Home › East Lynne › East Lynne: Isabel

East Lynne: Isabel

Six years passed. Life at East Lynne was not all that one might wish for. To be sure, Lady Isabel had a most devoted husband and three lovely children. But her happiness was marred by two thorns of which her husband was quite unaware. Cornelia Carlyle, the domineering and narrow-minded half-sister of Archibald, had steeled her heart against Isabel from the beginning, and made life at East Lynne quite miserable for the poor little inexperienced bride. The second disturbance was the suspicion that her husband had loved and was now renewing his love for Barbara Hare, the daughter of the neighborhood justice. Incited by the idle gossip of servants, this suspicion grew into jealousy. It was true that Archibald seemed to have many meetings with the pretty Barbara--but how was poor Lady Isabel to know that in reality these meetings concerned only private business of a professional nature? Barbara Hale had a brother, Richard, who years before had been accused of murder. Her mother was an invalid, and her stubborn, unforgiving father would hear naught of the son who had disgraced him. Barbara's secret meetings with her exiled brother had convinced her of his innocence. Her one recourse, when implored by Richard to seek help in finding the real criminal, was to confide in their old family friend, Archibald Carlyle.

Always delicate in health and worried sick over her imagined troubles, Lady Isabel was finally persuaded by her physician to go to the French coast for a change in air and scenery. The autocratic Cornelia forbade her being accompanied by the children. Lady Isabel was looking forward to a lonely fortnight before her husband was to join her, when she chanced to meet Francis Levison, exiled to the Continent because of his debts in England. Bewildered when she began to realize that she still had that indefinable, involuntary feeling toward him, she was yet completely fascinated, as in the old days before her marriage. She would have given all she possessed to overcome this attraction. Courage failed her to confide all in her husband. Full of sophistries as before, the unscrupulous Captain Levison compelled her to listen to him. "The past is gone," he said, "but if ever two people were formed to love each other, you and I were, Isabel. I would have declared myself, had I dared, but my uncertain position--my debts--well, I never knew how passionately I loved you until you became the wife of another. Isabel, I love you passionately still."

Lady Isabel felt it her duty to repel his advances, but there still remained that undercurrent of feeling for him that she could not comprehend. Fearful lest she betray herself, she dismissed him abruptly, sent for her husband to take her home, and made a pitiful attempt to drive all thoughts of Francis Levison from her mind.

It was well-nigh impossible. Her plans to forget him were completely frustrated when her generous husband, innocently enough, merely thinking to repay Captain Levison for his kind attentions to Lady Isabel on the French coast, invited that profligate to East Lynne as a place of shelter where he might be safe from his creditors until something could be arranged. Like a serpent, Levison boldly took every occasion to whisper into Lady Isabel's ear all the meetings that he spied between her husband and Barbara Hare. Under a misapprehension that her husband was giving his love to Barbara, and frantic with the jealous belief that the two were uniting to deceive her, Lady Isabel finally yielded to Levison's pleadings and eloped with him. No sooner had she taken the final step than she was filled with remorse. Almost immediately she discovered the true character of this insincere rake for whom she had given up her all. In a year he deserted her, leaving her unborn child nameless.

Too proud to accept help from relatives, she decided to become a governess. When she chanced to hear of the opportunity to return to East Lynne as the governess to her own children, she could not withstand the temptation, so great was her longing to see them again. It was a desperate chance to take, for she might be recognized, though illness and the railroad accident which had killed her child had altered her entirely. Her disguise was complete as, heartsick, she rode again along the familiar road toward East Lynne. When the dear old house loomed up before her, its gay and cheerily lighted windows a contrast to her own downcast spirits, she began to wish she had never undertaken the project. But for the sake of seeing her own children again, she would have turned back. Her fears of being recognized were allayed when she saw that no one suspected for a moment that the gray, saddened and disfigured "Madame Vine" was Lady Isabel.

East Lynne had a new mistress now--none other than her fancied rival of old, Barbara Hare. Not until she realized for the first time that Archibald's love could no longer be hers did Isabel feel an intensity of love for him that she had never experienced as his wife. And yet she became almost happy again in winning the affection of her children, though her joy in being with them was tempered with sorrow in caring for delicate little William, her second born, knowing as she did that he could not long be with them. Events moved along fast. There came the time when Francis Levison, returning to East Lynne to seek election to Parliament, only to be defeated by Carlyle, was convicted of the crime which had overshadowed Richard Hare for so many years. At East Lynne, after the death of little William, a sudden illness came upon Lady Isabel. When she realized that she was failing rapidly, she begged upon her death-bed to be allowed to see Archibald Carlyle. "I could not die without your forgiveness," she murmured. "Do not turn from me! Bear with me one little minute! Only say you forgive me, and I shall die in peace." "Isabel! Are you--were you--Madame Vine?" "Oh, forgive me for disgracing your home! And forgive me for coming back! I could not stay away from you and my children! The longing for you was killing me. I never knew a moment's peace after the mad act I was guilty of in quitting you. Not an hour had I departed when my repentance set in. Oh, forgive me! My sin was great, but my punishment was greater." "Why did you go?" "Did you not know? I grew suspicious of you. I thought you were deceitful, and in my sore jealousy I listened to the temptings of him who whispered to me of revenge. It was not true, was it?" she feverishly asked. "Can you suggest such a thing, knowing me as you did then, as you must have since? Isabel, I never was false to you in thought, word, or deed. Yes, I forgive you, fully, freely. May God bless you and take you to His rest in heaven!"

She raised her head from the pillow and clung to his arm, lifting her face with its sad yearning. Tenderly he laid her down again and suffered his lips to rest on hers. "Until eternity," he whispered.