Ellen Middleton—A Tale

He muttered something which sounded to me like an oath, and as I turned and looked at him, I was astonished at the singular expression of his countenance. He smiled, however, and said:

"You will be making acquaintance in that case with one of the most insupportable women that ever lived. I strongly recommend you to keep out of her way. She wears my life out with her querulous temper and tiresome complaints; and as I do not want to go through a scene with her, you would greatly oblige me, Ellen, by giving up this project."

"I am going there with a message from Mrs. Middleton: but you need not appear. Hide yourself in the manor woods, if you dare not face your nurse, and I will join you there on my way home."

Henry looked both vexed and provoked, but made no answer. He soon rallied, however, and began again talking and laughing in his usual manner. As we were slowly mounting a hill, his horse suddenly stumbled; he jumped off, and, calling to me to stop, he examined his foot; and finding, or pretending to find, a stone in it, he set about vainly endeavouring to knock it out.

"I cannot go on any further, Ellen: all I shall be able to manage will be to get home without laming this horse; so pray turn back now; – you can take this message some other day."

"Sit down on that bank, 'that mossy bank where the violets grow,' my dear Henry, and muse there in sober sadness, while I face the dragon in her den." And saying these words, I galloped off without further discussion. I had not gone far before he overtook me; and quoting the words of Andrew Fairservice in "Rob Roy," which we had been reading lately, he cried out:

"Well, a wilful man maun have his way: he who will to Curragh, must to Curragh!" and we proceeded on our road.

On passing the gates of Bridman Manor, we skirted the edge of the woods till we came to a terrace, where the ground was laid out in quaint patterns; and vases, some broken, some in tolerable preservation, were still ranged with some sort of symmetry. By the side of what had once been a fountain sat a group which attracted my attention by the picturesque effect which it afforded. On the back of one of those nondescript semihuman monsters, whose yawning mouths once formed the spouts of the fountain, sat a girl whose features struck me as perfectly faultless, and delicate almost beyond what one could have fancied possible in a living creature of real flesh and blood. She resembled the ideal of a sculptor; her little hand was laid on the moss-stained marble, and though not very white, its shape was so perfect that it was pleasant to gaze upon it – as it is upon any rare work of art. Near her was a little boy, apparently about three years old, who was standing on tiptoe, and thrusting his curly head into the cavity of the sphinx's mouth; another boy, who might have been ten or twelve years of age, had climbed up to the vaulted top of the fountain, and was looking down from that position at a little trickling thread of water, which still found its way into the basin below, though its passage was nearly choked by the moss and the creeping plants that intercepted its course.

As we were passing them the girl looked up, and, suddenly rising, curtseyed; and, taking hold of the little boy's hand, said, "Mr. Henry."

Henry stopped his horse, and, bowing to her in a manner that rather surprised me, in a voice that sounded to me unlike his usual one, he asked her if her grandmother was at home.

"Yes, Sir, she is," was her answer.

He turned to me and said, "That is Alice Tracy, Ellen; you can make acquaintance with her, while I speak to that boy there, who seems in a fair way to break his neck."

Dismounting hastily, he threw his horse's reins over one of the spikes of the adjoining railing, and sprang up to the spot where the boy was perched.

"Is that pretty child your brother?" I inquired of the beautiful girl who stood before me.

"He is," she answered; and lifting up the blushing boy, who was hiding himself behind her, she turned his reluctant glowing little face full towards me, in spite of his struggling efforts to thrust it into her lap, and then bent down to kiss his forehead, saying at the same time, "Naughty Johnny!"

"Will you come to me, Johnny?" was my next attempt at acquaintance.

"No, I won't," was the answer.

"What, not to ride this pretty black horse?"

"Yes, I will," was as resolutely pronounced; and soon the little fellow was hoisted up to my knees, and began amusing himself by vigorously pulling at my Selim's black mane.

"I am come with a message to your grandmother from Mrs.

Middleton; she is anxious to know how you like Bridman."

"I dare say grandmother likes it very much; and Mrs. Middleton is very kind."

"Do you like it?"

"O yes."

"Better than the last place you lived at?"

"That was very nice, but this is better."

"What do you like better in it?"

"Many things."

At this moment I saw the boy who had been speaking with Henry dart off suddenly, and scamper away in the direction of the village. Henry at the same time joined us.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "you have contrived to tame that unmanageable little savage, who always screams when he sets eyes on me. Well, suppose you give him a ride up to the entrance of the village, and then Alice can walk home with us, and introduce you to her grandmother."

Alice made some objections to Johnny's lengthened ride, which he (Johnny) resented by pushing her most stoutly away, when she attempted to remove him from his post; and victoriously shouting over her discomfiture, he shook the bridle with exultation, and we proceeded towards the village. As we arrived in sight of Bridman Cottage, the boy who had preceded us came running back to meet us; and I heard him say in a low voice, as he came up to Henry, "Granny's in, and I 've done your bidding."

Henry then advised me to get off my horse; and lifting down the child first, he helped me to dismount, and we walked to the cottage. It was one of those lovely little homes that we rarely see but in England, and that look (would that they always were!) like the chosen abodes of peace and happiness. The low thatched roof – the bright square-paned little windows – the porch overgrown with clematis, jessamine, and honeysuckle – the garden, where gooseberry bushes and stately hollyhocks grow side by side. Of this description was Bridman Cottage, and one of the loveliest that I ever set eyes upon.

As we entered, an elderly female came to the door, and, making me a curtsey, said, in a formal manner, "This is an honour I had not looked to, but I know how to be thankful for it, Miss Middleton. Mr. Henry, I hope I see you well?"

"As well as usual, thank you (he replied). Miss Middleton has brought you a message from her aunt."

"Yes," I immediately said; "Mrs. Middleton is very anxious to know that you find yourself happy and comfortable here, and would have come herself to see you, if she had been able to leave my uncle for so long; but he has been ill lately, and she scarcely ever goes far from the house."

"Tell Mrs. Middleton, Ma'am, that the house is good; that the children are well; and that I am grateful to her."

There was something chilling in the manner with which this was said, and the glassy eyes and thin lips of Mrs. Tracy were far from prepossessing.

I made, however, another effort, and said, "If you could manage to get as far as Elmsley, my aunt would, I know, be glad to see you."

"I have nursed her at my bosom, and carried her in my arms, and I do not care less for her now than I did then; but if it was to save her life, I would not go to Elmsley and see – "

"Me there," exclaimed Henry. "I told you, Ellen, that I should have to go through a scene, and now, I suppose, it must come to pass. Go upstairs with Alice while I make my peace;" and as he spoke, he almost pushed me out of the room, and shut the door.

Alice followed me, and said, in her gentle voice, as I stood at the bottom of the narrow stairs, somewhat puzzled and at a loss what to do,

"If you will come to my room, Miss Middleton, I can show you some of the reasons that make me like Bridman so much."

I gladly assented. She led the way, and opened the door of a small room, in which there was no furniture, but a little bed, with dimity curtains of snowy whiteness, a deal table, and two straw chairs.

"This is a nice room," she said; "but come to the window, and you will see one of my reasons."

She threw up the sash, and pointed with her little hand to the village church, which rose in quiet beauty from among the leafless trees.

"Is it not pretty?" she asked, with a smile.

"Very pretty," I answered; and as I used her own simple words, I felt that there was that in them, said as she said them, that is often wanting in pages of impassioned eloquence, in volumes of elaborate composition, —reality. She was happy in this place, because of her little room, and because of the view of the village church, which she could see from its window. How pure must be the mind, how calm must be the life, when such a circumstance can give a colouring to it.

"Alice, have you no books? I see none here."

"I have a few; do you wish to see them?"

"Yes, I do; I should like to know what books you like."

"Then I must show you another of my reasons," she said, with one of her sweet, calm smiles, and opened the door of another very small room, which had no other entrance than through her own.

There was a little table in it, and a wooden stool; both were placed near the window. Upon the table lay two books – one was a Bible, the other a large prayer-book, bound in red morocco, and illustrated with prints. A shelf hung in one comer; "Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying," the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Bishop Heber's Hymns," and a few more books besides, were ranged upon it. Among them, a small one, which I was well acquainted with, called "Birds and Flowers," attracted my attention. I asked Alice if she had read it through.

"Yes, I have," she replied. "Mr. Henry gave it me a few months ago."

I involuntarily started, and looked up into her face, as she said this; but not a shade of embarrassment was to be seen there.

She went on to say – "He gave it to me because I was so fond of this poor flower;" and she pointed to a sickly creeping plant, that grew out of a pot, which was placed on the window sill.

"You would not know it again now," she continued; "but last summer it was growing against the wall in the little patch of garden we had at Bromley, and a beautiful flower it was."

"But what had it to do with this book, more than any other flower, Alice?"

"It is a little story, but I will tell it you if you wish it. I sprained my ankle last summer, and could not walk for many weeks. Granny or brother Walter used to drive me in my chair to the open window, to breathe the fresh air, and look at the flowers in our little garden. There was nothing else to look at there – nothing but roofs of houses and black chimneys; but up the wall, and as high as my window, grew this very plant, that looks so dead now, poor thing. Day after day I watched its flowers, though I did not know their names, till I got to see in them things that I thought nobody but me had ever noticed."

"What things, Alice?"

"Across, a crown of thorns, nails, and a hammer."

"The Passion Flower!"

"So Mr. Henry told me one day when he found me reading my new kind of book. It was like a book to me, that pretty flower; it made me think of holy things as much as a sermon ever did."

"And Henry brought you then this book, because of the poem in it on the Passion Flower?"

"He did, and read it to me out loud. It felt strange but pleasant to have one's own thoughts spoken out in such words as those."

"And you brought away your Passion Flower with you?"

"Yes, but it is dying now; and this gives me thoughts too, which I wish somebody would write about. I should like to hear them read out."

I took up her book, and drawing a pencil from my pocket, I rapidly wrote down the following lines: —

"O wish her not to live again,Thy dying passion flower,For better is the calm of deathThan life's uneasy hour.Weep not if through her withered sternIs creeping dull decay;Weep not, If ere the sun has set,Thy nursling dies away.The blast was keen, the winter snowWas cold upon her breast;And though the sun is shining now,Still let thy flower rest.Her tale is told; her slender strengthHas left her drooping form.She cannot raise her bruised headTo face another storm.Then gently lay her down to die,Thy broken passion flower;And let her close her troubled lifeWith one untroubled hour."

Alice read these lines as I wrote them. When I had finished, she shook her head gently, and said, —

"These are pretty words, and pretty thoughts too; but not my thoughts."

"Tell me your own thoughts, Alice; I would fain hear them."

"I can't," she said.

"Try."

"I think as I see the flowers die so quietly, that they should teach us to die so too. I think, when I see my poor plant give up her sweet life without complaining, that it is because she has done what she ought to do, and left nothing undone which she ought to have done. I planted her in my little garden, and she grew up to my window; she gave me buds first, and then flowers – bright smiling flowers; and when I was ill she gave me holy happy thoughts about God and Christ. And therefore I wish to do likewise – to do my duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call me; and then to die quietly, when it shall please Him, like my passion flower."

As she was finishing these words, I was startled by the loud and angry tones of Henry and of Mrs. Tracy, who seemed to be disputing violently. They were speaking both at the same time, and his voice was quite hoarse with anger. I overheard these words: – "I tell you that if you do not command yourself, and behave as I desire you, I will never see you again, or put my foot into your house."

A tremendous oath followed this threat, and then their voices subsided. I looked at Alice; she seemed concerned, but not surprised or agitated, at what was going on down-stairs, and merely closed the door of her room, which had been left open. A that moment, however, Henry came half-way up the stairs, and calling to me said that it was late, and that we had better be setting out again. I complied, and in coming down into the room below I was civilly greeted by Mrs. Tracy, who thanked me for my visit, and muttered something about hoping we should soon meet again. Had it not been for Alice, who had interested and charmed me to an extraordinary degree, I should have formed exactly a contrary wish, for I had never more heartily agreed with any opinion than with that which Henry had pronounced about his former nurse; and her civility was to my mind more repulsive still than her ungraciousness. I took leave of her coldly enough, but earnestly pressing Alice's hand as I mounted my horse, I whispered in her ear, "Alice, I like your poem better than mine," and rode off.

We took a different road from that we had come by, and skirted the edge of a small lake that lies on the eastern side of the Bridman Woods. The day was altered, and dark clouds were beginning to gather over the sky; the wind was whistling among the bare branches, and Henry was unusually silent and pre-occupied. I felt depressed too, and we did not speak for some time. I was revolving in my mind what possible cause there could be for a man of Henry's character and habits entering into such a violent altercation with a person of Mrs. Tracy's age and inferior rank in life. His temper was generally good, and his manners peculiarly gentlemanlike; his conduct, therefore, (however provoking she might have been,) appeared to me unaccountable. I could not help wondering also, that he should have associated on evidently intimate terms with that lovely Alice, and yet had never mentioned her to any of us, even in casual conversation. There had not been a word, however, or a look, of his or of hers, that could, for an instant, have allowed one to suppose that there had been anything in their intercourse which either could have wished to hide. As to her, I could as soon have suspected of impurity the pearly drops that hung lightly on each twig of the hawthorn bushes that we passed, as her young life of one evil action, or her young mind of one evil thought. The deep blue waters of the little lake that lay stretched at our feet, were not more calm and more pure than her eyes; and in the marble paleness of her fair brow – in the divine purity of her child-like mouth – in the quiet innocence of her whole demeanour, there was that which seemed to speak of

"Maiden meditation, fancy free."

We were going at a brisk pace alongside the water, and the rapidity of our motion was an excuse for silence; but as we turned away from the lake, and began ascending a steep acclivity, which led to the moors we had yet to cross on our way home, we were forced to slacken our pace; and as we did so, I asked Henry in a half-joking manner, "Have you recovered the passion you were in just now? Your forebodings seem to have been fully realised."

"Thanks to you," he answered in a short dry manner.

"Come, come," I said, "do not visit upon me Mrs. Tracy's disagreeableness. Indeed I think you are not as patient with her as you ought to be, considering she is an old woman, and was your nurse. You were speaking to her with inconceivable violence."

"You overheard what I said to her?"

"Only a few words, and a dreadful oath."

"I was not aware that you were listening at the door. Had I imagined that you had stationed yourself there, I should certainly have been more guarded in my expressions."

I felt the colour rising into my cheeks, for the tone of his voice had something in it still more insulting than his words; but I answered carelessly, "It is a pity you did not think it worth while to controul your temper, whether you were overheard or not."

He coloured in his turn, and bit his lips; but suddenly changing the subject, he abruptly said, "How do you like Alice?"

"As I like all the beautiful things which God has made, and that man has not spoilt."

"She is very pretty; and she has a kind of cleverness too; but there is something tame and insipid about her, notwithstanding. In fact, I do not understand her."

"How should the serpent understand the dove?" I muttered to myself, and then my heart smote me for my unkind thoughts of Henry. I felt myself guilty of ingratitude, nay more, of hypocrisy, in thinking evil of one whose society I so much valued, and who certainly devoted himself to me with no common assiduity. I never could exactly explain to myself what my feelings were with regard to him at that time. As I said before, it would have been a severe trial to me had he left Elmsley, even for a short time.

Hour after hour I spent in conversation with him, hardly aware of the lapse of time, so great was the fascination that his powerful, original, and, withal, cultivated understanding, exercised over me; and yet, at the same time, an involuntary feeling of mistrust – an unaccountable shudder of repugnance – now and then shot over me as I listened to the sound of his voice, or as my eyes met his – and yet they were beautiful; his eyes, with their deep-gray colour that looked black by candle-light, and the fringing of their dark lashes. There was something reined in the shape of his small aquiline nose – in the form of his wide but well-formed mouth, both of which, when he was eager, bore an expression which I can only compare to that of a fiery horse when he tosses his mane, and snuffs the air of the plain which he is about to scour. Then why was it, that as I looked on his beauty, day by day, I found pleasure, if not happiness, in his devotion to me – why was it, that, now and then, the words fearful, false, and heartless, darted across my mind as I thought of him? and were instantaneously followed by a thrill of self-reproach, for I was false to him, not he to me; false in the contrast between my outward demeanour and my secret and involuntary impulses. It was I that was heartless, in feeling no real attachment for one whose life evinced an unvarying devotedness to me. False! Heartless! Was I really so? Resentment had hardened my heart against Edward Middleton, and every kind feeling I had ever entertained towards him was turned to bitterness. Painful associations, and fearful remembrances, had thrown a dark shade over the pure and holy love of my childhood – the enthusiastic affection I had felt for my aunt; – and as to Henry Lovell, whose society I eagerly sought, and whose attachment I appeared to return, I was forced at times to confess to myself that there was not a grain of tenderness in the feverish predilection I entertained for him. I felt to hate myself for the deadness and coldness of my heart. I despised myself for the inconsistent impulses of my soul. Abased in my own eyes, condemned by my own judgment, I often applied to myself the words of Holy Scripture; and in bitterness of spirit exclaimed – "Unstable as water, I cannot excel. Wasted with misery; drunk, but not with wine, my heart is smitten and withered like gnus. I was exalted into Heaven: I am brought down to Hell." These thoughts occupied me during the remainder of our ride.

When Henry uttered the remark which led to this train of reflections in my mind, we had reached the summit of the hill, and coming upon the wild heath that lay between us and Elmsley, we put our horses into a rapid canter, and arrived before the hall-door just as it was getting dusk.

CHAPTER IV

"How reverend is the face of this tall pile,Whose ancient pillars rear their marble headsTo bear aloft its arch'd and ponderous roof,By its own weight made steadfast and immoveable —Looking tranquillity. It strikes an aweAnd terror on my aching sight; the tombsAnd monumental caves of death look cold.And shoot a chiliness to my trembling heart.""MOURNING BRIDE." – CONGREVE

During the ensuing three or four months, nothing occurred in the course of our daily life, in any way worth recording. I had spoken to my aunt of Alice Tracy in such a way as strongly to excite her interest and curiosity about her, and from this reason, as well as from the wish to give me pleasure, which was at all times an all-sufficient inducement to her, she wrote to her grand-mother to request that if she herself did not feel inclined to come to Elmsley, she would at least allow Alice to come and spend a day with us.

Mrs. Tracy wrote a brief answer to the purport that Alice was gone away on a visit to some relations of her father, and was therefore out of reach of the honour intended her.

My uncle received now and then a letter from Edward Middleton, but never communicated its contents beyond the mere facts that he was well, and was staying in this or that town on the Continent.

Henry still remained at Elmsley; and nothing was changed in the state of things between us. The only new feature in our domestic affairs, was the growing dislike which my uncle seemed to feel towards him. He had never appeared much to like him, but now he seemed hardly able to endure his protracted residence at Elmsley, and often inquired of my aunt and myself, if Henry did not mean soon to begin the study of the law; which was the profession he was destined to pursue.

As to Henry himself, he never alluded to it, and seemed to look upon Elmsley as a permanent home. My uncle was too much attached to his wife, and by nature of too kind a disposition, to mark more plainly, than by occasional hints, his displeasure at this line of conduct; but he could hardly conceal his satisfaction, when, at last, a letter from his father obliged Henry to take the subject into consideration.

It became arranged that he should leave Elmsley in three weeks; and I was surprised, and even mortified, at observing how little he seemed grieved or annoyed at this rather abrupt separation, and with what indifference of manner he took leave of me on the day of his departure.

A few days afterwards, there arrived a letter from Mrs. Brandon, a sister of my mother and of Mr. Middleton, containing an urgent request that I might be allowed to spend a few weeks with her in Dorsetshire.

I had only seen this aunt of mine once or twice during the course of my childhood; and she had left no other impression on my mind than that she was a short, pretty-looking woman, with large dark eyes, and a peculiarly gentle voice.