The stricken one raised her head, and looked into her face; but it was, alas! too apparent that she saw her not; for the eye, though smiling, was still vacant. Again her lips moved, and she spoke so as to be understood towards the door through which she had entered.
"Yes," she exclaimed, in the same low, placid voice, "yes, he is beautiful! Is he not beautiful? Fatal beauty!--fatal beauty! It is a fatal thing--it is a fatal thing!--but he is very, very beautiful!"
"Jane," said Maria, taking her hand from Agnes"s, "Jane, speak to Maria, dear. Am not I, too, your own Maria? that loves you not less than--my darling, darling child--they do not live that love you better than your own Maria;--in pity, darling, in pity speak to me!"
The only reply was a smile, that rose into the murmuring music of a low laugh; but this soon ceased, her countenance became troubled, and her finely-pencilled brows knit, as if with an inward sense of physical pain. William, her father, her mother, each successively addressed her, but to no purpose. Though a slight change had taken place, they could not succeed in awakening her reason to a perception of the circ.u.mstances in which she was placed. They only saw that the unity of her thought, or of the image whose beauty veiled the faculties of her mind was broken, and that some other memory, painful in its nature, had come in to disturb the serenity of her unreal happiness; but this, which ought to have given them hope, only alarmed them the more. The father, while these tender and affecting experiments were tried, sat beside her, his eyes laboring under a weight of deep and indescribable calamity, and turning from her face to the faces of those who attempted to recall her reason, with a mute vehemence of sorrow which called up from the depths of their sister"s misery a feeling of compa.s.sion for the old man whom she had so devotedly loved.
"My father"s heart is breaking," said William, groaning aloud, and covering his face with his hands. "Father, your face frightens me more than Jane"s;--don"t, father, don"t. She is young,--it will pa.s.s away--and father dear where is your reliance upon her--upon her aid!"
"Dear Henry," said his wife, "you should be our support. It is the business of your life to comfort and sustain the afflicted."
"Papa," said Agnes, "come with me for a few minutes, until you recover the shock which--which----"
She stopped, and dropping her head upon the knees of her smiling and apparently happy sister, wept aloud.
"Agnes--Agnes," said William, (they were all in tears except her father) "Agnes, I am ashamed of you;"--yet his own cheeks were wet, and his voice faltered. "Father, come with me for awhile. You will when alone for a few minutes, bethink you of your duty--for it is your duty to bear this not only as becomes a Christian man, but a Christian minister, who is bound to give us example as well as precept."
"I know it, William, I know it;--and you shall witness my fort.i.tude, my patience, my resignation under this--this-----. I will retire. But is she not--alas! I should say, was she not my youngest and my dearest! You admit yourselves she was the best."
"Father, come," said William.
"Dear father--dear papa, go with him," said Agnes.
"My father," said Maria, "as he said to _her_, will be himself."
"I will go," said the old man; "I know how to be firm; I will reflect; I will pray; I will weep. I must, I must----"
He pressed the beautiful creature to his bosom, kissed her lips, and as he hung over her, his tears fell in torrents upon her cheeks.
Oh! what a charm must be in sympathy, and in the tears which it sheds over the afflicted, when those of the grey-haired father could soothe his daughter"s soul into that sorrow which is so often a relief to the miserable and disconsolate!
When Jane first felt his tears upon her cheeks, she started slightly, and the smile departed from her countenance. As he pressed her to his heart she struggled a little, and putting her arms out, she turned up her eyes upon his face, and after a long struggle between memory and insanity, at length whispered out "papa!"
"You are with me, darling," he exclaimed; "and I am with you, too: and here we are all about you,--your mother, and Agnes, and all."
"Yes, yes," she replied; "but papa,--and where is my mamma?"
"I am here, my own love; here I am. Jane, collect yourself, my treasure.
You are overcome with sorrow. The parting from Charles...o...b..rne has been too much for you."
"Perhaps it was wrong to mention his name," whispered William. "May it not occasion a relapse, mother?"
"No," she replied. "I want to touch her heart, and get her to weep if possible."
Her daughter"s fingers were again involved in the tangles of her beautiful ringlets, and once more was the sweet but vacant smile returning to her lips.
"May G.o.d relieve her and us," said Maria; "the darling child is relapsing!"
Agnes felt so utterly overcome, that she stooped, and throwing her arms around her neck wept aloud, with her cheek laid to Jane"s.
Again the warmth of the tears upon the afflicted one"s face seemed to soothe or awaken her. She looked up, and with a troubled face exclaimed:--
"I hope I am not!--Agnes, you are good, and never practised deceit,--am I? am I?"
"Are you what, love? are you what, Jane, darling?"
"Am I a cast-away? I thought I was. I believe I am--Agnes?"
"Well, dear girl!"
"I am afraid of my papa."
"Why, Jane, should you be afraid of papa. Sure you know how he loves you--dotes upon you?"
"Because I practised deceit upon him. I dissembled to him. I sinned, sinned deeply;--blackly, blackly. I shudder to think of it;" and she shuddered while speaking.
"Well, but Jane dear," said her mother, soothingly, "can you not weep for your fault. Tears of repentance can wipe out any crime. Weep, my child, weep, and it will relieve your heart."
"I would like to see my papa," she replied. "I should be glad to hear that he forgives me: how glad! how glad! That"s all that troubles your poor Jane; all in the world that troubles her poor heart--I think."
These words were uttered in a tone of such deep and inexpressible misery, and with such an innocent and childlike unconsciousness of the calamity which weighed her down that no heart possessing common humanity could avoid being overcome.
"Look on me, love," exclaimed her father. "Your papa is here, ready to pity and forgive you."
"William," said Agnes, "a thought strikes me,--the air that Charles played when they first met has been her favorite ever since you know it--go get your flute and play it with as much feeling as you can."
Jane made no reply to her father"s words. She sat musing, and once or twice put up her hand to her sidelocks, but immediately withdrew it, and again fell into a reverie. Sometimes her face brightened into the fatal smile, and again became overshadowed with a gloom that seemed to proceed from a feeling of natural grief. Indeed the play of meaning and insanity, as they chased each other over a countenance so beautiful, was an awful sight, even to an indifferent beholder, much less to those who then stood about her.
William in about a minute returned with his flute, and placing himself behind her, commenced the air in a spirit more mournful probably than any in which it had ever before been played. For a long time she noticed it not: that is to say, she betrayed no external marks of attention to it. They could perceive, however, that although she neither moved nor looked around her, yet the awful play of her features ceased, and; their expression became more intelligent and natural. At length she sighed deeply several times, though without appearing to hear the music; and at length, without uttering a word to any one of them, she laid her head I upon her father"s bosom, and the tears fell; in placid torrents down her cheeks. By a signal from his hand, Mr. Sinclair intimated that for the present they should be silent; and by another addressed to William, that he should play on. He did so, and she wept copiously under the influence of that charmed melody for more than twenty minutes.
"It would be well for me," she at length said, "that is, I fear it would, that I had never heard that air, or seen him who first sent its melancholy music to my heart. He is gone; but when--when will he return?"
"Do not take his departure so heavily, dear child," said her father.
"If you were acquainted with life and the world you would know that a journey to the Continent is nothing. Two years to one as young as you are will soon pa.s.s."
"It would, papa, if I loved him less. But my love for him--my love for him--that now is my misery. I must, however, rely upon other strength than my own. Papa, kneel down and pray for me,--and you, mamma, and all of you; for I fear I am myself incapable of praying as I used to do, with an un-divided heart."
Her father knelt down, but knowing her weak state of mind, he made his supplication as short and simple as might be consistent with the discharge of a duty so solemn.
"Now," said she, when it was concluded, "will you, mamma, and Agnes, help me to bed; I am very much exhausted, and my heart is sunk as if it were never to beat lightly again. It may yet; I would hope it,--hope it if I could."
They allowed her her own way, and without any allusion whatsoever to Charles, or his departure, more than she had made herself, they embraced her; and in a few minutes she was in bed, and as was soon evident to Agnes, who watched her, in a sound sleep.
Why is it that those who are dear to us are more tenderly dear to us while asleep than while awake? It is indeed difficult to say but we know that there are many in life and nature, especially in the and affections, which we feel as distinct truths without being able to satisfy ourselves they are so. This is one of them. What parent does not love the offspring more glowingly while the features are composed in sleep? What young husband does not feel his heart melt with a warmer emotion, on contemplating the countenance of his youthful wife, when that countenance is overshadowed with the placid but somewhat mournful beauty of repose?
When the family understood from Agnes that Jane had fallen into a slumber, they stole up quietly, and standing about her, each looked upon her with a long gaze of relief and satisfaction; for they knew that sleep would repair the injury which the trial of that day had wrought upon a mind so delicately framed as her"s. We question not but where there is beauty it is still more beautiful in sleep. The pa.s.sions are then at rest, and the still harmony of the countenance unbroken by the jarring discords and vexations of waking life; every feature then falls into its natural place, and renders the symmetry of the face chaster, whilst its general expression breathes more of that tender and pensive character, which const.i.tutes the highest order of beauty.
Jane"s countenance, in itself so exquisitely lovely, was now an object of deep and melancholy interest. Upon it might be observed faint traces of those contending emotions whose struggle had been on that day so nearly fatal to her mind for ever. The smile left behind it a faint and dying light, like the dim radiance of a spring evening when melting into dusk;--whilst the secret dread of becoming a cast-away, and the still abiding consciousness of having deceived her father, blended into the languid serenity of her face a slight expression of the pain they had occasioned her while awake.