“I know,” said Helen, “that all you say is for my good. I am sure your only object is my happiness.”
“Your happiness is not in my power or in your’s, but it is in your power to deserve to be happy, by doing what is right—by exerting yourself:—that is my object, for I see you are in danger of being lost in indolence. Now you have the truth and the whole truth.”
Many a truth would have come mended from Miss Clarendon’s tongue, if it had been uttered in a softer tone, and if she had paid a little more attention to times and seasons: but she held it the sacred duty of sincerity to tell a friend her faults as soon as seen, and without circumlocution.
The next day Helen set about a drawing. She made it an object to herself, to try to copy a view of the dear Deanery in the same style as several beautiful drawings of Miss Clarendon’s. While she looked over her portfolio, several of her old sketches recalled remembrances which made her sigh frequently; Miss Clarendon heard her, and said—“I wish you would cure yourself of that habit of sighing; it is very bad for you.”
“I know it,” said Helen.
“Despondency is not penitence,” continued Esther: “reverie is not reparation.”
She felt as desirous as ever to make Helen happy at Llansillen, but she was provoked to find it impossible to do so. Of a strong body herself, capable of great resistance, powerful reaction under disappointment or grief, she could ill make allowance for feebler health and spirits—perhaps feebler character. For great misfortunes she had great sympathy, but she could not enter into the details of lesser sorrows, especially any of the sentimental kind, which she was apt to class altogether under the head—“Sorrows of my Lord Plumcake!” an expression which had sovereignly taken her fancy, and which her aunt did not relish, or quite understand.
Mrs. Pennant was, indeed, as complete a contrast to her niece in these points, as nature and habit joined could produce. She was naturally of the most exquisitely sympathetic mimosa-sensibility, shrinking and expanding to the touch of others’ joy or woe; and instead of having by long use worn this out, she had preserved it wonderfully fresh in advanced years. But, notwithstanding the contrast and seemingly incompatible difference between this aunt and niece, the foundations of their characters both being good, sound, and true, they lived on together well, and loved each other dearly. They had seldom differed so much on any point as in the present case, as to their treatment of their patient and their guest. Scarcely a day passed in which they did not come to some mutual remonstrance; and sometimes when she was by, which was not pleasant to her, as may be imagined. Yet perhaps even these little altercations and annoyances, though they tried Helen’s temper or grieved her heart at the moment, were of use to her upon the whole, by drawing her out of herself. Besides, these daily vicissitudes—made by human temper, manner, and character—supplied in some sort the total want of events, and broke the monotony of these tedious months.
The general’s bulletins, however, became at last more favourable: Mr. Churchill was decidedly better; his physician hoped he might soon be pronounced out of danger. The general said nothing of Beauclerc, but that he was, he believed, still at Paris. And from this time forward no more letters came from Beauclerc to Helen; as his hopes of Churchill’s recovery increased, he expected every day to be released from his banishment, and was resolved to write no more till he could say that he was free. But Helen, though she did not allow it to herself, felt this deeply: she thought that her determined silence had at last convinced him that all pursuit of her was vain; and that he submitted to her rejection: she told herself it was what should be, and yet she felt it bitterly. Lady Cecilia’s letters did not mention him, indeed they scarcely told anything; they had become short and constrained: the general, she said, advised her to go out more, and her letters often concluded in haste, with “Carriage at the door,” and all the usual excuses of a London life.
One day when Helen was sitting intently drawing, Miss Clarendon said “Helen!” so suddenly that she started and looked round; Miss Clarendon was seated on a low stool at her aunt’s feet, with one arm thrown over her great dog’s neck; he had laid his head on her lap, and resting on him, she looked up with a steadiness, a fixity of repose, which brought to Helen’s mind Raphael’s beautiful figure of Fortitude leaning on her lion; she thought she had never before seen Miss Clarendon look so handsome, so graceful, so interesting; she took care not to say so, however.