Chapter 13

From this time their homeward journey was more prosperous. They arrived safely at Lyons, and thence proceeded to Basle—to take advantage again of river navigation; the motion of a carriage being so inimical to the invalid. They proceeded down the Rhine to Rotterdam, and crossing the sea, returned at last to England, after an absence of four years.

This journey, though at first begun in terror and danger, grew less hazardous at each mile they traversed towards the North; and while going down the Rhine, Falkner and his adopted daughter spent several tranquil and happy hours—comparing the scenery they saw to other and distant landscapes—and recalling incidents that had occurred many years ago. Falkner exerted himself for Elizabeth’s sake—she had suffered so much, and he had inflicted so much anguish upon her while endeavouring to free himself from the burden of life, that he felt remorse at having thus trifled with the deepest emotions of her heart—and anxious to recall the more pleasurable sensations adapted to her age. The listless, yet pleasing feelings attendant on convalescence influenced his mind also—and he enjoyed a peace to which he had long been a stranger.

Elizabeth, it is true, had another source of revery besides that ministered to her by her father. She often thought of Neville; and though he was sad, the remembrance of him was full of pleasure. He had been so kind, so sympathizing, so helpful; besides, there was a poetry in his very gloom that added a charm to every thought spent upon him. She did not only recall his conversation, but conjectured the causes of his sorrow, and felt deeply interested by the mystery that hung about him. So young and so unhappy! And he had been long so—he was more miserable when they saw him roving wildly among the Alsatian hills. What could it mean? She strove to recollect what Miss Jervis mentioned at that time; she remembered only that he had no mother, and that his father was severe and unkind.

Yet why, when nature is so full, of joyousness, when, at the summer season, vegetation basks in beauty and delight, and the very clouds seem to enjoy their aerial abode in upper sky, why should misery find a home in the mind of man? a misery which the balmy winds will not lull, nor the verdant landscape and its winding river dissipate. She thought thus as she saw Falkner reclining apart, a cloud gathered on his brow, his piercing eyes fixed in vacancy, as if it beheld there a heart-moving tragedy; but she was accustomed to his melancholy, she had ever known him as a man of sorrows; he had lived long before she knew him, and the bygone years were filled by events pregnant with wretchedness, nay, if he spoke truth, with guilt. But Neville, the young, the innocent, who had been struck in boyhood through no fault of his own, nor any act in which he bore a part; was there no remedy for him? and would not friendship, and kindness, and the elastic spirit of youth suffice to cure his wound? She remembered that he declared that he had an aim in view, in which he resolved to succeed, and, succeeding, he should be happy: a noble aim doubtless; for his soft eyes lighted joyously up, and his face expressed a glad pride when he prognosticated ultimate triumph. Her heart went with him in his efforts; she prayed earnestly for his success, and was as sure as he that Heaven would favour an object which she felt certain was generous and pure.

A sigh, a half groan from Falkner, called her to his side, while she meditated on these things. Both suffer, she thought; would that some link united them, so that both might find relief in the accomplishment of the same resolves! Little did she think of the real link that existed, mysterious, yet adamantine; that to pray for the success of one was to solicit destruction for the other. A dark veil was before her eyes, totally impervious; nor did she know that the withdrawing it, as was soon to be, would deliver her over to conflicting duties, sad struggles of feeling, and stain her life with the dark hues that now, missing her, blotted the existence of the two upon earth for whom she was most interested.

They arrived in London. Falkner’s fever was gone, but his wound was rankling, painful, and even dangerous. The bullet had grazed the bone, and this, at first neglected, and afterward improperly treated, now betrayed symptoms of exfoliation; his sufferings were great—he bore them patiently; he looked on them as an atonement. He had gone out in his remorse to die—he was yet to live, broken and destroyed; and if suffered to live, was it not for Elizabeth’s sake! and having bound her fate to his, what right had he to die? The air of London being injurious, and yet it being necessary to continue in the vicinity of the most celebrated surgeons, they took a pleasant villa on Wimbledon Common, situated in the midst of a garden, and presenting to the eye that mixture of neatness, seclusion, and comfort that renders some of our smaller English country-houses so delightful. Elizabeth, despite her wanderings, had a true feminine love of home. She busied herself in adding elegance to their dwelling, by a thousand little arts, which seem nothing, and are everything in giving grace and cheerfulness to an abode.