"Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity."
The purse was quickly finished, and dispatched to Philip, together with a letter. Emily was in high spirits at the prospect of the answer. She danced about the house, singing snatches of songs and ballads, and displaying an unusual amount of gayety; for, though generally cheerful, she was of too thoughtful a disposition to be often merry. Philip, she was sure, would write by return of post. How she wished the time were come! She knew pretty well, to be sure, what he would say; but what did that signify? She longed to feast her eyes on the words his hand had traced, and to fancy the tones and the looks which would have accompanied them had they been spoken instead of written. The expected day came at last, but the post-bag contained no letter for Emily. At first she could hardly believe it; her countenance fell, and for a few minutes she seemed much disappointed; but never mind, the letter would come to-morrow, and she soon began to trip about and to sing almost as gayly as before. But another day passed, and another and another, and still no letter! Poor Emily's blithe voice was mute now, and her light step rarely heard. Sometimes she tried to read, or to play on the piano, but without much success; while her anxious looks, and the tear which occasionally might be seen to glisten in her eye, betrayed the trouble within. A whole week elapsed, a longer period than had ever passed before without a letter from Philip Hayforth—a fortnight—a month—and the poor girl's appetite failed, her nights were sleepless, and her drooping figure and pining looks told of that anxious suffering, that weary life-gnawing suspense, which is ten times more hard to bear than any evil, however great, of which we can ascertain the nature and discern the limits. Could Philip be ill? Could he—No, he could not be inconstant. Ought she to write to him again? But to this question her parents answered "No. It would be unfeminine, unladylike, undignified. If Mr. Hayforth were ill, he would doubtless write as soon as he was able; and if he were well, his conduct was inexcusable, and on Emily's part rendered any advance impossible." Poor Emily shrank from transgressing what her parents represented as the limits due to delicacy and decorum, and she would have died rather than have been guilty of a real impropriety, or have appeared unfeminine in the eyes of Philip Hayforth; and yet it did often suggest itself to her mind—rather, however, in the shape of an undefined feeling than of a conscious thought—that the shortest, best, most straight-forward way of proceeding, was to write at once to Mr. Hayforth, and ask an explanation. She could not herself see clearly how this could be wrong; but she supposed it must be so, and she acknowledged her own ignorance and inexperience. Emily was scarcely twenty; just at the age when an inquiring and thoughtful mind can no longer rely with the unquestioning faith of childhood on assertions sanctioned merely by authority, and when a diffident one is too timid to venture to trust to its own suggestions. It is only after much experience, or one of those bitter mistakes, which are the great lessons of life, that such a character learns that self-reliance, exercised with deliberation and humility, is the only safeguard for individual rectitude. Emily, therefore, did not write, but lived on in the silent, wasting agony of constant expectation and perpetual disappointment. Her mother, in the hope of affording her some relief, inquired in a letter she was writing to her relative in London, if the latter had lately seen Mr. Hayforth. The answer was like a death-blow to poor Emily. Her mother's correspondent had "met Mr. Hayforth walking with a lady. He had passed her with a very stiff bow, and seemed inclined to avoid her. He had not called for a long time. She could not at all understand it." Colonel Sherwood could now no longer contain his indignation. He forbade the mention of Philip Hayforth's name, declaring that "his Emily was far too good and beautiful for the wife of a low-born tradesman, and that he deserved the indignity now thrown upon his family for ever having thought of degrading it by the permission of such a union. And his darling child would, he knew, bear up with the spirit of the Sherwoods." Poor Emily had, it is to be feared, little of the spirit of the Sherwoods, but she tried to bear up from perhaps as good a motive. But it was a difficult task, for she was well-nigh broken-hearted. She now never mentioned Philip Hayforth, and to all appearance her connection with him was as if it had never been; but, waking or sleeping, he was ever present to her thoughts. Oh! was it indeed possible that she should never, never see him again? No, it could not be; he would seek her, claim her yet, her heart said; but reason whispered that it was madness to think so, and bade her at once make up her mind to her inevitable fate. But this she could not do—not yet at all events. Month after month of the long dreary winter dragged slowly on; her kind parents tried to dissipate her melancholy by taking her to every amusement within reach, and she went, partly from indifference as to what became of her, partly out of gratitude for their kindness. At last the days began to lengthen, and the weather to brighten; but spring flowers and sunny skies brought no corresponding bloom to the faded hopes and the joyless life of Emily Sherwood. The only hope she felt was "the hope which keeps alive despair."
One May morning, as she was listlessly looking over in a newspaper the list of marriages, her eye fell upon a well-known name—the name of one who at that very time ought to have knelt at the altar with her. She uttered neither scream nor cry, but clasping her hands with one upward look of mute despair, fell down in a dead faint. For many days she was very ill, and sometimes quite delirious; but her mother tended her with the most assiduous affection, while her comfort and recreation seemed her father's sole care. They were repaid at last by her recovery, and from that time forth she was less miserable. In such a case as Emily's, there is not only the shock to the affections, but the terrible wrench of all the faculties to be overcome, which ensues on the divorce of the thoughts from those objects and that future to which they have so long been wedded. There is not only the breaking heart to be healed, but the whole mental current to be forcibly turned into a different channel from that which alone habit has made easy or pleasant. "The worst," as it is called, is, however, easier to be endured than suspense; and if Emily's spirits did not regain their former elasticity, she ere long became quite resigned, and comparatively cheerful.
More than a year had elapsed since that bright spring morning on which she had beheld the irrefragable proof of her lover's perfidy, when she received an offer of marriage from a gentleman, of good family and large property. He had been struck by her beauty at a party where he had seen her; and after a few meetings, made formal proposals to her father almost ere she was aware that he admired her. Much averse to form a new engagement, she would at once have declined receiving his addresses, had her parents not earnestly pressed the match as one in every respect highly eligible. Overcome at last by their importunities, and having, as she thought, no object in existence save to give pleasure to them, she yielded so far to their wishes as to consent to receive Mr. Beauchamp as her future husband, on condition that he should be made acquainted with the history of her previous engagement, and the present state of her feelings. She secretly hoped that when he learned that she had no heart to give with her hand, he would withdraw his suit. But she was mistaken. Mr. Beauchamp, it is true, knew that there was such a word as heart, had a notion that it was a term much in vogue with novel-writers, and was sometimes mentioned by parsons in their sermons; but that the heart could have any thing to do with the serious affairs of life never once entered into his head to suppose. He therefore testified as much satisfaction at Emily's answer, as if she had avowed for him the deepest affection. They were shortly afterwards married, and the pensive bride accompanied her husband to her new home—Woodthorpe Hall; an ancient, castellated edifice, situated in an extensive and finely-wooded park on an estate in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
But I have too long neglected Philip Hayforth—too long permitted a cloud to rest upon his honor and constancy. He was not, in truth, the heartless, light-minded wretch that I fear you may think him. Pride, not falsehood or levity, was the blemish in his otherwise fine character; but it was a very plague-spot, tainting his whole moral nature, and frequently neutralizing the effect of his best qualities. He had been quite as much charmed with Emily's present and Emily's letter, as she had ever ventured to hope, and had lost not a moment in writing to her in return a long epistle full of the fervent love and gratitude with which his heart was overflowing. He had also mentioned several affairs of mutual interest and of a pressing nature, but about which he was unwilling to take any steps without the concurrence of "his own dearest and kindest Emily." He therefore entreated her to write immediately; "to write by return of post, if she loved him." But this letter never reached its destination: it was lost—a rare occurrence certainly, but, as most of us are aware from our own experience, not unknown. And now began with Philip Hayforth the same agony which Emily was enduring—nay, a greater agony; for there was not only the same disappointed affection, the same heart-sickness, the same weary expectation, but there was the stronger suffering of a more passionate and less disciplined temper; and, above all, there was the incessant struggle between pride and love—the same fearful strife which, we are told, once made war in Heaven.
Sometimes he thought that Emily might be ill; but then that did not seem likely, as her health was generally good; and she was, when she had last written, perfectly well, and apparently in excellent spirits. Should he write to her again? No, she owed him a letter, and if she loved him, would doubtless answer it as soon as circumstances would permit; and he 'would let that haughty old aristocrat, her father, see that Philip Hayforth, the merchant, had more of the spirit of a man in him than to cringe to the proudest blood in England. And as for Emily, she was his betrothed bride—the same as his wife; and if he was not more to her than any father on earth, she was unworthy of the love he had given her. Let her only be true to him, and he was ready to devote his life to her—to die for her.' As the time wore slowly away, he became more and more exasperated, fevered, wretched. Sometimes it seemed to him that he could no longer endure such torment; that life itself was a burthen too intolerable to be borne. But here pride came to the aid of a better principle. His cheek tinged at the thought of being spoken of as the slighted lover, and his blood boiled at the bare idea of Colonel Sherwood's contemptuous pity for the vain plebeian who had dared to raise his thoughts to an alliance with his beautiful, high-born daughter. He 'would show the world that he was no love-sick, despairing swain; and Miss Sherwood's vanity should never be gratified by the display of the wounds her falsehood had inflicted. He would very soon, he knew, forget the fair coquette who had trampled thus upon his most sacred feelings.' So he tried to persuade himself, but his heart misgave him. No: he could not forget her—it was in vain to attempt it; but the more his feelings acknowledged her power, even the more the pride she had wounded in its tenderest point rose up in wrath against her; and he chafed at his own powerlessness to testify towards her his scorn and contempt. At such times as these he seemed even to himself on the verge of madness. But he had saner moments—moments when his better nature triumphed, and pride resigned for a brief space her stormy empire to the benigner sway of the contending passion.
In the midst of those terrific tornados, which in the West Indies and elsewhere carry in their path, over immense districts, ruin and desolation, there is a pause, often of considerable duration, caused, the scientific inform us, by the calm in the centre of the atmospheric vortex of which they are composed. Such a calm would occasionally rest upon the mind of Philip Hayforth, over the length and breadth of which the whirlwind of passion had lately been tearing. One night, after one of those hidden transports, which the proud man would have died rather than any mortal eye should have scanned, he threw himself upon his bed (for he rarely went to bed now, in the accepted sense of the phrase) in a state approaching exhaustion, mental and bodily. By degrees a sort of dream-like peace fell upon his spirit; the present vanished away, and the past became, as it were, once more a living reality. He thought of Emily Sherwood as he had first seen her—a vision of loveliness and grace. He thought of her as he had beheld her almost the last time on that clear summer morning, and like refreshing dew on his scorched and desolated heart fell the remembrance of her gentle words and loving looks. Could they have deceived? Ah no! and his whole nature seemed suddenly softened. He seemed to see her before him now, with her angel face and her floating white robes; he seemed even yet to be looking into those soft, bright eyes, and to read there again, as he had read before, love unspeakable, truth unchangeable. His heart was filled with a yearning tenderness, an intense and longing fondness, and he extended his arms, as if to embrace that white-robed image of truth and gentleness: but she was not there; it was but her spirit which had come to still his angry passions with the calm of trust and love. And in the fond superstition that so it was, he sprang from his couch, seized a pen, and wrote to her a passionate, incoherent epistle, telling her that she had tried him almost beyond his strength, but that he loved and believed in her still, and if she answered immediately, that he was ready to forgive her for all the pain she had caused him. This letter finished, he threw himself upon his bed once again, and after a space, slept more soundly than he had done for many a long night before. When he rose in the morning he read over his letter, and felt, as he read, some faint misgivings; but these were put to flight by the recollection of Emily, as she had appeared to him in the vision of the previous night. As the post, however, did not go out till evening, he would keep the letter till then. Alas for the delay! It changed for ever his own fate and that of Emily Sherwood. It chanced that very afternoon that, taking up a provincial newspaper in a coffee-room into which he had strolled, on his way to the post-office, the following paragraph met his eye:—'We understand that there is a matrimonial alliance in contemplation between J—— R——, Esq., eldest son of Sir J—— R——, Bart., and the lovely and accomplished Miss Sherwood, daughter of Colonel Sherwood, late of the —th dragoons, and granddaughter of the late R. Sherwood, Esq., of —— Park.' On reading this most unfounded rumor, Philip Hayforth waited not another moment, but rushed home as if driven by the furies; and tearing his letter in a thousand pieces, threw it and the purse, Emily's gift, into the fire, and vowed to bestow not another thought on the heartless woman who had perjured her own faith and sold his true and fervent love for riches and title. Oh how he scorned her! how he felt in his own true heart that all the wealth and grandeur of the earth would have been powerless to tempt one thought of his from her!
To conceal all suspicion of his sufferings from the world, and, if possible, banish their remembrance from his own mind, he now went even more than formerly into society; and when there, simulated a gayety of manner that had hitherto distinguished his most vivacious moments. He had always been a general favorite, and now his company was more sought after than ever. Among the young persons of the opposite sex with whom his engagements most frequently brought him in contact, was a young girl of the name of Fanny Hartley, pretty, gentle, excessively amiable, but without much mind, and with no literary taste whatever. She had nothing to say, but she listened to him, and he felt in her society a sort of repose, which was at present peculiarly grateful to his angry, troubled spirit. Her very silence soothed him, while the absorbing nature of his own feelings prevented him at first from thinking of hers. Philip Hayforth had certainly not more than an average share of human vanity, but he did at last suspect, partly from an accidental circumstance which had first drawn his attention to the subject, that he had created in the heart of the innocent Fanny a deeper interest than he had ever intended. He was touched, grateful, but at first grieved, for he "could never love again." But the charm of being loved soon began to work: his heart was less desolate, his feelings were less bitter, when he thought of Fanny Hartley, and began to ask himself if he were wise to reject the consolation which Providence seemed to offer him in the affection of this amiable and artless young creature. And when he thought of the pain she might perchance be suffering on his account, all hesitation upon the subject was removed at once. If she loved him, as he believed, his conduct, it seemed to his really kind heart, had already been barbarous. He ought not to delay another day. And accordingly that very evening he offered his hand to Fanny Hartley, and was accepted with trembling joy.
Their marriage proved a happy one. Fanny was as amiable as she had appeared, and in the conduct of the commoner affairs of life, good-feeling with her supplied in a great measure any deficiency of strong sense. Philip did perhaps occasionally heave a gentle sigh, and think for a moment of Emily Sherwood, when he found how incapable his wife was of responding to a lofty or poetic thought, or of appreciating the points of an argument, unless it were upon some such subject as the merits of a new dress or the seasoning of a pudding. But he quickly checked the rising discontent, for Fanny was so pure in heart, and so unselfish in disposition, that it was impossible not to respect as well as to love her. In short, Philip Hayforth was a fortunate man, and what is more surprising, knew himself to be so. And when, after twenty years of married life, he saw his faithful, gentle Fanny laid in her grave, he felt bereaved indeed. It seemed to him then, as perhaps, at such a time, it always does to a tender heart, that he had never done her justice, never loved her as her surpassing goodness deserved. And yet a kinder husband never lived than he had been; and Fanny had died blessing him, and thanking him, as she said, "for twenty years of happiness." "How infinitely superior," he now daily and hourly thought, "was her sweet temper and loving disposition to all the intellect and all the poetry that ever were enshrined in the most beautiful form." And yet Philip Hayforth certainly was not sorry that his eldest daughter—his pretty, lively Fanny—should have turned out not only amiable and affectionate, but clever and witty. He was, in truth, very proud of Fanny. He loved all his children most dearly; but Fanny was the apple of his eye—the very delight of his existence. He had now almost forgotten Emily Sherwood; but when he did think of her, it was with indifference rather than forgiveness. He had not heard of her since his marriage, having, some time previous to that event, completely broken off the slight acquaintance he had formed with her relations; while a short absence abroad, at the time of her union with Mr. Beauchamp, had prevented him from seeing its announcement in the papers.
Meanwhile poor Emily's married life had not been so happy as that of her former lover. Mr. Beauchamp was of a pompous, tyrannical disposition, and had a small, mean mind. He was constantly worrying about trifles, perpetually taking offence with nothing, and would spend whole days in discussing some trivial point of etiquette, in the breach of which, he conceived himself aggrieved. A very miserable woman was his wife amid all the cold magnificence of her stately home. Often, very often, in her hours of loneliness and depression, her thoughts would revert to the brief, bright days of her early love, and her spirit would be rapt away by the recollection of that scene on the balcony, when Philip Hayforth and she had stood with locked hands and full hearts gazing at the sinking star and the sweetly breaking day, and loving, feeling, thinking, as if they had but one mind between them, till the present seemed all a fevered dream, and the past alone reality. She could not have been deceived then: then, at least, he had loved her. Oh, had she not wronged him? had there not been a mistake—some incident unexplained? He had warned her that his temper was proud and jealous, and she felt now that she ought to have written and asked an explanation. She had thrown away her happiness, and deserved her fate. Then she recollected that such thoughts in her, the wife of Mr. Beauchamp, were worse than foolish—they were sinful; and the upbraidings of her conscience added to her misery.