“Oh! I shall never need anything to remind me of my dear, kind friends; of the happy time I have spent here. But please excuse me receiving this. My parents would regard it as a proof of my folly and vanity.”
“No,” said Mr. Barrington, “do not offend me—do not wound me by the refusal of so trifling a token of my regard.”
He hurried away, and Millicent, in deepest trouble, sought one of his sisters to express her embarrassment to. She found them all together, and with some confusion and with gushing tears, begged of them to prevail on their brother to receive the bracelet back, and give her something of less value as a testimony of his friendship. But the sisters unanimously expressed their pleasure in the gift; were charmed with its beauty, and told her that she thought too much of its mere money value. They instantly clasped it on her wrist, declared it was the very thing which she wanted on occasions of high dress, and that she must by no means hurt their brother’s feelings by declining it. They all, they said, wanted to give her something in memory of this visit, so dear to them. They then replaced the bracelet in its case, kissed her affectionately, and one of them carrying it into her bedroom, placed it on the toilette-table.
Dark and sleepless was that night to Millicent Heritage. The gift of the bracelet opened her eyes to what they might have been opened long before, the assiduous attentions and zealous courtesies of Edmund Barrington: the more than ordinary affection of his sisters. It was not the gift which startled her, but the state of her own feelings which it revealed to her. She could not see without terror the dimness of the image of Dr. Leroy in her heart, the space and intensity which that of Edmund Barrington had assumed there. The agreeable person, the courteous manners, the good sense and happy gaiety of this young man living amongst the proud, the powerful, the intellectually and politically distinguished, and destined to so immense a fortune, and who had been ever ready to attend, to serve, and to introduce her wherever enjoyment or social honour were to be found, had gained, unperceived by her, a hold on her regard, that only now stood revealed in its fullest proportions. What had made her so supremely happy in this visit—in this family? The love, she said to herself, of every individual in it. Mr. and Mrs. Barrington had treated her with the tenderness of parents. The daughters had received and treated her as one of them; the son, rather haughty as he was generally deemed, had been all devotion—a devotion never relaxing, always finding some new occasion of affording her pleasure. And Dr. Leroy? She saw with shame and compunction that her correspondence with him had declined. His letters had to her been as frequent as ever, as glowing with affection; but hers—they had certainly become fewer and colder. She had excused herself for not writing oftener, or at greater length, by the constant round of engagements in which she lived, and promised him ample details of what she called her adventures on her return. But were these assurances capable of satisfying the quick sense of a genuine lover? She knew that they had not been so. Dr. Leroy had complained, though in the gentlest and kindest manner, that the gaieties and friends of London seemed to have utterly eclipsed the sober life and friends of the country. Her mother had just now written that she was afraid Millicent had not been very attentive to Dr. Leroy, who seemed out of spirits, and who confessed that he seldom heard from her.
All her sins rushed over her memory and conscience. She hastened away to her bedroom: opened the drawer in which she kept the letters of her family and of Frank Leroy, and saw to her shame that there were many of his letters that she had scarcely read, many that she had never answered—some, actually with their seals unbroken. She sank down in a chair, and sat long motionless as in a trance. But in that outwardly trance-like state, her mind was in full and fiercest activity. She asked herself whether then such a change had really taken place in her. Whether she was prepared to abandon an ardent lover, a noble-spirited man, and to attach herself to a person of but yesterday’s acquaintance? Could she really be so fickle! She wished to break the spell of such strange enchantment, and seized pen and paper, and wrote a long letter to Dr. Leroy—but on reading it over, she was terrified to perceive that it was but words, words, words—the old life and love did not exist in it. It was like the dead shell of the chrysalis; the winged Psyche of love had flown—whither? Ah! too well she could follow and find it.
The bell for dinner rang, and she hurried down-stairs to take her part in the conversation as best she might. Every one observed her silence, her absence of mind, her want of interest in what was passing—and asked whether she was unwell, or had received bad news. To plead indisposition would have been to bring immediate attentions of the most perplexing kind upon her. She had no ill-tidings to report, and could only excuse herself by saying that she thought she was a little fatigued. This enabled her to retire early, and she sat down and wrote a letter to her mother, begging to be forgiven for the apparent neglect to herself and Dr. Leroy, but that the bustle of London, and its hurrying stream of engagements she thought had turned her head. Ah! poor thing! it would have been well had this been all, but they had turned something more serious—her heart!
The next day was Sunday, and whatever might be the social licence with which the young Barringtons overleaped the pale of the Society on the week-days, they all duly attended the morning meetings in town. The large family carriage regularly rolled up to the Meeting House gates in Houndsditch, and they descended to an hour and a half’s quiet musing of some sort in that still and shady tabernacle. Ah! that stillness! How little it suited the beating heart and tortured bosom of Millicent Heritage. Charles Lamb says, that he once got into a Quaker’s meeting, and never went through such a process of spiritual inquisition before. He found himself asking himself more questions in one short hour, than he could have answered in a year. What, then, must have been the condition of Millicent Heritage? Loving, sensitive, educated in a straight line of honour, purity, and truth—and guilty? Who shall depict the tortures of that age-long hour and a half? She went back to her past life; to its peace, its innocence, her deep enjoyment of existence and of nature; and then she turned a scared eye on the purple cloud and rapturous whirlwind in which she had lately been floating far above the darkened scenes and landscapes of the past. What would her father and mother say—if she proved faithless to her most solemn vows and most sacred engagements? Could she really give up Dr. Leroy for another—honourable, gifted, learned, and amiable as he was? Ay,—but that was no longer the question; did she, could she still love him? The answer from that strange thing, the heart, made a thrill of sickening cold pass through her. There was a spirit in it that mocked her; a chill that she could not cast out, a fire in another quarter of it, that she could not command. A sense of despair seized her that was more terrible than death, she prayed to die, and had she been alone, could have flung herself on the floor and cried aloud for death.
At this moment arose an aged woman in the gallery opposite to her. She was clad in the simplest garb of grey, and over it a light cloak of grey. She laid down her bonnet of the most rigorously antiquated make and material, and displayed a coarse muslin cap over her grey hair, as destitute of grace or ornament as any human hand could fashion. Millicent knew her well. She was from Ireland, and bore the unambitious name of Grubb.
In a voice clear and solemn she said, “Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world, because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! Therefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee; for it is better to enter into life halt and maimed rather than having two hands, to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell-fire.”
In words at first slow and with pauses between, as if the inspiration came but measuredly, she described the soul that is tempted by ambition, by avarice, or by the very affections of its weak nature to sin against itself or others. She drew a picture of the temptation of Judas Iscariot to betray even the Lord of Life, and the agonies of remorse that afterwards seized on him. She described him as hastening to the Sanhedrim, and flinging down the price of blood in the midst of the priests and scribes, and their taunt of “See thou to that!” As she warmed in her discourse, her language became rapid, loud, impassioned,—her small, slender frame seemed to expand, to rise, as it were, into the air, and all the spirit of the prophet to be upon her. She drew a picture of the horrors of such a soul as, tempted by the passions, pleasures, or even otherwise innocent endearments of life, selling what was sacred for the mere coinage of self-indulgence, and condemning the righteous to injury and woe!