University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

“How sweet the days of Thalaba went by!” Mellichampe,
under such attendance, soon grew insensible
to all his sufferings. The bruises quickly disappeared
—the wounds were healing rapidly. The care of the
nurse surpassed in its happy effects the anticipations of
the physician, and the youth was getting well. The
spirits of the two became strong and confident with the
improvement of the patient: and their hearts grew happier,
and their hopes more buoyant, with each day's continued
association. The world around them was gradually
excluded from their contemplation; and, blessed
with the presence of each other, the chamber of Mellichampe—his
prison, as it was—closely watched by
hostile eyes and guarded by deadly weapons—was large
enough for the desires of one, at least, of the two within it.
The relation existing between Janet Berkeley and Ernest

Mellichampe appeared now to be understood by all
parties. Her father had nothing to oppose—the maiden
herself in the perilous moment, as it was thought, to the
safety of her lover, had fearlessly and proudly proclaimed
the ties existing between them; and, if the prude
Decorum could suggest nothing against the frequent and
unobstructed meeting of the two, Virtue herself had no
reason to apprehend; for, surely, never yet did young
hearts so closely and fervently cling to one another—
yet so completely maintain the purity and the ascendency
of their souls. Love, built upon esteem, is always
secure from abasement—it is that passion, falsely
named love, which grows out of a warm imagination
and wild blood only, which may not be trusted by others,
as it is seldom entirely able to trust or to control
itself.

Rose Duncan complained, however, as she suffered
much by the devotion of Janet Berkeley to her lover.
This young girl was one of those, thousands of whom
are to be met with hourly, who derive all their characteristics
from the colour of events and things around
them. She had little of that quality, or combination
of qualities rather, which we call character. She was
of a flexible and susceptible temperament. The hues
of her mind came from the passing zephyr, or the over-hanging
cloud. She lacked those sterner possessions of
intrinsic thought which usually make their proprietor
independent of circumstances, and immoveable under
the operation of illegitimate influences. Unlike her
graver companion, she had no sorrows, simply because
she had little earnestness of character. She was usually
lively and elastic in the extreme; and he who only
casually observed might have imagined that a spirit so
cheerful as hers usually appeared would not readily be
operated upon or kept down by the occurrence of untoward
events. But, if she lacked all of those features
of sadness which mellowed and made the loveliness of

Janet's character, and softened the quicker emotions of
her soul, she was, at the same time, entirely wanting in
that concentration of moral object which enables the
possessor to address himself firmly and without scruple
to the contest of those evils, whether in prospect or in
presence, which, nevertheless, even when overcome,
make the eye to weep and the soul to tremble. Rose
Duncan would laugh at the prediction of evil, simply
because she could never concentrate her thoughts sufficiently
upon its consideration; and thus, when it came
upon her, she would be utterly unprepared to encounter
it. Not so with Janet Berkeley. Her heart, gentle
and earnest in all its emotions, necessarily inclined her
understanding and imagination to think upon and to estimate
all those sources of evil, not less than of good,
which belong to, and make up, the entire whole of human
life. Its sorrows she had prepared herself to endure
from the earliest hours of thought; and it was
thus that, when sorrow came to her in reality, it was the
foregone conclusion to which her reflections had made
her familiar, and for which her nerves were already prepared.
The tale of suffering brought forth no less
grief than the actual experience of it, and far less of
that active spirit of resistance and that tenacious soul of
endurance with which she was at all times prepared to
contend with its positive inflictions. It was thus that
she was enabled, when her more volatile companion lay
unnerved and terrified at her feet, to go forth fearlessly
amid all the danger and the dread, traverse the field of
strife unshaken by its horrors, and, from among the dying
and the dead, seek out the one object to whom,
when she had once pledged her heart, she had also
pledged the performance, even of a duty so trying and
so sad; and, though she had sickened at the loathsome
aspect of war around her, she had felt far less of terror
in that one scene of real horrors than she had a thousand
times before in the dreams begotten by an active
imagination, and a soul earnest, devoted, and susceptible
in the extreme.

Often did Rose Duncan chide the maiden for her
exclusive devotion to her lover, as she herself suffered
privation from her devotedness.

“There is quite too much of it, Janet; he will be
sick to death of you before you are married, if, indeed,
you ever are married to him, which ought to be another
subject of consideration with you. It would be very
awkward if, after all these attentions on your part—this
perfect devotion, I may call it—he should never marry
you. I should never trust any man so far.”

“Not to trust is not to love. When I confide less in
Mellichampe, I shall love him less, Rose, and I would
not willingly think of such a possibility. In loving him
I give up all selfish thoughts: I must love entirely, or
not at all.”

“Ah, but how much do you risk by this?”

“It is woman's risk always, Rose, and I would not
desire one privilege which does not properly belong to
my sex. I have no qualifications in my regard for
Mellichampe. To my mind, his honour is as lofty as,
to my heart, his affections are dear. I should weep—
I should suffer dreadfully—if I thought, for an instant,
that he believed me touched with a single doubt of his
fidelity.”

“Very right, perhaps, Janet, and you are only the
better girl for thinking as you do; but marriage and
love are lotteries, they say, and it is no wisdom to stake
one's all in a lottery. A little venture may do well
enough, but prudent people will be well minded, and
keep something in reserve. I like that Scotchman's
advice of all things—

“And I think it detestable doctrine, Rose Duncan,”
Janet responded, with something like indignation overspreading
her beautiful, sad countenance for the instant,
as a flash of parting sunlight sent through the deep
forests in the last moment of his setting—

“I think it detestable doctrine, only becoming in a
narrow-minded wretch, who, knavish himself, suspects
all mankind of a similar character. Such doctrines are
calculated to make monsters of one half of the world
and victims of the other. No, no, Rose,—I may be
wrong—I may be weak,—I may give my heart fondly
and foolishly,—I may train my affections unprofitably,—but,
oh, let me confide still, though I suffer for it!
Let me never distrust where I love—where I have set
my heart—where I have staked all that I live for.”

Rose was rebuked, and here, for a few moments, the
conversation ended. But there was something still in
the bosom of Janet which needed, and at length forced,
its utterance:—

“And yet, Rose, there is one thing which you have
said which pains me greatly. It may be true, that
though, in seeking Mellichampe day by day, and hour
by hour, I only feel myself more truly devoted to him;
it may be that such will not be the feeling with him; it
may be that he will, as you say, grow tired of that which
he sees so frequently; it may be that he will turn away
from me, and weary of my regards. I have heard before
this, Rose, that the easy won was but little valued
of men,—that the seeker was still unsought,—and that,
when the heart of woman was secured, she failed to
enchain that of her captor. Oh, Rose, it is death to
think so. Did I dream that Mellichampe would slight
me,—did I think that he could turn from me with a

weary spirit and an indifferent eye, I should pray to
perish now—even now, when he speaks to and smiles
upon me in such sort as never man spoke to and smiled
upon woman whom he could deceive, or whom he did
not love.”

And her head sank upon the shoulder of her companion,
and she sobbed with the fulness of her emotion,
as if her heart were indeed breaking.

It was long that day—long in her estimate, not less
than in that of Mellichampe—before she paid her usual
visit to the chamber of her lover. She was then compelled
to listen to those reproaches from his lips which
her own heart told her were justly uttered. Influenced
more than she was willing to admit, even to herself, by
the suggestions of Rose Duncan, she had purposely
kept away until hour after hour had passed—how drearily
to both!—before she took courage to reject the idle
restraints of conventional arrangement, which never yet
had proper concern with the business of unsophisticated
affection. Gently he chid her with that neglect for
which she could offer no sort of excuse; but she hid
her head in his bosom, and murmured forth the true
cause of her delay, as she whispered, in scarce audible
accents—

“Ah, Ernest, you will tire of me at last,—you will
only see too much of me, and I am always so same—
so like myself—and have so few changes by which to
amuse you, that you will weary of the presence of your
poor Janet.”

“Foolish fears—foolish fears, Janet, and too unjust
to me, and too injurious to us both, to permit me to
suffer them longer. It is because you are always the
same—always so like yourself, that I love you so well.
I am secure, in this proof, against your change. I am
secure of your stability, and feel happy to believe that,
though all things alter besides, you at least will be inflexible
in your continued love for me.”

“Ah, be sure of that, Ernest; it is too sweet to love,
and too dear to be loved by you, for me to change, lest
I should find you change also. I cannot change, I feel,
until my very heart shall decay. The seeds of love
which have been sown within it were sown by your hands,
and they acknowledge you only as the proper owner.
Their blight can only follow the blight of the soil in
which they are planted, or only perish through—”

She paused, and the tears flowed too freely to permit
her to conclude the sentence.

“Through what, Janet?” he demanded. In a murmuring
and low tone she replied, instantly,

“Only through the neglect of him who planted them.”

He folded her to his heart, and she believed the deep,
fond asseveration in which he assured her that no fear
was more idle than that which she had just expressed.

The shrill tones of the trumpet startled the lovers
from their momentary dream of bliss.

“That sound,” he said,—“it makes my wound shoot
with pain, as if the blood clamoured there for escape.
How I hate to hear its notes,—sweet as they are to me
when I am on horseback,—here in this dungeon, and
denied to move!”

An involuntary sigh escaped the maiden as she listened
to this language, and it came to her lips to say,
though she spoke not—

“But you are here with me, in this dungeon, Ernest,
and with you I am never conscious of restraint or regret.
Alas for me! since I must feel that, while I have
no other thought of pleasure but that which comes with
your presence, Ernest, your pulse bounds and beats
with the desire of a wider world, and of other conquests,
even when I, whom you so profess to love beyond all
other objects, am here sitting by your side!”

The sigh reached the ears of Mellichampe, and his
quick sense and conscious thought readily divined the
cause of her emotion.

“Wonder not, my Janet,” he exclaimed, as he caught
her to his bosom,—“wonder not that I chafe at this restraint,
even though blessed with your sympathy and
presence. Here I am not less conscious of the tenure
by which I hold your presence and my own life, than of
the thousand pleasures which your presence brings me.
I love not the less because I pine to love in security;
and feel not the less happy by your side because I long
for the moment to arrive when no power can separate
us. Now, are we not at the mercy of a wretch, whom
we know to possess no scruples of conscience, and who
feels few, if any, of the restraints of power? In his
mood, at his caprice, we may be torn asunder, and—
but let us speak of other things.”

And the conversation turned upon brighter topics.
The uttered hopes and the wishes of Mellichampe
cheered the heart of the maiden, until, even while the
tears of a delicious sensibility were streaming from her
eyes, she forgot that hope had its sorrows,—she forgot
that love—triumphant and imperial love—has still been
ever known as the born victim of vicissitudes.