# Ethel Churchill/Chapter 70

CHAPTER XXXV.
THE LAST LETTER.
Strong as the death it masters, is the hope That onward looks to immortality: Let the frame perish, so the soul survive, Pure, spiritual, and loving. I believe The grave exalts, not separates, the ties That hold us in affection to our kind. I will look down from yonder pitying sky, Watching and waiting those I loved on earth Anxious in heaven, until they too are there. I will attend your guardian angel's side, And weep away your faults with holy tears; Your midnight shall be filled with solemn thought: And when, at length, death brings you to my love, Mine the first welcome heard in Paradise.
Norbourne delayed opening the casket till alone in his room; and even then he lingered. There was something exquisitely painful in the memories that crowded upon his mind: a ​thousand of Constance's daily acts of affection rose before him: neyer till this moment had he felt them unrequited; but now they were remembered like a reproach. He could not accuse himself of a moment's unkindness, or even coldness; from the hour that they stood at the altar together, her happiness had been the most sacred and the most tender care in life; but now he felt as if he had wronged her in not loving her entirely. The image of another had been in his heart,—might not its shadow have sometimes fallen upon her? Any occupation was better than this mood of morbid dejection; and, suddenly drawing the lamp towards him, he opened the casket. The first things he saw were the long tresses of fair hair, which her father had had cut off after Constance's death. Norbourne's heart smote him, that he had not thought of them as a sad memorial. His eyes filled with tears, as he took up the glittering lengths. Their pale gold was lovely as ever; but there was something in the touch from which he involuntarily recoiled. It is strange the difference ​between the hair of the living and the dead: the one so soft, so fragrant, and falling; the other so harsh, so scentless, and so straight. In nothing is the presence of mortality more strongly marked.
There was a perfume hung about the casket; but it came not from that coldly golden hair: it rose from the withered leaves of some flowers, whose scent outlived their colours. Norbourne at once recognised the riband he himself had put round the roses the night of that festival whose end had been so fatal.
"Alas!" exclaimed he, "how tenderly has her father garnered these tokens of the past!" and again he felt as if he ought to have done likewise.
Below these lay the letter. Norbourne could see that it had been often read; and on it were the trace of tears—tears shed by the proud, the reserved Lord Norbourne. He felt that his uncle did, indeed, love him as his own son, or never would he have let him look on these proofs of the tenderest sorrow,—the most gentle affection. He took up the letter: well ​did he know the delicate and graceful handwriting; but he saw that the characters were tremulous, and it had obviously been written at different times. How much did it betray of the heart struggling for expression with bodily weakness! At first the page swam before him; but, with a strong effort, he at last read the contents.
LETTER OF CONSTANCE TO HER FATHER.
My Dearest Father,—Before you begin the following letter, I entreat your patient kindness if there be aught in its contents to grieve or to displease you. If you could know the relief that it is to me to write, you would, I know, forgive me.
Before you read this letter, the child whom your affection has made so happy, will be cold in the grave. Read it, my beloved parent, as the expression of my latest wish on earth—the wish that will be next my heart when it ceases to beat. I know that I am dying; and but for your sake, my father, I could be glad to ​die. You know not how weary I often feel, nor the cold sickness that often comes over me. The day is very long, and the night yet longer. Things that I used to love, now only fatigue me. I gaze into the sunshine, and my eyes close with its brightness. I look upon my flowers only to ask whether they or I shall be the first to fade. There was a time when I was sad to think of death, when I shuddered at the thought of the dark and cold tomb: but God, in his mercy, allowed not such terror to last. I used to shrink from the grave, where love was not; but I now feel that his love is with us even there. Few are the ties that now bind me to this weary world, and they will be with me in eternity.
My father, it is your old age left childless that is my abiding sorrow. I fear your proud and self-sufficing nature. Who will force you to love when I am gone? You will be unhappy, and your unhappiness will take the seeming of sternness and of sarcasm: and yet, if you would allow it, there is one who would love you almost as much as I have done. ​Norbourne has for you an affection that but few sons have for their father. He admires, he understands you; and confidence on your part, and return, will make him your affectionate and devoted child. I sometimes hope that it will be so, for my sake. You will grieve together over my loss; and grief subdues and draws those who share it together.
And now, dearest father, for what I long, yet dread to say. Norbourne is young; he will, I believe, I hope, marry again. May she whom he marries be to you as a daughter! Let her be such: you can make any one love you whom you choose. I have long felt that it was your influence over my cousin that made me his wife; for he never loved me. Do not start at this: I was a child when I married—a child in every thing but my passionate love; but I grew to womanhood rapidly. I seem to have lived years, so much have I thought and felt during the last few months. I have learnt the secret of others from my own heart, and that taught me that my cousin had for me only ​the affection of a brother. How unlike my own feverish, untranquil, and fearful fondness for him! yet how kind he always was! how tender in his even feminine care of me! Hour after hour has he turned from all study, all employment, all amusement, to watch and soothe my sick fancies. I could not help being happy in his presence; and yet his absence has often been a relief. I have wept with painful gratitude over the favourite flowers that, every morning, he would allow no one to gather for me but himself. Still there lacked that sympathy which taught me to read his thoughts without a word. Nothing but love can answer to love; no affection, no kindness, no care, can supply its place: it is its own sweet want.
Do you remember my fainting at Marble Villa? A sudden and dreadful jealousy of Lady Marchmont entered my mind. God only can forgive me for all I then thought! for God only can know the agony of my suffering. A moment's frantic misery led to an explanation ​with Lady Marchmont; and I learnt that my wretchedness had been vain. But not with my jealousy of her, who was afterwards my dear and true friend, did the knowledge depart that such jealousy had brought. I could not observe Norbourne's feelings without perceiving how different they were to mine. There was an anxiety about his kindness, which too often appeared as if it had something to make up to its object.
From discovering that he did not love me, it was but a step to finding that he loved another. I have watched him read, first earnestly; then the page has been closed unconsciously, and he remained lost in a gloomy reverie. I have opened the volume when he left the room, and found that the record was of ill-placed affection. Often have I noted how he shrank away from any conversation that turned on those tender, yet deep sentiments on which I could have talked to him for ever: and, alas!—worst of all to bear—I have bent over his feverish and troubled sleep: there was ​a name breathed amid his dreams, but that name was not mine.
My father, I charge you with the care of his future happiness: think that it is the last, the dearest wish of your child. In the mutual affection between you and my husband, I see the resource of your old age. His ties will become yours, and a new growth of kindly interests and warm affections will spring up under the shadow of the old. If, as I sometimes hope, the departed spirit is permitted to retain in another world those affections which made its heaven on earth, how tenderly will I watch over you!
My beloved father, our parting is but for a season. Not in vain have these divine words been spoken, whose comfort is with me even now. I die in their glorious faith, and in their cheering hope. If I die, as I trust to do, watching the faces that I love to the last, these words shall be my latest gift to you, my father; they will bring their own power.
​ I am very faint, I can write no more. I commend my dearest husband to you; and that God may bless, and re-unite us all, is the latest prayer of Your affectionate child,
Constance.