The cherished
images of the past,--the lovely visions of her golden childhood,--seemed
fearfully and insanely contrasted in her imagination with the ideas of
slaughter and blood,--of decks strewed with corses,--and of a young and
terrible conqueror bestriding them amid showers of ball and clouds of
fire. Her very senses reeled between these opposite impressions. Her
reason could not brook the sudden transition from the smiling and
Cupid-like companion of her childhood, to the hero of the embattled
deep, and of nations and navies on fire,--garments rolled in blood,--the
thunder of the battle and the shouting. “She sat and tried, as well as her wandering fancy would allow her, to
reconcile the images of that remembered eye, whose beam rested on her
like the dark blue of a summer heaven swimming in dewy light,--with the
flash that darted from the burning eye of the conqueror, whose light was
as fatal where it fell as his sword. She saw him, as he had once sat
beside her, smiling like the first morning in spring,--and smiled in
return. The slender form, the soft and springy movements, the kiss of
childhood that felt like velvet, and scented like balm,--was suddenly
exchanged in her dream (for all her thoughts were dreams) for a fearful
figure of one drenched in blood, and spattered with brains and gore. And
Elinor, half-screaming, exclaimed, “Is this he whom I loved?” Thus her
mind, vacillating between contrasts so strongly opposed, began to feel
its moorings give way. She drifted from rock to rock, and on every rock
she struck a wreck. “Elinor relinquished her usual meetings with the family--she sat in her
own apartment all the day, and most of the evening. It was a lonely
turret projecting so far from the walls of the Castle, that there were
windows, or rather casements, on three sides. There Elinor sat to catch
the blast, let it blow as it would, and imagined she heard in its
moanings the cries of drowning seamen. No music that her lute, or that
which Margaret touched with a more powerful and brilliant finger, could
wean her from this melancholy indulgence. “Hush!” she would say to the females who attended her--“Hush! let me
listen to the blast!--It waves many a banner spread for victory,--it
sighs over many a head that has been laid low!”

“Her amazement that a being could be at once so gentle and so
ferocious--her dread that the habits of his life must have converted the
_angel of her wilderness_ into a brave but brutal seaman, estranged from
the feelings that had rendered the beautiful boy so indulgent to her
errors,--so propitiatory between her and her proud relatives,--so aidant
in all her amusements,--so necessary to her very existence.--The tones
of this dreamy life harmonized, awfully for Elinor, with the sound of
the blast as it shook the turrets of the Castle, or swept the woods that
groaned and bowed beneath its awful visitings. And this secluded life,
intense feeling, and profound and heart-rooted secret of her silent
passion, held perhaps fearful and indescribable alliance with that
aberration of mind, that prostration at once of the heart and the
intellect, that have been found to bring forth, according as the agents
were impelled, “the savour of life unto life, or of death unto death.”
She had all the intensity of passion, combined with all the devotedness
of religion; but she knew not which way to steer, or what gale to
follow. She trembled and shrunk from her doubtful pilotage, and the
rudder was left to the mercy of the winds and waves. Slender mercy do
those experience who commit themselves to the tempests of the mental
world--better if they had sunk at once amid the strife of the dark
waters in their wild and wintry rage; there they would soon have arrived
at the haven where they would be secure. “Such was the state of Elinor, when the arrival of one who had been long
a stranger in the vicinity of the Castle caused a strong sensation in
its inhabitants. “The widow Sandal, the mother of the young seaman, who had hitherto
lived in obscurity on the interest of the small fortune bequeathed her
by Sir Roger, (under the rigid injunction of never visiting the Castle),
suddenly arrived in Shrewsbury, which was scarce a mile from it, and
declared her intention of fixing her residence there. “The affection of her son had showered on her, with the profusion of a
sailor, and the fondness of a child, all the rewards of his
services--but their glory;--and in comparative affluence, and honoured
and pointed to as the mother of the young hero who stood high in royal
favour, the widow of many sorrows took up her abode once more near the
seat of her ancestors. “At this period, every step taken by the member of a family was a
subject of anxious and solemn consultation to those who considered
themselves its heads, and there was a kind of chapter held in Mortimer
Castle on this singular movement of the widow Sandal. Elinor’s heart
beat hard during the debate--it subsided, however, at the determination,
that the severe sentence of Sir Roger was not to be extended beyond his
death, and that a descendant of the house of Mortimer should never live
neglected while almost under the shadow of its walls. “The visit was accordingly solemnly paid, and gratefully
received,--there was much stately courtesy on the part of Mrs Ann
towards her niece, (whom she called cousin after the old English
fashion), and a due degree of retrospective humility and decorous
dejection on that of the widow. They parted mutually softened towards,
if not pleased with each other, and the intercourse thus opened was
unremittingly sustained by Elinor, whose weekly visits of ceremony soon
became the daily visits of interest and of habit. The object of the
thoughts of both was the theme of the tongue of but one; and, as is not
uncommon, she who said nothing felt the most. The details of his
exploits, the description of his person, the fond enumeration of the
promises of his childhood, and the graces and goodliness of his youth,
were dangerous topics for the listener, to whom the bare mention of his
name caused an intoxication of the heart, from which it scarce recovered
for hours. “The frequency of these visits was not observed to be diminished by a
faint rumour, which the widow seemed to believe, rather from hope than
probability, that Captain Sandal was about to visit the neighbourhood of
the Castle. It was one evening in autumn, that Elinor, who had been
prevented during the day from visiting her aunt, set out attended only
by her maid and her usher. There was a private path through the park,
that opened by a small door on the verge of the suburbs where the widow
lived. Elinor, on her arrival, found her aunt from home, and was
informed she had gone to pass the evening with a friend in Shrewsbury.