I remember little of the style or nature of the letter. Something I read about a discovery made by Lady Ponsonby, and a solemn engagement or promise extorted from him, to see me only once more, in which interview he had intended to have explained and arranged everything; but could not. The perusal of this letter occasioned a mist to come over my eyes, my heart seemed to swell so as almost to produce suffocation: and yet I did not believe it to be possible that we could have parted for the last time, or surely my anguish had burst forth in one wild cry and then all had been still for ever!
But hope was not yet extinct. I felt stunned, more by the sudden shock of such an idea being presented to my imagination as possible, than from conviction of its probability. "Dreadful!" thought I, and shuddered, while I felt a cold dew as from the charnel-house overspread my whole frame, "shall Ponsonby refuse to speak to me, and even look upon me as a stranger, after all our communion of feeling, after all that deep interest which he evinced towards me so late as this very morning? Nonsense! palpable, gross absurdity! How I have been frightening myself! As if it were in human nature to be so cruel even to one's greatest enemy! And Ponsonby's nature is so kind!" and then a violent hysterical affection steeped my senses in forgetfulness and relieved for an instant the bitter anguish of my heart. Then I suddenly recollected his parting kiss. Gracious God! could he have left me? My brain seemed absolutely on fire. I flew to the window, where for years I had been in the habit of watching his approach. "It is not high enough," thought I, "and would but half destroy me. I will go to him first," and my trembling hands essayed in vain to fasten the ribbons of my bonnet under my chin: "but no, no, I will not risk her happiness. I am not really wicked, not so very wicked as to deserve this dreadful calamity. We are sent into the world to endure the evils of it patiently, and not thus to fly into the face of our God. If he is our father, and I kneel down to him with patience, this anguish will be calmed."
I locked my door, and then prostrated myself with my face on the floor and prayed fervently for near an hour that, if I was to see Ponsonby no more, God would take me in mercy out of a world of such bitter suffering before the morning. I arose somewhat comforted: but stiff, and so cold that my whole frame trembled violently. I swallowed some lavender-drops and tried to write: blotted twenty sheets of paper with unintelligible nonsense and wetted them with my tears.
The book Ponsonby last read to me now caught my eye. No sense of religion could calm me or save me from the actions of despair, while these objects were before me, and, hastily wrapping my cloak about me, I hurried into the streets. I walked on with incredible swiftness till my strength failed me all at once, and, panting for breath, I sat down on the step of a door in Half Moon-street. The night was dark and rainy. "I have a strong mind," thought I, "and I will exert it to consider where I shall look for help and consolation if Ponsonby has left me." As this thought struck me, the slow tear fell unregarded down my cheek. "Death," was the answer my despair made me, "only death can relieve me!" But then what is death? how soon the vital spark of life is destroyed in insects. The poor moth, when writhing in torture of its own seeking, how often and how easily I have put at rest! Ponsonby's neglect, Ponsonby's late passion, his smile, and his last long kiss, cannot torture me after this little palpitation has ceased, and I held my fingers to my throat to ascertain the strength of what seemed all of life about me. Yet I will suffer first, and suffer long, that I may pray for God's forgiveness, only be it my consolation that this will terminate all.
Alas! vain was my reasoning. There was no consolation for me. I was bent on writing to Ponsonby. "I will return home," thought I, "and shut myself up in the small room he has never entered." My trembling knees could no longer support me. I tried to rise; but could not. My lips were parched, my cheeks burned, and I was very sick. "God is about to grant the prayer I have made to him," thought I,—ever sanguine in what I wished—"I shall die by his own will."
I grew worse, and very faint. Sickness was new to me at that time, and now a slight touch of fear came over me. "Alas!" methought, "I am going out of the world very young and very miserably, and before I have written to Ponsonby. He would have returned to me. He loved me, and while there was life there was hope. I might have been so exquisitely happy as to have been pressed to his heart again! though but once more, it would have compensated an age of misery. It is but in losing him I can appreciate my late wonderful happiness. I would have been his servant or his slave, and lived on one of his smiles for a week, as a reward for the hardest labour. What am I? what was I, that Ponsonby should devote his precious life to me? No matter what I was!" As I grew still fainter, I prayed for Ponsonby's eternal happiness, as though I had felt he required my prayers.
"Vy do you set there?" inquired a man, who was passing, in the accent of a Jew, and, receiving no answer, after examining me attentively, he added, "Poor ting! poor girl you are ill! don't be afraid of a poor old Jew. Tell me vat I sal do for you." My heart was so deeply oppressed that my strongest effort to subdue my feelings proved unsuccessful; and, at the sound of these few words uttered in a tone of unaffected benevolence, I sobbed aloud.
"Poor ting! poor young ting! Got bless my soul," taking my hand, "you are very ill, you have much fever, vat shall pe done!"
"I am really ill," said I, struggling to speak calmly, "and you will oblige me greatly if you will have the kindness to see me to a hackney coach."