"Oh, no, it is not fancy; I never loved any one as I do you—except papa—my own darling, good papa!" the word was almost choked with sobs. "He used to fondle me and praise me, and call me his darling Ellen, as uncle Hamilton did Emmeline last Sunday; and when I was ill, so ill they said I should die, he never left me, except when his military duties called him away; and he used to nurse me, and try to amuse me, that I might forget pain and weakness. Oh, I shall never, never forget that dreadful night!" and she closed her eyes and shuddered, as the horrid scene of blood and death flashed before her.
"What dreadful night my poor child?" inquired Mrs. Hamilton, soothingly, after doubting whether or not it would be better for Ellen to pursue such an evidently painful theme, and no longer requiring an explanation of her emotion the previous Sabbath.
"The night poor papa was killed;—oh, there were so many horrid forms on the grass, the natives and poor papa's own men, and they looked so ghastly in the moonlight, and the grass was covered with blood and limbs and heads that had been shot off; and there were such cries and groans of pain—I see it, I hear it all again so often before I go to sleep, and when my head feels as it does to-day, and fancy I hear poor papa's last words and feel his kiss as he lay bleeding, bleeding slowly to death and his voice was so strange, and his lips so cold!"
"But how came you in such a dreadful scene, my poor Ellen? who could have permitted such a little child to be there?"
"Because I wished it so very much; I knew he would die before they could bring him to me, and I did so want to feel his kiss and hear his voice once more. Oh, aunt Emmeline! shall I never see him again? I know he can not come to me; but shall I, oh, shall I ever be good enough to go to him?" And she looked up in her aunt's face with such a countenance of beseeching entreaty, that Mrs. Hamilton's eyes filled with tears, and it was a full minute before she could speak; but when she did, Ellen felt more relieved and comforted, than on the subject of her father's death she had ever felt before. From her mother not being able to bear the subject even partially alluded to, and from having no one to whom she could speak of it, it had taken a still stronger hold of her imagination; and whenever she was unusually weak, and her head aching and confused, it became still more vivid. The very visible sympathy and interest of her aunt, and the gentle words in which she tried to turn the child's thoughts from that scene of horror to the happiness of her father in Heaven, and an assurance that, if she tried to do her duty, and to love and serve God, and trust in His mercy to render her efforts acceptable, she would rejoin him, seemed to remove the mass of tangled thought within her young mind. Her head, indeed, still ached very painfully, and her eyes seemed as if they would close, notwithstanding all her efforts to keep them open; but when she awoke from a long quiet sleep, on the sofa in Mrs. Hamilton's dressing-room, where her aunt had laid her, and found that kind friend still watching over her, the little heart and temples had ceased to throb so quickly, and she felt better and happier.
Mr. Maitland, the medical friend of the family, confirmed the opinion which Edward had said their physician in India had given of his sister's state of health. He did not, he said, consider her liable to serious illness, or of a constitution that would not endure; but that he feared it would be some years before she knew the blessing of really good health, and be constantly subject to that lassitude, severe headache, and the depression of the whole system thence proceeding, which must prevent the liveliness and quickness of acquirement natural to most children. He thought the evil had been very greatly increased by want of sufficient care in early years, and the unwholesome climate in which she had so long lived, that he wondered her mother had not been advised to send her over to England, adding, with a smile, he was quite sure Mrs. Hamilton would not have refused the charge, anxious as it might have been. And earnestly, not only on account of the child's physical but mental health, did Mrs. Hamilton wish that such had been the case, and that she had had the care of her niece from earliest infancy; and how much more would she have wished this, had she known that Mrs. Fortescue had really been advised to do with Ellen as Mr. Maitland had said, but that believing it merely an idle fancy, and persisting, too, in her own headstrong idea, that it was ill-temper, not illness, which rendered Ellen so disagreeable, she would not stoop so to conquer her unfortunate pride as to ask such a favor of her relatives, and to whom else could she appeal? Colonel Fortescue had none but distant cousins. She did satisfy a qualm of conscience by once suggesting to her husband—as her own idea, however, not as that of an experienced physician—that as he fancied Ellen was always ill, she might be better in England; but, as she expected, not only his intense love for his little girl rose up against the idea of separation, but his pride revolted from sending her to claim the pity of relatives who had so completely cast off her parents: yet had he been told it was absolutely necessary for her health and so greatly for her happiness, he would not have hesitated to sacrifice every thought of self. But Eleanor, satisfied that she had done her duty, and delighted that in one respect he was quite as proud as she was, never again referred to the subject, and the physician who had thus advised, from his constant removals, he never chanced to meet.
Great, indeed, was the amount of childish suffering which this selfish decision, on the part of her mother, occasioned Ellen. We do not mean the pain of constant languor itself, though that in its full amount our happy healthful young readers can not have the least idea of: they, perhaps, think it almost a pleasant change, the care, and petting, and presents so often lavished on a brief decided illness: but that is a very different thing to that kind of suffering which only so affects them as to be dull and heavy, they do not know why, and to make it such a very difficult task to learn the lessons others find so easy; and such a pain sometimes to move, that they are thought slow and unwilling, and perhaps even idle, when they would gladly run, and help, and work as others; and so weak sometimes, that tears start at the first harsh or unkind word, and they are thought cross, when they do not in the least feel so; and this, not for a few weeks, but, with few exceptions, the trial of months and even years.
And this was Ellen's—which not even the tenderest and most unfailing care of her aunt could entirely guard her from. It is a most difficult thing for those who are strong and healthy themselves to understand and always bear with physical suffering in others. Miss Harcourt, though in general free from any thing like prejudice, and ardently desirous to follow up her own and Mrs. Hamilton's ideas of right and wrong, could not so govern her affections as to feel the same toward Ellen as she did toward Edward and the children she had lived with and taught so long. Her task with Ellen required more patience and forbearance and care than with either of the others, and sometimes she could not help believing and acting toward her as if it were willful idleness and carelessness, not the languor of disease.
With the recollection and evidence of Herbert, who had been delicate from his birth, and who was yet of such a remarkably gifted mind, and so bright in aspect, so sweet in temper, that illness seemed to have spiritualized instead of deadened every faculty, she could not understand, as Mrs. Hamilton did, the force of circumstances in producing from nearly the same cause two much different effects, nor how it was that complete neglect had engendered more evils than indiscreet indulgence; but that it appeared to have done so, was unhappily only too evident not only to Miss Harcourt but to Mrs. Hamilton. It seemed almost surprising, and certainly a proof of a remarkably good disposition, that Edward appeared so free from great faults, and of such a warm, generous, frank, and seemingly unselfish nature, so open to conviction and to all good impressions, that, except occasional fits of violent passion, there really was, as far as his aunt and uncle could perceive, nothing to complain of. They did not know that he stood in such awe of Mr. Hamilton, from his mother's lessons of his exceeding sternness, that he exercised the greatest control over himself; and he was so excessively fond of Mr. Howard, and his days glided by in such varied and delightful employment, that there was no temptation to do wrong, except certain acts of trifling disobedience, of more consequence from the self-will they betrayed than the acts themselves, but which might have been sources of anxiety to his aunt, and lessened her confidence in him had she known them; but she did not, for Ellen not only constantly concealed, but she was the sufferer for him, and so brought reproof and suspicion on herself, which, could the truth have been known, might have been averted. But truth of act as well as word had never been impressed on Edward; and, therefore, though he was constitutionally too brave to utter a falsehood, too honorable to shield himself at the expense of another, if he knew that other suffered, he had been too long taught to believe that Ellen was his inferior, and must always give up to him, to imagine that he was even acting deceitfully or unmanfully in permitting her to conceal his acts of disobedience.
There was so much to love and admire in Edward, that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Hamilton imagined the real weakness of his character—that those lovable qualities all sprung from natural impulse, unsustained by any thing like principle. The quickness and apparent fervor with which he received the religious impressions they and Mr. Howard sought so earnestly to instill in the short time that was allowed them before he entered the navy, they augured so hopefully from, that not only his preceptor and uncle, but his ever anxious aunt, looked forward to his career with scarcely a doubt as to its probity and honor.