"Can I then wish to hear that she is no more? My dear, dear mother! Were all the accusations true which are brought against you, still would I seek your retreat, endeavour to assuage your sorrows; wherever, whatever you are, you are of more worth to me—methinks that you must still be more worthy of affection than all else that the earth contains! But it is not so. I feel it—I know it—she is dead. Yet when, where, how? Oh, my father's vain commands! I would walk barefoot to the summit of the Andes to have these questions answered. The interval that must elapse before I reach London, and see this man, is hard to bear. What will he tell? Nothing! often, in my lucid intervals, as my father would call them, in my hours of despondency, I fear—nothing!
"You have not played me false, dearest Sophy? In telling your lovely friend the strange story of my woes, you have taught her to mourn my mother's fate, not to suspect her goodness? I am half angry with myself for devolving the task upon you. For, despite your kind endeavours, I read your heart, my worldly-wise sister, and know its unbelief. I forgive you, for you never saw my mother's face, nor heard her voice. Had you ever beheld the purity and integrity that sat upon her brow, and listened to her sweet tones, she would visit your dreams by day and night, as she does mine, in the guise of an angel robed in perfect innocence. I cannot forgive my father for his accusations; his own heart must be bad, or he could not credit that any evil inhabited hers. For how many years that guileless heart was laid bare to him! and if it was not so fond and admiring towards himself as he could have wished, still there was no concealment, no tortuosity; he saw it all, though now he discredits the evidence of his senses—shuts his eyes,
'And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, "Where is it?"'
For truth was her attribute; the open heart, which made the brow, the eyes, the cheerful mien, the sweet, loving smile and thrilling voice, all transcripts of its pure emotions. It was this that rendered her the adorable being, which all who knew her acknowledge that she was.
"I am solicitous beyond measure that Miss Falkner should receive no false impression. Her image is before me, when I saw her first, pale in the agony of fear, bending over her dying father; by day and by night she forgot herself to attend on him. She who loves a parent so well can understand me better than any other. She, I am convinced, will form a true judgment. She will approve my perseverance, and share my doubts and fears; will she not? ask her—or am I too vain, too credulous? Is there in the whole world one creature who will join with me in my faith and my labours? You do not, Sophia; that I have long known, and the feeling of disappointment is already blunted; but it will revive, it will be barbed with a new sting, if I am deceived in my belief that Elizabeth Falkner shares my convictions, and appreciates the utility, the necessity of my endeavours. I do not desire her pity, that you give me; but at this moment I am blessed by the hope that she feels with me. I cannot tell you the good this idea does me. It spurs me to double energy in my pursuit, and it sustains me during the uncertainty that attends it: it makes me inexpressibly more anxious to clear my mother's name in her eyes; since she deigns to partake my griefs. I desire that she should hereafter share in the triumph of my success.
"My success! the word throws me ten thousand fathoms deep, from the thoughts of innocence and goodness, to those of wrongs, death, or living misery. Farewell, dearest Sophia. This letter is written at night; to-morrow, early, I set out by a fast coach to London. I shall write again, or you will see me soon. Keep Miss Falkner with you till I return, and write me a few words of encouragement."
Not a line in this letter but interested and gratified Elizabeth—and Lady Cecil saw the blush of pleasure mantle over her speaking countenance; she was half glad, half sorry—she looked on Elizabeth as she who could cure Gerard of his Quixotic devotion, by inspiring him with feelings which, while they had all the enthusiasm natural to his disposition, would detach him from his vain endeavours, and centre his views and happiness in the living instead of the dead. Lady Cecil knew that Gerard already loved her friend—he had never loved before—and the tenderness of his manner, and the admiration that lighted up his eyes whenever he looked on her, revealed the birth of passion. Elizabeth, less quick to feel, or at least more tranquil in the display of feeling, yet sympathized too warmly with him—felt too deeply interested in all he said and did, not to betray that she was touched by the divine fire that smooths the ruggedness of life, and fills with peace and smiles a darkling, stormy world. But instead of weaning Gerard from his madness, she encouraged him in it—as she well knew; for when she wrote to Gerard, she asked Elizabeth to add a few lines, and thus she wrote:
"I thank you for the confidence you repose in me, and more than that, I must express how deeply I feel for you, the more that I think that justice and truth are on your side. Whether you succeed or not, I confess that I think you are right in your endeavours—your aim is a noble and a sacred one—and, like you, I cherish the hope that it will end in the exculpation of one deeply injured—and your being rewarded for your fidelity to her memory. God bless you with all the happiness you deserve."
No subsequent letter arrived from Gerard. Lady Cecil wondered and conjectured, and expected impatiently. She and her friend could talk of nothing else. The strange fact that a traveller from America proclaimed that he had tidings of the lost one, offered a fertile field for suppositions. Had Mrs. Neville been carried across the Atlantic? How impossible was this, against her own consent! No pirate's bark was there, with a crew experienced in crime, ready to acquiesce in a deed of violence; no fortalice existed, in whose impenetrable walls she could have been immured; yet so much of strange and fearful must belong to her fate, which the imagination mourned to think of! Love, though in these days it carries on its tragedies more covertly—and kills by the slow, untold pang—by the worm in the bosom—and exerts its influence rather by teaching deceit than instigating to acts of violence, yet love reigns in the hearts of men as tyrannically and fiercely—and causes as much evil, as much ruin, and as many tears, as when, in the younger world, hecatombs were slain in his honour. In former days mortals wasted rather life than feeling, and every blow was a physical one; now the heart dies, though the body lives—and a miserable existence is dragged out, after hope and joy have ceased to adorn it; yet love is still, despite the schoolmaster and the legislator, the prime law of human life, and Alithea Neville was well fitted to inspire an ardent passion. She had a sensibility which, while it gave strength to her affections, yet diffused a certain weakness over the mechanism of her being, that made those around her tremble; she had genius which added lustre to her eye, and shed around her a fascination of manner, which no man could witness without desiring to dedicate himself to her service. She seemed the very object whom Sheridan addressed when he said—
"For friends in every age you'll meet,
And lovers in the young."