Chapter XXII

Savanna was going to remonstrate, but the words 'short remainder of my days' distressed her so much, that tears choked her words; and she obeyed in silence her mistress's orders to pack up, except when she indulged in a few exclamations against her lady's cruelty in going away without taking leave of Colonel Mordaunt, who, sweet gentleman, would break his heart at her departure, especially as he was not to know whither she was going. A postchaise was at the door the next morning at six o'clock; and as Adeline had not much luggage, having left the chief part of her furniture to be divided between the mistresses of her two lodgings, in return for their kind attention to her and her child, she took an affectionate leave of her landlady, and desired the post-boy to drive a mile on the road before him: and when he had done so, she ordered him to go on to Barnet; while the disappointed mulatto thanked God that the tawny boy was gone to Scotland with his protectress, as it prevented her having the mortification of leaving him behind her, as well as the colonel.--'O had I such a lover,' cried she, (her eyes filling with tears,) 'me never leave him, nor he me!' and for the first time she thought her angel-lady hard-hearted.

For some miles they proceeded in silence, for Adeline was too much engrossed to speak; and the little Editha, being fast asleep in the mulatto's arms, did not draw her mother out of the reverie into which she had fallen.

'And where now?' said the mulatto, when the chaise stopped.

'To the next stage on the high north road.' And on they went again; nor did they stop, except for refreshments, till they had travelled thirty miles; when Adeline, worn out with fatigue, staid all night at the inn where the chaise stopped, and the next morning they resumed their journey, but not their silence. The mulatto could no longer restrain her curiosity; and she begged to know whither they were going, and why they were to be buried in the country?

Adeline, sighing deeply, answered, that they were going to live in Cumberland; and then sunk into silence again, as she could not give the mulatto her true reasons for the plan that she was pursuing without wounding her affectionate heart in a manner wholly incurable. The truth was, that Adeline supposed herself to be declining: she thought that she experienced those dreadful languors, those sensations of internal weakness, which, however veiled to the eye of the observer, speak in forcible language to the heart of the conscious sufferer. Indeed, Adeline had long struggled, but in vain, against feelings of a most overwhelming nature; amongst which, remorse and horror, for having led by her example and precepts an innocent girl into a life of infamy, were the most painfully predominant: for, believing Mary Warner's assertion when she saw her at Mr Langley's chambers, she looked upon that unhappy girl's guilt as the consequence of her own; and mourned, incessantly mourned, over the fatal errors of her early judgment, which had made her, though an idolater of virtue, a practical assistant to the cause of vice. When Adeline imagined the term of her existence to be drawing nigh, her mother, her obdurate but still dear mother, regained her wonted ascendancy over her affections; and to her, the approach of death seemed fraught with satisfaction. For that parent, so long, so repeatedly deaf to her prayers, and to the detail of those sufferings which she had made one of the conditions of her forgiveness, had promised to see and to forgive her on her _death-bed_; and her heart yearned, fondly yearned, for the moment when she should be pressed to the bosom of a relenting parent.

To Cumberland, therefore, she was resolved to hasten, and into the very neighbourhood of Mrs Mowbray; while, as the chaise wheeled them along to the place of their destination, even the prattle of her child could not always withdraw her from the abstraction into which she was plunged, as the scenes of her early years thronged upon her memory, and with them the recollection of those proofs of a mother's fondness, for a renewal of which, even in the society of Glenmurray, she had constantly and despondingly sighed.

As they approached Penrith, her emotion redoubled, and she involuntarily exclaimed--'Cruel, but still dear, mother, you little think your child is so near!'

'Heaven save me!' cried Savanna; 'are we to go and be near dat woman?'

'Yes,' replied Adeline. 'Did she not say she would forgive me on my death-bed?'

'But you not there yet, dear missess,' sobbed Savanna; 'you not there of long years!'

'Savanna,' returned Adeline, 'I should die contented to purchase my mother's blessing and forgiveness.'

Savanna, speechless with contending emotions, could not express by words the feeling of mixed sorrow and indignation which overwhelmed her; but she replied by putting Editha in Adeline's arms; then articulating with effort, 'Look there!' she sobbed aloud.

'I understand you,' said Adeline, kissing away the tears gathering in Editha's eyes, at sight of Savanna's distress: 'but perhaps I think my death would be of more service to my child than my life.'

'And to me too, I suppose,' replied Savanna reproachfully. 'Well,--me go to Scotland; for no one love me but the tawny boy.'

'You will stay and close my eyes first, I hope!' observed Adeline mournfully.

In a moment Savanna's resentment vanished. 'Me will live and die vid you,' she replied, her tears redoubling, while Adeline again sunk into thoughtful silence.

As soon as they reached Penrith, Adeline inquired for lodgings out of the town, on that side nearest to her mother's abode; and was so fortunate, as she esteemed herself, to procure two apartments at a small house within two miles of Mrs Mowbray's.

'Then I breathe once more the same air with my mother!' exclaimed Adeline as she took possession of her lodging. 'Savanna, methinks I breathe freer already!'

'Me more choked,' replied the mulatto, and turned sullenly away.

'Nay, I--I feel so much better, that to-morrow I will--I will take a walk,' said Adeline hesitatingly.

'And where?' asked Savanna eagerly.

'Oh, to-night I shall only walk to bed,' replied Adeline smiling; and with unusual cheerfulness she retired to rest.

The next morning she arose early; and being informed that a stile near a peasant's cottage commanded a view of Mrs Mowbray's house, she hired a man and cart to convey her to the bottom of the hill, and with Editha by her side she set out to indulge her feelings by gazing on the house which contained her mother.

When they alighted, Editha gaily endeavoured to climb the hill, and urged her mother to follow her; but Adeline, rendered weak by illness and breathless by emotion, felt the ascent so difficult, that no motive less powerful than the one which actuated her could have enabled her to reach the summit.

At length, however, she did reach it:--and the lawn before Mrs Mowbray's white house, her hay-fields, and the running stream at the bottom of it, burst in all their beauty on her view.--'And this is my mother's dwelling!' exclaimed Adeline: 'and there was I born: and near here--' shall I die, she would have added, but her voice failed her.

'Oh! what a pretty house and garden!' cried Editha in the unformed accents of childhood;--'how I should like to live there!'

This artless remark awakened a thousand mixed and overpowering feelings in the bosom of Adeline; and, after a pause of strong emotion, she exclaimed, catching the little prattler to her heart--'you _shall_ live there, my child!--yes, yes, you _shall_ live there!'

'But when?' resumed Editha.

'When I am in my grave,' answered Adeline.

'And when shall you be there?' replied the unconscious child, fondly caressing her: 'pray, mamma--pray be there soon!'

Adeline turned away, unable to answer her.

'Look--look, mamma!'--resumed Editha: 'there are ladies.--Oh! do let us go there now!--why can't we?'

'Would to God we could!' replied Adeline; as in one of the ladies she recognized Mrs Mowbray, and stood gazing on her till her eyes ached again: but what she felt on seeing her she will herself describe in the succeeding pages: and I shall only add, that, as soon as Mrs Mowbray returned into the house, Adeline, wrapped in a long and mournful reverie, returned, full of a new plan, to her lodgings.

There is no love so disinterested as parental love; and Adeline had all the keen sensibilities of a parent. To make, therefore, 'assurance doubly sure' that Mrs Mowbray should receive and should love her orphan when she was no more, she resolved to give up the gratification to which she had looked forward, the hope, before she died, of obtaining her forgiveness--that she might not weaken, by directing any part of them to herself, those feelings of remorse, fruitless tenderness, and useless regret in her mother's bosom, which she wished should be concentrated on her child.

'No,' said Adeline to herself, 'I am sure that she will not refuse to receive my orphan to her love and protection when I am no more, and am become alike insensible of reproaches and of blessings; and I think that she will love my child the more tenderly, because to me she will be unable to express the compunction which, sooner or later, she will feel from the recollection of her conduct towards me: therefore, I will make no demands on her love for myself; but, in a letter to be given her after my decease, bequeath my orphan to her care;'--and with this determination she returned from her ride.

'Have you see her?' said Savanna, running out to meet her.

'Yes--but not spoken to her; nor shall I see her again.'

'What--I suppose she see you, and not speak?'

'Oh, no; she did not see me, nor shall I urge her to see me: my plans are altered,' replied Adeline.

'And we go back to town and Colonel Mordaunt?'

'No,' resumed Adeline, sighing deeply, and preparing to write to Mrs Mowbray.

But it is necessary that we should for a short time go back to Berrendale, and relate that, while Adeline and Editha were confined with the small-pox, Mr Drury received a summons from his employer in Jamaica to go over thither, to be intrusted with some particular business: in consequence of this he resolved to call again on Adeline, and inquire whether she still persisted in styling herself Mrs Berrendale; as he concluded that Berrendale would be very glad of all the information relative to her and her child which he could possibly procure, whether his curiosity on the subject proceeded from fear or love.

It so happened, that as soon as Editha, as well as her mother, was in the height of the disorder, Mr Drury called; and finding that they were both very bad, he thought that his friend Berrendale was likely to get rid of both his encumbrances at once; and being eager to communicate good news to a man whose influence in the island might be a benefit to him, he every day called to inquire concerning their health.

The second floor in the house where Adeline lodged was then occupied by a young woman in indigent circumstances, who, as well as her child, had sickened with the distemper the very day that Editha was inoculated: and when Drury, just as he was setting off for Portsmouth, ran to gain the latest intelligence of the invalids, a charwoman, who attended to the door, not being acquainted with the name of the poor young woman and her little girl, concluding that Mr Drury, by Mrs Berrendale and miss who were ill with the small-pox, meant them, replied to his inquiries,--'Ah, poor things! it is all over with them, they died last night.'

On which, not staying for any further intelligence, Drury set off for Portsmouth, and arrived at Jamaica just as Berrendale was going to remit to Adeline a draft for a hundred pounds. For Adeline and the injury which he had done her, had been for some days constantly present to his thoughts. He had been ill; and as indigestion, the cause of his complaints, is apt to occasion disturbed dreams, he had in his dreams been haunted by the image of Glenmurray, who, with a threatening aspect, had reproached him with cruelty and base ingratitude to him, in deserting in such a manner the wife whom he had bequeathed to him.

The constant recurrence of these dreams had depressed his spirits and excited his remorse so much, that he could calm his feelings in no other way than by writing a kind letter to Adeline, and enclosing her a draft on his banker. This letter was on the point of being sent when Drury arrived, and, with very little ceremony, informed him that Adeline was dead.

'Dead!' exclaimed Berrendale, falling almost sensless on his couch: 'Dead!--Oh! for God's sake, tell me of what she died!--Surely, surely, she--' Here his voice failed him.

Drury coolly replied, that she and her child both died of the small-pox.

'But _when_? my dear fellow!--when? Say that they died nine months ago' (that was previous to his marriage) 'and you make me your friend for life!'

Drury, so _bribed_, would have said _any thing_; and, with all the coolness possible, he replied, 'Then be my friend for life:--they died rather better than nine months ago.'

Berrendale, being then convinced that bigamy was not likely to be proved against him, soon forgot, in the joy which this thought occasioned him, remorse for his conduct to Adeline, and regret for her early fate: besides, he concluded that he saved L100 by the means; for he knew not that the delicate mind of Adeline would have scorned to owe pecuniary obligations to the husband who had basely and unwarrantably deserted her.

But he was soon undeceived on this subject, by a letter which Colonel Mordaunt wrote in confidence to a friend in Jamaica, begging him to inquire concerning Mr Berrendale's second marriage; and to inform him privately that his injured wife had zealous and powerful friends in England, who were continually urging her to prosecute him for bigamy.

This intelligence had a fatal effect on the health of Berrendale; for though the violent temper and overbearing disposition of his second wife had often made him regret the gentle and compliant Adeline, and a separation from her, consequently, would be a blessing, still he feared to encounter the disgrace of a prosecution, and still more the anger of his West Indian wife; who, it was not improbable, might even attack his life in the first moment of ungoverned passion.

And to these fears he soon fell a sacrifice; for a frame debilitated by intemperance could not support the assaults made on it by the continued apprehensions which Colonel Mordaunt's friend had excited in him; and he died in that gentleman's presence, whom in his last moments he had summoned to his apartment to witness a will, by which he owned Adeline Mowbray to be his lawful wife, and left Editha, his acknowledged and only heir, a very considerable fortune.

But this circumstance, an account of which, with the will, was transmitted to Colonel Mordaunt, did not take place till long after Adeline took up her abode in Cumberland.