<h2 id="id00302" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER VI.</h2>
<h5 id="id00303">THE BLIGHTED HEART.</h5>
<p id="id00304" style="margin-top: 2em">In February the deepest snow storm fell that had fallen during the whole
winter. The roads were considered quite impassable by carriages, and the
family at Luckenough were blocked up in their old house. Yet one day, in
the midst of this "tremendous state of affairs," as the commodore called
it, a messenger from Benedict arrived at Luckenough, the bearer of a
letter to Mrs. Waugh, which he refused to intrust to any other hands but
that lady's own. He was, therefore, shown into the presence of the
mistress, to whom he presented the note. Mrs. Waugh took it and looked
at it with some curiosity—it was superscribed in a slight feminine
hand—quite new to Henrietta; and she opened it, and turned immediately
to the signature—Marian Mayfield—a strange name to her; she had never
seen or heard it before. She lost no more time in perusing the letter,
but as she read, her cheek flushed and paled—her agitation became
excessive, she was obliged to ring for a glass of water, and as soon as
she had swallowed it she crushed and thrust the letter into her bosom,
ordered her mule to be saddled instantly, and her riding pelisse and
hood to be brought. In two hours and a half Henrietta reached the
village, and alighted at the little hotel. Of the landlord, who came
forth respectfully to meet her, she demanded to be shown immediately to
the presence of the young lady who had recently arrived from abroad. The
host bowed, and inviting the lady to follow him, led the way to the
little private parlor, the door of which he opened to let the visitor
pass in, and then bowing again, he closed it and retired.</p>
<p id="id00305">And Mrs. Waugh found herself in a small, half-darkened room, where,
reclining in an easy chair, sat—Edith? Was it Edith? Could it be Edith?
That fair phantom of a girl to whom the black ringlets and black dress
alone seemed to give outline and personality? Yes, it was Edith! But,
oh! so changed! so wan and transparent, with such blue shadows in the
hollows of her eyes and temples and cheeks—with such heavy, heavy
eyelids, seemingly dragged down by the weight of their long, sleeping
lashes—with such anguish in the gaze of the melting, dark eyes!</p>
<p id="id00306">"Edith, my love! My dearest Edith!" said Mrs. Waugh, going to her.</p>
<p id="id00307">She half arose, and sank speechless into the kind arms opened to receive
her. Mrs. Waugh held her to her bosom a moment in silence, and then
said:</p>
<p id="id00308">"Edith, my dear, I got a note from your friend, Miss Mayfield, saying<br/>
that you had returned, and wished to see me. But how is this, my child?<br/>
You have evidently been very ill—you are still. Where is your husband,<br/>
Edith? Edith, where is your husband?"<br/></p>
<p id="id00309">A shiver that shook her whole frame—a choking, gasping sob, was all the
answer she could make.</p>
<p id="id00310">"Where is he, Edith? Ordered away somewhere, upon some distant service?
That is hard, but never mind! Hope for the best! You will meet him
again, dear? But where is he, then?"</p>
<p id="id00311">She lifted up her poor head, and uttering—"Dead! dead!" dropped it
heavily again upon the kind, supporting bosom.</p>
<p id="id00312">"You do not mean it! My dear, you do not mean it! You do not know what
you are saying! Dead! when? how?" asked Mrs. Waugh, in great trouble.</p>
<p id="id00313">"Shot! shot!" whispered the poor thing, in a tone so hollow, it seemed
reverberating through a vault. And then her stricken head sank heavily
down—and Henrietta perceived that strength and consciousness had
utterly departed. She placed her in the easy chair, and turned around to
look for restoratives, when a door leading into an adjoining bedroom
opened, and a young girl entered, and came quietly and quickly forward
to the side of the sufferer. She greeted Mrs. Waugh politely, and then
gave her undivided attention to Edith, whose care she seemed fully
competent to undertake.</p>
<p id="id00314">This young girl was not over fourteen years of age, yet the most
beautiful and blooming creature, Mrs. Waugh thought, that she had ever
beheld.</p>
<p id="id00315">Her presence in the room seemed at once to dispel the gloom and shadow.</p>
<p id="id00316">She took Edith's hand, and settled her more at ease in the chair—but
refused the cologne and the salammoniac that Mrs. Waugh produced,
saying, cheerfully:</p>
<p id="id00317">"She has not fainted, you perceive—she breathes—it is better to leave
her to nature for a while—too much attention worries her—she is very
weak."</p>
<p id="id00318">Marian had now settled her comfortably back in the resting chair, and
stood by her side, not near enough to incommode her in the least.</p>
<p id="id00319">"I do not understand all this. She says that her husband is dead, poor
child—how came it about? Tell me!" said Mrs. Waugh, in a low voice.</p>
<p id="id00320">Marian's clear blue eyes filled with tears, but she dropped their white
lids and long black lashes over them, and would not let them fall; and
her ripe lips quivered, but she firmly compressed them, and remained
silent for a moment. Then she said, in a whisper:</p>
<p id="id00321">"I will tell you by and by," and she glanced at Edith, to intimate that
the story must not be rehearsed in her presence, however insensible she
might appear to be.</p>
<p id="id00322">"You are the young lady who wrote to me?"</p>
<p id="id00323">"Yes, madam."</p>
<p id="id00324">"You are a friend of my poor girl's?"</p>
<p id="id00325">"Something more than that, madam—I will tell you by and by," said
Marian, and her kind, dear eyes were again turned upon Edith, and
observing the latter slightly move, she said, in her pleasant voice:</p>
<p id="id00326">"Edith, dear, shall I put you to bed—are you able to walk?"</p>
<p id="id00327">"Yes, yes," murmured the sufferer, turning her head uneasily from side
to side.</p>
<p id="id00328">Marian gave her hand, and assisted the poor girl to rise, and tenderly
supported her as she walked to the bedroom.</p>
<p id="id00329">Mrs. Waugh arose to give her assistance, but Marian shook her head at
her, with a kindly look, that seemed to say, "Do not startle her—she is
used only to me lately," and bore her out of sight into the bedroom.</p>
<p id="id00330">Presently she reappeared in the little parlor, opened the blinds, drew
back the curtains, and let the sunlight into the dark room. Then she
ordered more wood to the fire, and when it was replenished, and the
servant had left the room, she invited Mrs. Waugh to draw her chair to
the hearth, and then said:</p>
<p id="id00331">"I am ready now, madam, to tell you anything you wish to know—indeed I
had supposed that you were acquainted with everything relating to
Edith's marriage, and its fatal results."</p>
<p id="id00332">"I know absolutely nothing but what I have learned to-day. We never
received a single letter, or message, or news of any kind, or in any
shape, from Edith or her husband, from the day they left until now."</p>
<p id="id00333">"Yon did not hear, then, that he was court-martialed, and—sentenced to
death!"</p>
<p id="id00334">"No, no—good heaven, no!"</p>
<p id="id00335">"He was tried for mutiny or rebellion—I know not which—but it was for
raising arms against his superior officers while here in America—the
occasion was—but you know the occasion better than I do."</p>
<p id="id00336">"Yes, yes, it was when he rescued Edith from the violence of Thorg and
his men. But oh! heaven, how horrible! that he should have been
condemned to death for a noble act! It is incredible—impossible—how
could it have happened? He never expected such a fate—none of us did,
or we would never have consented to his return. There seemed no prospect
of such a thing. How could it have been?"</p>
<p id="id00337">"There was treachery, and perhaps perjury, too. He had an insidious and
unscrupulous enemy, who assumed the guise of repentance, and candor, and
friendship, the better to lure him into his toils—it was the infamous
Colonel Thorg, who received the command of the regiment, in reward for
his great services in America. And Michael's only powerful friend, who
could and would have saved him—was dead. General Ross, you are aware,
was killed in the battle of Baltimore."</p>
<p id="id00338">"God have mercy on poor Edith! How long has it been since, this
happened, my dear girl?"</p>
<p id="id00339">"When they reached Toronto, in Canada West, the regiment commanded by
Thorg was about to sail for England. On its arrival at York, in England,
a court-martial was formed, and Michael was brought to trial. There was
a great deal of personal prejudice, distortion of facts, and even
perjury—in short, he was condemned and sentenced one day and led out
and shot the next!"</p>
<p id="id00340">There was silence between them then. Henrietta sat in pale and
speechless horror.</p>
<p id="id00341">"But how long is it since my poor Edith has been so awfully widowed?" at
length inquired Mrs. Waugh.</p>
<p id="id00342">"Nearly four months," replied Marian, in a tremulous voice. "For six
weeks succeeding his death, she was not able to rise from her bed. I
came from school to nurse her. I found her completely prostrated under
the blow. I wonder she had not died. What power of living on some
delicate frames seem to have. As soon as she was able to sit up, I began
to think that it would be better to remove her from the strange country,
the theatre of her dreadful sufferings, and to bring her to her own
native land, among her own friends and relatives, where she might resume
the life and habits of her girlhood, and where, with nothing to remind
her of her loss, she might gradually come to look upon the few wretched
months of her marriage, passed in England, as a dark dream. Therefore I
have brought her back."</p>
<p id="id00343">"And you, my dear child," she said, "you were Michael Shields' sister?"</p>
<p id="id00344">"No, madam, no kin to him—and yet more than kin—for he loved me, and I
loved him more than any one else in the world, as I now love his poor
young widow. This was the way of it, Mrs. Waugh: Michael's father and my
mother had both been married before, and we were children of the first
marriages; when Michael was fourteen years old, and I was seven, our
parents were united, and we grew up together. About two years ago,
Michael's father died. My mother survived him only five months, and
departed, leaving me in charge of her stepson. We had no friends but
each other. Our parents, since their union, had been isolated beings,
for this reason—his father was a Jew—my mother a Christian—therefore
the friends and relatives on either side were everlastingly offended by
their marriage. Therefore we had no one but each other. The little
property that was left was sold, and the proceeds enabled Michael to
purchase a commission in the regiment about to sail for America, and
also to place me at a good boarding school, where I remained until his
return, and the catastrophe that followed it.</p>
<p id="id00345">"Lady, all passed so suddenly, that I knew no word of his return, much
less of his trial or execution, until I received a visit from the
chaplain who had attended his last moments, and who brought me his
farewell letter, and his last informal will, in which the poor fellow
consigned me to the care of his wife, soon to be a widow, and enjoined
me to leave school and seek her at once, and inclosed a check for the
little balance he had in bank. I went immediately, found her insensible
through grief, as I said—and, lady, I told you the rest."</p>
<p id="id00346">Henrietta was weeping softly behind the handkerchief she held at her
eyes. At last she repeated:</p>
<p id="id00347">"You say he left you in his widow's charge?"</p>
<p id="id00348">"Yes, madam."</p>
<p id="id00349">"Left his widow in yours, rather, you good and faithful sister."</p>
<p id="id00350">"It was the same thing, lady; we were to live together, and to support
each other."</p>
<p id="id00351">"But what was your thought, my dear girl, in bringing her here?"</p>
<p id="id00352">"I told you, lady, that in her own native land, among her own kinsfolk,
she might be comforted, and might resume her girlhood's thoughts and
habits, and learn to forget the strange, dark passages of her short
married life, passed in a foreign country."</p>
<p id="id00353">"But, my dear girl, did you not know, had you never heard that her uncle
disowned her for marrying against his will?"</p>
<p id="id00354">"Something of that I certainly heard from Edith, lady, when I first
proposed to her to come home. But she was very weak, and her thoughts
very rambling, poor thing—she could not stick to a point long, and I
overruled and guided her—I could not believe but that her friends would
take her poor widowed heart to their homes again. But if it should be
otherwise, still—"</p>
<p id="id00355">"Well?—still?"</p>
<p id="id00356">"Why, I cannot regret having brought her to her native soil—for, if we
find no friends in America, we have left none in England—a place
besides full of the most harrowing recollections, from which this place
is happily free. America also offers a wider field for labor than
England does, and if her friends behave badly, why I will work for her,
and—for her child if it should live."</p>
<p id="id00357">"Dear Marian, you must not think by what I said just now, that I am not
a friend of Edith. I am, indeed. I love her almost as if she were my own
daughter. I incurred my husband's anger by remaining with her after her
marriage until she sailed. I will not fail her now, be sure. Personally,
I will do my utmost for her. I will also try to influence her uncle in
her favor. And now, my dear, it is getting very late, and there is a
long ride, and a dreadful road before me. The commodore is already
anxious for me, I know, and if I keep him waiting much longer, he will
be in no mood to be persuaded by me. So I must go. To-morrow, my dear, a
better home shall be found for you and Edith. That I promise upon my own
responsibility. And, now, my dear, excellent girl, good-by. I will see
you again in the morning."</p>
<p id="id00358">And Mrs. Waugh took leave.</p>
<p id="id00359">"No," thundered Commodore Waugh, thrusting his head forward and bringing
his stick down heavily upon the floor. "No, I say! I will not be
bothered with her or her troubles. Don't talk to me! I care nothing
about them! What should her trials be to me? The precious affair has
turned out just as I expected it would! Only what I did not expect was
that we should have her back upon our hands! I wonder at Edith! I
thought she had more pride than to come back to me for comfort after
leaving as she did!"</p>
<p id="id00360">This was all the satisfaction Mrs. Waugh got from Old Nick, when she had
related to him the sorrowful story of Edith's widowhood and return, and
had appealed to his generosity in her behalf. But he unbent so far as to
allow Edith and Marian to be installed at Mrs. L'Oiseau's cottage, and
even grudgingly permitted Henrietta to settle a pension upon her.</p>
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