CHAPTER XXV.
I did not become insensible, but I was dead to surrounding objects, dead to the present, dead to the future. The past, the terrible, the inexorable past, was upon me, trampling me, grinding me with iron heel, into the dust of the grave. I could not move, for its nightmare weight crushed me. I could not see, for its blackness shrouded me; nor hear, for its shrieks deafened me. Had I remained long in that awful condition, I should have become a maniac.
"Gabriella!" said a voice, which at any other moment would have wakened a thrill of rapture, "Gabriella, speak,—look up. Why do you do this? Why will you not speak? Do you not hear me?"
I did try to speak, but my tongue seemed frozen. I did try to lift my head, but in vain.
Ernest Linwood, for it was he, knelt down by me, and putting his arms round me, raised me from the ground, without any volition of my own. I know not what state I was in. I was perfectly conscious; but had no more power over the movement of a muscle than if I were dead. My eyes were closed, and my head drooped on his breast, as he raised me, bowed by its own weight. I was in a kind of conscious catalepsy. He was alarmed, terrified. As he afterwards told me, he really believed me dead, and clasping me to him with an energy of which he was not aware, adjured me in the most tender and passionate manner to speak and tell him that I lived.
"Gabriella, my flower-girl, my darling!" he cried, pressing my cheek with those pure, despairing kisses with which love hallows death. Had I indeed passed the boundaries of life, for my spirit alone was conscious of caresses, whose remembrance thrilled through my being.
The reaction was instantaneous. The chilled blood grew warm and rushed through every vein with wild rapidity. Then I became physically conscious, and glowing with confusion I raised myself from my reclining position, and attempted to look up into the face of Ernest. But I could not do it. Contending emotions deprived me of the power of self-command.
"This is madness, Gabriella! This is suicide!" he exclaimed, lifting me from the grave, and still supporting me with his arm. "Why do you come here to nurse a grief so far beyond the limits of reason and religion? Why do you give your friends such exquisite pain, yourself such unnecessary misery?"
"Do not reproach me," I cried. "You know not what cause I have for anguish and despair."
"Despair, Gabriella! You cannot know the meaning of that word. Despair belongs to guilt, and even that is not hopeless. And why do you come to this lone place of graves to weep, as if human sympathy were denied to your sorrows? Is not my mother kind,—is not Edith tender and affectionate? Am not I worthy to be trusted, as a friend,—a protector,—a redresser; and if need be, an avenger of wrongs?"