CHAPTER XVII.
"Poor little one! most bitterly did pain,
And life's worst ills assail thine early age;
And quickly tired with this rough pilgrimage
Thy wearied spirit did its heaven regain."
Kirke White.
Entering the coach, Mrs. De Brooke, in a faint voice, ordered the driver to return with all speed to the Bench. Her imagination, though greatly worked upon by so many successive impulses, was yet but little prepared to witness the terrifying scene that awaited her. Ascending the long winding staircase, breathless with the hurry of her spirits and the rapidity of her motion, she at last reached the door of the apartment in which she had left the dear invalids. For a moment she paused, in listening suspense, to catch the sound of their well-known accents. But none meeting her ear, she burst precipitately in.
What language can depict her horror! Her husband lay apparently lifeless before her, stretched upon his back; Robert extended over him, entering his whole body, endeavouring to recall life in its last low ebbings, by breathing into him his own breath, seeking by such means to reanimate the vital spark, to Mrs. De Brooke seeming entirely extinct! In all the agony of grief she threw herself by the side of her expiring husband, uttering aloud the most lamentable complaints. His cold hand falling inert from her touch, was again raised to her quivering lips or palpitating bosom. Her attached husband! her friend! her solace! her all that, in sharing, could help to allay the bitter cup of adversity, she supposed lost to her for ever!
Her apprehensions, nevertheless, were groundless. It was but the image of death thus presented to her affrighted vision, not its reality!
"Leabe massa to me, leabe massa to me," at length ejaculated Robert; "massa not dead, massa not dead."
The morbid pallidness of De Brooke's features by degrees assumed a more living hue; each feeble extremity, beneath the kindly warmth imparted by those of Robert's, gradually gave resistance to the pressure; the power of motion returning, he raised his heavy eyes, which for a time were fixed in vacancy: as when some dreadful dream still agitates the fancy, so De Brooke, in his confused gaze, seemed doubtful of his real state. A few incoherent words escaped him, and the name of his wife; but, unmindful of her presence and her efforts to make herself known, he turned himself about, lost and overwhelmed, then sunk into a profound languor, bearing the likeness of repose, which his deeply afflicted friends were cautious of disturbing.
Mrs. De Brooke felt persuaded that it was through the admirable and prudent measures of Robert that she owed the resuscitation of her husband. She lavished upon him her warm encomiums; "May the inward consciousness of having performed your duty to the utmost, reward you" said she, "for I fear it will never be in our power to do so according to your deserts."
"Talk not of dat, missus", returned he, "me be rewarded enough in seeing my massa not dead: me tought de iron hand of death was on him."
Though Mrs. De Brooke was desirous of being informed of the particulars leading to a catastrophe so alarming, yet, having recollected that in her fears for her husband she had forgotten her son, she suspended her curiosity. Fearfully approaching, the child, though wrapt in a still lethargic slumber, appeared to her to exhibit scarcely more of life than his father had done. Turning away, With a despondent sigh, she could not divest herself of the melancholy conviction, that the canker-worm of mortality was making rapid inroads to deprive her of that young blossom; carrying her fears still further, she thought if her beloved husband could yet be pronounced safe? and her little daughters at Mrs. Herbert's, what might not be their situations? It was then that Mrs. De Brooke exerted that fortitude, that noble energy of soul so peculiarly her own; it was upon such great and trying occasions that she manifested the superior usefulness of a religious education. The father's precepts, the mother's example, as impressed upon her heart and mind, gave sublimity and energy to her thoughts more than human, diffusing a holy trust in Providence over her affections, and beaming in heavenly lustre from eyes destined to behold scenes of the most touching, awful, and heart-rending description, connected and interwoven with the tenderest sympathies of her existence! Natural feeling, if not to be subdued, was yet, she was well persuaded, capable of moderation, and if, in her occasional sinkings, she felt its triumphs over the lessons she had taught herself, again Divine consolations imparted renewed strength to sustain her. Thus, awaiting in dread suspense, although with mingled feelings of hope and devotion, the issue of life or death, her station was alternately at the couch of her husband and son.
Meanwhile Dr. Beckford was punctual in his attendance, and failed not also to bring her information respecting her children, whom he visited at Mrs. Herbert's. She had the satisfaction of hearing their convalescence confirmed. The good lady had watched over them with unremitting attention; often during the long dull interval of night had she stolen to their pillows, had placed her ear near them, striving to catch the sound of their soft respiration, so still, so faint, and almost expiring, that she was sometimes left in doubt whether or not her sweet charges were really in existence. Her cares, however, being crowned with success, she had the gratification of seeing them gradually recovered from convalescence to the enjoyment of perfect health.
But although the anxieties of Mrs. De Brooke were thus from time to time agreeably relieved by intelligence from Mrs. Herbert's, it was far otherwise with respect to those dear sufferers who, besides being the theme of her thoughts, were the objects of her immediate personal attention. Her husband, from the nature of his slow and lingering malady, indifferent to all things passing around him, spoke but little, and from the excessive languor which oppressed him, unconscious that he slept, seemed equally so of the watchful solicitude bestowed upon him by his excellent wife and faithful servant. The little Aubrey was, if possible, reduced to a state of greater feebleness and decay, and given up continually to a sort of delirious drowsiness.
To add to the misery of such a situation, Mrs. De Brooke began to find that the resources from whence hitherto the innumerable demands incidental to a sick family had been supplied were beginning to fail her. In examining the écritoire of her husband, where she knew he was in the habit of depositing his cash, she had found there, for the support of another week, but a sum barely sufficient for the common necessaries of domestic existence. She was sensible that a few articles had been purchased by Robert from his own private means; a circumstance the more painful to her feelings, knowing that on the score of wages they were so much his debtor. To avoid the recurrence of such an additional, and, even to her meek mind, humiliating obligation, she had from time to time divested the room of every article of furniture not in immediate connection with her absolute wants, and also herself of her jewels and all she deemed superfluous in her wardrobe, not merely to the destitution of its ornamental, but also its useful contents. Even her husband's army allowance had been finally resorted to, and advanced by his agent for the purpose of defraying the hire of their apartments; and, to add to their distresses, she had been under the necessity of renouncing the comforts of a second chamber, to yield it to the claims of another, and confine herself wholly to that one which had become the dark abode of poverty, disease, and misery! There, meagre, pale, and wasted, her beloved husband and son represented every moment to her afflicted view the awful picture of mortality.
"Oh, could Sir Aubrey now behold his son!" burst from her lips, "and that young drooping flower, his unoffending grandson!"
Often she had been tempted to write to him, to make a strong and pathetic appeal to his feelings as a father; but as often the risings of indignation and the intolerable sense of unmerited insult, as felt in the person of her husband, had hitherto restrained her. Dishonoured and slighted, spurned and disowned as De Brooke had been, and all for her sake, was she to risk by repeated humiliations a renewal of indignity; or could she hope, even by a faithful delineation of the present scene, to awaken sympathy in a breast so callous? With her conjugal feelings thus highly wrought, and by her afflicting situation incapacitated from an impartial and calm estimate of things, she could find no extenuative plea for a chairacter and conduct so opposite to her own.
Driven, however, to the last extremity, she weighed again the subject, no longer hesitated, but wrote the dictates of her aching heart. With such a scene before her, as she was then called upon to represent, forcible was the colouring, emphatic and powerful the language which flowed from her pen. Several copies were written, but none pleased her. Notwithstanding the moderation she wished to throw into her style, some slight flashes of invective ran through it. The child of nature, she knew, not how to flatter or use dissimulation; such as were her heart and feelings, such they appeared. Amidst the discouraging calamities around her, a noble independence reigned. Truth, piety, and justice inspiring her sentiments and animating her diction, though she had endeavoured in some degree to soften the asperity of reproach, yet she was conscious she had not completely succeeded.
Whatever might be the result of her intended appeal, it was fortunate for her purpose that Robert had either never suspected, or else had prudently concealed from her the causes (real or ideal) which had led to the alarming scene that presented itself on her return from Mrs. Herbert's. The whole truth, as it appeared to the mind of De Brooke, shall be briefly related.
Two men, apparently creditors of his, rudely breaking in upon the stillness of the sick chamber, on being interrogated as to their business, answered that they were come from Sir Aubrey respecting the amount of their claims, the justice of which being allowed, they trusted would no longer be withheld from them; at the same time they produced a paper, exhibiting to the astonished De Brooke the signature of his father, as if authorizing their proceeding, and aiding in the prosecution. Stunned by this cruel demonstration, the unhappy De Brooke, already weakened and disturbed, as well by the inroads of disease as irritation of mind, now the victim of a father's vengeance, reeling from the sofa on which he lay, had sunk into that deep and dreadful swoon, in which upon her return his wife had found him; unable therefore to obtain further information, those hard-hearted men had departed that prison of sorrow, leaving, as the result of their visit, De Brooke apparently lifeless!
But though to Mrs. De Brooke the cold-blooded behaviour of these wretches had never been mentioned, at least in connection with the name of Sir Aubrey, yet, as it has been observed, it required scarcely any further development of his character to make him appear in her eyes too callous for entreaty; unnatural as did his conduct appear to her in every light in which she was capable of viewing it. Sometimes during the writing of her letter she had left off to ask herself, "Can he be really his father? Is it to the father of De Brooke I write?" She thought of her own parent; how opposite in character and feeling to him, the venerable sire of the Parsonage! and the contrast, added to the memory of his virtues and his affection, by bringing on a flood of tears, afforded a temporary relief to her oppressed feelings.
The letter, at length finished and sealed, was dispatched by the hand of Robert, that devoted minister, (well worthy of so honourable an appellation,) who, amidst the wretchedness and desolation in which the family he served was plunged, had not only discharged his duties with scrupulous fidelity, but had evinced a strength and disinterestedness of affection deserving the name of freedom and of friendship: frankly and with a right good will his time and talents were bestowed, without hope of other reward than what his liberal heart largely afforded. With such a disposition there is little room to doubt, that if need required, this noble creature would have cheerfully undergone death, rather than that the interests of those he so dearly loved and respected should have received through any fault of his detriment or compromise.
To return to Mrs. De Brooke; though herself innocent of the cause, it might truly be said that poverty had come upon her as one that travelleth, and want as an armed man*[1]. But it was not until the last resources had failed, that her condition became bewildering in the extreme, and all the terrors that can afflict virtue appeared in array against her. Surrounded by inextricable difficulties, and to which every hour threatened some fearful addition, bereft of the solace of conjugal sympathy, while there scarcely remained an earthly refuge which hope could suggest or despair embrace, what could have supported her under such complicated trial, but a meek surrender of herself and the dear objects of her continual solicitude to the Supreme Disposer of events! Bending at his omnipresent shrine, she would often fervently implore the Divine mercy to grant her in its own good time deliverance, and a patient endurance of the ills allotted to her. There alone, reader, in that meek dependence of mind, and submission to the Divine will, lies the solution of many a miracle of patience and of endurance. It is true she possessed a constitution by nature pure, and elastic from education, that, nurtured by the taintless breath of a country air, not undermined by the midnight fête, had enabled her but as a means, to sustain, and to achieve prodigies of suffering, privation, and toil.
It was only at intervals, during the tedious silence of night, interrupted by the sighs and plaints only of the weary sufferers, that, reclining on a mattress, she snatched a hasty slumber, then starting awake, and kneeling at her husband's couch, administered to his necessities, or to those more urgent ones of her almost expiring son. "A miracle alone can save him:" such was the expression that, faint and mournful, often died upon her faltering lips.
But to pass over further detail. De Brooke, as if suddenly awaking from a long and fearful dream, fixed upon his wife his wildly looking eyes, as if to be assured it was really herself; and in the next moment, sending his gaze around the chamber, said, "God be praised! it is over. I have been haunted by a frightful vision." Though with a memory greatly impaired, yet intellect returning, he gave to Mrs.De Brooke the most sanguine hopes, and, through the persevering and humane skill of Dr. Beckford, he at length arose from the bed of languishing.
It would be unnecessary to paint, in his progress towards recovery, those many afflicting scenes, deprivations, and anxieties which the sorrowing parents mutually partook of and witnessed.
Alas! the keenest arrow of adversity that ever pierced their united souls now seemed pointed against them; for while himself so nearly snatched, as if by miracle, from the verge of death, the rising thankfulness diffused over the mind of De Brooke for that providential blessing had been checked ere it had time to expand into the higher emotions of gratitude. For alas! his trials and probation had not yet ceased, and he was to endure, in common with his afflicted partner, the irreparable loss of his beloved boy.
Seated together in heartbroken anticipation of what they most dreaded: "Alas!" sighed the father, "how fruitless are the hopes of man!" his eyes riveted upon that once sweet animated countenance, then overshadowed by the pale complexion of death. In melancholy suspense they awaited the coming of the physician, under the impression that his visit might be too late. Respiration seemed nearly extinct; it struck Mrs. De Brooke to administer the same expedient which, to all appearance, had formerly saved his sister. In order, therefore, to keep life and hope awhile unextinguished, if perchance they could be prolonged until the dawning of day, raising the dying child in her arms, she gave him a few drops of that potion, which, has the power of subduing and even suspending for a time the operations of nature. She saw it take effect, she saw him sink to sleep: she kept her station, still and breathless, by his side. The morning beamed, but he awoke not; that sleep, was it the sleep of death? Sometimes she was tempted to think it was, and blamed herself, as the cause of perhaps hastening his dissolution. The doctor, however, at last presented himself, and approved of what she had done. The disorder, he said, had arisen to the greatest degree of malignancy; but that, until his patient awoke, nothing could be decided upon. The mournful interval elapsed. The child raised his weary lids, cast upon each of his trembling sensitive parents one long, silent, and tender regard, seeming to carry in its peculiar, heavenly, yet heartrending expression, "I go to a better world! farewell for ever!" A slight convulsion passed his features, which, in the next instant, became fixed in the marble stillness of death.
The distracted mother, uttering a piercing shriek, fell senseless into the arms of the doctor, whilst the father, perhaps a greater object of commiseration, threw himself upon the lifeless body of his son,—his first-born child! his darling boy! his Aubrey! wildly clasping him in his arms, and bedewing him with his tears.
Deep were the wanderings, the language of despair, resounding in that miserable chamber. The sorrow of this unfortunate couple seemed then to have attained its climax. Hearkening to the voice only of their inconsolable feelings, they remained deaf to the intreaties of the doctor, as he endeavoured to call their attention to the disease of which their son had fallen the victim, and consequently the precaution to be taken to avoid fresh communication of infection;—but how vain his exhortations! whither go? Whether the spirit had forsaken its earthly habitation or not, the same chamber must contain them.
It was to Robert alone, as capable of comprehending a distinct idea, he could address himself. His indeed was a sympathizing heart, and had well nigh overwhelmed him; yet grieving, as he well might, rather for the living than the dead, he essayed, in conformity with the regulations given, to ventilate and fumigate the chamber; that comfortless chamber of death, where presently wrapped in his shroud lay the youthful Aubrey, once so blooming, innocent, and joyous, who in the first short drama of his existence had, in the sweetness and intelligence of his heart and mind, given to his fond approving parents so fair an earnest of the future.
As waters inundate the earth, so affliction in the shape of poverty, sickness, and imprisonment poured heavy upon the head of De Brooke and his partner; but when weighed against that greater one, the loss of that endearing, that amiable child, all their former sorrows appeared but as drops of rain amid the sunshine.
- ↑ * Proverbs.