Read Ebook: A Woman's Love by Opie Amelia

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Ebook has 348 lines and 28367 words, and 7 pages

During the course of that day, Seymour was continually exclaiming, "How provoking it is, that I should be forced to go away just now!"

"Ah!" cried I, pertly enough, and insincerely too, "what will poor Miss Salter do?" This was the name of one of the ladies with whom he had fancied himself charmed.

"Miss Salter!

Here my mother rather pettishly interrupted him.

"I think, for Miss Salter's sake, young man, it is well you are going, as you certainly took great pains to make her think you admired her; and I must say, I am no friend to coquetry, be it in man or woman."

"Nor I," said Lady Helen; "and I trust the next time my son makes love, he will do it with his whole heart, and not mistake the illusions of fancy for the dictates of attachment."

"I trust so too, my dear mother," he replied, "and that the object will be one whom you approve."

The next morning he set off, and every thing at first seemed a blank to me. He wrote frequently during the first weeks of his residence at Oxford, but my mother discouraged my answering his letters, and he soon grew remiss in his correspondence even with Lady Helen, who found that his allowance, though handsome, was insufficient for his wants, and suspected that the life must be dissipated which required such an exorbitant expenditure. My mother knew that it was so; why she imparted what she heard to her friend, I cannot tell, because it made Lady Helen unhappy, and she wrote to her son in the language of expostulation. I was vexed to find that my mother gave such implicit credence to the stories of Seymour's errors, as the accounts might be exaggerated; and when I had once admitted that he was the victim of misrepresentation, pity for Seymour added force to my attachment.

It seemed a very long time to me till the next vacation came; but Seymour passed it in London, at his grandfather's; my mother was glad, but I was disappointed. Nor did he come down into the country till half of the long vacation was expired; and after he had spent a week with Lady Helen, my mother took me to pay a visit to a relation of her's. In vain Lady Helen remonstrated, and Seymour entreated; she replied she had put off her journey in the expectation of seeing him in June, and she could no longer delay her visit. He sighed, looked conscious and confused, and forbore to urge her again.

My mother was certainly right in thus resolving; for she knew, though I did not, that Lady Helen had communicated to him her views and wishes with regard to me; and she left home with a firmness and decision of manner which promised ill for the success of her hopes.

"My dear Julia!" cried she to my mother, in a voice almost inarticulate with emotion, "what a foolish thing is a fond mother's heart! Now it is all fear, and now all hope; now it is broken, and now healed again. This boy, this dear, naughty good boy! it was but yesterday I cried for his weakness, and now I cry for his strength."

"No one, I believe, ever doubted your son's talents," said my mother coldly, and I thought crossly.

"True," replied Lady Helen meekly; "and this prize, I own, is not proof of amended conduct."

"I know not," cried I eagerly, "what fault poor Seymour has committed; but of this I am sure, that if he was so very idle as ill-natured people say he is, he could not have found time to write for a prize, and still less have been able to gain it."

"Thank you, my dearest girl, for being my poor boy's advocate; for what you say is very just: and Seymour shall know how kindly you took his part."

"I must beg he may not know," said my mother, angrily.

"Indeed!" answered Lady Helen mournfully. "But I cannot now blame your change of feeling on this subject, for I myself should hesitate to give my daughter to a youth such as Seymour is said to be."

I now turned round, and looked at Lady Helen with so alarmed and inquiring a countenance, that she could not withstand the appeal. She took my hand, and said--

"Yes, Helen, your mother and I had pledged our words to each other, to do all in our power to promote a union between my son and you, and to cherish every symptom in you of a mutual attachment; but now, owing to some too well-founded reports, I fear, of his faulty conduct, she wishes to retract her promise; and here, as one of my last acts and deeds, I solemnly give her back that promise in your presence! declaring to you, my beloved child, that unless your mother thinks Seymour deserving of you, I cannot wish you to be his wife; and that it will be my parting injunction to you, Helen, never, never to marry an immoral man."

"But I wish to prepare you for it."

"Prepare, Helen! prepare. Do you think anything can make me endure the idea of losing you? Oh! it will be losing all I ever loved a second time!"

The night that followed was the first of real agonizing sorrow which I had ever known. I had heard that Seymour was believed, even by his own mother, to be unworthy of me, and that mine was decidedly averse to that union which she had originally made the first desire of my heart; I had also heard from Lady Helen's own lips a solemn assurance that she was dying.

At my time of life, however, the spirits are never long depressed, especially by an uncertain and remote sorrow; but as a captive butterfly, when the pressure on its wings is removed, flutters them again in air, with all their glittering dyes and buoyancy uninjured, so do the spirits of youth quickly resume their brilliancy and their elasticity.

But, alas! Lady Helen had not spoken from momentary dejection, and still less from the ungenerous wish to excite interest and alarm in the hearts that tenderly loved her: she spoke from her deep conviction--a conviction only too well founded.

In less than two months, she was attacked by fever and inflammation of the brain, such as had before seized her on the death of her husband. She had, however, lucid intervals; and though my mother and myself felt our hearts wrung by her delirious ravings--during which she called upon her son's name in the most affecting language--still we suffered more, when, on recovering her senses, she asked for this darling son, and we were obliged to reply that he was not yet arrived.

And where--oh! where was he, at a moment like that? We knew not.

"No, Julia; whatever are his other faults, my poor boy loves me--tenderly loves me; and even from a sick-bed he would hasten to his dying mother. Oh no! he has never received your letter--he is not in college."

"Then where is he? In college he ought to be."

"We did, indeed," cried my mother, abashed and silenced.

"Yes," continued Lady Helen; "and therefore I have always endeavoured to be mild in my judgment of other people--especially of the young."

The afflicting image thus presented to my mind, of what would be Seymour's misery if he indeed arrived too late, was more than I could bear, and I was forced to leave the room. Soon afterwards, Lady Helen's senses wandered again; but when I returned, she was sensible, though exhausted; and as I entered, she hastily put back the curtain, and said--

"Oh! I hoped it was my dear, dear boy!" Her breath now grew fainter, and she exclaimed, "Oh! where, where is he? must I die without seeing him once more, and giving him my blessing? Helen! Julia! be sure to speak very kindly to him, and tell him that I blessed him! But thy will, O Lord! be done!"

Still, as long as consciousness remained, her eyes were anxiously turned towards the door, as if looking for that beloved object whom she was never more to see, we thought, in this world. At that moment, however, my watchful ear heard a quick step on the stairs, and an exclamation of agony, not mistaken by me.

When he recovered, there was something so full of woe, and yet of a woe so stern, in the look with which my mother ordered me away, that I had not the heart to resist it. It was near an hour before she came to me; and never before had I seen her so overpowered with affliction. She called upon Lady Helen by the tenderest names; talked of her patient gentleness--of the sweetness of that temper which she had so often tried--and reproached herself for having thus tried it. But she spoke not of Seymour; and deep as my regret was for the dead, it was equalled by my anxiety for the living. I therefore ventured to say, "But how is poor Seymour?"

"Unfeeling girl!" cried my mother; "you can think only of him when his angel mother lies dead!"

"Hold, Helen! he is extremely wretched; so much so, that I could not bear to listen to his self-upbraidings, nor to witness his caresses of that hand which replied no longer to his grasp; and then his wild entreaties, that she would speak to him once more, and say that she forgave him!"

My mother started--"You are right!" said she: "I will return, and do my duty by him."

"Oh! let me go with you!"

"No, Helen; I must do my duty by you too--and the poor youth at this moment is only too dangerous."

She was right, and I submitted; but I had gained my point, and she was gone back to the poor afflicted one. Before she went, however, she insisted on my going to bed; where, wearied with three nights of watching, I fell into a heavy slumber. But, oh! that wretchedness on waking, which attends the recollection of a recent affliction! and I was giving way to all the misery I felt, when, soon after eight in the morning, my mother came into my room.

She told me she had not been in bed all night, for that she dared not leave Seymour.

"How kind it was in you, my dearest mother!"

"No, it was only right," she answered, in great agitation: "he was a bitter and penitent sufferer; and if my departed friend is conscious of what is passing here, I trust that she was satisfied with me, for I tried to do a mother's part by him. And now, my dear child, we must both return home: this, you know, is no place for you, Helen."

"And must I go without taking leave of poor Seymour?"

"What leave is there to take?"

I had nothing to reply, and we came away.

As my mother knew that Seymour's sleep was likely to be long, she did not return to the house of death for some hours; but when she did, I earnestly conjured her to let me accompany her. I pleaded, however, and wept in vain: in vain did I urge, that Seymour would think me unkind in forsaking him wholly at such a time as this was.

My mother said she feared that Seymour would only be too ready to attribute his not seeing me to her commands, rather than my own inclinations; and, disappointed and wretched, I threw myself on the bed in an agony of grief, and never rose from it, feeding my distress by every means in my power. I must own, however, that temper and contrivance had some share in this self-abandonment, or sensibility, which I thought would at once punish my mother for her obstinacy, and induce her to give up her resolution. How often is grief, like love, made up of materials which we dream not of--and how often has temper much to do with it! But my seeming unmixed sorrow had no effect on my excellent parent, whose decisions, where I was concerned, were the result of firm principle. Her first observation was--

"This excessive misery, Helen, accompanied, as I see it is, with a degree of sullenness, is not likely to make me change my purpose, but rather to confirm me in it the more; because it proves to me the great extent of the danger to which my compliance would expose you, when you can thus, in spirit at least, be rebellious; and this at a time, too, when I want every comfort possible."

These words subdued every particle of resentment in me: I threw myself on her neck, and assured her she should never have so to reproach me again; nor did I even venture to inquire for Seymour--but she was generous enough to speak of him unasked. She told me he woke, after a long sleep, more composed than she expected; "though, on his first waking, he started me excessively," she said, "by asking for his mother, and wondering to see me instead of her. My tears seemed to force back his recollection; and in a faint voice, and with a look of wretchedness, he added, 'Ah! I remember now;' and hiding his face in the pillow, he wept aloud.

"When this fresh paroxysm was over, I left him."

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