that gives light, but not fertility, to the parched and thirsting soil of the heart--to hear the ordinary language of affectionate civility addressed to us in tones of the most delicious suavity--to seek in these expressions an ulterior meaning, and to find it not---- This--this is an agony which only those who have felt can conceive!

“Elinor, with an effort that cost her heart many a pang, mingled in the habits of the house, which had been greatly changed since the death of Mrs Ann. The numerous suitors of the wealthy and noble heiress, now crowded to the Castle; and, according to the custom of the times, they were sumptuously entertained, and invited to prolong their stay by numerous banquets.

“On these occasions, John Sandal was the first to pay distinguished attention to Elinor. They danced together; and though her Puritanic education had taught her an abhorrence of those “devil’s measures,” as her family was accustomed to term them, she tried to adapt herself to the gay steps of the Canaries(9), and the stately movements of the Measures--(for the newer dances had not, even in report, reached Mortimer Castle)--and her slender and graceful form needed no other inspiration than the support of John Sandal’s arms, (who was himself an exquisite dancer), to assume all the graces of that delightful exercise. Even the practised courtiers applauded her. But, when it was over, Elinor felt, that had John Sandal been dancing with a being the most indifferent to him on earth, his manner would have been exactly the same. No one could point with more smiling grace to her slight deviations from the figure,--no one could attend her to her seat with more tender and anxious politeness, and wave the vast fan of those days over her with more graceful and assiduous courtesy. But Elinor felt that these attentions, however flattering, were offered not by a lover. * * * * * * * * *

(9) In Cowley’s “Cutter of Coleman Street,” Mrs Tabitha, a rigid
Puritan, tells her husband she had danced the Canaries in her youth.
And in Rushworth’s Collections, if I remember right, Prynne vindicates
himself from the charge of a general denunciation against dancing, and
even speaks of the “Measures,” a stately, solemn dance, with some
approbation.

“Sandal was absent on a visit to some neighbouring nobleman, and Margaret and Elinor were one evening completely alone. Each seemed equally anxious for an explanation, which neither appeared willing to begin. Elinor had lingered till twilight at the casement, from which she had seen him ride, and lingered still when to see him was no longer possible. Her sight was strained to catch a glimpse of him through the gathering clouds, as her imagination still toiled to catch a gleam of that light of the heart, which now struggled dimly amid clouds of gloomy and unpierceable mystery. “Elinor,” said Margaret emphatically, “look for him no longer,--he never can be yours!”

“The sudden address, and the imperative tone of conviction, had upon Elinor the effect of being addressed by a supernatural monitor. She was unable even to ask how the terrible intelligence that burst on her so decisively, was obtained.

“There is a state of mind in which we listen thus to a human voice as if it were an oracle,--and instead of asking an explanation of the destiny it announces, we wait submissively for what yet remains to be told. In this mood, Elinor slowly advanced from the casement, and asked in a voice of fearful calmness, “Has he explained himself perfectly to you?”--“Perfectly.”--“And there is nothing to expect?”--“Nothing.”--“And you have heard this from himself--his very self?”--“I have; and, dear Elinor, let us never again speak on the subject.”--“Never!” answered Elinor,--“Never!”

“The veracity and dignity of Margaret’s character, were inviolable securities for the truth of what she uttered; and perhaps that was the very reason why Elinor tried to shrink most from the conviction. In a morbid state of heart, we cannot bear truth--the falsehood that intoxicates us for a moment, is worth more than the truth that would disenchant us for life.--_I hate him because he tells me the truth_, is the language natural to the human mind, from the slave of power to the slave of passion. * * * * * * * *

“Other symptoms that could not escape the notice of the most shallow, struck her every hour. That devotion of the eye and heart,--of the language and the look, that cannot be mistaken,--were all obviously directed to Margaret. Still Elinor lingered in the Castle, and said to herself, while every day she saw and felt what was passing, “Perhaps.” That is the last word that quits the lips of those who love. * * * * * *

“She saw with all her eyes,--she felt to the bottom of her soul,--the obviously increasing attachment of John Sandal and Margaret; yet still she dreamed of interposing obstacles,--of _an explanation_. When passion is deprived of its proper aliment, there is no telling the food on which it will prey,--the impossibilities to which, like a famished garrison, it will look for its wretched sustenance.

“Elinor had ceased to demand the heart of the being she was devoted to. She now lived on his looks. She said to herself, Let him smile, though not on me, and I am happy still--wherever the sun-light falls, the earth must be blessed. Then she sunk to lower claims. She said, Let me but be in his presence, and that is enough--let his smiles and his soul be devoted to another, one wandering ray may reach me, and that will be enough!

“Love is a very noble and exalting sentiment in its first germ and principle. We never loved without arraying the object in all the glories of moral as well as physical perfection, and deriving a kind of dignity to ourselves from our capacity of admiring a creature so excellent and dignified; but this lavish and magnificent prodigality of the imagination often leaves the heart a bankrupt. Love in its iron age of disappointment, becomes very degraded--it submits to be satisfied with merely exterior indulgences--a look, a touch of the hand, though occurring by accident--a kind word, though uttered almost unconsciously, suffices for its humble existence. In its first state, it is like man before the fall, inhaling the odours of paradise, and enjoying the communion of the Deity; in the latter, it is like the same being toiling amid the briar and the thistle, barely to maintain a squalid existence without enjoyment, utility, or loveliness. * * * * * *

“About this time, her Puritan aunt made a strong effort to recover Elinor out of the snare of the enemy. She wrote a long letter (a great exertion for a woman far advanced in years, and never in the habits of epistolary composition) adjuring her apostate niece to return to the guide of her youth, and the covenant of her God,--to take shelter in the everlasting arms while they were still held out to her,--and to flee to the city of refuge while its gates were yet open to receive her. She urged on her the truth, power, and blessedness of the system of Calvin, which she termed the gospel.--She supported and defended it with all the metaphysical skill, and all the scriptural knowledge she possessed,--and the latter was not scanty.--And she affectingly reminded her, that the hand that traced these lines, would be unable ever to repeat the admonition, and would probably be mouldering into dust while she was employed in their perusal.

“Elinor wept while she read, but that was all. She wept from physical emotion, not from mental conviction; nor is there such an induration of heart caused by any other power, as by that of the passion which seems to soften it most. She answered the letter, however, and the effort scarce cost her less than it did her decrepid and dying relative. She acknowledged her dereliction of all religious feeling, and bewailed it--the more, she added with painful sincerity, because I _feel my grief is not sincere_. “Oh, my God!” she continued, “you who have clothed my heart with such burning energies--you who have given to it a power of loving so intense, so devoted, so concentrated--you have not given it in vain;--no, in some happier world, or perhaps even in this, when this “tyranny is overpast,” you will fill my heart with an image worthier than him whom I once believed your image on earth. The stars, though their light appears so dim and distant to us, were not lit by the Almighty hand in vain. Their glorious light burns for remote and happier worlds; and the beam of religion that glows so feebly to eyes almost blind with earthly tears, may be rekindled when a broken heart has been my passport to a place of rest. * * * * * * * *

“Do not think me, dear aunt, deserted by all hope of religion, even though I have lost the sense of it. Was it not said by unerring lips to a sinner, that her transgressions were forgiven because she _loved much_? And does not this capacity of love prove that it will one day be more worthily filled, and more happily employed. * * * * * *

“Miserable wretch that I am! At this moment, a voice from the bottom of my heart asks me “_Whom_ hast thou loved so much? Was it man or God, that thou darest to compare thyself with her who knelt and wept--not before a mortal idol, but at the feet of an incarnate divinity?” * * * * * *

“It may yet befall, that the ark which has floated through the waste of waters may find its resting-place, and the trembling inmate debark on the shores of an unknown but purer world.” * * * * * * * *