Fra Jose, incensed at her obstinacy, and trembling for the loss of his power over the family, threatened to exclude her from confession, unless she disclosed to him the secret of that night—“Then I will confess to God!” said Isidora. Her mother’s importunity she found it more difficult to resist, for her feminine heart loved all that was feminine even in its most unattractive shape, and the persecution from that quarter was alike monotonous and unremitting.
There was a weak but harassing tenacity about Doña Clara, that is the general adjunct to the female character when it combines intellectual mediocrity with rigid principle. When she laid siege to a secret, the garrison might as well capitulate at once.—What she wanted in vigour and ability, she supplied by a minute and gnawing assiduity. She never ventured to carry the fort by storm, but her obstinacy blockaded it till it was forced to surrender. But here even her importunity failed.—Isidora remained respectfully, but resolutely silent; finding matters thus desperate, Doña Clara, who had a fine talent for keeping as well as discovering a secret, agreed with Fra Jose not to utter a syllable of the business to her father and brother.
“We will show,” said Doña Clara, with a sagacious and self-approving nod, “that we can keep a secret as well as she.”
“Right, daughter,” said Fra Jose, “imitate her in the only point in which you can flatter yourself with the hope of resemblance.”
The secret was, however, soon disclosed. Some months had elapsed, and the visits of her husband began to give an habitual calm and confidence to the mind of Isidora. He imperceptibly was exchanging his ferocious misanthropy for a kind of pensive gloom.—It was like the dark, cold, but unterrific and comparatively soothing night, that succeeds to a day of storm and earthquake. The sufferers remember the terrors of the day, and the still darkness of the night feels to them like a shelter. Isidora gazed on her espoused with delight, when she saw no longer his withering frown, or more withering smile; and she felt the hope that the calm purity of female hearts always suggests, that its influence will one day float over the formless and the void, like the spirit that moved upon the face of the waters; and that the unbelieving husband may yet be saved by the believing wife.
These thoughts were her comfort, and it was well she had thoughts to comfort her, for facts are miserable allies when imagination fights its battle with despair. On one of those nights that she expected Melmoth, he found her employed in her usual hymn to the Virgin, which she accompanied on her lute.
“Is it not rather late to sing your vesper hymn to the Virgin after midnight?” said Melmoth with a ghastly smile.
“Her ear is open at all times, I have been told,” answered Isidora.
“If it is, then, love,” said Melmoth, vaulting as usual through the casement, “add a stanza to your hymn in favour of me.”
“Alas!” said Isidora, dropping her lute, “you do not believe, love, in what the Holy Church requires.”
“Yes, I do believe, when I listen to you.”
“And only then?”
“Sing again your hymn to the Virgin.”
Isidora complied, and watched the effect on the listener. He seemed affected—he motioned to her to repeat it.
“My love,” said Isidora, “is not this more like the repetition of a theatrical song called for by an audience, than a hymn which he who listens to loves his wife better for, because she loves her God.”
“It is a shrewd question,” said Melmoth, “but why am I in your imagination excluded from the love of God?”
“Do you ever visit the church,” answered the anxious Isidora. A profound silence.—“Do you ever receive the Holy Sacrament?”—Melmoth did not utter a word.—“Have you ever, at my earnest solicitation, enabled me to announce to my anxious family the tie that united us?”—No answer.—“And now—that—perhaps—I dare not utter what I feel! Oh! how shall I appear before eyes that watch me even now so closely?—what shall I say?—a wife without a husband—a mother without a father for her child, or one whom a fearful oath has bound her never to declare! Oh! Melmoth, pity me—deliver me from this life of constraint, falsehood, and dissimulation. Claim me as your wedded wife in the face of my family, and in the face of ruin your wedded wife will follow—will cling to—will perish with you!” Her arms clung round him, her cold but heart-wrung tears fell fast on his cheek, and the imploring arms of woman supplicating for deliverance in her hour of shame and terror, seldom are twined round us in vain. Melmoth felt the appeal—it was but for a moment.
He caught the white arms extended towards him—he fixed an eager and fearful look of inquiry on his victim-consort, as he asked—“And is it so?”
The pale and shuddering wife shrunk from his arms at the question—her silence answered him. The agonies of nature
