CHAPTER XVI.
THE BIRTHDAY GIFT.
Brightly and placidly, as the course of their own beautiful river, did the days now pass to the inmates of Oakwood. Letters came from Edward so frequently, so happily, that hope would rest calmly, joyously, even on the thought of him. He never let an opportunity pass, writing always to Mrs. Hamilton (which he had scarcely ever done before), and inclosing his letters to Ellen open in hers. The tone, the frequency, were so changed from his last, that his family now wondered they had been so blind before in not perceiving that his very seeming liveliness was unnatural and overstrained.
With Ellen, too, Mrs. Hamilton's anxious care was bringing in fair promise of success—the mistaken influences of her childhood, and their increased effect from a morbid imagination, produced from constant suffering, appearing, indeed, about to be wholly eradicated. Anxious to remove all sad associations connected with the library, Mrs. Hamilton having determined herself to superintend Ellen's studies, passed long mornings in that ancient room with her, so delightfully, that it became associated only with the noble authors whose works, or extracts from whom, she read and reveled in, and which filled her mind with such new thoughts, such expansive ideas, such calming and earnest truths, that she felt becoming to herself a new being. Lively and thoughtless as Emmeline she could not now indeed become—alike as their dispositions naturally were; but she was more quietly, enduringly happy than she had ever remembered her self.
There was only one alloy, one sad thought, that would intrude causing a resolution, which none suspected; for, open as she had become, she could breathe it to none but Ellis, for she alone could assist her, though it required many persuasions and many assurances, that she never could be quite happy, unless it was accomplished, which could prevail on her to grant it. Ellen knew, felt, more and more each week, that she could not rest till she had labored for and obtained, and returned into her aunt's hands the full sum she had so involuntarily appropriated. The only means she could adopt demanded such a seemingly interminable period of self-denial, patience, and perseverance, that at first as Ellis represented and magnified all connected with it, she felt as if, indeed, she could not nerve herself for the task, much as she desired to perform it; but prayer enabled her to face the idea, till it lost its most painful aspect, and three months after Edward's departure she commenced the undertaking, resolved that neither time nor difficulty should deter her from its accomplishment. What her plan was, and whether it succeeded, we may not here inform our readers. Should we be permitted to resume our History of the Hamilton Family, both will be revealed.
Greatly to Caroline's delight, the following October was fixed for them to leave Oakwood, and, after a pleasant tour, to make the long anticipated visit to London. There would then be three or four months' quiet for her to have the benefit of masters, before she was introduced, and Mrs. Hamilton fondly hoped, that the last year's residence at home, fraught as it had been with so much of domestic trial, and displaying so many hopeful and admirable traits in Caroline's disposition, would have lessened the danger of the ordeal of admiration and gayety which she so dreaded for her child—whether it had or not, a future page will disclose.
To Emmeline this arrangement was a source of extreme regret, individually, in which Ellen now quite sympathized. But Emmeline had never forgotten her mother's gentle hint, that too great indulgence of regret or sorrow becomes selfishness, and she tried very hard to create some anticipation of pleasure, even in London. Ellen would not look to pleasure, but merely tried to think about—and so, when called upon, cheerfully to resign that which was now so intensely enjoyable—her studies with her aunt—and so benefit by them as to give Miss Harcourt no trouble when she was again under her care; as she knew she and Emmeline must be, more than they had been yet, when Caroline's introduction, and their residence in London, would take Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton so much from domestic pursuits and pleasures, and, even when at home, compel them to be so frequently engrossed with a large circle of friends, and all the variety of claims on their attention and time, which a season in London includes.
It was again the 7th of June, and Ellen's birthday. Accustomed from the time she became an inmate of Oakwood to regard the anniversary of her birth in the same serious light as Mrs. Hamilton had taught her cousins—as a day of quiet reflection, as well as of thankfulness and joy, as one that, closing and recommencing another year of their individual lives, taught them that they were becoming more and more responsible beings—it was not much wonder that Ellen, the whole of that day, should seem somewhat less cheerful than usual. She had indeed had many sources of thankfulness and joy during the past year, but a heart and mind like hers could not recall its principal event without a return of sorrow. Mrs. Hamilton would not notice her now unusual sadness until the evening, when perceiving her standing engrossed in thought beside one of the widely-opened windows, near which Caroline was watering some lovely flowers on the terrace, she gently approached her, and, putting her arm round her, said, fondly—
"You have thought quite seriously and quite long enough for to-day, my dear Ellen; I must not have any more such very silent meditations. That there is something to regret in the retrospect of the last year, I acknowledge, but you must not let it poison all the sources of thankfulness which it brings likewise."