Patience - Barbara Hofland (red novels txt) 📗
- Author: Barbara Hofland
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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
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