You are here

قراءة كتاب A Woman's Love

تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"

‏اللغة: English
A Woman's Love

A Woman's Love

تقييمك:
0
No votes yet
المؤلف:
دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 6

said to be very soothing—and though she,

——"Like pity on one side,
Her grief-subduing voice applied."

As my mother expected, Lady Helen now conceived a terror of Mrs. Pendarves, which nothing could conquer; and her health became so visibly worse, that she quitted the place the following week, accompanied by my father and mother, and my mother's uncle, to London, leaving Seymour and myself behind, to be spoiled by our too-indulgent relatives.

In a short time, my father and mother had settled their pecuniary concerns, and purchased furniture for their new habitation, of which they now hastened to take possession; and there we soon joined them.

I have detailed thus minutely the sentiments and sorrows of those with whom my earliest years were passed, as I believe that by them my character was in a great measure determined; and that I owe the merit which you attribute to me, and the crimes of which I am conscious, to having been the pupil of Lady Helen, and the daughter of Julia Pendarves.

The next three years passed quietly away; but my parents observed with pain that Lady Helen's visits to Seymour Park became more and more frequent, though Lord Seymour had married a young wife before his daughter's return, who was jealous to excess of Lady Helen's influence over her lord, and that she had evidently lost much of her enjoyment of their society. The truth was, that though Lady Helen did not envy the happiness of my parents, it was not always that she could bear to witness it; because it recalled painfully to her mind the period of her life when she was equally happy; and she had no longer that sympathy with my mother which is the foundation and the cement of friendly intercourse; so true is it, that equality of prosperity, like equality of situation, is necessary to give stability to friendship. My mother, though she felt this, was too delicate openly to repine.

My intercourse with her, and the benefit which I derived from her instructions, remained the same, for I was always allowed to accompany Lady Helen to Seymour Park.

But, alas! the tide of sympathy towards my poor mother, which had been checked in Lady Helen's bosom by happiness, now flowed again with increased fulness, when she was summoned to console her under a sorrow kindred with her own.

My father had been saved from the dangers of war, to perish at home by a violent death. He was thrown from his horse, struck his head against a stone, and died upon the spot.

Lady Helen having removed her to her own house, devoted her whole attention to the offices of a comforter. In proportion as my poor mother's sense of happiness had been keen, her sense of privation was overwhelming.

But, so curiously, so mercifully are we fashioned, that we are sometimes able to derive medicine for our suffering from its very excess.

My mother was, as you well know, a woman of high aspirings, and loved to be pre-eminent in all things. She was proud of her conjugal love; she was proud of the dangers which she had dared under its influence, and of the sufferings to which she rose superior, to prove the tender excess of that love; she was proud, also, of her good fortune, in having her husband's life so long preserved to her, and she gloried in his devoted and faithful affection. But now of this idolized husband she was bereaved in a moment, and without any alleviating circumstances.

Soothing, though painful, are the tears which we shed for those who fall in battle; and sweet, "like music in the dead of night," heard after distressing dreams, or while we are kept waking by mournful realities, falls the sound of a nation's regret on the ear of those who weep over a departed hero.

But my father died ingloriously, and YET my mother felt pride derived from that very source, for it made her, in her own estimation, pre-eminent in trial; for how hard was it, after having shared her husband's dangers, and the struggles of war, to see him perish at home, the victim of an ignoble accident!

"Had he died in the field of glory, I might have found," she cried, "some solace in his renown; and I was prepared to see him fall, when others fell around him. But to perish thus! oh! never was woman's trial so severe!"

And thus, while descanting on the pre-eminence of her misfortunes, she got rid of much of their severity.

You remember with what eloquence my mother used to describe what she had endured in America; you have also, I believe, heard her speak of the manner of my poor father's death: but you never heard what I have often listened to, with the pity which I could not utter, Lady Helen's assertion of her own trying sorrow, when my mother had harrowed up her feelings by the painful comparison.

"You may remember, that you were happy many years: but I" (here tears choked her voice) "remember, that while you were allowed to prove your love by soothing the sufferings of the being whom you adored, and had his smile to reward you, I was forced to prove mine only in the privacy of solitary and almost maddening recollections. Till recently, you have never known a real affliction, and I—oh! when have I for years experienced an enjoyment?"

This language used to silence, if it did not convince my mother.

But however they might dispute on the superiority of their trials, they loved each other the better for them, and were now scarcely ever separated.

Hence, Seymour and I were in a measure educated together, till it was judged fit that he should go to a public school. This painful trial was imposed on Lady Helen by her relations, and approved by her own judgment against the suggestions of her feelings; when I was eleven, and Seymour near fifteen years old; and when our mothers (as I was not long in discovering) had projected a union between us, and had promised each other to do all they could to ensure it.

Thus ends my Introduction.


Here begins, my dear friend,

THE HISTORY OF SEYMOUR AND HELEN PENDARVES.

Forgive me, if I introduce my narrative with a very vulgar but a most excellent proverb—which is, that "Little pitchers have wide ears;" or, that children hear many things which they ought not to hear, and which they were certainly not intended to hear. Now, to illustrate the truth of this proverb, and this explanation of it.

It certainly could not be the intention of two such sensible women that I should know I was designed for the wife of Seymour Pendarves; and yet they talked of their plans so openly before me, that I was perfectly mistress of their designs; and that precocity of mind which they had often remarked in me was increased so much by this consciousness, that while they fancied I was thinking on my doll or my baby-house, I was in reality meditating on my destined husband, till my heart was prepared to receive the passion of love at an age when it would have been better for me to have been ignorant of its existence. And this passion I was authorized to feel, and for a most engaging object! I leave you to judge how pleasant I found this permission—how much, young as I was, the idea of Seymour Pendarves now mixed itself with every thing I thought, and did, and said. Small was the chance, therefore, that even my highly honoured mother could ever succeed in changing the bent of those inclinations which she had herself given in the pliant hours of childhood and earliest youth.

It was some time before Lady Helen recovered her spirits, after the departure of her son. I also gave myself the air of being very dejected; but as with me it was the season of "the tear forgot as soon as shed," and of the preponderating influence of animal spirits, I bounded over the lawn as usual, after the first three days were gone by, and at

Pages