If any thing could have cured the rankling wounds of Falkner's mind, it was the excellence of the young Elizabeth. Again and again he repeated to himself, that, brought up among the worldly and cold, her noblest qualities would either have been destroyed, or produced misery. In contributing to her happiness and goodness, he hoped to make some atonement for the past. There were many periods when remorse, and regret, and self-abhorrence held powerful sway over him: he was, indeed, during the larger portion of his time, in the fullest sense of the word—miserable. Yet there were gleams of sunshine he had never hoped to experience again—and he readily gave way to this relief; while he hoped that the worst of his pains were over.
In this idea he was egregiously mistaken. He was allowed to repose for a few years. But the cry of blood was yet unanswered—the evil he had committed unatoned; though they did not approach him, the consequences of his crime were full of venom and bitterness to others—and, unawares and unexpectedly, he was brought to view and feel the wretchedness of which he was the sole author.
Chapter VII.
Three more years passed thus over the head of the young Elizabeth; when, during the warm summer months, the wanderers established themselves for a season at Baden. They had hitherto lived in great seclusion—and Falkner continued to do so; but he was not sorry to find his adopted child noticed and courted by various noble ladies, who were charmed by the pure complexion—the golden hair, and spirited, though gentle, manners of the young English girl.
Elizabeth's characteristic was an enthusiastic affectionateness—every little act of kindness that she received excited her gratitude: she felt as if she never could—though she would constantly endeavour—repay the vast debt she owed her benefactor. She loved to repass in her mind those sad days when, under the care of the sordid Mrs. Baker, she ran every hazard of incurring the worst evils of poverty; ignorance, and blunted sensibility. She had preserved her little well-worn shoes, full of holes, and slipping from her feet, as a sort of record of her neglected situation. She remembered how her hours had been spent loitering on the beach—sometimes with her little book, from which her mother had taught her—oftener in constructing sand castles, decorated with pebbles and broken shells. She recollected how she had thus built an imitation of the church and church-yard, with its shady corner, and single stone, marking two graves: she remembered the vulgar, loud voice that called her from her employment, with, "Come, Missy, come to your dinner! The Lord help me! I wonder when any body else will give you a dinner." She called to mind the boasts of Mrs. Baker's children, contrasting their Sunday frock with hers—the smallest portion of cake given to her last, and with a taunt that made her little heart swell, and her throat feel choked, so that she could not eat it, but scattered it to the birds—on which she was beat for being wasteful; all this was contrasted with the vigilance, the tenderness, the respect of her protector. She brooded over these thoughts till he became sacred in her eyes; and, young as she was, her heart yearned and sickened for an occasion to demonstrate the deep and unutterable thankfulness that possessed her soul.
She was not aware of the services she rendered him in her turn. The very sight of her was the dearest—almost the only joy of his life. Devoured by disappointment, gloom, and remorse, he found no relief except in her artless prattle, or the consciousness of the good he did her. She perceived this, and was ever on the alert to watch his mood, and to try by every art to awaken complacent feelings. She did not know, it is true, the cause of his sufferings—the fatal memories that haunted him in the silence of night—and threw a dusky veil over the radiance of day. She did not see the fair, reproachful figure, that was often before him to startle and appal—she did not hear the shrieks that rung in his ears—nor behold her floating away, lifeless, on the turbid waves—who, but a little before, had stood in all the glow of life and beauty before him. All these agonizing images haunted silently his miserable soul, and Elizabeth could only see the shadow they cast over him, and strive to dissipate it. When she could perceive the dark hour passing off, chased away by her endeavours, she felt proud and happy. And when he told her that she had saved his life, and was his only tie to it—that she alone prevented his perishing miserably, or lingering in anguish and despair, her fond heart swelled with rapture; and what soul-felt vows she made to remain for ever beside him, and pay back to the last the incalculable debt she owed! If it be true that the most perfect love subsists between unequals—no more entire attachment ever existed, than that between this man of sorrows, and the happy innocent child. He, worn by passion, oppressed by a sense of guilt, his brow trenched by the struggles of many years—she, stepping pure and free into life, innocent as an angel—animated only by the most disinterested feelings. The link between them of mutual benefit and mutual interest had been cemented by time and habit—by each waking thought, and nightly dream. What is so often a slothful, unapparent sense of parental and filial duty, was with them a living, active spirit, for ever manifesting itself in some new form. It woke with them, went abroad with them—attuned the voice, and shone brightly in the eyes.
It is a singular law of human life, that the past, which apparently no longer forms a portion of our existence, never dies; new shoots, as it were, spring up at different intervals and places, all bearing the indelible characteristics of the parent stalk; the circular emblem of eternity is suggested by this meeting and recurrence of the broken ends of our life. Falkner had been many years absent from England. He had quitted it to get rid of the consequences of an act which he deeply deplored, but which he did not wish his enemies to have the triumph of avenging. So completely during this interval had he been cut off from any, even allusion to the past, that he often tried to deceive himself into thinking it a dream;—often into the persuasion, that, tragical as was the catastrophe he had brought about, it was in its result for the best. The remembrance of the young and lovely victim lying dead at his feet, prevented his ever being really the dupe of these fond deceits—but still, memory and imagination alone ministered to remorse—it was brought home to him by none of the effects from which he had separated himself by a vast extent of sea and land.
The sight of the English at Baden was exceedingly painful to him. They seemed so many accusers and judges; he sedulously avoided their resorts, and turned away when he saw any approach. Yet he permitted Elizabeth to visit among them, and heard her accounts of what she saw and heard even with pleasure; for every word showed the favourable impression she made, and the simplicity of her own tastes and feelings. It was a new world to her, to find herself talked to, praised and caressed, by decrepit, painted, but courteous old princesses, dowagers, and all the tribe of German nobility and English fashionable wanderers. She was much amused, and her lively descriptions often made Falkner smile, and pleased him by proving that her firm and unsophisticated heart was not to be deluded by adulation.
Soon, however, she became more interested by a strange tale she brought home, of a solitary boy. He was English—handsome, and well born—but savage, and secluded to a degree that admitted of no attention being paid him. She heard him spoken of at first, at the house of some foreigners. They entered on a dissertation on the peculiar melancholy of the English, that could develop itself in a lad scarcely sixteen. He was a misanthrope. He was seen rambling the country, either on foot, or on a pony—but he would accept no invitations—shunned the very aspect of his fellows—never appearing, by any chance, in the frequented walks about the baths. Was he deaf and dumb? Some replied in the affirmative, and yet this opinion gained no general belief. Elizabeth once saw him at a little distance, seated under a wide-spreading tree in a little dell—to her he seemed more handsome than any thing she had ever seen, and more sad. One day she was in company with a gentleman, who she was told was his father; a man somewhat advanced in years—of a stern, saturnine aspect—whose smile was a sneer, and who spoke of his only child, calling him that "unhappy boy," in a tone that bespoke rather contempt than commiseration. It soon became rumoured that he was somewhat alienated in mind through the ill-treatment of his parent—and Elizabeth could almost believe this—she was so struck by the unfeeling and disagreeable appearance
