The Soldier's Wife — page 218: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

— EN EE THE SOLDIER'S WIFE. " 197 ’ death of Frederick Lonsdale in addition to that}now sorrow too profound—too immense—to of Rechurn ! ' find a vent in passionate ebullitions, For these All this was appalling and horrible—a hide-]are accompanied by tears—and tears are a re pus and frightful complication of tragedies and|lief: but such relief was denied to the unhappy crimes. But there was one more scene of mark-| Lucy. It was not a mere wound productive of ed inlerest yet to occur: for scarcely had allj bitter anguish which she had received: it was a those explanations been mutually given and lis- |shock—crushing, overwhelming, and prostratng tened to by the group gathered round the hur-|—which she had sustained. dle whereon the dead body lay, when Sir Ar-| But at intervals she took her boy in her arms chibald Redburn, mounted on a foaming horse, |—strained him to her bosom—and held him galloped into the barrack-yard. He had been| tightly there for many minutes, without relaxing startled into horrible misgivings and flung into |her hold upon his form, Then she would cease a terrible dismay about a couple of hours back, | praying and gaze upon him in the dtsmal dreary by the circumstance of the horse which his sun) blankness of despair. Still not a tear stole down had ridden on the previous evening, having | her cheeks: her’s was a sorrow pasi all weeping. peen found wandering in the fields near Oak-| Weeping !—Oh, it is a luxury for those who are leigh; and as one of the stirrups was broken, |afflicted: it relieves: the surcharged heart of his first and most natural thought was that Ge-|balf its load! -Yes—there ts a luxury in tears; rald had been thrown, and either killed, or else |and therefore Lucy knew it not. She did not go seriously injured, that he had not the power |rave—she burst not forth into frenzied excess— to regain possession of the steed, which had ac- |she gave not way to maniac wildness, Through cordingly strayed away until instinct had led /all those phases of woe had she passed on former the animal to the neighborhood most familiar | occasions, — when Lonsdale was ensnared by to it. For we should observe that it was not| Langley at Oakleigh—when her father sought Captain Redburn’s own horse on which he had | to coerce her into marriage with Gerald Red- set off on the preceding night from the Manor :|burn—each time that her husband was betrayed it was one belonging to his father—and _ hencejas a deserter by the villain Bates—-each time the return of the steed to the neighborhood of |too that he was lacerated by the scourge—and its own stable. Without loss of time Sir Archi-) many, many times when he had maltreated her bald Redburn had ridden over to Middleton in| during the last year: these were her experiences a state of the acutest suspense; and he ctwbd fot the wild bitterness and rending tortures of to behold the corpse of his son stretched at one |affliction. But it was otherwise now. Physical extremity of the barrack-yard, and the corpse | pains rack the body until it sinks into an iInsen- of Frederick Lonsdale—that son’s victim—at|sibility to additional excruciation; so do the the other! — barbed irons of moral torture enter into the soul “My God, my God! there is retribution in/until its feelings sink into numbness with the all this!” exclaimed the unhappy man: and excess of their own ineffable agony.. Thus was he would have fallen headling from his horse, /it with Lucy Lonsdale. ‘There was one object had not those near rushed forward to catch him| which now held her to lfé—and this was her in their arms. son. Save and except in respect to him, the whole world, with its swarming millions of inhabitants—its business and its bustle—its con- flicting passions and its jarring interests—its pains and its pleasures—was but a mere blank, She might live on for the sake of that ehild— she might toil for him—but it would be mechan- ically: she would breathe, and move, and perform the functions of existence—but it wouid be without con-ciousness : she would know not the world around her—and the world would only know her as a loin and desolate belug, whose blighted hopes and ruined heart would permit her to take no share in its occupations nor to sympathize with its enjoyments. Such was the state in which she felt herself to be CHAPTER XLI. THE WIDOW AND THE ORPHAN. Upon her knees in her humble chamber, and With little Frederick also kneeling by her side, was Lucy Lonsdale, while the incidents of the preceding chapter were taking place. She was praying that heaven would sustain her unhappy busband in the fortitude of Christian piety and manly resignation to the Jast: and she was teaching her son to pray also for that father Whom he would never behold again. The poor} And Lucy knelt and prayed in her huakle boy comprehended this: he understood that ney-|chamber—and the boy kuelt by her side, She er more 10 this life would he look his sire in the | knew not the exact hour at which the executios fare; but beyond that he knew nothing. Helof ber husband was to take place: she nad not conceived not how this was to be; and yet with|dared ask the question of him at their farewell some instinelive feeling of awe and consterna-|meeting—she had not dared ask it of any other tion, he dared not ask his poor afflicted mother | But she had learnt enough to make her aware the question. Not for worlds would she suffer|that all would be over at least by elever. o’clock him to know—at least yet awhile—how his fa-|or that forenoon: and therefore she continued under the color of the law: she preferred to leave him in vague, and dim, and misty uncer- tainty upon the hideous subject. For the most part the language of her prayer was solemnly sollected ard lucidly continuous: for her’s was forth by the iron tongue of Time from the neigh boring church, told her that the hour was come —that it was eleven o’clock—she knew tkat she was a widow: she knew that her ooy was fatherless! She rose from _ her. “neces: nev. ther was being done to death by his cae until eleven. Then, as the sound sent, (C(O)