Part 91 (2/2)
”It will show how perfectly palsied was my heart when I tell you that I could not feel either horror of crime, grief for Volaski's death, or grat.i.tude for his bequest.
”I could feel nothing.
”Days and weeks pa.s.sed in this apathy of despair, from which I was at length painfully aroused by a most shocking discovery.
”Madelena, my hostess, who tenderly watched over my health had her suspicions aroused, and put some motherly questions to me, and when I had answered them she startled me with the announcement that in a very few months I should become a mother.
”This news, so joyful to most good women, only filled my soul with sorrow and dismay. It seemed to complicate my difficulties beyond all possibility of extrication.
”Lena, poor woman, who had never heard of my marriage with the Duke of Hereward, but had known me as the wife of the Count de Volaski, believed that all my distress was caused by the prospect of becoming the mother of a fatherless child, and bent all her energies to try to comfort me with the a.s.surance that this motherhood would be the greatest blessing of my lonely life.
”Ah! how willing would I have confided the whole truth to this good woman if I had dared to do so! It will show how timid I had grown when I a.s.sure you that I, a faithful daughter of the church, had not even ventured to go to confession once since my arrival in Italy.
”Now, Duke of Hereward, attend to my words! Had you been less bitterly incredulous of my statements, less cruel in your judgment of me, less murderous in your vengeance upon one much more sinned against than sinning, I should have ventured to write to you of my condition and my prospect of giving you an heir to your dukedom, in time to prevent your rash and fatal act by which you unconsciously delegalized your own lawful son!
”But your murderous cruelty had left me in a state of stupor from which I could not rally.
”Night after night I resolved to write to you. Day after day I tried to carry my resolution into effect. Time after time I failed through fear of you!
”At length I persuaded myself that there was no immediate necessity for action on my part. I might defer writing to you until the arrival of my child. That child might prove to be a girl, who could not be your heir, and, therefore, could not be an object of momentous importance to you; or it might die. Either of which circ.u.mstance would relieve me from the painful duty of opening a correspondence with you; or I myself might perish in the coming trial, when the duty of communicating the facts to you would devolve upon some one whom I would appoint with my dying breath.
”These were the causes of my fatal delay in writing to you.
”At length the time arrived. On the fifth of April, just five months after our separation. I became the mother of a fine, healthy, beautiful boy. He brought with him the mother-love that is Heaven's first gift to the child. I loved my son as I never loved a human being before. I _had_ prayed for death; but as I clasped my first-born to my bosom, I asked pardon for that sinful prayer, thanked the Lord that I had lived through my trial, and besought him still to spare my life for my boy's sake. From that day forth I was able to pray and to give thanks. I resolved that my first act of recovery should be to go to the church and make my confession to the good father there, gain my absolution, and then write and inform you of the birth of your heir, the infant Earl of Arondelle, for such I knew was even then the baby boy's t.i.tle! With these fond hopes I rapidly recovered. ”Perfect love casteth out fear.” Mother-love had cast out from my soul all fear of you. I thought that you would feel so rejoiced at the news of the birth of your son, your heir, and so fine a boy, that even for his sake you would forgive his mother, supposing that you should still think you had anything to forgive.
”In the midst of my vain dreaming a thunderbolt fell upon me!
”My boy was six weeks old. I had not yet left the house to carry out any of my happy resolutions, when my good Madelena entered my room and brought two large parcels of English papers, such as were sent me monthly by my London correspondent. She told me that the first parcel had arrived during my confinement to my bed, and that she had laid it away and forgotten all about it until this day, when the arrival of the second parcel had reminded her of it, and now she had brought them both, and hoped I would excuse her negligence in not having remembered to bring the first parcel sooner. I readily and even hastily excused her, for I was anxious to get rid of my good hostess and read my files of papers.
”As any one else would have done under the like circ.u.mstances, I opened the last parcel first, and selected the latest paper to begin with. It was the London _Times_ of April 7th. As I opened it, a short, marked paragraph caught my eyes.
”Judge of my consternation when I read the notice of your marriage with the Lady Augusta McDugald!
”The letters ran together on my vision, the room whirled around with me, all grew dark, and I lost consciousness. When I recovered my senses I found myself in bed, with Madelena and several of her kind neighbors in attendance upon me. Many days pa.s.sed before I was able to look again at the file of English newspapers.
”You had married again! you had married just one week before the birth of my son! But under what circ.u.mstances had you married? Did you suppose me to be dead, and that my death had set you free? Or--oh, horror! had you dragged my name before a public tribunal, and by lying _facts_--for facts do often lie--had you branded me with infidelity, and repudiated me by divorce?
”Such were the questions that tormented me, until I was able to examine the file of English newspapers, and find out from them; for, as before, I would not have taken any one into my confidence by getting another to read the papers for me, even if I could have found any one in that rural Italian neighborhood capable of reading English.
”At length, one morning, I sent for the papers, and began to look them over, and I found--merciful Heaven! what I feared to find--the full report of our divorce trial! found myself held up to public scorn and execration, the reproach of my own s.e.x--the contempt of yours! Found myself, in short, convicted and divorced from you, upon the foulest charge that can be brought upon a woman! Guiltless as I was! wronged as I had been! wis.h.i.+ng only to live a pure and blameless life, as I did!
”Oh! the intolerable anguish of the days that followed! But for my baby boy, I think I should have died, or maddened!
”In my worst paroxysms, good Madelena would come and take up my baby and lay him on my bosom, and whisper, that no doubt, though his handsome young father had gone to Heaven, it was all for the best; and we too, if we were good, would one day meet him there, or words to that effect.
”Surely angels are with children, and their presence makes itself felt in the comfort children bring to wounded hearts.
”One day, in a state bordering on idiocy, I think, I examined and compared dates, in the sickening hope that my darling boy might have been born before the decree of divorce had been p.r.o.nounced, and thus be the heir of his father's dukedom, notwithstanding all that followed.
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