We never loved without arraying the object in all the glories
of moral as well as physical perfection, and deriving a kind of dignity
to ourselves from our capacity of admiring a creature so excellent and
dignified; but this lavish and magnificent prodigality of the
imagination often leaves the heart a bankrupt. Love in its iron age of
disappointment, becomes very degraded--it submits to be satisfied with
merely exterior indulgences--a look, a touch of the hand, though
occurring by accident--a kind word, though uttered almost unconsciously,
suffices for its humble existence. In its first state, it is like man
before the fall, inhaling the odours of paradise, and enjoying the
communion of the Deity; in the latter, it is like the same being toiling
amid the briar and the thistle, barely to maintain a squalid existence
without enjoyment, utility, or loveliness. * * * * * *

“About this time, her Puritan aunt made a strong effort to recover
Elinor out of the snare of the enemy. She wrote a long letter (a great
exertion for a woman far advanced in years, and never in the habits of
epistolary composition) adjuring her apostate niece to return to the
guide of her youth, and the covenant of her God,--to take shelter in the
everlasting arms while they were still held out to her,--and to flee to
the city of refuge while its gates were yet open to receive her. She
urged on her the truth, power, and blessedness of the system of Calvin,
which she termed the gospel.--She supported and defended it with all the
metaphysical skill, and all the scriptural knowledge she possessed,--and
the latter was not scanty.--And she affectingly reminded her, that the
hand that traced these lines, would be unable ever to repeat the
admonition, and would probably be mouldering into dust while she was
employed in their perusal. “Elinor wept while she read, but that was all. She wept from physical
emotion, not from mental conviction; nor is there such an induration of
heart caused by any other power, as by that of the passion which seems
to soften it most. She answered the letter, however, and the effort
scarce cost her less than it did her decrepid and dying relative. She
acknowledged her dereliction of all religious feeling, and bewailed
it--the more, she added with painful sincerity, because I _feel my grief
is not sincere_. “Oh, my God!” she continued, “you who have clothed my
heart with such burning energies--you who have given to it a power of
loving so intense, so devoted, so concentrated--you have not given it in
vain;--no, in some happier world, or perhaps even in this, when this
“tyranny is overpast,” you will fill my heart with an image worthier
than him whom I once believed your image on earth. The stars, though
their light appears so dim and distant to us, were not lit by the
Almighty hand in vain. Their glorious light burns for remote and happier
worlds; and the beam of religion that glows so feebly to eyes almost
blind with earthly tears, may be rekindled when a broken heart has been
my passport to a place of rest. * * * * * * * *

“Do not think me, dear aunt, deserted by all hope of religion, even
though I have lost the sense of it. Was it not said by unerring lips to
a sinner, that her transgressions were forgiven because she _loved
much_? And does not this capacity of love prove that it will one day be
more worthily filled, and more happily employed. * * * * * *

“Miserable wretch that I am! At this moment, a voice from the bottom of
my heart asks me “_Whom_ hast thou loved so much? Was it man or God,
that thou darest to compare thyself with her who knelt and wept--not
before a mortal idol, but at the feet of an incarnate divinity?” * * * *
* *

“It may yet befall, that the ark which has floated through the waste of
waters may find its resting-place, and the trembling inmate debark on
the shores of an unknown but purer world.” * * * * * * * *




CHAPTER XXXI. There is an oak beside the froth-clad pool,
    Where in old time, as I have often heard,
    A woman desperate, a wretch like me,
    Ended her woes!--Her woes were not like mine! * * * * *

    ----------------Ronan will know;
    When he beholds me floating on the stream,
    His heart will tell him why Rivine died! HOME’S FATAL DISCOVERY. “The increasing decline of Elinor’s health was marked by all the family;
the very servant who stood behind her chair looked sadder every
day--even Margaret began to repent of the invitation she had given her
to the Castle. “Elinor felt this, and would have spared her what pain she could; but it
was not possible for herself to be insensible of the fast-fading remains
of her withering youth and blighted beauty. The place--the place itself,
was the principal cause of that mortal disease that was consuming her;
yet from that place she felt she had less resolution to tear herself
every day. So she lived, like those sufferers in eastern prisons, who
are not allowed to taste food unless mixed with poison, and who must
perish alike whether they eat or forbear. “Once, urged by intolerable pain of heart, (tortured by living in the
placid light of John Sandal’s sunny smile), she confessed this to
Margaret. She said, “It is impossible for me to support this
existence--impossible! To tread the floor which those steps have
trod--to listen for their approach, and when they come, feel they do not
bear him we seek--to see every object around me reflect his image, but
never--never to see the reality--to see the door open which once
disclosed his figure, and when it opens, not to see _him_, and when he
does appear, to see him not what he was--to feel he is the same and not
the same,--the same to the eye, but not to the heart--to struggle thus
between the dream of imagination and the cruel awaking of reality--Oh! Margaret--that undeception plants a dagger in the heart, whose point no
human hand can extract, and whose venom no human hand can heal!”
Margaret wept as Elinor spoke thus, and slowly, very slowly, expressed
her consent that Elinor should quit the Castle, if it was necessary for
her peace. “It was the very evening after this conversation, that Elinor, whose
habit was to wander among the woods that surrounded the Castle
unattended, met with John Sandal. It was a glorious autumnal evening,
just like that on which they had first met,--the associations of nature
were the same, those of the heart alone had suffered change. There is
that light in an autumnal sky,--that shade in autumnal woods,--that dim
and hallowed glory in the evening of the year, which is indefinably
combined with recollections. Sandal, as they met, had spoken to her in
the same voice of melody, and with the same heart-thrilling tenderness
of manner, that had never ceased to visit her ear since their first
meeting, like music in dreams. She imagined there was more than usual
feeling in his manner; and the spot where they were, and which memory
made populous and eloquent with the imagery and speech of other days,
flattered this illusion.