“I never loved living long in one place. We travelled over the greater part of England and France. What must be the enchantment of love, when accompanied with innocence and joy, when, even in sin, in remorse, in grief, it brings us a rapture to which all other things are tame. Oh! those were moments steeped in the very elixir of life; overflowing with the hoarded fondness and sympathies of hearts too full for words, and yet too agitated for silence, when we journeyed alone, and at night, and as the shadows and stillness of the waning hours gathered round us, drew closer to each other, and concentrated this breathing world in the deep and embracing sentiment of our mutual love! It was then that I laid my burning temples on her bosom, and felt, while my hand clasped her’s, that my visions were realized, and my wandering spirit had sunk unto its rest.
“I remember well that, one night, we were travelling through one of the most beautiful parts of England it was in the very height and flush of summer, and the moon (what scene of love—whether in reality, or romance—has any thing of tenderness, or passion, or divinity, where her light is not!) filled the intense skies of June with her presence, and cast a sadder and paler beauty over Gertrude’s cheek. She was always of a melancholy and despondent temper; perhaps, for that reason, she was more congenial to my own; and when I gazed upon her that night, I was not surprised to see her eyes filled with tears. ‘You will laugh at me,’ she said, as I kissed them off, and inquired into the cause; ‘but I feel a presentiment that I cannot shake off; it tells me that you will travel this road again before many months are past, and that I shall not be with you, perhaps not upon the earth.’ She was right in all her foreboding, but the suggestion of her death;—that came later.
“We took up our residence for some time at a beautiful situation, a short distance from a small watering place. Here, to my great surprise, I met with Tyrrell. He had come there partly to see a relation from whom he had some expectations, and partly to recruit his health, which was much broken by his irregularities and excesses. I could not refuse to renew my old acquaintance with him, and, indeed, I thought him too much of a man of the world, and of society, to feel with him that particular delicacy, in regard to Gertrude, which made me in general shun all intercourse with my former friends. He was in great pecuniary embarrassment—much more deeply so than I then imagined; for I believed the embarrassment to be only temporary. However, my purse was then, as before, at his disposal, and he did not scruple to avail himself very largely of my offers. He came frequently to our house; and poor Gertrude, who thought I had, for her sake, made a real sacrifice in renouncing my acquaintance, endeavoured to conquer her usual diffidence, and that more painful feeling than diffidence, natural to her station, and even to affect a pleasure in the society of my friend, which she was very far from feeling.
“I was detained at—for several weeks by Gertrude’s confinement. The child—happy being!—died a week after its birth. Gertrude was still in bed, and unable to leave it, when I received a letter from Ellen, to say, that my mother was then staying at Toulouse, and dangerously ill; if I wished once more to see her, Ellen besought me to lose no time in setting off for the continent. You may imagine my situation, or rather you cannot, for you cannot conceive the smallest particle of that intense love I bore to Gertrude. To you—to any other man, it might seem no extraordinary hardship to leave her even for an uncertain period—to me it was like tearing away the very life from my heart.
“I procured her a sort of half companion, and half nurse; I provided for her every thing that the most anxious and fearful love could suggest; and with a mind full of forebodings too darkly to be realized hereafter, I hastened to the nearest seaport, and set sail for France.
“When I arrived at Toulouse my mother was much better, but still in a very uncertain and dangerous state of health. I stayed with her for more than a month, during which time every post brought me a line from Gertrude, and bore back a message from ‘my heart to her’s’ in return. This was no mean consolation, more especially when each letter spoke of increasing health and strength. At the month’s end, I was preparing to return—my mother was slowly recovering, and I no longer had any fears on her account; but, there are links in our destiny fearfully interwoven with each other, and ending only in the anguish of our ultimate doom. The day before that fixed for my departure, I had been into a house where an epidemic disease raged; that night I complained of oppressive and deadly illness—before morning I was in a high fever.
“During the time I was sensible of my state, I wrote constantly to Gertrude, and carefully concealed my illness; but for several days I was delirious. When I recovered I called eagerly for my letters—there were none—none! I could not believe I was yet awake; but days still passed on, and not a line from England—from Gertrude. The instant I was able, I insisted upon putting horses to my carriage; I could bear no longer the torture of my suspense. By the most rapid journeys my debility would allow me to bear, I arrived in England. I travelled down to—by the same road that I had gone over with her; the words of her foreboding, at that time, sunk like ice into my heart, ‘You will travel this road again before many months are past, and I shall not be with you: perhaps, I shall not be upon the earth.’ At that thought I could have called unto the grave to open for me. Her unaccountable and lengthened silence, in spite of all the urgency and entreaties of my letters for a reply, filled me with presentiments the most fearful. Oh, God—oh, God, they were nothing to the truth!
“At last I arrived at—; my carriage stopped at the very house—my whole frame was perfectly frozen with dread—I trembled from limb to limb—the ice of a thousand winters seemed curdling through my blood. The bell rung—once, twice—no answer. I would have leaped out of the carriage—I would have forced an entrance, but I was unable to move. A man fettered and spell-bound by an incubus, is less helpless than I was. At last, an old female I had never seen before, appeared.
“‘Where is she? How!’ I could utter no more—my eyes were fixed upon the inquisitive and frightened countenance opposite to my own. Those eyes, I thought, might have said all that my lips could not; I was deceived—the old woman understood me no more than I did her; another person appeared—I recognized the face—it was that of a girl, who had been one of our attendants. Will you believe, that at that sight, the sight of one I had seen before, and could associate with the remembrance of the breathing, the living, the present Gertrude, a thrill of joy flashed across me—my fears seemed to vanish—my spell to cease?
“I sprung from the carriage; I caught the girl by the robe. ‘Your mistress,’ said I, ‘your mistress—she is well—she is alive—speak, speak?’ The girl shrieked out; my eagerness, and, perhaps, my emaciated and altered appearance, terrified her; but she had the strong nerves of youth, and was soon re-assured. She requested me to step in, and she would tell me all. My wife (Gertrude always went by that name), was alive, and, she believed, well, but she had left that place some weeks since. Trembling, and still fearful, but, comparatively, in Heaven, to my former agony, I followed the girl and the old woman into the house.