第30章 CHAPTER VII.(5)

But Ellinor recovered.She knew she was recovering,when day after day she felt involuntary strength and appetite return.Her body seemed stronger than her will;for that would have induced her to creep into her grave,and shut her eyes for ever on this world,so full of troubles.

She lay,for the most part,with her eyes closed,very still and quiet;but she thought with the intensity of one who seeks for lost peace,and cannot find it.She began to see that if in the mad impulses of that mad nightmare of horror,they had all strengthened each other,and dared to be frank and open,confessing a great fault,a greater disaster,a greater woe--which in the first instance was hardly a crime--their future course,though sad and sorrowful,would have been a simple and straightforward one to tread.But it was not for her to undo what was done,and to reveal the error and shame of a father.Only she,turning anew to God,in the solemn and quiet watches of the night,made a covenant,that in her conduct,her own personal individual life,she would act loyally and truthfully.And as for the future,and all the terrible chances involved in it,she would leave it in His hands--if,indeed (and here came in the Tempter),He would watch over one whose life hereafter must seem based upon a lie.Her only plea,offered "standing afar off"was,"The lie is said and done and over--it was not for my own sake.Can filial piety be so overcome by the rights of justice and truth,as to demand of me that I should reveal my father's guilt."Her father's severe sharp punishment began.He knew why she suffered,what made her young strength falter and tremble,what made her life seem nigh about to be quenched in death.Yet he could not take his sorrow and care in the natural manner.He was obliged to think how every word and deed would be construed.He fancied that people were watching him with suspicious eyes,when nothing was further from their thoughts.For once let the "public"of any place be possessed by an idea,it is more difficult to dislodge it than any one imagines who has not tried.If Mr.Wilkins had gone into Hamley market-place,and proclaimed himself guilty of the manslaughter of Mr.Dunster--nay,if he had detailed all the circumstances--the people would have exclaimed,"Poor man,he is crazed by this discovery of the unworthiness of the man he trusted so;and no wonder--it was such a thing to have done--to have defrauded his partner to such an extent,and then have made off to America!"For many small circumstances,which I do not stop to detail here,went far to prove this,as we know,unfounded supposition;and Mr.

Wilkins,who was known,from his handsome boyhood,through his comely manhood,up to the present time,by all the people in Hamley,was an object of sympathy and respect to every one who saw him,as he passed by,old,and lorn,and haggard before his time,all through the evil conduct of one,London-bred,who was as a hard,unlovely stranger to the popular mind of this little country town.

Mr.Wilkins's own servants liked him.The workings of his temptations were such as they could understand.If he had been hot-tempered he had also been generous,or I should rather say careless and lavish with his money.And now that he was cheated and impoverished by his partner's delinquency,they thought it no wonder that he drank long and deep in the solitary evenings which he passed at home.It was not that he was without invitations.Every one came forward to testify their respect for him by asking him to their houses.He had probably never been so universally popular since his father's death.But,as he said,he did not care to go into society while his daughter was so ill--he had no spirits for company.

But if any one had cared to observe his conduct at home,and to draw conclusions from it,they could have noticed that,anxious as he was about Ellinor,he rather avoided than sought her presence,now that her consciousness and memory were restored.Nor did she ask for,or wish for him.The presence of each was a burden to the other.Oh,sad and woeful night of May--overshadowing the coming summer months with gloom and bitter remorse!