Adeline Mowbray; or, The Mother and Daughter

by Amelia Opie

Here she was interrupted by the voice of Adeline; who, in a deep and hollow tone, was addressing the unconscious corpse. 'For God's sake, speak! for this silence is dreadful—it looks so like death.'

'Poor thing!' said Mrs Pemberton, kneeling beside her, 'and is it even thus with thee? Would thou couldst shed tears, afflicted one!'

'It is very strange,' continued Adeline: 'he loved me so tenderly, and he used to speak and look so tenderly, and now, see how he neglects me! Glenmurray, my love! for mercy's sake, speak to me!' As she said this, she laid her lips to his: but, feeling on them the icy coldness of death, she started back, screaming in all the violence of phrensy; and, recovered to the full consciousness of her misfortune, she was carried back to her room in violent convulsions.

'Would I could stay and watch over thee!' said Mrs Pemberton, as she gazed on Adeline's distorted countenance; 'for thou, young as thou art, wert well known in the chambers of sorrow and of sickness; and I should rejoice to pay back to thee part of the debt of those whom thy presence so often soothed: but I must leave thee to the care of others.'

'You leave her to my care,' cried Savanna reproachfully,—who felt even her violent sorrow suspended while Mrs Pemberton spoke in accents at once sad yet soothing,—'you leave her to my care, and who watch, who love her more than me?'

'Good Savanna!' replied Mrs Pemberton, pressing the mulatto's hand as she returned to her station beside Adeline, who was fallen into a calm slumber, 'to thy care, with confidence, I commit her. But perhaps there may be an immediate necessity for money, and I had better leave this with thee,' she added, taking out her purse: but Savanna assured her that Mr Berrendale was sent for, and to him all those concerns were to be left. Mrs Pemberton stood for a few moments looking at Adeline in silence, then slowly left the house.

When Adeline awoke, she seemed so calm and resigned, that her earnest request of being allowed to pass the night alone was granted, especially as Mrs Pemberton had desired that her wish, even to see Glenmurray again, should be complied with: but the faithful mulatto watched till morning at the door. No bed that night received the weary limbs of Adeline. She threw herself on the ground, and in alternate prayer and phrensy passed the first night of her woe: towards morning, however, she fell into a perturbed sleep. But when the light of day darting into the room awakened her to consciousness; and when she recollected that he to whom it usually summoned her existed no longer; that the eyes which but the preceding morning had opened with enthusiastic ardour to hail its beams, were now for ever closed; and that the voice which used to welcome her so tenderly, she should never, never hear again; the forlornness of her situation, the hopelessness of her sorrow burst upon her with a violence too powerful for her reason: and when Berrendale arrived, he found Glenmurray in his shroud, and Adeline in a state of insanity. For six months her phrensy resisted all the efforts of medicine, and the united care which Berrendale's love and Savanna's grateful attachment could bestow; while with Adeline's want of their care seemed to increase their desire of bestowing it, and their affection gathered new strength from the duration of her helpless malady. So true is it, that we become attached more from the aid which we give than that which we receive; and that the love of the obliger is more apt to increase than that of the obliged by the obligation conferred. At length, however, Adeline's reason slowly yet surely returned; and she, by degrees, learnt to contemplate with firmness, and even calmness, the loss which she had sustained. She even looked on Berrendale and his attentions not with anger, but gratitude and complacency; she had even pleasure in observing the likeness he bore Glenmurray; she felt that it endeared him to her. In the first paroxysms of her phrensy, the sight of him threw her into fits of ravings; but as she grew better she had pleasure in seeing him: and when, on her recovery, she heard how much she was indebted to his persevering tenderness, she felt for him a decided regard, which Berrendale tried to flatter himself might be ripened into love.

But he was mistaken; the heart of Adeline was formed to feel violent and lasting attachments only. She had always loved her mother with a tenderness of a most uncommon nature; she had felt for Glenmurray the fondest enthusiasm of passion: she was now separated from them both. But her mother still lived: and though almost hopeless of ever being restored to her society, all her love for her returned; and she pined for that consoling fondness, those soothing attentions, which, in a time of such affliction, a mother on a widowed daughter can alone bestow.

'Yet, surely,' cried she in the solitude of her own room, 'her oath cannot now forbid her to forgive me; for, am I not as wretched in love, nay more, far more so, than she has been? Yes—yes; I will write to her: besides he wished me to do so' (meaning Glenmurray, whom she never named); and she did write to her, according to the address which Dr Norberry sent soon after he returned to his own house. Still week after week elapsed, and month after month, but no answer came.

Again she wrote, and again she was disappointed; though her loss, her illness in consequence of it, her pecuniary distress, and the large debt which she had incurred to Berrendale, were all detailed in a manner calculated to move the most obdurate heart. What then could Adeline suppose? Perhaps her mother was ill; perhaps she was dead: and her reason was again on the point of yielding to this horrible supposition, when she received her two letters in a cover, directed in her mother's hand-writing.