CHAPTER VII
Let those deplore their doom, Whose hope still grovels in this dark sojourn. But lofty souls can look beyond the tomb, Can smile at fate, and wonder how they mourn. Shall Spring to these sad scenes no more return? Is yonder wave the sun's eternal bed?-- Soon shall the orient with new lustre burn, And Spring shall soon her vital influence shed, Again attune the grove, again adorn the mead! BEATTIE
Emily, called, as she had requested, at an early hour, awoke, littlerefreshed by sleep, for uneasy dreams had pursued her, and marred thekindest blessing of the unhappy. But, when she opened her casement,looked out upon the woods, bright with the morning sun, and inspired thepure air, her mind was soothed. The scene was filled with that cheeringfreshness, which seems to breathe the very spirit of health, and sheheard only sweet and PICTURESQUE sounds, if such an expression may beallowed--the matin-bell of a distant convent, the faint murmur of thesea-waves, the song of birds, and the far-off low of cattle, whichshe saw coming slowly on between the trunks of trees. Struck withthe circumstances of imagery around her, she indulged the pensivetranquillity which they inspired; and while she leaned on her window,waiting till St. Aubert should descend to breakfast, her ideas arrangedthemselves in the following lines:
THE FIRST HOUR OF MORNING
How sweet to wind the forest's tangled shade, When early twilight, from the eastern bound, Dawns on the sleeping landscape in the glade, And fades as morning spreads her blush around!
When ev'ry infant flower, that wept in night, Lifts its chill head soft glowing with a tear, Expands its tender blossom to the light, And gives its incense to the genial air.
How fresh the breeze that wafts the rich perfume, And swells the melody of waking birds; The hum of bees, beneath the verdant gloom, And woodman's song, and low of distant herds!
Then, doubtful gleams the mountain's hoary head, Seen through the parting foliage from afar; And, farther still, the ocean's misty bed, With flitting sails, that partial sun-beams share.
But, vain the sylvan shade--the breath of May, The voice of music floating on the gale, And forms, that beam through morning's dewy veil, If health no longer bid the heart be gay! O balmy hour! 'tis thine her wealth to give, Here spread her blush, and bid the parent live!
Emily now heard persons moving below in the cottage, and presently thevoice of Michael, who was talking to his mules, as he led them forthfrom a hut adjoining. As she left her room, St. Aubert, who was nowrisen, met her at the door, apparently as little restored by sleep asherself. She led him down stairs to the little parlour, in which theyhad supped on the preceding night, where they found a neat breakfast setout, while the host and his daughter waited to bid them good-morrow.
'I envy you this cottage, my good friends,' said St. Aubert, as he metthem, 'it is so pleasant, so quiet, and so neat; and this air, that onebreathes--if any thing could restore lost health, it would surely bethis air.'
La Voisin bowed gratefully, and replied, with the gallantry of aFrenchman, 'Our cottage may be envied, sir, since you and Mademoisellehave honoured it with your presence.' St. Aubert gave him a friendlysmile for his compliment, and sat down to a table, spread with cream,fruit, new cheese, butter, and coffee. Emily, who had observed herfather with attention and thought he looked very ill, endeavoured topersuade him to defer travelling till the afternoon; but he seemed veryanxious to be at home, and his anxiety he expressed repeatedly, and withan earnestness that was unusual with him. He now said, he found himselfas well as he had been of late, and that he could bear travelling betterin the cool hour of the morning, than at any other time. But, whilehe was talking with his venerable host, and thanking him for his kindattentions, Emily observed his countenance change, and, before she couldreach him, he fell back in his chair. In a few moments he recovered fromthe sudden faintness that had come over him, but felt so ill, thathe perceived himself unable to set out, and, having remained a littlewhile, struggling against the pressure of indisposition, he begged hemight be helped up stairs to bed. This request renewed all the terrorwhich Emily had suffered on the preceding evening; but, though scarcelyable to support herself, under the sudden shock it gave her, she triedto conceal her apprehensions from St. Aubert, and gave her trembling armto assist him to the door of his chamber.
When he was once more in bed, he desired that Emily, who was thenweeping in her own room, might be called; and, as she came, he waved hishand for every other person to quit the apartment. When they were alone,he held out his hand to her, and fixed his eyes upon her countenance,with an expression so full of tenderness and grief, that all herfortitude forsook her, and she burst into an agony of tears. St. Aubertseemed struggling to acquire firmness, but was still unable to speak; hecould only press her hand, and check the tears that stood trembling inhis eyes. At length he commanded his voice, 'My dear child,' said he,trying to smile through his anguish, 'my dear Emily!'--and paused again.He raised his eyes to heaven, as if in prayer, and then, in a firmertone, and with a look, in which the tenderness of the father wasdignified by the pious solemnity of the saint, he said, 'My dear child,I would soften the painful truth I have to tell you, but I find myselfquite unequal to the art. Alas! I would, at this moment, conceal it fromyou, but that it would be most cruel to deceive you. It cannot belong before we must part; let us talk of it, that our thoughts and ourprayers may prepare us to bear it.' His voice faltered, while Emily,still weeping, pressed his hand close to her heart, which swelled with aconvulsive sigh, but she could not look up.
'Let me not waste these moments,' said St. Aubert, recovering himself,'I have much to say. There is a circumstance of solemn consequence,which I have to mention, and a solemn promise to obtain from you; whenthis is done I shall be easier. You have observed, my dear, how anxiousI am to reach home, but know not all my reasons for this. Listen to whatI am going to say.--Yet stay--before I say more give me this promise, apromise made to your dying father!'--St. Aubert was interrupted; Emily,struck by his last words, as if for the first time, with a conviction ofhis immediate danger, raised her head; her tears stopped, and, gazingat him for a moment with an expression of unutterable anguish, a slightconvulsion seized her, and she sunk senseless in her chair. St.Aubert's cries brought La Voisin and his daughter to the room, andthey administered every means in their power to restore her, but, for aconsiderable time, without effect. When she recovered, St. Aubert was soexhausted by the scene he had witnessed, that it was many minutesbefore he had strength to speak; he was, however, somewhat revived bya cordial, which Emily gave him; and, being again alone with her, heexerted himself to tranquilize her spirits, and to offer her all thecomfort of which her situation admitted. She threw herself into hisarms, wept on his neck, and grief made her so insensible to all he said,that he ceased to offer the alleviations, which he himself could not, atthis moment, feel, and mingled his silent tears with hers. Recalled, atlength, to a sense of duty, she tried to spare her father from a fartherview of her suffering; and, quitting his embrace, dried her tears,and said something, which she meant for consolation. 'My dear Emily,'replied St. Aubert, 'my dear child, we must look up with humbleconfidence to that Being, who has protected and comforted us in everydanger, and in every affliction we have known; to whose eye every momentof our lives has been exposed; he will not, he does not, forsake us now;I feel his consolations in my heart. I shall leave you, my child, stillin his care; and, though I depart from this world, I shall be still inhis presence. Nay, weep not again, my Emily. In death there is nothingnew, or surprising, since we all know, that we are born to die; andnothing terrible to those, who can confide in an all-powerful God.Had my life been spared now, after a very few years, in the courseof nature, I must have resigned it; old age, with all its train ofinfirmity, its privations and its sorrows, would have been mine; andthen, at last, death would have come, and called forth the tears you nowshed. Rather, my child, rejoice, that I am saved from such suffering,and that I am permitted to die with a mind unimpaired, and sensible ofthe comforts of faith
and resignation.' St. Aubert paused, fatigued withspeaking. Emily again endeavoured to assume an air of composure; and, inreplying to what he had said, tried to sooth him with a belief, that hehad not spoken in vain.
When he had reposed a while, he resumed the conversation. 'Let mereturn,' said he, 'to a subject, which is very near my heart. I said Ihad a solemn promise to receive from you; let me receive it now, beforeI explain the chief circumstance which it concerns; there are others,of which your peace requires that you should rest in ignorance. Promise,then, that you will perform exactly what I shall enjoin.'
Emily, awed by the earnest solemnity of his manner, dried her tears,that had begun again to flow, in spite of her efforts to suppress them;and, looking eloquently at St. Aubert, bound herself to do whatever heshould require by a vow, at which she shuddered, yet knew not why.
He proceeded: 'I know you too well, my Emily, to believe, that you wouldbreak any promise, much less one thus solemnly given; your assurancegives me peace, and the observance of it is of the utmost importance toyour tranquillity. Hear, then, what I am going to tell you. The closet,which adjoins my chamber at La Vallee, has a sliding board in the floor.You will know it by a remarkable knot in the wood, and by its being thenext board, except one, to the wainscot, which fronts the door. At thedistance of about a yard from that end, nearer the window, you willperceive a line across it, as if the plank had been joined;--the way toopen it is this:--Press your foot upon the line; the end of the boardwill then sink, and you may slide it with ease beneath the other. Below,you will see a hollow place.' St. Aubert paused for breath, and Emilysat fixed in deep attention. 'Do you understand these directions, mydear?' said he. Emily, though scarcely able to speak, assured him thatshe did.
'When you return home, then,' he added with a deep sigh--
At the mention of her return home, all the melancholy circumstances,that must attend this return, rushed upon her fancy; she burst intoconvulsive grief, and St. Aubert himself, affected beyond the resistanceof the fortitude which he had, at first, summoned, wept with her.After some moments, he composed himself. 'My dear child,' said he, 'becomforted. When I am gone, you will not be forsaken--I leave you only inthe more immediate care of that Providence, which has never yet forsakenme. Do not afflict me with this excess of grief; rather teach me byyour example to bear my own.' He stopped again, and Emily, the more sheendeavoured to restrain her emotion, found it the less possible to doso.
St. Aubert, who now spoke with pain, resumed the subject. 'That closet,my dear,--when you return home, go to it; and, beneath the board I havedescribed, you will find a packet of written papers. Attend to me now,for the promise you have given particularly relates to what I shalldirect. These papers you must burn--and, solemnly I command you, WITHOUTEXAMINING THEM.'
Emily's surprise, for a moment, overcame her grief, and she ventured toask, why this must be? St. Aubert replied, that, if it had been rightfor him to explain his reasons, her late promise would have beenunnecessarily exacted. 'It is sufficient for you, my love, to have adeep sense of the importance of observing me in this instance.' St.Aubert proceeded. 'Under that board you will also find about two hundredlouis d'ors, wrapped in a silk purse; indeed, it was to secure whatevermoney might be in the chateau, that this secret place was contrived,at a time when the province was over-run by troops of men, who tookadvantage of the tumults, and became plunderers.
'But I have yet another promise to receive from you, which is--thatyou will never, whatever may be your future circumstances, SELL thechateau.' St. Aubert even enjoined her, whenever she might marry, tomake it an article in the contract, that the chateau should alwaysbe hers. He then gave her a more minute account of his presentcircumstances than he had yet done, adding, 'The two hundred louis, withwhat money you will now find in my purse, is all the ready money I haveto leave you. I have told you how I am circumstanced with M. Motteville,at Paris. Ah, my child! I leave you poor--but not destitute,' he added,after a long pause. Emily could make no reply to any thing he now said,but knelt at the bed-side, with her face upon the quilt, weeping overthe hand she held there.
After this conversation, the mind of St. Aubert appeared to be much moreat ease; but, exhausted by the effort of speaking, he sunk into a kindof doze, and Emily continued to watch and weep beside him, till a gentletap at the chamber-door roused her. It was La Voisin, come to say, thata confessor from the neighbouring convent was below, ready to attend St.Aubert. Emily would not suffer her father to be disturbed, but desired,that the priest might not leave the cottage. When St. Aubert awoke fromthis doze, his senses were confused, and it was some moments before herecovered them sufficiently to know, that it was Emily who sat besidehim. He then moved his lips, and stretched forth his hand to her; as shereceived which, she sunk back in her chair, overcome by the impressionof death on his countenance. In a few minutes he recovered his voice,and Emily then asked, if he wished to see the confessor; he replied,that he did; and, when the holy father appeared, she withdrew. Theyremained alone together above half an hour; when Emily was called in,she found St. Aubert more agitated than when she had left him, and shegazed, with a slight degree of resentment, at the friar, as the causeof this; who, however, looked mildly and mournfully at her, and turnedaway. St. Aubert, in a tremulous voice, said, he wished her to join inprayer with him, and asked if La Voisin would do so too. The old man andhis daughter came; they both wept, and knelt with Emily round the bed,while the holy father read in a solemn voice the service for the dying.St. Aubert lay with a serene countenance, and seemed to join ferventlyin the devotion, while tears often stole from beneath his closedeyelids, and Emily's sobs more than once interrupted the service.
When it was concluded, and extreme unction had been administered,the friar withdrew. St. Aubert then made a sign for La Voisin to comenearer. He gave him his hand, and was, for a moment, silent. At length,he said, in a trembling voice, 'My good friend, our acquaintance hasbeen short, but long enough to give you an opportunity of shewing memuch kind attention. I cannot doubt, that you will extend this kindnessto my daughter, when I am gone; she will have need of it. I entrust herto your care during the few days she will remain here. I need say nomore--you know the feelings of a father, for you have children; minewould be, indeed, severe if I had less confidence in you.' He paused. LaVoisin assured him, and his tears bore testimony to his sincerity, thathe would do all he could to soften her affliction, and that, if St.Aubert wished it, he would even attend her into Gascony; an offer sopleasing to St. Aubert, that he had scarcely words to acknowledge hissense of the old man's kindness, or to tell him, that he accepted it.The scene, that followed between St. Aubert and Emily, affected LaVoisin so much, that he quitted the chamber, and she was again leftalone with her father, whose spirits seemed fainting fast, but neitherhis senses, or his voice, yet failed him; and, at intervals, he employedmuch of these last awful moments in advising his daughter, as to herfuture conduct. Perhaps, he never had thought more justly, or expressedhimself more clearly, than he did now.
'Above all, my dear Emily,' said he, 'do not indulge in the pride offine feeling, the romantic error of amiable minds. Those, who reallypossess sensibility, ought early to be taught, that it is a dangerousquality, which is continually extracting the excess of misery, ordelight, from every surrounding circumstance. And, since, in our passagethrough this world, painful circumstances occur more frequently thanpleasing ones, and since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute thanour sense of good, we become the victims of our feelings, unless we canin some degree command them. I know you will say, (for you are young, myEmily) I know you will say, that you are contented sometimes to suffer,rather than to give up your refined sense of happiness, at others;but, when your mind has been long harassed by vicissitude, you will becontent to rest, and you will then recover from your delusion. You willperceive, that the phantom of happiness is exchanged for the substance;for happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult. It is of atemperate and uniform nature, and can no more exist in a hea
rt, that iscontinually alive to minute circumstances, than in one that is dead tofeeling. You see, my dear, that, though I would guard you against thedangers of sensibility, I am not an advocate for apathy. At your ageI should have said THAT is a vice more hateful than all the errors ofsensibility, and I say so still. I call it a VICE, because it leads topositive evil; in this, however, it does no more than an ill-governedsensibility, which, by such a rule, might also be called a vice; butthe evil of the former is of more general consequence. I have exhaustedmyself,' said St. Aubert, feebly, 'and have wearied you, my Emily; but,on a subject so important to your future comfort, I am anxious to beperfectly understood.'
Emily assured him, that his advice was most precious to her, and thatshe would never forget it, or cease from endeavouring to profit by it.St. Aubert smiled affectionately and sorrowfully upon her. 'I repeatit,' said he, 'I would not teach you to become insensible, if I could;I would only warn you of the evils of susceptibility, and point outhow you may avoid them. Beware, my love, I conjure you, of thatself-delusion, which has been fatal to the peace of so many persons;beware of priding yourself on the gracefulness of sensibility; if youyield to this vanity, your happiness is lost for ever. Always rememberhow much more valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace ofsensibility. Do not, however, confound fortitude with apathy; apathycannot know the virtue. Remember, too, that one act of beneficence,one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in theworld. Sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it leadus to good actions. The miser, who thinks himself respectable, merelybecause he possesses wealth, and thus mistakes the means of doing good,for the actual accomplishment of it, is not more blameable than the manof sentiment, without active virtue. You may have observed persons, whodelight so much in this sort of sensibility to sentiment, which excludesthat to the calls of any practical virtue, that they turn fromthe distressed, and, because their sufferings are painful to becontemplated, do not endeavour to relieve them. How despicable is thathumanity, which can be contented to pity, where it might assuage!'
St. Aubert, some time after, spoke of Madame Cheron, his sister. 'Letme inform you of a circumstance, that nearly affects your welfare,' headded. 'We have, you know, had little intercourse for some years, but,as she is now your only female relation, I have thought it proper toconsign you to her care, as you will see in my will, till you are ofage, and to recommend you to her protection afterwards. She is notexactly the person, to whom I would have committed my Emily, but I hadno alternative, and I believe her to be upon the whole--a good kind ofwoman. I need not recommend it to your prudence, my love, to endeavourto conciliate her kindness; you will do this for his sake, who has oftenwished to do so for yours.'
Emily assured him, that, whatever he requested she would religiouslyperform to the utmost of her ability. 'Alas!' added she, in a voiceinterrupted by sighs, 'that will soon be all which remains for me; itwill be almost my only consolation to fulfil your wishes.'
St. Aubert looked up silently in her face, as if would have spoken, buthis spirit sunk a while, and his eyes became heavy and dull. She feltthat look at her heart. 'My dear father!' she exclaimed; and then,checking herself, pressed his hand closer, and hid her face withher handkerchief. Her tears were concealed, but St. Aubert heard herconvulsive sobs. His spirits returned. 'O my child!' said he, faintly,'let my consolations be yours. I die in peace; for I know, that Iam about to return to the bosom of my Father, who will still be yourFather, when I am gone. Always trust in him, my love, and he willsupport you in these moments, as he supports me.'
Emily could only listen, and weep; but the extreme composure of hismanner, and the faith and hope he expressed, somewhat soothed heranguish. Yet, whenever she looked upon his emaciated countenance, andsaw the lines of death beginning to prevail over it--saw his sunk eyes,still bent on her, and their heavy lids pressing to a close, there was apang in her heart, such as defied expression, though it required filialvirtue, like hers, to forbear the attempt.
He desired once more to bless her; 'Where are you, my dear?' said he,as he stretched forth his hands. Emily had turned to the window, that hemight not perceive her anguish; she now understood, that his sight hadfailed him. When he had given her his blessing, and it seemed to be thelast effort of expiring life, he sunk back on his pillow. She kissedhis forehead; the damps of death had settled there, and, forgetting herfortitude for a moment, her tears mingled with them. St. Aubert liftedup his eyes; the spirit of a father returned to them, but it quicklyvanished, and he spoke no more.
St. Aubert lingered till about three o'clock in the afternoon, and, thusgradually sinking into death, he expired without a struggle, or a sigh.
Emily was led from the chamber by La Voisin and his daughter, who didwhat they could to comfort her. The old man sat and wept with her. Agneswas more erroneously officious.