The Linwoods by Catharine Maria Sedgwick

Author:Catharine Maria Sedgwick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

223VOLUME II

225CHAPTER XIX.

“Ignomy in ransom, and free pardon, Are of two houses.”

It is reasonable to suppose that the disclosures which occurred in Sir Henry Clinton’s library would be immediately followed by their natural sequences: that love declared by one party, and betrayed by the other, would, according to the common usages of society, soon issue in mutual affiancing. But these were not the piping times of peace, and the harmony of events was sadly broken by the discords of the period.

The conflict of Mr. Linwood’s political with his natural affections, at his eventful meeting with his son, was immediately followed by a frightful attack of gout in the stomach—a case to verify the theories of our eminent friend of the faculty, who locates the sensibility in the mucous tissue of that organ. Isabella, afflicted on all sides, and expecting her father’s death at every moment, never left his bedside. In vain Meredith besieged the house, and sent her message after message; not he, even, could draw her from her post. “My life depends on you, Belle,” said her father: “the doctor says I must keep tranquil—he might as well say so to a ship in a squall—but my child, you are my polar star—my loadstone—my sheet-anchor—my everything; don’t quit me, Belle!” She did not, for an instant.

“Bless me! Mr. Meredith,” said Helen Ruthven, on entering Mrs. Linwood’s drawing-room, and finding Meredith 226walking up and down, with an expression of impatience and disappointment, “what is the matter—is Mr. Linwood worse?”

“Not that I know.”

“How happens it that you are alone, then?”

“The family are with Mr. Linwood.”

“The family! the old lady surely can take care of him; is Isabella invisible?—invisible to you?”

“I have not seen her since her father’s illness.”

“My heavens! is it possible! well, some people are better than others.”

“I do not comprehend you, Miss Ruthven.”

“My meaning is simple enough; a woman must be an icicle or an angel to hang over an old gouty father, without allowing herself a precious five minutes with her lover.”

“Miss Linwood is very dutiful!” said Meredith, half sneeringly, for his vanity was touched.

“Dutiful!—she may be—she is undoubtedly—a very, very sweet creature is Isabella Linwood; but I should not have imagined her a person, if her heart were really engaged, to deny its longings and sit down patiently to play the dutiful daughter. I judge others by myself. In her situation—precisely in hers,” she paused and looked at Meredith with an expression fraught with meaning, “I should know neither scruple nor duty.”

There was much in this artful speech of Helen Ruthven to feed Meredith’s bitter fancies when he afterward pondered on it.—“If her heart were engaged!” he said, “it is—I am sure of it—and yet, if it were, she is not, as Helen Ruthven said, a creature to be chained down by duty. If it were!—it is—it shall be—her heart is the only one I have, invariably desired—the only one I have found unattainable. I believe—I am almost sure, she loves me; but there is something lacking—I do not come up to her standard of ideal perfection!—others do not find me deficient.

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