“I am content to live,” said Helen.
“Content! to be sure you are,” said Miss Clarendon. “Is this your thankfulness to Providence?”
“I am resigned—I am thankful—I will try to be more so—but cannot be glad.”
General Clarendon’s bulletins continued with little variation for some time; they were always to his sister—he never mentioned Beauclerc, but confined himself to the few lines or words necessary to give his promised regular accounts of Mr. Churchill’s state, the sum of which continued to be for a length of time: “Much the same.”—“Not in immediate danger.”—“Cannot be pronounced out of danger.”
Not very consolatory, Helen felt. “But while there is life, there is hope,” as aunt Pennant observed.
“Yes, and fear,” said Helen; and her hopes and fears on this subject alternated with fatiguing reiteration, and with a total incapacity of forming any judgment.
Beauclerc’s letter of explanation arrived, and other letters came from him from time to time, which, as they were only repetitions of hopes and fears as to Churchill’s recovery, and of uncertainty as to what might be his own future fate, only increased Helen’s misery; and as even their expressions of devoted attachment could not alter her own determination, while she felt how cruel her continued silence must appear, they only agitated without relieving her mind. Mrs. Pennant sympathised with and soothed her, and knew how to sooth, and how to raise, and to sustain a mind in sorrow, suffering under disappointed affection, and sunk almost to despondency; for aunt Pennant, besides her softness of manner, and her quick intelligent sympathy, had power of consolation of a higher sort, beyond any which this world can give. She was very religious, of a cheerfully religious turn of mind—of that truly Christian spirit which hopeth all things. When she was a child somebody asked her if she was bred up in the fear of the Lord. She said no, but in the love of God. And so she was, in that love which casteth out fear. And now the mildness of her piety, and the whole tone and manner of her speaking and thinking, reminded Helen of that good dear uncle by whom she had been educated. She listened with affectionate reverence, and she truly and simply said, “You do me good—I think you have done me a great deal of good—and you shall see it.” And she did see it afterwards, and Miss Clarendon thought it was her doing, and so her aunt let it pass, and was only glad the good was done.
The first day Helen went down to the drawing-room, she found there a man who looked, as she thought at first glance, like a tradesman—some person, she supposed, come on business, standing waiting for Miss Clarendon, or Mrs. Pennant. She scarcely looked at him, but passed on to the sofa, beside which was a little table set for her, and on it a beautiful work-box, which she began to examine and admire.
“Not nigh so handsome as I could have wished it, then, for you, Miss Helen—I ask pardon, Miss Stanley.”
Helen looked up, surprised at hearing herself addressed by one whom she had thought a stranger; but yet she knew the voice, and a reminiscence came across her mind of having seen him somewhere before.