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, little

refreshed by sleep, for uneasy dreams had pursued her, and marred the

kindest blessing of the unhappy. But, when she opened her casement,

looked out upon the woods, bright with the morning sun, and inspired

the pure air, her mind was soothed. The scene was filled with that

cheering freshness, which seems to breathe the very spirit of health,

and she heard only sweet and _picturesque_ sounds, if such an

expression may be allowed—the matin-bell of a distant convent, the

faint murmur of the sea-waves, the song of birds, and the far-off low

of cattle, which she saw coming slowly on between the trunks of trees.

Struck with the circumstances of imagery around her, she indulged the

pensive tranquillity which they inspired; and while she leaned on her

window, waiting till St. Aubert should descend to breakfast, her ideas

arranged themselves 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 sunbeams 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 the

voice of Michael, who was talking to his mules, as he led them forth

from a hut adjoining. As she left her room, St. Aubert, who was now

risen, met her at the door, apparently as little restored by sleep as

herself. She led him down stairs to the little parlour, in which they

had supped on the preceding night, where they found a neat breakfast

set out, 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 met

them, “it is so pleasant, so quiet, and so neat; and this air, that one

breathes—if anything could restore lost health, it would surely be this

air.”

La Voisin bowed gratefully, and replied, with the gallantry of a

Frenchman, “Our cottage may be envied, sir, since you and Mademoiselle

have honoured it with your presence.” St. Aubert gave him a friendly

smile for his compliment, and sat down to a table, spread with cream,

fruit, new cheese, butter, and coffee. Emily, who had observed her

father with attention and thought he looked very ill, endeavoured to

persuade him to defer travelling till the afternoon; but he seemed very

anxious to be at home, and his anxiety he expressed repeatedly, and

with an earnestness that was unusual with him. He now said, he found

himself as well as he had been of late, and that he could bear

travelling better in the cool hour of the morning, than at any other

time. But, while he was talking with his venerable host, and thanking

him for his kind attentions, Emily observed his countenance change,

and, before she could reach him, he fell back in his chair. In a few

moments he recovered from the sudden faintness that had come over him,

but felt so ill, that he perceived himself unable to set out, and,

having remained a little while, struggling against the pressure of

indisposition, he begged he might be helped up stairs to bed. This

request renewed all the terror which Emily had suffered on the

preceding evening; but, though scarcely able to support herself, under

the sudden shock it gave her, she tried to conceal her apprehensions

from St. Aubert, and gave her trembling arm to assist him to the door

of his chamber.

When he was once more in bed, he desired that Emily, who was then

weeping in her own room, might be called; and, as she came, he waved

his hand 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 her fortitude forsook her, and she burst into an agony of tears.

St. Aubert seemed struggling to acquire firmness, but was still unable

to speak; he could only press her hand, and check the tears that stood

trembling in his 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 firmer tone, and with a look, in which the

tenderness of the father was dignified 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 myself quite unequal to the art. Alas! I would,

at this moment, conceal it from you, but that it would be most cruel to

deceive you. It cannot be long before we must part; let us talk of it,

that our thoughts and our prayers may prepare us to bear it.” His voice

faltered, while Emily, still weeping, pressed his hand close to her

heart, which swelled with a convulsive 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; when

this is done I shall be easier. You have observed, my dear, how anxious

I am to reach home, but know not all my reasons for this. Listen to

what I am going to say.—Yet stay—before I say more give me this

promise, a promise made to your dying father!”—St. Aubert was

interrupted; Emily, struck by his last words, as if for the first time,

with a conviction of his immediate danger, raised her head; her tears

stopped, and, gazing at him for a moment with an expression of

unutterable anguish, a slight convulsion seized her, and she sunk

senseless in her chair. St. Aubert’s cries brought La Voisin and his

daughter to the room, and they administered every means in their power

to restore her, but, for a considerable time, without effect. When she

recovered, St. Aubert was so exhausted by the scene he had witnessed,

that it was many minutes before he had strength to speak; he was,

however, somewhat revived by a cordial, which Emily gave him; and,

being again alone with her, he exerted himself to tranquilize her

spirits, and to offer her all the comfort of which her situation

admitted. She threw herself into his arms, 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, at this moment, feel, and

mingled his silent tears with hers. Recalled, at length, to a sense of

duty, she tried to spare her father from a farther view 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 humble confidence to

that Being, who has protected and comforted us in every danger, and in

every affliction we have known; to whose eye every moment of 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, still in his

care; and, though I depart from this world, I shall be still in his

presence. Nay, weep not again, my Emily. In death there is nothing new,

or surprising, since we all know, that we are born to die; and nothing

terrible to those, who can confide in an all-powerful God. Had my life

been spared now, after a very few years, in the course of nature, I

must have resigned it; old age, with all its train of infirmity, its

privations and its sorrows, would have been mine; and then, at last,

death would have come, and called forth the tears you now shed. Rather,

my child, rejoice, that I am saved from such suffering, and that I am

permitted to die with a mind unimpaired, and sensible of the comforts

of faith and resignation.” St. Aubert paused, fatigued with speaking.

Emily again endeavoured to assume an air of composure; and, in replying

to what he had said, tried to sooth him with a belief, that he had not

spoken in vain.

When he had reposed a while, he resumed the conversation. “Let me

return,” said he, “to a subject, which is very near my heart. I said I

had a solemn promise to receive from you; let me receive it now, before

I 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 he

should 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

would break any promise, much less one thus solemnly given; your

assurance gives me peace, and the observance of it is of the utmost

importance to your tranquillity. Hear, then, what I am going to tell

you. The closet, which adjoins my chamber at La Vallée, has a sliding

board in the floor. You will know it by a remarkable knot in the wood,

and by its being the next board, except one, to the wainscot, which

fronts the door. At the distance of about a yard from that end, nearer

the window, you will perceive a line across it, as if the plank had

been joined;—the way to open it is this:—Press your foot upon the line;

the end of the board will 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 Emily sat fixed in deep attention. “Do you

understand these directions, my dear?” said he. Emily, though scarcely

able to speak, assured him that she 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 into

convulsive grief, and St. Aubert himself, affected beyond the

resistance of the fortitude which he had, at first, summoned, wept with

her. After some moments, he composed himself. “My dear child,” said he,

“be comforted. When I am gone, you will not be forsaken—I leave you

only in the more immediate care of that Providence, which has never yet

forsaken me. Do not afflict me with this excess of grief; rather teach

me by your example to bear my own.” He stopped again, and Emily, the

more she endeavoured to restrain her emotion, found it the less

possible to do so.

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 have

described, you will find a packet of written papers. Attend to me now,

for the promise you have given particularly relates to what I shall

direct. These papers you must burn—and, solemnly I command you,

_without examining them_.”

Emily’s surprise, for a moment, overcame her grief, and she ventured to

ask, why this must be? St. Aubert replied, that, if it had been right

for him to explain his reasons, her late promise would have been

unnecessarily exacted. “It is sufficient for you, my love, to have a

deep sense of the importance of observing me in this instance.” St.

Aubert proceeded. “Under that board you will also find about two

hundred louis d’ors, wrapped in a silk purse; indeed, it was to secure

whatever money might be in the château, that this secret place was

contrived, at a time when the province was over-run by troops of men,

who took advantage of the tumults, and became plunderers.

“But I have yet another promise to receive from you, which is—that you

will never, whatever may be your future circumstances, _sell_ the

château.” St. Aubert even enjoined her, whenever she might marry, to

make it an article in the contract, that the château should always be

hers. He then gave her a more minute account of his present

circumstances than he had yet done, adding, “The two hundred louis,

with what money you will now find in my purse, is all the ready money I

have to 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

anything he now said, but knelt at the bedside, with her face upon the

quilt, weeping over the hand she held there.

After this conversation, the mind of St. Aubert appeared to be much

more at ease; but, exhausted by the effort of speaking, he sunk into a

kind of doze, and Emily continued to watch and weep beside him, till a

gentle tap at the chamber-door roused her. It was La Voisin, come to

say, that a 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 from this doze, his senses were confused, and it was some

moments before he recovered them sufficiently to know, that it was

Emily who sat beside him. He then moved his lips, and stretched forth

his hand to her; as she received which, she sunk back in her chair,

overcome by the impression of 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. They remained alone together above half an

hour; when Emily was called in, she found St. Aubert more agitated than

when she had left him, and she gazed, with a slight degree of

resentment, at the friar, as the cause of this; who, however, looked

mildly and mournfully at her, and turned away. St. Aubert, in a

tremulous voice, said, he wished her to join in prayer with him, and

asked if La Voisin would do so too. The old man and his 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 fervently in the

devotion, while tears often stole from beneath his closed eyelids, 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 come

nearer. He gave him his hand, and was, for a moment, silent. At length,

he said, in a trembling voice, “My good friend, our acquaintance has

been short, but long enough to give you an opportunity of showing me

much kind attention. I cannot doubt, that you will extend this kindness

to my daughter, when I am gone; she will have need of it. I entrust her

to your care during the few days she will remain here. I need say no

more—you know the feelings of a father, for you have children; mine

would be, indeed, severe if I had less confidence in you.” He paused.

La Voisin assured him, and his tears bore testimony to his sincerity,

that he 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

so pleasing to St. Aubert, that he had scarcely words to acknowledge

his sense of the old man’s kindness, or to tell him, that he accepted

it. The scene, that followed between St. Aubert and Emily, affected La

Voisin so much, that he quitted the chamber, and she was again left

alone with her father, whose spirits seemed fainting fast, but neither

his senses, nor his voice, yet failed him; and, at intervals, he

employed much of these last awful moments in advising his daughter, as

to her future conduct. Perhaps, he never had thought more justly, or

expressed himself more clearly, than he did now.

“Above all, my dear Emily,” said he, “do not indulge in the pride of

fine feeling, the romantic error of amiable minds. Those, who really

possess sensibility, ought early to be taught, that it is a dangerous

quality, which is continually extracting the excess of misery, or

delight, from every surrounding circumstance. And, since, in our

passage through this world, painful circumstances occur more frequently

than pleasing ones, and since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute

than our sense of good, we become the victims of our feelings, unless

we can in some degree command them. I know you will say, (for you are

young, my Emily) 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 be content to rest, and you will then recover from your delusion.

You will perceive, that the phantom of happiness is exchanged for the

substance; for happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult. It

is of a temperate and uniform nature, and can no more exist in a heart,

that is continually alive to minute circumstances, than in one that is

dead to feeling. You see, my dear, that, though I would guard you

against the dangers of sensibility, I am not an advocate for apathy. At

your age I should have said _that_ is a vice more hateful than all the

errors of sensibility, and I say so still. I call it a _vice_, because

it leads to positive evil; in this, however, it does no more than an

ill-governed sensibility, which, by such a rule, might also be called a

vice; but the evil of the former is of more general consequence. I have

exhausted myself,” said St. Aubert, feebly, “and have wearied you, my

Emily; but, on a subject so important to your future comfort, I am

anxious to be perfectly understood.”

Emily assured him, that his advice was most precious to her, and that

she would never forget it, or cease from endeavouring to profit by it.

St. Aubert smiled affectionately and sorrowfully upon her. “I repeat

it,” 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 out how

you may avoid them. Beware, my love, I conjure you, of that

self-delusion, which has been fatal to the peace of so many persons;

beware of priding yourself on the gracefulness of sensibility; if you

yield to this vanity, your happiness is lost for ever. Always remember

how much more valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace of

sensibility. Do not, however, confound fortitude with apathy; apathy

cannot know the virtue. Remember, too, that one act of beneficence, one

act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the

world. Sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead

us to good actions. The miser, who thinks himself respectable, merely

because he possesses wealth, and thus mistakes the means of doing good,

for the actual accomplishment of it, is not more blameable than the man

of sentiment, without active virtue. You may have observed persons, who

delight so much in this sort of sensibility to sentiment, which

excludes that to the calls of any practical virtue, that they turn from

the distressed, and, because their sufferings are painful to be

contemplated, do not endeavour to relieve them. How despicable is that

humanity, which can be contented to pity, where it might assuage!”

St. Aubert, some time after, spoke of Madame Cheron, his sister. “Let

me inform you of a circumstance, that nearly affects your welfare,” he

added. “We have, you know, had little intercourse for some years, but,

as she is now your only female relation, I have thought it proper to

consign you to her care, as you will see in my will, till you are of

age, and to recommend you to her protection afterwards. She is not

exactly the person, to whom I would have committed my Emily, but I had

no alternative, and I believe her to be upon the whole—a good kind of

woman. I need not recommend it to your prudence, my love, to endeavour

to conciliate her kindness; you will do this for his sake, who has

often wished to do so for yours.”

Emily assured him, that, whatever he requested she would religiously

perform to the utmost of her ability. “Alas!” added she, in a voice

interrupted by sighs, “that will soon be all which remains for me; it

will be almost my only consolation to fulfil your wishes.”

St. Aubert looked up silently in her face, as if would have spoken, but

his spirit sunk a while, and his eyes became heavy and dull. She felt

that look at her heart. “My dear father!” she exclaimed; and then,

checking herself, pressed his hand closer, and hid her face with her

handkerchief. Her tears were concealed, but St. Aubert heard her

convulsive sobs. His spirits returned. “O my child!” said he, faintly,

“let my consolations be yours. I die in peace; for I know, that I am

about to return to the bosom of my Father, who will still be your

Father, when I am gone. Always trust in him, my love, and he will

support you in these moments, as he supports me.”

Emily could only listen, and weep; but the extreme composure of his

manner, and the faith and hope he expressed, somewhat soothed her

anguish. Yet, whenever she looked upon his emaciated countenance, and

saw 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

a pang in her heart, such as defied expression, though it required

filial virtue, 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

he might not perceive her anguish; she now understood, that his sight

had failed him. When he had given her his blessing, and it seemed to be

the last effort of expiring life, he sunk back on his pillow. She

kissed his forehead; the damps of death had settled there, and,

forgetting her fortitude for a moment, her tears mingled with them. St.

Aubert lifted up his eyes; the spirit of a father returned to them, but

it quickly vanished, and he spoke no more.

St. Aubert lingered till about three o’clock in the afternoon, and,

thus gradually sinking into death, he expired without a struggle, or a

sigh.

Emily was led from the chamber by La Voisin and his daughter, who did

what they could to comfort her. The old man sat and wept with her.

Agnes was more erroneously officious.