Patience, Barbara Hofland [readict books TXT] 📗

such an action, re-uniting herself to a bad

man, and thus giving a sanction to his profligacy. A conclusion made by

Mrs. Aylmer in language equally strong, and more persuasive, as she

added,

 

“Surely, Dora, you will not so disgrace the education I gave you, nor so

wound the heart of her who loves you as a mother, as to countenance

adultery by your presence!—to share your husband with a wanton.”

 

Dora started—her pallid cheeks became crimson, and she covered them

with her trembling hands, whilst her bosom heaved with thick-coming

sobs.—Mrs. Aylmer, pierced to the heart with grief and compassion,

added,

 

“I see you will not leave me, Dora, you will return to the friend of

your youth—the pious, happy path, in which your early days were

passed.”

 

“Oh! no, no, do not tempt me—he is my husband, and with all his faults

I know he will not expose me to the evil you fear—he is too proud so to

degrade the woman who bears his name—he may not love me, but surely he

cannot despise me.”

 

Dora wept long and bitterly, but she persisted in her determination,

repeatedly observing, “that Mr. Blackwell had judged rightly, he had

opened her eyes to the deficiency of her own conduct, which had been

prejudicial to the vacillating mind of one so impatient of restraint,

and injured by indulgence, she therefore owed him reparation for the

past, as well as compassion in his present distress.”

 

The very word “reparation,” as applied by her, could not be endured by

those friends who knew that her husband never had, never could deserve

her; and deeply as they felt for her present distress, both became

seriously angry; and Mr. Blackwell solemnly assured her, that if she

joined Stancliffe again, let her distress be what it might, she should

never receive a shilling from him till the moment when she could legally

claim it, and he now informed her that he was aware Stancliffe had

forfeited his bond to her father since his arrival in Dublin, by

frequenting a gaming house, in consequence of which she must experience

soon the most abject poverty.

 

“Alas!” said Dora, internally, “here is a new reason surely why I should

fly to him, wretched as he must be;” but she did not reply further than

to look earnestly towards Mrs. Aylmer—to that beseeching look she

answered,

 

“Dora, though I perfectly approve of all Mr. Blackwell has said, and can

by no means blame the resolution he has made—yet—I am a woman, you

have been that to me which you cannot be to him, a child fed at my

board, a daughter bound to my very heart, should you be in actual want I

must relieve you—my last morsel must be shared with you—but my

competence is not riches, I have nothing to squander, you know I have

not.”

 

Dora did know this; she knew also that her friend was charitable and

generous, and at the present moment low in the purse, not having been

prepared for this painful, unexpected journey. Exhausted with the

dreadful excitation of the hour, and aware that she had still much to

think of and to suffer, she slowly withdrew to look up in solitude to

that power which alone could give the strength and composure so

necessary to her trying situation.

 

When Frank was informed that Stancliffe was unwell and had sent for

Dora, contrary to the fears of those around him, he readily agreed that

she ought to go, only begging he might see her alone for a single

moment:—they then proposed removing him, saying, “it would be soon

done, and the room prepared for him much pleasanter.”—“If she says

it is right, take me any where, without her, all places are alike to

me,” was his answer.

 

Dora was interrupted in her retirement by Harriett, who called her to

Frank; and she hastily wiped her tears, put on a bonnet to shade her

swollen eye-lids, and forced herself to speak in a calm if not a

cheerful voice as she approached the bed, and stooped down to catch his

whispered words.

 

“My dear sister, be quite easy about me, I will be very still, and shall

get better in time—but, Dora, whether I live or die, I will not betray

our secret—you can rely upon me, cannot you?”

 

Her look and her kiss answered for her, for her heart was too full to

allow her to speak, and her resolution to go was now really shaken—she

felt that if her removal should prove prejudicial to Frank, she could

never forgive herself, since it was impossible for her not to see that a

stronger claim on her attentions was made by the injured and unoffending

brother, than by the cruel, unworthy, and self-divorced husband.

 

Frank read the struggle of her mind in her countenance, and he again

assured her, he should do well, and directed her where to find his

little (very little) stock of pocket money. Dora was roused by this to

consider the difficulties of this nature by which she was surrounded,

and an enquiry at her banker’s soon informed her that Mr. Blackwell’s

information was but too true. Stancliffe had drawn every thing out in

his power, and had subjected himself to the conditions imposed in such a

case by her father; but her immediate wants were supplied at length by

poor Mrs. Judith, for whose personal comforts she engaged Mrs. Aylmer to

provide during her absence.

 

Dreading the increase of expences, poor Dora set out on the only voyage

she had ever adventured, without a servant; and so great were the

inconveniences she suffered on her landing, that could she have beheld

them in prospect, they would have been too appalling for a woman of her

description to have encountered; but truly as our great poet said, “when

the mind’s at ease the body’s delicate:”—the intense anxiety, the

sorrowful reflections, the touching remembrances, and the fearful

prospect before her, so filled up every power of thought, and so

occupied her feelings, that lesser evils lost their usual effects and

even pain and weakness yielded to the stimulus of sorrow and solicitude.

 

At length Dora reached the place from whence her guiding letter was

dated, and was thankful to find the situation was quiet, and so far

suitable for an invalid; and in answer to her first inquiry, she had the

satisfaction to find, that although Stancliffe still kept his bed, his

case was considered no worse, and her informer, the mistress of the

lodgings, added:

 

“And if so be, ma’am, you’re the sister, or the likes of that, which he

have bin expicting, I hopes you’ll jist interfere a bit for the young

cratur his wife, for she’s crazy, ye see, by reason he won’t see her at

all, any how, for this fortnight, but jist sends down the nurse to say

‘tis no use coming at all, for that the doctors say as he mistn’t be

distarbt by her.”

 

“His wife?” gasped Dora.

 

“Oh! yes, miss, quite a dacent young body, but not a gintlewoman, that’s

for sure; and sure any body may see she’s not come o’ the likes of him

and you, who are brother and sister, I doubt not all the world over; but

a wife’s a wife, and a man’s best friend in the hour o’ trouble, and to

my thinkings,”—

 

Dora, feeling as if she could bear no more, used the little strength

her agitation left her, to request that Mr. Stancliffe, or at least his

nurse, might be informed “that the lady from England had arrived.”

 

“Oh! to be sure I will go up, and will I not make bould too jist to stip

in myself? why not? seeing his frind has bin with him these two

hours—never’s the time he’s denied for sure.”

 

“What friend?” said Dora.

 

“Oh! ma’am, it’s not I that shall say a word aginst him, for an angel I

take him to be, that’s for sure; yet, as I said before, a wife’s a wife,

and to kip her away, and to lit oder people in, it’s not to my mind.”

 

These observations continued till the soft voice of the truly Irish

hostess was lost from the closing of the door after her:—her

information, and the train of new and distressing thoughts it had

awakened, had so completely overpowered Dora, that she now felt as if

she had indeed undertaken that which she could not perform; and the

denunciations of Mr. Blackwell and Mrs. Aylmer, again sounded in her

ears:—twice had the landlady invited her into the room before her

shaking limbs permitted her to accept the summons; and when at length

she stepped forward, it was with the breathless trepidation of one who

enters on a scene of terror.

 

In a bed supported by pillows, in the same state apparently as she had

often seen him, appeared Stancliffe, looking less ill than might have

been expected; for it is certain that a deep hue of shame suffused his

face, and a person standing close by him looked the paler of the two.

Dora thought she had seen this person before; but her head swam, her

eyes refused the light, and she sunk senseless on the bed, ere she had

the power of speaking.

 

When Dora came to herself, she was on the chair occupied lately by the

stranger, who was holding something to her lips—the light fell full on

his face, and looking on him, she exclaimed in a faint voice,

 

“Arthur Sydenham!” then, recollecting herself, said, “I beg pardon, I am

confused.”

 

“No, no, you are right, Dora,” said Stancliffe, stooping over her as

well as he was able, “it is Mr. Sydenham, who, I believe, knew you when

you were a child in Wales—to him you are indebted for my life—(so far

as it is a debt)” he added in a low and broken voice.

 

“I shall resign my office of head nurse, now Do—now Mrs. Stancliffe

has arrived,” said Sydenham, in a tone intended to be cheerful, but by

no means answering to the speaker’s wishes.

 

“How have you left Frank, Dora?” said Stancliffe, with a look of great

anxiety.

 

“Extremely weak, but doing well.”

 

“Poor fellow!—that is what they say of me—I have lost a great deal of

blood, but nothing compared with his loss, so he may well be weak—but I

deserved it—he—ah! how very different is his situation to mine; he is,

as I have told you, Sydenham, so often, the very best creature that ever

was born—the most generous.”

 

Stancliffe’s head sunk on his pillow, and Dora thought he wept; her

heart was touched with the deepest sympathy, and she felt thankful now

that she had undertaken a journey which already repaid her by the hopes

it held out of a change for the better, in him with whom “she had

garnered up her soul;”—so rapidly do circumstances change the feelings

of the female so situated. In the relief thus offered to persons of

great sensibility, the power of enduring its inflictions is in a measure

obtained, the very acuteness of our tortures compels us to look round

for aid, and seize on the first shadow which can cheat us into ease.

 

Mr. Sydenham went away very soon, and after his departure Stancliffe was

eloquent in his praise—he recapitulated the circumstances of his duel,

which appeared to have sprung from a slight difference in opinion with a

gentleman in a coffee-house, from which he had been led to use that

insulting language to which his habitual treatment of his own family

subjected him, and which the customs of the country he was visiting by

no means permitted. As he was not deficient in personal