Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 344 (Supplementary Issue)», страница 6
But these feelings were soon lost in astonishment, and horror so confounding, that for awhile she lost all power of moving, or even of thinking. Still her eyes were fixed upon the words which had pierced her heart:—she could not force them away. Again and again, struck with shame and horror, she shrunk away;—again and again, she found herself forced by doubt, by positive disbelief, to search the terrible pages. At last she had read enough—quite, quite enough to be assured, not that her father—her mother, had been suspected, but that by the law of the land they had been convicted, and condemned to death as foul, adulterous murderers;—the murderers of Sir Thomas Overbury!
The Lady Ellinor returned alone into the gallery, "You little truant!" she cried, "why so long? you said you would soon be with the foremost. I thought you must have escaped me, and have sought you through half the garden, and you are here all the while!"
No voice replied: not a sound was heard; and the Lady Ellinor had already returned to the door of the gallery to seek her friend elsewhere, when something fell heavily to the ground.
She flew back; and in one of the receding windows, she found the Lady Anne lying senseless in a deep swoon. Throwing herself on the ground beside her, she raised her tenderly in her arms, and not without some difficulty, restored her to herself. Then laying her head upon her bosom, she whispered kind words. "You are ill, I fear, my own Anne, who has been here? What have you seen? How so changed in this short time? I left you well and smiling, and now—nay, my dear, dear friend, do not turn from me, and look so utterly wretched. Do not you see me! What can be the matter!" The Lady Anne looked up in her friend's face with so piteous and desolate a look, that she began to fear her reason was affected.
"Have I lost your confidence? Am I no longer loved?" said the Lady Ellinor. "Can you sit heart-broken there, and will not allow me to comfort you? Still no answer! Shall I go? Shall I leave you, my love? Do you wish me absent?" continued she in a trembling voice, the tears flowing over her face, as she rose up. Her motion to depart aroused the Lady Anne. "Ellinor! my Ellinor!" she cried, and throwing herself forward, she stretched forth her arms. In another moment she was weeping on the bosom of her friend. She wept for a long time without restraint, for the Lady Ellinor said nothing, but drew her nearer and nearer to her bosom, and tenderly pressed the hand that was clasped in hers.
"I ought not to be weeping here," at length she said, "I ought to let you leave me, but I have not the courage, I cannot bear to lose your friendship,—your affection, my Ellinor! Can you love me? Have you loved me, knowing all the while, as every one must? To-day—this very hour, since you left me, I learned:—no I cannot tell you! Look on that page, Ellinor, you will see why you find me thus. I am the most wretched, wretched creature!"—here again she burst into an agony of uncontrollable grief.
Who can describe the feelings of the Lady Anne—alone, in her chamber, looking up at the portrait of her mother, upon which she had so often gazed with delight and reverence! "Is it possible?" said she to herself, "can this be she, of whom I have read such dreadful things? Have all my young and happy days been but a dream, from which I wake at last? Is not this dreadful certainty still as a hideous dream to me?"
She had another cause of bitter grief. She loved the young and noble-minded Lord Russell, the Earl of Bedford's eldest son; and she had heard him vow affection and faithfulness to her. She now perceived at once the reasons why the Earl of Bedford had objected to their marriage: she almost wondered within herself that the Lord Russel should have chosen her; and though she loved him more for avowing his attachment, though her heart pleaded warmly for him, she determined to renounce his plighted love. "It must be done," she said, "and better now;—delay will but bring weakness. Now I can write—I feel that I have strength." And the Lady Anne wrote, and folded with a trembling hand the letter which should give up her life's happiness; and fearing her resolution might not hold, she despatched it by a messenger, as the Lord Russel was then in the neighbourhood; and returned mournfully to her own chamber. She opened an old volume which lay upon her toilette—a volume to which she turned in time of trouble, to seek that peace which the world cannot give.
Lady Ellinor soon aroused her by the tidings that a messenger had arrived with a letter from her father, and she descended in search of him.
"Oh, why is this? why am I here?" exclaimed the Lady Anne, as trembling and almost sinking to the ground—her face alternately pale and covered with crimson blushes, she found herself alone with the Lord Russell. "You have received my letter, might not this trial have been spared? my cup was already sufficiently bitter—but I had drunk it. No!" she continued gently withdrawing her hand which he had taken, "Do not make me despise myself—the voice of duty separates us. Farewell! I seek a messenger from my father." "I am the messenger you seek," replied he, "I have seen the Lord Somerset, and bring this letter to his daughter."
The letter from the Earl of Somerset informed his daughter that he had seen the Earl of Bedford, and had obviated all obstacle to her union with the Lord Russell; that he was going himself to travel in foreign parts; and that he wished her to be married during a visit to the Earl and Countess of Bedford, whose invitation he had accepted for her.
"Does not your father say, that in this marriage his happiness is at stake?" said the Lord Russell, gently pressing her hand. The Lady Anne hung down her head, and wept in silence. "Are you still silent, my dearest?" continued he, "then will I summon another advocate to plead for me."
He quitted the apartment for a moment, but soon returned with the Countess of Bedford, who had accompanied him to claim her future daughter-in-law. The Lady Anne had made many resolutions, but they yielded before the sweet and eloquent entreaties that urged her to do what, in fact, she was all too willing to consent to.
They were married, the Lord Russell and the Lady Anne Carr; and they lived long and happily together. It was always thought that the Lord Russell had loved not only well, but wisely; for the Lady Anne was ever a faithful wife, and a loving, tender mother. It was not until some years after her marriage, that the Lady Russell discovered how the consent of the earl of Bedford had been obtained. Till then, she knew not that this consent had been withheld, until the Earl of Somerset should give his daughter a large sum as her marriage portion:—the Earl of Bedford calculating upon the difficulty, nay almost impossibility, of his ever raising this sum.
But he had not calculated upon the devotion of the wretched father's love to his fair and innocent child: and he was astounded when his terms were complied with, and the money paid at once into his hands. He could no longer withhold his consent; nor could he refuse some admiration of this proof of a father's love for his child. The Lord Somerset had, in fact, sold his whole possessions, and reduced himself to an estate not far removed from beggary, to give his daughter the husband of her choice.
It was the Lady Anne Carr, of whom Vandyke painted an exquisite and well-known portrait, when Countess of Bedford. She was the mother of William Lord Russell; and died heart-broken in her old age, when she heard of the execution of her noble and first-born son.
This is, perhaps, one of Mr. Tayler's most successful pieces; it has more breadth (if we may use such a term) than he is wont to employ, the absence of which from his writing, we have more than once had occasion to regret.
Time's Telescope
Our old friend Time has this year illustrated his march, or object-glass, with a host of images or spectra—that is, woodcuts of head and tail pieces—to suit all tastes—from the mouldering cloister of other days to the last balloon ascent. The Notices of Saints' Days and Holidays, Chronology and Biography, Astronomical and Naturalist's Notices, are edited with more than usual industry; and the poetry, original and selected, is for the most part very pleasing.
As we have a running account with Time's Telescope, (who has not?) and occasionally illustrate our pages with extracts during the year, we content ourselves for the present with a quotation from an original article, by "a correspondent from Alveston," possessing much good feeling and a tone of reflection, to us very pleasing:—
THE INFLUENCE OF A FLOWER
Towards the close of a most lovely spring day—and such a lovely one, to my fancy, has never beamed from the heavens since—I carelessly plucked a cowslip from a copse side, and gave it to Constance. 'Twas on that beautiful evening when she told me all her heart! as, seated on a mossy bank, she dissected, with downcast eyes, every part of the flower; chives, pointal, and petal, all were displayed; though I am sure she never even thought of the class. My destiny through life I considered as fixed from that hour.—Shortly afterwards I was called, by the death of a relative, to a distant part of England; upon my return, Constance was no more. The army was not my original destination; but my mind began to be enfeebled by hourly musing upon one subject alone, without cessation or available termination; yet reason enough remained to convince me, that, without change and excitement, it would degenerate into fatuity.
The preparation and voyage to India, new companions, and ever-changing scenes, hushed my feelings, and produced a calm that might be called a state of blessedness—a condition in which the ignoble and inferior ingredients of our nature were subdued by the divinity of mind. Years rolled on in almost constant service; nor do I remember many of the events of that time, even with interest or regret. In one advance of the army to which I was attached, we had some skirmishing with the irregulars of our foe; the pursuit was rapid, and I fell behind my detachment, wounded and weary, in ascending a ghaut, resting in the jungle, with languid eyes fixed on the ground, without any particular feeling but that of fatigue, and the smarting of my shoulder. A cowslip caught my sight! my blood rushed to my heart—and, shuddering, I started on my feet, felt no fatigue, knew of no wound, and joined my party. I had not seen this flower for ten years! but it probably saved my life—an European officer, wounded and alone, might have tempted the avarice of some of the numerous and savage followers of an Indian army. In the cooler and calmer hours of reflection since, I have often thought that this appearance was a mere phantom, an illusion—the offspring of weakness: I saw it but for a moment, and too imperfectly to be assured of reality; and whatever I believed at the time seems now to have been a painting on the mind rather than an object of vision; but how that image started up. I conjecture not—the effect was immediate and preservative. This flower was again seen in Spain: I had the command of an advance party, and in one of the recesses of the Pyrenees, of the romantic, beautiful Pyrenees, upon a secluded bank, surrounded by a shrubbery so lovely as to be noticed by many—was a cowslip. It was now nearly twenty years since I had seen it in Mysore: I did not start; but a cold and melancholy chill came over me; yet I might possibly have gazed long on this humble little flower, and recalled many dormant thoughts, had not a sense of duty (for we momentarily expected an attack) summoned my attentions to the realities of life: so, drawing the back of my hand across my eyes, I cheered my party with, "Forward, lads," and pursued my route, and saw it no more, until England and all her flowery meadows met my view; but many days and service had wasted life, and worn the fine edge of sensibility away; they were now before me in endless profusion, almost unheeded, and without excitement; I viewed not the cowslip, when fifty, as I had done with the eyes of nineteen.
