Cannot conceive nor name thee!
Macbeth.
“James,” said a mild but feeble voice, “cheer up, God will yet send us relief. Has he not said that he heareth even the young raven’s cry, and think you that he will suffer us to starve? Oh! no,” continued the sick wife, forgetting her own sufferings in those of her husband, “believe it not. Succor will yet come: we shall once more see happy days—”
“Ay!” answered the husband, bitterly, “when we are in our graves. Ay! when want has driven the nails in our coffins: but not till then. My God!” he exclaimed suddenly, with the fierceness of despair, “was it for this I was sent into the world?”
“Oh! James,” said the meek wife, bursting into tears, “I can bear all except such terrible repinings. Father,” she continued, raising her streaming eyes to heaven, “forgive him, for he knows not what he says.”
The husband was moved. He turned his head away from his wife, perhaps to hide a tear; but if so, his weakness vanished as he gazed upon the ruinous and desolate apartment to which poverty had driven them, while all the bitterness of his soul once more lowered on his face.
The room was a low garret, black with age, and tottering to ruin. In its best days it had been at most but a wretched apartment, for at its highest part it would scarcely admit of a man standing upright, while on the opposite side the cracked and leaky ceiling shelved down until it met the floor. The walls had once been plastered, but age had long since peeled them nearly bare; and the time-stained beams of which the building had been constructed—it was a wooden one—now gaped through many a crevice. In several places even the weather-boarding without had given way or rotted off, admitting in copious draughts, the biting wintry blast which roared around the house. A solitary candle burned in the room, flaring wildly as the gusts whirled through the apartment. There was no fire-place in the garret—God knows it was well enough!—for the poverty-stricken inmates had not wherewithal to purchase food, much less fuel. No furniture was in the room, except an old chest, a broken cup or two, and the ricketty bedstead, on which, with a mattress of straw beneath her, lay that suffering wife. She was pale, emaciated, and evidently ill, but, amid it all, you could see on her wasted countenance, traces of the rarest beauty. The marble forehead; the classic eye-brow; the Grecian contour of face; the finely chiselled mouth and throat; and above all, the dark blue eye, its chastened expression lighting up the whole countenance as with an angel’s purity, told what must have been the loveliness of the sufferer, before care, or poverty, or woe had driven their iron ploughshares through her soul. Oh! well might it fill her husband’s heart with agony to look upon her now, and think of the day when in far different circumstances, he led her a blushing bride, to his home. But if such were his feelings when gazing on his angelic wife, how far more poignant did they become as his eye fell upon the almost famished babe lying in her arms. Poor little thing! it had fallen asleep at length, after crying long for that sustenance which its mother had not to give, although she would have drained her heart’s blood, if, by so doing, she could have appeased the hunger of her babe. By its side lay a boy, apparently about four years of age, his little delicate face worn with hunger and privation, and his thin fingers tightly grasping the bed-clothes, as though he feared lest some one should snatch the scanty covering from around his form. Alas! he had been early introduced to misfortune. Often had he gone supperless to bed of late, forbearing even to ask for food, because he knew his mother had it not, and that it would only pain her to refuse him; and often, too, when her husband being absent in the vain search after employment, his mother would indulge freely in the tears she checked in his presence, her little boy would climb upon her knee, and throwing his wan arms around her neck, kiss her and tell her not to cry. At such times the mother’s tears would only fall the faster, and clasping her babes convulsively to her bosom, she would find a melancholy pleasure in the sympathy of her child. But all these things were now forgotten by the boy. He lay in the deep sleep of infancy; and as he slumbered a smile played across his little face. Perhaps he was dreaming of the angels in heaven.
James Stanhope was a young man of good family, a fine personal appearance, and the manners of a gentleman. Destitute, however, of a fortune, he obtained a livelihood by acting as a clerk in a public office. He moved in good society, and enjoyed a moderate income, which, by proper economy afforded him, at least once a year, the means of spending a fortnight at one of those public places of amusement to which beauty, wealth, and fashion annually resort. During a visit to one of these summer pleasure haunts he met, and formed an acquaintance with Miss Howard, a young lady, scarcely seventeen, a beauty, and an heiress, who was spending a month at the watering-place, with a maiden cousin for a chaperon. An intimacy was the result of a casual introduction, which soon ripened into that most dangerous of all things to two young hearts—an acknowledged friendship. In one short word, they loved, and loved as few have done. But Stanhope, while he addressed the younger, did not neglect the older cousin; and the consequence was that the simple-hearted spinster fancied that it was her company to which the handsome young stranger was attracted. She thus shut her eyes effectually to the increasing intimacy between the young people, and their love had become not only unconquerable, but so evident as to be the theme of general remark, before the deluded chaperon, became aware of Miss Howard’s entanglement. She was then thunder-struck at her own indiscretion. She was more: she was enraged at the deception which had been practised upon her, or rather which she had practised upon herself. Dreading, moreover, the consequences of Mr. Howard’s displeasure, she determined at once, by flying from the place, to escape the attentions of Stanhope. Her carriage was instantly ordered to the door, their baggage hastily collected, and with scarcely an hour’s warning, Miss Howard was torn from her lover’s presence, without a moment being afforded her to communicate with him. She was not able even to wave him a silent adieu, as he was absent that morning on a ride. Disturbed by a thousand fears lest her lover should think her faithless, and compelled to listen to the bitter recriminations of her cousin, when sympathy was rather needed for her tortured mind, the poor girl lay back in the corner of the carriage and wept with a bitterness of heart such as she had never experienced before. Oh! who can picture the agony of one thus rudely torn from the object of her love. Life seemed to her to have lost its charm. Death, in those first moments of crushing anguish would almost have been welcome.
But if such were Miss Howard’s feelings, what were those of her lover when, on returning from his ride, he learned her sudden departure! A thousand doubts tortured him. At length, however, he gleaned enough of the real cause of Miss Howard’s disappearance, to convince him that her flight did not, as he had at first feared, originate in herself. Oh! the joy, the bliss of that knowledge. Ellen still loved him, loved him as warmly as ever. But here another reflection shot across his mind. With the sanguine temper of youth he had indulged the hope that his want of fortune would be overlooked by Mr. Howard, especially as his cousin had suffered the intimacy between his daughter and Stanhope to continue so long unopposed; but now—how could he resist the intimation so plainly given to him? Few can tell the agony of the lover’s feelings who have not passed through the same terrible ordeal.
“I will follow her,” at length he said, “I will see her once more. To live without beholding Ellen is more than I can endure,” and having come to this conclusion the ardent young man set out within a day to the city which was the residence alike of himself and his mistress.