THE ORPHAN'S TASK.
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“O, mother, it 's so cold here! I shall freeze, I know I shall;
and, mother, just see how blue the baby's hands are! You won't
stay in this dreadful place much longer, will you? And say,
mother, why don't father come?”
Yes, that was it—“Why don't father come?” Marion Leslie
had asked herself that question a great many times, since
the sunny morning when her noble husband had clasped her to
his heart, two long years before, with words of blessing, and
joined his good ship for a six months' voyage. Weary, weary
days and nights she had asked herself, “Why don't he come?”
and the wind and rain sobbed through the linden-trees, and gave
no answer but a wail. Six months after his departure, Marion
had clasped to her breast a babe, on which its father's eyes had
never rested; and a faint, sweet smile rippled round her red
lips, as she thought how he would take them in his arms, and
bless them, the mother and the child. But weeks were braided
into months, and yet he came not. There was a rumor, very
brief, and very terrible, that his ship was wrecked, and all on
board perished; but Marion never believed it, — how should she?—
and still she sat there in the cottage, singing to her babe sometimes,
and sometimes weeping, and asking herself, between her
sobs why it was her husband did not come.
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But there was a change, at length — an execution in the house.
At first, Marion looked on listlessly, neither caring nor understanding;
but at last the truth broke on her with a sudden shock,
and she arose. They were beggars. She understood that; and
then it was beautiful to see the triumph of her woman's love and
courage. She went forth with her three fatherless children, —
her daughter Blanche, her little Charley, and the baby not yet
three months old, — forth from the smiling cottage, out into the
cold, desolate world.
It was a beautiful home from which she was driven — the home
of her bridal, the home of her wife-hood, whither her husband
had borne her, with the orange-blossoms in her hair, ere
the suns of seventeen bright, summery years had woven their radiance
in her golden curls. There, for fourteen years, they had
lived and loved, with only the one sorrow of his necessary
absences; for Marion was a sailor's bride. She had been a
spoiled and petted child, and a still more petted wife; and now
that misfortune had come upon her, she was too proud to
suffer in the pleasant country-town among those who had known
and loved them in their brightest days. And this was why, having
collected what money she was able to command from the
sale of her few valuables, she gathered her stricken ones around
her one morning, and departed, — no one knew, and only a few
cared, whither. Other hands lit the hearth-fire at Maple Cottage,
and its rosy light beamed upon happy faces; and there
came no shadow of those suffering ones who had once lived and
loved there, to dim the picture.
Marion Leslie found a refuge, with her children, in one of the
humblest of the many cheap boarding-houses of New York.
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For a long time she could procure no employment, but at length,
by dint of persevering inquiry, she obtained regular work from a
cheap clothing-store in the neighborhood. But they had sunk
from one privation to another, until eighteen months after their
coming to New York (the time at which our brief sketch opens),
when their home, if home it could be called, was but a miserable
attic, in Paradise-square. Marion had grown very thin, but
there was a wild lustre in her blue eyes, a hectic flush on her
pale cheek; and you could not have met her, without a start of
surprise, at finding, robed in patches, and dwelling in misery, the
very embodiment of some painter's conception of a Saint Cecilia.
She sat there, bending over her rickety pine table, and stitching
wearily, while the baby lay sleeping on a couch of straw at her
feet; and the little Charley, clinging to her robe, clasped his
stiffened fingers together, and strove not to cry. So early do
the children of the poor learn patience.
At last the mother stopped for a moment, and drew her little
boy upon her knee. “Charley,” she said, “mother's dear Charley,
are you so very cold? Well, sister Blanche will come home
presently, and then Charley shall be warmed and fed. Mother's
little boy can wait, can't he?”
“Yes, mother, I can wait. I don't freeze much now, do you,
mother?” and the little fellow wound his thin, cold arms round
the weary woman's neck, and kissed away the tears that were
streaming down her thin cheeks. And then the door-latch was
raised softly, and a young girl of fourteen tripped lightly in.
Spite of all the disguises of wretchedness, spite of the clumsy
shoes, the coarse, patched garments, and the half-frozen fingers,
Blanche Leslie was beautiful. Hers was not the mere beauty of
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feature and complexion, through which looks oftentimes deformity
of soul; but it was that perfect and harmonious beauty,
which only one painter in a cycle of centuries can shadow forth.
Her long, golden curls floated down over her spiritual face, like
rippling waves of sunlight; and her features were pure and classical,
as the Madonna of Thorwaldsen. A glad smile illuminated
her face as she entered the apartment, and, going up to her
mother, she exhibited, with eager interest, two twenty-five cent
pieces.
“Only see, dear mother,” she cried, joyfully, “was n't Mr.
Green good? Here are two shillings he owed you for work,
and here are two shillings more, that he just made me a present
of; and he spoke to me so gently, mother dear, and put his hand
upon my head, and drew my curls through his fingers, just as
father used to, long ago; and then he said it was a shame for one
so delicate as you to have to do such work, and for a child like
me, too; — that it must not be, and he could put me in a way of
doing something better; and he said I must not let you tire
yourself with coming to the shop any more; that I must always
come for you. Was n't he good, mother?”
“God is good, my child,” said Marion, solemnly, and, for a
moment, she drew the girl's fair head to her bosom. “Now, go
darling,” she said, smiling through her tears, “go and get some
fagots, and a loaf of bread, for these poor children are almost
starved and frozen.”
And as Blanche left the room Mrs. Leslie sighed bitterly. O,
is not suspicion one of the most blighting curses of poverty?
Marion had striven to teach her daughter faith in the beauty and
purity of human nature, but painfully was the conviction forced
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upon her mind, that hereafter the widow's child must learn a
different lesson. Blanche was too poor, and too beautiful, to be
spared the luxury of trust. Grafton Green was a plodding,
scheming man of the world, and not the one to give even two
shillings from a pure motive of disinterested kindness; and
Marion resolved that, no matter how much she was needed at
home, or how much she suffered, she must be the only one here-after
to visit the rich man's clothing-store.
Another year passed, and still the wretched family lived on, in
the miserable attic in Paradise-square. And yet they were not
wholly wretched, not wholly miserable. There was faith and
prayer, and much love, beneath their humble roof; and the baby,
the little Ida Leslie, was growing up fair and sweet enough to
have gladdened any heart not wholly broken. She was a perpetual
joy to her mother, for only in her face could she see an
ever-present semblance of her lost Willie. Blanche and Charley
had Marion's own blue eyes, and golden curls; but Ida's heavy
tresses were black as night, and her large, dark eyes were wild
and passionate as an Italian's;—they were Willie's own. But
there was more sorrow than joy in the lonely roof. The pain
in the mother's side was growing more constant and severe;
the hectic flush was deepening on her cheek, and slowly, but
surely, she knew her feet were entering the path that leads down
to the country of the great departed, “into the silent land.”
For many a month Blanche had been the only messenger to
the clothing-store of Grafton Green; and whether it was that
the unsoiled innocence of the sweet young girl had subdued, by
its silent power, even his wicked and worldly heart; or whether
it was that he was waiting for the mother's death, that he might
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be more secure of success, he had, during all this time,
treated Blanche with the greatest respect. But the kindest
friend the lone ones had as yet found was a tall, graceful,
beautiful woman, living by herself, on the lower floor of
the house. Marion did not know her business, or whence
came the means to purchase her welcome and delicate offerings
of fruit and flowers; but she never dreamed of doubting the
stranger's purity, and had learned to love her with a sister's
fondness. “There comes Lady,” said the little Ida, one day,
when the woman entered; and Marion, looking up, with a sweet
smile, said, “Will you not let us have some other name to call
you by?”
“Clara was the name I bore when I was young and happy,”
said the stranger, sadly; and from that time the little Ida called
her “Lady Clara;” and in truth the name suited well the proud,
statuesque style of her faded but still regal beauty.
“I am going to die, Lady Clara,” said Marion, solemnly, one
day, when the little Ida was sleeping on the stranger's lap, and
Charley had gone on an errand with his sister Blanche.
“Yes,” was the reply, “and I have long been wishing to make
a proposal to you. I am an actress. I presume, Mrs. Leslie,
you have looked, as I once did, on actresses, with holy horror. I
think, however, you already know me well enough to believe that
my life has been free from crime. I have, indeed, been unfortunate,”
she continued, while her finely-chiselled upper lip curled
with a half-sneer, “and there are those in the world to whom
suffering and misfortune are the worst of crimes. My story
has not been a singular one. I was born in the highest
circle of metropolitan aristocracy. I was an only child, and my
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mother died when I was very young. My education was superficial;
that is, I was required to learn only such things as I
pleased; and I confined my studies chiefly to the modern languages
and music, of which I was passionately fond. The legitimate
result of such a self-willed course of training was a runaway
marriage with a handsome but dissolute soldier; and yet I
loved him. O God, how I did love him!” and the proud woman
clasped her white hands across her brow, and wept for a brief
moment of tempestuous agony, and then, with a firm voice, she
proceeded. “It was not a twelvemonth before my husband
wearied of his plaything, and left me. I thanked God then
that I was not a mother; but I have thought since it might
have been better if there had been a childish voice to call me
back to life. Already my poor father had died, and I took
to my heart the knowledge that I had brought his gray hairs to
the grave. Soon after his death, a will was produced — though I
was always doubtful of its authenticity — endowing his brother's
sons with all his vast fortune. I do not know as the will could
have been set aside; I surely would not have questioned it;
for I was far too proud to go back among the circles I had
adorned in other days, as a deserted wife; and I bore my griefs
alone, as best I might. At first, I strove to support myself, as
you have done, by needle-work. You know what a weary, torturing,
slow-dividing of soul and body that is; and soon I began
to loathe existence most intensely. At last, I sought an engagement
at a third or fourth rate theatre, and my offer was accepted
gladly. I am told that, if I had had ambition, I might have
risen to be a queen of tragedy; but I had none.
“I would not go upon the boards of a first-class theatre, lest I
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should perchance be recognized by those who had known me in
happier days; and even where I am, I would only take the least
conspicuous parts. I have chosen this ruinous, tumble-down
habitation, because it suits both my altered taste and my altered
means; but I have managed to surround myself with many comforts,
and, thank God, I have preserved, unsoiled, the purity of
my heart and life.
“And now, Mrs. Leslie, I have, as I said, a proposal to make
to you. I have seen, for a long time, your anxiety about Blanche;
nor do I wonder at it. But Blanche is strong-principled, and
strong-minded beyond her age. Now, if you will trust her to
me, I propose to make her an actress. She can soon take a
higher rolè of characters than I do, and will be able to support
her brother and sister. I know you will think it a hard choice
between this and starvation. I know your imagination will even
exaggerate the trials and temptations of this career; but think a
moment, — can any other path be more, nay, can any other path
be as much exposed to temptation, as that of a young and beautiful
sewing-girl, whose scanty pittance hardly keeps her above
absolute want, and whose very business exposes her in a thousand
ways to the pursuit of the unprincipled and licentious? Then
there is one more consideration; — as an actress, Blanche need
not despair of finding time enough to become, at least, respectably
educated; while, should she grow up a seamstress, you are
aware such a hope would be the height of absurdity. Blanche
is well enough while you live, — I would not have her situation
changed at present; but I know it is your conviction that you
cannot stay to guard her long; and, not even though she were
starving, would I say to her, `Blanche, come with me to the
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theatre,' unless I could also add, `Blanche, my advice has your
mother's sanction.' Shall I say it?”
“Leave me for a few moments, good, kind friend,” was the
reply, “and then I will answer you;” and, laying the little Ida
gently down, the actress glided from the room. Left to herself,
Marion Leslie knelt and prayed, long and fervently, —
prayed as only an anxious, suffering mother can pray. She
looked forward, with strained and aching eyes, into the future;
she saw the place of thorns over which her loved one's tender
feet must tread, and she prayed for strength to decide aright.
At last, as she heard the returning footsteps of her friend, she
rose from her knees, and, with a faint smile, whispered —
“Yes, I have decided. You may give my Blanche her
mother's sanction and blessing on whatever course you approve.
I leave her in your care, and, when I am gone, deal gently with
her, for the sake of the dead.”
“I accept the trust,” said, very solemnly, she whom the child
called “Lady Clara;” and, in a moment more, Blanche entered.
“Come hither, darling,” said the mother, fondly, holding out
her thin hand to Blanche; and Charley climbed upon her knee,
and Blanche knelt down by her mother's side.
“Blanche, dearest, you have been a good and faithful child
to me, and God will bless you, now, when I am gone, and
forever.”
“You gone, sweet mother!” and a look of mingled grief and
terror drifted up to Blanche's clear, blue eyes.
“Yes, darling,” — and Marion took in her hand the length of
her fair child's golden curls, — “yes, darling, the wild-flowers
of another spring-time will blow above your mother's nameless
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grave, and my little ones will be God's orphan children then!
No, no, Blanche, darling, treasure, don't weep so wildly!—I 'm
very weak, Blanche; I can't bear it.” And the brave girl struggled
with herself till moans subsided to sobs, and sobs to quiet
tears, and then her mother continued: “It would be sinful to
mourn so for me, my darling; for I am going home to Jesus. I
may stay with you for some time yet, but I must go when He
calls me, and then Clara will take care of you.”
The next morning Blanche awoke just as the first sun-rays were
brightening the attic windows. The poor children had crept early
to bed the night before, for they had no money to buy lights or
fuel, and Blanche could not carry home the work they had completed
till the morning. It had been a bitter cold night, but
Blanche, with the little Charley in her arms, had slept soundly.
When the sunlight flashed upon the windows, she started up in
alarm, to see how late it was, and, hurrying on her scanty supply
of raiment, she glanced at the low couch of straw where her
mother lay sleeping. The tears came to her eyes as she whispered,
“Poor, dear mamma, she is so ill! She sleeps late this
morning, and I guess I 'll carry this work home before I wake
her;” and then, gathering up the work into a bundle, she stept
softly to her mother's pallet, to give her one gentle kiss before
she left her. God of the fatherless! The lips to which she
pressed her own were cold and pale as marble. Marion Leslie
was dead!
Another meek victim “led as a lamb to the slaughter;”
another sacrifice offered up to the mighty Moloch of trade, and
that iron custom which closes to a woman the avenues of
healthy and respectable employments; another soul gone up
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before its Maker, crying out for vengeance against the mighty
of the land!
There are, who think death steals into the habitations of the
poor almost in the guise of an angel of light; that, because their
paths are hedged about with troubles and choked up with thorns,
the echo of the familiar foot-fall is not missed; that, because the
rain and storm beat upon their heads, the rain of sorrow fails to
fall upon the grave of the departed; but those who read the
“short and simple annals of the poor” will trace another record.
There were tears, and wailings, and sorrow, in the tumble-down
house in Paradise-square, when the body of Marion Leslie was
borne forth to the burial. The fair hair banded across her forehead
was wet with tears; and it was as if she wrenched out,
and carried away with her, other hearts beside her own. And
why not? If all things are bright around us, there is less room
for the shadow to fall. The difference is between taking his
single sun-ray from some lone prisoner in dungeon-walls, or
leaving one beam the less to brighten the splendors of the royal
palace.
It was a week after the funeral, when one morning Clara
reminded the sorrowing Blanche of the bundle of work not yet
carried home to the clothing-store of Grafton Green.
“Yes, yes,” said the young girl, abstractedly; “where is it?
I must go to work, I know. I 'll take it now.”
“Wait a moment,” said the actress, “and I will go with you
to carry it;” and she robed herself in a costume which, to the
uninitiated eyes of Blanche, seemed the height of elegance.
And, in truth, she looked more than ever worthy of her title —
“Lady Clara” — when the heavy folds of a rich and costly
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mantle fell gracefully about her tall and slender figure, and her
wrists and throat were muffled in soft and glossy furs.
“Now, Blanche,” she said, when she had completed her toilet,
“I will go with you; but you must wait till a moment after
I have gone in, and not on any account appear to recognize
me!”
When Blanche entered the store, she was surprised to see the
deference accorded by the clerks to her richly-dressed companion.
The actress stood at a counter at the further end of the
store, turning over, with an air of fashionable indifference, some
finely-stitched collars and cuffs. The young girl entered timidly,
and, stepping up to Mr. Green himself, she said, in a low,
musical tone, “Here is that last work, sir. Won't you please
to excuse my not having brought it home before? for my mother
is dead!”
A strange kind of expression flitted over the rich man's features, —
Blanche thought it anger, the actress called it triumph.
“I should be glad to indulge you, if I could, poor child!” he
said, with a strange gentleness; “but I must treat all my girls
alike, and the rule is, if any one keeps work out a week, it must
be charged to them, and they are to retain it. So, you see, I must
charge this now, Blanche, — twenty shillings, — but the charge
is a mere matter of form; you are too young and fair to suffer,
and I 'll give you some easy work to do now, and we 'll settle
about that, another time.”
“Blanche,” said Lady Clara, coming forward, “I expected
this — trust in me, poor child! Mr. Green, you said your
charge against this girl was twenty shillings; here is your
money, and we 'll just make you a present of the garment, to
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atone for your disappointment. Come, Blanche; wish Mr.
Grafton Green a very good-morning; you will take no more
work from his establishment!”
Mr. Grafton Green muttered something altogether too near an
oath to be written down for ears polite, and the actress took the
fair girl's hand in hers, and left the “establishment,” with a
patronizing courtesy. When, at length, they were seated with
Charley and the little Ida in the apartment of “Lady Clara,”
in reply to Blanche's tearful, “O, Clara, what shall I do? we
shall starve!” the lady unfolded her plan, and endorsed it with
the dead mother's sanction. “I have paid up for your miserable
attic, dear Blanche,” she concluded, “and settled up accounts
with your landlord. I have been laying by money for this very
thing, Blanche, and now you shall stay with me, you and the
little ones, until you can do better; and I will support you, until
you can support yourself.”
And thus it was, climbing up, on to the stage, from weary
stepping-stones of toil, and want, and sorrow, one of our first
actresses made her début. “You have nothing to do now but
study,” said Clara, when the preparatory arrangements were
completed; and Blanche did study, as none can but those who
have a high and holy motive. She had not adopted her profession
without a bitter struggle, — not until every other door
seemed closed against her, and she had seemed to hear her dead
mother's voice, out of the grave, calling on her to arise and toil for
the children so sacredly given to her charge.
It was her highest ambition that they, for whom she thus
sacrificed herself, should never know at what a cost the flowers
which strewed their path were purchased. While they were yet
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so young, it was very easy to send them to bed, before she made
her toilet for the theatre; and, as they grew older, she hoped to
be able to take a higher part, and so acquire the means to send
them away from her to school. Years passed on, and her wishes
were accomplished. At twenty, she found herself promoted to
the highest characters in the first theatres, and she had the satisfaction
of calling home her little sister on the Sabbath, and
learning, from the love of that innocent child-heart, that earth
was not all a wilderness. As for Charley, he was sent far away,
and growing hale and hearty, as his sister saw, when the happy
trio assembled with Clara, at a quiet, rural, country boarding-house,
for the summer vacation.
At twenty, Blanche Leslie was beautiful, — proudly beautiful.
Her success as an actress had been almost unexampled,
for one so young; and she had found time and
means to secure a brilliant education. The promise of her
childhood was more than fulfilled. Her large, radiant blue
eyes revealed the gifted soul looking through them, and her
complexion was fair and pure as the finest statuary. Her
figure was lofty and commanding, tall, and with sufficient fulness
to be graceful as a vision; and altogether she was the
most magnificent tragedienne that ever appeared upon the
boards of New York.
And now there dawned another dream upon her life. One
night there came behind the scenes a stranger, whom the manager
introduced to her as his friend, Lionel Hunter. It was to
Blanche like a revelation. She had never before met such a
man. Her acquaintance was limited to the circle of the green-room,
and no one had hitherto found lodgment in her heart for
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more than a passing thought; but this man — this Lionel
Hunter!
You might not have thought, at the first glance, that he was a
man to strike a lady's fancy; but I, who have seen and known
him, tell you that no man ever came so near realizing my conceptions
of the divine as Lionel Hunter. I never looked at him,
but I held my breath, and thought of those old times, when
the sons of God loved the daughters of men — when there
were Titans on the earth, and Nature, our primal mother,
wove stars in her dark hair for her bridal. He must have
been at least six feet two inches in height, and proportionately
large. His face resembled, more than anything else, the portraits
we have all seen of Shakespeare. He was handsomer than
the portraits, it is true; but there was the same expansive forehead,
the same indescribably fascinating eyes, and the same
sensuous mouth, with its expression of almost infantile sweetness.
His eyes were large and bright, of a liquid hazel, and his
chestnut-black hair curled over his classical head, down almost
to his shoulders.
“My friend,” said the manager, as he presented him, “is the
author of the last new play we brought upon the stage; and he
wishes to thank you, Miss Leslie, for having so gloriously personated
one of his best characters.”
And then he took Blanche's little hand in his own; and while
it lay there, fluttering like a caged humming-bird, he spoke a
few low, musical words of praise and thanks, which brought
the rich blood flushing to the fair girl's cheek, as it had
never flushed before. That night he walked with her to her
home; for she and “Lady Clara” had removed from
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Paradise-square, and now had taken pleasant rooms at a respectable
hotel. After that, Blanche was no more lonely. Almost daily
Mr. Hunter would meet her in her walks, and sometimes accompany
her home.
Then, the enthusiastic girl lived on the memory of that meeting,
until she should see again her hero, her demi-god. Sometimes
there was but a chance interview of a few words, and
sometimes she would not see him for a day; but there would be
a quick ring at the door, and a bouquet of flowers left for Miss
Leslie. And these were always the costliest exotics, or heavy
clusters of the fragrant climbing roses, with long stems; so that
always in Blanche Leslie's parlor was summer, and the breath
of flowers. Perhaps it was not well for the inexperienced girl
that Lady Clara's voice had failed her, and she was spending
the winter in the country; but surely never before had life
seemed half so bright.
At last, Mr. Hunter came often to her rooms. Another of
his tragedies was to be produced, and, that she might be perfect
in her part, he read it to her many times at home. Surely, never
was another voice so musical; and Blanche could not refuse, when
the play was over, to listen to yet other plays, and hear the
glorious creations of the master dramatist himself made vocal.
It was the day before Miss Leslie's last engagement previous to
the summer vacation, and once more Lionel Hunter sat beside
her in her room. Somehow it seemed a very natural thing,
and his broad breast had grown to be the customary resting-place
for her sunny head.
He sat beside her now, and once more he had drawn that fair
head underneath his arm, and was gazing fondly in her upturned
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face. “Blanche,” he said at length, in a deep, musical whisper, —
“Blanche, darling, tell me once more that you love me.
O, dear one, my life has been a weary thing sometimes; there
have been dens and dark places in it; but you have walked
beside me for a while, and my path has grown radiant with the
glory of your soul. O, Blanche, Blanche, best, purest half of
myself, I could not live without you now!—tell me once more
that you love me!” And the proud man paused, and bent his
face to catch the whispers of her answer, till he could feel her
breath warm upon his cheek.
There was truth, and passion, and tenderness, in the girl's
voice, as she murmured, “O, my Lionel, my lion-hearted!
you know I love you — you know I could not help it.”
And his face bent lower still, as once more he said, “And
Blanche, my Blanche, will you be all mine, and forever?”
“Forever,” was the faintly-whispered reply; “I love you,—
how could I be another's?”
“And you will not love me less, Blanche, when I tell you I
am not the humble, plodding scribbler you have thought, but a
man rich in fame and wealth, whose name is a passport to the
proudest circles in the land. Can you be proud of me, Blanche
darling, and not love me less?”
But the tears gathered slowly in the young girl's eyes, and
trembled on the heavy lashes, as she replied, “But you, Lionel;
if this be so, how can you love me? Will you not blush when
men shall say your wife has been an actress?”
“Great heavens, Blanche! have you been deceived, all this
time? Did you think I meant to marry you? Why, Blanche,
that would be certain ruin. Have you so little trust, so little
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faith in me, that you think I would be more true to you, when
some old priest had said over a few words of a senseless ceremony?
I thought you loved me. Well, no matter, Blanche; I
was deceived — I can bear it — take your head off my breast —
get up, and go away. Why don't you go? In Heaven's name,
what are you staying here for?”
“Because I love to stay, Lionel, and because I will never stay
again. O, Lionel, you have darkened all my life! Why did
you come to me, with your bright, bewildering beauty?”
“Why? Because I loved you, because I thought your heart
was not that of a stone, but a woman. Stay, now; what are you
getting up for? Blanche, sit still!”
“No, I shall get up now, and you will go and leave me forever.”
“I shall do no such thing. I will go and leave you till to-morrow,
and then I 'll come back, and say `Blanche, will you
be mine?'” and he rose, and walked toward the door; but turning,
ere he reached it, he spread out his arms, and said, in those
low, rich tones that never could have belonged to any human
voice but his, “Come to me, Blanche darling, come and lay
your little golden head upon my breast. Who else can shelter
you so well as I? You have said that I was your world. Be
true to me, then, — true to your own soul, clinging even now to
mine, — and come to me. Is the world more than I am, Blanche?”
“No, sir, no,” and the young girl shut her eyes, and clasped
her white hands across them. “No, sir, but God is, and the
voice of my dead mother calling to me out of her grave! Go,
Mr. Hunter!”
“Do you mean it, Blanche? Do you mean to say I shall go
away and never see you any more — that you will no more live
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for me, nor I any more live for you? That we are to be nothing
to each other, any more?”
“That is what I mean, Mr. Hunter.”
He walked slowly and deliberately back again, and raised her
in his arms. “Look at me, Blanche, and tell me, now, do you
mean to say, Go, Lionel, go, and never look upon my face
again!”
“Yes, yes, Mr. Hunter; I mean to say just that: — Go, and
never come again, and in mercy go quickly.”
“You mean to say, Go and come again to-morrow; — that is
my reasonable Blanche. You are feverish and excited now, and
would indeed be best alone;” and, so saying, he kissed her
gently, released her, and walked to the door. Then, turning
once more, he said, “Good-by till to-morrow, Blanche, little
one. Let me see you happy, then!”
It was two o'clock, the next afternoon, when Lionel Hunter
rang at the door of Miss Leslie's boarding-house. He was shown
into her accustomed sitting-room, but she was not there. He
threw himself into her easy-chair, and lying on the table beside
him he perceived two notes, directed in a light, graceful hand,
which he recognized but too well — the one to him, the other to
the manager of the Broadway theatre. Eagerly he broke the
seal of the one superscribed “Lionel Hunter,” and read thus:
“Lionel: When your hand touches this sheet, I shall be
far away. It is two hours since you left me, and I have been
sitting here all the while, in a kind of stupor. I have loved you
very fondly, Lionel, and there is no blame for you in my heart
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now, only sorrow, bitter, crushing sorrow. I will believe that
you love me — that you did not mean to deceive me! I will
even try to think that the fault, the misunderstanding, was all
mine. My soul shall send back only prayers for you — my heart
shall breathe only blessings. I love you, Lionel — O, how I
love you! If I could coin my life-blood into a flood of blessing,
and pour it on your head, I would do so gladly; if I might die
for you, my soul would be blessed as the angels. I even have
thought, — may God forgive me! — that I could give my soul to
perdition for your sake; but I have no right to bring sorrow, and
shame, and suffering, upon another. The lips that my little sister
presses must be pure; the life consecrated by a dying mother's
blessing must be unstained.
“Lionel, Lionel, how I have loved you! — But I go! I dare not
trust myself to look again upon your face! I must not write
longer here. It is time already I had made my few preparations.
O, it is hard to tear myself even from this sheet, which
seems to link me to you. Do not, do not suffer, dearest Lionel!
On earth we meet no more; but in heaven, if you keep your
heart pure, I will know you and call you by your name, and I—
I will still and forever be your
Blanche Leslie.”
A deep, anguished groan burst from the heart of Lionel Hunter,
as he pressed the note again and again to his fevered lips.
“Lost, lost, lost!” It seemed a dirge with which the whole
creation was groaning. Then, for the first time, he knew how
madly he had loved Blanche Leslie; then, he knew it would
have been but a light thing to have laid down fame, and wealth,
and this world's honor, so that her head could have lain
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upon his bosom, so that he could have called her his wife.
But it was too late. Lionel Hunter was not one to yield to circumstances
tamely, or without a struggle. He had found the
eidolon of his life's long dreams; had looked into her eyes,
had held her head upon his heart; and now she was gone —
now that he would have called her wife, he could not. At first
there seemed a kind of injustice in it. He forgot that she had
fled because of her very love, not from him, but from temptation;
and the proud man ground his teeth together, and then sat
down in the chair her form had pressed, and moaned helplessly.
Ten years had passed. It was the rich, hazy autumn.
A kind of misty, Indian-summer glory lay all over the broad
landscape, and flooded with its radiance the pleasant parlor of
an elegant little cottage, in the suburbs of New Orleans.
The room was tenanted by two ladies, both graceful, both elegant,
but neither young. Thirty summers had woven their
meshes of light in Blanche Leslie's fair tresses, and over them the
moon must have risen in a night of sorrow; for among the
golden curls were threads of silver. Her features were purer,
and more spiritual in their outline, and her thin figure had lost
none of its grace.
“Three weeks more, Lady Clara,” and, as she spoke, you
might have fancied her voice had in it the low, touching music
of a Peri shut out of Paradise, and pleading that the gates
might be reöpened, — “three weeks more, and Ida's schooldays
will be past forever. How can I manage then? How
shall I any longer spare her the knowledge that her sister is an
actress?”
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“You can hardly hope to conceal it longer, Blanche; and why
should you wish it? Surely, dear one, in your pure life there
is nothing for which to blush. In my anxiety, when you left
New York so suddenly, I had nearly betrayed your secret. O,
Blanche, you can never dream the relief it was, when I got your
letter, telling me your assumed name, and requesting me to join
you at New Orleans. I was really thankful when Charley
entered the navy; for, if he had staid at home, both he
and Ida must surely have long since known your secret;
though, really, Blanche, I never could see your reasons for concealment.”
“O Clara!” and the poor girl shuddered as she spoke, “you
would see, if you knew all. Sometime I 'll tell you why I left
New York so suddenly. God in heaven be thanked, I 've been
able so far to prevent Ida from even seeing the inside of a
theatre! I can bear to have my life blank and dark, if I can
make my mother's child happy. — What! a letter, Anne?” as
the servant entered. “That must be from some one at the
green-room. I hope they don't want me for a rehearsal.”
But why did her cheek grow pale, and her hand tremble, as
she glanced at the superscription, and nervously broke the seal?
and what was there in its contents to bring the hot, bitter tears
up from their fountain in her strong, proud heart? “Blanche,”
it said —
“Blanche Leslie, — For something tells me you are Blanche
Leslie yet — I have found you at last, after these weary years.
Listen, and hear if it be not destiny. When you left me, Blanche,
I was a heart-broken, miserable man. You did not know me, little
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darling, or you never would have gone. I did not know myself.
I did not know how strong was the love I had for you. Blanche,
believe me, for I swear it before heaven, I never would have asked
you to make one sacrifice for my sake. You should have done
nothing, been nothing, your own heart did not sanction. When
I read your note, I awoke to the knowledge of my own soul.
Then I knew that, without you, wealth, and fame, and honor,
were worse than vanity, hollower than the apples of Sodom. I
would have laid down everything I possessed on earth, to have
called you wife. My soul cried out for you `with groanings
that could not be uttered.'
“For a month, Blanche, I was nearly crazy. I did nothing.
I shut myself up, and never closed my eyes. I said nothing but
`Blanche! Blanche! Blanche!' Then there came to me a
resolve to find you, and I went forth. For all these weary
years, I have given myself to the search. Sometimes I wandered
into the obscurest alleys and dens of misery, for I would
wake from terrible dreams, to fancy you suffering — dying, perhaps,
of starvation. Then I would seek you in the haunts of
fashion; for all this time, Blanche, never once did the thought
visit me, that you might be another's. I knew you were true to
me. I knew, wherever you were, my name was written upon
your heart. I judged your love by the resistless might of my
own.
“It is strange, Blanche, but all these years I never once
entered a theatre until last night. I thought you would expect
me to seek you there, and so avoid them; and I loathed their
very atmosphere. I cannot tell why this feeling should have
taken possession of me, but it was so. Last night my mood
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changed. Something told me, as I passed the brilliant lights,
to enter. I strolled into a box in the corner, and, Blanche, I
saw you. Saw you! Can you understand how my whole being
was electrified? I was wrapped in a trance of joy. The
weary, weary past seemed like some horrible night-mare;
and, O, the wakening was so glorious! I could not see you
last night at your own home, and yet I could not leave you.
I followed you and guarded your door the whole night, like
a sentinel, and only this morning I have come home to write
this letter. Blanche! Blanche! was I indeed so near you
without your knowing it? or did your heart thrill, as in a vision,
because I was near, and then your reason chide you for
the fantasy?
“I cannot talk of all that terrible past. It is over now. Let
us forget it. I will be with you presently; and then, then,
little darling, I will feel those warm arms about my neck, — I
will draw the fair head to my bosom, and the beauty of my
dreams shall be my wife! O, Blanche! how many weary years
I have wept and prayed for this! The seas have not been deep
enough, nor the steep mountains ever so high, as to divide you
from my vision. At night, I have taken in my hand the length
of your golden curls, and felt my forehead baptized, in a dream,
with your kisses. There, — I cannot write longer. I will come
to you, and then, before God and man, you shall be mine, even
as I am
Your
“Lionel Hunter.”
Blanche glanced around, when she had read it to the close;
she was alone. Clara had stolen unperceived from the room.
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She threw herself upon her knees, and prayed, for a brief moment,
as only the suffering can pray; and, when she rose, her
face was pale and tearful, indeed, but she had ceased to tremble.
Going toward the open window, she drew before her a little
inlaid ebony writing-desk, his gift in happier days, and wrote
rapidly:
“No, no! Come not near me, Lionel Hunter! Disturb not
the holy calm to which it has been the work of years to attain.
I have wept much, suffered much, but I am stronger now. Talk
no more to me of earthly love, now that my heart has grown old,
and the beauty you used to praise has faded. Leave me, leave
me! It is my prayer; it is all I ask. Over my night of sorrow
dews have fallen, and stars have arisen; let me walk in their
light! Only in heaven will I rest, if it may be so, my head
upon your breast. Then, when the angels shall name me by a
new name, I will steal to your side, and, looking back to earth,
over the bastions of the celestial city, you shall call me
“Blanche Leslie.”
“No, no, little darling, you shall not send me from you. I
will call you my wife. You shall be Blanche Hunter. Look
up, darling. Let me gaze into your blue eyes, life of my life!
and, believe me, as God is in heaven, I will never leave nor
forsake thee!”
And, dear me, reader! — but stories of real life always will
end with a marriage, however much I may strive to prevent it,
and my heroine behaved just like all other heroines; and it was
not till years after, when Ida Leslie also sat among her husband
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and her children, that she learned the furnace of affliction
through which her sister's feet had trod; and that she herself
owed the joy and prosperity of her life-time, — not to Mrs.
Lionel Hunter, leader of the ton, — but to Blanche Leslie, the
Actress.
-- -- p655-046
HEAVEN'S CHANCERY.
“I expect a judgment, shortly — at the day of judgment.”
Bleak House.
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Fast fell the snow; keenly blew the north-east wind;
loudly rattled the hail-stones upon the frozen pavement. Wild
and wet, and fierce with tempest, the long hours came rolling
on; the black, scowling sky above, the gray, slippery
stones beneath. Not a single carriage rumbled along the
streets of the great city; still and silent it lay, like the hush
of the grave, with only the storm stirring the pulsations of its
mighty heart. It seemed to have folded round itself a pall
of night and stillness, and gone to its shrouded sleep, haunted
by ghosts of fearful dreams.
There were sumptuous halls there, where fair forms reclined
on couches of crimson velvet; where the rosy light streamed
over groups of statuary and rare paintings, in which old masters
had wrought out such dreams as man dreams but once on earth,
ere he wakes from them in heaven.
There was life, and light, and hope, within; there was black,
surging storm without. The very watchmen had cowered within
their boxes, and came not forth at the sound of a quick, firm
step along the deserted side-walk. You would have started as
you heard that foot-step, with its proud, defiant language. It
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was a Wall-street broker, who had counted his gains late in
the night, and was now returning homeward.
Suddenly behind him was heard another foot-fall. This one
seemed to express a kind of dogged resolution, stung to madness.
Quickly they passed onward, those two, in the midnight and
the darkness. There was little light at the street corner where
the broker paused at last, — paused, for a strong hand was on
his arm.
“Wretch! fiend!” whispered the stranger, “have we met at
last?
“`Unhand you,' do you say? `You do not know me?'—You
do know me, and, by all the fiends, you shall know me better
before we part! I loved once. Annie Lyle was fair and bright
as the roses on a June morning. I thought she loved me, —
and God knows how fondly I would have cherished her! but you
crossed her path — you, sir — do you hear?
“You were young and handsome, but with poison on your
adder's tongue. Annie was innocent and beautiful, but very
poor, — poor people have no hearts, you know! You deluded
your victim by a mock marriage, and then told her all, and left
her to her shame.
“That girl died of a broken heart; and, with my hand on her
cold, dead face, with its upturned, glassy eyes, I vowed to guard
her child.
“You, I suppose, were happy. The arms of a beautiful
woman were round your neek; one who would have spurned my
Annie from her side. Ha! ha! — I wonder if the skeleton arms
of that dead bride of yours never choked and strangled you in
your dreams.
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“That child — your child and the poor dead girl's — has grown
up now; and when she came to you for gold (I sent her, to see
if the father's heart within you might not even yet be moved),
you spurned her from your presence; — her, with her mother's
look in her face, her mother's soul gazing out of those clear eyes.
You, bold, evil man, dared to turn her child from your door, and
whispered to her of bread that shame might bring. No, no! mean,
pitiful wretch, it is no use to tremble — no use to mutter and
deny! Pray, if you will, for there is short shrift before you —
this hour you die!”
“Mercy! mercy!” pleaded the doomed man; but his cry
was uttered to a heart whence all sweet mercy-drops had been
washed out, long years ago, by bitter tears of agony.
“Mercy, ha! tell me, did you heed Annie's prayer for mercy,
when she clung to your knees, in her comfortless attic, and
begged you to kill her with your own hands, and not leave her
there to die of shame and want? Mercy! yes, there is a dagger
at your side; — use it, if you list, — use it — or — die!”
And with that word the murdered man fell heavily, while one
shriek, wild as the wail of a lost soul, rose loud and clear above
the storm, above the clear voices which rung the peal of one from
the lofty spire of Trinity!
It brought the startled watch to the spot, as if summoned
by the clang of a trumpet; and a dozen night-lamps shed their
lurid glare on the murderer's face, as he cooly drew the reeking
steel from the body of the dead.
A crowd was assembled in front of Sing-sing prison, for a
soul was to go forth from thence to meet its Maker. The
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by-standers held the morning papers in their hands, and scarcely
dared even to breathe, as they lingered over the accounts of the
justice and nobleness of the deceased, and the fearful incidents
of his shocking, cold-blooded murder!
Hush! hush! All is very still now. The prisoner has been
placed upon the scaffold, and turns to address the people.
“I am going to die now, fellow-citizens; dear, good friends,
such as the world has always been to me and mine. You
have done me a great many favors, and this last one — this
consent to let me die — is the greatest one of all! I have
appealed to another Court, and I go there to await my doom.
I make no base, mocking denial, no plausible lies, to cheat the
world of its sympathy. I killed him, and, could I kill him once
more, I would indeed wish to live. He has left me no family to
disgrace, and I go to a Court where Wall-street and the cell at
Sing-sing stand on an equal footing.”
There were shouts, and jeers, and hisses, when the dead body
hung there, in its cold chains, stark and stiff; there were voices
to whisper words of cheer, and trust in Heaven, to the proud
widow of the Wall-street broker; but I thought low to myself
of the high Chancery where God will be the plaintiff, and, with
little, half-crazed Miss Flite, I whispered, “I expect a judgment,
shortly — at the day of judgment!”
-- -- p655-054
CHANGE.
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
O word, colder, more bitter, more terrible than death! Word,
whose lightest meaning is a great gulf, with black, surging waters,
over which not even the angel wing of Hope has power to pass.
Fearful spectre! — how can I comprehend its meaning, when
such fond arms are hedging me from care, such dear eyes making
sunshine in my life! We can put the grave-yard sod above a
loved one's brow and live; for we can weep over the grave, and
put flowers on it. The pictured face, the curl of sunny hair, can
be bathed in tears; for Pride, that passion stronger than life, or
love, and erewhile stronger than Heaven, forbids us not to shrine
in our hearts the memories of the dead, to build altars to the
loved, and lost, and gone before.
But Change! When the dear lips smile still, but the smile is
not for us; when the curls are long and sunny, but our fingers
may not twine them; when the voice swells still with music, but
the name on which it lingers is not ours, — then, indeed, are our
life-paths written desolate; then does stern Pride put her finger on
our lips, and choke and strangle every thought that would breathe
his name; then do we lock up the olden memories in our hearts,
and, struggling for escape in vain, they can only walk to and
fro, like caged beasts.
It is a strange, mystic word; whose meaning we only fully
learn after months and years of anguish.
When the summer days are long, and they cannot watch with
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us the blue light sleep on the distant mountains, or the day go
down the sunset slopes, trembling to its death; when the hymn
falters on our lips, and the prayers are hushed, because their
voice joints not in them, there only steals to our souls a faint,
creeping shadow of the desolation which is to come!
What wonder that our heart is baptized in tears, at the
thought of another brow lying on the breast where only our head
should have rested, of other lips being pressed to the shrine of
our own idolatry? And yet it must be.
There is no rest, save that which broods, bird-like, with its
great white wings, above the tide of death; no abiding-place,
save the fields that lie so green and sunny in the God-light of
heaven!
But fain would I put the evil day far off. Fain would I pray
our Father that the sunlight may linger long about my home,
and the day be a long time hid in the cloud of coming years,
when time, or death, or fate, shall brand the heart I trust with
the cold word Change!
-- -- p655-056
A LEGEND OF THE SNOW-FALL.
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What sayeth the storm-wind, sighing?
It bloweth with might and main,
And its touch on my aching forehead
Cools the throbs of my deathly pain.
It tells of a grave by the hill-side,
Where the wild winds madly blow,
And a heart that is cold and pulseless,
'Neath the fall of the hurrying snow.
And I think of a time in my cabin,
By the pine-fire's flickering light,
When a hand in my own lay trembling,
The whole of a lonesome night.
And he said, “Bend over and kiss me —
O friend, thou art dearer than all!
Let me feel thy touch on my forehead,
While the cold, white snow-flakes fall!”
But my eyes were dim when I kissed him,
For well in my soul did I know
To the beautiful country of shadows
His feet would be first to go!
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The wind was aloft in the chimneys,
And the snow was aloof, like the wings
Of a cloud of descending angels,
Or the blooms of a thousand springs!
But his thoughts went back to the summer,
And followed the pleasant ways
Where our foot-steps had wandered together,
In the long, bright summer days.
His thoughts gathered flowers on the uplands,
Where he never more might stray,
Till he cried, “My thoughts, they are angels,
Baptized in eternal day!”
Then there came to his forehead a glory
By the pine-fire's flickering blaze,
As I told 'twixt my sobbings the story
We had learned in those happier days:
How the good Christ was born in a manger,
And over the storm-waves of life
Walked with majesty simple and humble,
Saying Peace to their turbulent strife!
And when he went up into Heaven,
O'er the hills of eternal snow,
He promised his children should follow
Where he had been first to go!
Then my love, rising up from the pillow,
Said low, with his head on my breast,
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“O friend, I go forth in the morning,
To the fields of Eternal rest!”
And when the gray shadows of dawning
Swept over the cabin floor,
He said, “I am weary, ah! weary,
And cannot come back any more!”
Then the golden-fringed eyelids were folded
Close over his lustrous eyes,
And I heard, 'mid the storm and the tempest,
A summons from Paradise.
'T was sweet as the sorrowful closes
Of death-hymns chanted at night,
Or the breath of the folded roses,
On the dead man's shroud of white.
And I knew, when down through the snow-flakes
I heard those sweet tones fall,
'T was the voice of a summoning angel,
And my love must obey the call!
And, alack! when there stole o'er the snow-drifts
The gold-shodden morning's tread,
The embers had faded to ashes,
And I was alone with my dead!
-- -- p655-059
“I CANNOT MAKE HIM DEAD. ”
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Hush! tread very lightly! The long shadows stretch
across the floor, the canary is silent in the window, the air
seems heavy with the perfume of the violets you hold in your
hand.
There he lies, — your little Charlie! Yes, yours, for Charlie's
mother has gone to sleep. They put her down in the cold, dark
earth, in the gray of a winter's morning; daisies grow over her
grave now, and wild birds, southern birds, with gay, brilliant
wings, sing over her. Charley is yours.
Watch him as he sleeps. The eye is like yours when it
opens, but the blue-veined lid that closes over it is his mother's.
Those lips are hers! Do you remember how they trembled
when you first told her your love, and how in long years they
only parted to breathe for you words of gentle kindness? Sometimes
you were impatient, petulant. O, how you repented
it when it was too late! But nothing had power to dim the
love-light in those clear blue eyes — nothing! not even death
itself, for her last words were a blessing, when she died, and —
gave you Charlie. O, how you have loved that boy! You
have watched the breath of heaven, lest it fall too roughly on his
cheek. You have buttoned your coat around you, as you
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turned homeward, after a profitable speculation, saying to yourself,
“Yes, he shall be rich, my Charlie.”
But there came days when there was no little foot to meet
you on the stair, no childish voice to whisper welcome.
The room, your room and Charlie's, was hushed and still;
the nurse stepped softly; the whip you bought him hung upon
the wall, and Charlie could only whisper faint words of thanks
for the flowers or fruit you brought him as you hurried homeward.
Now you have come once more to look upon him, as he
slumbers. It is fearful, all this stillness. “Charlie,” you say,
“Charlie.” Slowly the blue-veined lids uprise; the dark eyes —
your eyes — look up to your other eyes.
Strange how bright they are! You put the violets in that
tiny hand. He clasps them closely, but he whispers, “Papa,
mamma has been singing me to sleep, and now she 's calling me.
Kiss me, papa!” and with that last, fond kiss your little boy's
eyes close, and the white dimpled hands tighten over the fresh
flowers.
No need to step softly, lest you waken him. His mother
guards her boy! No, no — you need not sob, or groan. Bear
a brave heart, man!
Do you hear that carriage in the street? Do you hear the
town-clock strike, and the church-bells peal? The world is going
onward, brisk, lively, smiling as ever, with the joy-pulse
beating at its great heart; and you, what are you, that you
should make your moan, sitting there in the silence, holding your
dead boy to your breast?
“You cannot make him dead,” you say, and small need!
The earth was a cold soil for your fair flower to grow in.
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The Great Gardener has transplanted it to the ever-blooming
gardens of Paradise. He is yours still! You have but nursed
an angel for heaven! You have held him on your lap, cradled
him in your arms, and when you have hushed him to rest laid
him down on the bosom of Jesus. No, to you, Charlie “is not
dead, but sleepeth!”
-- -- p655-062
CHILDREN.
[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
Children are troublesome comforts — no mistake about that.
I always believed it, and lately I 've had a new revelation —
not exactly of the kind the angel Gabriel gave Mahomet, either.
When I want to go out, it 's “Here, Nell, can't you take
little Tom with you?” or, “Nell, if you could wait a few moments,
here is Herbert wants to go to sleep, and you can still
him quicker than anybody!”
I 'm a feminine Job, naturally, but I must confess it puts
even me out of patience, sometimes. Just to think of having my
new sky-blue barège consecrated with tears and molasses, to say
nothing of the way my white bonnet-ribbons are tugged at,
when I enter the house, by half a score of urchins afflicted with
pinafores, and a “What-have-you-brought-me” fever. I used
to pride myself on immaculate white kids; but I had to give
that up, long ago! I 'd just like to see what one of those model,
sweet-tempered Lady Esmonds would do, if she had my daily
penance to go through with — if she found Honiton lace collars
cut up for flounces to doll-baby ball-dresses, new silks maplesugared
with innumerable little finger-prints, velvet mantillas
spread out on the bushes to bleach, and my sanctum sanctorum
drawer of fineries turned into a menagerie!
Heigho! But I 've learned to bear it with all the patience
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imaginable; indeed, about those things, I am a model aunty,
now-a-days.
But that 's not the worst of it — I 've got a beau! It 's funny
I should have, — every time I look in the glass I think how
funny it is, — but no less true than strange!
Of course, Tom, and Will, and Herbert, and the rest, must
needs have free entrée of mamma's parlor, and I can't say a
word.
But just imagine my dismay when, at the breakfast-table,
some cunning little mouth cries out, “O, mamma, don't you
think, Mr. Smith never kissed us once! Should n't you thought
he might, when he kept kissing Aunt Louise all the evening?”
You know it 's not very fashionable to blush, — shockingly
old-fashioned, indeed, — but, I 'm rather unfashionable on some
occasions.
And yet, after all, there is no more devoted lover of children
than I am, in the main.
Dear, sweet little denizens of a world we are not pure enough
to inhabit any longer!
I saw one on the Common the other day, — I was walking with
him — I shan't tell you who he is though, — and suddenly, somewhat
to his surprise, I came to a “dead halt” before a little
two-wheeled baby-wagon. But such a beauty! “What is her
name?” I asked. “Annie,” was the reply.
I ought to have known before asking, for the name fitted the
little, rosy, darling gypsy completely.
She was a poor person's child, one could see by all her
appointments; but she was graceful as an opium reverie.
Such a forehead as the tangled curls o'ershadowed; and such
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eyes — large, black, laughing, saucy, and so deep! Such a little
rose-bud mouth as it had; and, though it did laugh, I must
needs stop to kiss it.
Sweet Annie! Little truant sunbeam! I wonder if thou
wilt ever again smile on my life-path?
This world has a great many roads, and much I wonder if
thou and I will ever again travel the same?
I wonder if thou art destined to look on human hearts, and
melt them with thy great eyes! If it be thine to write thy
name upon the age, with high thoughts and lofty deeds; or, perchance,
if thou art holding one end of a golden chain, with which
God's angels shall ere long draw thee to Heaven; while green
grass and violets shall wave round a white headstone, on which
stranger hands have graven “Annie!” I cannot say, — it may
be that some other day, when thou and I are both older, I may
pause again by the way-side to look upon thy beauty; or, it may
be, we meet on earth no more, — but, God be thanked, after the
day comes night, and there is one hostel for both of us at our
journey's end!
THE ANTHEM.
-- -- p655-065
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One day, on a voyage of pleasure,
I entered a comet's car,
And followed the sun to the westward,
In his journey fiery and far;
Till I saw where the barges of heaven
Lay moored, in the silence deep,
And the azure sea was pouring
Down over the heavenly steep.
Their canvas of clouds they were reefing,
And over their broad decks shone
The rays of eternal glory
That beam from the great White Throne!
But a chant arose when the comet
Was gallantly bearing down,
And it swept from the barges at anchor
To the towers of the heavenly town.
'Twas a band of heavenly minstrels,
And they chanted a heavenly song,
For never such anthems of glory
Bore earthly breezes along.
The stars of the morning sang treble,
And the water-spouts muttered their bass,
And the Asteroids joined in the chorus,
Each one from his far-off place.
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And the thunder came in 'twixt the verses,
With his grand adagio-tone,
And higher and higher the chorus
Swelled up to the great White Throne!
And I took to my heart the lesson,
As we glided silently past,
Where the infinite navies of heaven
A shade on the azure sea cast —
That our voices must all do homage,
Be our places near or far,
And praise must come up from the earth-worm,
As well as the morning star!
-- -- p655-067
POOR MAUD.
“Melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth,
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near, in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality more real?”
Byron.
[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]
Have you ever heard the shrieks, and shouts, and jeers, of a
frantic madman? Have you seen the mocking laughter in his
wild eyes, or the swollen veins knotted on his flushed brow? If
so, you bear on your heart a daguerreotype of the wildest horror
whose impress a human heart can bear. But there are milder
and still more tearfully appealing phases of insanity, where the
shattered intellect develops itself with a strange, rare beauty.
It was many years ago that I spent the lustrous southern summer
in a fair village of Louisiana. Villages are rarer there
than at the north, but occasionally you find a church, a post-office
and a school-house, and around them a few scattered
houses. Such was the village of Oakly, where I was staying.
It took its name from good old General Oakly, the largest
landed proprietor in those regions. The friend I was visiting
was no other than his fair daughter Kate, and Oakly Hall rang
with our merriment.
Kate Oakly was as pretty a specimen of a southern girl as
my Yankee eyes ever rested on. A brunette, tall and graceful,
with an exquisitely moulded figure, and red lips and sparkling
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eyes that might have charmed a hermit from his cell, or a Mahometan
from his paradise. We were friends in the fullest
sense, for we each had a lover of our own; so, of course, there
was no quarrel to come between us. We had had sails, and
rides, and drives, without number; and at last, one morning,
taking a volume of Moore in our hands, we started out to vary
the ordinary programme by a long ramble.
It was the seventeenth of June. Never was there a day more
gloriously beautiful. The luxury of tropical sunshine had swelled
the buds on the almond-trees to bursting, and the whole fair
world around us seemed like a mighty garden. We wandered
along the banks of a dimpling, leaping stream, till we came to a
part of the grounds which I had never before visited. Suddenly,
as we climbed a little height, there burst upon my view the
fairest picture these eyes have ever witnessed. For a space, the
brook ran more slowly, and its murmurs subsided into low, sighing
dirge-notes. On its banks grew a fringe of drooping willows,
dipping their long, green fingers in the dimpling water. On one
side, where the bank sloped downward from the rivulet to a little
dell, there rose a small, plain cross, exquisitely sculptured from
the purest of Carrara marble. Around it was a neat and tasteful
iron paling, overgrown with the climbing rose and trumpet-creepers;
and on the cross itself hung tasteful garlands of the rarest
flowers, evidently freshly gathered.
Nor was this all. Within the enclosure, her head bowed to
the foot of the cross, knelt a female figure, in bridal robes. At
the first glance, I thought she too was chiselled out of marble,
she knelt there so still, and hushed, and breathless, with her
white drapery falling about her. A band of orange-flowers was
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braided in her long curls, and they were of almost silvery whiteness.
Her face was so bowed upon the stone that I could not
see it, but in a moment more she spoke.
“Come forth out of thy grave, O my beloved!” she murmured;
“come forth! I have waited for thee these many
years, and now, behold, I kneel here once more attired for my
bridal. Come forth! The grave shall not hold me from thee!
I fear not the worm. This cross is heavier on thy breast than
my head ever was. Come forth! come forth!”
She seemed utterly unconscious of our presence. She paused
a moment, then wound her arms about the cross, as if trying to
lift it from the grave. Then she placed her ear to the ground
to listen; and, rising up in a moment, shook her head in despair,
and swayed her body mournfully to and fro, crying, wailingly,
“O, art thou false, my beloved? Dost thou not see the
bridal garland, and the white robes? I am all ready, but I
cannot die till thou comest. Come forth! come forth!”
Alas! alas! I too had loved. There was a breast where
my head had rested, where it might rest never again forever; a
sealed-up past, blistered with many tears, on whose leaves I
dared not look; and I bowed my head upon my clasped hands,
and wept in mortal agony. When once more I raised it, Kate
was kneeling by my side, with her soft arms wound about me.
The fierce despair which had swept over the mourner's soul
seemed to have passed away, and she knelt beside the cross,
binding over again the orange-flowers in her hair.
“It is well,” she said. “Peradventure he sleeps; or,
-- 057 --
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peradventure, he has gone on a journey. I shall have time to make
up my wreath.”
Kate Oakly knew all my heart. She knew how I looked
forth from the sheltering arms of my betrothed, to follow, with
tear-dimmed eyes, the form of a weary pilgrim, climbing in loneliness
the heights of fame. How thorns grew among the roses
of my love, and my ears were deaf to the whispers of the present,
as my soul roamed out into the shadow-land, thirsting and
waiting for a voice which long ago said, “I love you, Nellie!”
Therefore it was that I wept freely, with her soft arms wound
about me, for Kate was no intrusive comforter; and when at
last I smiled through my tears, pointing to the grave and the
mourner, I could only guess the depth of her loving sympathy
by the tender tearfulness of her voice as she replied:
“That is `Poor Maud,' Nellie. Every one calls her so. Go
and sit down with me under the thick trees, with your head in
my lap, and I'll tell you her story.”
In a moment we were seated at a little distance, partially
screened from the grave by the fringe of drooping willows; and
Kate began:
“Perhaps you noticed the name on the cross was Allan Oakly.
He was my father's only brother; and I suppose a handsomer or
more gifted man never trod the green fields of Louisiana. He
was, I have been told, very different from my father. You
know that papa is bluff, hearty and independent. Well, Uncle
Allan was sensitive as a woman. His fine, firmly-knit figure
was tall and slight. The lashes drooped over his olive cheek,
and his large, dark eyes were passionate and languishing, except
when kindled up by some martial ballad, or some strain of
-- 058 --
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impassioned song. My Uncle Allan was a soldier and a poet.
He was born so. The very qualities that gave fire and intensity
to his poetry nerved his heart on the battle-field. He chose
arms for his profession before he was out of the nursery, and his
whole education had been with a view to that end.
“His was the very nature to love with that intensity of passion
which poets like him have sung; but his choice was a mystery.
He was an eagle in his nature, and when before did the
eagle ever swoop from his eyrie, and do homage to the dove?
When, at nineteen, he came home from his military school, arrayed
in brilliant uniform, friends and neighbors vied with each
other in homage to his talents, and endeavors to enliven the
summer he passed at home. But his wayward and impetuous
nature would not be fettered by conventional restraints. He
used to steal away from all the enticements of society, and
wander for whole days in the vast solitudes of wood and plain.
It was thus that he first met Maud Vincent. He was one day
wandering in the forest, through which we rode the other day.
You remember how beautiful it is, and how romantically it rises
up, just behind the little country school-house. A New England
schoolmaster taught there then, — a poor man, widowed and
lonely, with but one child.
“My Uncle Allan had often passed the school-house, and
paused under its eaves to hear the children sing; and, though he
had never entered it, he was not without curiosity as to whose
could be that clear, rich soprano voice, leading the whole, which
swelled up to heaven with such bursts of melody. On the
day in question, as he wandered through the forest, he came
suddenly upon a sleeping maiden. He could not see her face,
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for she lay upon a bank of moss, with her brow buried in her
clasped hands. Her dress was of some cheap, cotton fabric, neat
and simple; and the tiny foot that escaped from its folds was
faultless, with its black slipper and snowy stocking. A little
gilt-edged volume of the `Loves of the Angels' had just escaped
from the clasp of her dimpled fingers, and there she lay, like
another Peri, with the sunshine wandering over her golden
hair!
“Very gently Allan Oakly seated himself by her side, to
watch her slumbers and wait for her awaking. Then he raised
the book, and glanced at the passage she had been reading. A
faint pencil-mark was traced along its margin, and it ran thus:
`There was a maid, of all who move
Like visions o'er this orb, most fit
To be a bright, young angel's love,
Herself so bright, so exquisite!
The pride, too, of her step, as light
Along the unconscious earth she went,
Seemed that of one born with a right
To walk some heavenlier element,
And tread in places where her feet
A star at every step should meet!'
“What more was needed? There was the charm of place
and time, and then these words seemed traced as a magic picture
of the beautiful sleeper. He laid down the book, and looked at
her in an unconscious ecstasy. At that moment she languidly
raised her fair head, and the soldier-poet did homage to the full
radiance of her beauty. Her figure was slight and delicate;
-- 060 --
[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]
her face pure as a seraph's, with its calm brow, clear, blue eyes,
and the lights and shadows floating over it like the charmed
atmosphere of a dream. Allan Oakly looked and worshipped;
and when the maiden, who started on perceiving him, would
have fled, very respectfully he laid his hand on her arm to
detain her, and said, gently, `The soldier could never wrong
what the poet adores. I have watched your slumbers, and, now
that I have waited for you, will you not give me a moment?
Tell me, bright nymph of the forest, what do they call you when
you go among mortals?'
“`My name is Maud Vincent,' was the quiet reply, `and I
am the schoolmaster's daughter.'
“The conversation, the pleasant interview which followed,
were but the first among many. The young girl's heart yielded
itself up to his pleadings, in a flood of delicious, trembling joy; and
Allan Oakly wreathed with flowers his sword and lyre, and laid
them at the feet of the maiden of nineteen. When they parted
in the autumn, it was with the understanding that they were
betrothed, and the marriage was to be celebrated the next summer.
`It shall be when the June roses blow, Maud, darling,'
said the soldier-lover, — `June 17th, for that is your birth-day,
dearest; and your father shall give you to me the same day on
which God gave you to him.'
“My Grandfather Oakly was a proud, stern man. You have
seen his portrait, Nell. It hangs in the long gallery. From
time to time my Uncle Allan had resolved to tell him of his
betrothal, and implore his blessing. But he was withheld by a
knowledge of his father's stern pride and ambition. My father,
who was at that time very young, was his only confidant, and
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papa, loving his elder brother almost to idolatry, never dreamed
of opposing his wishes. The winter passed very happily to
sweet Maud Vincent, cheered by frequent letters from her betrothed.
She loved him with a purity and singleness of heart,
that it was beautiful to see. The letters of his name spelt her
universe, and, like a sleep-walker cheered by glorious visions,
she passed on, heeding not cold, or darkness, for the summer
that was in her heart.
“In the spring they met once more, and Allan Oakly forgot
the doubts and shadows that lay heavy around his own heart,
while gazing into the sweet blue eyes of his plighted bride. In
those days, and especially in the plantation-districts of Louisiana,
parental authority was by no means the light thing it is
regarded now. No Romanist ever shunned the maledictions of
the Pope with a more fearful awe, than children, then, the curses
of their father. And perhaps, in all the country round, there
was not another man regarded with so servile and timid a
respect as my Grandfather Oakly. It was the first week in
June before my uncle could gather courage to tell his father of
his dream of love.
“They were standing together, in an alcove of the lofty wainscotted
parlor, when my grandfather laid his hand on Allan's
shoulder with an unwonted display of affection. `It is twenty-two
years ago to-day, my son, since your mother came into this
house a bride. It is ten years ago to-day, since she was carried
out of it a corpse, married to death. Never yet has my heart
found room for another image! You are very like your mother,
boy.'
“`Then you, sir, were twenty years old when you married. I
-- 062 --
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am twenty now. May I go forth, and bring you a daughter to
love, who will kneel with me at your feet for your blessing?'
“`You would wed, my son? On whom has your choice
fallen?'
“`On Maud Vincent, my father, — the schoolmaster's daughter!
'
“I have been told the outbreaks of my grandfather's passion
were terrible to see; but he mastered himself, at last, sufficiently
to say, in a tone of suppressed rage, `Allan Oakly, marry
Maud Vincent, if you will; but from that hour you are no son
of mine; and with my dying breath I will curse you — curse
you — CURSE YOU!'
“Terror-stricken, my uncle glided from the room, with a blight
resting on his whole future. He loved Maud Vincent. For her
sake he could have braved death in its wildest forms. He could
have defied pain, or want, or ruin; but not, O, not a father's
curse! It wanted two weeks still to the day appointed for the
marriage. Already Maud's simple trousseau was completed,
and her lover had shared in her childish joy, when she tried on
her bridal dress of snowy muslin, looped up with orange-flowers;
and he made the discovery that she had never before looked
half so beautiful. How could he crush this innocent happiness,
and lay upon her pure young soul the blight which was
consuming his own? He resolved to wait until the last
moment.
“The night of the sixteenth of June was passed by him in
sleepless agony. He attempted to write to his betrothed, but
many times he snatched up the sheet and tore it in fragments.
At last he succeeded in producing a scrawl, blotted, and almost
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illegible with tears, which he commissioned my father to deliver
to her, at the hour appointed for the nuptials. It was day-light
when he completed it, and in five minutes he took the early
morning stage for the capital.
“At ten o'clock that day, my father entered the schoolmaster's
cottage. He was but fifteen then, and his boyish heart was
deeply moved. Tears chased each other down his pale cheeks,
and his limbs trembled so violently he could hardly enter the
parlor. Maud was already attired for her bridal. Her golden
curls were crowned with a wreath of orange-flowers, and her
dimpled neck and arms looked fairer than ever, through the
fleecy folds of her snowy robe. She looked up with a glad,
joyous smile, as my father entered; and then, seeing him, she
cried, `O, it is you, good Bertie! Welcome, — but where is
Allan?'
“`He could not come yet,' said my father, in a choking voice,
`but he bade me give you this,' and he put the letter in her
hand. The blue eyes of the girl grew larger and larger, as she
read. It ran thus:
“`Heaven forgive and pity me, life of my life, that I should
be writing you, the night before our bridal, only to say farewell.
Our bridal; yes, it shall be so. To-morrow my soul shall marry
your soul, though I am far away. I have been mad, for two
weeks past, Maud! The ashes of the bottomless pit have been
upon my head, and its hot breath has scorched my cheek. I
would not tell you, my beloved, because I wished not to drag
you down with me to perdition. O, Maud, my darling! Maud,
my beloved! Can it be, I never more must draw your head
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to my heart — never more must look into your blue eyes,
or watch the blushes stealing over your cheek? But I am
raving.
“`Two weeks ago, Maud, I told my father of our love, and,
with a terrible oath, he vowed that he would curse me with his
latest breath, if I made you my bride. I dare not oppose myself
to his wishes. God knows I would have braved for you all
that man could brave of fate, or suffering; but my father's curse,
it is too horrible. You may think me selfish, darling, that I
have fled, and left you to bear this all alone; but, O, I could
not look into your sweet face, and know I must not call you
mine. I could not see your agony. It would unman me.
Beside, my heart tells me you will bear it better if I am far
away.
“`I go to France, dear one. Life is held there now at the
point of the bayonet, and I long to die. And yet, Maud, I have
one hope. All things earthly pass away, and so may the opposition
to our wishes. It will not be in weeks, or months; perhaps
not in long years. I dare not ask you to wait for me, to
be true to me; but, O, Maud, life of my life, I can never love
another. I shall be true, and if you should be? — O, my
angel, at the very thought, heaven opens before me. I must
not write more. God in heaven bless you! O, angel Maud,
follow me with prayers, or I shall be a lost and ruined man.
Let me think Maud prays for me, Maud waits for me, and
it will be my salvation. Bless you — bless you — bride of my
heart — wife of my soul! Blessed be thou, as I am wretched.
“`Your Allan.'
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“All the time the girl read, her blue eyes had kept
growing larger and larger, and when she had finished she
calmly folded the letter and left the room. My father had
expected she would be stunned by the blow, or, at least, that she
would weep or faint; but she did neither. She was so very
calm that it frightened him, and he stole from the house.
“After that Maud came among the villagers as before. She
taught her own little class at day-school, and Sunday-school;
and there was no change, except that her eyes looked larger
and sadder, and her fair cheek grew thinner and paler, every
day. If any questioned her concerning her lover, `He has
gone to France,' she would answer, `and will return again,
after a time.'
“And so three years passed on. Each month there came a
letter for Maud, full of the most earnest protestations of
unchanging love, and imploring her to write him, if it were
but one word. Not one of these ever reached the sweet girl
for whom it was intended. My grandfather had control over
the post-office, as over most other things in that region. The
letters were given into his hands, and he read them, and locked
them in his desk. And still, in spite of all, he dearly loved his
first-born son Allan; and when he saw the clinging, passionate
tenderness with which his thoughts still turned to his early love,
he sat down and wrote him that Maud had forgotten him — that
Maud was wedded.
“Other years passed — sad, weary years to Allan Oakly — in
which he wrote no more letters to the schoolmaster's daughter.
Nor did he ever mention her name in his letters to my father.
If he had, the mystery might, perhaps, have been explained,
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and two lives made happier. But, I don't know — God orders
all things, and there are some souls that grow meet for heaven
through much tribulation.
“Almost ten years had past since my uncle left his home,
when my grandfather received a letter announcing his return.
He would bring his bride with him, he said; and he was coming,
perhaps, to die. He had never forgotten Maud Vincent, — never
loved another as he had loved her; but he had been very ill,
very miserable, and Alice Graves had been his gentle nurse. She
was a fair, high-born English girl, and when he found that she
loved him he had given her his hand; but his malady was of
the soul, and no care or nursing could cure it.
“Then it was that my grandfather, terrified at the result of
his own schemes, called my father to his side, and told him that
by some means Allan had supposed Maud to be married, and
so had united himself to another; and he bound my father, by a
solemn promise, not to undeceive him, lest the shock should
prove fatal. All these years Maud had lived on, in her still,
quiet beauty, growing every year paler, and more spiritual.
But a sweet hope lay warm, living and earnest, in her heart;
the hope, the faith, that, some day in the far future, her betrothed
would return, and they should be reünited.
“There were costly preparations made at Oakly Hall for the
reception of the heir and his bride. The spacious parlors were
refitted, a conservatory thrown open, and a new room, added to
the west wing of the building, was arranged as a boudoir for the
Lady Alice. It was a pleasant afternoon in early May, when a
travelling-carriage bowled slowly up the gravelled walk, and
my Uncle Allan, descending from it, extended his hand to a fair
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and gentle lady. You could have seen, as they ascended the
steps, however, that he leaned on her frail form for support. This
return to Oakly, a spot haunted by so many memories, proved
a shock too severe for his already enfeebled constitution, and one
from which he never recovered.
“He had been home a month already, and had not yet left the
house, when one evening he lay, a little before sunset, on a lounge
by the window of his wife's boudoir. My grandfather stood
near him, and the Lady Alice sat on a low stool by his side.
`Father,' he said, in a husky voice, `where is Maud? I must
see her before I die. Dear Maud! Alice always knew how well
I loved the Maud of my memory, the Maud of my worship, — did
you not, sweet Alice? Father, I have not long to live, and I
must see Maud before I die. I gave her up at your request,
and now you must bring her here at mine.'
Slowly the old man left the room, and in a few minutes more
Maud had been summoned, and arrived at the Hall. My grandfather
met her as she entered, and said, in a husky whisper,
`Maud Vincent, you have loved my son. He thinks you are
married to another; do not undeceive him, or his death will be
upon your head!'
“`I promise,' answered Maud, firmly and gently, as she passed
into the boudoir.
“`O, Maud, Maud, star of my heart, beauty of my dreams!'
cried the sick man, raising himself from his pillow. `Father,
Alice, you will go forth for a moment, and leave us alone.'
“What passed at that interview no one ever knew. A half-hour
afterwards, my grandfather reëntered the room. Maud had
climbed upon the couch, and there, with her arms around him,
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with his head resting at last on her bosom, lay my Uncle Allan,
dead! A wild light burned in Maud Vincent's eyes; but she
clasped her hands imploringly, and said, in a low, pleading
whisper:
“`For the love of Heaven, do not waken him, sir; he sleeps, at
last. You know, sir, we are to be married, the seventeenth of
June!' Then, turning to the dead one on her breast, she
brushed back the hair from his pale, high brow, and murmured,
`Sleep, Allan; sleep, darling! Nobody shall harm thee —
Lullaby!”
“Alas, alas! poor gentle Maud Vincent! Her long-tried heart
had broke at last; she had gone mad. Long the Lady Alice
sorrowed for her lord, but not as one without hope; for, two years
after, she gave her hand to my father, and I, Nellie, am her
child. My grandfather, in his latter years, was penitent, and
grew meek and gentle as a child; but it is said remorse haunted
and stung him terribly on his death-bed. Maud Vincent is
nearly sixty years old now, but every seventeenth of June she
fails not to robe herself in bridal atire, and come to her lover's
tomb, to awaken him. Sometimes I have thought she was less
crazed than we deemed her; and that the wakening for which
she waited was to come after death, the new birth of heaven.
But look, Nellie, there she is still!”
Kate paused from the recital, and, looking out through my
tears, I could see the pale mourner, in her white robes, kneeling
still, with her lips pressed to the cold marble; and once more she
said, in the same trembling voice, so full of melancholy, “Come
forth, O my beloved! Alas! thou wilt not. Have I, then, one
year more to wait in care and sorrow? Alas, alas!”
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Several years after, toward the close of a long letter from
Kate, occurred this passage:
“Poor Maud is gone at last, Nellie! The manner of her
death was, to say the least, very singular. She had seemed
wilder than usual, for some days, and we had not allowed her to
go anywhere without an attendant. It was the seventeenth of
June, and in the morning her manner was very calm and gentle.
Once more she robed herself in her bridal attire, and, shaking
down her long silver tresses, soft and curly still, she bound them
with a wreath of fresh and fragrant orange-flowers. `We are
to be married at ten,' she said, smiling, as she left the house,
`and it is eight now!'
“She went directly to the grave, and knelt there for nearly
two hours, apparently absorbed in silent prayer. At last she
said, with a wild cry of joy,
“`It is time — it is time! Come forth, O beloved! At last
Thou comest — Thou, who art the resurrection, and the life!
Welcome — thrice welcome, for I have waited many years.
Praise God, my beloved!'
“And the frightened attendant avers that she saw an angel
rise out of the grave, with wings of white. She hastened to the
house; I glanced at the clock, on the mantel; it was five minutes
after ten, and, when we reached the grave, Poor Maud was
dead!”
-- -- p655-087
“THERE, NELL, THE HAY 'S IN. ”
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So it is! Ten thousand blessings on you, little, darling, rosy
cousin Hal! You rode on the cart, did n't you, and helped, of
course! What an achievement! I doubt greatly whether, if
you should sit in the Presidential chair, some day, you 'd be half
as elevated; — you would n't be so high up in the air, would you?
Brave, nice little rider, the old-time memories sweep over my
heart like a gale, when I look at you; for I am older than you
are, and have ridden on many things, beside hay-carts!
What a beautiful simplicity there is about childhood, especially
the childhood of such children as grow up among buds, and
blossoms, and fresh air! Blessed be Heaven that I was a child
once! That, even that, is something now, — to look back and
remember that there was a time when I dared to be transparent;
when my eyes mirrored my heart like wells; when I spoke as
I felt, and feared nothing short of God and heaven!
Blessed be childhood, for its unworldliness, its living in the
present, which is the nearest thing to living unto God! No questions
then about fashion; no schemes or troubles; no brief, fitful
dreams of fame-fires, which burn, for their fuel, the very heart
whence they sprung.
It is joy enough then to take a breezy walk over the downs,
to have a pocket-full of nuts or apples, or a ride on a hay-cart.
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Why, O, why cannot this freshness be preserved, to make green
our after life? It is a question that has haunted me for many
a week, and I cannot answer it. It cannot be, surely, that our
God-created hearts pass, of their own accord, out of these quiet,
sunny fields of the child-life, into the world-paths, choked with
sand and thorns, and oftentimes steep with hills!
It must be a kind of hereditary madness, so common that it
has ceased to be fearful. We walk, ourselves, in a land of shadows;
we stretch out our hands, and grasp unreal phantoms, calling
themselves wealth, and pleasure, and fame; and we say their
names over to our children, and teach them, too, to turn away
from the tree of the true life, and stretch their dimpled fingers
after these apples of Sodom.
The pain, the disappointment, the loss and anguish, are theirs;
but the curse, alas for it! will it not fall on us? I have been forth
into the world, and come back again weary; and now my heart is
aching sore for the sunnier days, when I made parasols of hollyhocks,
and tea-pots of poppy-pods, and, after the fashion of ladies
on Fifth Avenue, kept my own carriage, which was — a hay-cart!
-- -- p655-089
DELIA: A LAMENT.
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RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED TO HON. C. F. CLEVELAND AND LADY.
Dim, struggling sunbeams of the dawn
Keep with the clouds a funeral tryst;
A long, blue line lies slant across
The whiteness of the morning's mist;
With solemn monodies of birds
The air is tremulous the while,
As when, from hollow organ-pipes,
A moan floats through the old church-aisle!
And 'mid thick boughs of branching trees,
Where spring-buds cannot struggle through,
I tread beneath my listless feet
The crisp grass, bended o'er with dew.
A dirge, as of unnumbered bells,
Is ringing, painful, in my ears;
Around my heart, in choking tide,
Surge sullen baptism-waves of tears.
What time the sweet spring-days grew long,
Beneath the last year's mellow rays,
Our fond hearts echoed back her song,
Our voices trembled to her praise.
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When starlights from her meek brown eyes
Illumined all our spirit's night,
Our pains, like crowns of thorns, fell down,
And hopes sprang up from hopeless blight.
What time she braided up her hair
With summer buds and bands of flowers,
It was as if some saint had shed
Heaven's light on this dim world of ours;
And, kneeling where her feet had trod,
We watched to see the glory break,
When angel fingers, at the dawn,
Heaven's portals opened for her sake!
She was too good, we said, and fair,
To dwell in this cold world of pain,
And yet, we never dared to think
Her own might beckon her again.
All the pale winter that is gone,
Our life knew neither shade nor fear;
'T was bathed in love's serenest light,
From those brown eyes, so heavenly dear.
But, in the twilights of the spring,
The angels whispered to her soul;
In sweet and pleasant symphony,
She heard heaven's tide of anthems roll;
And, putting from her forehead pale
The scarcely faded bridal crown,
In the dim twilight of white death
The young day of her life went down.
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And grief sits brooding in our hearts;
For sweet spring time, and summer heat,
And autumn winds, that viewless tread
The hill-side with their homeless feet,
But breathe to us of sweet hopes changed,
Of fond hearts breaking, young life fled;
And earth seems but a mighty grave,
Where lonesome voices wail the dead!
-- -- p655-092
REVERIES.
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A Girl! Yes, young and pretty, with the life-blood fairly
dancing in my veins, and heart and eyes all a-glow with
hopes!
Hopes! and why not hopes, I pray? What if I be young,
and weak, and a woman? Why not hope? Is there not enough
within me to beautify my future? Am I not loved? Is not
Ernest good and noble, and is not his fate mine?
Beloved! Yes, I am; and already into my soul steals some
of the quiet holiness belonging to the tie of a betrothed wife.
Yes, beloved! I am ambitious for myself no longer. Indeed, I
doubt sometimes whether I have any individual existence.
My plans are all for him. What care I for fame now — for
glory, save the glory of being his? But I would have men bow
before him whom I delight to honor. I would have palms of
victory and glory rustle over his noble brow, and shine myself in
the lesser light reflected from his name. Ah, yes, I love and am
loved! — O, Heaven, how fondly!
A Bride! What dreams, what visions, have already met their
fulfilment! What other and still more glorious visions are
stretching onward into futurity?
How strange it seems to hear them call me by his name!
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With what a flutter of timidity and delight I trembled, when
they called me so for the first time!
I am his now forever. I do not tremble; I am calm and
glad, for I love him and he loves me. How pleasant it seems
to have him take care of me! How kind and tender he is;
how observant of my every wish! What a joy to feel that the
arm on which I lean is my own forever; that not even time or
death can take him from me, for our union shall be truer still,
and more enduring, in the skies!
A Wife! What has become of the wild gladness of my bridal
days, the fairy visions of my girlhood? Ah me! they are all
pressed down in graves, with the flowers growing over them.
My life now is different from anything I had dreamed, or
hoped!
We are one too wholly to say “I love.” We would as soon
think of saying to each other, “I love myself,” as to say those
words so pleasant in the olden time, “I love you.”
O, how the ties which bind our hearts have strengthened since
then, till they have grown so firm and strong, no words can
undo, no deeds can break them! O, none but a happy wife can
realize the full beauty of that almost prophetic declaration, —
“And they twain shall be one flesh.” We are not one flesh
only, but one soul! Our hearts thrill to the same hopes and
dreams; — we do not talk to each other any more, we only
think aloud. All that is Ernest's, his life, his hopes, his dreams,
ay, and his very beauty, is in another and a dearer sense
mine.
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Truly, if ever hearts were wedded, with the Eternal for the
priest, and angels for witnesses, ours are so wedded, and I am
blest!
A Mother now! O, this young and beautiful part of myself,
this sweet new life that is resting on my bosom! God be
praised that he has given me work, — an angel to train for
heaven. What a soul looks forth from those violet eyes! My
child, my holy one, my God-given! I wonder if ever there was
another baby like my baby! What eyes it has — its father's
eyes; and the little hand that rests upon my bosom, — did ever
another mother's heart thrill to touch, so soft, so fairy-like, so
dear! What pretty little ways it has! How it winds its arms
around my neck, and laughs till its cheeks dimple and flush like
the hearts of the June roses!
But it has come into a weary world, my little pilgrim from
the Eden-land. God help me to guard it from care and sorrow,
and from sin! Stoop from thy heavenly throne, O Saviour of
men, and hallow my baby with the baptism of thy divine love!
Gone to sleep now! It must be an enchanted sleep, my
dearest one, for the smile brightens round thy rose-bud mouth,
as if at pleasant dreams.
Childless! Alas for it! O, my beautiful one, how still
thou liest! Scarcely does the summer wind lift thy fair curls,
O, my own life!
Dearest half of my being, — baby that I have borne beneath
my heart! How can I give thee up? O, my precious! I
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shall hear thy voice in the long, blue summer, when the violets
grow above thy head. I shall clasp my arms about thee in
dreams, and wake to find them empty, with the moonbeams on
my bosom, where the shadow of thy hair was wont to float.
Speak to me but once, my darling, and then I can say, God's
will be done!
Kiss me but once — once more, ere they nail down thy coffinlid!
Cold and silent, still. O God, how can I bear this agony?
My child, my child! What have you gone to sleep for there
in the sunshine?
You are not dead! no, indeed, you can't be! What a bitter
mockery it was when they told me my beautiful baby was dead!
Did I not know better? Dead, indeed, with that sweet smile on
her lips!
But wake up, darling; you 've slept long enough. Here 's your
little rattle, the pretty silver one that mother would n't let you
play with. You shall have it now, little one! What! you don't
wake — not when your mother kisses you? — Then you are dead,
my precious!
O God! cannot I come too? I can hold her more gently
than the angels, for is n't she mine?
They shall not put her in the ground! I will hold her on my
bosom! The whole world is empty!
Forgive me, O Father, it is not empty! I can say “Thy
will be done,” for Ernest is by my side. He is holding me on
his heart, — weeping with me, for me, — his tears are hot and
burning, but they cool the fever of my soul. I can bear to have
them put my baby in the ground now, for Ernest tells me she
will be mine still in heaven. I can live, for his life would be
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desolate without me. And yet, my precious child, my only one,
thy mother loves thee. But I will not call thee back; I will
not grieve that thy home is on thy Saviour's breast, and over
thy pure heart grow sweet-breathed flowers, brightening in the
shine and shower of the summer. Permitted to be the mother
of an angel in heaven, I will not go mourning among the graves
of earth.
Widowed! Dead! dead! Can it be, — strong, true heart?
Is there no more a breast where I can weep, an arm to shelter
me, a voice to call me darling? Dead! Then God be merciful,
for all is gone! O, speak to me but once, only one little time,
to say that you forgive me!
O, Ernest, did I not love you? What have I done, that you
should go away and leave me here alone? Do you not feel me?
See, I am lying upon your breast! Awake! arise! What!
cold and silent still, when such tears fall from my eyes!
Did you not promise to love me always? — and you are gone!
What am I saying — forgive me!
See, I am kneeling to you, my own beloved! Look at me!
Not one glance, — dead, dead!
You loved me once, I know you did. They cannot take away
that, if they do put you down in the grave-yard.
How the clock ticks! How the carriages rattle! and I hear
people laugh on the side-walk! Cruel! I will shriek it into
them, so they will hear it forever, that fierce word — Dead!
Kiss me. I never kissed those lips before that they did not
thrill at my touch. Cold and stark!
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The sun does n't shine any more. Ah, yes it does; it is
mocking me.
The sun shines, and the birds sing. Birds that he used to
feed. The world goes on as gay as ever. How I long to tear
the mask off, and see if other hearts are never scorched, and
seared, and branded with that wild word — Dead!
A Pilgrim! At last, O Father in heaven, I can say, “Thy
will be done!”
Thou hast taken all, and given me a double portion in Thyself.
I walk in the shadow of Thy Cross now, for my loves and hopes
are in heaven.
Three winters the snow has woven shrouds over my baby's
grave; three summers the flowers have blossomed there, and the
stars smiled on them.
Twelve long and weary months I have walked alone to the
grave-yard, where they wrote my husband's name on the
marble!
He has slept well. At first, I used to clasp him to my heart,
in feverish dreams. My head used to lie upon his bosom, and I
would wake and weep that I was alone. But I am only on a
journey.
I am contented, now that they have gone home before me —
Ernest and little Carrie. I loved them, and I dare not weep
when I think they are borne on angels' pinions through the
gates over which I must climb in toil and sorrow.
It chokes my heart with tears, sometimes, when I see some
happy mother lay her child's head on her breast, and watch the
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light in its smiling eyes; for I think of eyes that looked in
other days into my own, and hair that streamed like moonlight
over my bosom; but I dash the tears away, for the angels are
nursing Carrie for me in heaven, and by and by they will put
her in my arms. Downward from the invisible country fall the
sun-rays on those two dear graves, making a shining path of light,
wherein one day my feet shall tread; for, God be praised, I can
go to them, though they can never come to me!
-- -- p655-099
CHRISTIANA: OR, THE CHRISTMAS GIFT.
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A GERMAN TALE.
“And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst
of them,
“And said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become
as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever,
therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, the same is
greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
“And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me!”
Holy Scripture.
It was the evening before Christmas. The Hartz Mountains
were covered with snow, and the trees looked as beautiful, in
their white drapery, as the choir of white-robed village maidens,
that scatter flowers on a bridal morning. The moonlight fell in
a flood of glory over all, smoothing away the roughnesses of the
sleeping world, even as the roughnesses are smoothed away from
our life-paths when we look at them in the clear light of
eternity.
Everything wore a holy peace in the home of Gottlieb Schwiden,
the forester. Gottlieb had been out all day in the forest,
gathering up boughs, and piling wood into fagots. He had
worked later than usual, for it was the day before Christmas,
and his wife had got all things ready for his return. Her two
eldest boys, Carl and Johan, had gone out with their father to
help in the fagot-binding. Marie, a quiet, womanly girl of
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twelve, had been assisting her mother, and now sat down by the
window to watch for her father's return; while the other children,
Maud and Katrine, and even the little Heinrich in his
cradle, were still and quiet in the hush of the Christmas
evening.
The fire burned brightly on the broad hearth, and the reflection
of its rays made the little looking-glass opposite flash like
a great diamond, from out its frame of green twigs and holly-berries.
In one corner, Gertrude Schwiden had spread her
husband's supper-table. It was a round table of smooth pineboards,
but on it lay a cloth white as the snow on the top of the
Hartz Mountains, and the supper of hot oat-meal cakes and
honey, and goats' milk, was good and plentiful.
Gertrude, herself, was a kind, motherly woman of forty, still
handsome, with just the good-humored, loving face a man likes
to find smiling on him when he comes home at night.
Gertrude's father and mother were poor cottagers, and she
had not many folds of linen to her dowry; but Gottlieb Schwiden,
though he never met her at fairs, or market-days, had seen
her come to church on the Sabbath, with her simple straw
bonnet, and her old grandmother leaning upon her arm; and so
he said, “She who makes so good a daughter will certainly
prove a good wife.” And he had taken the portionless Gertrude
with a glad heart to his cottage in the forest.
Gottlieb was considered a “well-to-do” young man, as poor
folks reckon such things. He owned his snug little cottage on
the borders of the forest, and was a forester, as his father had
been before him, for the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg. But yet, during
the twenty years of his married life, he had only been able,
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by close toil, to hold his own, and care for the wants of his
increasing family. But he had a portion better than riches, for
he was pious and contented; and one wiser than you, or I, or
Gottlieb Schwiden, has said, “Godliness with contentment is
great gain.”
His wife had been all to him that he hoped — the cheerful
fellow-worker, the sympathizing friend, the godly mother of his
children. And now, this Christmas evening, she had swept up
her little room, and garnished it with evergreens, and, taking the
little Heinrich from his cradle, she sat down before the fire with
a quiet smile, to await her husband's return.
At last there were quick steps outside, and in rushed the two
boys, Carl and Johan, with their rosy cheeks, and eyes sparkling
with exercise and good-humor.
“Hurra, mother, for Christmas! nothing to do to-morrow;
but we are just as hungry as bears — can't we have supper?”
“Yes, boys, presently; but where is your father?”
“O, he won't be home, these two hours. One of the big black
oaks has blown down, and he staid to cut it up and bind it.
You know the moon shines so, it is as light as day.”
“Well, sit down, then, and eat your supper; the oat-cakes are
beginning to get cold, and I 'll make some new ones, and have
them hot for your father.”
It was nine o'clock before Gottlieb Schwiden lifted the latch
of the little cottage. When at last he entered, he bore with
him a large-sized wicker basket, with a card attached to the
cover, on which was printed, in good black ink,
“A Christmas Gift for Gottlieb Schwiden and his wife Gertrude.”
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“Well, wife, what can this be?” cried the forester, as he set
the basket down upon the table. “Get your shears, and just cut
these cords, and we 'll see in a trice.”
Gertrude quickly cut the cords, and then they lifted the cover
from the basket, and found — what do you guess, wise old people
that are reading? — and what do you guess, dear little children?
It was a baby, — not a common little baby, but one fair, and
sweet, and beautiful, as a fairy-baby, or a snow-child.
It was sound asleep when they opened the basket, but in a
moment the joyful cries of the children awoke it, and, with a
smile, it opened wide its great blue eyes. O, such a beautiful
child as it was!
“Not so pretty as our baby,” I hear one and another of you
say, little boy and girl readers! May be you would n't think
so, for you love your own baby best; but forget him just now,
and imagine yourself a little German child, with no playthings
at all, in a small house in the forest; and suppose, on a Christmas
evening, some one should send you a real live little baby,
with nose and eyes and mouth just like other children, only ten
times fairer and sweeter than any of them. I guess you would
say it was a beauty; or, if you would n't, the little German children
in the forest did, and that 's just as well for my story.
The little one had great, fearless blue eyes, clear as the blue
sky on a summer evening, when the air-fairies have stolen away
all the clouds to make castles of; then she had such sunny
curls — you would have thought, surely, some fairy had been
bribing the big giant who tends the fires of the sun, and had
stolen away some of his sunbeams to bind the baby's forehead.
I don't know as you would have seen anything uncommon
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about the baby's toes and fingers, and the little nose and lips;
but Maud and Katrine and Marie thought them the most remarkable
toes and fingers that ever were seen. But one thing
you would have thought strange — the baby bore all this examination
patiently, turning her great smiling eyes from one to
another, and “never cried a word;” while, you know, in church
last Sunday, your baby, if she did n't cry words, cried a great
many other things that were worse than words.
But, while we have been talking, they have left the baby in
the basket; and now, Gertrude, who has quietly warmed some
goat's milk, takes it out, and gives it some supper.
All this time Gottlieb had stood silent, with a puzzled face,
half smiling, now and then, at the delight of the children. At
last he came and sat down by his wife, as, with her loving, motherly
eyes, full of quiet tears, she was giving the stranger its cup
of milk.
“Pretty little thing, is n't she, Gertrude?” he said, at length.
“I must carry her off to Dame Purtzell's in the morning. She
takes care of the poor, you know. I declare I hate to take it
away, it 's so pretty.”
“Surely, Gottlieb,” said the wife, turning away her meek
eyes, “you don't mean to give away our Christmas present to
any one else? We don't know what a blessing may have been
sent with the gentle, fearless little thing. You will let me keep
her, won't you?”
“But, Gertrude, we have hardly enough for these,” and he
turned his fatherly eye on his own seven children; “how can
we get bread enough for another?”
“Surely, my husband,” said Gertrude, meekly, “the Lord
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will provide. Has He not said, `Whoso shall receive one such
little child in my name, receiveth me'? He provides for the
sparrows, and He will provide for us, His children, and those He
has given us.”
“You are right, as you always are, my wife Gertrude; you
shall have the child;” and Gottlieb Schwiden arose, and went to
the supper-table.
An hour later, and the children had all gone to bed, save
Heinrich, who was sleeping in his cradle, and the little stranger
lying in Gertrude's arms. The wife sat thoughtfully beside her
husband, and the fire-light shone flickering over her, and the fair
child in her arms, making a beautiful picture, that some artist
might have wrought out on the canvas, and won himself a
name. But no artist was there to see it; there was only Gottlieb,
and he sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire.
“Wife,” said he, at last, “what will you name your Christmas
gift? We do not know that she has ever been baptized,
and we will take her to the church to-morrow, and have her
christened.”
“I have been thinking of that, Gottlieb, and I thought, as she
was given to us as a Christmas gift, like a Christ-child, we
would call her Christiana.”
“Well, Gertrude, she is yours; you can name her what you
will. She 's a fair, sweet little thing, and looks pure enough for
an angel, as she lies there upon your lap. You know the good
book says some have entertained angels unawares.”
Merrily rang all the church-bells, far and near, on the bright
Christmas morning.
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Gayly flashed the snow-crested tops of the Hartz Mountains,
and the tall trees of the forest spread out their long, white-robed
arms, like so many bishops, all saying a benediction. The
breakfast-table had been cleared away in the little cottage of
Gottlieb Schwiden, the mother had hung the Christmas turkey
up to roast, and, leaving Marie at home to watch the turkey and
the children, she was making ready to go to church with her
husband, her two oldest boys, her daughter Maud, and the little
Christmas child.
The comfortable sled, with its wolf-skins and bear-skins, stood
at the door, with the same strong donkey fastened to it which
was Gottlieb's patient companion in all his journeys through the
forest. The wife looked very fair to her husband's eyes, in her
quiet, holy, matronly beauty, as she stood there before him in
her plain, gray woollen dress, and her Sunday cloak and hood.
But fairer still, and far more beautiful, was the little one she
held in her arms.
It wore the same dress it had on when they found it; for, said
Gertrude, “I will give it to God in the same garments in which
he gave it to me.”
It was a delicate little robe of richly-wrought muslin, finer
and softer than anything that had ever before been seen inside
the forester's cottage. Outside this was many a wrapping of
soft, warm flannel, and on her golden curls was placed a little
cap, with its delicate frill of lace, just shading the fair, spiritual
face. “Dear child!” whispered Gertrude, as she clasped it to
her bosom. She took her seat in the sled beside her husband,
and then, turning to Gottlieb, remarked —
“I hope the little one won't cry very much. Our other children
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have been pretty quiet at their christenings; but you know no
child takes to the water naturally.”
“Are there any children to be baptized this morning?” asked
the old pastor, standing up in his place before he began the
services.
Gottlieb Schwiden arose, and walked to the altar. “I have
brought one,” he answered.
The old man smiled, as he said, “Another lamb for the church
of Christ? God hath blessed thee very abundantly, my son.”
“Yes, my father, and this one is God-given,” answered the
forester; and, standing up there before the congregation, he told
the story of his little foundling, and begged that thanks might
be returned in his name to the good God who had sent the
Christmas gift.
“Let the child be presented for baptism,” said the pastor at
the close of the lessons; and Gottlieb Schwiden stepped forward
to the altar, with Gertrude, his wife. At the same moment,
into the church came a lady very bright and beautiful. Her
face was pure as the angel faces we see in the clouds at sunset,
and her rich robes swept the rush-matting of the long aisle.
“I am the child's godmother,” she said to Gertrude, in a low
and gentle tone, approaching the altar. “You will never see
me again till the little one shall need me; but my influence will
be around her, and I shall be powerful to protect her, in more
ways than you dream of now. Will you give her to me?”
For a moment Gertrude hesitated. She thought of spirits,
and genii, and the beautiful sisters of the Hartz Mountains, and
she turned once more an earnest, curious look upon the stranger.
The child looked at her, too, with its great blue eyes, and,
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stretching toward her its dimpled arms, a strange, sweet smile
broke over its baby face; and Gertrude said, “The child is wiser
than I, for she has been a shorter time out of heaven.” Then
turning, she put the babe in the strange lady's arms, and made a
sign to the pastor to proceed.
In a few moments the sacred rite was over. All this time, the
same sweet smile was on the fair child's face, and just parted her
rose-bud lips. Not until the strange lady gave her back to Gertrude's
arms did it fade away; then, for a moment, the little
Christiana closed her eyes in a kind of patient sorrow; and at
length, as if weary, laid her head down upon her foster-mother's
breast.
The turkey was indeed nicely done, and the mother found the
table spread, and the children neatly dressed for their Christmas
supper.
When it was over, the father piled fresh Yule logs on the fire,
and, taking his baby Heinrich on his knee, sat down before it;
and the mother drew up her low seat in the midst of her children,
with the little Christiana lying upon her lap.
Sitting there, as the night-shadows lengthened, she told of
that other Christmas, centuries ago, when the divine Christ-child
had been born in the lowly manger at Bethlehem.
“And was the great God really a weeny, little baby, like this
new sister Christiana?” asked the little Maud, lifting unconsciously
her large, thoughtful eyes.
“Yes, dear,” answered the mother reverently. “Just such a
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little baby God the Son became for our sakes, that He might
grow up among men, and as man be tempted.”
“And could n't He stir, any more than Christie, — nor walk,
nor talk, nor creep, nor anything?”
“No, my darlings; He became a little, weak infant, and, like
other babies, had to be nursed and tended.”
“I 've been thinking, mother,” said Marie, very thoughtfully,
“that when the God-child was born there, it was as if the whole
world had had a glorious Christmas present; for you say, mother,
He came to die for all men.”
“Yes, dear child, it was indeed the world's Christmas present;
but, even as little Christie, last night, would have done us no
good, but rather been a condemnation to us, if we had not
brought her into the house and accepted her, so the divine gift
of a Saviour will do us no good, if we do not accept him, and
bring him into the house of our hearts.”
The children listened to their mother in silent earnestness; and
later still, when she told them of the great Christmas fires in
lordly castles, and the Christmas trees, where the rich gifts hang
like fruit, with glistening eyes they stole softly up, on tiptoe, to
the little one lying there, in the fire-shine, on their mother's lap,
and kissed her, with hearts thankful for the richer Christmas gift
that had been theirs.
Years passed away. The Hartz Mountains rose solemnly, as of
old; the great trees in the forest seemed unchanged, as the mosses
grew gray upon their trunks in summer, or the snows of winter
dressed them in fantastic winding-sheets. But there had been
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changes in the house of Gottlieb Schwiden. The forester's form
was becoming slightly bowed, and his step getting a little slower,
while many a thread of silver was braided in his wife's fair hair.
Carl and Johan had built their houses near at hand, and brought
home quiet, sensible German girls, for their wives. A handsome
young forester, too, came often to the house, on Sundays and
holidays; and the mother sighed as her glance rested on Marie's
quiet little figure, and thought how soon it must go forth to
gladden another home.
Christiana, too, had grown up along with the other children,
and every day she seemed more and more worthy of her name.
Many a traveller along the forest road would pause to look upon
the fair, spiritual face, with its large blue eyes; and many a shining
silver piece found its way, through her little fingers, into the
coffers of the good man Gottlieb Schwiden.
There was a deserted wayside chapel near at hand, almost in
ruins; but there hung a picture of the Virgin, untouched by the
wasting hand of time, for it was a glorious old masterpiece,
and no one saw it but to wonder how it had chanced to hang in
such a shrine. This was the little Christiana's favorite resort.
Gertrude had many times told her the story of her christening,
and always added that the sweet face of her unknown godmother
was as like to the picture in the ruined chapel as if the
Virgin had stepped out of her frame to come to the christening.
Therefore the fair child loved the sweet face of the Virgin,
and studied it until it looked forth at her from every cloud, and
smiled up at her from each stream in the forest. And, strange
to say, people said the child's own face grew like to the blessed
Virgin's, as if features could take coloring from thought. And
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it was true, — so you may remember this, dear children, — if you
think of God, and heaven, and angels, and all things good and
pure, your faces will grow pure and sweet also, like the disciple
whom Jesus loved; but always a wicked heart looks out of
wicked eyes.
Well, as I was saying, the sweet child Christiana grew every
day fairer and purer; and, at thirteen years old, her beauty was
famed in all the country round. One day, in the sunny German
summer, a young artist appeared at the forester's cottage. Whether
he had heard of Christiana's beauty, and wished to paint her, or
whether, as he said, he came only to see the wayside Virgin, I
do not know; but certain it is he staid six weeks at the cottage,
and painted, not the Virgin, but Christiana; and these six weeks
seemed the happiest of the fair child's life.
They wandered together to many a sunny nook in the dim forest,
and sat beside the deep streams, where the water-spirits
combed out their long hair, and bound it up with lotus-flowers;
singing strangely sweet German melodies, the while! Then they
strayed into the sunny glades, where the strawberries blushed,
and the grapes grew purple in the long, blue summer; and the
artist opened another leaf of the great world, for the child's
large blue eyes to read.
He told her of distant cities, where the ladies' hair was braided
up with jewels, and their robes were wrought with gold; where
silk rustled, and plumes nodded, through the long halls hung with
pictures, and flashing with mirrors; and the girl listened with a
pleased, half-doubtful wonder, opening wider, the while, those
large blue eyes.
But she loved best to learn of him the pleasant lore of the
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fairy-land, to call the fairy people by their names, and hold her
breath as she thought of tall forms stealing over the Hartz
Mountains, and through the lonesome passes of the forest. To
the artist she seemed but a child; fair and gentle, indeed, but a
child still.
Her foster-sister Maud was, if the thing be possible, almost as
beautiful as herself; but it was a very different style of beauty.
While Christiana might have claimed kindred with the angels,—
for, looking in her face, you would have dreamed some band of
seraphs had strayed earthward, and left one of their number behind,
by a mistake, — Maud's beauty was essentially earthly.
Well had the forester been rewarded for his care of his Christmas
gift, by the influence she exerted on his other daughters.
It was impossible to be rude, or harsh, in the pure, sweet presence
of the Christmas-child; and so Maud and Katrine had grown
up to be calm, graceful girls, with much of Christiana's poetitemperament
blending with their German common sense.
Maud had still the dark, thoughtful eyes of her childhood,
large and bright, and yet full of shadows among their brightness;
but her strong physical organization had imparted to them an
unfailing cheerfulness, which sometimes deepened into mirth.
Her figure was full, almost voluptuous, in its outline; while Christiana's
had the pliant, breezy gracefulness of the drooping willow.
Five years Christiana's senior, she had already ripened into
the beautiful woman of eighteen, and on her the young artist,
Ernest Heine, looked with eyes of love.
True, he saw the sweet Christmas-child was the one who truly
appreciated his genius; who shared his rapture as the sun went
down behind the mountains, flinging back the robe of his glory
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upon their lofty tops; and when he looked on her, he loved her
as he might have loved the muse of his art, clothed in mortality;
but of such love as man gives woman he never thought.
Upon Maud he looked as a beautiful flower, from whose petals
no other touch had ever rifled the sweetness, and he longed to
wear her in his bosom; nor did he leave the forest until he had
won Gottlieb's consent to call her his, and claim her, when two
more years had silvered the larches, and left their tribute of moss
on the gnarled trunks of the oaks.
And Maud loved him as such girls can love, with a love that
deepened the rose on her cheek, and the light in her eye; but
yet, if Ernest Heine had come no more to the cottage, her heart
would not have broken, or her step grown heavy, and by and by,
like her sister, she would have gone, contented and happy, to be
the mistress of some other home. The artist left, and, as the
spirit of the Summer clasped hands with Autumn, and walked
backward over her fair domain, the slight figure of the Christmas-child
grew thinner, and slighter, until she seemed more than
ever akin to the angels.
That winter there came a messenger to the forest. The emperor
had heard of the fame of the wayside Madonna, and sent
for it to adorn a new chapel, in process of erection in the imperial
grounds. It was a sore grief to Christiana; but, after a while,
the old smile came back to her eyes, as she playfully told her
mother she was richer than the emperor, for he could only see
the Madonna in the chapel, while she could see her smile from
every cloud, and look out of every stream.
But another grief came to the family at the cottage. Gottlieb
was out one day in the forest, when there came up a sudden
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storm; and one of the huge black oaks, torn up by its roots, was
hurried along for several rods, and, reaching him in its path,
hurled him to the ground, and, falling upon one of his legs, crushed
it to fragments.
Fortunately, his two sons being at no great distance, his cries
speedily summoned them to his aid, and he was borne home. He
recovered his wonted health, indeed, but it was pitiful to see the
bold forester of other days plodding round with his staff and
his wooden leg.
It was but a few weeks after this when news came that the
emperor's new chapel had taken fire, and, together with the way-side
Madonna, been burned to the ground. With this news
came a proclamation that, for the best Madonna which should be
painted in his own dominions, the emperor had offered so large a
sum of money that it would make the successful artist independent
for life. It was now nearly spring, and the decision on
the merits of the different pictures was fixed for two years from
the following summer.
Christiana listened to all this, thoughtfully at first, and, by
and by, with a new light stealing into her deep eyes; and when
the evening shadows gathered round the quiet hearth, she came,
and, kneeling at her parents' feet, prayed that she might go forth
from the forest. She spoke of the prize that had been offered,
and told how she had heard of a school for artists, where every
year three poor persons were freely admitted.
“Let me go, dear parents,” she concluded; “I will study as no
one else can study, and I will win the prize.”
There was I know not what of inspiration in her uplifted face,
the clear, spiritual brow, and the earnest eyes. The husband
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and wife looked on her silently. In Gertrude's motherly eyes
the great tears gathered; and at last she said, with a trembling
voice,
“Gottlieb, my husband, our Christmas-child has always been
a blessing to us, — when did we know her judgment to guide her
wrong? It is the voice of her destiny calling to her; we must
let her go forth.”
And her husband said, “Yes, Christiana, — God-given, — go
where thy heart tells thee; and may God be good to thee, as thou
hast been good to us, all the days of thy life!” and he crossed
his hands in blessing upon her bowed head.
Then the young girl rose up, and stole away in the twilight
to her own little room; and, as she glanced on her way at the
scantily-spread table in the corner, tears almost choked the
voice which whispered, “There will be one mouth less to
feed!”
It was a week before the exhibition of the prize-pictures;
and Christiana sat alone in her studio, giving the last touches
to a beautiful Madonna. Wearily had the girl-artist toiled
and studied, and many a time had her lamp grown dim, in the
gray light of morning, as she worked alone at the beloved picture.
She had completed it, at length, and she threw herself
upon her knees, with tears of thankfulness raining from her
eyes.
Another week, and a breathless crowd were awaiting the
imperial decision in the hall of exhibition. There were jewelled
countesses and sabred knights; and there, in the brilliant
light, hung the seventy prize-pictures. Many times had the
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emperor walked thoughtfully up and down the hall, his eyes
kindling before paintings, almost all of them masterpieces
of art.
At last he slowly paused, and, indicating with his sceptre the
chosen picture, he exclaimed,
“This alone is worthy to fill the niche in the new chapel; this
alone the exact counterpart of the lost Madonna. Let the artist
come forward!”
There was a moment's breathless silence; — then a faint rustling
at the other end of the hall, and down through the midst
came a white-robed figure. At first, many crossed themselves
and bowed their heads, as if they had seen an angel, and all
eyes turned upon her with a strange surprise. She was a
young girl, with a face as pale and fair as her snowy robe.
Her long, golden curls fell about her, as she tripped onward
like a spirit, and stood, at last, with bowed head, before the
emperor.
Tears dimmed even his proud eyes for a moment, as he gazed
on the humble, silent, graceful child before him, and then said,
with father-like pity, “God grant you may not have wrought
your life into this picture, my sweet child!” and then he placed a
crown of silver myrtle-leaves upon her forehead, and in her hand
the well-earned reward.
That night another form stood beside Christiana in her little
study, and the voice of Ernest Heine pleaded wildly with her
for her love.
“I never loved Maud,” he concluded; “I paid her beauty
homage, and I thought of you as a mere child. I have
watched you since then, Christie, many an hour, and a love for
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you has grown into my soul, so wild, so strong, I think it will
kill me or drive me mad to see you another's. Christie, pure,
beautiful child-angel, will you answer me?”
Drawing her hand firmly, but very gently, from the clasp
which held it, the young girl answered:
“Gottlieb Schwiden and his wife saved me from death; —
they have brought me up and loved me as their own, and shall
I cause their child to suffer? No, no, Ernest Heine, look not
at me so beseechingly! I am no viper to sting the breast which
warmed me; — as God hears me, I will never be your wife. But
you have been much to me. You first taught me how to love
my art, and I will never pain you, if it would be pain to see me
another's. I will be my art's bride now, and by and by the bride
of death. No, no, Ernest, do not talk to me any more; go now,—
next time we meet, brother Ernest, I will be bridesmaid at
Maud's wedding.”
The young man saw it was hopeless to say more, and slowly
and sorrowfully he went out. Then, indeed, came for Christiana
an hour of most bitter agony, a trial than which death had
scarcely been more terrible. Kneeling there, with bowed head
and clasped hands, she could find no voice to pray; but the very
attitude seemed to carry consolation with it, and the triumphant
artist knelt there alone for hours in that humble room, wrestling
with the tide-waves of a crushing and most mighty sorrow.
She had put away from her, with her own hands, a cup of hope
beaded to the brim with bubbling drops of joy. She had sent
one forth in anguish who was dearer to her than life; and along
her own track had withered all the roses, and left nothing for
her clinging hands but thorns. But she had done right; — out
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of the depths she could lay hold of the consolations our God has
promised to those who fear Him, and by and by her soul grew
strong.
Two days after, she alighted from a travelling-carriage at a
little distance from the forest-cottage. She wished to gaze
unseen upon those she loved; and she stole softly in at the back
door. The first tones of Gottlieb's voice arrested her, they were
so strangely sad.
“It 's all over, wife,” he said; “we must go to-morrow out
from the forest-cottage, and with no longer a roof to cover us.
I cannot stay, except I pay five hundred thalers, — I, who could
not raise as many hunderts!”
“`I have been young, and now am old,'” said his wife, solemnly,
“`yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
begging bread.'”
A moment, and Christiana was kneeling at their feet, and
pouring many times five hundred thalers into the mother's
lap!
Six weeks later, and there was a bridal at the cottage, for
Maud was wedded to her artist-lover; and no one noted that
the bridesmaid's cheeks were paler than the snow-drops in her
hair.
Many years later still, when title-deeds of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg
came to Christiana, she learned the name of the proud and
beautiful lady, who, by an ill-starred marriage, had become her
mother, and afterwards her godmother.
But she sent the empty honors back, and staid in her own
home to cheer the old age of her foster-parents; and, when at
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last they were gathered to their fathers, she held in hers their
trembling fingers as they passed through the valley and shadow
of death; and, bending down to catch the last words faltering
on Gertrude's lips, she thanked God, for the dying woman
whispered, “Whoso receiveth one such little child in my name,
receiveth me!”
THE VOICE OF THE WIND.
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The voice of the wind seems wailing,
But it breathes no wail to me;
'T is only a tone and a message
From one lying under the sea.
“Hath the storm-wind a voice, dear mother?
And what does it seem to say,
When it comes to the window at night-fall,
Or lifts up the latch in its play?”
“Come hither, my little daughter,
And kneel in the red fire-light,
And put back the curls from thy forehead,
And lift up thine eyes so bright.”
“Why trembles the hand, dear mother,
You 're laying upon my hair?
And why do you droop your eyelids,
So heavy with tears or care?”
“I think of a grave, my daughter,
Where the storm-winds sing their hymn,
And a shroud of pearl and coral,
And mine eyes with tears are dim.
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“There are lids like thine, my daughter,
Closed under the salt sea's flow,
And a voice that I love is blending
With the winds, in a murmur low.
“A stately ship, one morning,
Went forth on the smiling main,
But she never sent back any message,
And she never came again,
“Till a night, when the storm-winds, blowing,
Stole into my lonely room,
And told me a tale in the darkness,
And whispered my name in the gloom.
“Then I knew that the winds had laid him
Where the sky is blue above,
And the South Sea lifts his tresses,
Like the hand of one we love!
“And the wind and the storm, my daughter,
They make my heart rejoice,
For ever I catch the echoes
Of a well-remembered voice!
“Thou art asleep now, little daughter,
And thy head is upon my knee,
But the wind wails on in the darkness,
In its flight from the desolate sea;
“And the hopes of my youth are shrouded
With the days that once have been,
And I heed not the rain that falls without
For the tears that fall within.”
-- -- p655-121
POOR AND FRIENDLESS.
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Gather up your dress! Closer! There, that is right. She
cannot hit so much as the hem of your robe, now, — the little
pauper!
How her thin frock clings to her shivering limbs! She has
bare feet, too; and the tangled elf-locks are peeping from
beneath the tattered hood.
What a sight she is, to be sure! You wonder poor people
will let their children go out in the street looking so indecently.
Hush! she is speaking to you: “Please, ma'am, for the love of
Heaven, give me a little bread for my poor old grandmother!”
O, you must preserve your dignity, young lady! It will
never do to be accosted by such persons in the street.
Tell her you are Col. Lofton's daughter; she must know you
have no time to spend with idle, worthless beggars. That's
right! She knows who you are now! You have preserved your
dignity admirably; no fear of her annoying you again.
There she goes, homeward. Now you notice it, she does walk
very gracefully. Those chilled limbs, which her poor robe reveals
so plainly, are chiselled like a model from the sculptor.
Those eyes, too, that she raised to your face, filled with the
mournful agony which we read sits in the fixed, settled gaze
of the drowning, agony that only comes to us when the lifewaves
have surged away our last hope, — those dark, despair
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ing eyes wear a strange, weird beauty. The pale face is one
that might have broken the heart of Paris, — but you said well,
she is a beggar! Poor in all things, save this ill-fated beauty,
which is a double woe to its possessor!
On she goes, down close, dirty streets, and now up, up, many
a flight of steps in that rickety old house.
Do you hear that sharp voice asking, “Hey, child, what you
got?” and the answer, — the fierce blows, and the low wail.
What wonder that she rushes down, down, and goes out weeping
into the cold, miserable streets? And now, for the first time,
she hears sweet words of kindness!
He is very handsome, that young gentleman who has paused
to speak to her. True, there is an expression of dissolute selfishness
around the ripe and well-cut lips; but the girl heeds it
not. They utter the first words of kindness she has heard in a
lifetime.
She was born in a fierce, dry storm. There was a high wind,
and dark clouds, and moans and sighings in the air; but no
gentle, pitying rain, falling like the quiet drops of a human
sorrow.
Wilder, wilder blew the gale, when the little pauper opened
her eyes on life; and they carried her dead mother out, and
buried her where the spot is fenced about for nameless pauper
graves, within the village church-yard.
Strange, is n't it, that the poor child's heart bounds at these
first words of love? Strange she should be so imprudent as to
go home with him who, for the first time, offers her fire, and
food, and shelter!
Strange, too, that she should look so much like a lady, — so
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much like one of your set, Miss Lofton, — now that the tangled
hair is braided up with jewels, and the slender figure draped in
silks and satin. But the vain man wearies at length of his
plaything.
He has taught her the lore of many a land, — the transcendentalism
of the Germans, the gay infidelity of France, — but
never once life's greatest lesson, “Thou, God, seest me!”
What wonder that she falls lower and lower, until, with a
still more haughty contempt, you gather up your jewelled robe,
and cross the side-walk to avoid the contamination of her presence!
True, Jesus said to such an one, in other days, “Go,
daughter, sin no more;” but you — O, you have a code of morals
a shade purer than the carpenter of Galilee!
But “there 's an hour that comes to all;” some time the
scenes of that first night may visit you, — there may be stains
upon your robe you will not care to see.
“Ah! Lady Clara Vere de Vere,
You put strange memories in my head;
Not thrice your branching limes have blown
Since I beheld the pauper dead!”
-- -- p655-128
KATE LYNN'S BRIDAL.
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A STORY OF THE FIRST OF MAY.
In commencing a household tale of our quiet little village, let
me warn the reader to expect no highly-wrought dreams of
poetry or romance. The quiet development of a character formed
amid the woods and glens of New England is the most I can
promise him.
Kate Lynn was no beauty, after the type which poets and
painters have dreamed and pictured. Indeed, by the side of
Blanche Ingram, she would have been called quite plain, and
Mistress Genevra Fanshawe would have annihilated her pretensions
altogether. Her father, Doctor Francis Lynn, was a kind,
noble, good-hearted man, — a physician of the old school, and,
sooth to say, he lost no more lives by his adherence to system
than he saved by his quiet benevolence and more than fatherly
care. His house had been a widower's mansion for several years
before my acquaintance with the beautiful village of Ryefield;
but I had heard many a tale of a gentle, sweet-voiced woman,
who used to wander over hill and meadow-land by his side, and
who closed her blue eyes at last, in a dreamless sleep, with her
head lying on his breast. At the time our story opens, Kate
Lynn was a graceful girl of nineteen, as blithe and merry as
the wild fawn in a Western forest. Her complexion was
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a clear brunette, and her large black eyes were the reflex of as
pure a soul as ever shrined itself in a human temple.
She looked almost beautiful sometimes, with the crimson rosebuds
knotted in the heavy braids of her raven hair; but her
features were far from regular, and you would have been as
much puzzled to find a natural rank for her loveliness, as a connoisseur
who should attempt to criticize, by classic rules, the
anomalous, half-barbaric, and yet tasteful, architecture of some
of our modern buildings.
Such a treasure of a house-wife as was our Kate, — so exact, so
neat, with the clean cloth always spread on her bright, mahogany
table, at just such an hour, the napkins looking like full-blown
white lilies in their tasteful rings, and the fresh fruit bedded
thick in green and clustering leaves!
Such a picture of comfort as was her snug little parlor, of an
evening, — the bright fire burning in the polished grate; the
easy-chair drawn up before it; the gay, tasteful slippers, embroidered
by Kate's own white fingers; and, sweeter, fairer
than all, our tiny little Kate herself, perched on a low stool at
the window, listening, as it seemed, with heart and eyes, as well
as ears, for her father's well-known footsteps upon the gravelwalk.
Kate had a sister — a fair, graceful girl, whom every one
called “sweet Lizzie Lynn.” She was just fifteen when our
story opens, and the gayest, merriest, and, withal, the prettiest
little sprite you could meet between Maine and Louisiana.
Kate Lynn was scarcely ten years old when her dying mother
had placed the little Lizzie's hand in hers. “Kate,” whispered
the dying woman, “you are older than Lizzie; it may be in your
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power to guard her from many sorrows. Promise me, darling,
that you will give her, as far as may be, a mother's love; that
you will think no grief too great to shield her path from sadness.”
And Kate Lynn gave that solemn pledge, kneeling at the side
of the bed, with the deep eyes of the dying looking into her own,
and the grief-waves swelling and choking the young life in her
little heart, till it seemed as if mother and child might be fain to
rest them in the same grave. There are those who would
think this a strange promise to be exacted from a child of ten;
but Mrs. Lynn had read those young hearts, and she knew her
children well.
It may be that the little Lizzie was the dearest, on the principle
that we become most strongly attached to those who require
our protection, for their very weakness; but in the mother's love
for her black-eyed Kate was blended a strong commingling of
respect. Already had the child begun to make manifest the
strength that was in her, — strength of will, and strength of
love, — and Mrs. Lynn felt that she was trusting her youngest
darling to no broken reed, when she confided her to the love and
care of her elder sister Kate.
When the sod was dropped upon her mother's coffin, no tears
fell from Kate Lynn's dark eyes, no cry escaped from her pallid
lips; only from her struggling heart burst one sob, — so low, so
deep, it seemed more like a moan, — and then she was hushed,
and still, and very calm. She drew the little Lizzie to her
breast, and in that hour, amid the throes of her orphan sorrow,
was born in Kate Lynn's heart a love than which no
mother's tenderness was ever deeper, or more enduring, — a love
which was destined to exert an influence upon her whole future.
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Kate had grown up at home, educated by her father's own
care, thoroughly, but by no means fashionably. Other advantages
were at her command, had she chosen; but those, she said,
would be quite enough for her, and “there would be no one to
care for papa” if she were gone. So she struggled on, mindful
of his lightest wish, caring for his most trifling needs, guarding
Lizzie from every touch of care or sorrow, and gleaning, meanwhile,
many a page of philosophy from the ponderous tomes of
those strange old writers, half sages, half seers; many a gem of
sparkling song from quaint old poets; and treasuring in the cloisters
of her pure young heart every strange and mystic voice of
fount and woodland.
But Lizzie, strange as it may seem, was most decidedly the
favorite of good Dr. Lynn. Perhaps it was her beauty, — singular
in its power of fascination, even in her infancy. Many a
stranger paused to gaze for a moment on the graceful child,
with her clear blue eyes, and the long tresses falling like a
shower of sunlight over her white robes. What wonder, then,
that this beauty should have been all-powerful at home, joined,
as it was, to a voice and manner the sweetest in the world, and a
disposition affectionate even in its unchecked wilfulness.
No home education was good enough for Lizzie! Hard as it
was for Kate to part with her, not for worlds would she have
placed her wishes in even momentary opposition with what she
believed to be for her sister's best interest. And so, for three
years previous to the opening of our tale, Lizzie, now a fair
“young lady” of fifteen, had been a pupil at a fashionable
boarding-school in a distant city.
Vine Cottage (the pleasant home of good Dr. Lynn) had
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meantime been very lonely, until six months before we introduced
it to our readers, when its solitude was enlivened by Stanley
Grayson, the handsomest of medical students. He had become
almost like a brother to our darling Kate, whom he seemed to
deem the very impersonation of all womanly loveliness. I said
almost like a brother. I am going to tell you how he proved
there was a shade's difference on the first of May, on which our
story opens.
For a whole three weeks before this eventful first of May, all
Ryefield had been in a state of fermentation, of which only a
country village is capable. Many a kitchen had borne witness
to the solemnization of certain mysterious culinary rites, by which
round, honest-looking cakes were made incontinently to ingulf
the hearts of raisins and sweetmeats; while cream turned pale
with the discovery that it was freezing up in the very glow of the
spring sunshine; and good, motherly hens looked with the most
rueful faces on great piles of broken egg-shells.
The one milliner's shop, too, — O, such consultations as were
holden there, such borrowings of patterns, and furbishing of bonnets, —
such busy needles, seeming to glow and brighten in the
light of smiling faces!
The young men wore a look of unusual importance, and many
a smart cane and new hat made its appearance in the village
store, only to be smuggled into obscure home-nooks by these
modern Mercuries.
The truth was, a grand picnic was to be holden in the old oak
grove, and not a pretty girl in Ryefield but went to sleep with an
earnest wish and a half-prayer for sunshine and blue skies on
this long-looked-for May morning.
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The wished-for day came at last, as at last every day must
come, whether it be watched and longed for by bright eyes or
dreaded by fond hearts, clinging to life and love, and waking
to find themselves one day nearer change and death. Surely
never was blue sky so very blue, or green fields so smooth and
soft and smiling. And surely never were young faces so fair, so
full of all the charm of refined friendliness!
The queen for the day was a proud, stately-looking beauty.
There was a world of command in her firm step, and in every
gesture of that small, white hand. A more than regal pride
flashed in her full, dark eye, and the crown of the Bourbons
never rested above a brow more noble. Others were there, too,
young and passing fair; but I missed one face, dearer than all to
me. Hush! She was coming. Kate Lynn was by my side at
last, and with her the handsome Stanley Grayson.
It struck me, as I looked on him, that I had never seen a more
perfect type of manly beauty. His hair was auburn, with a rich
tint of gold, and now, as he stood in the sunlight, it seemed all
a-glow. His whole face beamed, and the classical contour of his
lower features struck me as it had never done before.
The forehead was broad and full; the large, laughing hazel
eyes were what the Scotch call bonny; they had a bold, fearless,
but quite charming expression, in which, however, was blended a
certain something, which, against one's will, conveyed to the
mind a faint sense of insecurity. This something was deepened
in its tendency by the mouth and chin, certainly most beautiful
in themselves, but paining you, as it were, by their very
beauty,— or, perhaps, in spite of it, — with a vague feeling that it
were well not to trust too deeply in Stanley Grayson's power of
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continuity. There was a half-wicked mirth there too, that teased
you, because it always lurked there, without any ostensible
cause. But, after all, he was strangely handsome; and so
thought Kate Lynn, if one could judge by the unwonted light in
her bright black eyes.
Kate was certainly a sweet girl in holiday costume. Her
dress of simple white muslin contrasted beautifully with the
clear olive of her complexion; and the quaker-like simplicity of
her black braids was sufficiently relieved by the crimson rosebuds
and green leaves which nestled there as if at home.
The day passed very pleasantly, the collation was a chef
d'œuvre, and the blue sky smiled upon fair young faces, radiant
with the joy of youth, which, when once gone, comes back, alas!
never again.
It was towards the close of the afternoon when Kate Lynn
found herself quite alone with the handsome young physician.
Over them was the blue sky and the bright sun, but the rays fell
upon them with a tempered warmth, through broad canopies of
thick oak boughs; the moss was green and soft beneath them,
and warmer, brighter than all, grew the blush on Kate Lynn's
fair cheek, as the young man threw himself on the grass beside
her, and pressed her small hand to his lips.
“So, Katie, little one,” he whispered, “you think you love me
just like a brother, do you?
“Why don't you speak, dear child? Why, how you 're blushing!
Ah, Katie, darling!” — and he stole his arm about her
waist. “No, my little Kate, you don't love me like a brother;
you love me as I love you, far more than that; and by and by
you 'll be my little wife, won't you? Nay, Kate, don't weep so;
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I am not joking; I love you — love you as I never loved woman
before, — I would have you all mine. Can't you love me,
Katie?” O, how smiles, tears and blushes, struggled for the
mastery over poor Katie's face, as she answered,
“Yes, sir; yes, Mr. Grayson, you know I love you very much
indeed.”
“No, no, little one; that won't do. Not Mr. Grayson; — say,
`Stanley, I love you!'”
“Well, then, `Stanley, I love you;' will that do?” and suddenly
Katie's manner regained all its accustomed archness and
naïveté. O, how bright her eyes were when she again joined our
circle, as Stanley Grayson's betrothed! She was always womanly,
and her deep joy showed itself only in the light in her eyes, and
the new music-tone which blent with her clear, ringing laugh,
causing it fairly to swell out its exultation upon the air. I suppose
every one has heard such laughs; but they only come from
very young hearts, in the first flush of that wild joy, which time
must chasten, if it does not wholly take away.
I found, a few days since, some leaves from Katie's diary, written
in those sunny days, and I will insert them here. She was
not romantic, not at all; but, with her mother sleeping beneath
the grave-yard turf, and her only sister rather a child than a
companion, she had had few friends with whom to share the
dreams and hopes which make their phantom light and shade in
every human heart, not quite of the earth, earthy. This was
why, since first her childish fingers had learned to guide a pen,
Kate had written out fresh leaves from her inner life; making
confidential leagues with reams of clear, white paper, bound up
in Russia leather. Of those leaves I have but few; most were
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burned, and their ashes scattered to the winds of heaven. Of
the few that remain, the first was written the day after her
betrothal, and the light of her pure young love seems to come
down through the long lapse of years, and make a halo round the
delicate characters of her clear Italian hand-writing.
“May 2nd.
“Can it be that only one sun has set and risen since Stanley
Grayson called me his, — since another and a dearer life grew into
mine, with the knowledge that I was beloved? O, joy! great,
unutterable joy, whose seeds were sown in grief, and watered by
the hot tears which made the flowers grow upon my mother's
grave! Who shall say, if I had not been thus desolate, I could
have felt so deeply this wondrous bliss of love?
“How strange it seemed last night, when we were quietly at
home, after all the excitement of the day, to have him taking
care of me so tenderly! We had had the stove carried away at
house-cleaning time, and the air was cold. He saw I shivered,
and said I must be wrapped up; but when I would have gone
after my shawl, he stopped me, and went himself. How carefully
he folded it around me! and when I placed my hands in his
to thank him, he raised them to his lips, but presently gathered
me, hands, shawl and all, to his heart, and sat down with me in
his arms, at the window, in the moonlight.
“O, what a long time we sat there! I seemed to cling to
him, and look up to him so trustfully, and he, — O, I know he
loves me!
“There is no doubt, no distrust. I know he will be mine only
till his life shall end.
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“This morning I really seemed to be growing pretty, for I
was so happy that my face was fairly radiant; as I looked in the
glass, my black eyes sparkled, and I thought, as I buttoned my
simple gingham morning-dress, nothing else ever became me so
finely. Stanley must have thought so too, for he put his hand
upon my head, and, smoothing back my hair, whispered, `Ah
Katie, you must n't grow handsome so fast, or I 'll be afraid of
you, by and by, my gypsy queen.' I don't wonder he calls me
gypsy; for I 'm sure I look like it, with my brown face and
straight black hair.
“O, how often I wished for Lizzie's blue eyes, and golden curls!
but I don't seem to mind them now; for, brown and small and
homely as I am, Stanley loves me! I declare, here I 've sat
writing in the sunshine till dinner-time. Betty never did set
things right without me, and I must go help her. What a sunshine!
I can't believe the world was ever half so bright before!”
“May 9th.
“A week has passed — a long, sunny week of happiness! Stanley
says we must be married in September — his birth-day, September
fifth. Papa, dear, good papa, has given me carte blanche as
to money. He says I never did cost him anything yet, and have
only been a help to him, all my life; and now, when he 's going
to lose me, he will give me all he can. Poor papa! I fear,
though he likes Stanley, he is hardly reconciled to the idea of
my leaving home; for, when he spoke of my going away, the
tears came to his eyes, and he looked so regretfully at his easy-chair,
and the little ottoman where I always sit beside him! It
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seemed so selfish in me to go and leave him, — him who has always
been so kind to me, — and for one, too, whom I had never seen,
a few short months ago! The tears came to my eyes, and for
the moment I was half resolved to send Stanley away without
me; but, O, I know that already my soul is married to his soul,
and I cannot give him up. Lizzie will come home in July, and
she can stay with papa. Do I love Stanley better than papa?
Why do I not say Lizzie will do for Stanley? And why would
she not — she, so good, so young, so very beautiful?
“Down, selfish heart of mine! The truth must be uttered. I
find it seared upon my soul. Stanley is dearer to me now than
all things earthly!”
“June 5th.
“O, how dear, how much dearer than ever, my future husband
is every day becoming to my heart! How long a time
since I 've written here before! but then I 'm so busy, and so
happy!
“There are such webs and webs of cloth to be made up! All
the forenoon I am cutting and planning things, and seeing to
Betty; and in the afternoon Stanley usually contrives to stay
at home, and read to me, while I work. Why, I never knew
before what a little ignoramus I am, until I saw how much he
knew. But, then, I am improving; I understand better when he
reads to me, and I seem to grow wiser under his teaching. He
says I am gifted naturally. I wonder if I am! I never thought
of it before. I 've always been content to love what was beautiful
in others, without sounding the depths of my own spirit, to
see whether pearls lay sleeping beneath the waves.
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“Dear me! What am I saying? I wonder if Stanley would n't
call that a simile! Whoever thought cotton cloth was so pretty
a sight as it looks to me now — all these sheets and towels spread
out so nicely on the grass to dry, and all so prettily marked, too,
with my new name that is to be — `Kate Grayson!' Stanley
would have it so. He was to mark them, because he writes so
well; and he went and put that name on, mischievous fellow!
“It does n't seem as if I had any right to them. Can it be
that will be my name, some time? I suppose so, and yet it does n't
seem the least in the world natural. I wonder if it 's wicked to
be glad Stanley is an orphan! I am afraid it is, and yet I don't
know why it should be; for God took his parents away, and it
is n't wicked to say God's will be done. It seems a thought so
dear, so precious, that there is not one heart on earth which can
come between Stanley's and mine! — that there is no one else very
near or dear to him, and he can give me all his love!
“Somehow it seems to blend a religious ecstasy with my happiness.
I feel that I am all he has, and in my heart wells up a
prayer that God will help me to be a good angel, guarding his
life.
“He called me his guardian angel, once. Somehow it made my
heart thrill so with joy, that it choked me. I could not bear it.
I bade him not to call me so, for I was n't good, I was no angel;
and he has not said it since. I have been thinking whether,
some time, when I am his wife, — when I strive earnestly, as God
knows I will, to make his life bright and happy, — he will not come
to me in the twilight, and put his arms about me, with the tears
swimming in his eyes, and whisper, `My life's good angel — my
wife!'
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“My wife! How sweet those words will sound from him! He
called me so once, the other day; but it frightened me, it seemed
so unreal, the foretaste of a happiness which, alas for it! may
never come!
“Hush! I hear the carriage. That is he, home again, so soon,
smiling at me, and sending me kisses through the window, as he
unfastens his horses. I must hurry this out of sight, for I would
not have him know what a silly child I am.”
“July 11th.
“O, how it rains! — Such a perfect wail as the wind makes,
hurrying by, as if its viewless feet were `swift to do evil!' Poor
Lizzie! she is inside the stage, I suppose; she will have a
long, uncomfortable ride! I don't know why it is, but my soul
seems to go out toward her to-night more than ever. I have
thought of Stanley so much lately, that I 've not had so much
time to think of my poor child, and now my heart is reproaching
me. Sweet Lizzie! She and Stanley have never met. How
proud I am of them both! I am sure they must be pleased
with each other. Stanley is in his room now. I sent him up to
put on his black coat, and that new vest in which he looks so
well.
“Papa is asleep in his drowsy-looking easy-chair; Betty is
burning her face over the kitchen-fire; and I, Kate Lynn, — Kate
Grayson that is to be, — sit here writing. Heigho! I wish
Lizzie would come. Dear child! I had Betty make those nice
little cakes to-night, which she loves so much; and I put beside
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her plate the little silver cup she used to tease to drink out of.
Nonsense! what a silly girl I am! I am forgetting that Lizzie
is a miss of fifteen now. O dear, my child Lizzie! The stage
is so late to-night; but is n't that the horn?”
“July 18th.
“Yes, it was dear Lizzie. Stanley heard the horn too, and hurried
down stairs. I bade him go and meet Lizzie; for it was
raining, and papa was n't half awake. I followed him to the
door, and he received Lizzie in his arms. She thought it was
papa, for, what with the night and the rain, it was quite dark;
and she pressed her lips to his face again and again. But when he
brought her into the pleasant, brightly-lighted parlor, and set her
down, she pushed from her white shoulders her heavy cloak,
and glanced around; that is, as soon as she could, for at first I held
her to my heart so closely she could see nothing. When papa
took her in his arms, and welcomed her, and bade God bless her,
she glanced at his slippers and dressing-gown, and then at Stanley,
who was looking at her with a shade of amusement at her
perplexity, and yet with the most vivid admiration I ever saw
portrayed on his fine features. At last he laughed out, merrily.
“`I see, little lady!' he exclaimed, playfully, `you are wondering
who I am, and what earthly business I had to be lifting
you from the stage, and cheating your good father out of so
many kisses that it would be sheer robbery, if there were n't
enough left on those pouting little lips. Well, it 's no great loss,
after all, my blue-eyed fairy! for I 'm no less a person than your
brother-in-law that is to be, Stanley Grayson.'
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“Lizzie seemed quite shy of him at first; but they are getting
on together nicely now. Papa has bought Lizzie such a handsome
little pony, and Stanley is teaching her to ride. They are
gone now for a long ride over the hills. How pretty the dear
child looked, as she cantered away, in her deep-blue riding-dress.
Sweet Lizzie! Even Stanley says she is the prettiest person he
ever saw. I wonder if it was envy I felt when he said that! I
guess not, for I 'm sure I want him to love her; but somehow,
of late, the old longing has come back again, for Lizzie's blue
eyes and golden curls.”
“July 25th.
“I am a little lonely, I 'm left so much alone now. The long
rides over the hills continue, and of course I stay at home, for
there is no horse for me to ride. Stanley comes and kisses me
just before he goes off, and says, `You are always so busy,
Katie!' but he says nothing of late about the reason I am so
busy — nothing about our marriage.
“I mentioned it once, and he seemed hurt — almost angry.
We have no more of those quiet little talks about our future, when
I shall be all his own. He is good still, but so different! The
other night, — it was a little thing, — but we went to walk, and
neither Lizzie nor I put anything over us. The air was colder
than we thought, and Stanley exclaimed, `Why, Kate, we must
not let our little fairy, here, go without a shawl. She needs so
much care, the baby!' And, springing lightly over the fence,
he ran back and brought a shawl for Lizzie, but none for me. I
needed one as much as she, but pride would not let me speak of
it; and I would not go back myself to fetch one, lest it should
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look like a reproach to him. The next day, what with cold,
and stiff-neck, I was punished for my folly and my carelessness.
“At first, Lizzie used to kiss me, and tell me how pleased she
was that she was going to have such a dear, noble brother-in-law.
But she never mentions it now; and I, too, have ceased
alluding to it, because it makes her look pained. And yet,
she surely does n't dislike him, for she goes to ride with him
every day, and every day comes back looking more sparklingly
beautiful; though somehow she seems growing thinner and
slighter.
“It cannot be — but no, I will not even think of it. Stanley is
true — true as steel; and Lizzie, sweet child, never thought of
love in her life. God bless them! How I love them both!”
“July 27th.
“Two days, and I am writing here again; but O, how
changed! I have been struck by a thunderbolt. I have had
a struggle, brief, but very fierce; and it is past. I was sailing
in a fair ship, upon calm waters; there were only a few clouds
in the sky. Sunlight rested on the waves, and in the distance I
could see a floating pleasure-island, green and calm, made
beautiful with tropic flowers, where gorgeous birds rested, and
sang love-songs all the day. Merrily the bark dashed onward.
Loved forms were by my side, and one dearer than all
was at the helm; but from the clear sky a tempest-blast swept
suddenly. It had sobbed no warning of the doom it was
bringing us.
“There was a moment of agony. Shrieks and groans rose
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upon the air; prayers, and pleading wails of human sorrow.
Rain-clouds swept over us, big with bitter, bursting tears; and
then my boat went down!
`In the billows' joyous dash of death went down.'
“There was night, and darkness, and every soul perished —
every soul but me. The waves took from me love, faith, every
joy of hope or memory, then dashed me upon the rocks, and
left me — Life!
“How I longed for death! My soul beat its prison-bars in
vain, but it came not. I wonder I can write my own story so
calmly. I suppose it is because I have no more hope, no more
fears, because all the joy and life have been ground out of my
heart, and I only stay now, — I do not live!
“Let me see. It was night before last. I wrote here until the
light faded, and then I went into the long arbor in the garden,
to watch the sun go down. O, what a beautiful sight it was! —
such clouds of rose, and gold, and crimson, and anon one of pure,
snowy white, as if an angel's wing had cleft the gorgeous canopy
to pave the blue with glorious stars, those `things which look
as if they would be suns but durst not.' I felt my heart swelling
with a quick, exultant sense of life. A dancing flame
seemed to leap up in it, as when a candle flickers brightly in its
socket, just before it goes out. At last, `the stars, the forget-me-nots
of the angels,' rose up, sweet, and pale, and silent;
and, going into the further end of the arbor, apart from observation,
I threw myself down to dream. All things seemed to
love me. The jasmine drooped downward, and laid its long
green fingers on my brow, softly, like the touch of a mother's
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hand. The air seemed heavy with the perfume of night-blooming
flowers; and my thoughts
`Were such as thrill the heart, in youth's rich summer time
Of life, and beauty, and sweet hope, and passion's golden prime.'
I heard horses' feet at last, and then steps approaching the
arbor. I was happy enough to be playful; and I said, `I will
keep still, and let them look for me.'
“But it seemed I was not the object of their search. The
moon shone on them full and bright, but I was in the shadow;
and I saw Stanley, my Stanley, take Lizzie to his heart, and
press his lips to hers. It may have been wrong in me to
remain concealed; but who shall blame me?
“More than my life hung upon that one moment, and I could
not stir! The first words that fell upon my ear were —
“`Yes, yes, Lizzie, I know it — I know it is sin. But
I cannot, cannot help it. O, Lizzie, I worship you so
madly!'
“`But Kate, Stanley?'
“`Yes, Lizzie, I know it; I know I am a brute; I hate myself:
but Kate does not, cannot love as we do. I could bear it
for myself; but you, Lizzie, to know how you love me, — to see
you wasting away, and feel that I have done it, — sweetest,
dearest, purest! By all the saints, you must be mine!'
“`Can I?'
“And I could almost see my sister tremble as she spoke.
“`O, Lizzie, I do not know. Kate is so good — she might
release me; but how can I ask it? I remember how solemnly
our vows were plighted before God. Kate is all she was
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when those vows were pledged. How dare I break them?
How can I tell her that I am fickle, and a villain?'
“`Fickle, Stanley?'
“`Well, dearest, not that exactly, for I never loved Katie
as I love you; but I have been so hasty, so wrong! Why
could I not have waited till you came home? Why was
I so mad as to dream I loved her, other than as a brother
might?'
“`O, cruel, cruel!' I gasped, in my desolate corner—`cruel,
even to take away the joy of thinking that you once loved me!'
And the weight of woe swept over me so wildly, that, for the
first time in my life, I fainted. When I recovered, the moon
was shining clear and full; she had reached her zenith. The
birds were still, the bower was deserted, and over all rested the
strange hush and silence of midnight.
“For a time I could remember nothing. There was a dull,
heavy pain pressing intolerably upon my forehead; but it
seemed as if I had awoke after the nightmare, and was trembling
to the remembered horrors of some fearful dream. Gradually
sense and memory came back to me. I rose and crept
toward the house, clinging for support, as I passed, to the vines
and shrubs along my path. Very silently I stole up stairs,
and entered our room — Lizzie's and mine.
“She lay there sleeping, and I thought that I had never seen
her look so beautiful. Her white arms were tossed above
her head; her cheeks were fairly crimson, and over them
drooped her long, golden lashes, heavy with round, sparkling
tears. Poor, innocent, motherless little lamb! How my heart
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smote me as I gazed on her, that I had for one instant dreamed
of opposing my happiness to hers! And yet the struggle was a
fierce one. I knelt down, and drew Lizzie's head to my bosom,
very gently, lest I should waken her. I thought of all the past,
of the promise I had made to my dying mother; and then I
prayed, still holding Lizzie on my breast. I never prayed so
before. It was a prayer in my own fashion, but very earnest,
and I think very effective. I seemed to come near to a
Great Spirit, and to feel my heart kindling with the light from
the divine eyes looking into it. I knelt there till the moon
went out, and the dawn, in her gray robes, had stolen softly up
the cloud-stairs of the east, and quenched, with rosy fingers, the
stars hanging there, pale and wan, like half-exhausted lamps.
Then I rose, and, putting Lizzie gently back upon the pillow, I
pressed one kiss, long and earnest, on her pure brow, and,
with trembling fingers, arranged my somewhat disordered hair.
As I stepped to the mirror, I caught a glimpse of a face so
pale, so haggard, that it startled even myself; but I hurried
down into the garden, and walked to and fro, till the cool, fresh
air of the morning had somewhat revived me.
“At last I heard a hasty step, and in an instant Stanley was
by my side. His face bore the traces of great care and weariness,
and all my love for him rushed up to my heart with tenfold
strength. O, how I pitied him — far, far more than myself!
I knew his proud heart, and his strong sense of right; and
felt that, whatsoever way he turned, there was bitter suffering
before him. With but the one wish strong in my heart, of
sparing him from pain, at whatever cost to myself, I spoke
hurriedly:
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“`Stanley, I have been thinking that I cannot leave my
father. Will you release me from our engagement? I don't
think we are suited to each other, and my duty lies elsewhere.'
“He looked surprised, even pained. I could see, too, that his
pride was wounded; and yet, spite of himself, an expression
of instant joy and relief danced into his fine eyes; but he merely
said,
“`Ah, Katie, you never loved me!'
“Somehow I could not bear that; it overthrew all my resolves
of silence and caution, and I said, boldly,
“`I cannot tell, Stanley — I think I have loved you; but it
may be not as Lizzie does. I heard all, last night. I was sitting
in the arbor, and a spell was on me that I could not stir; and,
Stanley, Lizzie is yours. Please don't thank me; I could not
bear that just yet. I do it, too, more for Lizzie's sake — the
poor child! Stanley, you will be my brother, and I 'll try and
be a good sister. Go and tell Lizzie, and make her happy, as
I shall be, when I see you both smile again.'
“Stanley heard me through, and then, kneeling upon the ground
beside me, he pressed my hand again and again to his lips.
“`O, Kate,' he exclaimed, `I ought not to marry you — I
am not worthy of you. I should feel as if my wife were an
angel, rather than a woman. No one else was ever half so
good, Kate; and God will make you happy! But, Kate, your
father! —'
“And he rose and stood beside me.
“`I have thought of that, Stanley, and I will speak to him.
I am essential to his comfort now, and he 'll soon be glad that
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his little housekeeper is not going to leave him, and that his
darling Lizzie is to be so happy!'
“I had said all I could, and I hurried in. At breakfast we all
met again. I saw Stanley had told Lizzie, for she looked at
me once or twice with a glance of inexpressible tenderness, in
some sense blended with compassion; but when she turned her
blue eyes on Stanley, her young face was fairly radiant with
happiness. I forced myself to make the tea for papa, and pour
coffee for them, laughing and talking merrily the while, lest
their joy should be clouded; but all the time I could feel how
my own heart was struggling, choking, in black, bitter waves
of trouble.
“After breakfast I detained papa, and told him, very simply,
that Lizzie and Stanley had concluded they could love each
other, and, if he would give them his blessing, they would marry,
and let me stay at home to care for him. For a moment, he
looked at me sharply, as if to read my very heart; but I would
not let him see it. I turned my eyes away, and, moving
to the flower-stand, commenced picking the withered leaves off
my monthly rose-bush.
“`Kate,' said my father, at length, speaking quickly, `do
you like this plan? Are you quite in earnest?'
“`Yes, sir, quite,' I answered; for I could not have told him
what was in my heart, and I wished to complete the arrangement
with as few words as possible.
“`I hope Stanley is n't giving you up for Lizzie, against your
will?'
“`No, sir; I proposed the measure first myself. I saw that
Lizzie loved Stanley, and would not be happy without him; and I
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felt that you needed me, dear father; so I asked Stanley to let
me stay. You won't send me away, will you, dear, dear father?'
and, going up to him, I caught his good, honest hand, and raised
it to my lips.
“`Send you away! no, indeed! but I don't understand it, at
all. You are a good girl, Katie, a comfort to your old father,
and always were. You may give the children my blessing.'
And he put his hand upon my head, and kissed me with unwonted
tenderness, as he left the house.
“I found `the children' in the arbor which had witnessed the
declaration of their love. I gave them my father's blessing, and
Lizzie threw her arms round my neck, and cried, `O, Kate,
God will bless you! no mother could have loved me more!
Sister, dear sister, you have never suffered me to be an orphan!'
“The words thrilled me; once more they recalled my promise
to my mother. Had I not kept it well? was I not keeping it, at
God only knew what cost to myself? Stanley pressed my hand
to his lips, and, saying some pleasant word, I turned away. I
paused for a moment, and heard Stanley say, `You see, Lizzie,
Kate never loved me. I believe she is glad to be free once
more; and I — O, Lizzie, my bride, my beautiful!”
“Beautiful! yes, that was it; Lizzie was beautiful! If I
had been, — but no matter. I must n't write any more now.
I have told the events; the feelings must not be written here!”
“August 27th.
“A month has passed since I wrote here last; I hardly know
why, myself. It has been a long summer month. Days are so
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long in summer, and they have seemed like centuries of late.
What a beautiful day it is! The sunshine smiles so pleasantly
on the fields, and the bright-winged birds sing, and the insects
hum lazily, or go to sleep upon the flowers. It seems to me I
never saw such a scene of calm, quiet beauty; — as if Nature
had on her holiday garments, decked newly for the sun, her
lover.
“But why do I write of the world around me, rather than of
the world within me? of the external, rather than the internal?
“It must be because I have no internal world now. It is as
if a simoon had swept over the fields of my heart, and left them
barren and desolate. I hope for nothing, and I fear nothing.
That is, I hope for nothing but heaven, and I fear nothing but sin.
Alas for poor, weak human nature, that it cannot content itself
with these visions of eternal glory! It will go pining for that love,
human and earthly, for which I look no more. I am peculiar, it
may be, but it is not possible for me to love more than once.
The dreams I have dreamed I can never dream over again, nor
do I wish it; I have locked them up, like priceless jewels, in the
casket of memory, and perhaps, by and by, long years from now,
when I have grown older and stronger, and these locks are gray,
I can put them back from my forehead, and be calm. Then, in
some twilight hour of those other years, I can unlock this casket,
and look once more on the jewels and precious stones that were
twined round the brow of my youth.
“Nine days more, and Lizzie will be a bride, a happy bride;
for how can his wife be otherwise? They wish me to be bridesmaid,
and I have consented; it will be hard, but I would not
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that they should know the sorrow in my heart; I would not
that word or deed of mine should jar upon their happiness.
“Lizzie is very thoughtless, poor little thing! but very good
and pure; I hope he will cherish her as she deserves. She has
never been used to care; even the preparations for her bridal I
have taken upon myself. She has ridden and walked with
Stanley, and I have sewed on sheets and pillow-cases, and bridal
robes. I was glad to have it left to me, for I should have been
wretched had I not been busy; even as it is, I fear I have
repined sometimes, — but it must not be. Here they come, cantering
along; Lizzie's face is bright with happiness, and Stanley is
looking on her with — O! such fond, husband-like pride! I
will go and meet them!”
“September 7th.
“Lizzie is married, and they have gone; surely no bride ever
before looked so beautiful! Her long curls floated over her
white robe like sunshine over snow; and her cheeks were fairer
than ever, shaded so faintly by her rich veil. She trembled
during the ceremony, and I could feel how firm and strong was
the lover-like pressure with which Stanley clasped her waist.
When we knelt in prayer, his arm was around her still; and I
seemed quite to forget my own existence, so intently was I occupied
in watching them, so fervent were my prayers for their
happiness. It was the hardest when Stanley came back to me,
after Lizzie had said good-by, and he had put her in the carriage.
He took both my hands in his, and, looking into my eyes,
whispered,
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“`O, Kate, I am so happy, and you have done it! God bless
you!' And he kissed my brow, and sprang into the carriage.
“O, how those words seem to ring in my ears yet, `You have
done it!' Yes, I had done it! How could I complain? I had
voluntarily given him up; he was my brother now, and I must
give him only a sister's love! Well, it is past; I am glad it is
over. I have no longer anything to dread; I don't think it is
best to write of what my feelings are, or my hopes might have
been; I must be so busy as to give myself no time to be miserable.”
A year passed, and no more leaves were written in Katie's
diary. She seemed to feel it a sin even to think of bygones,
much more to write of them; and her life was made up of the past,—
she had no present and no future. I mean by this that she
looked forward to nothing with hope, and the calm sea of
her life was undisturbed by incident or passion. Perhaps I
ought to except Lizzie's visits; for the young wife came home
several times, and sometimes spent a week or two at Vine Cottage.
Once or twice Stanley remained with her, but usually he
left her there, and came after her when she was ready to return.
It is very true that lovers, during the season of courtship, for
the most part, learn very little of each other's real character.
Any one who had known thoroughly Stanley and Lizzie Grayson
would have trembled for their chance of happiness. Lizzie was,
indeed, guileless and affectionate, but her mind had no great
depth. Accustomed, from childhood, to be contradicted in
nothing, her will was strong and determined, though she was
guided almost entirely by impulse, instead of judgment.
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Naturally a lover of ease, her education, though showy, had been
superficial; and she assumed the ties of a wife without the faintest
idea of discharging the duties. I said she was naturally very
affectionate; I should have added, as far as affection is demonstrable
by kisses and caresses; but her predominant feeling was
a strong under-current of selfishness, which, though unseen, like
the corner-stone of a building, formed the real basis to all her
actions. As a child, her father and sister had loved her too
fondly, and admired her too intensely ever to check her in her
heedless pursuit of self-gratification. During the period of courtship
and betrothal, Stanley had been so intoxicated with her
beauty as to make all her whims his own; and, during the honey-moon,
though he sometimes differed with her in opinion, one of
her brilliant smiles would usually prove irresistible, carry her
own point, and convince her husband that he was, or ought to be,
the happiest man in the universe. But Stanley's character,
though in some respects the exact counterpart of his wife's, was
in others so radically different, as to make you wonder what
could possibly have been the harmonizing medium to have drawn
them together.
The truth was, Stanley had not thought of Lizzie so much as
his wife, — a woman, happy, indeed, as every true woman must
be with the man she loves, but yet tried ofttimes, and coming
from the furnace with a character beautified and made purer by
suffering; he had dreamed of her as a beautiful bride, a being
whom he would be proud to hear called by his name; whom he
could introduce to his friends, and then go home claiming this peerless
object of the world's admiration as his own. It was his
mistake that he had not looked further — that the white satin and
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the bride had come between his vision and the future years; but
it was a mistake into which half the people in the world have
fallen, and will continue to fall, until the world's end.
Stanley was an orphan, and, like his wife, had very early
learned the omnipotence of his own will; he had been accustomed
to submit to no one, and to make few, if any, sacrifices in
those little things in which sacrifices are so essential to the daily
comfort of life. He was as thorough as Lizzie was superficial;
he had a mathematical horror of anything like carelessness, or
want of exactness. The fondest dream of his manhood had been
an intellectual wife, one who would be able fully to share in
all his refined pleasures of taste and intellect.
And yet, during his acquaintance with Lizzie, previous to
their marriage, he had never perceived her deficiencies. She
was beautiful; she sung and played enchantingly, and talked
the prettiest of small-talk, in the sweetest and most musical
accents imaginable. He had admired, almost idolized, her
beauty; hung enraptured over her piano; and forgot, as men,
even the best and most sensible of them, will forget sometimes,
that this was not all of life.
Through the honey-moon the delusion lasted very comfortably.
It was certainly a pleasant thing to travel with Lizzie; to hear
her lively, musical exclamations of surprise at the panorama of
beauty which spread itself before them; to have the fair being
on his arm greeted with the silent homage of earnest glances,
and suspended breath. But it was another thing, when they
were settled in a house of their own, and, too late, he began to
discover his mistake. If he commenced to plead his wishes in
opposition to hers, Lizzie would have recourse to tears and
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hysterics, or overpower him with caresses; and he, reflecting how
she had been indulged at home, would, for the most part, submit.
Sometimes, when compliance seemed weak, or sinful, to his cooler
judgment, he persisted; and then a new phase in Lizzie's character
was revealed. She made her husband feel the power of her
stinging sarcasm, and her bitter reproaches. Once she alluded
to his old love for Kate, and taunted him with his perfidy; he
had broken Kate's heart, she said, by his cruelty, and now he
was breaking hers. Usually he had answered her — always gently
at first, but latterly in cold, stern words, sometimes; but this
time he said nothing, — he looked at her! There must have been
power in his look, for Lizzie trembled and sat down, clinging to
the chair for support.
Stanley was very pale, his hands were firmly closed, and his
lips cold and white as death; but he only looked at her, and went
out. Lizzie did not see him again till the next morning, and
then there was no allusion made to the past by either. Her
conscience reproached her bitterly for taunting him with a wrong
that was done only for her sake, and which he might long ago
have repented in sackcloth and ashes; and she was but too glad
to leave the subject untouched, since he did not allude to it.
Mistaken course! how can a wife ever let a wrong go unexplained,
unforgiven, when the right is hers, if she would but use
it, to hang upon her husband's neck, and plead for peace and
forgiveness, by the holy memories of olden love!
But Lizzie said nothing; and Stanley Grayson was a man
who, unasked, could never forgive a wrong, — at least, could never
forget one. The power of Lizzie's beauty was not all gone, and
very easily she might have healed the wound; but she let it
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alone — let it fester and corrode still deeper, while it was covered
by a strict and almost forbidding courtesy and attention. But
this wore off in time, and there was no outward difference in
Stanley Grayson's behavior to his wife — at least, none that
could be perceived by a woman like Lizzie, not exactly heartless,
but frivolous and self-loving. He had accompanied her on her
first visit home after their marriage, but after that he never came
again to stay more than a few hours. I think Kate must have
suspected something of his disappointment in his wife; but she
kept her own counsel, and said nothing; throwing still more of
caressing gentleness into her manner towards Lizzie; and
seemed most anxiously trying to lighten her path by a sister's
love, united to more than a mother's care.
Three years after her marriage, Lizzie Grayson was brought
home, as it then seemed, to die. She had taken cold by going
to the first party of the season too thinly clad; and yet, though
her husband saw her health was failing, and remonstrated
earnestly, and, for him, tenderly, she had persisted during the
whole winter in an unprecedented course of gayety.
She had been home two weeks, and had been rapidly growing
worse, when one evening her husband lifted her in his arms and
sat down by the window, laying her head upon his shoulder, that
she might once more gaze forth on the glory of the April sunset.
Kate sat beside her, holding her thin white hand; and, as she
looked up in her husband's face, and then turned her eyes on her
sister, and her father, who was in his old seat by the fireplace,
a smile of content passed over her face.
“I have much to say to you, dearest Stanley,” she whispered,
“and you must let me say it now. You are so good to me, you
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and Kate, and yet I wonder you do not hate me. I have been
a sadly thoughtless, selfish child, and I have pained you often;
you forgive me all now, don't you?”
A fond pressure of the hand, and an earnest, tearfully-loving
glance, were Stanley's sole reply, and she continued,
“I was a child when you married me, Stanley, — a poor, weak,
selfish child, not fit to be a wife, — and I have been a bad one. I
am so weak I do not know, but I can't help thinking, if I were
to live longer, I would do better; I would try harder to learn
my duty, and I might make you happier, — but I do not know.
I have always loved you, Stanley; let me tell you that, now I
am dying, and you will believe it! Father, dear father, please
to come here, and kiss me!”
Dr. Lynn started quickly, and pressed his lips to his daughter's
brow; but, when he looked at her, the tears gathered in his
eyes, and he turned away sorrowful, for on her face he read that
fearful change, which no man can describe, but which goeth
before death and the grave.
“Kate — Stanley!” whispered the dying girl, very faintly;
and Stanley, entirely overpowered by the violence of his emotion,
pressed his lips to Lizzie's, and then, laying her in Kate's arms,
knelt beside her, and murmured wild and strangely earnest
words of supplication. When once more he looked on her who
had been joined to him in the strange and mystic tie of marriage,
the form was there, indeed, — the cold, still, beautiful form, —
but the light had faded from the blue eyes, the hands hung cold
and powerless by her side! — Lizzie Grayson was dead!
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It was the “leafy month of June,” and Kate Lynn's twenty-fifth
birth-day. Care and sorrow had made her look even older
than that. Her cheeks were hollow, her figure thin, and amid
her jetty hair lay broad streaks of silver; and yet, Kate was as
attractive as at nineteen, and, perhaps, even more interesting. I
said as attractive; for what she had lost in color, complexion, and
symmetry of figure, she had more than gained in the calm, sweet
pensiveness of her fair face, and the holy, tender, but inexpressibly
beautiful light in her soft eyes. She had gone alone, at the
twilight, to the green and mossy bank where she had first plighted
her vows to Stanley Grayson. Sitting in the old seat, she drew
from her pocket the miniature he had given her, and gazed long
and fondly on the pictured features.
“It was the one love of life,” she murmured, at length, “the
love of life, — and he was false —”
“No, no Kate! say anything but that. Kate, my darling, —
Kate, my worship!”
Kate raised her soft, beautiful eyes, and there, on the moss
beside her, was kneeling Stanley Grayson. It was the first time
they had met since the turf was put over Lizzie's grave; and a
choking tide of old-time memories swelled Katie's heart, and
nearly stifled her.
“Kate,” he continued, speaking hurriedly, “I did love you;
as Heaven is my witness, Kate, I loved you, when, long years
ago, I knelt here by your side, — and, Kate, I never loved another!
Lizzie came home, and she was beautiful, — O, so
radiantly beautiful! — the fairest shape, I thought, my eyes ever
rested on; we were thrown much together, and she loved me, as
much as she could love; and I — I became intoxicated with
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her glorious beauty. One night, — one fatal night, — we told
our dream, and you heard us, Katie. The next morning you
gave me up, so coldly, so calmly, that I thought you had
never loved me. I thought I was happy, for Lizzie seemed
all the fondest heart could ask, and the dream continued.
When the romance was over, and I settled down with her as
my wife, I felt the wrong then. Lizzie was a pet, a plaything,
a pretty creature; you, Kate, the noble, unselfish woman, for
whom I pined, who might have been the other half of myself.
I came home with Lizzie once, and I felt it more and
more. A passionate, wicked love for you was growing up
in my heart; or, rather, it was the old love speaking out,
haunting me, mocking me, confronting me defiantly, now that I
was the husband of another. I left you, Kate, and I kept away
from the charmed circle of your influence. True, you haunted
me everywhere; but I was better away, and I had one comfort
in the thought that your heart was light, that you had never
loved me. Lizzie was good and sweet-tempered, generally; but
she did not make me happy, for she could not understand me.
You, Kate, suited me, to the finest fibre of my being; it
seemed as if we were made for each other. At last, Lizzie died.
O, how bitterly I reproached myself, as she lay dying, that I
had not loved her better! how gladly I would have laid down
my own life that she might go forth again, free and happy, into
the beautiful earth! — but — she died. Something kept telling me
that I had killed her; that, if I had loved her better, and
guarded her more tenderly, she might have been happier, — she
might have lived! I felt as if the brand of a murderer was
upon my brow; I seemed to read scorn and hatred even in your
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eyes, and I fled. Time has, in some sense, healed the wound, it
may be; but it has only brightened your memory, and I came
back to-night to plead with you for the old-time love. You
must hate me, Kate; you won't have me, I know you won't, —
but don't say no. If I must leave you, get up and walk away,
and say nothing; for I can't — O, Kate, I can't hear your lips
speak my doom!”
But Kate did n't get up and go away, — I guess it 's not best
for me to tell what Katie did; but, sure I am, there was a wedding
in the old country church at Ryefield, September 5th, 1843;
and that, dear readers, that was
KATE LYNN'S BRIDAL.
-- -- p655-162
EIGHTEEN TO-DAY.
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My birth-day! Here I go, drifting down the stream of time,
with the wrecks floating upon its swollen tide, and the buried
hopes sleeping beneath, like entombed human creatures, lifting
up their pale faces, and staring with their ghastly eyes.
Here and there, bedded in pearls and coral, lie tufts of old-time
memories — the heart's forget-me-nots!
As I look behind me, I see dim, shadowy floating islands of
pleasure, peopled with forms that have made glorious my dreams.
And there, beyond, rise cold, gray cliffs, where, in unguarded
hours of storm and tempest, I have been transfixed with thunderbolts,
and woke to life again by the fierce cries of demons.
But a hand of mercy has drawn a veil before the joys and
sorrows of the past. It is a bright, rosy veil of mist, and they
gleam faintly through it, like the dim, soft outlines of a far-off
picture; but the joys make not my heart beat quicker, nor do
the griefs bring back a pang of fear. My Father looks on me
from heaven, and the past, with its sins and errors, is a dead
body, a cold corpse. It cannot rise again to haunt me; I am
strong now, and my heart sings, though my tired feet bear me
onward as chief mourner at the burial of days that were!
TO A PICTURE OF KATE.
-- -- p655-163
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Sometimes I dream of thee at night;
Thy wild brown eyes,
Thy phantom eyes,
Gaze on me with a live delight;
And then I feel my brow o'erblown
With tresses that must sure be thine.
In dreams I tremble to thy tone,
In dreams I dare to call thee mine;
While, gazing on me all the while,
Those wild brown eyes,
Those phantom eyes,
O'ersweep my spirit with a smile.
I know not where thou hadst thy birth;
But sure it was some country fair,
Set floating in the upper air,
Some region that was not of earth;
For nothing earthly ever shone
With half the splendor of thine eyes,
The pale moon treading on alone
(Though many an ocean silent lies
To gaze upon her calm, white face,
O'erswept by waves of golden hair,
And trancéd light, so heavenly fair)
Wears not one half thy spirit grace.
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I think of goddesses divine,
While gazing on thy lofty brow,
And can but whisper, soft and low,
“Sure, thou hast drunk immortal wine!”
And then I say a legen o'er
('T was told at twilight by my sire,
As, with his tresses long and hoar,
He sat beside the drift-wood fire),
How, many a lonesome year ago,
When summer's soft and balmy smile
Lay warm upon the Ægean isle,
The Grecian gods kept court below.
And when upon the southern sea
The night came down with shadows long,
And snowy swans began their song
Of sad and plainéd melody,
Methought the gods, who there had striven
In pleasant pastimes all the day,
Went up on cloudy stairs to heaven,
And left thee, wearied with thy play,
Within a southern grove of balm,
A sleeping, with thy phantom eyes
Half-closed beneath the watching skies,
Like some fair statue, tranced in calm!
And, when I dream of thee at night,
Thy wild brown eyes,
Thy phantom eyes,
Oft wear a glory to my sight,
As if but now thou didst awake
From sleeping by Thessalian streams,
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Where not a breeze had dared to break
The silence of thy charméd dreams;
And, gazing on me all the while,
Those wild brown eyes,
Those phantom eyes,
Thrill all my spirit to their smile!
-- -- p655-166
CIS-ATLANTIC BORIOBOOLA-GHA.
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Never mind Peepy, Mrs. Jellyby! Let the child cry, — let
him fall down stairs, and break his nose. What are a thousand
Peepies now present, to the mighty schemes of our modern
Borioboola-Gha, which will affect the destinies of myriads of
Peepies yet to come? Can you fritter away your attention on
one man, and his little troop of children, when that new lawgiver—
that Moses — that Stephen Pearl Andrews — has told us,
woman's chief duty is to be “true to herself, and not true to any
man”? Thanks, Mr. Andrews! We, little girl that we are,
did n't know our duty before. We 've found out, now. Never
mind if there were tears in his eyes, when he whispered, “I can't
live, if you change!” We know our duty now, and it 's not
much matter what he suffers in so good a cause.
And you, Mrs. Jellyby, — you, with the exalted scope of your
intellect, — surely, you cannot linger for an instant over darningneedles
and pin-cushions!
You must see it 's an affair of small moment whether Peepy's
stockings are darned, or Mr. Jellyby's coat out at the elbows,
compared with the mighty, the stupendous interest of persuading
a half-million intelligent women to cut twelve inches from their
dresses at the bottom, and add on a dickey and black scarf at
the top!
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Then you have other incentives to exertion, of, if possible, still
more stu-pid — I meant to say, stu-pen-dous importance.
O, will not the ghosts of our grandmothers come out from
among the wraiths of spinning-wheels and home-made linen, and
smile their encouragement upon the marshalled ranks of their
grand-daughters, the brave defenders of Women's rights?
Press on — the time may soon come when we, down-trodden and
oppressed, held in the fearful thraldom of so many centuries, —
a slavery to which the bondage of Uncle Tom was as nothing,
and the myriad links of the Lilliputians weak as a melted snow-wreath, —
when we, American women of the nineteenth century,
may go forth, leaving home and firesides in charge of our worse
and weaker halves, marshalling the bright-eyed ranks of our
emancipated women, carrying the election with a rush, disposing
of cabinet appointments as freely as cast-off dresses, and
going home, at last, to make a further display of our magnanimity,
in our utter disregard of such minor inconveniences as unswept
rooms, unkempen hair, scalded children, muddy coffee, and the
burnt sides of very dry toast.
O, let us rejoice in our exalted destiny — we, the regenerators
of the world, the saviors of our nation! Don't breathe
it, for worlds, Mrs. Jellyby; but, if you can stoop to be
guilty of such a masculine vice as curiosity, I 'll tell you what
I thought, before I was awakened to my duty, as with the clang
of a trumpet, by the bold words and high thoughts of Mr. Andrews,
Miss Kelley, and other patriarchs and patriarchesses, who
lead the van in our glorious battle for the right.
Don't whisper to them what I say, please, dear Mrs. Jellyby,
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because you know it might lose me the ambassador's appointment
I am so anxious to obtain under the first female President!
You know I am reformed now; but I did use to think woman's
noblest sphere was home, — her dearest right, the right to
make bright flowers of home and heart spring up and blossom in
some dear one's path.
I used to think it was so blest a thing, that round those whom
God has made so sensitive the seven-fold walls of home and love
were hedged, — that the cold cares of the outer world could not
come nigh us, and we could only catch such faint glimpses of out-door
care and turmoil as lingered in the shade on some dear
brow, which our lips loved to kiss away. It seemed to fill our
heart with blessings, our eyes with thankful tears, that dear
hands had built this sanctuary for our tenderer lives, and, amid
all the cares of life, turned hopeful back to us for strength and
cheer! I must confess, too, that I have not always boasted a
soul above such light discomforts as burnt toast and muddy
coffee, to say nothing of tearful faces and ragged coats.
Nay, in our day-dreams, we even used to picture the day when
we should have a home; we fancied the bright fire, the cosey
little table with its hissing urn, the easy-chair, the slippers, and
the fond, fond welcome for one for whom busy, loving hands had
retouched all. There came tears to our eyes, at that kiss upon
our brow, at that voice whispering, “It gives me strength to toil,
sweet wife, when I can turn at night to you and home!” Pah!
the tears have come back again at the very thought, Mrs. Jellyby.
Lend me your handkerchief; — there, the dream is passed
now. Remember the appointment, and don't, for worlds, expose
Ellen Louise.
-- -- p655-169
SPRING-TIME OF THE HEART.
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Soft and warm on hedge-rows and dingles sleep the shine and
shade of the sweet spring-time.
Young flowers look up to heaven with their wishful, tear-wet
blue eyes; gay, laughing streams dash onward, rippling and
dimpling into eddies; and over the graves of long ago green
grass grows, and spring-buds bloom and brighten. Little birds
sing their Gloria Patri, in a pleasant cadence, to the grand symphonies
of the organ of the air; and, with the refrain, back to
our hearts steal low, pleasant voices, from the soul's own spring-time.
The stream seems less fair to our tear-dimmed eyes than when
our little brown fingers were building dams across it. The grass
springs not so greenly as when we lay upon it in the sunshine,
stringing garlands of dandelions and cowslips, and holding yellow
butter-cups under round, dimpled chins, to see if little folks
loved butter.
Never a cloud that flecks the sky seems half as bright as
when the clearer vision of our childhood could see the seraphfaces
peering through.
Not an anthem-note of bird or breeze but is jarred by discords
in our own heart.
We gaze forth into the glad earth, and hear the delicate
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singing of the spring-birds, and catch the uncertain rustling when
the earth arises from her winter swound, and blushes that the
eyes of moon and stars have gazed upon her bare, unconscious
bosom, and grown sick with love. Nature is our mother;
mighty, glorious shape, we welcome her, with her pale hair floating
backward in the gray of dawning, or the one bright star of
eve resting, like the crown jewel in a diadem, upon her regal
brow; — but we turn away, and remember that white hats are
getting dear, and we must hasten and buy our blue velvet mantilla,
before all that cheap piece is sold out, at Stewart's. The
very breeze that fans our flushed cheeks, and sends the young
blood back again heartward with a rejoicing tide, reminds us
only of that new style of Spanish fans, — very dear they are, to
be sure, — and sets us wondering how much pa did make in his
last speculation.
There was only one whom all these pomps and vanities had
never power to change — Our Nettie!
But, then, Nettie “was only another name for nature.” She
was a strangely-sweet little thing, with her long golden curls,
and her clear, spiritual blue eyes, — sweet and gentle as the June
sky is bright, or the song of the spring-birds pleasant.
Old people shook their heads when they looked at her, and
said she was one of those children whose names are always
written on grave-stones.
I believe that even then Nettie had a kind of strange longing
for death and heaven; for, sitting at my feet, one day, weaving
flowers, and raising her large, thoughtful eyes, she whispered,
“Nettie Neil! will they put it so on my grave-stone, Nellie?”
And when I had answered, “Yes, darling,” she rejoined, “
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Nellie, do you suppose Jesus in heaven is very big?” “Yes, darling:
but why?” “O, 'cause it says he holds little children on
his bosom; and he 's got so many, he 'd let me fall, if he was n't
pretty big!” Then, pausing for a few moments, she looked upward
with a holy faith, at once very strange and very beautiful
in one so young, and whispered, “No, Nellie, he will not let me
fall — something tells me so, in here,” and she placed her baby
hand upon her baby heart.
I am not superstitious! I can look a ghost in the face with
exemplary composure; I can go down cellar dark nights without
a candle, and to spiritual knockings I have always been enabled
to turn a deaf ear; but I must acknowledge I never looked at
Nettie Neil without a strange feeling that she was linked in some
mysterious manner with the spirit-world — a vague expectation
that I should see her melt away before my eyes!
But mortal hearts read poorly the counsels of the All-Glorious.
Perhaps it is designed there should be always some angels on
earth, guides to teach our earthlier natures the infinite glory
of our lost heritage.
Nettie Neil lived: she is a wife now, — a rich man's wife, —
and her small feet sink half buried in gorgeous velvet carpets,
her fair form looks out from massive mirrors in heavy golden
frames, and her clear eyes grow dim with tears as they rest on
the pictured spiritual faces of saints and madonnas, or the meek,
faint smile which hovers round the sculptured lips of the young
Christ-child, wrought out by artists who have dreamed of heaven.
But she is very simple still, amid all this grandeur. The
harshness and worldliness of her husband's spirit are exorcised,
as he gazes in the clear eyes of his fair wife; and to her pure
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soul there is no winter, nor any gloom, for round her whole life
lingers the glorious sunshine of the spring.
But there are very few such hearts on earth; very few from
whom the glory of the child-life passes not away; very few
where the cool pleasantness of spring-time grows not hot and
sultry in the fierce breath of summer.
Some — alas for it! — some there are, who have no child-life,
nor any spring-time; hearts which never leap to the sound
of a kindly word, never hear the faintest whisper of that Great
Heart of God, where weary ones may rest! O, Heaven help
them, those weary ones, for whom earth's life and light can never
dawn; and Heaven help us to keep our hearts fresh and green,
that we may not blush, as we go forth in the light and heavenly
glory of the spring-time of earth, for a wasted heritage — the
better, happier spring-time of the heart!
-- -- p655-177
MABEL MURRAY'S BALL-DRESS.
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O, what a splendid establishment it was! Such gorgeous
Turkey carpets upon the floor, and such magnificent materials
for all kinds of garments and trimmings as lay scattered upon
the velvet lounges! There were satins there which could have
stood alone; gorgeous moires wrought with bouquets of silver
and gold; black laces frosted with silver stars, and bunches of
French flowers flashing with jewels. Well might Madame
Malsherbes' be called the emporium of fashion. Well might
Madame's taste be quoted, and her prices form a nine days'
wonder to heathens outside New York!
Mabel's eyes were dazzled as she entered. She handed Madame
her package of fleecy-white illusion, and the pearly satin
for the under-dress, with a blush on her fair, soft cheek, and
gave her directions in a quiet, subdued tone, that contrasted
very pleasantly with the French woman's eager volubility.
“Here, Alice,” said Madame, summoning a pale, delicate
girl to her side. “Here, Alice, you have the best taste of any
one in the establishment, and I 'll give this into your hands. —
So this is your first ball,” turning to the Lady Mabel. “Well,
I 'll see to Alice myself, and I pledge you your dress shall be
unexceptionable, if we have to sit up all night for it.”
Mabel left the room, and Alice said, timidly, “Please,
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Madame, may I take this dress home, and make it? My mother is
very sick, and she has no one to stay with her.”
“I should be glad to accommodate you, if I could,” was the
reply; “but it 's impossible, for this dress of Miss Murray's
must be finished and taken home to-morrow morning, and I
must arrange the trimming myself. You see how it is. Mabel
Murray's father is almost the richest man in the city. Mabel is
just out of boarding-school, and it would never do to disappoint
them about her first ball-dress. Don't say any more, child.
I know what 's what, and, if I could accommodate you, I would;
but I can't, and that ends it.”
It was eleven o'clock that night before Alice Griggs was permitted
to go home, with a parting injunction from Madame to
be back very early in the morning, so as to set the trimmings
on Miss Murray's dress, and have it ready to carry home in the
forenoon. It was an hour after the usual time, the next day,
when Alice entered the shop.
“Hey, Alice, what now? You 're behind time,” said Madame,
sharply.
“My mother is dead!” was the reply, and Alice Griggs burst
into a passion of tears.
“Well, well, child, don't cry. I 'm sorry, but it can't be
helped. Just hurry on those trimmings, and take the dress
home; and then, if Lady Mabel don't want it altered, you need
not come back again to day.”
Two hours after, Alice Griggs stood in the Lady Mabel's elegant
room. “Madame said I was to help you try the dress on,
Miss, and take it back if it wanted altering.”
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“Well,” and Mabel's little fingers fluttered like a bird, as she
smoothed down the rich folds of the satin, and arranged
Madame's faultless trimmings of crimson creeper, with its bright
green leaves, and long golden stamens.
“O no, it does n't want any altering,” she said, in clear, joyous
tones; “it is exquisite, perfect!”
“Thank God!” burst involuntarily from the poor seamstress'
lips, and Mabel turned to look at her. The girl's delicate limbs
trembled, and there were tears in her blue eyes, and Mabel said,
very gently, “What is it, Alice, poor child? Don't fear to tell
me, if I am a stranger. See, I am a young girl like yourself —
I can pity you.”
But it was some time before she could persuade the poor girl
to relate her sorrowful history. Alice had left her mother very
ill the day before. At first, she had refused to go; but her
mother had insisted on it, since her engagement with Madame
was their only dependence. She had vainly endeavored to persuade
Madame to permit her to return, but had obtained no
release until eleven. Climbing the tottering stairs, with heart
that ached still more wearily than her eyes, she had cried
“mother, mother,” — “mother, mother,” she had repeated on
entering the desolate room, and there, on a heap of straw, lay
her mother — cold — stiff — dead! “O God, God!” cried the
stricken girl, sinking down on Lady Mabel's velvet carpet,
“she died there all, all alone, with not a soul to smooth her
dying pillow, or give her a drop of water in her last agony!”
Lady Mabel was just out, otherwise she would have known
all this was “nothing new under the sun;” otherwise she
would not have suffered it to spoil the pleasure of her first
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ball; otherwise she would not have taken the poor Alice to
share her palace-home.
Alice Griggs was weak-minded, probably, else she would
not have died of grief, as she did, three months after, ever
haunted by the terrible vision of her mother's last agony, which
no human eye beheld.
Alas! alas! shall such things be? Shall human blood cry
ever unappeased toward our Father's throne for vengeance?
Shall we robe ourselves “in purple and fine linen,” while others,
whose faces are as fair, whose limbs are as delicate, as our own,
must die the slow death of toil and exhaustion, or live to eat the
bread of shame? Is there not a day coming when the diamonds
in our hair shall burn us like coals of fire, when the
flowers on our brow shall be crowns of thorns, in the great day
of His wrath!
-- -- p655-181
A LOVE SONG.
We met, it was as barks that on the tide of life
Go drifting onwardly, by isles of joy, and strife;
'T was but a voice from sea, an answer from the shore,
One clasp of kindly hands, and the brief dream was o'er!
I gazed up momently into thy dark-blue eyes,
As one who sees in sleep the far-off Paradise;
I, trembling, bowed my head upon thy broad, calm breast, —
I wept a moment there, in dreams that I was blest.
And yet, those eyes looked coldly down into my own, —
There was no glance of love, no thrilling passion-tone;
'T was as a flower which pours its worship on a star,
And dies, because it wins no answer from afar!
We met, and my proud heart shall thrill forevermore
With dreams, and memories, aching at its burning core;
While joy, and hope, shall smile within thy calm blue eyes,
Like moonlight on a pool where sparkling water lies!
I may not speak, and so my earnest woman's heart
Shall proudly guard the dreams that will not hence depart,
And only in my prayers, with low, half-whispered tone,
Thy name shall tremble up to the Eternal Throne!
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-- -- p655-182
THE FIRST QUARREL.
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It was the bridal morning of Effie St. Claire, and her mother
stole gently in, to breathe a blessing over her for the last time,
in the home of her childhood.
It seemed that her sleep had been restless, for the bare arms
were tossed like a snow-wreath above her head, and her sunny
curls had floated out over the velvet counterpane. There
were tears, too, on the long lashes which seemed to cast a
shadow over her rose-hued cheeks; and yet, round her lips
was beaming a happy smile, and anon those bright lips parted,
and on the morning air floated a whisper, “Ernest, dear
Ernest!”
Long and silently knelt the mother by her side, with the hot
tears streaming through her clasped fingers; for the memories
of the past were busy in her soul, as she thought of the untrodden
future of that beloved one, who erst had lain beneath her
breast.
“Seventeen years have I cherished thee, my darling,” she
murmured. “O, can another's love ever be so faithful?”
And yet there rose a haunting shadow of self-accusation.
Had she not guarded her loved one too tenderly from care?
Had she not suffered that proud will to grow strong, and subdue
others, when it should have learned to submit? And now no
other one could guard her Effie as she had done; and might
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there not be clouds about her future, which a mother's hand
had helped to weave? Very tenderly she brushed back the
long, silken curls, and kissed the fair brow; and, at that
gentle caress, Effie St. Claire languidly unclosed her large
blue eyes.
“You here, dear mother, so early?” and she pressed the fond
hand to her lips.
“Yes, my child,” and the mother's voice was very low in its
earnest tenderness; — “yes, I came to look on you, as you slept;
and, darling, your mother would make one parting request:
“It is this, dear one, that you strive to yield to your husband,
and to control your own strong will.
“I have meant it for the best; but now, in this parting hour,
my heart is heavy with a fear lest I have made it harder for
you to enter on your new relations, by mistaken tenderness.
My child, my Effie, forgive your mother!”
“O mother, dearest mother!” pleaded the young girl, “not
that word from you to me! Forgive me, rather, for every
grief I have ever caused you, and, believe me, I will promise all
you wish.”
Two hours later, and Effie St. Claire was arrayed for her
bridal. Her slight but graceful figure was robed in a pearlwhite
satin, embroidered with threads of silver, and over it fell
the rich folds of a heavily-wrought point-lace veil, fastened on
her graceful head with a wreath of orange-flowers, knotted with
a string of large seed-pearls.
Very proud was the look of Ernest Ethrington, as he came to
her side on his bridal morning.
“Fairer than ever, my beautiful!” he whispered, as he led her
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to the parlor, and, bending down, gazed lovingly into her clear
blue eyes.
And there, in the sunny flush of the June morning, amid the
fragrance of sweet flowers and the hum of bright-winged birds,
Effie St. Claire became Effie Ethrington.
Let us look at her again, six months later.
In an elegantly-arranged breakfast-parlor was sitting a graceful
and charming woman. Her hair was put back with a pearl
comb, and round her lingered the cool beauty of a Grecian
statue, as she sat there in her dress of snowy muslin.
On the table was a magnificent breakfast-service of Dresden
china, with coffee-urn, salver and cream-jug, all of massive
silver. You could recognize our Effie in the lady, notwithstanding
that on her brow sat an expression of haughty pride, and
the full, red lip was curled almost with an air of defiance.
And yet, surely, one could not have wished a nobler-looking
companion than the gentleman sitting opposite, with his kind,
serious eyes fixed earnestly upon her. Surely no fault could
have been found with the fragrant Mocha, or the snow-white
roll; and yet she pushed both from her, as she spoke, seemingly
in answer to a remonstrance from her husband.
“I tell you, Ernest, I never was crossed at home, and now
you would tyrannize over me in this fashion; as if I did not
know enough to take care of myself! I must n't associate with
Frank Hudson, forsooth! — a vile fellow, you say. Why, there 's
not a woman in town but would triumph in a smile from him,
and you say I shan't associate with him. It 's easy to see why;
and, indeed, you may well be jealous of those glorious black eyes,
and that fascinating manner.”
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“Effie,” — and the husband's mien grew stern and altered, —
“Effie, I am not jealous, and I had not even thought of my
wife stooping to give me cause; but I have opportunities for
knowing Frank Hudson that you cannot have, and, since you
do not heed my request, I must command that you shun his
society.”
So saying, Ernest Ethrington left his palace-home, and went
to his office on Chestnut-street.
Long Effie sat there, weeping bitterly. It was their first
quarrel, and she knew it was her fault. Her mother's words
came back to her, and she almost resolved to beg his forgiveness;
but her heart was very proud, and three days passed without
the exchange of one word of conciliation and repentant
tenderness.
On the evening of the third day, Mr. Ethrington returned
home, and, seating himself on a low stool, with his face buried
in his hands, seemed absorbed in a painful revery.
He was aroused by a stifled sob; and Effie, his Effie, his wife,
was kneeling at his feet.
“O, husband!” murmured she, “I have done wrong, — forgive
me, hold me to your heart once more, and I will do all
you ask!”
“Nay, Effie, my beautiful, forgive me. I have been cold and
stern, I fear, forgetting what a flower-wreathed cage had held
my birdie, ere she nestled in my bosom. We 'll learn a lesson,
both of us, darling. But, look here;” and, opening the evening
paper, he pointed to the name of Frank Hudson as arrested for
forgery.
Effie shuddered, as she clung closer to her husband, and wept
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upon his bosom bitter tears of repentance for their first and last
quarrel.
The proud will was subdued; the warm, loving heart of the
true woman was awakened, and the life-woof of Effie Ethrington
was braided up with golden threads.
-- -- p655-187
TO A PICTURE OF NATALIE.
“Her eyes were homes of silent prayer.”
Pictured saint, in whose deep eyes
Many a psalm and prayer there lies,
Set like stars in twilight skies —
Underneath thy banded hair
Lies a brow so pale and fair,
Angels leave their kisses there.
Pressing on thy dimpled cheek,
With her lips so pure and meek,
Doth the Virgin mother speak
All her love for thee, her child, —
Holy, sainted, undefiled, —
Heart by earth-care ne'er beguiled.
What clime soe'er calls thee its own,
Sunny south or frozen zone,
If heaven hath angels, thou art one! —
Coming in thy mortal guise,
From thy distant Paradise,
Lest thy glory blind our eyes!
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-- -- p655-188
SILENCE ADAMS.
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AN OLD MAN'S STORY.
“Vergiss die treuen todten nicht.”
Drop, drop, drop, — how wearily the rain falls! What spectres
are gliding downward from the weird, dream-haunted past, —
the land whose phantom memory-bells are only rung by goblins,
whose fateful halls are brooded over by midnight and solemn
silence! What shapes of glorious beauty flit through its shadowy
aisles! what calm, pale brows, what smiles bright with
the prisoned sunshine of a lifetime!
I am an old man now. The hair she used to twine lies above
my furrowed brow, like silver-tinted moonbeams; my form is
thin and bowed, and these strong arms, with which I used to fold
her, are weak and shrivelled; but the fire burns on in my heart,—
low down there it glows and sparkles, unquenched, eating
away life.
I suppose the world would call me romantic, if they could
read the old man's heart, and know that her soul keeps tryst
with mine at twilight; and that still, with the chill in my bones,
and the frost on my hair, my heart thrills, and my pulses quicken,
when I say over, low to myself, the name of Silence Adams.
It is a long time since I have heard any other speak that
name; a long time, and the dust has settled on her fair, sweet
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face. I saw it the other day, when I went alone into the picture-gallery,
and drew away the curtain from before a veiled
picture, and looked once more on that brow, with the clear,
brown eyes below, and the smoothly-parted brown hair above.
I turned away sorrowful, for there is a great gulf between us
now; not death only, but time and change. I am an old man
now; and she, my one love, went to sleep beneath the roses, with
the sunshine of youth bright and warm upon her brow.
I don't know where it was I first saw Silence Adams. Her
memory is linked with my infancy, and yet I was by many
years the oldest. But I think some angel figure, some guardian
face, with pure, pale brow, and clustering curls, — her curls, —
must have guarded my infancy, and, as I grew toward boyhood,
this angel came on earth, came among mortals, and they called
her Silence Adams.
No other name could have been so appropriate, she was so shy,
so pale, so spiritual. There seemed a hush and stillness to brood
all about her. Her home, even, was quiet as the Ghost's Walk,
at Dedlock Hall. It was a calm, fair spot, — one of those
old family mansions, which look as if they had stood still for
centuries. The trees were all large, and gnarled, and heavy,
and very old.
The grass was green and soft as a carpet for the fairies, and
the house looked like a fancy some poet-painter had woven out
of the clouds at twilight. The Gothic windows were quaintly
set in their deep embrasures; the clapboards were gray with
moss, or green with ivy; the roofs and gables were high and
steep; and over all a tall, straight chimney towered up, steeple
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like, and now and then, when the sunbeams crossed it, seemed to
nod and look down frowningly.
Inside, the mansion was even more appropriate, in seeming, for
the name and character of its goddess. The furniture was all
quaint and old, but in the most careful state of preservation.
The carpets were of dark, rich colors, over which the sunshine
fell, through the latticed windows, with a tempered radiance.
The chairs were of solid mahogany, with the fantastically-wrought
cushions of our grandmothers' days.
The tables loomed up, in a kind of polished grandeur, so dark,
and smooth, and glossy, as readily to inspire a child with a kind
of “you must not touch it” feeling; and even the Canary in its
gilded cage was a civil, well-behaved Canary, and never sang
when there were visitors.
I can well remember the kind of awe with which I used to be
inspired, as I stole, with noiseless footfall, into the halls of Oakwood,
in my early boyhood, — the broad, spacious drawing-room,
the curiously-carved furniture, and, more than all, the two old
people who sat on either side of the broad chimney-piece.
I hardly think I ever imagined that they were not as much
part and parcel of the furniture at Oakwood Hall as the chairs
and tables. Indeed, I am impressed with a conviction that an
order to the upholsterer, had I been reproducing Oakwood,
would have commenced much in this wise:
“Please send me two very nice old people, with corresponding
arm-chairs. Let the lady be fair and neat, with a black silk
gown, and smooth muslin neckerchief. Let the crown of her
cap be high and stiff, and the silver hair be smooth upon her
forehead.
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“Let the old gentleman's wig be nicely powdered, make his
knee-buckles the brightest in the world, and place beside him an
ivory-headed cane.”
Such was the home where Silence Adams lived with her grandparents, —
at least, such it rises to my memory's eye. I cannot
remember when I commenced to love her; only, as I have said,
she, or one like her, watched over me in infancy, and I think the
love must have been born with me.
I used to go stealing into Oakwood every night at sunset, to
make my best bow to the old people, and then seek Silence in her
favorite retreat, the garden. This latter place partook strongly
of the general character of the estate. The trees were as still,
and proper, and sober, as old people at church-time. The very
flowers seemed to have been selected with an eye to good behavior.
There were the sedate and matronly sun-flowers; good
old-fashioned four-o'clocks, regular in their hours as an old-maid's
tea-drinking; quiet lilies of the valley, mignonette, and large,
bright-eyed English violets. There were no flaunting dahlias, no
gaudy tulips, in Oakwood garden.
The flowers were all in the highest degree respectable; and, if
they had been going to have a dance, it would have been the
stately minuet of Queen Elizabeth, and not by any possibility the
detestable polka and Schottishe, that so vulgarize our modern
drawing-rooms.
In the midst of this garden was a kind of summer-house, embowered
with roses. Here Silence was wont to spend the long,
warm summer. Here she lived and dreamed. On the little
rustic table lay her guitar, her work-box, and a few books I had
given her.
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Hither it was that I bent my steps one summer evening, when
Silence Adams had grown up, from a child, into a calm, quiet,
beautiful maiden of fifteen. I seemed, however, to look upon
her as a child still, for I was six years her senior; and yet, I remember,
my heart fluttered a little, as I caught the gleam of her
white robe floating out of the little summer-house.
I went in and sat down by her side, lightly running my fingers
over her guitar.
I had just graduated from college, and was soon to leave for a
tour on the continent. I had brought Silence a little ring, and
a golden cross, to wear for my sake when I was far away, and I
had come to give them to her.
I entered very quietly, so quietly that Silence did not look up.
Her small white hands were clasped over her pure face, and
through them tears were trickling, one by one. I went up to her,
and, putting my arm about her waist, whispered, “Silence —
dear little Silence!”
Something in my manner, perhaps my addressing her as the
little child I had always considered her, reässured the weeping
girl; and when I took her hands from her face, she looked up, and
the calm, truthful eyes beamed on me, through their tears, with
an expression I shall never forget, until the grass grows green
above my heart.
That moment I learned, for the first time, that I loved Silence
Adams, as a man should love the elect woman, whom he chooses,
from among all others, to walk with him through life, till death.
Man as I believed myself to be, I know my voice trembled,
when I asked, “Do you love me, Silence?”
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“Yes, William,” was the calm, innocent reply; “I have loved
you this long while, longer than I can remember!”
Had she, too, that strange feeling, I asked myself, as if our
love was born with her, and then I said,
“But, Silence, you love others, — Mary Lewis; your grandparents.
Do you love me more than them?”
An expression of half perplexity crossed her truthful features,
and for a moment she seemed rapt in communion with her own
heart. Then she placed her hand in mine, and said, still very
calmly,
“Yes, William, I am sure I love you more than all of them, —
more even than my dead mother in heaven, I love you.”
Surely those three words, “I love you,' never before conveyed
to human heart such an undoubted assurance of happiness;
but she was calm, and I restrained myself still, while I asked,
once more,
“But, Silence, do you understand me? It is as a wife I love
you. Are you willing to give up all others, and be mine only —
to live for me, as I will live for you?”
I dare not write the dear girl's answer. I dare not even say
it over to myself, after all this lapse of years.
I held her there, with her brown head lying upon my breast,
till the moon and stars rose up and smiled on our betrothal.
Then I placed upon her little finger the ring I had
brought, hung the golden cross about her neck, and walked slowly
homeward.
It would be vain to attempt to describe the heaven of joy and
peace which permeated my soul. Another life had grown into
mine. God had sent me an angel, to walk over these
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troublesome life-paths, hand-in-hand with me, to heaven! O, how fervent
was my prayer of thanksgiving, as I knelt at my window,
with the rich, silvery moonlight falling over me like a blessing!
When I woke in the morning, my great joy at first seemed dim
and indistinct, and then the full realization of it broke over me
as gloriously as the sunshine over earth.
There was but one thought to dim its brightness. Silence
could not go with me to Europe. She could not leave her aged
grandparents, and I must go alone, and claim her upon my return.
I hurried over to Oakwood early in the morning, just to tell
my fair betrothed the good news, that, by taking a horseback ride
of twenty miles to New York that day, in order to secure my
passage, I could remain at home for a fortnight longer. Two
weeks, or “fourteen days,” as Silence chose to call it. They
seemed a little eternity of joy to both of us, and my heart was
very light when I kissed Silence a cheerful good-by, telling her
I should probably remain in New York that night, and she would
see me again the next morning.
All that day my spirits were at high tide. I transacted my
business, chatted gayly with my friends, and a little before night,
tired as I was, I started to ride homeward, for I longed to look
into my darling's brown eyes; and I thought to her the surprise
could not fail to be a pleasant one.
On I dashed, over bushes, stones, and hills; but the path
seemed all flowers to me. I reached home just after moonrise,
and, giving my horse to a servant, started myself for Oakwood,
forgetting, in my lover-like impetuosity, that I had need of food
or rest.
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I had nearly reached the little bower which had, the night before,
witnessed our solemn troth-plight, when the thought struck
me that it would be pleasant to go on the other side, where the
boughs were thick, and take a peep at my darling's sweet face
before letting her know I was there. It was a lover's fancy; I
thought I could tell if she were thinking of me, and whether she
was sad or happy.
Quietly I stole round the other side of the bower, and, cautiously
pulling aside the grape-leaves, looked in! * * * *
The blood freezes in my veins, even now, at the remembered
horror of that moment. I recall everything distinctly; through
years of agony, there was not an instant in which I could forget.
Silence was there, lovely, beautiful as ever, and by her side a
man young and handsome, with raven curls, and large, laughing
black eyes. He was in the undress of a military officer, and the
sword he had unbuckled from his side lay on the grass beside
him.
His arms clasped my Silence, her head lay quietly upon his
breast, and, as he pressed his lips to her brow, I — yes, I, her
betrothed lover! — heard her murmur,
“I had not thought to see you again so soon, Henri, dearest.
O, to see you and be so happy! Thank God!”
How could she, false and perjured as she was, dare to take
God's name upon her lips, I asked myself, as I turned away, shuddering.
How I got home I cannot tell, but I have a confused
recollection of biting my lips till they frothed with blood, and
tearing out great locks of hair in my solitary walk, to and fro,
through the house, that mad, weary night of agony.
I was calm enough in the morning, I remember. I arranged
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my toilet with the nicest care, and remarked, very carelessly,
when I met the family at breakfast, that I had concluded to go
from home to-day, after all, since I thought it would look better
to see a little more of my own country before crossing the seas.
My father, devoted to his chocolate and his newspaper, scarcely
heeded me at all; and my step-mother, whatever she may have
thought, said nothing.
After breakfast was over, I went to my room, and wrote a
note to Silence. I remember every word of that cruel missive,
as distinctly as if I had penned it but yesterday. It ran
thus:
“Miss Adams: Perhaps it may give you some satisfaction
to learn that, in compliment to you, I returned from New York
last night, instead of this morning, as I at first intended. I went
over to Oakwood, and, in the natural indulgence of a lover's
curiosity, was a witness of the pleasant scene in your favorite
bower. I presume it will be an occasion of heartfelt rejoicing
to you to know that you are quite free from all the ties which
have bound you to
Your humble servant,
“William Carlton.”
In an hour my messenger returned, bringing with him a note
from Silence. O, what a pretty, graceful little note it was!
Such a dainty envelope, and such an exquisite little hand! Despising
Silence in my heart, as I surely did, the note yet seemed
dear to me, in a certain sense, for it was the first one from her
whom I had hoped to call my wife; and I could not make up
my mind to return it, so I tossed it, unopened, in the bottom of
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my trunk, and left the town, without even a parting glance at
Oakwood.
Crossing the ocean was not then, by any means, the easy,
hasty thing it is now. It was like making a long and pleasant
visit at a friend's house.
I had plenty of leisure, while at sea, to think of Silence
Adams; but I was proud, and not even to myself would I acknowledge
my disappointment.
But still I must confess there was a voice low down in my
heart which kept saying her name over and over; and very often
her calm, fair face would come between me and the blue eyes of
Carrie Stanley, a sweet-voiced English girl.
Friendships are formed quicker at sea than on land; and a
week had not elapsed, ere, in a moment of insanity, I had
besought Carrie Stanley to become my betrothed bride. She
would have brought me broad lands as her dower, and a face
fair as our dreams of heaven; and yet, God knows, Silence was
my one love, even then. Carrie was calmly, tranquilly dear, but
never, for one moment, did my heart thrill to word or look of
hers as it had done to the lightest tone of Silence Adams.
We were yet many leagues from shore, when Carrie, my fair
orphan Carrie, sickened and died, with her head lying upon my
breast. The sunshine of heaven seemed to break upon her vision
ere she departed, and, pressing my hand to her lips, she whispered,
“I am being translated into the ineffable glory. You
will follow me some time into this great Peace.”
She died without a struggle, and round her lips lingered, even
in death, that smile kindled by the dawning light of Paradise.
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I heard them say, “We commit this, our sister, unto the
deep!” A sullen plash, and all was over; and yet I do not think
I mourned her.
I had never loved her with a human passion. She seemed
rather some beautiful angel I had met in dreams. If there was
loneliness at my heart as we heaved in sight of the English
shore, the name to which the aching chords thrilled was not
Carrie's.
Three years had passed. It was the early Italian spring,
and I sat alone in my pleasant villa at sunny Florence. I had
travelled over many lands; gazed in blue eyes, black eyes and
gray eyes; flirted with the phlegmatic German, the lively
Frenchwoman, and the Italian with her lustrous eyes and her
voice of music. And yet but one name was on my lips, but
one face was in my heart, as I sat there dreaming in the hazy
glow of the southern sunset, — the name, the face of Silence
Adams.
I thought of that strange love which seemed born with me;
of the destiny which had linked our fates together; of the
halls of Oakwood, and the night on which we murmured our
troth-plight. She seemed to rise before me, in her youth and
beauty, as I saw her then. I could see the very flutter of her
white robe, and catch the music of her voice, as she murmured,
“I love you, William!”
And then came that other memory, crushing, and stern, and
terrible.
But — had I not wronged her? It was the first time I had
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ever asked myself this question — the first time I had ever
admitted to myself such a possibility.
I rose hurriedly, and, tumbling to the floor the varied contents
of my trunk, clutched eagerly that note — fair and pure, and
closely sealed, still. I read it, not with a burst of tears, but
with a frozen heart, and eyes starting from their sockets.
Silence was pure, pure as heaven!
It is a long way back now, and I 'll try to explain it all
calmly, as she did in that little note.
The poor child's mother, ardent, beautiful and enthusiastic,
had incurred the everlasting displeasure of her parents by marrying,
for love, a poor but handsome navy officer. He had
proved to be dissipated and unworthy of her, but she still clung
to him with all a woman's truth, and followed him from place to
place with her little Henry, until, five years after the birth of
this idolized child, Herbert Leslie was shot in a duel.
The next day Silence was born. There was but rude nursing
at the barracks, and no gentle tones of kindness. The one voice,
which would even now have been music to the poor mother's
ears, was hushed in death, and all around was cold, and calm,
and very still.
“Let her be called Silence,” whispered the mother to the
grim, hard-featured nurse standing at the bed's foot — “Silence
Adams;” and then those thin lips seemed to move in prayer
for a few moments, and — Silence Adams was motherless!
Her grandparents heard of their daughter's death, and of the
helpless babe, and came to claim her; but the boy bore his
father's face, and looked at them with his father's eyes, and they
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drove him from their presence; nor could any persuasions
induce them to admit him to Oakwood.
When Silence grew older, Henry made himself known to her;
and she, with so few to love, had lavished upon him a tenderness
which was almost idolatry. He had bound her by a solemn
oath to conceal from every human ear her knowledge of him;
and she dared not reveal it, even to me, without his consent. I
had surprised them at one of their stolen interviews, just as she
had succeeded in obtaining his permission to reveal these facts
to her betrothed.
“And now, William,” thus the note concluded, “now that
you know all, dearest, you will hasten to me, will you not, and
take back all those cruel words? O! William, William, if I
thought them true, I do believe my poor heart would break.”
Yes, Silence was pure, pure as heaven; and I — O, God,
could it be that I should yet be forgiven? There was hope in
the very thought. I placed the priceless note in my bosom, collected
my effects hurriedly together, and travelled post-haste for
Liverpool. The seventh day from that time saw me embark for
America.
O, how impatiently I trod the good ship's deck! how I prayed
for gales, tempests, anything that might bear us more swiftly on
our way! Hours seemed like months, and days like weary ages,
until, sailing thus o'er the calm blue sea, as in other days, there
came to me a vision of the lost Caroline.
Her brow was as fair as ever, her eyes were as bright, but
calmer than of yore. It seemed that about her was floating the
very radiance of that ineffable glory.
It may have been but a dream. I dare not think it was
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more; but, in the calm, silent night, she seemed to stand beside
me, and lay her cool hand upon my brow. She spoke — but it
seemed like the voice of a soul, and the bright lips were
motionless.
“Beloved,” she whispered, “I have come to warn you.
Human hearts must suffer. Perfect peace comes only when we
are absorbed in the Infinite. There is many a path before you
where the flowers beneath your feet will turn to thorns, and
where no cool water lies. But be patient, O my beloved! If
the great good comes not on earth, will it not go before you to
heaven?”
And the dream, the vision, passed away, and my soul came
back to this earthly life, with a murmur on my lips — “Yes,
in heaven.”
Ah! I have had need to say it over many times!
After that, I grew calm and patient, and only whispered the
name of my beloved in prayers.
At last my feet touched the shore. I had no time to gaze
up to the blue sky, or down to the green earth; there was not
even time for my soul to thrill to the joy of seeing my native
land. I hurried restlessly onward. It was midsummer afternoon
when I reached my father's gate, and, once more throwing
the reins to the servant, hurried over the fields to Oakwood.
I could see it in the distance. Its turrets looked grand,
and calm, and still, at even. And Silence, would she be there
to greet me?
Could she forgive me? What justification could I plead for my
great wrong? Suddenly my heart stood still. I grasped the limb
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of a willow that hung drooping in my path for support, and I
looked resolutely towards Oakwood.
Merciful God! was that a funeral procession which was coming
through the gates, as if to meet me? That coffin with its
waving pall, those girls robed in white, scattering flowers!
How madly I hurried on! They set the coffin down in front
of the gateway, after the manner of country funerals.
Slowly they turned back the pall. Slowly they lifted the lid,
and madly I hurried onward.
They gave way before my coming, as if they had seen a
spectre, and I gained the spot.
For one moment I veiled my eyes, and then I glanced downward.
It was Silence! — my Silence — cold, still, dead!
O, Heaven, how beautiful she looked there! The blue-veined
lids were closed over the brown eyes I had so loved to gaze into;
but the brown hair lay above her brow as of old, soft, and fair,
and very smooth.
The village girls had placed white roses on her breast, and
there, above her white robe, above the cold, pulseless heart, lay
the golden cross I had given her!
Silence! my own, my beautiful! faithful in death, as in
life!
Was the love passionate and earthly which forced me to press
such wild, beseeching kisses upon her brow and lips, which made
my hot tears fall over her like a rain of molten lava? O, why,
why did they not waken her? “Silence!” I shrieked, “Silence!”
but there came no answer from the lips that had always before
welcomed my coming. “Silence!” and still the fair, sweet,
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almost mocking smile rested on those beautiful features. It drove
me mad.
I did not know whether I followed her to the grave. I did
not know even where they laid my beautiful; but, when my
overthrown reason came tottering back again, I found myself with
the old people, her grandparents, who were forgetting their grief
in earnest strivings to lighten my wilder sorrow.
They were gathered to their fathers long ago, and Oakwood is
mine now.
Her brother dwells here with me, — her brother and his sweet
young wife, — and their fair children play at my feet; but I do
not envy him.
My wife is waiting for me above; and, as surely as I die, God
has mercifully given me faith that I shall rise again, and go
home to heaven and to her; for, when I depart, will not the last
name on my lips be Silence Adams!
-- -- p655-204
ONLY A PAUPER.
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Over the stony street of the great city the iron-shod car rattled
onward, bearing the rude, hastily-constructed hearse.
The coffin was narrow, and rather short, and the sexton's lip
curled slightly, as, in answer to our half-whispered inquiry, he
muttered, “Only a pauper!” The form within was very slight
and fair, the features delicate and purely classical in their outline,
the mouth like a frozen rosebud, and forth from the coarse
cap had strayed one long, sunny curl, which fond hands long ago
must have nurtured carefully.
But there was no funeral train to go to the pauper burial; only
the sullen hearse-driver and the two bearers, with the brutal,
stupid leer on their coarse faces.
No long array of coaches wheeled along in stately grandeur,
with the black plumes nodding their solemn mockery over the
horses' heads!
There was no silver plate, or sculptured marble, on which to
write out the sanctified lies of an epitaph; no parson to say his
prayer, or clerk to breathe amens, as they lowered the dead
woman to her nameless grave. Therefore the sexton's lip curled;
therefore he answered me, “Only a pauper!”
Was this, indeed, all? Had life for her no deeper destiny?
Were there no eyes which brightened at the light in her own, no
broad breast where her head might lean, no child's voice to call
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her mother? Had no father's lips ever blessed her, no mother's
hand parted the sunshine of her flowing curls? O, yes! Once
a sweet country home had echoed back her laugh, a deep voice
had whispered lovingly in her ear, and her sleep had grown sweet
with a small head pillowed on her bosom. But father and
mother had long lain sleeping; the sod had grown over his broad
breast; and, for the child, the gaunt, half-famished thing was
whipped for crying, and told it was no use for her to go to the
pauper funeral.
As for souls, does anybody know whether paupers have such
an article? Hers must have been safe enough; or, if it were not,
who cared? — she was only a pauper!
THE OLD HOMESTEAD.
-- -- p655-206
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Maples o'erhang the garden gate,
A beech-tree rises against the wall,
Where in the pleasant summer day
Sunbeams go hunting, and shadows fall;
Every cloud the sky that flecks
The brooklet mirrors, hurrying by,
Bearing songs of the mountain sprites
To nymphs that dwell in the forest nigh!
Frolicksome lambs and woolly sheep
Sport 'neath the shade-trees green and cool;
Patient cattle, with dreamy eyes,
Go to bathe in the sedgy pool;
There I can hear the wild-birds sing,
There in the solitude hums the bee,
And bodiless winds, with airy feet,
Their dances weave in the hollow tree.
There, in the midst, the homestead stands,
With its gable roof, and its chimneys tall,
Its clapboards and shingles weather-stained,
And its windows, narrow, and high, and small.
There, in the kitchen, low and wide,
Flitches of bacon hang to dry;
Peppers, and pumpkins, and apples strung,
Droop festooned from the hooks on high!
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The spinning-wheel in the corner stands,
The dye-tub is turned against the wall,
And down on peppers and wheel and tub
Pleasant flecks of the sunshine fall.
The clock is ticking upon the stair,
And over the dresser deftly spread
Are many a pewter platter and plate,
And many a loaf of home-made bread!
There, in the sun, at the open door,
The dame o'er her knitting has gone to sleep;
The dog and cat are slumbering nigh,
And the very shadows softly creep!
And still, when the winter nights grow long,
There, in the chimney deep and wide,
The good wife plieth her spinning-wheel,
The good man sits by the old fire-side!
And aye, when the earth-cares darkly press
My spirit striving in Life's fierce noon,
I love to turn from the sultriness,
And go where winds, in their viewless shoon,
Sway the boughs at the garden-gate,
Breathe through the beech-tree's quivering leaves,
Where sunbeams go hunting and shadows fall,
Or the dew drops down on the dusty eaves!
-- -- p655-208
HOME AGAIN.
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Ryefield, next station! “Hurra! It seems good to get
into a Christian country once more, after a three-years' camping
out among California savages. I declare, I wonder if Kate
has n't just got supper ready!”
“Hurra, there, Mr. Conductor! just shove out my baggage;
I 'm off here!” And, sure enough, he hurries home at the rate
of two locomotives tied together.
“Kate! Kate! I say, little wife, where are you?” and he
looks through the window. “Whe! — w-h-e-w! if that is n't
comfortable! — There sits Katie with a handsome young man. In
a blue dress, too; the gypsy always knew she looked prettiest in
blue; — and those earrings, too, confound the woman! I wonder
where she gets money to dash out with, when I am digging away
in California! Taking her hand now! Sathanos, what will
come next? May you go to — Kate, God bless you, darling!—
Kate! I say, Kate!” and he raised his voice a little.
“My husband!” and the prettiest white arms in the world
are round his neck, the rosiest lips pressed to his own, and over
the bright black eyes close long, jetty lashes, heavy with
tears!
I don't know how it was, but by this time the husband's heart
was softened considerably. It might have been owing to the influence
of a certain other heart, beating and throbbing against
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his own; but it 's certain he gave the handsome young fellow,
his wife's youngest brother, a cordial welcome, and sat down with
his good humor not at all diminished by the sight of nicely-browned
biscuits and smoking tea-cakes.
A handsome man, with a slightly sunburned face, sat, in the
afternoon train toward Slingsby, leaning his head on his hand.
He had been for three years a wanderer, and come home rich.
Rich! there 's a great deal in that word, to most. To him there
was everything! The proud man had seen his delicate wife,
reared in luxury, reduced to privation, and she suffered, and
complained not; but it maddened him. He left her on a
crusade for gold, — left her with a weary memory dwelling in
his soul of clinging arms, and passionate kisses. The deep,
bright eyes of their one child, their almost angel Florence, looked
on him in his dreams sometimes, and he heard the last tearchoked
“God bless you!” from his young wife's lips.
Not for many a weary month has he heard tidings from home;
and there were tears in the deep eyes that shone from underneath
his slouched Spanish hat, as he hurried from the Slingsby dépôt.
The roses were bright around the porch of that little fairy
cottage, the woodbine was green over it, and forth from tufts of
mignonette and hearts-ease floated a faint, delicate breath of
perfume. But where were his wife's blue eyes, where the sunshine
of Florence's golden hair? He hurried in; there was no
sound of life, and the pale, thin figure lying on the couch, with
the golden-fringed lids drooping heavily over the blue eyes, can
that be Jennie, — his Jennie? It must be. “Jennie, sweet
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wife!” and the words burst from his heart like a low wail. The
lids unclose, — the ripe lips part, — and then she sinks in his
arms in a fainting fit, almost like death.
A half-hour later, and he held her on his breast, murmuring
low words of love, blent with vows never again to part on earth.
“But Florence, our Florence!” he asked, at last; “where is
she?”
“Dead, dearest, dead!” and the young wife clung to him
convulsively. “Dead!” and the word swelled on his ear like
the wail from a broken heart.
Yes, there was life and light on earth, and the great world
recked not that the grass grew green over that child-heart, that
the violets nodded above those closed eyes, and that only dirges
were the husband's welcome home!
Ah me! can gold pay for the wasted wealth of the heart?
Can the gleam of gems shine out of memory the tears that sparkle
in the eyes we love; or velvet spreads, enwrought with gold and
pearl, warm us like the clasp of clinging arms which hold us to a
heart that beats for us only?
-- -- p655-215
ONLY AN OLD MAID.
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No, no, nothing but that! She has never derived any additional
importance from linking her name with yours, imperial
man! — never grown angelized by a wife's thrice-drugged potion
of care and sorrow. She lives alone, in a little, lonely house, —
alone, with her black cat, and her memories of the past!
For even she has past memories; you can't deprive her of
those. Sitting in her quiet room, with the black cat purring at
her feet, voices steal to her from the olden time, — dreams and
loves, vague, and dim, and distant, from the lost paradise of
Life!
Sunshine streams again over the broad green meadows of her
child-life; sunshine lies on the tufts of fresh red strawberries,
and browns the small fingers that clasp her own. She wanders
over hill, and dell, and woodland, with young, happy hearts
beating at her side, opening such golden leaves in her book of
destiny as make her eye brighten with the twin lights of youth
and hope!
And then the pale shadow-hands of spirits lift the curtain
from before a veiled picture.
The old maid gazes once more into “bonny wells of eyes,”
brushes back long, fair curls, and holds her breath while a low
voice breathes her name!
Dead or false! — which was he? Who shall tell? It was a
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gay, glad morning, when she saw him last, as he stood on a
proud ship's deck, and waved his hand in fond farewell. What
years she hoped, and waited! — but he never came again. Did he
hold some Eastern beauty to his heart, or was the sea-sand draggling
in his long, bright curls? Who shall say? Only the
voice of the recording angel, in that day when the sea gives up
its dead!
But she hoped and waited, and she is an old maid now, — a
lonely, loveless old maid. Young misses, who are just out of
school, and into market, sneer at her, pursing up their dainty
little lips.
Young men, who exult in long, silky moustaches, and banditlooking
whiskers, look at her patronizingly, and call her “the
old girl.” Married ladies, who quarrel with their lords half the
twenty-four hours, and gossip about their neighbors the other
half, condescend to pity her, and she, — O, she gropes along
graveward, and does n't mind!
True, those eyes grow dim with tears sometimes, as she looks
on shapes from the spectre-land of the past; but she chokes them
all back again. Tears are romantic in the eyes of beauty, but,
reddening the old maid's peaked nose, they are stuff and nonsense!
Ridiculous of her it is, you say, to wear those stiff, short curls.
You forget it may be because he liked them.
You call her a winter-rose, dried and withered, when you see
her in her bright shawl; but it was his last gift.
To me there is something beautiful in the eternality of a love
which triumphs over time and death; but, alas! I can't make
the old maid a heroine in any eyes but my own.
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This is merely because I cannot make her young and beautiful;
because she will train those winter curls like tendrils of
the spring; because, with her love and hope in heaven, she is in
the world, and not of the world.
She must live on alone; drink her tea out of her little, old-fashioned
tea-pot; eat her marmalade out of her little, old-fashioned
dessert-plates, and, by and by, lay her down to die, and be
followed to her grave only by her black cat, and —
Ellen Louise.
-- -- p655-218
LENORE.
Hush thy foot-fall, lightly tread,
Passing by a loved one's bed!
Dust hath gathered on her brow,
Silently she sleepeth now!
Sank she unto dreamless rest,
Clasping violets to her breast,
With her forehead pale and fair
'Neath the midnight of her hair.
And the sunshine, wandering by,
Paused a while to see her die; —
Stealing with a silent tread,
Wove a glory round her head.
Angels, bending from the skies,
Gently closed her dimming eyes, —
Kissing then her lips so fair,
Left an Eden smiling there!
Then we laid her down to sleep,
Where the wild-flowers bend and weep;
Earth below, and blue sky o'er,
Sweetly sleeps our own Lenore!
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-- -- p655-219
SEPULCHRES.
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I wonder if there is any human heart which has not its own
grave-yard, — its tombs, and monuments, and haunted houses —
its sepulchres, from which the buried hopes come out at midnight,
like sheeted ghosts?
There be coffins of gold, and coffins of silver; and there lie
dead bodies, white and ghastly, wrapped only in winding-sheets
of pride.
Sometimes memory-bells toll over the unquiet sleepers, and
other hopes and loves say a solemn mass for the repose of the
dead. But yet the spectres will come out upon the “Ghost's
Walk;” and though, in the careless day-time, we can pass
them by with a “God bless you,” such as the Swedes give to a
sneezing traveller, in the night they do lay cold hands upon our
brows, and startle us strangely, making us close our eyes against
the vision, and mutter prayers and Ave Marias!
There be often grave-yards, — solemn ones, — behind holy
country churches, where the dead go to sleep within the sound
of the organ on holy-days and festivals, and the harmonies of the
church-choirs singing together. There be crosses and monuments
over them, which the country people twine round with wreaths
and garlands, and there the village sexton says, “The dead
sleep well!”
There be others still, in the great city, where the dome frowns
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over them, and the mighty shadow of Saint Paul's falls over the
passing traveller like a spell.
There, above hearts that once were quick with life, are strange
shapes of mighty warriors in bronze and marble, gleaming
swords, and the presence of a brooding human pride.
We can look on them calmly; for never do the graves open,
never do the warriors in bronze and marble totter on their pedestals,
and the church-clock ticks in their presence, and the church-bell
rings!
But the sepulchres in the grave-yards of our hearts have
yawning mouths, and from them comes silently many a Lazarus,
with a frown upon his brow. There is no power, no spell, to
lay the spirit. Star-beam and moon-beam stream in vain over
the sepulchres of our hearts, — the shrines and altars where are
only the ashes of desolation!
-- -- p655-221
SWEET ELLEN ADAIR.
“Ellen Adair, she loved me well,
Against her father's and mother's will;
To-day I sat for an hour and wept
By Ellen's grave on the windy hill.
Shy she was, and I thought her cold —
Thought her proud, and fled over the sea;
Filled was I with folly and spite,
When Ellen Adair was dying for me.
“Cruel, cruel were the words I said,
Cruelly came they back to-day;
`You 're too slight and fickle,' I said,
`To trouble the heart of Edward Gray.'
There I put my face in the grass —
Whispered, `Listen to my despair;
I repent me of all I did,
Speak a little, Ellen Adair!”
“Then I took a pencil and wrote,
On a mossy stone as I lay,
`Here lies the body of Ellen Adair;
And here the heart of Edward Gray!'
Love may come, and love may go,
And fly like a bird from tree to tree,
But I will love no more, no more,
Till Ellen Adair comes back to me!”
Tennyson.
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I am sitting here alone, in my old maid's room. The sunshine
drifts pleasantly in at the windows; the orioles and robins
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have built their nests in the trees that overshadow my eaves;
the cool breeze lifts my silver hair lightly, and I am happy, with
a strange, quiet blessedness.
Voices come to me from bright, young lips, that were long ago
laid to rest beneath the grave-yard turf. White, dimpled hands
are clasping mine, and I am wandering again with those beloved
dead, over the enchanted paths of my childhood.
Once more we gather strawberries in the meadows, or go nutting
in the still haunts of the woodland.
And among those buried friends and loves there is one face
fairer than all, — a quiet, calm, spiritual face; clear chestnut
eyes, overshadowed by glossy chestnut hair — the hair, the eyes,
of Ellen Adair! I met one like her, in Charlestown, a few weeks
since, one as fair almost as she was; and Ellen Adair rose up
again before me, pure, fresh and lovely.
It is but a few days since I sat underneath the beech-tree by
the garden wall, with a living friend beside me, — one who, for
many years, seemed to me as a brother, — and I listened to a tale
of those other days, of which I will tell you here in the pages
of this old book, this memoir of my youth, which I shall leave
behind me for my nephews and nieces to read, when I too have
gone to the land of shadows.
My pet namesake came to me, the other day, with her sweet
face wearing an unusually grave expression, and asked me, very
earnestly, “Aunt Louise, you are an old maid, an't you?”
“Yes, dear,” I answered, nothing daunted.
“Well, Aunt Louise, did anybody ever want to marry
you?”
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“You shall know when I am dead, darling,” was my reply;
and the sweet questioner left me with tearful eyes.
O, blessed be God for love! It is a blessed thing to be thus
dear to Gertrude's children, even though no childish voice can
ever call me mother, no small, rose-dimpled hand ever rest upon
my bosom. Yes, they will read the history of my poor heart's
loves and hopes, when I am dead; and then, too, they may
read the story of Ellen Adair, in these leaves out of my
diary!
I can just remember the first time I saw her. It had been
rumored about, in our village, that a new family had moved into
the neighborhood; and of course their children, more or less,
would attend our next term of school. The first day of school is
always, like the last one, an important occasion; there is the
new teacher to criticize, the new scholars to get acquainted with,
and the new rules to listen to.
I remember this day was a particularly important one to me,
for it was the first time I wore my new pink dress, and that
little new white apron.
School-girls can generally afford to be generous enough to
admire what belongs to another, and my dress and apron elicited
their due share of approval ere I commenced to watch the gravelled
walk leading from Mr. Adair's (the new neighbor's) frontdoor,
and “wonder” how many new scholars would come.
At last the door opened, and one little girl came out all alone.
She left the yard, crossed the street, and came up to the school-house.
As she approached, the scholars all looked at the shy,
pale, delicate little creature, in her sky-blue muslin frock, with
an air of not unkind curiosity; but they all withdrew as she
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entered. I was about to follow them, when another glance at
her timid, appealing face determined me to remain.
I approached her very gently (thinking, I remember, that my
pink dress and white apron might serve to assist me in making a
favorable impression), and asked if I should show her where
to put her bonnet.
“Thank you,” she said, gently — “I don't know any one here;
will you please to tell me what your name is?”
“Louise Cleveland,” I answered, with a smile, quite delighted
at finding her so easy to get acquainted with. “Louise Cleveland, —
and yours?”
“O, I am Ellen Adair.”
“Ellen Adair,” I repeated; “it is a sweet name, and I mean
to love you very much, — may I?”
Her answer was a kiss; and from that hour she was my other
self, a part of my very existence.
In the play-ground I was her champion, and in the languages
her guide and assistant; while she repaid me by lending me the
advantage of her unusual quickness in mathematics, for which
her love amounted almost to a passion.
Strange as this love seemed to me then, now that I think of
it, it seems not quite so singular, for hers was a mathematical
character, — about her every act there was a kind of mathematical
precision, — and her ideas of right and wrong were as
thoroughly grounded on the plummet-and-line system as if
every act were the solution of a problem in geometry.
For years our friendship continued to glide along in the same
uninterrupted channel, when at length a stranger came to disturb
the current of Ellen Adair's peaceful life. I have met,
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during my long life, many persons whom to see was to admire,
but I never met one whose first appearance was so irresistibly
impressive as that of Edward Gray.
He was a young man of brilliant talents, and of rare promise
in his chosen profession, the law; but he was poor, and in debt
for his education, and this seemed to close against him many of
the hospitable doors of Ryefield, and, among others, that of the
aristocratic Colonel Adair.
But he soon became a warm friend of my brother Frank, and
a frequent visitor at my father's house.
Of course, Ellen soon met him there; and it seemed to me,
from the first, that they were made for each other. When I
introduced them, Edward bent upon the delicate girl a glance of
intense, almost passionate admiration; and she — but it was not
possible for any one to see Edward Gray without an involuntary
admission of his superiority.
He was about the medium height, with a full chest, strong
arms, and firmly-knit muscles. His forehead was broad and
prominent, and over it hung thick curls of coal-black hair;
while beneath his heavy brows flashed eyes so black, so large, so
glorious, that to meet them was almost to adore them. His
manners were faultless; and his voice (as if a woman ever could
forget that) was clear, and deep, and musical. He said but
little, except when he was particularly interested, and then forth
from his lips would burst a whole flood-tide of eloquent words,
swaying you like the sea.
It was a quiet summer evening when they first met. The
trees waved their giant arms between them and the blue sky,
spangled with stars. Beneath their feet was the cool, soft grass,
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and around them the balmy air of the summer evening, laden
with moonbeams. Ellen and I were in the garden, and Edward
Gray joined us, with my brother Frank.
After that they met quite often, and soon I learned that
a passion new and absorbing had taken possession of my sweet
friend.
When she told me of it, with tears and blushes, she made
me promise to guard the secret in my own heart; and never did
I breathe it to mortal, until roses were growing over her pure
brow.
“He will never love me,” she cried, amid her tears, as she
ceased her narration. “He could not, Louise, I am so small,
and plain, and foolish. Louise, you know he could never love
me, and don't you despise me for loving him?”
“No, indeed, darling. Why should I? I thought, from the
first, that you were made for each other, and the wonder would
be if you did not love him. I am sure, dearest, he can't help
loving you; nay, I think he does already.”
Nor was I wrong, for the very next day Edward himself came
to me with a tale of love for my sweet Ellen, and in a similar
manner made me promise to preserve silence. So here was I in
possession of a secret whose disclosure would have made two
hearts happy, and which, yet, I was bound in honor not to
reveal. Was there ever a more difficult position for a woman to
be placed in? O, how my tongue did ache! Had he better tell
Ellen now, was Edward's concluding question, or should he wait?
Tell her now, by all means, I advised.
Always before, when Ellen had spent the evening with us,
my brother Frank had attended her home; but the next time she
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came, Frank was not there, and I thought Edward was not sorry
to have the opportunity. I watched them depart, talking gayly,
and then I reentered the house, and sat there building air-castles
as usual, when, half an hour later, Edward entered.
“What! you back here again, and so soon?” I exclaimed,
as he approached; but instantly I saw something unusual had
disturbed him.
“Yes, I am back here,” he replied; “and I 'd better not have
left here, unless I wished to get insulted gratuitously.”
“Why, Edward, what do you mean? Surely, Nellie has n't
rejected you?”
“No, I have not given her the opportunity.”
“Well, for mercy's sake, what is it, then? Who, in the name
of common sense, has been insulting you?”
“Well, listen, Lou; you may as well know it first as last, and
I 'll tell you. I walked home with Ellen Adair, simpleton that
I was. I thought I had never been so happy in my life as when
her little hand rested confidingly, I almost dared to think lovingly,
on my arm. I was telling her of my past, of my poverty
and my struggles, and perhaps in five minutes more I should
have asked her to become the arbiter of my future, when we
arrived at the door of her father's house, and there was Colonel
Adair himself standing at the gate.
“`This is Mr. Gray, father, who has come home with me from
Louise Cleveland's,' said Ellen, timidly; and then, turning to
me, she added, `Won't you come in, sir?'
“Before I had time to reply, the colonel remarked,
“`It is already time for prayers, and retiring. I am much
obliged to the gentleman for taking you safely home, though I
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should prefer you would always let me know where you are
going, that I may have a servant sent for you.'
“`Good-night, sir,' said Ellen, gently. `Good-evening,' said
the colonel, in his most polite and frigid manner; and your humble
servant, Edward Gray, bowed his head and left.”
“Yes, Edward,” said I, laughing merrily at his description,
“you are proving how very humble you are, by your present
resentment of an affair no one else would have thought of construing
into an insult. I suppose that the colonel thought Ellen
had never met you before, — did n't exactly approve of a stranger
gallant, and probably thought it was time for young people to
be in bed, that was all, — so run home, sir, get a good sleep,
and come over to escort Ellen home in better season to-morrow
night.”
However, I ascertained, the next day, that there was more in
the affair than my philosophy had dreamed of. It seemed the
colonel had been for some time mistrusting his daughter's
increasing regard for Edward Gray, and had determined to
improve the first opportunity of expressing his disapprobation.
After prayers, he had called her to him, and firmly, calmly
told her that, if she married Edward Gray, she would henceforth
be no child of his; and that the less a young lady associated on
intimate terms with a gentleman she could not marry, the better
would be her reputation.
Poor Ellen came to me, in great affliction, the next morning.
She was almost, nay, quite certain, that Edward loved her, from
his remarks, as he walked home by her side; and, if he asked
her love in return, what should she do?
“If he loves you, and you love him,” I answered, “and you
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believe him good and true and noble, marry him, and make his
life happy.”
Reader, I suppose my advice was very wrong, but it was the
judgment of an inexperienced girl, deeply anxious for the happiness
of two whom she most truly loved. But Ellen's mathematical
notions of right were not so to be set aside.
“Why, Louise,” she said, mildly, “my father gave me life,
and he has a right to say to whom it shall be devoted. I was
only deliberating whether I ought to tell Edward that I love
him, or whether it would be better for him not to know it.”
“Better for him!” I exclaimed, passionately. “You have not
a thought for yourself in your heart. I tell you it won't kill
Edward, any way, for he 's proud, and a man, though he does
love you; but you, Ellen Adair, you will die, if you don't
marry him. You need not shake your head — I 've known you
ever since you were a tiny child, and I tell you, you would die.
Don't I know your disposition? You never loved but a few
persons in all your life, and to lose one of those — the dearest,
too — would kill you. You could n't live, and see Edward
Gray married to another!”
O, how meekly she answered me! Never had I seen her
look so thoroughly angelic.
“I am so glad,” she said, “that you think it won't kill
Edward, any way. As for me, I don't think I shall die yet;
but my mother's in heaven, you know, already, and I 'm willing
to go home to her when my Father calls me;” and she raised
her mild, serious eyes to heaven, with such an expression of
hopeful love and trust, that I could hardly refrain from falling
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on my knees and worshipping her, as a visible incarnation of the
Divine Love.
After that, Edward Gray met her but seldom, and even then
usually in the presence of others; but one night they chanced to
be alone for a few moments in the grape-vine arbor at Elmwood,
and he told her all his love. She listened, timidly, in
wild joy, blent with quick throbs of agony, and when he concluded,
she answered, very quietly,
“I love you, Edward, but I cannot marry you. It is impossible!”
“I knew it — I knew it!” cried Edward, wildly, as he rushed
from her presence, hearing not, or heeding not, her faint, whispered
request that he would return.
Half an hour later, I found Ellen alone in the arbor, sobbing
as if her heart would break.
“O, Louise,” she said, “I have made him angry, and he
will never come back. He would not wait for me to tell him
why I would not marry him — and he is gone!”
And, true enough, he was gone. The next morning Edward
Gray had left the village, and it was years before we heard from
him again.
Ellen Adair suffered deeply; every day her pale face seemed
to grow thinner, and paler, and more spiritual; but she did not
die. She never uttered a single complaint. Not one word of
unthankfulness marred the pure gratitude of her living unto
God, for her life was one continual sacrifice of herself. It was
in vain that men, however noble or talented, attempted to
pay her any attention. They were repulsed — quietly and politely,
it is true, but yet most decidedly.
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Her heart had opened like a rose-bud to the touch of one
master spirit; but, like a rose-bud once withered, its leaves
could never again unfold. She passed her life in the discharge
of all gentle duties of love and charity; while you could never
have guessed, from her manner, that a single grief had ever
shrined itself in her pure heart.
Five years had passed, and a new house was going up in Ryefield.
A stranger had purchased the ground, the most beautiful
site in the village. Then an architect arrived with his troops
of workmen, and soon the imposing structure rose up fair and
stately. The grounds in the neighborhood were laid out with
exquisite taste, and everything was being arranged and beautified
according to the directions of its invisible owner.
At last came a rumor that Edward Gray, who had been
spending some time in Europe, had returned, and was become
the proprietor of the grove, and its new edifice.
“Of course he must have got married,” said the gossips; “he
never would think of taking that trouble for himself, all alone.”
For once it seemed that the gossips were right; for, as soon
as the house and its appurtenances were completed, a handsome
travelling-carriage drove through the village, and stopped at the
grove. From this same travelling-carriage alighted our old
friend Edward Gray, and after him a lady, young, slight, and,
the gossips said, beautiful.
For my own part, I thought of all the happiness at the grove
without either pleasure or envy, for I was heartily provoked
with Edward.
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True, Ellen Adair had refused to marry him; but why could
he not have asked her again — why could he not have waited?
I was brooding these things in my heart, about a week after
the family had become domesticated, when Ellen herself came
in.
“Have you been to the grove yet?” was her first inquiry.
“No, nor I don't want to. I don't like Edward Gray, now;
and, as for his upstart wife, I don't want to see her!”
“Why, Louise, are you quite sure you are in your senses?”
said Ellen, quietly, as she laid her hand upon my brow. “I
am going to call on Mrs. Gray,” she continued, “and you must
go and get your bonnet and come with me. It 's a civility we
owe to strangers; and, beside, I don't mind telling you, Louise,
I do want to see what kind of a person Edward Gray has found
to love.”
I know not what sort of spell the girl exercised over me with
her “come and go,” but, really, it soon began to seem a necessary
piece of civility, and a very desirable thing, to call on the
Grays, and forthwith I got ready and went.
Ellen was looking beautifully, that afternoon. She wore a thin
white hat, with pale pink flowers and ribbons, a dainty white
muslin dress, and a delicate rose-colored scarf.
She was “fair and beautiful” to look upon, as the Scotch
people say; and I was wondering, as she tripped up the gravelled
walk, whether the sight of that sweet face would not still
have power to make Edward Gray's matrimonial heart ache.
A servant conducted us into the pleasant parlor. It was
indeed arranged with exquisite taste — books, and pictures, and
rare objects of vertu brought from beyond the sea, were
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scattered round in luxurious profusion, while the other appointments
of the room were gorgeous enough for the boudoir of a countess.
“And all this might have been Ellen's!” thought I, as I surveyed
it.
Edward Gray entered first. He was indeed handsomer than
ever, and I trembled for the effect of his appearance on Ellen.
She rose as he entered the room, but immediately sat down
again. He approached her cordially, with an extended hand.
“Miss Adair,” he remarked, “it gives me pleasure to welcome
you to our new home.”
“And it gives me pleasure, Mr. Gray,” she replied, “to
welcome you to Ryefield.”
And this was all. Thus they met — two persons who had
once been all the world to each other. I knew that Nellie loved
him still, but for Edward Gray I could not answer.
Very soon Mrs. Gray entered. The character of her face was
not sufficiently exalted to be called beautiful, but she was an
extremely pretty person. She was a blonde, with luxuriant
hair, and large, clear blue eyes, with a smile in them. Her
slight figure was arrayed in the most elegant and tasteful manner,
and, altogether, she was as nice a little wife as one need
wish to see.
She welcomed us both cordially, remarking to me, “I
have often heard my husband speak of you, Miss Cleveland; but
I don't remember to have heard Miss Adair's name before.
Perhaps” (turning to Ellen) “you were not in town when my
husband was here before?”
“O, yes,” said I, simply, “surely Ellen was in town, but
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perhaps Mr. Gray mentioned me more especially, because my
brother Frank was his most intimate friend.”
Our call, though a brief one, was sufficient to assure me that
there was no intellectual sympathy between the talented, brilliant
Edward Gray, and his very nice little wife; and to convince
me, also, that Ellen Adair was not quite forgotten. After many
years, Edward told me the particulars of his marriage.
It seems, he had acquired his immense fortune by a successful
discovery which he patented in England, soon after he left
Ryefield; and then, being desirous of making the tour of the continent
before his return, he had joined the party of an English
nobleman, whose wife was an American. The lady's sister, Miss
Maria Clinton, had been of the party, and very soon he discovered
that his polite attentions to the younger lady had awakened
a sentiment warmer than friendship in his behalf.
At first, this perplexed him; then it flattered him, and soothed
the vanity wounded by Ellen Adair's rejection; and so, before he
was aware of it, he found himself the husband of Maria Clinton.
But he awoke from the honeymoon to discover a want in his
heart which she could not satisfy, a love she had never yet been
able to awaken. Still would the sweet face of Ellen Adair
haunt his slumbers; still he awoke to sigh over a love his conscience
condemned, and his judgment pronounced hopeless.
I know not by what strange fate he was urged on, when he
came to Ryefield, and fixed his residence so near the object of his
hopeless love. For her, at least, his coming was not well. I
was right in thinking she could not endure to see him the husband
of another.
From the day on which we called at the grove, she commenced
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to pine; and, while the summer days grew long and pleasant, her
step became more and more feeble, and her cheek paler.
It was late in an August afternoon, the sun was just sinking,
and his infinite glory streamed over the broad earth, and through
the blinds, into the windows, and over the carpet of Ellen
Adair's pleasant room.
Ellen herself was sitting in a high-backed chair, bolstered up
by pillows, watching the clouds; and when the last one faded
from the west, and the stars began to come out in the clear
blue, she turned to me, and said, solemnly,
“Louise, I have seen the sun go down and the stars rise for
the last time!” There was nothing mournful in her voice; it
was only the certainty, and the shadow of death, that frightened
me. Ellen's face looked calm and sweet, as usual, and there was
no tremor in her clear voice.
“Must you go to-night, darling?” I whispered, mournfully.
“Yes, Louise, and, were it not that I don't like to leave you, I
should be very thankful. While here I had to struggle fiercely with
a terrible sin, — the temptation to love Edward Gray, now that he
was the husband of another. Thank God, Louise, that this cup
is about to pass from me; for it will not be wrong to look down
on him from heaven and love him.”
I stole from the room, as she ceased speaking, and taking a
card, I wrote hurriedly on the back of it:
“Edward Gray: Ellen Adair is ill — dying. She will die
to-night. I do not say if you ever loved her, for I know you
did, but, if you love her now, come to us directly.
“Louise Cleveland.”
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I sent this note by the errand-boy, and then reëntered Ellen's
room, without telling her anything of the proceeding. In five
minutes Edward Gray stood by her bed-side, for we had lain her
down on her couch by the window. Going up to her, he knelt
down by her side, and, folding her in his arms, he exclaimed,
“O, Ellen, my first, my only love!” For a moment she
shrank from his embrace, but he only held her the more
firmly.
“Ellen,” he said, “darling Ellen, you shall rest here now;
you are dying, and it is not wrong. I will hold you thus, once
in this life. You shall die upon my bosom! O, Ellen, how I
have loved you! God in heaven knows that, from the first
moment I ever saw you, you have been the very idol of my being.
It is true, I called another wife. I took another to my home
and heart; but it was for her sake, not for mine, and when I did
not know you had ever loved me.
“O, Ellen, my soul's darling! will you not be mine in heaven?
Thank God with me, my beautiful, that there is death, there is
heaven!”
And there he sat all this time, clasping her in his arms, as she
had never dared to hope he would clasp her on earth. The past
was forgotten, — the long, bitter, suffering past, — in the ecstasy
of that one hour, snatched, as it were, from the very jaws of
death.
Silently, for a long time, Ellen lay there, with her head upon
his bosom. At length she said, with a faltering voice, “Glory
be to God on high! God is good, — is he not, Edward? — to give
us one hour like this, even though it must be death which hallows
it!”
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Then, for a long time, there was once more silence between
us in that chamber of death; and once more Ellen broke it.
“Come and kiss me, Louise,” she said; and I pressed my lips
to hers. “You have been very dear to me, my more than sister;
and God will bless you for all your love.
“My father,” and she turned her eyes on the old man, seated,
in his agony, at the bed's foot, — “my father, will you not kiss
your motherless child, and bless her?”
Fondly the father pressed his lips to her brow, and bade God
be merciful unto her and bless her in her last agony, even as she
had blessed him, all the days of her life. Then she turned to her
lover, and, resting her head still closer on his bosom, she whispered,
“Edward, I am all yours now, until I am summoned by our
Father and our God. He is our God, is n't he, Edward? Strive,
for my sake, dearest, to put all your faith in him, to pray for his
grace, and finally to meet me in heaven. But I can't talk any
more. I am faint. Pray for strength, dearest. Kiss me
once!” and, for the first time in his life, Edward Gray pressed
his lips to those of the idol of his youth, the worship of his manhood.
But he kissed the dead, for Ellen's lips were cold and
stiff.
So soon, so silently, had her spirit passed from earth to heaven,
while the light was still kindling in her eyes, and the sweet smile
still beaming about her lips.
We laid her to rest in a quiet, blessed spot, where the grass is
green, and the brook murmurs by her, ever and forever, soothing
her sleep with its melody. The days of her father were long
ago numbered, and he, too, sleeps beside his Ellen.
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Edward Gray was a kind, devoted husband, but a year has
passed since his wife sunk into her grave; and, sitting beside
me in a pleasant nook, not many days ago, he told me, for
the first time, of his relations with Maria, his motives in marrying,
and the sacred altar in his heart, where Ellen's name had
been always written, and where no eyes, save hers, had ever
gazed.
But that is past. I am an old woman now, and Edward Gray
also will soon be gathered to his fathers. There will be other
graves, beside Ellen's and that of my little brother; and over
them all will the sunshine rest, the stars smile, the willows wave,
and the green trees nod.
We have loved in life, and in death we will not be divided.
A WALK IN MAY-TIME.
-- -- p655-239
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We wandered by the burnside,
In the merry month of May,
When the leaflets and the blossoms
Were keeping holiday;
When the cowslips starred the meadows,
And the alders fringed the brook,
And the early violets lifted
To the skies a loving look;
And the wild choke-cherry blossoms
You braided in my hair,
Till my cheek with blushes deepened,
As you said that I was fair!
And I thought that sweet spring sunshine
Jacob's ladder might have been,
On which angels clomb to heaven,
And came down again to men;
For the breezes breathed but incense,
And the streamlet breathed but prayer,
And a misty gold went floating
On the fragrant spring-time air;
And I surely thought your kisses
Were like blessings from the skies,
And a thousand visions slumbered
In your blue and dreamy eyes!
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But the day blew slowly over
With a noise of wind and rain;
To your eyes there came a shadow,
To my heart there came a pain;
And the streamlet 'gan to dimple; —
Was it with some angel's tears,
Who sat weeping, in the silence,
O'er the changes of the years?
There shall come another May-time;
By the burnside I shall walk,
Hearing no glad step beside me,
And no sound of pleasant talk;
Gone will be the breathing fragrance,
And the music in the air,
As the wild choke-cherry blossoms
Will be withered from my hair.
Never more, like Jacob's ladder,
Will the sunshine seem to fall;
'T will be clomb by ghosts and spectres,
Bearing up a funeral pall;
But my life is blowing over,
With a noise of wind and rain,—
I shall sleep the death-sleep calmly,
And my heart will cease from pain.
-- -- p655-241
HUSH!
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Hush! she is dying! The sunlight streams through the plateglass
windows, the room is fragrant with the sweet breath of
southern flowers, — large, milk-white African lilies, roses a nightingale
might stoop to worship, cape jasmines, and camellias
with their large, glossy leaves.
Through the open casement steals the faint, musical tinkle of
playing fountains; and the light, tempered pleasantly by rosecurtains,
kindles up gorgeous old paintings with a halo bright as
a rainbow. It is as if fresher sunshine was falling earthward on
the bower of beauty.
The canary sings in his gilded cage, — her canary, — and the
mocking-bird raises his clear note higher and higher on the perfumed
air.
Why do you clench your hand till the nails draw the rich
rosy blood through the quivering skin? Why do you grind
your teeth together, and hiss between, that one word, hush? It 's
a beautiful home, I 'm sure; and that lady, with her head upon
your bosom, is fair as any dream-vision of the painter.
Surely nothing could be purer than that broad, high brow;
nothing brighter than those sunny curls!
And she loves you, too! Ah, yes, any one could read that, in
the deep violet eyes raised so tenderly to your own. Ah! that
is it, — your young wife loves you!
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She linked to yours the existence of an angel, when she knelt
beside you at the marriage altar.
For twelve long, golden months, an angel has walked or sat
by your side, or slept in your bosom.
You knew it! No mortal woman ever made your heart bow
before a purity so divine!
No earthly embrace ever so filled your soul with the glory
from beyond the stars; no earthly smile ever shone so unchangingly
above all such noisome things as you earth-worms call care
and trouble. She is an angel, and other angels have been singing
to her in the long days of this pleasant June-time.
“Hush!” you say, but you cannot shut out the anthem-notes
of heaven from those unsealed ears! Louder, higher swell the
hymns of the seraphs, — brighter grows the smile round your
young wife's lips.
“Charles,” she whispers, “dearest, I 'm almost home; you
will come by and by, and I am going to ask God to bless you!”
But you cannot bear it; you turn away, and the big tears
gather in the violet eyes.
You have held her there on your bosom all day — all night;
are you tired? — but you don't answer. Closer, closer you clasp
the slight, fair figure; painfully you press your lips to the cold
brow; — Carrie is dead!
What is it to you that the sunshine is bright? what that its
rays fall on broad lands — your lands? what is it, now that she
can walk on them no more? And what is death — her death?
Few people knew her; no nation will raise a monument to her
memory! But she was yours, — your all!
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No, — yours and God's; and your year of joy is over, and she
rests on His bosom now, in heaven.
They have dug a grave for her; spring-flowers brighten over
it, and the green grass smiles with daisies and violets. You go
there and sigh and pray, and ask God if you, too, may go
home; and, when no answer comes, your proud heart rises up in
bitterness, and, with the bold, wicked words upon your tongue,
you pause, — for your guardian angel looks down from heaven,
and whispers, “Hush!”
Hush! she is praying! There is no carpet upon the floor, no
fragrance of flowers in the comfortless room, and the sun's
broad glare falls all untempered upon the rough boards and the
heap of straw in the corner.
She is beautiful, that young girl who kneels there. Her face
would have been a glorious study for one of Greutze's pale, spiritual
Madonnas. Her attitude — the upraised face, the clasped
hands, the long, black hair streaming backward — might have
been a model for Praxiteles, as she kneels there, in that glaring,
uncomfortable room, by the pallet of straw in the comfortless
corner.
“Hush!” You should hear her prayer; it is not a model
prayer; it is not so much the giving thanks for the blessings
showered upon her lot; not a petition put up half-falteringly for
friend or lover; — no, it is the near approach to a great and
mighty Spirit!
“Father,” it pleads, “O, Father, save me from myself!”
There is a crushing agony in the tone, and the big tears roll
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down from her pale cheeks, and fall on the bare floor like round,
glittering diamonds. Not always had she been thus desolate.
Her father — a proud, sensitive, dreamy man, better fitted for
a poet than a merchant — had been unfortunate in his speculations,
and his creditors had turned him beggared from the fair
home he had built for his dead wife's child!
“Brutes, fiends!” do you say? Hush! They were safe men,—
their notes were good on Wall-street; true men, — they carried
all their threats into execution; pious men, — they went to
church every Sunday, and carried prayer-books clasped with gold
and bound in velvet; just men, — Daniels come to judgment, —
they only took their own. What was it to them whether Paul
Clifford starved, or his daughter sank to a ruin worse than death?
They did n't see why people would get into such scrapes, and
then look to honest people to help them out; they never got
into any, — not they! O, they were good men, were Paul Clifford's
creditors!
Dreadfully shocked they were, when the proud, sensitive poetmerchant
put an end to an existence misfortune had rendered
torture. They would n't let Blanche Clifford teach music in their
families, — not they! Why, she might turn out as bad as her
father.
This very day Blanche had been to the chief of them, and
pleaded for work, in vain, with the tears streaming from her beautiful
eyes. This day his son, who had been her own betrothed,
had whispered to her of flight with him, — of a bridal where
their own hearts should be the priests; and Blanche, loving him
still, as woman loves but once, had felt all her soul thrill to the
strange power of his brilliant words, as he whispered of a fair
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southern home, till she seemed to see the glorious sunshine steeping
southern flowers and crimsoning rich clusters of southern
fruit; and then, remembering that she could not be his wife, had
put her fingers in her ears, and ran for more than life, — for the
hope of heaven!
This day, as she knelt, her soul passed forth from the weary
scene of misery and starvation, and her fair form was left
stark, and stiff, and cold, in the hot glare of the June sunshine.
Truly, you say, are God's judgments in this world unequal!
Be silent.
There will be a judgment at the day of judgment; and mortal
eyes can poorly read the counsels of the Infinite and Unchangeable. —
HUSH!
-- -- p655-246
“AN EMPTY POCKET'S THE WORST OF CRIMES. ”
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To be sure! Nothing at all like it! A man may get his
money in whatever way he pleases; be guilty of usury, extortion,
anything, so that his coat is fine and his boots glossy.
I tell you what, — there is nothing like velvet to sanctify religion.
Now, any common-sense individual can't help seeing that there 's
no possibility of John the coachman, who stands on the churchsteps
holding the horses and congealing in his new livery, being
in as religious a frame of mind as his master, who sits in his
comfortable, damask-covered pew, kneels on his embroidered hassock,
and says amen with such an unction.
It would be the death of me even to suggest that John the
coachman gets just about as good a knowledge of the sermon as
his master; that the cold, and the horses, and the handsome
lady's maid over the way, don't any more occupy his attention
than the rise in stocks, the prosperity of his children, and the
sense of his position as a family-man, occupy John the coachman's
master, kneeling on the hassock, or sitting in his cushioned
pew. I must confess one question does pop into my head,
rather provokingly, — whether there is one Gospel for the poor
and another for the rich, — whether it is a Christian duty for
John's master to go to church, and John to stay outside.
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I should like so much to know which set that passage was
meant for where it says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand.”
I guess that means the poor folks. It can't be that rich people
have any such disagreeable duties to perform as faith and repentance.
Sackcloth and ashes would n't look well outside of velvet and
embroidery. I do believe rich folks ought to raise John's salary,
though, when, besides standing out in the cold till the tip-ends of
his fingers get irreligiously lukewarm, he has to do all their
repenting for them
-- -- p655-248
WOOED AND WON.
[figure description] Page 219.[end figure description]
“Div me just a little piece of b'ead, dear mamma! P'ease,
dear mamma, and baby will be so good! Baby hundry — baby
so hundry — no b'ead so lon' time! P'ease div baby a little!”
“O, God, it is too much!” and Kathleen threw down her
work, already stained with tears, and caught her famished child
to her heart. Time was when Kathleen had never known want,—
when her little foot sank half-buried in rich carpets, when
her delicate form reclined on velvet and down, and her fastidious
taste was pampered by viands the rarest and most costly. Then
there was a broad, strong breast for Kathleen to rest upon, a
fond arm to shelter her, and a voice which called her, many times
every day, “Kate, my life's star, my darling!”
But he had died, — died with his head upon her bosom; and
she had seen the sod piled above his breast, and turned away,
a stricken, lonely woman, clasping her little Winnie to her heart.
Then came ruthless creditors, whose rights she never dared
to question, and swept away from her her fair home, and even
the treasured bridal tokens given her by the friends of her own
orphan childhood. Kathleen was destitute. Those who had
courted her society of old — who would have given a small fortune
to be invited to her parties, or take an airing in her carriage—
swept by her now on the other side. Only one friend
remained. He was an old man, rich and influential, one
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who had sought to gain her hand before she had given it to
Harry, and who renewed his offer now, and still in vain. She
had buried her heart, she said, in Harry's grave, and she should
die if she could not be true to his memory. O, how wearily had
toiled those fingers, unused to labor! and still her scanty pittance
could not procure the little Winnie bread, and still the hungerfiend
was gnawing at her own vitals.
She strained the little one to her bursting heart. “Mother
will give Winnie bread pretty soon, darling, if she has to beg it.”
There was a step upon the stair, and the old man entered.
“What! your child, Kathleen, wailing for bread! That must
not be! If you will not be the old man's wife, you must be
his child; — come to my house, Katie, for I am very desolate.
I will take care of you and Winnie, — you shall never want
more.”
“B'ead, mamma, p'ease div Winnie some b'ead,” broke in the
infant's wailing cry; and, raising her dark eyes to heaven,
Kathleen made answer,
“I have no right, Mr. Green, to accept your generosity, without
making you some equivalent. My heart is dead, buried
with Harry; but, if my hand, with my esteem, and my unswerving
truth and gratitude, can make you happy, you shall have it.
Harry will forgive me, when he knows it is for his child's sake I
do it.”
And thus it was that Kathleen became the old man's darling,
and the world said she had forgotten and was happy. But she
bore the same resemblance to the Kathleen of old as does a
marble statue to the model after which it is chiselled. Sometimes,
in her hours of solitude, she would clasp his child to her
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heart, and weep and sob like an anguished woman; but in society
no statue could have been colder or prouder. Every one said
Mrs. Green was more beautiful than ever, but there seemed a
kind of mystery about her. No one dared to address her as of
old, and yet every one sought her society. The throbbings of
her proud, true heart were bound down with folds of silk and
velvet, and the gems which glittered in her hair were not colder
or brighter than her cold, proud eyes. But the world did not
see her in her hours of lonely anguish. They could not share
her lonely vigils, kneeling at the foot of the cross; or know how
sweet was the release, when the kiss of the death-angel froze the
smile upon her lips.
-- -- p655-251
OUR LADY UNA.
Lady Una, pure and saint-like,
Wondrous mother, perfect wife!
O'er my heart there falls a shadow,
From the deep calm of thy life.
And I bow my head in homage
To thy matron beauty fair,
For I know some angel braided
Back the dark waves of thy hair.
Surely seraphs, straying outward,
Underneath the stars at night,
Kissed thy lips and forehead, lingering
With a thrill of deep delight;
Leaving there a peace so holy,
Mortal hearts grow hushed in awe
At thy wisdom pure and lowly,
Type of God's most perfect law.
Lady Una, child-like kneeling,
At thy feet I breathe a prayer, —
Let but once thy hands in blessing
Gently fall upon my hair;
So shall I, who blindly traverse
Paths which angel-feet have trod,
Sometimes see from far the glory
Of the far-off home of God.
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-- -- p655-252
VALERIE.
“I feel my soul drawn unto thee,
Strangely, and strongly, and more and more,
As to one I have known and loved before;
For every soul is akin to me, that dwells in the land of mystery.”
Golden Legend.
[figure description] Page 223.[end figure description]
“Come to me! Come to me!”
It was the third night I had heard that summons in my sleep,
and awoke to find a cold sweat on my brow, and a chilliness as
of death in my limbs. The third night, and I dared not disregard
it longer. I knew that it was the voice of Valérie; I
knew that those were the pale hands of my beloved stretched
out to me thus imploringly; I knew that those were her beseeching
eyes looking into mine from the far distance. But the
way was long. I had not met Valérie for years; and she was
living in a stately castle, many thousand miles away. Between
us were high mountains and boiling waves, and many a league
of torrid deserts. The second night, when the voice called me, I
had made answer,
“Wherefore dost thou summon me, O restless spirit, suffering
me not to slumber? The way is long, and, lo! I am weak
and helpless!” But still the answer was, “Come to me! come
to me!” and the third morning I started.
I crossed many a rapid stream, many a dreary waste; and
every night, when I lay down to rest, still sounded that far-off
voice in my ear, hurrying, pleading, beseeching, — “Come to
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me!” I said it was years since I had met Valérie. When I
was a boy scarcely yet fifteen, I was the pupil of a far-famed
sage, and in his house I first saw my beloved. She, too, was
there, from a great distance. She was three years my senior,
and at first I only dared to gaze timidly into the mysterious
depths of her eyes. She was always dressed in black, with her
heavy black hair pushed off her broad, intellectual forehead, and
lying round her pale cheeks like shadows of midnight. I used
to look all day into her great eyes; and at night I would see her
in my dreams, her white, still face set in its night of hair.
I don't know how it was that I ever dared to speak to her of
love, but I suppose I obeyed the voice of my fate. The hour came,
and I spoke. Valérie threw herself into my arms. There was
no attempt at disguise or concealment. In that faint, sweet voice,
which always sounded to my ear like music out of grave-yards,
she whispered, as she laid her soft lips to my cheek, “Paul, I
love you! — I am yours now and forever.” And never, surely,
were vows of love breathed by truer lips. Valérie was mine.
We talked often of that world of spirits lying above us and
around us — of the power of the immortal, and the strength of
the human will. “There is no such thing as death,” said Valérie,
one day. “What men call so, is but the change, when the tired,
worn-out body needs rest, and the soul seeks another habitation.
We die when our souls will; and I shall only die when you are
by my side, for I will give you a double might. My soul shall
enter your body, and dwell with yours. No matter how many
leagues of land lie between us, — I will summon you to my side,
and my soul shall not go forth until it enter the tabernacle of
yours.”
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Months passed on, and we were parted. Valérie returned to
the castle of her fathers, and I entered the lists at the great
tournament of life. “Valérie,” I had said, “when years have
passed, and I have won gold and fame, I will seek you in the
far-off castle, and you shall be my wife.”
“Yes, Paul; but this frail body may get weary sooner than
that; and then I shall summon you to my side, and you shall
bear away my soul to help you onward. — Will you come?”
I bound myself by a solemn oath, on the holy Evangels, and
we parted, — Valérie stretching toward me ever and forever her
pale hands, and turning on mine her great eyes, streaming with
tears.
I had gone forth into the world, and fought manfully against
the spectral knight, in his death-black armor, whom men call Fate.
I had wrested many things from his iron fingers; and before every
encounter I had said, “I will win this, and this; and, bearing its
price in my hand, I will go to Valérie;” and every time my soul
had been unsatisfied, and I had waited till still another good
gift should be mine, ere I started on my journey.
But at last, in the solemn winter-midnight, the summons came.
In the solemn winter-midnight, the pale hands supplicated me,
the great eyes melted me with their tears, the wailing voice pleaded,
“Come to me, come to me!” and I went forth on my way.
After many days, I came to a green path, which led up
through a thicket of roses to a stately castle; and again I heard
the voice, coming from a turret in the left wing of the building.
The castle was of dark-gray stone. It had towers and bastions,
“With its battlements high in the hush of the air, and the turrets
thereon.”
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Under its windows lay sleeping a fair lake, very calm and
tranquil. On its marge grew strange, flame-colored flowers,
shaped like living things; and over them fluttered gorgeous insects,
red, green, and blue. I drew near to the brink, and gazed
downward; and the reflection of my own face seemed to come
from very far off, and I looked pale and wan, as I had seen the
faces of the dead. And then once more, from the lofty turret,
fell the sound of that wailing voice.
I opened the ponderous castle-door, which yielded readily to
my touch, and passed onward through a long suite of rooms.
They were furnished with a cold, funereal magnificence. I saw
no one. There was nothing to give evidence of life. The carpets
on the floor were rich and dark; the hangings were of heavy
crimson; and the furniture of solid mahogany, quaintly carved
in curious devices, the forms of griffins and monsters. The
statues were of persons already dead, cold and sepulchral in the
cerements of the grave; the paintings were livid and ghastly,
as of human beings transfixed in mortal agony. The table in the
centre of the long hall seemed like a hearse; and on it stood
a vase, in the form of a death's head, the face upturned and the
wide-open mouth filled with a bouquet of the same flame-colored
flowers which grew upon the margin of the lake. I had time
for only a passing glance at all these things, as I was hurried onward,
and ever onward, by that beseeching, resistless voice. At
last I came to a narrow, winding staircase, up which I climbed,
and before me was a heavy, oaken-panelled door, slightly ajar.
I pushed it open, and entered a room which seemed a chamber
of mystery. It was hung with thick folds of sable velvet. It
had no windows, but from a dome of colored glass fell rays of
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light, golden, and green, and crimson, chasing each other fantastically
over the black drapery. Directly beneath, and in the
full radiance of white light pouring from its very centre, where
all the colors of the rainbow were concentrated to one focus, stood
a lofty bedstead of carved ebony. It formed the support to a
couch of crimson velvet, and here reposed a female figure. The
long hair, black as night, floated over the white pillows; the great,
fathomless eyes were wide open, with their tides of light coming
and going. The pale hands were outstretched, and the low voice
hushed its unquiet wailing at last, and only whispered, “Paul,
you have come to me! — life of my life, I am at rest!” The
weary leagues of torrid desert, the rushing streams, and the
heaven-crowned mountains, were crossed at last! — Valérie was
in my arms!
I had climbed upon the tessellated couch, and once more Valerie's
arms were around my neck, her head on my bosom, and I
held there in my embrace that only one, of all earth's daughters,
to whose voice the pulses of my soul could ever, in all eternity,
keep time. I held her there for hours. Neither of us spoke,
until the sunlight had ceased to pour downward through the
stained-glass dome, and the room was only lighted by the everburning
wax tapers, standing on the black tables, in the
corners.
“Paul!” said Valérie, at length, looking upward; “Paul, do
you see that star? Is it Mars or Venus?”
“Mars, my beloved!”
“Yes, Paul, I thought so. It is the star of strength, and
when it sets, this poor body will be worn out, and I must leave
it. I have been on a weary journey, my beloved! Many days
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ago, I left the body lying here, and went forth to summon you.
I have lived many years, Paul, since our last meeting — many
more than could be counted in earthly records. Do you not know,
beloved, the old Arabian secret of the fast life? Do you not
know that every human soul, in the first hour of its incarnation,
has a weird appointed it, according to its strength; and it may
do this task quickly, and pass to another sphere of action, or it
may linger slothfully in the body, like the toad who slept a
thousand years in the ruins of Thebes? I have wrought my
work quickly, Paul; and I have sent for you, because, when the
star of strength shall set, my soul, departing from the flesh, shall
dwell with yours. Lift me up, my beloved, and lay my head
just where I can hear your heart beat beneath it. That is it,
strong, true heart; now listen, and, while I still may speak, you
shall hear the secrets of the stars.”
And, holding her there, I listened. God of the Hebrews, is
there forgiveness for the idol worshipper, who dies holding his
idol to his breast, with his cold lips pressed to the shrine? I
cannot answer. In that hour Valérie told me strange secrets of
nature, wizard-spells that I dare not whisper over to myself at
midnight. Spoken here, they would raise the gray stones from
the roof, rive the madman's fetters, and lay chapel and tower in
ruins. And, between them all, Valérie interrupted herself with
oaths, and vows, and passionate cries of love, that on other lips
than hers would have been blasphemy; and, whispered there,
with her lips against my cheek, they seemed to scorch me, like
the wind blowing upward from the valley where flows the bottomless
river of Phlegethon. What wonder that love so uttered
is unblest? Love which raises before the Saviour, and his cross,
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a human idol, and hides the brow of the Son of man with the
tresses which o'ersweep a mortal bosom?
It was morning ere the star of strength sank in the west.
Valérie had lain for some time silently watching it, and when
it disappeared she raised her head in momentary strength.
She pressed her lips fervently to mine, and then the fire passed
from her eyes, the graceful head fell heavily back upon my
arm, the sweet mouth closed, the long lashes drooped downward,
and the unbound tresses floated over my bosom like a
pall. Valérie was what men called dead; but I knew my
beloved was living still, free and happy, now that her task of
life was wrought. I put her gently from me, and smoothed the
pillows for her unconscious head.
All that day I watched her. I sat motionless by her side,
while the features grew more and more rigid, looking out from
their frame of death-black hair. That night, at midnight, a
change came. All day had my eyes been wide open, — fixed
upon her face, — but, while the bell was chiming twelve, I felt
an unseen hand pass before them, and they were sealed. Then,
all around me, I felt a buzzing, swarming life. The air was full
of life. It was above me, beneath me, around me, — life that
thrilled the blood in all my veins, and quickened all my pulses,
and yet kept me silent and motionless. And then there was a
shock which took away my breath. The castle shook to its
foundations. The calm lake under the windows burst its bounds,
and hurried surging toward some unseen sea. The tapers
flared upwards in the corners, and I could feel the room flooded
with a strange light. A moment, and all was still. The
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life had departed, the bell tolled one, and I knew that Val
érie's soul had entered my body. Over the corpse on the
carved ebony bedstead had passed a change too ghastly to
name. It was my beloved no longer. Valérie was in my
heart, and the dead body there was no longer aught but the
sister of the worms.
We left the castle, I and the soul of Valérie, and went forth
among men. I believe they feared us; they could not comprehend
the strange might of my two-souled existence. They did
not know that when I laid my hand in kindness on an old
friend's shoulder, it was not my will, but that strange, passionate
soul of Valérie, in its wild strength, which flew at his throat
and throttled him. They bound me with fetters, and put me in
this strong fortress; and they think they have me safe. They
would start up from their slumbers and tremble, did they but
know that I am free still, — that I stay here only because it is
my fate to suffer, and that when the hour is come I shall go
forth again, I and the soul of Valérie, to dwell in the far-distant
castle, whose western turrets rise up out of the still lake, with
the flame-colored flowers on its margin.
They tell me I am mad! They told me it was not a castle
where I found Valérie, but a stately tomb. That the furniture
I saw was grave-stones, and the table with its death's-head was
a hearse; and that there I found my Valérie dead, in the white
garments of the grave. That I called wildly on her name, and
watched there by her side, with wide-opened eyes, until at last
sleep came at midnight, and I woke up raving. But I remembered
once more the voice which summoned me; the weary
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journey, and the chamber of mystery, with its black hangings
and stained-glass dome. Then knew I that I was not mad. I
speak the words of truth and soberness. Hush your murmurs,
heart of mine! the weird is almost over. Soon shall we go to
rest, I and the soul of Valérie, my beloved!
JUNE-DAY DREAMINGS.
-- -- p655-261
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Sitting on the mossy rock,
Where the shepherd guards the flock,
Where I used to sit of old,
Weaving chaplets manifold
(Strung with Fancy's threads of gold),
Has another tale been told.
Friends, that in other days
Roamed o'er these pleasant ways,
Far from my side have strayed,
To some fair realm of shade;
And in these lonely hours,
Girt round with withered flowers,
Wherein my weary eye
Turns to the watching sky,
Glances of pain,
Groping with outstretched hands,
Toward Death's shadow-lands,
They come, they come again!
Not as they came of old,
When spring-flowers were blowing,
Or summer streams a flowing;
When the very air was humming
With the birds and beetle-thrumming;
And the sunshine's paly gold
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Lay upon the velvet moss,
Lay upon the road-side cross,
Stretching out its kindly arms
Like a hermit in a grove of palms,
Blessing dark-browed maids who bend,
Kneeling, in those groves of Ind!
There were bands of laughing girls,
With their waves of sunny hair,
Where the snow-drops gleamed like pearls,
Over brows more purely fair, —
With their laughter-trilling lips,
And the sunshine in their eyes,
Shining still, without eclipse,
When the stars are in the skies!
Many days we roamed together,
In the summer's long, blue light,
Chasing down the lengthening shadows,
Toward the corridors of night —
Pulling cowslips in the valleys,
Hunting berries in the wood,
Where the summer sunshine dallies
With the trailing golden-rod!
But my shadow has grown longer,
As I tread those meadows wide,
And no more in summer mornings
Other shadows fall beside!
And I seem to see a vision, —
For they come to me once more,
From the dusky realm of phantoms,
As they never came before, —
Putting back the golden tresses,
Which around their foreheads lay,
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Like the smiling of the sunset
O'er the death-bed of the day,
With their blue eyes gazing upward,
And their pale hands clasped in prayer,
Journeyed they unto the country
Than all other lands more fair;
With my hands I cannot clasp them,
And my dim eyes cannot see
When they seem to smile upon me,
For the tears that in them be!
On the same gray rock I 'm sitting,
Still the butterflies are flitting —
Still the very air is humming
With the birds and beetle-thrumming;
Cowslips nod within the valleys,
Berries blush within the wood;
Still the summer sunshine dallies
With the trailing golden-rod, —
But they cannot give me pleasure;
To a slow and solemn measure
Treads my heart the march of life,
Getting weary with the strife;
Only spirits sit beside me,
Only air is on my brow;
Only unseen fingers guide me,
I am weary, — where art thou?
-- -- p655-264
THE MAN IN THE MOON.
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I have just been putting the rose-hued drapery away from the
window of my little sanctum,
“And I would you had been there to see
How the light broke forth so gloriously.”
The moon is smiling down on her earth-worn daughter, as
peacefully as an angel's blessing. Over the blue sky glide white,
fleecy clouds, all tremulous with silvery light, and here and
there a golden star floats out into the clear azure, pacing a
stately minuet; for the wild star-dance of December is over.
But, even to-night, my heart is beating a mournful cadence to
olden memories, that came stealing over me as I sat at the
pleasant window. O, what a soft hand was laid upon my tresses;
but cold and still in death is that fair hand now! Still,
down from Paradise gleam her brown eyes, and her voice floats
out from the corridors of the past, like a spirit-whisper.
And then, there are memories, such as every one has who
feels that the earth-stain has fallen on his spirit, never so lightly;—
memories, half mournful, of childhood's innocent visions and
trusting faith. Among these, gently to my heart there steals the
shadowing of my first love-dream.
I was always a strange, wild dreamer; and I fancied that all
above the earth must be the abode of the good, and true, and
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beautiful; for I was sure that down, low down beneath my feet,
was the river of Phlegethon, and the sleepless hell. So upward I
gazed ever, like the children in the Pilgrim's Progress; and when
they told me there was a “Man in the Moon,” my childish heart
soon learned to regard him as the impersonation of all beauty,
light and loveliness. And then, in time, I grew to fancy he
looked lovingly from his lofty throne on my simple worship;
and that he wore a smile for me, invisible to other eyes. Night
after night I watched him; and when they thought I was soundly
sleeping, I would rise, and draw the curtain from before the foot
of my white bed, that he might look on me in my sleep, and
watch over my dreams. And when they said my eyes were dull
and dreamy, and mourned that the “Great All-Father” had not
gifted me with beauty, he seemed to bend and whisper, “Ah,
loved one, 't is but to keep the spirit bright, and its beauty will
tremble through, — thou art my heart's bride still!”
The months and years passed on, and purer and paler grew
my brow; for I was weary — restless with ever striving to keep
my heart bright for my spirit-bridegroom. O! how I lingered
for his voice, — how I watched and waited for his coming!
Wild, stormy nights, such as witches run riot in, my heart was
glad, for I thought the moon shone not, because his face was gone;
and that he was roaming through the air in search of me, coming
to bear me home. O! what dreams I had of that beautiful
country, of the lakes that were sleeping in the silver light, and
the low chimes ringing through the folded lily-bells! With
every disappointment, my pure faith seemed to brighten, and I
hoped on.
At last, my gentle mother, with tears in her prayerful eyes,
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folded her soft arms around me, and, kissing her child, sent me
off to school. School — ah me! it is a weary place to send a
young child, with a heart brimful of spirit-fancies. I believe
the scholars all laughed at my strange dream; and I think they
told the teacher, for she gave me a lesson in astronomy to learn
next day. She was a kind, noble woman, and yet I never dared
to love her. There was a world of straight-forward, genuine
kindness in her words and tone, and then she was wise, too; we
children trembled as we thought how wise; but there was no
romance stored away beneath her broad brow and raven hair,
and I knew (for everywhere children have a God-given talisman
to read the hearts of men) she would laugh mockingly at the
sweet whispers of my spirit-love; so I only stole away and looked
at him from the window in the broad, steep landing of the old-fashioned
stairs. But they brought the lights, and took me
away from my Eden, and set me down to learn my long, long
lesson in astronomy! And then, for the first time, I read, with
tear-dimmed eyes, how far the moon is from our little world!
Perhaps older children have dreamed dreams a little like my
own. Perhaps others than I may have looked too many weary
miles above them, and read their fate in eyes that gave back no
answering light into their own. But scarcely more bitter can
have been their agony than mine, when, in my innocent, trusting
childhood, with my white robe still floating like a cloud about
me, and the heavenly sunshine still sleeping in my hair, I read
this terrible sentence, that seemed the death-knell of all human
hopes and joys, “The distance of the moon from the earth is
two hundred and forty thousand miles!” It crushed all my
beautiful star-hopes in a moment. I knew he had not learned to
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love me from that long distance off; and I thought it was so far
he could never journey earth-ward. O! how bitterly I wept
that night, with the curtains closely drawn at my bed's foot, that
he might not look at my misery! But at last I sobbed myself
to sleep; and then there came to me the beautiful Virgin mother,
with her smiling eyes; my bed grew soft and light, like the little
bed at home, and she lifted my head on her bosom, and whispered,
“Be good, dear child, and look upward still; there is love for
thee in heaven!” But she could not take me with her, for I
must linger on the green earth, ever striving to keep my heart
bright, and my white robe pure. And still I strive, and still I
linger; and the memory of that early love, and the gentle whisper
of the Virgin mother, go ever with me as a talisman.
But others than I have dreamed thus! Others than I have
been woke to tears and suffering, — and God grant that to all
such summoning whispers from the Eden-land may come; and
to the heart that earthly love has left desolate the love-light
may still glow and brighten around the Saviour upon the cross!
Truly, for such the reward is great in heaven!
-- -- p655-268
THE BISHOP'S BRIDE.
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The Bishop was coming to Ryefield, — coming to spend six
long summer weeks in our pleasant little village, in search of
rest and quiet! Ryefield people are, for the most part, hospitable,
and they usually mind their own business, at least, half
the time; but, then, one does n't see a real, live bishop every day,
and I suppose this was why the young ladies all got together,
the day before he was expected, to form a league against his
peace and happiness.
It so chanced that our bishop had never obeyed the scriptural
injunction, to “be the husband of one wife.” He was thirty-five,
and a bachelor. He was accounted remarkably fine-looking, and
I remember I thought him even handsome, with his tall, firmly-knit
figure, his clear, blue eyes, and his heavy, waving curls of chestnut-brown
hair. He seemed, from all we could learn of him, to
be a man of the “St. John Rivers” order, somewhat cold and
stern, but indefatigably devoted to his calling. He had been
admitted to the priesthood at twenty-three, and nearly ten years
of his after life had been passed in the establishment of Indian
missions. The bishopric had fallen on his head unsought, and
in his daily life he still walked humbly, as one of the least of
Christ's disciples.
And yet all his Christian humility could not prevent us from
holding a sewing-society, and, as I have said, conspiring against
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his peace. We must surely all get acquainted with him, — that
was resolved on, and a discussion was forthwith held as to ways
and means. “I shall be presented to him,” said the queenly
Ada Glengyle, “for I know his sister very well, and, beside, — ”
“And, beside,” interrupted dashing Kate Barclay, “you are
chief soprano singer; but that won't help us any. I say, girls,
what do you think of a picnic? We could ask the bishop's
protection, just hinting that we were all lambs of his flock.”
“Capital! capital!” cried several voices; and saucy May
Evelyn shook down her golden curls, and tossed her little head.
“I give you fair warning, girls,” she exclaimed, laughingly,
“fair warning. I am quite resolved Bishop Blake shall never
leave Ryefield without a wife. If any of the rest of you can do
better than I can, you 're welcome to try. But what do you
say, Lily White? you have n't spoken yet.”
“I say, that I hardly think it 's right to talk so about the
bishop. He seems to me like St. Paul, or one of the angels.
I don't ever expect to get much acquainted with him; I shall
be quite satisfied if, some time, he lays his hand on my head and
blesses me, and looks at me with his clear, blue eyes.”
“Dear, sweet, innocent Lily!” we all cried, and the white
Lily bowed her fair head, and stole away. Lily White was an
orphan — every one's darling. The whole village loved her, and
already, at sixteen years old, she had been for eighteen months
the teacher of the village children, and the guardian spirit of the
little country school-house. No strong man, with his rod of
iron, could have ruled the little ones half as skilfully as Lily,
with her sceptre of love. I never heard any one call her beautiful,
but, looking back, her fair face, rising up before me, leaves
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the impression of surpassing beauty. And yet it was a face
you might pass a hundred times in a crowd without looking
after it, but, once really seen, it could never be forgotten. Every
feature was fashioned with a quiet, pensive grace, that left you
nothing to desire. Her eyes, a clear, dark gray, hardly deep
enough in tint for hazel, were fringed with golden lashes so long
they fairly cast a shadow on her pearl-like cheek; and her figure
was graceful, lithe, and almost too slight. Her whole beauty
was of the lily type, and she had been most fitly named.
Two days after the above conversation, we were all together,
upon the green, as was often our custom on summer evenings.
We were gathered in groups under the tall old elm-trees, and
were chatting merrily, when, glancing up, we perceived our beloved
gray-haired rector, and with him Bishop Blake. They had
come amongst us unperceived; but the bishop spoke.
“Good-evening, my dear young ladies,” he said, in his deep,
musical tones; “I must get acquainted with all of you, for I
believe you are all `lambs of my flock.'”
I don't know, to this day, whether this latter clause of the
sentence was a genuine expression of the good bishop's kindness
of heart, or whether he had by some means become
informed of our conversation at the sewing-society; but I do
know there was n't a girl present whose cheek did n't wear the
hue of a peony as she replied to the bishop's salutation.
After that, we found the bishop not at all formidable, and
really a delightful companion. Saucy May Evelyn declared
that he did flirt — that he was particularly attentive to everybody,
and yet not particularly attentive to anybody. It was
such an unusual thing for a bishop to hurry through with his
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appointments early in the season, just for the sake of recruiting
his health at a simple country village! No wonder the girls
determined he should not leave without getting married. But
time passed on, and his resolution did n't seem any nearer being
carried into effect. If one person was more frequently than
another his companion, it was May Evelyn. Her piquancy
seemed to amuse him, much as would the gambols of a favorite
child; and the little romp affirmed that she could never succeed
in convincing him that she was not his granddaughter.
The last day of July rose with a strange glory, like the clouds
that herald a tempest. The sun looked forth out of a heavy
mist, and sent before him clouds robed in gorgeous drapery of
gold and purple. The day passed over, scorching, sultry and
silent. But toward night the storm broke, and the evening set
in wild and wet. The gloom was impenetrable, save when the
darkness was rent apart by a fitful flash of lightning, brief, but
terribly bright.
It was nearly midnight, and still the bishop sat by the small
table in his pleasant study at the rectory. Sometimes he read;
then he would lay the book aside, and listen to the wail, the
desolate tramp, of the winds without. At last there came a
knock at the door, and the bishop, drawing his dressing-gown
about him, was going down stairs, when he heard it opened by
Jennie, the old housekeeper.
“Why, child, is it you, in this dreadful storm? and what do
you want?” he heard her ask; and then a low, sweet voice
made answer —
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“Old Dame Margery is dying, Jennie, and I was staying with
her all alone. She kept shrieking out for a minister to pray by
her bed-side, and I felt that I could not hope for mercy in my
own last hour if I disregarded her prayer. There was no one
else to come, and I thought Tom would harness the horse, and
take the rector back with me.”
“Come in, come in, you strange child!” said Jennie, commandingly.
“As for you, you won't go back till day-light; and
the master is sick, and can't be disturbed, let alone the asking
him to go out in such a storm as this.”
“O, but Jennie, indeed you must not keep me! If no one
can go with me, I must go back alone. I should never rest
again, if I left poor Margery there to die, with no watcher but
the storm. No, no, Jennie, I must go!”
“You are right,” said Bishop Blake, advancing to the door.
“You shall go, and I will go with you,” and he laid his hand
upon Lily White's tresses, all wet with the storm. “Jennie,
you need not call Tom; just give me a lantern, and I can harness
my horse myself, as I have done, many a worse night than
this. Take this poor child into the study, in the mean time.
There is a good fire there, and she will get warm; and then give
her a glass of mulled wine, if you have it, — it will keep her from
taking cold.”
Never before had Lily White reverenced the bishop so deeply
as when he stood by her side at old Dame Margery's dying bed,
soothing the terror of the dying woman, and pointing her for
salvation to the cross on which her God had suffered. His clear,
deep tones rose above the wail of the blast, even as above all
the storms and temptations of life may be heard the “still,
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small voice” guiding us on our way to heaven. The terror-stricken
heart was calmed, the weak faith strengthened, and
when at last Dame Margery fell asleep, it was with a smile on
her face.
Three weeks after, as Lily White walked alone in the clear
moonlight, a tall, stately figure joined her, and a rich, earnest
voice murmured, “Lily White, I love you, as I never before
loved woman. When I saw you standing at the rector's door, that
dreadful night, I wondered that I had never before noticed your
delicate and exceeding beauty. But it is not for that I love
you. If every thread of your sunny tresses is dear as my own
life, it is not because they are so beautiful in their golden
hue; but, Lily, there was a bond to knit your heart to mine,
in that night-watch, by the dying. I loved you then for your
earnest faith, your sublime, fearless courage, your unselfishness,
and strength of purpose. It is a love which would last, if the
fair lily should wither on the stalk, and the graceful figure be
bowed by age. Will you let me so love you, Lily? Will you
be my wife?”
I did not hear Lily White's answer. I only know that when
the harvest-moon smiled upon Ryefield she was poor and an
orphan no longer. She slept upon a true heart, strong arms
sheltered her, a fond voice called her name, and the bishop
did n't leave Ryefield without getting married.
-- -- p655-274
MY BLIND BABY.
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Sleep softly on thy mother's breast, my baby! Thou wilt
have many a colder pillow, ere the banners wave and the bugles
sound thy triumph in life's great battle.
Thou art beautiful, my darling! The curls lie soft and golden
as pale bands of sunlight, above thy pure brow; the smile
brightens round those lips, like moonlight over snow; and
thy soft voice swells with music, like a shell from the Indian
sea, when the southern wind breathes through it.
And yet there is a seal on thy blue eyes, when they are
raised to mine. A faint shadow is upon them, as if the soul
were struggling to gaze forth, and could not; as if thou wert
too pure for earth, and thy glance could only soar upward for
thy lost Eden.
For thee it is in vain that the winds blow the rye-fields into
billows, or the sunshine lies soft and warm on the meadow-land.
In vain that the violets purple dingles and hill-sides, or the
blue sky is bluer than thine eyes. I cannot smile on thee, till
an answer dimples into thy rose-heart cheeks, — my little girl is
blind!
Woe to the life-path round which the clouds have so early
settled! — to the heart which has so early been written desolate!
Woe to my darling, when no longer thy mother's arm
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can shield thee, no longer thy mother's hand can bear thee
up! Woe to thee, when the green grass is growing, and the
wild-flowers nodding over the heart beneath which thou hast
lain!
And yet, why? Be still, O faithless, unbelieving mother's
heart, — be silent! Is not the blue sky our Father's home? Is
there not one eye which never slumbers? Has not one voice
bidden the blind to see and the lame to walk, and yet do we
dare murmur? Hush thee, baby! angels are whispering to thee
in dreams; and when the dust is on my brow, and the sod upon
my heart, thou shalt walk safely; for unseen hands shall guide
thee, and the blue eyes, closed on earth, shalt be but brighter
and purer in the sunlight of heaven!
-- -- p655-276
A HUSKING-PARTY AT RYEFIELD.
“And when into the quiet night the sunset lapsed away,
And deeper in the brightening moon the tranquil shadows lay,
From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet without name,
Their milking and their home-tasks done, the merry huskers came.
“Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from pitchforks in the mow,
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant scene below;
The growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears before,
And laughing eyes and busy hands, and brown cheeks glimmering o'er.
“Half hidden in a quiet nook, serene of look and heart,
Talking their old times o'er again, the old men sat apart;
While up and down the unhusked pile, or nestling in its shade,
At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, the happy children played.
“Urged by the good host's daughter, — a maiden young and fair,
Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes, and pride of soft brown hair, —
The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth of tongue,
To the quaint tune of some old psalm a husking-ballad sung.”
Whittier.
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“Do you ever have husking-parties in Ryefield?” wrote a
dear friend, the other day. The question awoke to life many a
sweet memory of the olden time; and this, my answer, must
needs be a long one.
It was many years since, — that is, it seems so now, though to
count them it would not be so very long, — that I passed my first
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autumn in Ryefield. It had been a beautiful season, — so beautiful
that we scarce had noted the summer putting away with
pale hands her bands of flowers, and closing her dim eyes in
death. The blossoms of the autumn had stood high and fair, —
the asters, and golden-rods, and the patient laurels. The fruit
hung heavily, and my life had been passing like the clear, ringing
song of a summer bird.
It was late in mild October, and I had gone out to search for
hen's eggs, — I was to have some pan-cakes, in the event of my
success, and I was highly elated by the importance of my mission.
I had climbed to the very highest beam, and was holding
on with all my might.
“Holloa, Sis, what are you up there for?” I heard brother
Frank's voice call, far beneath me; and, bending over, I peeped
down upon him. “Sis, do come down, won't you, — there 's a
good girl!”
“I 'm astonished,” I began.
“Astonished!” Frank cried, interrupting me; “well, I guess
you would be, if you knew what I do; but I 'm not going to tell
you till you come down here.”
Of course my curiosity was stronger than my wish for pan-cakes,
and I hurried down.
“Well, there, Lou,” said my brother, when I had safely
“landed,” as he called it, on the floor, — “well, there, Lou, you
just beat all for climbing, anyhow; — but what do you think, —
they are going to have a party, to-night, over in Grandfather's
barn!”
“A party in the barn, you stupid! — and who are they going
to ask, — the horses?”
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“No, no, Lou, I tell you we are going to have a real party in
the barn. It 's to husk the corn, you know; and then they 'll go
into the house, and get some of Grandma's pumpkin-pies. All
the girls and boys are going, and mother says you and I can go
over and stay all day, for perhaps Grandma will want us to run
of errands for her.”
“You don't say so, Frank! Girls and boys and pumpkin-pies!
Glorious!”
In five minutes more, I had on my scarlet merino dress, and
Frank his new jacket, and we were hurrying over the fields
toward Grandpa's. O, what a dear old homestead was that
brown, one-story farm-house! How cheerful and home-like
the great, old kitchen always looked, — the strings of bright
red peppers across the windows, the rows of polished pewter
upon the dresser, and the broad old fireplace, with its brightly
blazing logs!
“Good-morning, children,” said Grandmother's pleasant voice,
as we entered. “You 've come to stay all day with me, I
suppose?”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Frank, “if you 'll please not to send us
home. We will do anything in the world to help you, if you 'll
let us.”
“Well, well; I suppose you are hungry, an't you? Here
are some little pies, — made on purpose for little folks, like
you, — and then you can go into the long hall and see the
tables.”
Grandmother's tables! I wonder if ever there was anything
else just like them? They were as good as a written character.
You could see Grandmother there, unmistakably. They were
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spread with snow-white cloths, and a place was left in the centre
for the turkeys and the chicken-pies. All around stood the
deep, old-fashioned china-plates, heaped up with every variety
of goodies. There were custards and jelly-cakes, in immediate
proximity to pumpkin-pies and plum-puddings. Then there were
the great, red-cheeked apples, and the late October pears, just
getting ripe and mellow.
O, what a long, happy day we passed! now watching Grandma
stuff the turkeys, and now running out to the great, old barn
where Grandpa was helping his men to heap up the unhusked
corn in the western end. And by and by, when night came;
when we had watched the great fire kindled in the uncarpeted,
but nicely-sanded parlor; when Grandma had put on her black-silk
dress, and Grandpa his Sunday coat, we went into the barn
to watch the coming of the guests, feeling well assured that we
were the happiest children in the world.
Very soon Uncle Horace joined us. He was my father's
youngest brother, at that time about twenty, and during the
season of which I am writing the “schoolmaster” of the pleasant
village of Ryefield. He had got through trying to be terrible,
for this day at least, and made his way to his mother's pantry,
where stood a reserve corps of pumpkin-pies, flanked by a
cold chicken; and now, having satisfied the cravings of the inner
man, was whistling a merry tune as he joined us in the barn. I
have always thought my Uncle Horace was one of the handsomest
men I ever met. He was tall, and rather stoutly-made,
with a full, open brow, curling hazel hair, and laughing hazel
eyes. And then he was always so kind to us children, no wonder
he was a favorite.
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Very soon the company began to assemble. First came the
old people and children, and after them the rustic beaux and
belles, and — Mary Andrews. This latter was the belle, par excellence,
of our little village. She was a saucy-looking gypsy of sixteen,
with as bright an eye as ever flashed back sunlight, and as
pretty a foot as ever trod the mazes of a country dance. She was
quite an exception to all the other Marys I ever saw — an arrant
little coquette as the moon ever shone on.
There was scarcely a young man in our village that had not
been down on his knees for one of her jetty ringlets, and deferentially
intimated that a marriage license would neither be
beyond his means or his inclination. For the past six months my
Uncle Horace had been the favored recipient of her “nods and
becks and wreathed smiles,” and the gossips had already begun
to look grave, and predict a wedding at the mansion of Squire
Andrews. To be sure, Uncle Horace told us children that he
had no such notion in his curly head, and that he would ask our
permission “before ever he went courting;” but of course we
did n't believe him. Mary had on a new dress, on this eventful
evening, — a large and very bright-colored plaid. They were just
coming in fashion then, and it was n't every one that could afford
one; but Mary Andrews was a rich man's daughter.
It was, perhaps, a little too showy for the occasion; still it was
very becoming, and, if Mary's object had been to excite the envy
of the feminine portion of community, she succeeded admirably.
They had all been assembled about half an hour, and of
course Uncle Horace was sitting by Mary, and there were jokes,
and smiles, and blushes; then there was a slight stir, occasioned
by the entrance of a new comer.
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I looked around. Grandmother entered first, and after her
came a tall, thin lady, leaning on the arm of a slight, graceful
girl.
“This is my old friend, Mrs. Lee,” said Grandmother, in her
good, kind voice. “She moved into Honeysuckle Cottage a few
weeks ago, and I persuaded her to come over here to-night, because
this little girl of hers could not come alone, and I wanted
all of you should get acquainted with Norah Lee.”
People's sympathies move quicker in country places, reader;
there are not so many folds of silk and velvet to bind down the
heart; and the welcome extended to the pale widow and her
child was as cordial as that of dear old friends. I learned their
history afterward. Mrs. Lee, though much younger than my
grandmother, had, at one time, been her schoolmate, and a
strong friendship had sprung up between the kindly maiden
and the sweet child. But my grandmother then married, and
settled in another town; and, some few years after, her friend
married James Lee, a wealthy New York merchant. Occasionally
my grandmother heard of her — how, one by one, her
seven children faded from her arms, until, at last, there was none
left but Norah; and then there was a long interval of silence.
My grandmother was serenely growing old in her pleasant home,
and Mrs. Lee, moving in the midst of wealth and fashion, was
anxiously watching the childhood of her one ewe lamb, her little
Norah. But, a few weeks before the husking-party, my grandfather
brought a new dress home, from a neighboring town,
and around it was wrapped an old newspaper. Grandmother
untied the bundle, and was folding up the paper with her customary
thrift, when her eye fell upon the notice of the bankruptcy
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and subsequent death of the wholesale merchant, James Lee, leaving
his wife and daughter totally unprovided for.
Grandmother's letter-writing days were over long ago, and to
sign her name even was a work of time; but she would allow
no hand but her own to pen the missive which offered Mrs.
Lee the use of Honeysuckle Cottage, rent free, and besought her
to make her future home in Ryefield. To be sure, Honeysuckle
Cottage, romantic as its name sounds, was but a wee little mosscovered
building, with two rooms, and an out-house for cooking
and washing; but it was snug and warm, and the rich merchant's
widow thankfully accepted its shelter. At the time our brief
sketch opens, she had been in possession of her new home about
three weeks, and as yet few of the villagers had seen her. Even
Uncle Horace had never been over there, and the sweet face of
Norah Lee was as new to him as to any of us.
I have seen women, since then, whom the world called strangely
beautiful; proud, sultana-like beauties, that would make you hold
your breath to look at them; but never yet have I seen a face
that my eyes deemed so fair as Norah Lee's. She was dressed in
a plain, black frock, with high neck and long sleeves, and over
this her rich, golden-brown hair floated in heavy ringlets. Her
eyes were a clear, deep brown, large and soft as a gazelle's, and
her brow was fair and pale as marble. She had such soft, white,
dimpled hands, too, as had never before been seen in Ryefield;
and her look and smile were at once so appealing and sorrowfully
gentle that our hearts went forth to meet her.
At least, I was pretty sure, then, that Uncle Horace's did, for
something very like a blush passed over his cheek, and his
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voice perceptibly softened, as her small white hand rested a moment
on his broad palm; and he said, very gently,
“For our mothers' sakes, let us be friends, Miss Lee.”
Norah answered all the salutations that were bestowed on her,
with a calm gentleness; and then, blushing timidly, she stole to a
seat by her mother's side.
“I can't get this husk off, Horace, it's so tough!” said Mary
Andrews; and once more Horace was at her side, and they were
chatting merrily as before. And yet, it was very singular, but I
could not help noticing how often a glance would steal around
to the quiet, golden-haired little Norah, in the corner.
At last the corn was husked, and Grandpa said, in his kindly
voice,
“Now, good friends, for supper!” and young and old rushed
pell-mell toward the house.
“Why, Louise, little girl,” said a big, and I thought very
saucy boy, “you need n't make such great mouths at that very
respectable turkey. He 's meant for older people than you.”
“Here, Simon,” said his mother, laughing, reaching toward him
a full plate of chicken-pie; “there 's supper enough for all of
you, and so you can just let the little girl look hungry to her
heart's content.”
Brother Frank, I remember, was in every one's way. He was
evidently convinced that he was the most important personage of
the whole company, and of course was sure to be just where his
presence was least welcome.
“Hey, old fellow! enjoying yourself, I suppose? We were
rather sorry to have supper so late, on account of the old folks!”
was his very respectful salutation to an antiquated bachelor,
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doing his feeble best toward rejuvenation. Then to an elderly
maiden lady, near at hand, “Well, Aunt Eunice, your new teeth
look pretty well, but you got rather too dark-colored hair to look
natural.” But these were only little things. Altogether, the
supper passed off very pleasantly, and when it was over a high
degree of good humor prevailed.
Under its influence, the old people assembled themselves in
Grandma's pleasant kitchen, and left the spacious parlor for the
young ones; and then — but, dear reader, if you never assisted at
an old-fashioned husking, not even my eloquence can give you any
idea of it. The exercises, of course, opened with “Button, button,
who 's got the button?” and then there was “scorn,” and “forfeits,”
and “tape to measure,” and “skillets” and “gridirons”
to be made, and, last of all, Uncle Horace contrived to be sent to
Rome. Of course, every pretty girl in the room had to “pay
duty,” except Norah. I 'm sure Uncle Horace was n't at all unwilling
to kiss her; but the little one said, “Please don't, Mr.
Cleveland!” so prettily, and turned away her blushing little face,
and so of course he had n't the heart to do it.
Well, it was a merry husking-party enough; and it is indeed
queer, but Mary Andrews went home with her parents, for
Uncle Horace had a positive conviction that Mrs. Lee, as his
mother's friend, required his first attention, and I never heard
that he made the slightest objection to giving his other arm to
Norah.
The winter passed very quickly. There were sleigh-rides, and
apple-parings, and, O, such good times coasting! O, was n't it
bright? — and there never was such a kind schoolmaster as Uncle
Horace. He seemed just brimming over with happiness, and I
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don't think he ever punished a single one of us. Then came the
blue-eyed spring, flinging forth over the land the blossomy
robes of her glory; and we were to have a May-pole on the
green, and a pleasant picnic, the first of May. This was a time-honored
custom at Ryefield. Last year Mary Andrews had
been queen, and she had become her honors well; but we were
thorough-going little democrats, and could not possibly bow the
knee twice over to the same person; so, by universal acclaim,
Norah Lee was chosen queen of the May. In vain Mary pouted,
and shook down her jetty ringlets till they hid her flashing eyes;
never was parliament more determined on carrying a measure
into execution.
Early on May-day morning, we prepared our crown of roses
and myrtle-leaves, and started for Honeysuckle Cottage. Already
I had become, not prime minister, but prime favorite with
the queen elect; so I left my companions, and hurried over to the
cottage by a by-path through the fields, to apprize Norah of
their coming. Gently I put aside, as was my playful habit, the
honeysuckles from before the window, and looked in. Never shall
I forget the beautiful picture on which my eyes rested.
In the first place, it was a pleasant room. The furniture was
the only relic they had preserved of their old home in the far-off
city. A light and cheerful carpet was upon the floor. The
pattern was a running vine of roses and green leaves; and the
curtains were of delicate, fleecy-white muslin. In the centre
of the room was a round mahogany table, and on a smaller one
at the window stood Norah's little inlaid writing-desk and work-box.
The chairs were low and easy; and through the open door,
at the end of the room, you caught a glimpse of a pleasant
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bedroom, with its carpet of the same cheerful pattern, and Norah's
little straw hat and blue ribbons lying on the white Marseilles
quilt, which half covered the low but richly-carved rose-wood
bedstead.
There was a tableau vivant in the little parlor. Three persons
composed it. The first was Norah, looking more beautiful
than I had ever before seen her. She had left off her mourning,
and was dressed in a snowy muslin, confined at the waist with a
blue sash. Her long golden-brown ringlets floated over her
graceful shoulders, and half hid her blushing cheeks. At her
feet was kneeling a gentleman, with full, open brow, curling
hazel hair, and earnest, pleading hazel eyes — no other than
my Uncle Horace. Leaning over them, stood the tall, graceful
Widow Lee, with a hand on the head of each
“Yes, Horace,” I heard her say, “my daughter shall be
yours, in the cool pleasantness of the Autumn. She is my all,
Horace; promise me that she shall never miss a mother's
tenderness.”
“God knows, dear madam,” said Uncle Horace, fervently,
“that Norah's happiness will be ten thousand times dearer than
my own; and she shall never want for anything my love or my
toil can procure her.”
“I believe it,” said the Widow Lee, and tears were in her
eyes; “I believe it, and God bless you both, my children!”
Looking back upon this scene, I am thankful that, graceless
child as I generally was, I did have the grace to leave the window,
and only when I saw the rest of our party approaching the
cottage did I go up to the door and tap timidly. Mrs. Lee
herself opened it, and Norah, though there were tears in her
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eyes and blushes on her cheeks, still received me with her
accustomed gentle and affectionate welcome.
Norah was crowned queen of the May, and very fair and
winsome she looked in her white robes, and her May-day garland
“Like an angel,” Grandma said, looking out of the door,
with tears in her eyes, as we passed the farm-house. Norah
leaned, that day, on Uncle Horace's arm; and somehow every
one seemed to know that they were betrothed, and that there
would be a wedding at Honeysuckle Cottage in the early
autumn.
Mary Andrews tossed her coquettish head, and flirted desperately
with a handsome young physician; and yet Horace
did n't seem to feel very badly. The picinc passed off delightfully.
Grandmother was n't there in person, but she sent a
representative, in the shape of a basket — large, fat, and round,
like herself — containing a supply of the good food we so much
loved. There were such nice waffles as nobody could bake but
Grandma, and such tender cold tongue, and dainty, delicate
slices of boiled ham, and such nice cakes and comfits. Truly
Grandmother ought to have been appointed Her Majesty's Purveyor
to the Household.
Then we had a dance, and Norah would dance with nobody
but Uncle Horace, and Uncle Horace with nobody but Norah.
O, it was a long, bright, beautiful day; and it was a long, bright,
beautiful summer which followed it. The wild-flowers grew and
brightened and the wild birds sang, and the land was merry
with the voices of children.
Norah could n't take very long walks, but Uncle Horace
did not mind that much, for every evening found him sitting
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on a low stool at her feet, and she would pass round her neck
the black ribbon of her guitar, and sing to him until the stars
rose, and the moon shone down upon her white robe. She grew
more and more beautiful. She had been pale formerly, but now
a sweet, delicate rose-tint flushed her cheeks, and her eyes
were strangely bright. When the early autumn came, her
feet could no longer go forth over the pleasant paths they had
trod together, and Mrs. Lee said, “Norah must n't marry
then — she must wait till she got stronger. She was n't very
well now, but would be better soon.”
And Norah smiled, and waited. She did n't suffer at all, she
said, only felt languid; and she would sit all day in her low
chair, or recline on the lounge by the window, with a calm,
sweet face, more beautiful than ever. Uncle Horace reaped the
waving grain, proud man as he was, with secret tears falling
upon the sheaves. He would steal all the time he could, from
the cares of his daily life, to sit by Norah's side, and hold her
fair white hand in his. Books were not quite so plenty then as
now, but it was an age of truth, and there was not much glitter
that had not the ring of the true metal. He never wearied
of reading to his “little darling,” as he used to call her, the
magnificent conceptions of Shakspeare, or the inspired pages of
Scott, with their gorgeous word-painting. And Norah would
smile, and look sweetly happy and contented. But, one day in
pleasant September, I was all alone with her, and, looking up
from her lounge, she said, “Louise, come here.” I went,
and kneeled down beside her. She had been for many days in
an uncommonly playful humor, and I was startled to see tears
on the fringes of her eyelids.
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“I want to tell you a secret; — can you keep it?”
“O yes, yes — true as I live,” answered I, in the ready
phraseology of childhood. She smiled mournfully, and then,
parting my curls with her thin hand, she said,
“I am dying, Louise, fading with the leaves! They do not
know it, and I would not have them. For myself, I do not
care. There was a time when I longed to live — to pass my
whole life by Horace's side — to be his wife. I could not bear
the thought of death. I rebelled against it. But I am a
changed girl since I have been obliged to stay here in this little
room. I have watched the sun set and moon rise, until, out of
the clouds, I saw a great glory — Heaven seemed to come
nearer, and the Highest Love overshadowed me.
“Now I am ready to go — I sorrow only for Horace; and I
tell you this now, because you can remember it, in part, at
least; and when I am gone, I want you to tell him. Tell
him I knew that I was going, and all my sorrow was for
him. Tell him to try and meet me beyond the clouds and the
sunset; and that I want him to think of me, not sorrowfully,
not as her who should have been the wife of his youth, but as a
blessed spirit gone before him to heaven. Tell him to love some
gentle one on earth, who will be all to him I could have been,
and I will smile on him when the stars shine. I shall not be
jealous. He will have love enough for both of us, when hope
becomes fruition, and he sees my face in the far-off country.
Tell him all this, darling, and you — but, dear child, are you
crying? Was poor Norah loved so well?” And, drawing my
head to her bosom, she soothed me with more than a mother's
gentleness, till tears subsided into sobs, and at last, wearied out
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by the violence of my emotion, I fell asleep there, kneeling on
the floor by her side.
But weeks passed on, and a change for the better seemed to
have taken place. Norah's eye became less bright, her cheek
less deeply flushed; and we almost thought our lily-flower
would brighten and bloom once more with other lilies, in the
sunshine of another summer. Horace talked hopefully of the
sweet cottage he would build, and the roses and jasmine she
should twine over its porch and windows, when she was well;
“for you know you are better already,” he would add.
Once more she passed over her shoulder the ribbon of her
guitar, and played lively, cheerful airs; though she was too
weak to sing much, but she would laugh and say, “I shall be
singing in a few weeks, better than ever,” and we did n't believe
her!
Mrs. Lee's face brightened, and her steps grew quick and
cheerful, and even Grandmother, when she used to come to the
cottage, and bring the nice little things that Norah loved, would
look at her with a smile on her kind, motherly face, and say
that “it was a lazy little girl, who liked petting, and it must
come over after its own cakes pretty soon.” And Norah would
laugh and reply that indeed she had n't much temptation to get
well, when being a little sick made every one so good to her.
And now it was the last quarter of the October moon, and
there was, according to time-honored custom, to be another
husking-party in grandfather's barn. Grandma had objected to
this, at first, for the sick one's sake; but then no one desired it
so strongly as Norah. It would be so like the first night she
came among them, she said; and though she could n't go to the
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barn, she could, at least, be carried to the house, and taste some
of the nice supper. And so we all thought, for she was certainly
getting better very fast. And the preparations went on.
Once more the tables were set out in the long dining-room,
and once more the board groaned beneath the choice array of
tempting viands. The barn-floor was swept and garnished, and
stored high with the golden corn. And at last the day dawned
clear and bright, as it should have done; for I lay awake all
night, every now and then rising, and going to the window to
watch it.
Early in the morning, Uncle Horace went over to Honeysuckle
Cottage, and brought back the intelligence that Norah was n't
quite so well, but still hoped to be able to come over. He was
going back, he said, to spend the day. He would take her over,
if she could come; and if not, stay with her. And the preparations
went on.
Evening came, and with it the expected company. Mary
Andrews, now the betrothed wife of the handsome young physician,
came, leaning on her lover's arm. They were all there,
young and old, and merriment was at its height. The corn was
nearly husked, and we were about to adjourn to the house, when
there was a stir at the door, and Uncle Horace appeared, pale
and ghastly. He stood silently for a moment, looking upon us,
like some terrible phantom; and then from his white lips fell
the words — “Norah, Norah Lee is dead!”
There was one quick shriek of horror, and then Grandmother
started, as fast as her trembling limbs would carry her, for the
cottage. Our company hurriedly dispersed, some for their own
homes, and some for the house of mourning. The fair girl had
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been universally beloved, and the whole village wept. The supper
was left untasted, and the viands of the party became the
“meats for the burial,” — and this was the last “husking-party
at Ryefield.”
I wish I could tell you that Uncle Horace vowed eternal constancy
to Norah's memory. But I must be truthful. Another
gentle and dearly-loved one shares the little cottage he planned
at the dead girl's side; and their child, who sits upon his knee
at twilight, lifts to his face her sweet brown eyes and pride of
golden hair, and sometimes the tears come to his eyes, as he
calls her by her name — “Norah.” But the mother is not
jealous; she, too, is loved, and she knows, when a few more
twilights shall have faded into night, they will all sit down
together, in a land where twilight never comes nor shadows
fall — even heaven!
SPRING-TIME RAIN.
-- -- p655-297
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All day long has the rain beat down,
Slowly beat on a lonely grave;
All day long, 'neath the gray sky's frown
Beat like the flood of a briny wave.
Drops have beaded the meadow grass,
Drops have dashed on the willow-tree,
And the village children pattering pass,
A pleasant sight in the rain to see.
Flowers are bowing their heads at prayers,
Birds are ringing their vesper bell,
Monodies wild, and mournful airs,
From viewless harps of the wind-sprites swell.
Still, in a grave-yard lone and old,
Riseth a tomb-stone fair and white,
Pillar that sculptured seraphs fold,
Cloud by day and fire by night!
There, where the grave-mound groweth green,
Flowerets spring in the summer sun,
Roses and myrtle and eglantine
Weave a wreath round the white head-stone.
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Settling down upon shining hair,
Lieth the grave-dust dark and dim;
Down on the brow that was once so fair,
Mouldering round each snowy limb.
Never a fleck of the sunshine steals
Into the grave they have dug so deep;
Never a ray of the moon reveals
The spot where an angel went to sleep.
But when the rain of the spring falls down,
She comes from the world of living streams,
Lighting the earth-life bare and brown
With rosy hues from the land of dreams.
By and by, when the days grow long,
I will lay me down by her side,
Hushed to sleep by the wild-bird's song,
Floating out on the even-tide.
-- -- p655-299
MY AUNT PATIENCE.
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It was a beautiful summer day. It seemed to me that Ryefield
had never looked half so fair. The summer roses blushed and
trembled like bashful maidens; and over the tall trees flitted
gay, happy birds, all singing love-songs. But, perhaps, you
have seen just such days, dear reader, when the blue sky seemed
bluer, and the green fields greener, and your heart sang anthems
of joy, to which all the world went keeping time. You have
seen them, if you have loved as I loved, and known as I knew,
that, when the earth slept in the peace of the summer afternoon,
another shadow would fall beside your own, and a voice you
loved make music in your ear.
That morning I had risen early. I wandered here and there,
with the one dear name on my lips, gathering the lush-red
strawberries, and sorting the pale, fragrant flowers into Grandmother's
rich, old-fashioned china vases. At last I dressed myself,
and descended to the library. It wanted yet four long hours
of the time when he was to arrive; and I threw myself on a
lounge, and closed my eyes, to spend the time as best I might
in weaving dreams and fancies wherewith to furnish my hereditary
“Castles in Spain.” A light foot-fall, so light that it did
not arouse me, passed over Grandmother's Wilton carpet; a soft
hand was laid upon my brow, and, looking up, I saw that Aunt
Patience was standing beside me.
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She was a singular, and yet most interesting woman; and,
hitherto, she had seemed to me as one dwelling apart from our
common sympathies, and had won from me even more of curiosity
than love. She was tall, and very slight, with soft, brown hair,
banded smoothly about her pale face. She seldom spoke, and,
when she did, her voice was low and calm, and her words fell
upon the ear like the measured cadences of mournful music.
And yet Aunt Patience had not always seemed thus. Grandma
had told me of a time when her face looked less like the pictures
of the saints, and more like one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' court
beauties, full of human love and joy, ay, and of human error,
too. She had told of a fair, smooth brow, shaded by masses of
curls; of a slight, swaying, and graceful figure; clear, starry
blue eyes; dainty little fingers, and a voice like civilized bird-notes.
But Aunt Patience was very different now. I had
never known what had occasioned the change; but, like those
buried cities, round which not even tradition has wove her garment
of memories, leaving them to the sceptre of that mightier
potentate, the Imagination, I felt sure that Aunt Patience had
a history.
Her very name seemed strangely appropriate. I don't think,
in her whole life, she had ever been known to utter a murmur or
complaint; and the very expression of her face was that of one
who had suffered much, and grown purer under the pressure of
the crown of thorns. I had many times thought she seemed to
regard me with unusual tenderness; but I had judged only from
the inflections of her voice and the brooding warmth in her quiet
blue eyes. I knew it on this pleasant summer morning, when
she stood beside me, with her hand upon my hair. “So you
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think you love Wilton Mowbray, my little girl?” she said,
inquiringly, yet very gently.
“Think! O, Aunt Patience, I know I love him! I would
give my whole life to make him happy!”
“Well, child, I believe it; and yet I have seen in you a
disposition to try his love, to excite his jealousy, to tyrannize over
him; and I have felt that, loving him as you do, and acting thus,
you were standing on the verge of a fearful precipice, and I have
longed to warn you. My own heart has a history whose leaves
no human eyes have ever read. Shall I tell it to you, this
morning?”
There was a kind of dimness gathering in Aunt Patience's
eyes, as she drew an easy-chair to the library-window, and commenced
her story. I was lying upon the lounge, with my head
in her lap, and her hand upon my hair.
“I have been much interested in your friend, Wilton Mowbray,”
she commenced, “very much interested, because he bears
so close a resemblance to one I used to know and love. In his
character and disposition, I mean, for his face is not at all similar.
You have never before heard me speak of Walter Harding,
the lover of my youth. He had precisely your Wilton's quick,
sensitive, impetuous disposition; and I, though you would never
guess it, was the exact counterpart of what you now are, — gay,
lively, impulsive, and a little inclined to flirt. Withal, I had
more than your share of pride; and yet I loved Walter as well
as woman ever loved the one whom she chose from all the world
to guide her trembling steps along the uneven paths of life,
toward the great end. He was very fond of me, — much more so
than I deserved. I saw that I had it in my power to annoy him,
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and I think I used to take advantage of it. Many were the
bouquets I accepted, and the smiles I returned, from others; and
I have seen his cheek flush, and his lips tremble, until any other
girl would have feared his anger; but I knew no fear, in those
days. When it came time to return, I used to step up to him,
and say, `Are you ready, Walter?' He would look at me a
moment, and then the frown would pass from his brow, and,
drawing my hand through his arm, he would exclaim, in those
dear, good tones of his, that it made one's heart rejoice to hear,
`God bless you, Patience, for a dear, cruel, tormenting little
angel, as you are!' and then he would walk away with me, just
as kind and tender as if I had been the best girl in the world.
“But there came a time when I tried my strength, and found
it wanting. There was a young law-student in the village.
Most persons called him handsome, far handsomer than Walter,
though to me he certainly was not. All his airs and graces,
clear, white complexion, and delicate hands and feet, were not
worth to me one single, beaming, truthful look from Walter's
dark eyes. And yet it suited my purpose to flirt with him, to
appear fond of him. I always — that is, always when Walter was
by — welcomed him with empressement, wore the flowers he gave
me in my hair, and played his favorite songs. At last, one
evening when Walter was with me, he came with a card for me
to attend a ball, which was to come off the next evening. Cotillons
were much more fashionable then than now, and this ball
was to be a brilliant affair. Dancing was my passion; but Walter,
who was studying for the ministry, never danced, and since
I had known him I had almost entirely abandoned it. But here
was afforded a fine opportunity to tease him, gratify my
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inordinate love of fun, and constitute myself once more the belle of a
ball-room. Heedless of Walter's sad, imploring face, I accepted
the invitation, and Frank Stanley (that was the student's name)
left almost immediately. After he had gone, there was silence
between us for a long time. At last Walter broke it.
“`I am sorry, Patience,' he said, mildly, `that you should
have carried your trifling quite so far. Of course you will not
go to this ball, and it will disarrange Mr. Stanley's plans, and,
perhaps, mortify him, to receive a note of regrets now!'
“`And who says I shan't go to the ball?' I asked, angrily, for
my naturally quick temper was aroused by his tone of unwonted
authority.
“`Who says it, Patience? Why, I think your own innate
good sense will say that the betrothed bride of a minister of the
Gospel should not be found in the ball-room!'
“`Well,' I retorted, `my own good sense says nothing of the
kind. It does say that, even if I 've got to wear the surplice
after marriage, it's very ridiculous of you to expect me to assume
ministerial obligations beforehand. And it does say that nobody
knows of our engagement now, and I don't want they should, for
we can't be married in any reasonable time; and so it becomes a
matter of necessity that I should go to this ball, for, of course, I
could not give any excuse, without giving the true one.'
“`Well, Patience,' he said, with a calmness and forbearance
that I hated then as much as I admired it afterwards, `well,
Patience, I had not thought to learn that you are so much
ashamed of your betrothal to me that, rather than have it known,
you would commit what seems to me a sin, and what even you
cannot regard as less than an impropriety; but, darling,' and, as
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he spoke, he gazed tenderly into my face with his dark eyes,
and drew my proud, rebellious head to his bosom, `my own
darling, I will not chide you; I am so sure you did not mean
it. You shall drive with me into the country to-morrow, and we
will not return until it is too late for this affair.'
“`Shall I, indeed, Mr. Harding? Is it you who says “shall”
to me? Pray remember the vow to obey is yet in the future.
But surely you don't mean it, now? You would n't take my
humble self into the country, would you? What a pity that I
shall have to decline the honor!'
“`Patience,' he said once more, and this time his tone was
very serious, `Patience, answer me truly, do you mean to attend
this ball?'
“`Yes, sir; I truly do mean to attend this ball!'
“`Then, Patience, I must tell you candidly what the result will
be. It will terminate our engagement. I have loved you, God
only knows how well, — to idolatry, I have feared sometimes. I
have borne patiently with your caprices for a long time, suffered
you to follow in all things your own inclinations, because I had a
firm faith that your heart was right, and that, in spite of all, you
truly loved me, and would seek to make me happy. But, if you
cannot give up so small a thing as this foolish ball for my sake,—
if you prefer its gaud and glitter to a day of quiet pleasure
with me in the country, — then, alas! I must yield to the conviction
that you never loved me, and go my own way in solitude.'
“Louise, can you comprehend the enigma of my behavior? At
that moment he seemed to me truly noble. I loved him more
than ever. I would have given worlds to have thrown myself
into his arms, and told him the simple truth, that one word of
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love from him was worth more to me than all the balls and
gayeties in the world. But, alas for it! that evil spirit of pride
was regnant in my heart. I had tried his love before. I wished
to test it yet once more, to make still another display of my
power over him. So I masked my aching heart, with an air of
haughty coldness, and answered, `Well, sir, if I am henceforth
to enter a state of serfdom, to have no will of my own, and if
your boasted love for me is merely a desire to reduce my spirit
to subjection, the sooner we part, and you go your own way, the
better.'
“`Nay, Patience, my poor proud child, I will not take your
answer now. You will see all this differently to-morrow. I do
not think you will go to the ball; and I fancy we shall have, if
not the ride into the country, at least a happy evening at home.
I can't help thinking you love me, Patience; for I have a pleasant
memory of a light step by my bed-side during the weary
watches of a terrible illness, of a gentle hand upon my brow, and
sorrowful blue eyes full of tears. Patience, your love has been
more than life to me. I cannot give you up to-night. To-morrow, —
we shall see, when it comes, what fate comes with it.'
And he would have raised my fingers to his lips, but I crushed
the dear hand and threw it from me; and he went out.”
My Aunt Patience paused in her recital, and her tears fell fast
upon my brow and my braided hair. “But you did n't go to
the ball, Aunty?” I inquired, with eager interest.
“Yes, Louise! Morning came. I had passed a sad, restless
night; but my pride was not one whit abated; and hardly to
purchase my salvation would I have sat down and written to
Walter that I would accept his invitation to go into the
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country. He never came near me all day, and toward night I began
to dress for the ball. I brushed out the long curls which Walter
so loved to twine around his caressing fingers, and crowned them
with a wreath of starry cape-jasmine. I put on a dress of deep
azure silk, which suited my complexion exquisitely. My arms
and neck were bare, and a glance at my mirror assured me that
I had never before looked so beautiful. Well, Frank Stanley
came for me, and I went. I do believe I hated him then.
Somehow my purblind vision could not or would not see my own
faults, and unjustly I blamed him for coming between me and
Walter. But I determined that I would at least seem happy; so
I exerted myself to appear as lively as possible. My hand was
engaged for every set, and I danced as gayly as if my heart had
never experienced a single pang.
“It was nearly midnight when I threw a shawl over my shoulders,
and wandered out by myself into the conservatory. My
heart throbbed with a wild longing to hurry home, to seek Walter,
and implore him to forgive the wanderer, and take her to his
heart once more. Had I obeyed the impulse, all might yet have
been well. I drew my shawl around me, and in a moment more
I should have started; but I heard footsteps near at hand, and,
looking up, Frank Stanley, my gallant of the evening, stood
beside me. I did not hear half he said, but I managed to understand
that he wished me to marry him. In the mood of remorseful
tenderness toward Walter which then possessed me, I could
scarcely listen to him with civility and, though I well knew that
I had given him sufficient encouragement to warrant his proposal,
my rejection was brief, haughty and almost bitter, unsoftened by
a single word of esteem or regret. He stood before me for a
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moment with compressed lips and frowning brow, and then
recollecting himself, he smiled bitterly, and, offering his arm,
said, `At least I may hope for the honor of conducting you to
supper, Miss Evelyn?'
“I took his arm in silence. His tone convinced me that I had
made for myself a bitter, life-long enemy; and my conscience
said, justly. O, that was a weary, wretched evening for me! I
got home at length, and, tearing off the ornaments which mocked
my misery, I threw myself upon a lounge, and sobbed myself to
sleep.
“The next morning I heard the door-bell ring, and in a moment
the servant entered my room. She held in her hands an exquisite
little ebony casket, such an one as I had long desired to
possess. I took it from her, and eagerly opened it. It was very
beautiful, lined with quaintly-carved satin-wood, and soft, rose-colored
satin; but I did not heed its beauty, or rejoice in its possession.
It contained a little locket, with my miniature, which I
had given Walter, and a few letters I had written him from time
to time, when we chanced to be separated for a day or two.
`Mr. Harding bade me give you this,' said the girl, as she
handed me a little note in his well-known chirography. I tore it
open.
“`Patience,' it said, `Patience, I have loved you as no other
will ever love you again. But why do I use the past tense? I
do love you as fondly as ever; but your course last evening has
shown me that you do not wish to be my wife, and far be it
from me to claim an unwilling bride. You will accept this little
casket, won't you, Patience, as a parting gift? I have heard you
wish for one like it, and I could not bear to see it, when far
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away from her for whose use I intended it. I would fain have
kept your picture and your letters, but I dared not. They were
too dear. I leave town to-day, and I want to bid you good-by.
Will you come down and speak to me? Dear, beautiful
Patience, — treasure I once thought to call my own, — God bless
you!'
“For a single brief moment of indecision, I held the letter in
my hands. My heart pleaded wildly to go and kneel at his feet,
and weep out my wrong and my penitence, and see if haply, even
then, I might not be forgiven; but pride triumphed. I drew my
writing-desk toward me, and wrote:
“`I am surprised, Mr. Harding, at the acuteness which enables
you to divine my wishes so readily. I trust the attachment
which can so easily relinquish its object will not be difficult to
overcome. For your kindness in procuring me this casket, I am
infinitely obliged; but you must, of necessity, excuse my accepting
it, as it is a present of too great value for a lady to receive
from any but her lover. Enclosed you will find your miniature
and letters, and a certain emerald ring, the pledge of a tie now
broken. You will excuse me from coming down, as I have a
head-ache this morning. I wish you God-speed on your journey,
long life and happiness, and remain your friend,
`Patience Evelyn.'
“He left the house. I heard his quick tread upon the gravelled
walk, and, throwing myself upon the bed, I wept such tears of
heart-breaking love, and anguish, and penitence, as one can weep
but once in a lifetime. He left the casket upon the table. It is
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the only token I have of the fair past, whose paths my feet once
trod. His letters, his miniature, the engagement-ring, all were
gone. I have never seen him since. Others, rich and noble,
knelt at my feet; but the love of my heart was crushed, and it
never bloomed again. It is twenty years since that day, Louise,—
twenty long, sorrowful years, — and not once have I failed to
whisper his name in my prayers, though for half that time he has
been the husband of another.”
“But surely, surely,” I cried, “he cannot love her, after all
his love for you!”
“I do not know,” said my Aunt Patience, sadly. “I hope he
loves her; I hope they are happy. I have prayed that they
might be. He must have deemed me unworthy of a thought. I
have told you this sad story, dear child, that you might take
warning by my errors. I have seen in you the same spirit that
has ruined the happiness of my own lifetime. Pray God that
you may never carry with your own hands such desolation into
all your future.” And, with a soft kiss upon my brow, Aunt
Patience glided from the room. How I had wronged her! — I,
who had thought her cold, thankless and unloving. How my
heart did homage to the mute, uncomplaining forbearance of her
mighty sorrow!
Reader, my story has a sequel. That afternoon, as we sat in
the dining-room, luxuriating over Grandmother's delicious early
tea, Wilton Mowbray said, as he thoughtfully swayed his teaspoon
back and forth, “Louise, did I ever tell you of a kind
friend of mine, the Rev. Walter Harding? He is such a
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gentleman, I 'm sure you 'd like him, — a nice, middle-aged man. He
lost his wife a few weeks since; a noble, excellent woman she
was; but I don't think he feels her loss as much as if they had
had more sympathies in common. He knows of our engagement,
you mad-cap, and somehow he has got the idea in his head that
you have common sense, and know enough to choose a companion
for his only child, a sweet little girl, with large, thoughtful eyes,
like her father's own.”
“How would I do?” said Aunt Patience, looking up from her
tea, with her calm, pale face.
“You, Aunt Patience!” and Wilton smiled; “why, you
would do capitally; but surely you would n't leave your home,
and go there in the position of half-governess and half-companion?”
“Yes, Wilton. I used to know Walter Harding, and for the
sake of our old friendship, I will gladly take care of his child;
on the one condition, that you will not let him know who I am.
My name is Patience Cleveland Evelyn, and he must only know
me as Miss Cleveland.”
When we chanced to be left alone, I clasped my arms round
my aunt's neck, and exclaimed, joyfully, “O, I am so glad!
Now you will marry Walter Harding, after all; and O, you 'll be
so, so happy!”
But it was a pensive smile with which my aunt answered me,
and she said very calmly, “O, no, Louise. You have jumped at
a very unwarrantable conclusion. When I parted with Walter
Harding, I was eighteen years old, — almost a child, — and very
handsome. Twenty years have passed since then, and the faded
and sorrowful woman of thirty-eight bears no trace of the
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maiden of eighteen. No, dear child, Walter Harding will never
recognize me. I am going to him because I did him a great
wrong once; and, if I can make some slight amendment by
bestowing on his child a mother's care, I will bless God for the
privilege!”
Walter Harding met his old love without one single faint suspicion
that the quiet, middle-aged lady before him had ever
crossed his path in earlier years. He never dreamed that head
had lain in other days upon his breast, or that small hand
trembled in the caressing love-clasp of his own. To him, she was
his daughter's governess, and no more. And yet she was ten
times worthier of his love than in those other days, when it had
been his proudest ambition to call her his own. Her heart had
been chastened and subdued by suffering, her mind matured and
expanded by time and culture, and her whole character elevated
by the beauty of holiness. She devoted herself to her little
charge with all a mother's tenderness, and Winnie Harding soon
learned to love the gentle stranger even more fondly than the
lost mother, who had manifested far less sympathy in her childish
joys and sorrows.
One night, when my aunt had spent about six months in the
family, she rose from her seat at the usual hour, to put the little
Winnie to bed, when her old lover laid a detaining hand upon
her arm. “Miss Cleveland,” he said, “will you not return again
to the parlor? I have a new poem I wish to read you.”
“Certainly, sir, if you would like,” was the reply; and she
passed out of the room. I believe there was a thrill at her
heart, that night, as she heard the little one say her prayers, and
then sang her to sleep. I think her hand trembled as she lifted
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the latch, and, for the first time in years, entered alone the presence
of him she used to love so fondly. The poem he wished to
read was Evangeline, and his masterly intonation made that
beautiful history of a faithful love, long disappointed, and
rewarded at last only in death, strangely musical. When he
concluded, he looked at his companion, and her eyes were dim
with tears.
“Do you know, Miss Cleveland,” he asked, suddenly, “do you
know those blue eyes of yours have a look in them strangely like
those of one I knew and loved once? Once, did I say, — I love
her yet, — I have always loved Patience Evelyn, and always
shall. I heard, years ago, that she was married to another, but I
have never ceased to love her as of old; and sometimes I have
felt almost sure that she would come back to me. You remind
me of her in more ways than one. It is singular, very singular,
is n't it? but sometimes I have fancied your voice was like hers,
particularly when you were animated at anything. I have
dreamed, too, that, if you would promise to stay with me, and
share my life always, I might be happy once more, — as happy,
almost, as she would have made me. I suppose we are both too
old now for vows and protestations, but I do believe I love you
truly; and you, Miss Cleveland, — will you share the old man's
home?”
My aunt had listened in joy and wonder; but when he closed,
her cheek was suffused with blushes, her eyes with tears. She
threw herself at his feet, and, when he would have raised her, she
cried, impulsively, “No, no; let me kneel! It is time I knelt at
Walter Harding's feet, and besought forgiveness of the true
heart I have twice won. Walter, do not hate me! I am
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Patience Cleveland Evelyn! I never married, never loved
another, Walter; and even when we parted, my heart was breaking
for your love. Can you forgive me, Walter?”
I suppose my Aunt Patience pleaded not vainly, for when next
I saw her she was Walter Harding's wife; his child was clinging
to her knees and they were happy!
-- -- p655-314
DOMESTIC ECONOMY.
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We have learned something new, this week, — new to us, at
least, — that it 's really a bona fide disgrace for a young lady to
do house-work. Why, she may toil till her delicate fingers are
blistered in rolling nine-pins; she may walk over half the streets
in the city, or fatigue herself with music-lessons for which she
has not the slightest taste; but, if she would not lose caste, let
her avoid the kitchen, as she would a pestilence. No matter
how the beaded drops of sweat may stand on her mother's brow;
no matter how that mother's wearied head may throb, or her
tired limbs ache for repose! You may pity her, you may be
very sorry, — I don't know as that 's unfashionable, — but beware
how you lift her burden with the tips of your fingers!
No matter how bewitching may be that little close cap tied
over your rich hair, how neat and pretty the little white apron
which you are fastening over that gingham morning-dress, — take
them off, throw them away; for it 's “so unfashionable” to be
seen in the kitchen, and a fashionable acquaintance might chance
to enter, and discover you in those badges of the disgraceful occupation!
No matter how your heart aches to see that mother looking
so tired, no matter how your own enfeebled frame gives evidence
of a want of exercise; 't will never do to be unfashionable!
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For exercise, you can go to a party, and dance half the night;
after all, your mother can but die, and the cold church-yard sod
will lie soft above that throbbing brow, and for earth's weary
ones there is a glorious rest in heaven!
We did n't know, till now, that “'t would n't do” to take practical
lessons in domestic economy; and we have some dim,
shadowy recollections of the theory of clear-starching and ironing,
and dusting parlors, that we shall very carefully conceal,
lest they should disgrace us forever in the eyes of fashionable
society. We used to think women — I beg Mrs. Grundy's
pardon, ladies — looked very lovely when they were trying to
lighten some dear one's toil, and flitting round, like a birdie in the
home-cage, with a gush of song trilling on their bright lips;
but, O dear! of course we must change our opinion now, since
we are taught that it is so dreadfully old-fashioned. Even the
Bible is getting now-a-days to be considered in some circles an
old-fashioned book, — very nice in its way, to be sure, but then so
old-fashioned, just suited to the days of spinning-wheels and
home-made linen.
Were it not for this, we might have suggested King Solomon's
picture of a good wife; but that, you know, is out of date now.
People are not expected to be wives, but brides and married
ladies.
Though, to be sure, we never could have learned all this alone,
unaided, we never should have invented the nice distinction by
which it becomes proper and fashionable for a father or brother
to toil in his counting-room like a very slave, but dreadfully
outré for a young lady to go in the neighborhood of a furnace or
frying-pan!
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To be sure, had no one informed us, we should have thought it
the better way to strive to scatter fresh heart-flowers in the path
where dear feet must walk, and lighten the toil of one we loved,
by the help of fair, white hands; but, now that we have learnt
better, we are amazed to see what an ignorant little body we
were; and we take this opportunity to impress it on your minds,
fair readers, that you can violate the spirit of every commandment
in the decalogue with more impunity than you can in the
least degree venture to be unfashionable!
LAURA TO PETRARCH.
-- -- p655-317
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Alas, alas! bound by a tie I hate,
And forced to call the man I scorn my lord,
Thou canst not wonder that I curse my fate,
And wildly dream about each blessed word
In golden days of old spoke by thy lips,
While Cupid lurked 'mong beds of passion-flowers,
Ere yet my life's sunshine had met eclipse,
Or I had measured with my prayers the hours!
Thou canst not wonder that, in looking back,
I pour out blood for tears along the path,
And sprinkle drops upon each once fair track,
Now blackened by the Simoom's deadly wrath.
And yet, O, what am I, that make my moan?
A woman, with her hair to silver turned;
A bird, whom all its mates have left alone;
A vase, whence all the roses have been burned!
A seed left choking in some stony ground,
I fittest liken to my wretched plight;
A cry, a moment heard, then deeply drowned,
By dash of waves, on Pluto's shores of night!
I see thee climbing up Fame's rugged height,
And know thy heart sends after mine a cry,
As traveller, in some fairy land bedight,
Amid its flowers gives utterance to a sigh!
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The bridal-roses, bound about my brow,
A crown of thorns I wear for thee this hour;
The winter moon, slow-sailing, lights thee now,
While o'er my path fierce waves of baptism lower.
Time was, I decked my heart and spread my feast,
And called thee gayly to my rustic board, —
As sceptred monarch, in the far-off East,
Shows to some cherished guest his glittering hoard.
And thou didst come: that simple feast the last,
Those words of love the only glory left,
Of all the mocking radiance of the past,
To gild the life of hope and light bereft.
But, as the dead Christ crowns some funeral pile,
And crosses gleam through mists of vanished years,
So I will give my life to shrine thy smile,
And pave thy future with my woman's tears!
-- -- p655-319
THE SCOTCH PASTOR'S BRIDE.
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“Come hither, Annie;” and Lord Maxwell's fair daughter
glided to his side, and sat down on a stool at his feet. It was
a pleasant scene, — that quaint old drawing-room, with its dark
cornices of richly-carved oak, its chair-covers and tapestry
wrought in the most approved fashion of our grandmothers'
days, its black-walnut reading-desk with the large family Bible
chained on it, and the hassock standing before it on which Lord
Maxwell's chaplain, the young and godly George Herbert, was
wont to kneel at hours of morning and evening prayer. In a
high arm-chair sat Lord James Percy Maxwell, a worthy representative
of the gentleman of the old school, with his flowing
wig, his bright knee-buckles, and blue coat and golden buttons.
At his feet nestled the sweet and winsome Annie.
We are sorry, for the romance of the thing, dear reader, that
we cannot tell you Annie Maxwell was peerlessly beautiful; but
we must content ourselves with saying, in broad Scotch, that
“she was a sweet and sonsie lassie.”
Her eyes were very blue, and their gentle mirth was softened
into a look of demure propriety by their long, golden fringes.
Her brow was neither high nor low, though it was sweet
and womanly; and her hair, of a rich brown, was brushed
smoothly away from her sunny face, and knotted behind with a
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black ribbon. Her close-fitting dress of blue merino suited
exquisitely well her clear, soft complexion; and, altogether, she
was as winsome, cheery a little maiden as ever graced hall or
cottage; and so thought Lord Maxwell, as, with her hands
crossed over his knee, she sat and looked into the fire.
“Annie, pet bird, how would you like to be married?” The
girl said nothing, but the blush deepened on her cheek, and a
half-smile played about her rose-bud mouth. “Say, darling,
would you not like to be mistress of some stately castle, and be
guided through life by some kindly hand?”
“Nay, father, dear,” — and now the smile faded from about
her lips, — “nay, father, ask me not to leave you; do not send
me away from Maxwell Grange, for I fain would dwell here
always!”
“Nay, darling,” — and, with a fond pride, he smoothed back
her sunny hair, — “nay, but you must leave me some time, or,
Annie,” — and his voice grew solemn, — “some time I must leave
you, and I would not that it should be to loneliness. Annie, my
child, I am an old man, and must soon die.”
But she twined her white arms round his neck, and besought
him not to leave her, his motherless girl.
“Nay, dearest, be calm,” and he gently put her from him.
“Nay, love, I must leave you; and, Annie, will you not let me
leave you the wife of Lord Say? He is good and noble, and
the proudest earldom in England would be his wedding present
to his sweet Scotch bride! He has been to see me again to-day,
and I have promised my influence in his favor.
“You are twenty-two now, dear child, and I fain would see
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you happily married before I die; — look up, Annie, and tell me
you will be Lady Say.”
But her only answer was a gush of passionate tears, as she hid
her fair head on his bosom.
“Annie,” — and this time his voice trembled, though one
could not tell whether with grief or anger, — “Annie, do you
love another?” Still there was no answer, but the flush deepened
on the maiden's cheek, and the long lashes drooped over her
tearful eyes.
“You do, Annie! Who is the wretch that has dared to steal
that innocent heart? Speak, child; your father commands it!”
And this time the maiden spoke. Rising from his arms,
she stood erect, her slight figure drawn to its fullest height.
“Father, he is no wretch, no villain! — I love George
Herbert!”
“George Herbert, forsooth!” and the proud man looked at
her fiercely, as if he would have dashed her from his sight.
“And so he is the pitiful traitor who has stolen into my house,
in Christian garb, to ruin the happiness of my innocent child?
Villain! — but he shall answer for this!”
“Father,” — and the young girl stood before him, her white
hand laid upon his arm, and his own haughty spirit looking
forth from her clear blue eyes, — “Father, George Herbert is
no traitor; — never has he said to me, by word or act, that he
loved me; and, if I love him, 't is because, seeing how good and
noble he is, I cannot help it; and, should he never love me, I
will go down to my grave unmarried; for I love him, and, as
God hears me, I will marry no other!”
“And, as God hears me, you shall marry Lord Say!”
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“Never!” and Annie Maxwell's lips seemed to move involuntarily.
“Hear me, girl, hear me! If you do not make up your mind
to wed Lord Say within ten days, then will I turn George Herbert
from my door, and drag you to the altar by force, if it must
be so; for the word of a Maxwell can never be broken!” and,
turning away, he entered the door of his own room, and locked
himself in. O, how many times, in after years, did James Maxwell
regret those harsh words! How many times did his brow
throb, and there was no gentle hand to lave it; his heart ache,
and there was no soft voice to whisper words of consolation!
Annie Maxwell turned away, with her heart swollen almost to
bursting, and, ascending the long, oaken staircase, entered
George Herbert's study. The young pastor sat there, his head
buried in his hands, and seemingly busied in intense thought.
Annie stole gently to his side, clasped her arms about his neck,
and, pressing her lips to his brow, murmured, “George, you love
me; I cannot tell how I learned it, but I know it; and I have
come to give myself to you, to ask you if you will indeed call
me your little wife. George, dearest, tell me!” and she sank
into his arms.
For a full moment, George Herbert held her there in that
embrace; then, brushing back her sunny hair, he looked into her
eyes, and spoke:
“Annie Maxwell, you have well said; — I do love you more
than all things else, — more than life itself. God knows how I
love you, Annie, but I thought not to have told you this; — the
vows of God are upon me, and I cannot do so great wickedness
as to ask your father's daughter to share a lot so far beneath
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her!” and he put her mournfully from him, and bent his eyes
upon the floor.
“O, George, you will not cast me off!” and Annie Maxwell
knelt on the floor at his feet, and told him of Lord Say, and her
father's fierce words and determined threat. George Herbert
knew Lord James Maxwell well; he knew that he would do all
he said; and he raised Annie from the floor, and whispered, “Go
down to the library, dearest, — I will be with you soon; this is a
hard matter, and I dare not decide without much thought and
prayer.
And for two weary hours George Herbert knelt in fervent
supplication in his little study, and Annie Maxwell sat the while
in the library down stairs, weeping — not noisily, not wildly,
but quietly, and very still — the bitter tears of an unutterable
anguish.
At last the door opened, and George Herbert entered, and,
folding her to his heart, pressed his lips to hers in a first, fond
passion-kiss, and whispered, “My own, my dearest — my little
wife — look up, my sweet one, for already I feel that God has
given thee to me. Sad as 't will be for thee to wed against thy
father's will, 't would be worse, ay, ten thousand times worse,
for thee to do such solemn mockery as give thy hand where
thy heart goes not with it. 'T is but a humble lot I have to
offer thee, my darling. I have a brother, who is vicar of a small
and poor country parish; he will understand me, and believe
that I am acting aright. I can be his curate. Say, Annie,
darling, canst thou be a poor curate's wife? — thou, a nobleman's
daughter, — my own, my beautiful!” Very trustfully
sweet Annie Maxwell laid her hand in his, and answered,
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like one of old time, “Where thou goest I will go; thy people
shall be my people, and thy God my God!” and once more
he caught her to his heart, as he whispered, “Then, dearest, we
will go forth to-night!”
It was a humble wedding, that of gentle Annie Maxwell, in
the small country church of St. John.
There were no diamonds on her brow, no orange-blossoms in
her hair, and no delicate and costly veil floating over her like a
cloud. You would have been puzzled to tell what were the
“worldly goods” with which George Herbert had vowed to
“endow” his beautiful bride, as he led her into her new home —
a little white cottage, over which the woodbines and climbing
roses had wrought out a fairy poem.
And here sweet Annie Maxwell reigned, undisputed mistress
both of her bird's-nest home and the heart of her husband. For
a time Lord Maxwell had searched for her, but, on hearing of
her marriage, he immured himself in his castle, a prey, some
said, to regret; others, to a proud, fierce shame, that he had
been compelled to forfeit his plighted word to the bold Lord Say.
Lord Say brought home another bride, on short wooing, and the
world jogged on as of old.
There were just as many tears in it as before, — just as many
sighs, — but there was more happiness; for, in a sweet nook, far
away from the din of the great world-life, George Herbert and
his Annie rejoiced in their pure young love.
They were poor, and it made his heart ache sometimes that
his sweet bride must lead a life so different from that to which
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she had been accustomed; and yet his eyes kindled with joy, to
see her bright face, as she went dancing about his home like a
fairy, or to hear her merry voice, instructing the good-humored
Scotch lassie, who was the only assistant in their simple cuisine.
And their evenings, — O! what happy hours they had then!
In the morning there was housekeeping to attend to, and sermons
to write; in the afternoon, callers to be entertained, and parishioners
to be visited; but the evenings — ah! then they had only
to be happy. How proudly George would smile, when he had
drawn the round study-table before the brightly-blazing fire, and
wheeled the study-chair beside it, and his sweet wife would come
and lay her head on his bosom, sometimes smiling, sometimes, all
too intensely happy even for silent smiles, she would look into
his eyes, with the bright joy-tears trembling on her long lashes!
And there they would sit, with the fire-shine brightening over
them, and the kitten lying at their feet and purring.
Sometimes he would lay her fair head back on his shoulder,
and sing to her, till her heart went beating time to the music of
his voice; and then she would talk to him, in her own sweet
tones, of all things good and beautiful, — of poetry, and the
wondrous songs that fairy whispers seemed trilling through the
cloisters of her own pure spirit.
And, at last, they would kneel together, with his fond arm
clasping her, and bless God for all this happiness; and though
their earthly father was far away in the gloom of his stately
castle, love-rays floated over them from the throne of their
Father in heaven, — angels watched over them, and they slept
like the blest!
Time passed on, and another visitor came to gladden their
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little circle, — a very tiny one, indeed, but, O, so dear! and
now their evenings were merrier. How proudly the young father
held his little Lilias; and Annie — O! love had smiled all the
jealousy out of her heart, and she heeded not that another occupied
her old, time-won place in her husband's arms.
And when, at nine o'clock, the nurse came to take the sweet
Lily away, what kisses and blessings and good-nights there
were! and then, as in the old time, would the girl-wife nestle
fondly in her husband's bosom.
Three years passed by, and Lilias had grown strangely beautiful.
She inherited her father's classically regular features, and
her mother's deep, soft eyes, and golden hair. Hers seemed “a
face to look upon, and pray that a pure spirit keep her.” She
loved the beautiful, too, with all her mother's passionate devotion;
and would sit for hours in her little high chair, drawn to the
window, and look forth, with her spiritual eyes, over the waving
woods and distant mountains, rising, dim and soft, up into the
clear blue sky, until Annie would almost tremble lest she should
see angel-faces in the clouds, and hidden voices should call her
away from the earth-land.
But, no, — she lived, grew, and brightened before them, until
now she was nine years old; and, by a succession of providential
events, George Herbert had been called to the pastoral charge
of the church at which Lord Maxwell was an occasional attendant.
The young clergyman had looked forward with dismay to
the prospect of meeting the grim old lord; but they had been
settled in their new abode for three weeks before they saw him.
One evening Lily and her nurse went forth for a long walk
over the hills.
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The girl had left the beautiful child for a few moments, in
order to exchange a few words with an old friend; and the sweet
Lily had wandered onward, till she thought herself lost, and,
sitting down by the road-side, wept bitterly.
Presently a carriage stopped before her, and an old gentleman
alighted, who, apparently, had been attracted by her beauty.
“Why do you cry, dear child?” he asked, at the same time
caressingly brushing back her curls.
“Because, please, sir, I am lost!” and the little maiden looked
up into his face with her spiritual eyes.
“Well, dear child, will you go with me? I have nobody to
love me, and I will give you a beautiful castle, and pearls, and
diamonds, and pictures.” The sweet child had never heard of
pearls or diamonds; but she had seen a castle, and she thought
pictures must be pleasant things, because Mamma had said that
their new home, at Sutherland rectory, looked like a picture; and
the old man's words seemed very beautiful.
But she thought a moment, and answered, “No, thank you,
sir, I cannot go with you; Papa would cry so, and then I must
go home, and say my prayers at Mamma's knee.” And, as she
spoke, there was a music in her voice which thrilled the old
man's heart strangely, and made him wonder he had not noticed
it before. Almost mechanically he asked, “And what do you
pray for, little one?” more for the sake of hearing her voice
again, than from curiosity as to what would be her answer.
“For Ma, sir, and Pa, and Grandpa!” and she smiled into
his face with her large, trustful eyes.
“And what do they call you, child-angel?” and he lifted her
fondly to his bosom.
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“Lilias Herbert is my name, sir, but Papa calls me his Lily.”
“My child, my child!” and the old man covered her sweet
face with tears and kisses, as he told her he was that unseen
grandpa for whom she had prayed these many years.
The fair Lily looked at him, with all the innocent trust of
childhood, and whispered, “Please, sir, won't you go to see
Mamma?”
“Yes, child-angel, I will go to see your mamma, and you
shall all come and live at Maxwell Grange.”
And so the sweet child was carried home in that handsome
carriage, and the old man raised his Annie, when she would have
knelt at his feet, and whispered, “It is I that should ask you to
forgive, but I will not; I 'll only ask you, darling, if you 'll
come again, and gladden the old man's home?”
And there were tears, and smiles, and joyful kisses, and once
more Annie Herbert's gay laugh echoed through Maxwell Grange;
and little Lily went roaming over its broad halls, in her snow-white
garments, like a beautiful spirit.
O, what a blessing seemed to brighten all their lives! and the
proud old man learnt lessons of wisdom and purity from the little
one whose white arms were wreathed about his neck.
One evening, George and Annie left them together, — the old
man and the beautiful child-angel, — and sought the little study
which had witnessed their first, strangely-spoken vows of love.
There was a bright fire burning, as in the old time, and the
old books were neatly ranged, their gilded lettering glowing in the
fire-light; and still, as then, George Herbert sat in the old study-chair;
but this time he did not put his Annie from him: there
she lay, her head resting on his bosom, peacefully as an infant in
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its mother's arms. They had been speaking of the old time, and
George had been recalling all the fond pride with which he had
watched his bustling little wife in those early days, till a tear
glistened in Annie's eyes, as she answered, “Ah! dearest, I am
happy with you, and Lily, and father, in my dear old home; but
the jewels he has given me are not half so sweet as the roses you
used to twine in my hair; and, amid all my after life, memory
will never sing me a pleasanter tune than those dear old chimes
of our love in a manse.”
-- -- p655-330
THE NEW-YEAR'S NIGHT OF THE UNHAPPY.
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TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF JEAN PAUL RICHTER.
An old man stood in the New Year's midnight, at his window,
and looked with the eye of a long despair up to the immovable,
always blooming sky, and down on the still, pure white earth,
on which now there was no one so joyless and sleepless as he.
Then his grave drew near to him; it was only concealed by the
snow of age, not by the verdure of youth; and he had brought out
of the whole rich life nothing but the errors, sins and sickness, of
an enfeebled body, a desolated soul, a breast full of poisons, and
an old age full of remorse.
His beautiful youthful days came back to him to-day as spectres,
and led him far away back again to the fair morning, when his
father first set him out upon the highway of life, which, to the
right, leads upon the sun-path of virtue, into a wide and quiet land,
full of light and harvests, and full of angels; and which to the
left leads down into the mole-path of vice, into a black cavern,
full of dripping poisons, full of serpents ready to dart upon their
prey, and full of dismal, close exhalations. O! the serpents
hung around his breast, and the poison-drops to his tongue, and he
knew not where he was.
Beside himself, and with unspeakable grief, he cried out to
Heaven: “O, give me youth again! O, Father, set me out once
more upon the highway, that I may choose the other path!”
But his father and his youth were past long ago! He saw ignes
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fatui
dance over the marshes, and go out upon the grave-yard,
and he said, “They are my foolish days!”
He saw a star shoot from heaven, shimmer in its fall, and
vanish on the earth. “That is me!” said his bleeding heart,
and the serpent-fang of remorse dug deeper into the wounds.
His glowing imagination revealed to him tottering sleep-walkers
on the roof; the wind-mill raised its arms, threatening to crush
him; and a mask, which had been left in the empty charnel-house,
by degrees assumed his own features.
Suddenly, in the midst of the struggle, the music of the new
year flowed out of a tower near at hand, like the distant sound
of a church-anthem. His mind became calmer. He looked up
to the horizon, and out over the white earth; and he thought on
the friends of his youth, who, now happier and better than he,
were teachers on the earth, fathers of happy children, and blessed
of men, and he said, “O, I might also have slumbered, with
closed eyes, on this first night of the year, if I had willed it!
O, I might also have been happy, you dear parents, had I fulfilled
your New-Year's wishes and instructions!”
Amidst these feverish reminiscences of his youth, it appeared
to him as if the mask, with his features, stood up in the charnel-house;
and, at last, by means of that superstition which, on New-Year's
eve, sees ghosts and future events, it was changed into a
living youth.
He could look at it no more! He veiled his eyes; a thousand
hot tears streamed dissolving into the snow, and still he sighed,
but very low, beside himself, and grief-stricken, “Come again,
only once, O youth; come again!”
And it came again; for he had only dreamed so bitterly, in
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the New-Year's midnight. He was still a young man; only his
wanderings were no dream. But he thanked God that he, still
young, could turn back from the dark track of vice, and set out
again upon the sunny path of virtue, which leads into the fair
land of harvests.
Turn with him, young reader, if thou standest on his path of
error! This fearful dream will some time become thy reality; but,
if once thou shalt cry, full of anguish, “Come back to me, beautiful
days of youth!” ah, they will come back never again!
FANCIES FOR LOULIE.
-- -- p655-333
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Winsome, fairy, darling child!
Pure of heart and undefiled,
With the rings of sunny hair
Lying on thy forehead fair,
Like the light we see in dreams,
Resting on enchanted streams.
Visions of thy future years,
Shadows from their loves and fears,
Rest upon my trembling soul,
As thou near'st the shining goal,
Where the woman and the child
Blend in girlhood sweet and mild.
Many a streamlet fair and blue,
Many a flower of radiant hue,
Many a magic mountain green,
Many a broad field, lies between
Now and then, sweet child, to thee,
Loulie and her destiny.
Many a love-dream sweet and fair,
Many a rosary of prayer,
Many a broken link and chain,
Rent apart with throbs of pain
(On the road which thou shalt pass)
Gleam like stoles at midnight mass!
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Darling, fairy, sweet Loulie!
Let the future's mystery
Bring no heritage of care
To that brow, so young and fair;
For the angels sentry keep
O'er thy soul's enchanted sleep.
-- -- p655-335
AGNES LEE. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
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CHAPTER I.
I like this strange morning on which I am writing; this sunless,
rainless day; the all gray sky, the phantom wind, stealing
over the hills with its ghostly feet, and now and then stopping to
blow some fearful, shrieking blast. I like it; for it comes to me
like a memorial. I sit still, holding my breath, with my hand
clasped tightly over my eyes, and think of high, fierce tides,
tramping in upon low lee-shores, of alarm-guns sounding among
the breakers at midnight, and the pale moon over head, stretching
out her arms, and fighting fiercely with black, pursuing
clouds.
Some one has said there are moments which command our
lives, — moments, looking back upon which, we can see where a
single half-hour might have changed our destinies. Every one's
life has such points, that rise, pyramid-like, above the dead
level of the years; and I am going back to one, this morning.
You would think me very old, could you see me now. The
smooth gray hair is folded back under my quaker cap, like bands
of silver; and over my face are drawn deep, furrowed lines, the
footprints left by lonesome years in their tireless journeyings. I
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am old, when I count my life by incidents; and yet not so very
old, when I tell it over in years.
I do not know how far back I can remember. Sometimes I
seem to have dim visions of a fair southern home. Bright
flowers seem blooming round me; and southern breezes make
sweet music, touching with their invisible ffngers Æolian harp-strings.
Standing there, the soft eyes of beautiful pictures smile
on me, or the still form of some old marble hunter rises up in
solemn state at my side. It is a pleasant country, though I see
it very dimly through mists of years; and I am not quite sure,
after all, whether it be anything more than a floating island of
fancy. It seems little else, on mornings such as this. I can go
back to it, and bind my brow with its flowers, in the calm, pleasant
days of midsummer, when I sit in my low chair before my
cottage door, and round me the wild birds sing, the summer
flowers blossom, and the sweet south wind lifts lovingly my silver
hair.
But it is different now. This sobbing, lonely November morning,
I see no fair and sunny scenes, no southern palaces, or soft-eyed
pictures, but back to my heart comes the first deep, vivid
memory of my life, stern, crushing, terrible!
It was a strange scene; you may have read of such, but God
grant they may never have dawned on your own life, never have
made your hair stiffen, or chilled the blood in your veins. I was
very small, I know, for I had been playing on the deck of a stately
ship, handed around, baby-like, from one to another. At last I
had been put to bed in my little hammock, and a being fair as
a seraph had bent over me, saying prayers, and Ave Marias.
I had been dreaming, I believe, pleasant, sunny dreams, when
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suddenly a quick grasp woke me. It was the same fair woman,
but now her face was blanched deadly pale. The white women,
whose work it is to bury the dead drowned at sea, could not have
looked more ghastly. She said nothing, but, gathering me up in
her arms, she rushed on deck.
I see it yet distinctly — that fearful scene! The good ship
was plunging like a frightened steed, — madly plunging, rushing
on toward a low lee-shore upon our left.
There, over rocks whose white tops shone up clear and ghastly
in the fitful moonlight, the great waves boiled and surged,
and then retreated, coming up again to hug those frightful, desolate
rocks more madly than before.
The winds howled and shrieked, like so many demons keeping
holiday; and onward toward this terrible shore our ship was
plunging. The moon over head shone out sometimes from thick,
black clouds, like a phantom face, looking down mockingly upon
this war of elements. Anon, the vivid lightnings flashed, and
the thunder sounded its hoarse, muffled dirge-notes; and in the
midst of it all, our vessel, like a prancing steed, was careering
joyously, bounding onward toward death.
There was no boat which could stand, for a moment, the fury
of such a gale. Some of the men launched one, it is true; but
it had scarcely cleared the ship when it went to pieces before
our eyes, and the poor fellows perished.
No, there was no hope, none; the boldest swimmers were
powerless in such a sea, and the grasp of those fiercely-battling
waves was no mother's cherishing love-clasp. I know that fair
woman strained me closely to her breast, as she clung with her
other arm to a rope overhanging the sides of the vessel. I know,
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with my ear close to her lips, I could catch, amid the storm,
solemn words of prayer; then there was a mighty shock, —
a sound, as when many a cannon peals forth its echo-startling
clang of defiance; and after that I know no more.
I seem to have a faint, and yet most terrible vision, of the
moon shining down, brighter than ever, on white, ghastly faces
upturned to her gaze, their long locks dripping with the briny
waves; of the sea subsiding to a dead calm, as if contented
with its prey; but, beyond that fierce, terrible crash, I know
nothing.
My next memory is very different. It is of a fisherman's
hut on the Cornwall shore; a little, smoky, disagreeable place,
where one morning I lifted my head from a couch of sea-weed,
and looked around me. I saw low, smoke-blackened walls, hung
with fishers' nets, seal-skins and dried herring. A man sat by
the drift-wood fire; he had a strange face, in which my riper
judgment can hardly tell whether the good or evil predominated.
It wore an expression of hardy, patient endurance. About the
mouth were the strong lines of physical power, and the thick,
shaggy hair shaded a brow whose solidity and breadth betokened
anything but a simpleton.
I fancy I must have loved power and strength even then, for
I know my childish spirit seemed to recognize far more affinity
with him than with his wife, who was by far the kindest-looking
person of the two.
But, whatever I thought of them, I am sure I must have had
memories of far different scenes; for I well remember that I
resented, as an indignity, my having been brought to that humble
dwelling.
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I was very weak, for I had no sooner completed my survey
of the desolate-looking apartment than I was forced to lay my
head back upon my sea-weed pillow; and it must have been
half an hour before I was able to speak. By this time, the
woman had completed the preparation of breakfast, and approached
me with a porringer of warm goat's milk, and coarse
bread. But I put it haughtily from me, and, rising up in my
bed, I exclaimed,
“I don't want any of your breakfast; and I wish you 'd just
tell me what I 've been brought to this horrid place for?”
“I reckon 't was as kind a thing,” growled the man at the
fire, “to bring you home here, as to ha' left you out o' doors to
die along with that dead woman I found you fastened to, two
weeks agone this mornin'.”
“Dead!” said I; “mamma is n't dead, is she?”
“Wal, I reckon you won't find any on 'em anythin' else but
dead, that was out on the lee-shore that night. They 're all
gone, barrin' you; and we might as well ha' left you to die, if
you can't carry a more civil tongue in your head.”
“Well, go away, please,” said I, more gently to the woman,
who still stood by the bed-side; “I can't eat any breakfast, this
morning.”
“Poor little critter!” said the woman, compassionately; —
“belike she 's lonesome, — you ought not to told her, John;”
and she turned away.
I lay there in a kind of stupor. I was not old enough to
realize how strange was the providence which had preserved
only me, a little, helpless child, out of all that crew of bold,
strong men; not old enough for praise and thankfulness; and I
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was only sensible, as I lay there, still and quiet, with closed eyes,
of a deep, desperate feeling of hate and anger against I knew
not what — the sea, the storm, the ship, almost against the very
people who had died, and left me thus alone in the world.
CHAPTER I.
Mine was surely a strange childhood. I grew up there in
the fisherman's lonely hut, on the Cornwall shore. The fisherman
and his wife had no children, and they loved me, and were
kind to me in their way. The woman soon found that my errant,
wandering spirit could ill brook confinement; and she ceased her
attempts to teach me knitting and net-making, and allowed me
to wander whither I listed, only exacting that I should bring
home at night a certain quantity of sea-moss, which her husband
used to carry for sale to the neighboring market-town, a
distance of some twenty miles.
Perhaps, to one of my temperament, this hardy life was not
without its advantages; at least, it was singularly free from
temptation. No Indian maiden ever led a life freer, or more
tameless. I used to scale cliffs from which the boldest hunter
would have shrunk back appalled, and, standing on their jagged
summits, laugh a defiance to the eagles, and toss back my long,
black hair, with its sea-weed coronet, a princess in my own
right.
Neither the fisherman nor his wife knew how to read, and I
grew up in a like ignorance; and yet, I was by no means devoid
of one kind of education. I could tell where the eagles hatched
and the sea-birds hung their nests; where the tallest trees lifted
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their great arms, praying to the pitiless sky, and where the
storm-winds lashed the waves to wildest fury.
My keen eye could discern in the distance each little cloud
no bigger than a man's hand; and afar off I recognized the
coming spirit of a blast that should be strong to strew the sea
with wrecks.
One night — I must have been about thirteen years old — I
had climbed to the very top of a high cliff, known as the Devil's
Tea-kettle. It was a singular place; steep, pointed, jagged
rocks hemmed in a basin, on whose sandy bed white, shining
pebbles lay bleaching in the sunlight. I had heard terrible
tales of this strange chasm. The peasantry said it was the
brewing-place of the waters of the stream of death, for never
were the waves known to rise high enough to fill the basin, but
that some goodly ship went down in sight of land, with all her
freight of precious souls.
I had never seen the waves boil in the Devil's Tea-kettle, but
I had been told that never had they surged so madly as on that
fearful night when I was dashed upon the lonely shore, and
the storm-spirits clasped hands with the winds, and shouted
forth my mother's requiem.
I think I must have been born in a storm, for they wore to
me the familiar faces of dear old friends. I loved them; and
on this night of which I speak, when I had climbed to the topmost
ledge of these spectral cliffs, I planted there my firm step,
and, looking forth to sea, laughed merrily. And yet a landsman
would have said it bade fair to be a beautiful night. The sea
was very calm — too calm — for it was the lull before the tempest.
The sun was going down into his palace of clouds,
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flinging back over the waters the lengthening robe of his glory; and
over opposite, the moon, like a fair young bride, was climbing up
the east, with a star or two for bride's-maids, going forth to be
wedded to the night.
O, it was a beautiful scene! I have looked on such in later
years, till my heart ached with their quiet beauty. But it ached
not then. I clapped my hands as I looked forth over the waters,
for there, in the far distance, was a little cloud. It was a pretty
thing enough, quite in keeping with the scene; white, and
soft, and fleecy, as an angel's wing. But I recognized it; I
knew it was no seraph coming nearer; but that, as in their
funeral processions at the East, they send far on, in advance,
white-robed maidens, scattering flowers, even so now had the
advancing spirit of the storm, twin-leagued with darkness and
despair, sent forth before his face this peaceful herald. And I
knew from its position, and the rate at which it scudded before
the wind, that there was to be a fearful storm, — no gentle breeze
to rock a child's cradle, but a Euroclydon, to lash the deep sea
into fury.
O, how high my heart swelled as I looked on it, and shouted,
in my glee, that the Devil's Tea-kettle would boil well to-night!
But I think it was not from any native malignity. I desired
not death, but excitement. I wanted a wreck, it is true; but
then I would have braved life and limb to save the lives of its
victims. But the sunset glory faded out from the heavens, the
moon climbed higher, the white cloud widened, and I sprang
down the cliff, and, gathering up my basket of sea-moss, walked
slowly home.
I did not sleep that night. My little room opened out of the
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one where I had first found myself, and which was at once sleeping-room,
kitchen and parlor, for the fisherman and his wife.
About midnight, I heard a sound. It was a signal-gun, — once
and again it boomed over the waters. Hurriedly dressing myself,
I roused the fisherman from his slumbers, and, putting on
a cloak and hood, stole unobserved from the dwelling. My feet
did not pause till I had reached the topmost ledge of the Devil's
Tea-kettle. Merciful Heavens! how the waves seethed and
boiled! What a sight! It frightened even me, who had never
known fear before; and, springing down the rocks, I fled as if
a whole army of fiends were pursuing me.
I hurried along the shore for a few rods, when the light of a
lantern flashed full in my face, and I paused. It was John.
“You here, child?” he said, in a tone which had more of
surprise than anger. I think he was glad to have some human
eyes to gaze on the terrible scene, beside his own. The moon,
which had shone out fitfully as I stood beside the Devil's Tea-kettle,
was now buried beneath billows of heavy, surging clouds.
Only now and then some vivid flash of lightning would show us,
in the distance, a great, black-looking ship, like some fearful
phantom bearing down upon the shore.
At intervals, the signal-guns would boom over the waves
like the sullen roar of some wild animal; or a human voice
would shriek out wildly, hopelessly, for the help which came
not. O, it was a terrible sight to stand there and watch that
mighty ship, hurrying helplessly to its death. I looked till my
soul grew sick — I could look no longer. I sank down upon the
cliff where I was standing, and clasped my hands across my
eyes. I did not see the struggles of the proud ship, but I heard
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the sullen, deafening crash, when she, too, struck upon hidden
rocks, and went down helplessly in sight of land. I heard the
crash, and, putting my fingers in my ears, ran inland, till my
breath was spent.
And then the early summer morning dawned. We had stood
there three hours, though it seemed not as many minutes. So
long had the good ship struggled with the waves, so long her brave
crew died a living death of suspense and anguish. As soon as
the earliest dawn-rays commenced to light my path, I turned my
footsteps homeward; and, at the door of the hut, I met John,
bearing a senseless figure in his arms.
“This is all that's left of 'em, Agnes!” said he, with a sadness
unusual to his tone; and, entering the cabin, he laid his
half-drowned burden upon the sea-weed couch. His wife had
already opened the windows, and lighted the fire; and she
hastened to apply vigorously all her stock of simple restoratives.
Her care was presently rewarded, by seeing the stranger's eyes
unclose, and catching the faint sound of his irregular breathing.
It was several days, however, before he could rise from the
couch where he had been placed. On the morning of the fourth
day, he slowly approached the window, and sat down. “My
friend,” said he to the fisherman, “I owe you already more than
gold can ever pay you! Will you do more for me still? Can
you bring me, from the next post-town, a sheet of paper and some
ink; and will you let me be your guest, till I receive an answer
to the letter which I must write? When it comes, I shall have
gold to reward your care, and strength to proceed on my journey.”
Of course he gained his point, for when did Frederick Hutton
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ever fail so to do? I watched his course after that for years,
and I never knew him fail to accomplish whatever he undertook.
The letter was written and sent, and, during the two months
which glided away before its answer came, Frederick Hutton was
my constant companion in all my rambles. He wanted a guide,
and took me in the absence of a better; quite careless as to the
effects such an association might produce upon my mind. And
yet, to do him justice, he was really very good-natured; and
when he found out, a week after our acquaintance began, that I
could not read, he set himself to work in earnest, to supply the
deficiency. I loved my teacher, and my progress was rapid.
I suppose Frederick Hutton would as soon have thought of
winning the fisherman himself to love him, as me, the rough,
wild-natured child of his adoption. But I have been told, by
physiognomical connoisseurs, that half the blood in my veins is
Spanish; and I, uncultivated child of thirteen as I was, loved
the handsome young Englishman with a wilder devotion than
many a grown woman is capable of. O, how I loved him!
He told me nothing of his personal history, but years afterwards
I learned that he was very rich and noble. For a long
time I was unconscious of the nature of my own love for him,
until, one afternoon, when we were walking, his own words revealed
it to me.
“So they call you Agnes Lee, do they?” he asked, pulling
me down on a rock beside him, and leisurely drawing my long
hair through his fingers. “How, in the world, came you by such
a romantic name?”
“I don't know what romantic means, sir,” I answered, simply;
“but they call me Agnes Lee, because on St. Agnes' night I was
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cast upon the lee-shore in a terrible storm, and they had n't any
other name for me?”
“Ho! that 's it, is it? Quite a good account! You must have
been born for telling stories. Well, I 've a mind to amuse myself,
now, telling you one. Did you ever hear about love? But
of course you never did, you who never saw a handsome man in
your life.”
“Except you, sir,” said I, looking admiringly into his bold, handsome
face. His laughing blue eyes twinkled with fun, in appreciation
of the honestly-given compliment; and then he proceeded
to give me my first lesson of that love, stronger than life, and
more powerful than death. As he described its workings, my
cheek flushed crimson, for I knew that even so I loved him. At
last he grew weary of me, or of his subject, and, drawing a book
from his pocket (he had procured several from the next market-town,
in order to teach me to read), he bade me run away for
a while to play, and come again when I got tired.
Slowly I sauntered onward, with one remark which he had
made sounding in my ears. He had said, “Love seeks beauty as
naturally as the flowers the sunlight!”
Was I beautiful? My whole mind and soul were full of the
question. At last I remembered a sunny pool of clear, fresh
water, where I could see myself as in a mirror. I had often
looked there, to adjust my sea-weed wreaths; but I had never
noticed my face, for never, until this afternoon, had the question
suggested itself, whether I was beautiful. Cautiously I crept to
the brink, and, many times drawing back in fear, I at length
looked in. I unbound my tresses, and they floated almost to my
feet, long, heavy, and black as night. Set in them, as in a frame,
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a face looked out, — a childish, sunburned face. There were eyes
there like a sloe's, large, black, and melting, and anon flashing
fire. I thought they might be beautiful, but I was not sure. As
to the features, I was not very well competent to judge. I know
now that they were regular enough for a sculptor's model; then
I only knew that Frederick Hutton was handsome — my face
was not like Frederick Hutton's; therefore I thought I must be
homely. But I was not satisfied. I stole lingeringly back to my
companion, and found him, in turn, tired of his book, and ready
to amuse himself with me. “Please, sir, may I ask you a question?”
I inquired, very timidly.
“Why, yes, Miss Agnes Lee, since you have never in the
world done such a thing, I rather think you may.”
“Well, sir, am I handsome?”
Frederick laughed long and loudly, ere he replied,
“Well, you genuine descendant of Mother Eve, you precious
little specimen of feminine humanity, where you picked up your
vanity, nested here on the lee-shore, like a sea-gull, I don't know;
but go and stand there in the sunshine, and I 'll answer you.
Shake down your long, black hair, all about you, gypsy, — there,
that 's right, — now stand still!”
I should think I stood still there a minute and a half, waiting
for him to make his decision. I really suffered while his eyes
were so bent upon me. At last, his fixed, steady look was
getting to be torture, and it was an inconceivable relief when he
made answer,
“Well, Aggie, it took me some time to decide, did n't it?
No, you are not handsome yet, Aggie. You are brown as a
Malay, and there 's something almost savage in your fierce, black
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eyes. But your features are good enough, your hair is long and
thick; and, if it were taken care of, and were n't sunburnt, it
might be magnificent. As it is, you 're rather homely; but, if
some people had you, you might be made a very handsome
woman.”
Strange as it may seem, dearly as I loved him, this reply gave
me pleasure, instead of pain; though I well knew, had he loved
me, he never would have made it. But I don't think I wanted
him to love me then. He had said I had the material for a
handsome woman, and that was all I wanted to know. My
heart beat quicker, with a sense of power. I said that I would
make him know I was beautiful, some time; that, some other
day, I would make his proud heart quicken; and with this hope
for the future I was quite content.
One day, soon after, we were walking together over the rough
rocks bordering the shore. I remember a sense of life swelled
high and exultant in my heart; and I bounded over the steepest
ledges, hardly seeming to touch them, or paused to balance
myself and turn around on their sharpest points.
“Come down here, Agnes Lee,” said Frederick Hutton's voice,
at length; and, in an instant, I was by his side.
“I 've been thinking,” he remarked, carelessly binding up some
strands of sea-weed, “I 've been thinking that you would make a
capital ballet-dancer.” And then he proceeded, in answer to my
eager inquiries, to explain to me the nature of theatrical performances
in general, and ballet-dancing in particular.
“It 's a bad life,” he concluded, “and I would n't advise you
to try it. But, after all, I don't know but you 'd be better
off there than here. You do very well here now, but what 'll
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become of you when you get old? If you could get to be primadonna,
you could make a fortune, if you would only keep it. Let
me tell you one thing, Agnes: some people think all dancing-girls
are wicked; but I tell you it is the soul governs the profession,
not the profession the soul; and you could be as good and pure
on the boards of the Royal Theatre as in the Hermitage of
Lough Derg.”
It was but a few days after this last conversation when the
answers to Frederic Hutton's letters came; and, having liberally
rewarded the honest fisherman's hospitality, he bade farewell
to the lee-shore of Cornwall. It was a beautiful morning
in the early autumn, and I went with him a mile or two on
his journey. O, how gladly the waves danced, and the sun
shone! and I could see his heart was dancing too. As for me,
I was not glad, nor yet very sorry; for my whole heart was
filled with a strong under-lying purpose. Pausing, at length, he
let go my hand.
“There, Agnes, you must go home now,” he said; “good-by,
my child;” and, taking a guinea from his pocket, he added,
“take that, Aggie; it 's the best thing I 've got to give you to
remember me by.”
“Will you just please to make a round hole in it, and mark
an F. on it somewhere?” I pleadingly inquired.
“Well, here 's one with a hole in it; that will do — and
there,” and, sitting down, he marked “F. H.” in bold, distinct
characters. “There, little one, good-by, now,” and, drawing me
to him he kissed me. It was the first time he had ever done
so — the first kiss man had ever left upon my lips; and it lingered
there for weeks, and its memory had power to thrill me
for many a year.
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CHAPTER III.
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Six months after this, I woke up, one spring morning, and
found myself in London. I do not know how I got there;
that is, even to this day, I can hardly understand the perseverance
with which I, an unprotected child, walked the whole
distance, seeking food and lodging of whoever had charity
enough to shelter me. Providence must have guided me, and I
think so, more than ever, when I recall a singular incident which
befell me on my arrival.
It was afternoon when I entered the great whirlpool of London.
Half-frightened by the crowded streets, I had somehow
made my way to the Park, and, for almost the first time in my
life, I sat there crying. At last I was roused from my sorrowful
abstraction by a gentle touch and a kind voice; and, looking
up, I met the glance of a middle-aged gentleman, clad in a quiet
citizen's suit of black. There needed but one look at his
kindly face to assure me I could trust him; and his question,
“What is your name, my child, and why are you here alone?”
was immediately followed by my relating to him my whole history,
save only that portion which was connected with my love
for Frederic Hutton.
“So you 've come all alone to this far-off London, to learn
to be a ballet-dancer?” he said, kindly. “I must say it is
a very strange undertaking. The chances that you will succeed
are hardly one in ten thousand. However, you could
not have fallen upon a better friend. I am a theatre-manager
myself, and I 'll try you; and, if I find you can do anything, I
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will take you to a friend of mine in Paris, where I am going on
business, and you shall be educated for the stage.”
Thus it was, reader, that my first night in London was passed
in a respectable lodging-house; and I woke up in the morning
from peaceful dreams under the mighty shadow of St. Paul's.
My protector proceeded, soon after I arose, to put me through a
trial-course of calisthenics; and I suppose the result was satisfactory,
for a dress-maker was sent for, and requested to prepare
me for a journey to France, and a residence at l'école de
theatre.
Two years had passed; I was now fifteen. They had been
two of the happiest of my life. True, at first confinement had
been irksome. I had missed the wild, wailing, solitary sea, and
the free range of rocky shore. But my cherished purpose was
every day drawing nearer its accomplishment. My kind protector
had visited me several times, when business called him to
France; and it would have done your heart good to see his kind,
satisfied smile, when he received a favorable report of my progress.
It had been discovered, in the course of my instructions,
that I had a voice of unequalled power and pathos, and that I
should be able to succeed as a cantatrice with even less trouble
than as a danseuse; but I had marked out my own course. I
could not consecrate every gift to the insatiable spirit of the
stage. I must retain some power not thus prostituted, to make
beautiful my private life. However, I cultivated my voice most
assiduously, and was, in a short time, pronounced the best singer
in l'école.
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There were, in the same institution, a large number of young
girls, more or less gifted, preparing for the stage; but among
them all, I had but one friend, — Inez Vaughan. She has, since
then, under another name, made the world's heart throb strangely.
She flashed, comet-like, upon the age, the very impersonation
of the genius of tragedy. The great world held its breath to
listen; but, comet-like, she was struck down suddenly, and the
Provence roses bloom upon her grave.
I could easily discern that there were no others whose acquaintance
would not rather retard the accomplishment of my
great end; but Inez and I became friends, in that word's truest
sense. We studied and read together, and she would sit beside
me, her dark eyes flashing like lighted coals, while I told her
strange, wild tales of the rocky shore, and the surging, restless
sea.
But, as I was saying, I was fifteen. My two years' study had
been completed, and the night was appointed on which I was to
make my début at the Royal Theatre. I had grown very beautiful;
no one who had known me as the romping child of
the fisherman's hut would have recognized me now. My hair
was long, and heavy, and luxuriant as ever; but now it was satin-smooth,
and from its wavy folds seemed to flash sparks of light.
My complexion, by proper care, had cleared up wonderfully;
now it was like the sunny side of a ripe peach, only deepening in
the cheeks to a richer crimson than peaches ever wore. The eyes
were the same, — large, black, and strangely lustrous, — and the
wan, thin figure of the child had rounded in the girl to a symmetry
as perfect as it was stately. Yes, I was very beautiful.
I arrayed myself for the occasion in a crimson satin, heavily
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wrought with pearls. Around my neck and arms were chains of
pearls and rubies, fantastically twisted together, fastened with
gold clasps, in which a single diamond flashed like a burning
star. Strings of the same jewels flashed among the heavy bands
of my braided hair, and I almost started back in wonder as I
glanced at my full-length reflection in the green-room mirror, it
seemed so like some old picture, with its strangely vivid lights
and shades.
That night my triumph was complete. The whole house rang
with applause, and many of the bouquets thrown at my feet were
knotted with jewels. I welcomed this success, for it was one
stepping-stone the more toward my great end. O, how I wished
he had been there to see it! But never once had my eyes rested
on him since we parted in the sunshine on the desolate Cornwall
shore.
All that season I continued to draw crowded houses, and on
my last night the theatre was filled to overflowing. I had never
looked better. My costume was one just calculated to set off my
dark, oriental beauty, and it was in full glow. Half an hour
had passed, when a new arrival, in one of the front boxes, seemed
to create a sensation. I glanced that way, and my eyes met
the most perfect vision of feminine loveliness on which they had
ever rested.
Her style of beauty was totally different from mine; and I
looked on her, at first, with an artist's admiration, unmingled with
envy or jealousy. She wore a garnet-colored velvet cloak, lined
with ermine; but, as she entered the box, it fell from her neck,
revealing shoulders white as Caucasian snow-banks, and moulded
as purely as a Grecian statue. Her hair was of a bright gold tint,
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and the heavy ringlets were gathered at the neck in a net-work
of pearls, from which one or two stray tresses had escaped, and
floated down over her neck and bosom. Her robe was of azure
satin, frosted with pearls; and her fan was gorgeous with the
plumage of tropical birds. Her eyes were a deep, tranquil blue,
large, and strangely bright; and her fair complexion, pure and
clear as marble, was deepened in the cheeks with a just-perceptible
tint of rose.
My eye had taken in all this at one glance. She seemed to
me like the actual presence of one of those beautiful pictures before
which I had stood with filling eyes in the gallery of the
Louvre, and from my heart I blessed her for her loveliness, as
I turned to gaze upon her companion.
Saint Agnes! patron saint of mine! why was it that in that
instant a deep and bitter hatred for that beautiful being crept
into my heart? Her companion was Frederick Hutton! It was
his hand that so carefully adjusted the folds of her cloak, his
eye that watched so eagerly her every look.
I danced that night as I had never danced before. Deafening
roars of applause fairly shook the building to its centre: but, of
all that gorgeous crowd, I saw but one. It was a full half-hour
before he seemed even to notice me, and then he carelessly turned
his opera-glass toward the stage.
I danced to him, at him — what you will; at least, I danced
for his eyes only. And I had the satisfaction of seeing him perfectly
absorbed, entranced, and apparently quite forgetful of
the presence of his companion. That was my last opera in
the season, and a few months afterwards I was in London, pleasantly
established in fashionable apartments at the West End.
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“Agnes,” said my guardian (for so I had learned to call my
fatherly protector), entering my room, one morning, “there are
yet six weeks before your first engagement here commences.
What do you say to a masquerade, in the mean time? I
have plenty of relatives among the West-End fashionables, and
I should find no difficulty in having you introduced as Miss Agnes
Lee, in circles where no one would ever dream of Viola the
ballet-dancer being admitted. Will you go?”
While he spoke, an intense longing took possession of my
heart to gaze face to face on that great world of which I had
heard so much. True, I had seen people enough. I had danced
to crowded audiences, — but of fashionable society I was as
ignorant as a child. But I presume very little of my enthusiasm
appeared in my manner, as I lifted my eyes, and said, quietly,
“Yes, guardian, I will go.”
“Well, I thought so; it 's so like girls to want to see the
world! So I 've made arrangements accordingly, and I 've two
invitations for you, from two very fashionable ladies, who are
under some obligations to me. Here is one from Mrs. Somerby,
to her estate, `The Grange,' a little out of town. You 'd meet
there a half-score of ladies, beside Simmons, and Falconbrace,
and a dozen other young men who would fall in love with you.
You 'd have to look out for your own heart, because their cards
would be played out as soon as they knew your true position.”
“Well, sir, where is the other one?”
“That? O, that 's further out of town — to the Heronry, the
estate of Mrs. Somerville Sikes, and you would n't find anybody
there to fall in love with. There 'll be one man of mark there,
though, — Fred Hutton; but Lady Clara Emerson will be there,
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also, and they 've been reported engaged so many times, I think
there must be something in it.”
Frederick Hutton! O, how the very mention of his name
thrilled me! Could it be? Was I indeed to see him, — to be
in the same house with him once more? My heart fluttered like
a caged bird, but my nerves were strong, and my self-command
perfect; so I answered, carelessly,
“Well, sir, I believe I 'll choose the Heronry; you know
there 's no knowing what might become of my heart at the other
place.”
My guardian laughed, and, patting my cheek pleasantly, went
out to hunt me up a dressing-maid, and provide me with a suitable
wardrobe.
The next day, at three in the afternoon, I was whirled up the
spacious carriage-drive of the Heronry, and introduced to the
stately Mrs. Somerville Sikes. She was a lady of, I should
think, about forty, extremely well preserved, and very elegantly
dressed. There was an air of patrician ease and gracefulness
about her, such as I had never before observed in any lady with
whom I had been thrown in contact.
She welcomed me cordially, and went up stairs with me to
my own room; then, kissing me, she remarked, “I will send your
maid to you, my dear; you will have just time to dress for
dinner.” O, what would I not have given to have dared to
inquire if Frederick Hutton had arrived! But I could not trust
myself to mention his name, and I threw myself in an easy-chair,
and sent my thoughts backward with memory, while my maid
unbound the long tresses of my hair.
When, at last, its arrangement was completed, I arrayed
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myself, with trembling fingers, in a richly-wrought India muslin.
Nothing could have exceeded the simplicity of my attire. The
white dress was without ornament, and I wore not a single jewel,
with only a sprig of cape-jasmine in the dark folds of my hair.
I turned to the mirror, as I was drawing on my gloves, and saw
that, though I had many times been more dazzlingly brilliant, I
had never looked more beautiful; and yet my step faltered as I
entered the drawing-room.
Mrs. Sikes advanced to meet me, and I was formally presented
to the company; but my eye took in but two faces, my ear
caught but two names. Clara Emerson was there, with her face
so strangely fair in its quiet beauty, and her slender figure robed
in azure silk. A wreath of white buds nestled in her golden
curls, and she looked even more lovely than when I had first
seen her. Beside her sat Frederick Hutton. His was truly the
handsomest face my eyes ever rested on. He was, indeed,
as my guardian had said, a man of mark; with his Apollo
Belvidere figure, his hyacinthine locks, and his laughing dark-blue
eyes. The Lady Clara looked up, smiled, and spoke
very sweetly; but Frederick seemed so intent on his conversation
with her, that he merely noticed me by a bow. A moment after,
however, as Mrs. Sikes repeated my name, “Miss Agnes Lee,”
he paused in his conversation, and I knew, by his puzzled face,
he was remembering that he had heard that name before; but he
could not recall the time, and I felt relieved. But, even if he
had, he would hardly have associated the fisher-girl of the Corn-wall
lee-shore with the very different looking young lady presented
to him in Mrs. Sikes' drawing-room.
He sat opposite to me at dinner, but his attention was wholly
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engrossed by his companion. Once, indeed, he casually glanced
at me, and then I heard him remarking to Lady Clara that
“Miss Lee was magnificently handsome;” and then he added,
“but her style is so different from yours, ma belle Clara,” in a
tone which left the listener little room for conjecture as to which
style he preferred.
During the evening I had been making painful efforts to be
agreeable to some dowager countesses, until I was tired; when,
much to my delight, my task was interrupted by a call for music,
and the Lady Clara Emerson was led to the piano. Her performance
was mediocre, perhaps a trifle better than that of
boarding-school misses in general. She affected opera airs, for
the most part, and, though Frederick Hutton leaned over her, and
turned her music, I could see he was neither interested nor animated;
and yet I knew that music was his passion. At last
Lady Clara arose from the instrument.
“Perhaps Miss Lee will favor us,” suggested Mrs. Sikes; and
Frederick Hutton came to my side, to lead me to the instrument.
His hand just touched mine as I took my seat, and, strong as
my nerves were, it thrilled me strangely. I sang an old Scotch
ballad of hopeless love, — a song that required power and pathos,—
and I sang it well.
I dared not glance at Frederick, but I could hear his quickened
breathing, I could almost seem to feel his attitude of rapt
attention; and I knew he recognized my power. For a week
after that he scarcely spoke to me. His attention was still
absorbed by the beautiful Clara; and yet, sometimes, when he
was sitting by her side, I would raise my eyes from my embroidery,
and meet a glance from the distant corner where they were
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sitting, that would cause my cheek to crimson beneath my drooping
lashes. When I sang, Frederick never came near me; but
I knew he listened, and that, let him struggle as he would, one
day my purpose would meet its accomplishment.
CHAPTER IV.
The human will is strong, stronger than life, and even death
will not triumph over it utterly! I wonder whether man or
woman ever yet devoted themselves, with all their energies, to
the accomplishment of a favorite purpose, without succeeding.
At least, success is the rule, and failure the exception.
Time passed on, and Frederick Hutton gradually changed in
his deportment. His attentions to the beautiful Clara became
a shade or two less engrossing, and very often he would lead me
to the piano, and hang over me during my performance, with his
whole soul looking out of his dark eyes. The Lady Clara must
have noticed it, and I think she loved him; but her disposition
was a singular one. She was too proudly indolent to struggle
for the possession of anything. She dressed as becomingly,
talked as prettily, and smiled as sweetly, as ever. When Frederick
Hutton sat down beside her, she welcomed him with a look
that had not the slightest shade of reproach in it; and when he
was away, she seemed totally unconscious of his desertion. No
battery of attractions could have been half so effective as this
calm, indifferent dignity. I could not have had a more powerful
adversary to contend with. Sometimes Frederick would watch
her for a long time, and then turn away, with just the queerest
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kind of smile about his lips, and talk to me more assiduously
than ever.
One night, I was walking in the shrubbery. It was the rich,
lustrous prime of the summer; the sun had gone down in his
glory, and the twilight hours had gathered up the gorgeous
clouds, like drapery of kings. It was evening; the moon, like
a fair queen, sat on her silver throne, among her parliament of
stars. I had gone out alone, and, with a hurried step, was
walking to and fro beneath the larches, keeping time to painful
thoughts. At last my step grew slower, and my mood changed.
I went down with memory, searching for hidden treasures
along the paths of the past; and tears came to my eyes, as
I remembered the free, happy, gypsy-like life I had led, before
Frederick Hutton came to Cornwall.
“Better, O, how far better off was I then than now!” said
my throbbing heart, beating painfully against my velvet robe.
“Alas! for I am weary,” said my lips aloud; and, at that
moment, a voice, whose faintest tone could have almost called
me from life to death, said, very gently,
“Agnes — Miss Lee — am I intruding?”
I turned, and welcomed him, with the tears still heavy on my
lashes, and the shadow heavier on my heart.
“You are sad, Agnes,” he said, sorrowfully, taking my hand
in his, as soothingly as one would pet a weary infant. “Agnes,
dear, beautiful Agnes, I love you! I never said those words
before, Agnes, to any woman, not even to Clara Emerson;
though long ago the great world voted us engaged. You will
understand them, — you will believe them. I did not mean
to love you, Agnes, — I closed my eyes against your beauty,
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— I tried to shut my heart against the melody of your voice;
but you have triumphed. See, I am at your feet! Won't you,
can't you love me, my Agnes?”
But I did not speak; I could not. The hope of a lifetime
had met its fulfilment when I heard him say those words, and I
could not answer him.
“O, Agnes, Agnes!” he cried, beseechingly, “only answer
me! only say, `Frederick, I love you!'”
And, clearing my voice, and drawing my figure to its fullest
height, I stood there in the moonlight, under the larches, and
answered him,
“Frederick Hutton, I love you with my whole soul, as I have
loved you for years. I am yours, and I will be yours, and no
other man's, till I die!”
In his excitement he did not notice that I had said “for
years;” and, standing by my side, he clasped me to his heart,
whispering, “My Agnes, — my wife!”
For one moment, sick and faint with joy, I suffered my head
to lie upon his breast; and then I withdrew from his arms, and
said, firmly, “No, Frederick Hutton, not your wife; and, if you
knew me, you would sooner die than call me so. You know not
who or what I am!”
“And care not, Agnes, so that you will let me call you mine.
Nay, Agnes, do not think so meanly of me. I care not for
wealth or rank; — I know that I love you, and that is all I ask
to know.”
I am very strong-willed, naturally, but I could not summon
strength or courage to dash, with my own hands, that blessed
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night, the cup of joy from my lips; and I answered him, resolutely,
“To-night, Frederick, I will tell you nothing. Meet me here
at sunrise, to-morrow morning, and I will tell you what you little
dream. I am going in, now.”
Once more I passively suffered him to fold me to his heart;
for the second time in his life his lips touched mine, and then,
gliding from his arms, I reëntered the Heronry. That evening
I was happy. I resolutely closed my eyes against the shadows
that hung around the morrow, and opened my heart to the joy-touches
of the present. He never left my side, and, when I
sang, he watched me with his dark eyes beaming through tears.
The next morning arose, fair and calm. I dressed myself
quickly, and hastened to the trysting-place. Frederick was there
before me. What a joyousness there was in his greeting!
Surely I must wait yet longer, ere I could summon courage to
freeze the smile on his lips. Once more I yielded my hand to
his clasp, and wandered along with him underneath the larches.
The sun was just rising. The tree-tops glowed like golden
arrows, pointed with diamonds; the long grass, knotted together,
shone like a fairy tracery of brilliants, and over all the sunshine
lay, broad and fair, — the very smile of the gods. Its
glad beams rested like a blessing on Frederick Hutton's hair,
and the whole world seemed to be dressed in holiday robes,
as if for a rejoicing. And yet, amid all that beauty, and glory,
and happiness, I walked on by his side, a crushed, downcast,
miserable woman, with a confession trembling on my lips which
would blot out from my own life all the sunlight, and send one
forth, dearer than my life, out into the world, a heart-broken,
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hopelessly wretched man. I could not look at him, — I could
scarcely breathe. At last, I could walk no further. I leaned
against one of the larches; I stood there, and lifted up my
pallid, woful face, in the light of heaven's free sunshine.
Frederick turned and looked at me, with a vague and nameless
terror in his gaze, and then he faltered, “Agnes, my Agnes,
what is it?”
“Listen, Frederick Hutton, and I will tell you,” I answered,
and my voice was strangely calm. “You remember the fisherman's
hut, on the Cornwall lee-shore, and the wild, rude child
whom you taught to read? And you remember this!” and I
drew from my bosom, where I had always worn it, the guinea
he had given me when we parted. He took it in his hand, and
looked at it.
“Yes, I remember, Agnes; but what of that? Go on, —
how came you by this?”
“You gave it to me, sir; for I am that lowly child. Would
you call me wife, now?”
Brave, noble heart! I could see the struggle ere he answered;
but his love triumphed.
“Yes, Agnes, I would call you wife, even now. It was your
misfortune to have been cast upon the lee-shore; so it was mine.
Shall I shut you out of my heart because you stayed there a
longer time, my Agnes?”
O, I had hoped he would have spared me that last trial; but
no, I must drain the bitter potion to the dregs, and so I did.
“No, Frederick Hutton! Not your Agnes! I will never be
your wife! You saw me upon the stage at Paris; for, listen,
Frederick, — I am Viola, the dancing-girl!”
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“O, God! O, God!” moaned that strong man, weeping like
a child. “Spare me, for this is bitter!”
I knew then, as I had known before, that he was lost to me
forever. I had willed that he should love me, and he did love
me. Perhaps I might have been his wife, had I willed that also;
but I would not. Even had he wished it, out of the might of
his great love, still would I have refused; for I loved him too
well, too unselfishly, ever to couple his proud name with disgrace.
At last, he drew me within his arms once more.
“Agnes,” he said, “my own, my beautiful! — God knows I
would have gone down gladly to my death, rather than live and
know that fate had put this stern and terrible barrier between
us. O, may Heaven bless thee, Agnes, and save thee from grief
like mine!” and down, over my face, fell, like rain, the bitter,
scalding tears of that proud man's sorrow.
That day, I left the Heronry. The purpose to which I had
vowed my life was accomplished, and even in the hour of its accomplishment
its curse came with it. Better far that I had
died, than brought such sorrow to him, so noble, so dear. And
yet I danced that winter better than ever. The smile that
curled my lips was as bright; the bloom died not out from my
cheeks, nor the light from my eyes. Still the world's homage
fell upon my ear, and even the noble and the gifted knelt at the
feet of the beautiful dancing-girl. Very often the Lady Clara
Emerson was among the spectators; but I never knew whether
she recognized in Viola the Miss Lee she had met at the Heronry.
I thought her cheek was a little paler than of old; and somehow
the old hatred toward her crept out of my heart, and into
its place stole a gentle sympathy. I heard of Frederick Hutton
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upon the continent, and, amid all my heart-poverty and wretchedness,
my life had one crowning glory — I knew he loved me!
CHAPTER V.
It was toward the close of the second winter after I had
parted with him at the Heronry. I was no longer a ballet-dancer.
With the departure of him I loved, came a full conviction
that hereafter I had no private life to make rich, — that I
must give all to the world. I had commenced to sing, and I was
now prima donna of her Majesty's theatre.
It was almost the last night of the season. I had gone to the
green-room with a heavy weight upon my heart; but I shook
it off, and perhaps sang even better than usual. At last the
audience dispersed, and, going down by the private entrance, I
stepped into my carriage; but, seeing the outline of a man's form
upon the seat, I was about to spring back, and summon my servants
to my assistance, when a voice I had heard in the dreams
of many a night whispered, “Agnes!” I called “Home!” to
my coachman, and sat down. As the carriage turned, the gaslight
flashed full in my companion's face. I could scarcely restrain
a shriek of surprise. Frederick Hutton had changed so,
one would hardly recognize him.
“You are surprised, Agnes,” he said, gently, “at the work
trouble has done. Never mind, — I shall only be at rest the sooner.
I don't know what made me come to seek you, Agnes, this night,
of all others. I am to be married to-morrow. I came home, and
found that Clara had suffered terribly. She did not know that I
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had ever loved another; but my long-continued attentions to her
had won her heart, and, upon my desertion, the whole joy and
hope of her life seemed to pass away. I was too wretched myself
to wish to be the instrument of like misery to another. My heart
smote me when I looked upon her pale face, and I resolved to
make what reparation I could, by giving her my hand and what
of life remained.”
He paused, but I felt that my voice was full of tears; I said
nothing, and he continued, “Agnes, I know your strength of love;
but your frame is strong, too; perhaps you will suffer more than
I, but you will live longer. I want you to promise me something,
will you? I will send for you when I am dying, and I want you
to come. Will you come, Agnes, wherever you are? Will you
promise me to come?” And, putting my hand in his, I answered
“I will come!” and it was to both our souls as if an oath had
been spoken.
I saw Frederick Hutton once more. Three years had passed,
and I was rich. I had left the stage, and was residing on
my own estate, a lovely villa in the south of France. I was
scarcely more than twenty, and still beautiful, though trouble
had wrought many a thread of silver in my hair. I think
my taste must have been tropical; for you might have fancied
my boudoir the abode of a Sultana. A fountain of perfumed
waters danced and sparkled in its marble basin, in the centre.
A glass door opened into a small but choice conservatory, where
grew the Indian aloe, with its broad green leaves; and gay
tropical birds plumed their wings on the whispering boughs of
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the Eastern palm. Tiny, graceful little streams flowed among
thick, mossy grass; and beneath the Indian trees, half hidden in
the foliage, stood groups of marble statuary, that you might have
dreamed were Fauns and Hamadryads, the guardian spirits of
the scene. Around the walls of my favorite room I had hung a
few pictures, small, but choice; they were mostly woodland landscapes,
with here and there one of Claude Lorraine's Italian
sunsets, or a head by Perugino. On the floor were rich, heavy
mattings, from the far-famed looms of the Indies; and lounges
and cushions of Genoa velvet, in crimson and purple, were scattered,
with lavish prodigality, around. On one of these I lay
reading, and listlessly winding around my fingers my unbound
hair, when my favorite waiting-maid, entering the apartment,
handed me a letter. I recognized the hand-writing, and my
fingers trembled as I broke the seal. It was long, and closely-written;
but I will copy it all here. It ran thus:
“Agnes, my Soul's own Agnes: —
“Many months have passed since last we met. Summers and
winters have been braided into years, and still on my heart is
your name written; not one hieroglyph that you traced there
has been obliterated. Heart and soul I am, what I always have
been, yours! I married Clara the day succeeding our last meeting,
and I love her very much. Can you reconcile this with what I
have just written? I am yours, as I said; you, even you, my
Agnes, are more to me than all the rest of earth; but it is much
to feel we can make another human being entirely happy.
“I told you Clara was sorrow-struck and drooping. Well,
after our marriage, she brightened up in my presence, as a
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wood-flower, beaten down by the wind and rain, but yet not crushed,
revives in the calm glow of the sunshine. Soon she regained
her health, and I believe she grew dear to me as a sister.
My own health was failing even then, and for many weeks I was
prostrated by a low, nervous fever. During all that time, she
was so devoted in her attentions, so patient in her tireless vigils,
you would have thought her some angel sent from heaven to guard
me. And yet, Agnes, through it all, grateful as my heart was
to her, it never beat with a single throb that was not faithful to
you. I loved you, — you only, you always.
“For a time after my fever, I seemed to be recovering; but
the cold weather brought increasing debility, and I was ordered
to Italy. Of course, Clara was my companion. I don't know
why it was, but even these genial skies could do little for a malady
which was not of the flesh; and yet, more and more I grew
in love with Italy. I used to sit and dream for hours on the
banks of the silvery Arno, trying to people the fair land with its
old-time deities; but, somehow, every sylph used to wear your
face. I wonder if it was sin thus to worship you? I could not
help it, and I believe God has forgiven me. And this brings me
to something I must tell you; it took place last summer. I had
been very ill, and was just able to go out of doors. I sat alone
(for I had sent Clara away from me), feeling miserable and despondent.
I thought of you, and, O! Agnes, I cannot tell you
how my soul longed and pined for you. I knew it would be sin
to see you then, but I remembered your promise to come to me
at my dying hour; and wickedly I knelt down before God,
and my heart uttered a wail, a cry, an earnest prayer for
death! I longed for it, Agnes; for I felt that thus only
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could I gaze again on my heart's treasure; and yet, when I
had uttered the words, I was frightened at their terrible meaning,
and I grew still, and held my breath. I am not superstitious,
Agnes; I am a Protestant, and do not believe in miracles,
or visions; but I know I heard a voice then, and it was no human
voice; it said, `Come unto me, all ye that are weary and
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest!' There was a struggle
in my soul, and then once again I prayed, and this time the
words of my prayer were, `Thy will be done!' And then
unto my soul there came a holy peace and calm.
“Since then I have longed for you, Agnes, as I sat under the
orange-trees; but it has not been that I might fold you in the
arms of earthly love — O no! for I knew I was a dying man; —
but that I might take your hand in mine, and point you to
that other land, where never more will the white day wrap her
robe about her, and go mournfully down the sunset slopes, trembling
to her death. You must meet me there, Agnes, where
there is no need of the sun by day, or the moon by night. —
“Agnes, it is weeks since I wrote the above. I was at Genoa
then; you will see, by the post-mark, I am at Florence now. I
have a mission for you, my Agnes; come quickly, and you will
find me here. I was taken very ill at Genoa; but I travelled
here by easy stages, and now I am writing, propped up by pillows,
to summon you to my dying bed. Do not start, Agnes, or
sigh, or weep! I am a happy man. I am going home, where
there will be no more sickness nor sorrow, — home to a friend
whom I know, a Redeemer whom I trust. You must meet me
there, Agnes; I shall wait for you, and you must come. But you
will see me here first, you will come to me immediately; for you
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have vowed to stand by my dying bed. My soul will wait for
you, — I shall not die till you are here! Come, then, quickly,
for I am in haste to be gone!
“I said I had a mission for you. I give Clara to your care.
She was an orphan when I married her, and she has no one left
to care for her. She is a good, gentle little thing, but not a
strong woman, like you. You can guide her, you can care for
her; for I know you have left the stage. You will promise to
stay with her as long as she shall need your care. She knows
but little of our past; nothing, save that you are dear to me,
and I have sent for you. God in heaven bless you! Agnes,
not of my claiming, but of my loving, come quickly!
“Frederick Hutton.”
Two days more, and I stepped from my travelling-carriage at
the door of a beautiful Italian villa. In the faint glimpse I had
as I hurried up the steps, it seemed like an earthly Paradise. An
English housekeeper met me at the door.
“You have been expected, ma'am,” she remarked; “my
master is just alive!”
And there, in that pleasantly-furnished room in the Italian
villa, I saw Frederick Hutton once more, and for the last time.
He was handsomer than ever, but his face wore the beauty of an
angel. His large eyes were unearthly in their brightness, and
on his forehead sat a radiance as of heavenly glory.
His whole face kindled as he saw me, and a smile of welcome
played around his lips. He stretched forth his hand:
“You are in time, Agnes,” he said; “I knew you would be;
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I was waiting for you. Will you care for her?” and, with his
thin finger, he pointed to Clara, who was kneeling, in a stupor
of grief, at the bed's foot.
“Yes, Frederick,” I answered, with faltering voice and filling
eyes, “as long as she has need of me!”
“God bless you, darling!” he whispered, tenderly; and then he
closed his eyes, as if in prayer. “Agnes,” he said once more,
“you will find in that little desk what I have meant for you.
You must look for it when I am gone, and use it often. You
will come, Agnes, I know it. `He giveth his beloved sleep.'
Think of that, and be comforted when I am lying low. Sit down
now, Agnes, and take my hand in yours, and sing some old hymn.
Good-by, darling!”
I took his hand in mine, and sat beside him. I steadied my
nerves and my voice, choking back the tears; and I sang that
grand old hymn, “Saviour, when in dust to thee.” Before I
had finished, the hand I held in mine grew cold, the dark eyes
closed. Frederick Hutton was dead!
We buried him there in sunny Italy; you would know his
grave, if you should go to Florence. We placed a white stone
at his head, and on that stone was graven, “He giveth his
beloved sleep!”
The gift he had left for me was the pocket Bible which had
been his constant companion. At first I prized it for his
sake; then it became far dearer to me for its own, for it has
guided my footsteps in the path which will one day take me
home to heaven and him.
I watched over Clara, for his sake, until the throbbings of her
great grief grew still; and then, still young and beautiful, she
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went forth to gladden another heart, another home; and, standing
now with her husband and her children, I know not whether
her lips murmur at night-fall the name of the dead.
I am old now, but my life is calm and happy. I am looking
forward to that day, not very far off, when I shall stand by Frederick's
side in heaven, and, putting my hand in his, whisper,
“Here am I, my beloved; I have been thine only, through
all!”
MY WIFE.
-- -- p655-377
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AN IMPROMPTU.
Where the maples nodded together,
At the edge of the pathless wood,
With a basket of ripe red berries,
A sweet little maiden stood.
Her hair was like shadows of sunset,
Falling soft over meadows asleep,
Or the earliest break of the morning
Pouring gold upon hill-side and steep.
The green leaves lay light on her forehead,
As if wood-nymphs were crowning their queen;
And the tremulous smile of the sunshine
Slept warm on the tresses between;
The blue-bells were nodding beside her,
But her bright eyes were bluer to see,
As they turned, with an innocent gladness,
That fair summer morning, on me!
Her cheeks wore the hue of ripe peaches
The sunlight so often hath kissed,
And her figure was light as the fairies
That ride on the morning's blue mist!
But her voice was like nothing, save Eden,
And the musical breezes which blow
Over meadows that sleep in the sunshine,
Where never falls tempest or snow!
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And she said, with her blue eyes uplifted,
And a blush on her berry-brown cheek,
“Will you show me the way, sir, to Ashley?”
And her voice was so gentle and meek,
That I caught to my heart the maiden,
And sued her to be my wife;
So I showed her the way to Ashley,
And she shows me the way through life.
-- -- p655-379
GRACIE'S SNOWDROPS.
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It was a little bunch of snowdrops which a child laid on my
window. They were very beautiful, with their soft, delicate
green, and their petals white and pure, and fleecy as the great
flakes of snow the children used to catch in their fingers, standing
in Grandfather's porch, on a Thanksgiving morning. They
reminded me of those old days, when I, too, held the snow-flakes
in my fingers, and watched to see them melt. Weary years had
passed since then, wherein my feet were wandering far away
from the old homestead, and the thanksgiving on my lips was
sobbed upward through tears. I had seen many other things
melt beside snow-flakes, and sometimes an avalanche had fallen
upon my brightest hopes; but not for these things I wept, holding
between my fingers the snowdrops which little Grace had laid
upon my window. My gaze was turned inward, and I seemed to
see another Grace, and other flowers, heavy with the tears of a
yet wilder sorrow.
Our little Grace — “Little Blossom,” as Grandmother loves to
call her — is strangely fair. Her loveliness is of the most ethereal
type out of heaven. You, with your poetical fancy, would compare
it to white clouds of a summer evening, or the transient
gleam of an angel's wing, in those spring days when the sky
seems lovingly bending nearer, and the very glory of heaven is
scarcely hidden by the blue between. Her rare loveliness does
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not consist alone in the pearly whiteness of her skin, and the
delicate tracery of her blue veins, or the clear azure of her eye,
and the pale gold of her hair. Beyond all this, there is beauty
of a higher order, which lends to her every word and act an
indescribable charm. It shines in her smile, it rings in her gleeful
laugh, and makes graceful every movement of her flexile
figure. But we gaze on her oftenest through tears; for even so
looked and moved and brightened before our eyes our other
Grace, her mother before her. Grace Vinton had been the pet
and darling of the whole village. She was beautiful, and an
heiress; and yet the rarest of her charms was her entire forgetfulness
of self. O, how we all loved her! how we blessed the
fate that constituted her my father's ward!
She made our whole lives radiant with a new charm, even in
the days of her early childhood. The breath of the flowers was
sweeter when her hand gathered them; the bird-songs swelled
up with a clearer melody when her sweet voice joined their
chorus; and our very prayers grew eloquent with a deeper faith,
at her low, silvery “Amen!” And then, when she grew up
to womanhood, every day getting fairer and sweeter, fuller of
music and poetry, and all things good and glorious, what wonder
we looked on her with almost superstitious awe, and whispered
to each other that God had sent his angel to dwell among us?
The house grew strangely dark and dull when she left us to
spend a few months in the great city. Brother Frank declared
himself a victim to “dog-days” long after the autumn wind
had swept the last sere leaf from the drooping willow. We
heard of her very often; — how noble and gifted ones had
knelt before her in homage; how her angel nature seemed to
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cast a spell of love and purity even over the sickly haunts of
fashion; and brother Frank listened with a frown on his brow,
and declared the dog-days had lasted, this year, into January.
But she came back to us, after a time, looking lovelier and
more radiant than ever, — all our own Grace still! And then, in
the simple country church, Grace became in very truth my sister,
my brother Frank's wife. Surely never was there a fairer bride.
There were no pearls or diamonds in her hair, no costly Point
D'Alençon lace floating over her white neck and graceful arms;
but I don't think the veriest fashion-monger in the world would
have thought they could improve Gracie. She looked so fair, so
ethereal, in her simple white muslin, with her rich tresses
looped up with a wreath of snowdrops! Never did a young husband's
eyes turn on his loved one with more of idolizing tenderness,
and never was there a warmer welcome than that with
which our parents held her to their hearts, and called her their
child, their life's best blessing.
A year had passed, and the room where Grace lay sleeping
was dark and very still. She opened her eyes, at length, with a
shudder, and cried out, “Nellie, O Nellie! did you say it?
Must I die? Must I leave the husband who has made my life
so happy, the baby that has only one short week been pillowed
on my bosom, and go, no one knows or can tell where?
Must I, Nellie?”
My answer was a burst of tears, and then once more Gracie
murmured, “O, must I? Why did n't any one tell me, before,
that I had got to die? Why was I taught everything but this?
O, Nellie, Nellie! it is very bitter!” And then she turned her
face toward the wall, and went down alone into that dark valley,
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strait and narrow, where no two can walk together. Spasms of
mental agony passed over her pure face; memories of unrepented
sins came up like ghosts before her, who, we thought,
had committed no sin; and in that hour spirit-hands held to her
lips a cup filled to the brim with those waters of Marah which
men call Repentance, that bitter portion which every mortal one
day must drink. But the struggle passed over, and up to her
eyes there drifted a peace which comes to those only whose feet
tread the borders of the land of promise.
We placed snowdrops in her coffin, and loving, almost breaking
hearts moistened them with tears; and one heart, whereon
her head had rested, throbbed with a sorrow too wild for utterance,
too mighty for tears!
We named her baby Grace, and she lives and brightens before
our eyes, as like to the Grace of our earliest love as the lily
nodding fresh and fragrant on the stalk to the last year's blossom
mouldering beneath. But, ah! the eyes that gaze on her are
oft-times dim with tears, as my heart goes sorrowfully backward
through the spectre-haunted fields of memory, whither Gracie's
snow-drops have carried me this morning.
BEHOLD, I MISS THEE, LOVE.
-- -- p655-383
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I miss thine arms, beloved!
Thy breast whereon my head was wont to lie,
While the pale moon clomb up into the sky,
And winds like vagrants roved.
I miss thy calm, deep eyes,
That, smiling all their Peace into my soul,
Taught my wild yearnings where to find their goal,
And made earth Paradise!
I miss thine earnest praise!
Dost thou remember, resting on thy heart,
How some low gush of trembling song would start
Some dream of other days;
And I the silence broke,
Whilst thou, my heaven, with thy calmest eyes,
Bent o'er me, as in summer bend the skies,
Blessing the words I spoke?
Or how for hours I sat,
And whispered legends, told alone to thee,
Of fairy land, so far beyond the sea,
And tricksy pomps thereat?
Till life a glory seemed,
And we, like mortals whom some god had blest,
Immortal grew, and tranced in golden rest,
As Grecian poets dreamed.
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Be satisfied! To thee
My soul no veil has worn. It has been thine,
And thou hast lingered o'er each burning line,
Till naught was mystery;
And in each writing traced
By fate, or passion-spell upon my heart,
So long thy name has borne a blessed part,
It cannot be erased.
Be satisfied! The form
Though other claim, or call the lips his own,
He cannot win to them the burning tone
Thy love made warm!
I may not be thy bride,
But, O, by all the past, whose glory hath been thine,
By all the paths thy soul hath trod with mine,
Those souls shall be affied!
-- -- p655-385
THE SECRET MARRIAGE.
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It was a magnificent apartment in an old English baronial
hall. A strong light fell from the lofty window over a gentleman
and a lady, the only occupants of the room.
The girl was very young, — scarcely had her feet wandered
beyond the enchanted boundary of girlhood; and yet there was
a kind of tropical ripeness in her gorgeous beauty.
Her figure was tall, stately and fully developed, — exquisite
in its proportions; her features were purely classical in their
outline, and from the small and graceful head fell, nearly to
her waist, the shining ringlets of her jet-black hair. But the
chief glory of that matchless face was the large black eyes, with
their long fringes, in one instant so dusky and full of shadows,
and the next so melting, so suffused with grief or tenderness,
so full of dreams.
She was, indeed, a glorious creature, and her loveliness was
unconsciously displayed to the best advantage by her simple
deep-mourning dress. Her corsage was fitted smooth and
close over her bosom, and finished at the throat by a simple
collar of plain white muslin. She wore no ornament, save a
heavy golden cross, fastened around her neck by a black cord,
and hanging midway on her bosom. Her sleeves were tight at
the shoulder, while at the wrist their folds fell heavily about the
small, dimpled hand.
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Scarcely could a painter's fancy have imagined a fairer being
than was Margaret Hereford, as she sat there, in the high-backed,
crimson velvet chair, with the full light falling over her
head. She was an orphan, and alone on earth.
Not a drop of her kindred blood flowed in the veins of any
human being. Her father had died scarcely six months before,
and left her desolate; and she, the delicately-nurtured child of
affluence, had gone forth to win her bread by the toil of a governess
among strangers.
Hers was one of those strong natures, very powerful either for
good or evil. So far, by the care of her gentle mother in early
infancy, and in later years of a father, the rule of whose life had
been, “Thou, God, seest me!” her faith and her life had been
kept pure, and the great strength of her soul had been turned
heavenward.
The gentleman kneeling beside her was almost equally handsome,
in another style of beauty. He was tall, slight, and very
graceful, with large blue eyes, laughing and bright. Upon
his brow lay heavy curls of rich brown hair, brushed lightly
back. His mouth was beautiful, but there was about it a
lurking expression which a physiognomist would have interpreted
as an evidence of a certain kind of voluptuous self-worship,
and he would have been right. Percy Ruthven had, indeed,
shrined himself as the idol in the temple of his heart, and all
other things were second to this handsome, haughty self; yes,
all, even the beautiful Margaret Hereford, whose avowed lover
he had for some time been, and whom he did indeed love beyond
all things mortal, except himself.
Percy Ruthven was the only son of a baronet recently
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deceased; with a slender fortune, and strong hopes, based upon
the good will of a wealthy, childless old uncle, who (the gossips
said) was at the point of death.
A frequent visitor at Clifton Hall, he had often met the beautiful
governess, before he even knew her name. At first he used
to look with a wonder that was half compassion on the pale
girl, in her deep mourning robes, who was sent for, evenings,
to play waltzes and quadrilles for the young people to
dance. She would come into the drawing-room so shy, so still;
her sad, irresistibly fascinating face, and her deep mourning
robes, were such a contrast to the glare and glitter around
her; then, when her task was performed, she would steal so
quietly from the room, noticing no one, speaking to no one, yet
moving as if she were the superior, with her regal step and her
scornful eye.
From noticing her coming with surprise, he grew to watch for
it, to be silent and dissatisfied when she did not appear, and at
last to use his privilege as an intimate friend of the family, and
steal away sometimes to the nursery, under the pretence of a
visit to her ward, the little Angelique.
The first time he went he found Miss Hereford (he had learned
her name from the servants) sitting by the window, in the moonlight,
with the little Angelique in her arms. A lamp was burning
on the side-table in another portion of the apartment; but
the child, with her golden curls, was sitting in the full glory of
the moonlight, and about her were folded the arms of her governess,
scarcely less a child than herself.
The little one was very beautiful. Well had she been called
Angelique, for her fair face reminded you of nothing but an
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infant angel. You might have thought some fairy had changed
her on a midsummer night.
There could hardly have been imagined a fairer picture. The
governess was the shadow, with her deep-mourning dress, her
long ringlets of black hair, and her dark and splendid beauty;
and the fair, golden-haired child, with her clear, English complexion,
and her large, spiritual blue eyes, was the brilliant
light.
For a moment Percy Ruthven stood, and, unseen, gazed upon
the two, in silent admiration.
“Ah, Angelique, lily-bud!” whispered the governess, “thank
God you were given me, — the one green spot in my summerless
life.”
The little one lay there quietly, winding those long black
curls around her white, dimpled fingers; then she asked, earnestly,
“Do the angels have such curls? Do the angels look like
you, Maggie? 'Cause, if they do, I shall love to go to heaven.
Say, Maggie, do you think they look like you?”
“No, darling, I don't suppose angels have black hair and dark
eyes, like mine. You look much more like an angel, my pet;
you know they call you Angelique.”
“Angels, both of you,” exclaimed a deep voice close beside
them. “I, for one, can bear witness, Miss Hereford, that I have
seen one with black hair. Nay, Angie, pet child, I came to see
you; can't you introduce me to your friend? I see she is
looking scorn on me for speaking to her without an introduction.”
“O, yes,” said the sweet child, simply. “Maggie, this is
Percy Ruthven. I like him better than any one in the world,
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except you; and he loves me, and pretty soon he 'll love you,
too.”
“Ha, ha! Bravo, Angelique, — a shrewd prophecy!”
laughed Percy Ruthven; “but, Miss Hereford, since I have come,
and so well recommended, too, you will surely let me stay?”
Miss Hereford laughingly gave her consent, and, thanks to the
young gentleman's lively conversation, she passed a far pleasanter
evening than ever before since she entered her new abode. This
was succeeded by many other pleasant evenings; for Percy
Ruthven was not, as yet, sufficiently rich or distinguished to have
his absence from the drawing-room particularly remarked.
For some time previous to the afternoon on which our story
opens, he had been the affianced lover of the beautiful governess.
Had you known them both, you would have wondered
how Margaret Hereford, with her pride, her strength of purpose,
and her lofty soul, could have loved one so far her inferior
in all that constitutes true greatness.
But he was handsome, fascinating, generous; and Margaret,
looking through this glass of love, saw not that his good impulses
were nothing more than impulses, that his principles were wanting
in strength and steadiness, and even his learning was superficial.
She only felt that he, in worldly station so far above her,
had yet given to the poor governess the rich treasure of his love,
to be the one star of her life.
Many times, when he was absent, rising up from her bed in
the solemn night, with her face upturned to the stars, she prayed
God to bless him, and crown him with glory and honor.
There was a longing in her heart to pour out its worship and
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reverence. Percy loved her, and her imagination invested him
with the perfections of an archangel.
Hers was a passion, a worship, stronger than life; ay, so
strong that the waves of the sea of death could not choke it.
And yet, so perfect was the womanly dignity, the innate royalty,
of the proud spirit, that she never forgot her own position.
Not for her was the outward worship of clasped hands and
bended knees; in her heart she bowed before him, but outwardly
her betrothed had no power to quicken a single footstep, to cause
the neglect of a single duty.
Therefore it was that she sat proud and composed, this
pleasant summer afternoon, in that high-backed arm-chair, in
the drawing-room of Clifton Hall.
Her lover, as we have said, knelt beside her, and his eyes were
upturned to her face.
“But, Margaret, my own Margaret,” he was pleading, “is not
a marriage before only the priest and the witnesses just as sacred
as if all the world beheld it?
“Listen, Maggie,—you are mine; you have given yourself to
me, to be cherished and protected. Your engagement closes here
to-morrow, and you shall not, my Maggie, commence another.
I will not have you endure this slavery any longer. You must
be my wife to-night.
“Now, Maggie, you shall decide. Shall it be openly, before
all the Cliftons, in the drawing-room of Clifton Hall, with many
an eye to gaze upon my fair bride's loveliness, though she has
said she cared nothing for other eyes than mine? Shall it be
here, Maggie, and then shall I go forth, disinherited by my
uncle, self-doomed to poverty forever? or, will you meet me
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outside the house, at half an hour before midnight, and go with me
to the chapel, where you shall become my wife before Heaven,
with the pastor's blessing, and to-morrow, when you leave Clifton
Hall, go to the station, a few miles distant, where your husband
will meet you, and bear you to a sunny southern home,
beyond the blue sea, trusting to a future day, when the world
shall call you by my name?
“If you had friends, Maggie, whom such a course might pain,
I would not ask it; but you are all alone, and you have said my
love was all you sought.
“But, darling, I do not dictate; choose as you will. If I
desire riches, it is for your sake more than mine; but, if you
choose to give them up, if you choose the public marriage, be it
so; for I would give life itself, rather than you should ever suffer,”
and the speaker paused, and pressed her hand to his throbbing
heart.
For a moment the lady hesitated; then, veiling her lustrous
eyes with her silky lashes, she said, timidly,
“We will have the secret marriage, Percy. I care not for
riches for myself, but I cannot cause you pain. It is true I
have no friends but you, and while my heart is right I will
neither court nor fear the world. It hurts my pride, this concealment,
for it is foreign to my nature; but I love you so
fondly, Percy, that, for your sake, I will strive to forget it. Yes,
I will meet you to-night, outside the hall, at half an hour before
midnight. God grant, beloved, that neither of us may ever have
cause to regret it!”
“We shall not. God in heaven bless you, my own dearest,
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for you have made me very happy!” and, rising, the young man
drew her to his heart.
“O, my Margaret,” he said, softly, “can the love of a lifetime
ever reward you for all this great goodness to one so unworthy?
May God be merciful unto me only in proportion as I make you
happy!”
As he spoke thus, for the first time in her life, the young girl
passed her arm around her lover's neck, and pressed his hand to
her lips. “I am happy now, my beloved!” she whispered. “It
is I who must reward you, by my untiring devotion, for the
riches of your great love, the wealth of my life.”
“I must leave you now, darling,” said the young man, gayly;
“leave you to prepare for that other, happier hour, which shall
see you my bride, as well as my idol!” and, with a kiss, he departed.
“O, take away your snowdrops pale, — I cannot bear the sight!
They were woven in our darling's hair upon her bridal night;
And fairer seemed the snowy buds than India's rarest pearls,
And fairer than them both the brow that beamed beneath her
curls;
That lily brow, those tresses dark, — O, ne'er so fair a bride
Hath trembled at the altar place, her chosen one beside;
And never heart more fond and pure a wedding gift was brought,
Than Ada's, in its sinlessness, its sweet and earnest thought.”
At half-past eleven, Margaret rose from her knees, and, folding
about her a heavy crimson shawl, she left her room. Hurriedly
she stole into the adjoining chamber, and, bending over a
tiny crib, pressed her lips to the brow of the little Angelique,
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and murmured a blessing over her. The crushed tears were
heavy on Margaret's drooping lashes; but she faltered not in her
purpose, and, in a moment more, she was clasped to Percy Ruthven's
heart.
“God bless you, dearest!” he exclaimed; “I knew you would
not fail me;” and then, pulling her shawl more closely around
her, he hurried her toward the chapel.
As they passed in, and Margaret stood there in the full glare
of the wax tapers, Percy started back in astonishment, for never
had he seen a human being one half so beautiful.
She stood there, her strange eyes lit as if with the fires of inspiration,
her black curls put back from her forehead with a
band of snowdrops, her robe of thin, embroidered muslin floating
around her like folds cut out of a snow-cloud, and
the crimson shawl streaming backward from her polished
shoulders.
Her cheek burned with a deep, steady crimson, the glow of
her unwonted excitement; and her bosom rose and fell beneath
the folds of her muslin robe.
It was dark as night at the further extremity of the chapel;
only a brilliant light streamed over the priest in his white robes,
and the bride and bridegroom kneeling before the altar; and, just
as the nuptial benediction was pronounced, twelve chimes rung
out, loud and clear, from the chapel bell. They rose from their
knees as the last one struck, and stood there in the solemn midnight,
wedded!
At that moment, just as Percy Ruthven was about to clasp
his fair bride to his heart, a bird which had flown in, apparently,
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through a broken window-pane, fluttered feebly a moment above
the lights, and then fell down lifeless at the bride's feet.
“It is a young raven,” said Percy, as he raised it, — “apparently
half starved,” — and he threw it down again, carelessly.
“O, Percy, dearest, I am sick with terror! The omen, the
omen!” and the bride shuddered, and clung tremblingly to the
arm of her new-made husband.
“What, you frightened! you, my strong, brave Margaret!”
and Percy passed his arm about her waist. “Why, it is nothing,
darling; there is no omen. I suppose the poor bird got in
here by mistake, some time ago; and, as the chapel is seldom
used, he could not find his way out, and he has starved to death.
“Do not tremble, my Margaret, on this golden morn of our
existence! My life, my blessing, look at me once with a wife-like
smile, or tell me, my wife, do you regret that you are
mine?”
“Regret it, Percy, my soul's idol, never! I am so glad, so
happy! I was only foolish, that is all;” and, trembling with joy
now, as she had before done with fear, she nestled trustingly in
his arms, and they left the chapel.
At the door of Clifton Hall they parted; and thus ended
that strange marriage, in the midnight and the solemn silence.
A few days later saw the newly-wedded lovers domesticated
in a delightful villa, in the south of France.
“Another night; O, if her brow out-paled the wreath before,
Sure, nothing earthly could have matched the white her cheek then
wore!
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So pallid that the tracery of the blue, delicate vein
Upon the temple passed away, and all its violet stain, —
Gone was all light and radiance; with moveless lip and limb,
She listened to the dreadful words they whispered her of him;
The husband of her bride-hood false! her frightened soul seemed
flown,
And the pale snowdrops wreathed a brow above a heart of stone!”
Seven years had passed, of mingled light and shade, — seven
years!
The first three had flown rapidly in that sunny villa in the
south of France.
Percy had been devotion itself to his fair young wife, and she
in return worshipped him. All her pride seemed swallowed up
in adoration. His will was her law, and his smiles her joy and
hope. Only one trouble had visited them, and that was when
the roses of Provence had bloomed on their little Percy's grave,
ere he had been three months strayed away from Eden.
But, at the end of the third year, they were recalled to England
by the sudden death of Percy's uncle, and the acquisition
of the fortune the young husband had anticipated. But they
were so happy in each other, that Margaret had joyfully yielded
to the suggestion that their marriage should not yet be made
public, as such a course would inevitably bring upon them a
round of visiting and fashionable annoyances.
But life in England had hardly been so deeply blessed to
Margaret as was life in France. True, Percy was as tender, as
reverent, as affectionate, as ever. True, she worshipped him
with the same soul-engrossing affection; but he now spent
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a great part of his time away from home, alleging that his increase
of fortune rendered his personal supervision of his estates
absolutely necessary, and also that he was obliged to mingle in
society to some extent, in order to avoid suspicion concerning his
family ties, and secure to them undisturbed those blessed hours
of peace and love together, which were their deepest joy.
Margaret also knew that her husband had embarked a large
portion of his fortune in speculations, of whose nature and extent
she was not informed. And yet, of late, she had been very
happy.
Another babe slept in her arms. The angel visitant was a
girl, this time, with her father's large blue eyes and sunny curls;
and for this was Aymee all the dearer.
Percy, too, seemed to share all her enthusiastic fondness for
the child. He used to come home worn and weary, and then,
sitting at his wife's feet, with the little one in his arms, declare
that God had blessed him on earth with all the blessedness of
heaven, and that one could afford to be patient under slight annoyances,
so that one could turn again always to the peace and
repose of such a home.
And Margaret's proud spirit had grown meek and calm. Her
resistless energy and love of excitement were hushed to sleep, and
she dreamed not of a future fairer than the present, as she
watched for her husband's footsteps, or hung over the crib of her
babe.
I said seven years had passed; yes, and this was the very
anniversary of their marriage.
Their home was a beautiful one in the suburbs of London, — a
pleasant little English cottage, with a perfect Eden of beauty
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surrounding it. There were fountains which tinkled musically on
the drowsy air, little miniature ponds, and clumps of rare and
beautiful trees.
Inside, the house was adorned with all that taste could devise
and art could furnish; rare mosaics, exquisite paintings, and
little gems of sculpture; jewelled vases, and ornaments of China
and porcelain, or grotesquely carved out of silver.
But, in all those gorgeous, tasteful rooms, there was nothing
half so fair as the young mother and her sleeping babe. The
wife was robed in a dress of snowy muslin, delicately embroidered;
for she remembered that seven years ago, that very
night, had her bridal vow been spoken, and she had robed herself
as if for a second bridal. Once more a wreath of the
drooping snowdrops was knotted in her curls, and once more
her snowy shoulders and exquisitely-moulded throat rose like
sculptured marble above the soft and fleece-like robe.
She was, if possible, even more beautiful than ever. A happiness
more perfect than oftentimes falls to the lot of mortals had
brought smiles of joy to her eyes, and a bright flush to her delicately-rounded
cheek. She sat there now at a western window,
with the glory of the sunset falling at once over her and the
cherub little one sleeping so quietly upon her breast.
At this very hour, in another part of the city, another scene
was passing before the eyes of the angels. In a large and stately
garden, lying adjacent to a palace, rising on one side as
if out of the bosom of the waves that surrounded it, on the
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other fronting broad lands, and pleasant paths straying
among fountains, walked a lady almost as fair as the sweet wife
Margaret.
The Lady Alice Sinclair's loveliness was of a very different
style. Her figure was small and slight as a fairy-child, or a
snow-figure; her features were delicate; her large eyes reminded
you of the blue sky and the calm home of the angels,
while over her fair shoulders floated sunny curls, like tangled
masses of fine-spun golden threads. Her dress was of a
sky-blue silk, falling about her in graceful folds; and she wore
no ornaments save a cross of diamonds attached to a necklace
of pearls. The little graceful fairy could not have smiled
beneath the sunshine of more than sixteen summers, and all that
time the paths where her tiny feet must walk had been angel-guarded
and strewn with flowers.
By her side walked a man, to whose perfection of form, and
mien, and features, at least thirty years had brought the lustre
of their maturity. He was tall, finely formed, and strikingly
handsome, and his voice was musical as the harmonies of a skilfully-played
instrument.
“Alice, sweet, angel Alice!” he whispered, tenderly, “in three
days you will be my bride, all my own. What a joy, Alice,
to make your life a very dream of sunshine! Will you be happy,
my beautiful one?”
“Yes, dearest, I could not be otherwise than happy with
you by my side; but, tell me, Percy, how came you, so much
older and wiser than I am, to love a silly little thing like
me?”
“Rather let me ask, beloved, how could you, so young, so
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beautiful, and highly-born, have learned to love me, so much
older, with my temper soured, and my brow wrinkled by the
cares of years, and poor, too, as you knew I was, Alice? Tell
me, darling.”
O, what a beaming face was turned up to his in reply, albeit
the tears did tremble on the long lashes; and how musical the
sweet voice, which whispered,
“Your love gives me life, my adored, my noble one! Ask
why the flowers love the sun which shines on them, the rain
which waters them, why the infant loves the mother who cherished
it in her bosom, and then know that you are my life's sun
and music, that my heart's hopes sprang into being at your
touch, and behold why I love you!”
The proud man bent over her, and caught her to his bosom, as
he said, solemnly,
“May God in heaven visit me with his anger, if aught but
death part thee and me, O, my beloved!”
An hour later, and the same proud man was entering the
fairy-like cottage of Margaret; for the impetuous wooer of
the Lady Alice Sinclair was Percy Ruthven, the wedded husband
of Margaret Hereford. The young wife — for even yet Margaret
was scarcely twenty-five — heard the welcome sound of
his approaching footsteps, and, hastily laying her babe in its
little crib, she darted forward to meet him.
Percy had been charmed, touched, by the beauty and innocence
of the Lady Alice Sinclair; he had been flattered by her
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love, but never, for one moment, had his heart been untrue to
Margaret. His love, such love as he was capable of giving,
was all hers. His soul was penetrated by her beauty, for he
had never seen another face so fair, and it was a style vastly
more to his taste than that of the Lady Alice Sinclair.
He met her with a fond embrace, and, taking her in his arms,
he sat down with her at the window. He brushed back the
long, black curls, and gazed into the upturned, passionate
eyes.
“O, Margaret!” he cried out, as if, in spite of his will, his
soul gave the voice utterance, “my hope, my joy, my life, my
Margaret!”
“Husband,” she said, softly.
“What says my beloved?”
“Did you know, dearest husband, to-day is the seventh anniversary
of our marriage?”
“Well, my Margaret, have you ever repented it?”
“Repented it! O, my husband! ask the captive if he repents
being restored to freedom, the blind man if he repents because
he can once more see the glorious sunshine of heaven; but ask
me not, if I repent leaving the cold, rough sea of life, on which
my rudderless bark went ploughing, for the safe harbor of
your home and heart! God knows, dearest, it seems as if I
never could thank him enough for these beautiful leaves of my
destiny.”
Percy Ruthven trembled, and the cold sweat started from his
brow. He had come there, with a purpose strong in his soul, of
making a disclosure which would shiver that innocent, trusting
heart with agony; but he must hold her there a while longer,
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— villain as he was, and deserving of her hatred, God knew he
could not put her from him then!
And there he held her, while the moon rose up, and one by
one the stars trembled forth, and looked down into his guilty,
miserable heart, like the great, bright eyes of the angels.
Many times he raised her long curls to his lips, or pressed
them passionately to his bosom. Many times he elasped her to
his heart, as a lost soul would cling to its hope of heaven; and all
the time those large, passionate eyes were not turned away from
his face, and not once did the angel-eyes of the stars pause
from looking into his wretched, guilty heart.
At last Margaret said, in a low, earnest voice, “Blessed
be God that, though this quiet, beautiful human life may
not last always, after it there is hope of a better life in
heaven!”
“Would it cost you much pain to part with me, Margaret?”
asked the husband. “Would n't you be glad enough to get rid
of such a graceless scamp?”
“Part with you, Percy? — get rid of you? O, you are jesting! —
thank God that I am your wife, and only death can part
us! But don't jest so again, my husband; the very thought of it
kills me.”
“Nay, Margaret, dearest, listen to me quietly;” and he put
her gently from him, and then sat down beside her, with his arm
around her waist.
“Margaret, you are pure, pure as heaven; for you thought
yourself my wife, though you never have been. I don't know what
fiend led me to substitute a gay young friend in the priest's
stead; a mock marriage instead of a real one; but I never meant
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to part with you, — I never meant you should know you were
not my wife; — you were dear as life, then, my Margaret; you
are still dearer now; but I have sinned, and we must suffer.
“You know, dearest, how happy we were in France. Alas
for it! that might have lasted always, but for this accursed fortune,
which led me in the first place to wish our marriage concealed,
which tempted me to wrong your true heart, by the
false nuptials. Well, this fortune came to us, and we returned
to England. Since then, I have plunged madly into speculations,
and they have all been cursed; — they have failed, ruined
me. I will not live disgraced, Margaret. You know me, and I
say I will not!
“There were but two alternatives, — death and marriage. I
thought of the subject a weary while. I imagined your agony
when they should tell you that Percy Ruthven, your husband,
had died by his own hand; and I felt that such a death
would separate me from you forever. It was for your sake,
Margaret, I chose marriage. I have wooed the Lady Alice Sinclair.
She is young and fair, but not so beautiful as you, Margaret.
She loves me; for her love I care not, but her gold
will help me to go into the world a free man, to surround you,
my Margaret, with luxury. You shall live here still, dearest;
and every day will I come to you, and care for you, and cherish
you, as if you were indeed the lady of Ruthven.
“You have heard me, calmly, my Margaret, — am I forgiven?”
Margaret started to her feet as he concluded, and, tossing her
arms wildly in the air, she cried,
“O God! O God! dost thou suffer me to be deserted — I,
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who have sat by his side and slept on his bosom for seven long
years? Yes, for seven long years, Percy, have I forsaken all
and followed you. O, be merciful! be merciful!”
And then, seeing the tears stealing down his cheeks, she threw
herself once more into his arms, and cried, “Don't weep, darling,
if it must be. See, I am strong, — I don't weep. I have forgiven
you, long ago. Kiss me once, dearest, and then go. And
listen, Percy, my best Percy, — don't come here again till after
you are married!”
Then, without a sob or a moan, she pressed her lips long,
fondly, clingingly to his, and then motioned him to leave her.
He turned to depart, but, standing in the door and looking back
upon her, he cried out, earnestly,
“God in heaven bless you and be good to you, Margaret, even
as you have been good to me, all these many years!”
A solitary figure flitted through the wilderness of London, —
through the retired streets of the West-End, through the heart
of the city, onward, and onward, and ever towards London
Bridge.
Men turned to gaze on her as she fled by them in her white
robes, with the swiftness of a spirit. Some caught a glimpse of
her large, dark, fathomless eyes; some, of the heavy tresses of
black hair streaming on the wind behind her; and others, still,
of the delicate hands clasping the folds of a crimson shawl which
floated backward from her shoulders; and each one, as he gazed,
asked himself what could she be doing there alone in those
crowded streets, — so young, and so startlingly beautiful.
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But on, on she pressed, until she reached the bridge, and gazed
down on the waters. Silent, black, sullen, they lay there, chafing
against the heavy stone-work far below, and over them gazed the
wanderer, with a wild, eager glance.
“Why should I live?” she murmured. “Who shall say I
may not lay my head on this wave's dark breast and sleep?
He is gone; and why should I live for my child's sake, if I am
the guilty thing he calls me? Let me see; I was happy once,
a long time ago, was n't I? Well, it 's past now. I am weary!”
and the poor creature clasped her hands across her burning brow,
still looking down, steadily, calmly, into the black, sullen waters.
Who shall say what visions of past happiness were floating
through her mind? — what confessions of sin, what prayers for
mercy, what unutterable longings for death and peace?
But the loud voices in the steeple of St. Paul's were calling
the hour of midnight, and with the last chime Margaret Hereford
sank beneath the waves!
Seven years ago that very day, hour and moment, had she
arisen from the altar, married to Percy Ruthven; and now she
sank, the bride of Death, in her white robes and snowdrop
wreath, into the arms of the cold, black sea!
“One more unfortunate
Gone to her death,
Rashly importunate,
Yielded up breath!
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair.”
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Percy had left her feeling that she had borne the stroke
better than he expected, and was looking forward to many an
hour of happiness by her side, when the waning of the honey-moon
would permit him once again to visit her.
The sun shone gayly on the morning of his bridal. They were
wedded at a suburban chapel, and the bridal cortège drove gayly
through the streets of London. The sides of the carriage were
put up, to admit the clear, fresh air; and you could hear the glad
voice of the bride ring out cheerfully.
As they approached London Bridge, the vehicle was stopped
by a crowd, unusual even in that portion of the city, and Percy
leaned from the window to inquire the cause.
“Please, your honor,” answered a man standing by, “it 's the
body of a drowned woman they have just brought on shore; and
all the folks must needs look at her, she is so handsome and
princess-like.”
Ruthven sprang from the carriage with an eager glance of
curiosity, and an undefined blending of fear. One glance, and
then on the air rung out a wild, piercing shriek, “Margaret! —
O, my God! — dead! dead!”
Ere a year had passed, the quiet daisies grew over Alice
Ruthven's fresh-dug grave; but still, at the window of a London
mad-house, sits a wild, dark man, ever looking toward the
sea, and shrieking out,
“O, Margaret! Margaret! — dead! dead!”
THE TWO GRAVES.
-- -- p655-410
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There are two graves far, far apart,
And the deep sea rolls between;
O'er one they 've piled the marble high,
O'er one the grass grows green.
In the one within a gorgeous fane,
Lies she whom I called my bride,
Before whose feet I knelt of old,
In her father's halls of pride.
In the one behind the village church,
Where wild-flowers nod in prayer,
Is resting the shade of the purest dream
That brightened my life of care!
The one had waves of raven hair,
Bound round with diamond light,
Like the circlet of the evening stars
Upon the brow of night!
The other had curls like threads of gold,
And a smile as faint and mild
As those which the olden artists paint,
In their dreams of the young Christ-child!
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One brought me a castle gray and old,
And jewels, and gold, and lands,
With serfs to bow at my lightest word,
And go at my first commands.
The other brought but the earnest love
That glowed in her starlit eyes,
And blest my heart like the downward rays
From the distant Paradise!
I wedded the one with stately pomp,
In a grand cathedral aisle,
And bells were ringing, in high church-towers,
A sounding chime, the while.
I wedded the other as quakers wed,
In the forest still and deep,
When hushed were the sounds of noisy life,
And the flowers had gone to sleep.
O, blithe was my night-haired love, I ween,
With the light in her bright black eye;
But dearer far was my cottage girl,
In her angel purity.
The demons wandering over earth
For the one spun out a shroud,
And they laid her low, where wax-lights glow,
In the old cathedral proud.
The other, when holy stars shone down,
Was hearing the angels sing,
And a truant seraph folded her
In the clasp of his viewless wing!
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They told me the one was lying dead,
And a tear came to mine eye;
But joy-dreams chased the gloom away,
And a smile went flitting by.
They told me the other had gone to sleep,
And I sought the battle's strife;
For I hated the light of the rosy day,
And I cursed the light of life!
The one lies still in her far-off tomb,
Where the tall wax-tapers gleam,
And their slant rays shine on the marble shrine
With a fixed and ruddy beam.
But over the other the night-stars swing,
When the light of day has fled,
And the wild winds sigh her gentle name,
Till I wish that I were dead!
-- -- p655-411
MALE COQUETTES.
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“Well, disappointment 's the lot of all mankind!” said some
venerable sage. He should have added an expression of condolence
to the weaker half of community, for surely they are
still more subject to the evils of chance and change.
You can hardly read a poem by one of these fair angels that
does not complain of some direful calamity. Indeed, to our certain
knowledge, one lovelorn damsel has been bewailing in the
newspapers the loss of her husband, and some three or four
faithless suitors, within the past few weeks!
Now, don't put up both hands, and murmur, puritanically, “O,
Frailty, thy name is woman!” for every one knows that lovers
are not so plenty we can afford to throw them away. Every
instance of this kind only affords another example of the fickleness
of man! And this brings us to a subject we have long
desired to see properly discussed. We mean flirting and coquetry
among the “lords of creation.” There is already such an outcry
made about coquettes and faithless lady-loves, that one needs to
stop one's ears, to shut out the din; but no one seems to consider
that flirting is twice as common, and certainly three times
as dangerous, on the other side.
Perhaps one reason may be, that woman, the world over, is
too proudly noble to complain of these things. She locks whatever
grief there may be in her own heart, and the cold world can
only guess it by the proud step, and the haughty glance, which
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seem to say the treachery of one has made the whole earth seem
a kind of mirage — a pageant as false as it is glittering. For
ourself, we cannot speak from experience, as we are very little
yet, and never had a beau! But we can see a thousand instances
of unprincipled coquetry on the part of those who decry
it the most.
It is very easy to clasp trembling fingers, until the heart sends
back an answering thrill; very easy to gaze in bright eyes, till
the fair cheek grows crimson with blushes; very easy to soften
the voice in its whispers to one ear, or to linger tremblingly over
one sweet name!
You can do all these things, very innocently, of course; and, if
they should awaken a heart-thrill that shall not be stilled in
time, — no, not in eternity, — you can shrug your shoulders, and,
throwing your cheroot to the ground, ejaculate, “Pity, pity!
she 's a fine girl; but I don't love her — never told her I did in
my life; and yet I 'm sorry for her, — I am, 'pon honor!”
Most magnanimous young man! One could almost consign
you to the tender mercies of a second Mrs. Caudle! No, worse
than that, — for it has been proved, to a demonstration, that a poor
wife is better than none, — one could wish that you might suffer
all the miseries of an old bachelor! — the direst lot that can
befall humanity.
There are friends for the old maid — the universal aunt!
Children love her, and kittens come and lie in the fire-shine at
her feet, and purr! There are pleasant homes where her presence
is welcome, and, by and by, some poor soul she has comforted
will put a flower on her grave. But, for the old bachelor,—
Heaven help him, — for man cares not for him!
-- -- p655-413
ALINE.
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CHAPTER I.
There, she sees a damsel bright,
Dressed in a silken robe of white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone;
The neck that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck and arms were bare;
Her blue-veined feet unsandalled were,
And wildly glittered here and there
The gems entangled in her hair.
I guess 't was frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she —
Beautiful exceedingly!
Christabel.
It was a fair scene, the one where we would transport our
reader, in the old days when New York was the queen city of
our young republic, with scarcely a rival to dispute her sovereignty.
We have a fairy spell, be it understood, by which we
pass “bar, and bolt, and porter's lodge,” and now we stand in
the boudoir of the Lady Aline Wentworth.
Judge Wentworth was a thoroughly-bred gentleman of the
old school, very rich, and it had been his pride and pleasure
to surround his motherless girl with every charm of the most
unbounded luxury.
The room where she was sitting was exclusively her own; and
it was a perfect bower of beauty. On a snowy velvet carpet
shone bunches of dark, purple grapes, with their green leaves, as
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if fresh gathered. Beside them were thrown wreaths of bright
crimson roses, and blue-bells, looking as if piled up on snow.
Bunches of rare exotics were exquisitely arranged in antique
vases of agate and porphyry, and, here and there, of heavily
chased silver; and the room was filled with a fragrance as subtle
as that of the gardens of Gul.
There were massive mirrors, in heavy golden frames; and on
the wall hung the glorious paintings of many an old master.
There were pure-browed Madonnas, with their prayerful eyes, and
sweet pictures of the Saints, with glory-halos resting on their
tresses. Then there were bunches of flowers and pleasant landscape-scenes,
that made your very soul grow homesick for green
fields and blue sky.
But not a fairer object was there, in that luxurious collection
of the rich and beautiful, than the Lady Aline Wentworth herself.
You would hardly have dared to call her beautiful; for there
was such an air of exclusiveness about her, you would have hesitated
to speak of her as of any other woman.
She had just returned from the opera, where she had been
introduced to a half-dozen handsome students, and reigned the
lady paramount of the occasion.
She had exchanged her opera-dress of claret-colored velvet for
a white silk dressing-gown; but still her arms and hands, and
her raven tresses, literally flashed with jewels, and a cross of
diamonds, on her fair bosom, rose and fell with every breath.
Her forehead was high and calm; her nose Grecian in its outline,
with thin nostrils.
Her mouth was small, and, between her full lips, you caught
glimpses of teeth like pearls. But, though you might notice all
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this when you first saw her, it needed to be but a moment in her
presence, ere you forgot all else, in the matchless glory of her
eyes.
Such eyes! — no description could realize their beauty! Large
and full as those of a gazelle, with wells of light in them like
the sea; and yet dark and fearful as the tempest-clouds in a
wild night.
They were not eyes that an artist could paint, or a poet sing;
and yet they were human eyes, destined to influence, for good
or evil, every soul on whom they rested.
There was unmistakable haughtiness in every turn of Aline
Wentworth's small, graceful head; haughtiness in her arching
neck, and even in the tiny, slippered foot which rested with such
provoking firmness upon the velvet carpet. Her position in
society, her whole course of education, had been exactly calculated
to foster this proud self-reliance, and at fifteen (the time
our story opens) Aline Wentworth was a girl no longer, but a
high-spirited woman.
Among the students she had met at the opera, was one whose
image she had borne with her into her palace-home — a man
calm, handsome, and with a full sovereignty of pride, meeting
and matching her own, — Ernest Glenville.
Was the name noble? It might be, and it might not; at all
events, she should see him again to-morrow.
Her dark eyes grew fairly liquid with light as she murmured
his name, and the flush burned on her damask cheek like the
heart of the carnation.
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Scarcely a stone's throw from the stately mansion of Judge
Wentworth, in a more obscure part of the city, rose a tall, frowning,
and, even then, somewhat dilapidated wooden mansion. In
one of the most gloomy of its gloomy apartments a student sat,
gazing forth into the night.
The moon-rays fell full upon his face, and you could observe
him closely. His dark-brown hair curled in short ringlets about
his calm, firm brow; his features were regular, and rather small,
and in his clear blue eye lay slumbering a will which might
have moved a world.
He had been called Ernest at his baptism, and his sponsors
had chosen well; for, if ever there was a man on whose face
power, and will, and firmness, were stamped legibly, that man
was Ernest Glenville.
He was poor, but his great soul smiled and mocked at poverty.
His only amusement was the opera, where the music swelled his
heart with a new, exultant sense of strength.
To-night, for the first time, he had come home, bearing with
him a new inspiration, a goddess even more beautiful than fame;
to-night he had, for the first time, seen Aline Wentworth, and it
was she of whom he sat dreaming.
At last, striking his head with his hand,
“Fool, that I am!” he exclaimed, “mad, insensate fool! What
can Judge Wentworth's daughter be to me but a curse?” “And
why a curse?” whispered his cooler judgment; “why think of
her at all?”
“Sure enough, why?” he exclaimed once more. “I shall see
her to-morrow, since she invited me with Irving and the rest,
and then I will forget her. Ha, ha! fancy her dainty feet on
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this bare floor! No, no! Ernest Glenville, there is work for
you on earth; you may not pause to bask in fortune's smiles, or
woman's eye.”
So saying, he turned over a file of papers on the rickety table,
drew towards him a large-sized book, bound in black leather,
and commenced studying, as if for life.
In truth, it was a strange fancy to paint the Lady Aline Wentworth
in the student's room. The uncarpeted floor was of rough
pine boards, and the single stiff, high-backed chair, had neither
arms nor rockers. The fire was kindled in a gloomy-looking little
box-stove, and across the top of the one window cobwebs were
woven, thick and strong, as if the growth of years. Here dwelt
Ernest Glenville. Here dreams were nourished which the future
was to gild with glory; and here, for the first time, the eyes of
woman flooded his path with sunlight.
CHAPTER II.
“And she with her bright eye seemed to be
The star of the goodlie companie!”
There was a gorgeous festival at the mansion of Judge Wentworth.
The light fell pleasantly downward, from lamps of porcelain,
held in the marble fingers of rare statues, over a scene of strange
brilliancy. There were handsome men, and beautiful women;
jewels, and robes of silken sheen.
But there were two who seemed to attract more attention
than any others. The host's fair daughter, Aline, and, standing
beside her, the handsome student, Ernest Glenville.
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The proudly-beautiful woman stood in the alcove of a window,
leaning gracefully against a statue of Juno, which might not inappropriately
have been modelled after herself. In one hand
she held her jewelled bouquet-holder, while with the other she
was pulling in pieces a fragrant half-opened moss-rosebud.
The dark waves of her jetty hair were knotted with diamonds,
and a single ruby burned upon her bosom, like a spark of fire.
She was talking in a low, musical tone to Ernest Glenville, of
passion, and poetry, and fame. Her wild eyes burned and
sparkled till they kindled up his soul; and then, in turn, his voice
grew eloquent with music, as he spoke of the past, dwelling
always upon the triumph and success of men of low estate, — those
great souls which have climbed upward, and made themselves
mates for kings and nobles; and Aline Wentworth listened, until
her proud heart did him homage, and for the first time in her
life she loved.
Weeks passed on, and, reckless of the future, forgetful of the
destiny his own hand was to carve, day after day Ernest Glenville
sought the presence of the enchantress, and hushed his very
soul to listen to the music of her voice, or drink in her beauty
like an inspiration.
At last, one night he sought her in her luxurious boudoir, and
told his love. He, who had never before breathed words of passion
in woman's ear, grew strangely eloquent, and the light burned
wilder than ever in Aline's glorious eyes. When he paused, she
drew his hand to her lips, with more than woman's tenderness,
and whispered those three words, so musical on the lips of the
beloved, “I love you!”
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For one instant Ernest Glenville caught her to his heart; and
then, resolutely putting her from him, he said,
“My Aline! — no, not mine yet. I have a revelation to
make, before I ask you to become my plighted bride. I am not
wealthy, like your honored father, but poor, abjectly poor, as
far as this world's goods are concerned; I am rich in nothing
but courage, and an unfaltering soul. I can feel my destiny
stirring within me. I know I shall do something, yet, this great
world will not blush to own. If you are mine, it is necessary
you should have faith in me. We must wait, it may be years,
before I could have a home to offer you. Think calmly; will
you, Aline Wentworth, become the poor man's promised bride?
Remember what you say now is said forever, and do not answer
rashly!”
Aline gazed for a second into his clear blue eyes, and then,
turning from him, she paced the room, breathing rapidly, and
wringing her hands. He had cautioned her against rashness;
but every moment that she waited swept over him like an age of
torture. There was a fierce struggle going on in the young girl's
soul, — love and pride contending for the mastery. Which shall
conquer?
Glenville held his breath, and the sweat stood upon his brow
in great beaded drops, until at last the cry of his heart burst
forth, —
“Aline, Aline!”
The girl came and stood beside him. Tears were in her large
black eyes, and trembled on her long, fringe-like lashes, as she
raised her hand to his forehead, and brushed back the clustering
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curls. She spoke at last, in answer to the mute appeal in his
passionate glance.
“I cannot, O Ernest Glenville, I cannot! — I love you, God
knows I do, — I who never loved mortal before; but to marry
you, — O, Ernest, do not ask it!”
“It is well, Aline Wentworth; you have chosen;” and, so saying,
Glenville turned away; but apparently a secret impulse
urged him to return; for he came back, and, clasping her trembling
form in his arms, he pressed on her lips one kiss, long and
thrilling, and then, saying once more those solemn words, “You
have chosen,” he left the house.
For a long time Aline Wentworth sat there still and quiet as
he had left her. She saw nothing, heard nothing, but those three
words of warning. They haunted her sleep for many a night
after that. The struggle between love and pride had been terrible,
and the conqueror dared not even triumph in his victory.
Three months after saw Ernest Glenville enlisted in the French
army under Napoleon, at that time himself a subaltern.
Those were stirring times in the early days of the French republic,
when fame and promotion hung upon the broad sword's
gleam and the musket's flash, when ten days could raise the
meanest name to glory. Stirring times, when Europe stood still,
awe-struck, and men's hearts were failing them for fear. Here,
in these wild days, and under an assumed name, Ernest Glenville
struggled with the fierce energy despair so often brings to
a noble soul. Aline knew not where he was; but hope whispered
that for her sake he might win power and glory, and then
return to her side.
She should have known him better. He had well said her
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words must be forever; and, had he been the possessor of an
earldom, ten days after their strange parting, he would not have
shared it with Aline Wentworth.
He thought of her, indeed, not in scorn, not in anger; but, O,
not with love, — at least, not with the love of passion; but calmly,
and with a subdued, gentle sorrow, as we think of those long ago
dead; and he only knew that he had been unhappy, by the
desolation which left him nothing for which to hope!
CHAPTER III.
“And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain!”
Tennyson.
“Yet, press on!
For it shall make you mighty among men;
And from the eyrie of your eagle thought
Ye shall look down on monarchs!”
— Willis.
A period of six years passed. Other houses had grown up
around the palace-home of Judge Wentworth. New York was
gayer than ever, and Aline Wentworth more beautiful. It was
an autumn afternoon. The country was glorious with the balmy
air, the trees heavy with their ripe fruit, and the fields rich with
waving grain. Something of this autumn glory had penetrated
the heart of the city, and was flooding the gorgeous furniture
in Aline Wentworth's boudoir.
Never had the Lady Aline been fairer. Her robe of many-shaded
India silk became well the clear olive of her gypsy-like
complexion. Her jetty hair seemed almost to emit sparks of
light, and her glorious eyes out-flashed the diamonds on her brow.
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A man, in the pride and prime of life, gallant and noble, was
kneeling beside her. His mien betokened one rather used to
command than to entreat; and yet there was a world of tenderness
in the voice which pleaded for that proud woman's love!
The lady rose at last, withdrawing her hand from his passionate
clasp, and stood before him, with her proud eyes, and full, stately
figure.
“I do not,” she said, very calmly, “I do not estimate lightly
the honor you have done me, General Howe. I am but the more
sensible of it when I know that it is profitless. I have listened
to your words, and they awoke no echo in my own heart. God
knows I wish it were otherwise; but so it is, and I will not
wrong your noble nature by giving you my hand without my
heart. Leave me now, and God grant you may be happier than
ever Aline Wentworth could have made you!”
For one moment he bowed his head over the fair hand that
was extended to him, and then Aline Wentworth was alone!
Sinking down among the velvet cushions of her boudoir, she
bent her head, and sobbed pitifully.
“O Ernest, Ernest!” she rather groaned than said, “have I
not been faithful? Wealth, and rank, and power, have tempted
me in vain. Every throb of my heart through all these weary
years has been but thine. Wilt thou never come back?”
Ah, Aline! that fierce pride is working out its own terrible
retribution.
It is a bitter cup, but thou shalt drink it to the dregs!
That same pleasant autumn day, in 1802, witnessed another
wooing.
One there was, in Napoleon's army of fierce spirits, whom
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men called “Bravest of the Brave.” He had charged on many
a battle-field, riding down men and spears like dust. His very
name was a host in itself; and where foe met foe, if but his legion
of invincibles hurled themselves into the fight, if but he thundered
upon the enemy, Napoleon would sit down calmly and
write, “The day is won!”
At first but an unknown soldier in the ranks, he had risen
rapidly, until now a Marshal's baton had been the reward of his
valor. And now there was peace, brief, indeed, but yet peace,
though the couch where the tired nations lay still and rested was
piled up on muskets.
In Paris rose many a stately palace, and in the grounds surrounding
one of the fairest walked he whom men called the
“Bravest of the Brave,” with a young girl by his side. Scarce
fifteen summers had deepened the rose-tint upon her cheeks, or
woven their sunshine in her hair. Her brow was like the large
white leaves of the water-lily, broad, and smooth, and fair. Her
eyes were of that rich, violet blue, something the color of the
lapis-lazuli, rarely seen but in the islands of the sea, and seldom
even there. Her figure was slight and fairy-like as a child's;
and the trust and unsullied purity of girlhood shone in her
clear eyes, as she turned them upon her companion.
“Sit down with me, Julie Augne,” at length he said, in a tone
of command better suited to camp than court, and yet with an
inexpressible tenderness.
And then, with that fair young creature sitting by his side,
the soldier told his love, while the shadow of her long lashes
drooped over the cheek of Julie Augne. Her lips quivered,
and her lithe little figure fluttered like a bird.
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“Julie,” he said, at length, “one learns but ill courtly phrase
in the mad encounter, where men hold their breaths, and war-horses
dash onward, with the bits between their teeth. And yet,
Julie, one learns there to protect the loved, to guard them, ay,
with one's life; and so would I guard thee, sweet one. Will
you trust me, my beautiful child?”
For one moment Julie Augne raised her clear, truthful eyes to
his, and he could see that the lashes were heavy with tears, and
then she spoke.
“But you, sir, how can you love me? Have you not loved
another? I have heard men say that the secret of your bravery
was because you had nothing more to lose, — because you had lost
all, with a lost love. Where Julie Augne cannot have all, she
scorns to share anything!” and the young girl turned away with
a pride scarcely less imperious than that of Aline Wentworth
herself. But her lover noticed it not, for he resumed,
“Listen to me, Julie, and you shall know everything. I am
not what it has been my interest to appear, the son of poor
French parents. I am an American, whose only heritage in his
orphan boyhood was a noble name, and bitter poverty.
“I was a student. I hardly know how I became one, but
alone and unaided I struggled upward.
“Years ago, when I was very young, I was introduced to one
whom the world would have called far my superior, — one
beautiful as the fairest dream of an opium-eater. I hardly
know whether I ever loved her. I only know she dazzled and
bewildered me, and my whole future seemed bounded by her
smiles.
“My passion for her was sudden; it did not grow up, like my
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love for you, from weeks of patient knowledge, while I read your
pure heart like a book.
“It was a dream, — and like a dream it vanished. She
refused to be mine, Julie, because I was poor and unknown;
and yet I know she loved me. She is free still, but I have no
wish to share with her my toil-won glory. She is to me as one
dead; but you, Julie, my beautiful darling, will you not be my
living love, my wife?”
Tears and smiles and blushes chased themselves over the
young girl's sunny face, as she placed her hand in his, and
returned to the house a plighted bride.
Brilliantly, as if for a festival, burned the tall wax tapers in
the cathedral of Notre Dame. Clouds of incense floated out
upon the air, and the organ melody from the lofty choir was
faint and sweet as the far-off anthems of angels. Before the
altar knelt Julie Augne. The first consul, Napoleon himself,
gave away the bride, and Julie rose from that silent prayer a
wife.
It boots not to write of festivals given in her honor, of the
love that surrounded her with luxury; for in the palace, as in the
cottage, the crown word and jewel of a woman's life is love.
Without it fame and glory are but as apples of Sodom, and the
sceptre mocks the hand that wields it.
But there was happiness in the palace-home of Julie Augne,
for she was beloved!
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CHAPTER IV.
“Alas! they had been friends in youth,
But whispering tongues can poison truth,
And constancy dwells in realms above,
And life is thorny, and youth is vain,
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness on the brain.”
Coleridge.
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It was the winter of 1807; the power of Napoleon had
reached its zenith. Paris was an universal festival. The shop-windows
were gay with colored lights, and trade, which had been
stagnant during the stormy days of the republic, was brisk and
lively under the brilliant reign of the Emperor Napoleon.
In a hotel on one of the most fashionable streets, sat a beautiful
woman, — remarkable among a thousand, even in that “age
of handsome women.”
She had been in Paris only five days, and already her staircase
was crowded with liveried pages, bearing costly bouquets,
and dainty, perfumed notes. Many a title had already in these
brief five days been laid at her feet, and still Aline Wentworth
(for she it was) walked majestically onward, with her great,
dreamy eyes gazing far away, never seeming to recognize the
bare existence of her titled train of suitors.
She sat in her boudoir, with the busy fingers of her maid
Lucille rapidly employed in arranging her for the opera. Bouquets
of the costliest exotics lay about the room all unheeded;
on some of them she had trampled; and they lay there crushed
and fading, and yet swelling the air with fragrance.
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Jewels lay upon the velvet carpet, jewels were strewn upon
the damask lounge, and still others gleamed in their agate caskets,
and bathed the room in a flood of light. Rich robes were
scattered about on chairs and lounges, and on her inlaid table
lay the costliest and most delicate gifts, tokens of the gay world's
homage.
But, amid all this splendor, Aline Wentworth's thoughts were
far away. What mattered it to her that already she was called
the handsomest woman in Paris, that she was surrounded by
more than the luxury of a princess, that the world was going
mad about her beauty? What mattered it, when cheerfully she
would have laid down all this luxury, and gone forth in peasant's
cap and gown, but for one kiss from lips that she had known and
loved long ago?
She heard but one tone, saw but one face, in the magic land
of her fancy, — the face of Ernest Glenville, the tone in which
he said “You have chosen!”
And yet not one word had she heard from him since that
night on which they had so strangely parted. He had sailed
for Europe under an assumed name, and she knew nothing of his
departure from New York, or of his after-fate. It was a love,
strong as her nature, which had then usurped the throne of her
heart. Her pride was fierce and strong, — stronger than death;
but this love had conquered even that, for she would have
bowed her haughty head, and gone forth gladly to shame, or
ruin, so it had been as the bride of Ernest Glenville.
Once, since her arrival in Paris, she had been presented at
court, and the impression she produced there by her marvellous
beauty was very singular. Napoleon himself had gazed on her
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with a glance of admiration that brought the blushes to her clear,
transparent cheek; and Josephine, almost the fairest woman of
the time, had taken her hand, and pressed her lips to her brow
with a sister's kindness.
There was one name which, ever since her arrival in Paris,
had fallen on Aline's ear in accents of almost idolatrous admiration, —
that of Marshal Michael Ney, the “Bravest of the
Brave.” She had heard it mentioned reverently by the people,
affectionately by the emperor, and proudly by his brethren in
arms, and already the very sound had a strange power over
her fancy.
It seemed to carry her backward into fields of battle. She
saw a clear blue eye, an unfaltering mien; and she saw this
soldier fight as if some spirit had risen from the grave, armed to
the teeth. Then she saw him, brave and grandly kind, like an
angel of mercy, caring for the wounded, soothing the mourner,
and anon, once more at the head of his division, in the fierce
fight, for death or annihilation.
He had been away from Paris, and on this, the first night of
his return, she had been told she would see him at the opera;
and all day she looked forward to it with an almost feverish
anxiety. But now even this hero of her dreams had faded from
her mind, as she sat there in her Genoa velvet easy-chair, with
the busy fingers of Lucille plaiting the jetty masses of her shining
hair into waves.
The blushing, trembling spell of her girlhood's love was upon
her heart to-night in all its power, and she dreamed on, till, unconsciously
to herself, her parted lips murmured “Ernest,” and
the sound awoke her from her revery.
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“You have done well, Lucille,” she exclaimed, as she arose,
and stood before the lofty mirror, extending from floor to ceiling.
“You may knot a few diamonds in my hair; or, stay, I will
wear simply this pearl rose-bud.”
O, what a beauty she was! How fair were the small
hands which smoothed down the folds of her sable velvet! how
delicately rounded the arms, whose exquisite contour seemed
heightened by the drapery of illusion lace!
At last she was attired; the tiny gloves had been drawn over
the slender fingers, a mantle of white cashmere had been folded
about her regal figure, and she placed in her jewelled bouquet-holder
one bouquet more elegant and costly than the rest, for it
was the gift of Josephine herself.
Entering her carriage, in a few moments she was securely
seated in her box at the opera, while whispers of “how beautiful!
how beautiful!” were heard all around her.
It could not but have flattered any ordinary woman's vanity
thus to be the mark for every opera-glass in the most brilliant
assemblage in Paris; but Aline Wentworth betrayed not the
slightest satisfaction in glance or motion. Proud and queenly
she sat there, as if she honored Paris by accepting the people's
homage.
“Vive L'Empereur!” shook the building to its centre, as
Napoleon entered with his suite; and then there was a cry scarcely
less loud, “Long live the Marshal! the `Bravest of the
brave!'” and Marshal Michael Ney entered the Royal Theatre.
At the first glance, Aline Wentworth had uttered a faint cry
and sank down breathless; but she had not been noticed in the
tremendous excitement, and in five minutes she sat erect, strong
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and cold, in the full glory of her matchless pride. Her eyes had
recognized, beneath the Marshal's star and the cross of the Legion
of Honor, a breast to which she had once been folded; those
blue eyes had once gazed into her own, that voice had murmured
her name; but she had chosen for herself, and this great, glorious
man had gone forth from her side, to win a name she might not
share; for this soldier, this Marshal Michael Ney, was but
the poor student, Ernest Glenville, older grown.
Well had he said he felt his destiny stirring within him; he
knew he should do something yet this world need not blush to
own!
But he was hers no longer. A being was by his side whose
loveliness could hardly grow dim even in the blaze of her own
beauty.
Aline understood, by love's quick intuition, that it was the
Marshal's wife, this fair child, — for even now she was little past
the age of girlhood, — on whom he gazed so tenderly.
She was very sweet, with a slight form, and hair like an
angel's wing, changing, and bright, and golden. Her eyes, —
but they were like nothing on earth, — and scarcely were the
stars of heaven, set floating in their sea of blue, as beautiful.
Her dress was of pure white satin, and some bright roses lay
trembling with her bosom's rise and fall.
What wonder that Aline Wentworth's heart grew sick and
shuddering? But it was a glorious night; never were the lamps
brighter, never were the dress-boxes a more intense blaze of gems
and beauty, and never, never swelled music on the air with such
high, exultant strains of melody.
Not once, in all this long evening, did Aline take her eyes
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from the Marshal and his bride. Her own admirers watched in
vain for a glance, until their patience was exhausted, and their
lorgnettes turned in other directions; and still the lights blazed,
still the music sounded, and still Ernest Glenville knew not that
the eyes of his early love were resting upon his face. But at
last it was all over; stately carriages rolled homeward, and
Paris slept.
Released from the necessity of self-control, it was fearful to
witness the paroxysms of Aline Wentworth's grief. She dismissed
her maid, and paced hurriedly to and fro in her room.
She tore her magnificent hair till it hung in dishevelled masses
about her haughty form; she bit her lips till they were stained
with blood; she snatched off her jewels, and flung them away;
she stamped her delicate feet; she tore the drapery from her
beautiful arms, and the folds of silk and linen from her passionate
heart; she threw herself prostrate on the floor, with her
black locks and torn garments streaming around her. Then she
arose, and lifted up her clenched hand.
Splendid, yet terrible sight! One moment she seemed a fury,
fearful in her grief; the next, she was touchingly beautiful, as
anguish, and sorrow, and regret at this blighting of her first,
strong love, agitated her.
Then the dark eyes were thrown upward in an intensity of
agony, their long lashes trembling on the contracted brows;
then her burning lips quivered, and her hand pressed her
throbbing bosom, while the attitude of that superb form was
eloquent of despair.
Half the night the excited woman gave herself up to this
uncontrollable outbreak of her agony; then she sank into a
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feverish slumber. After this, though her disappearance caused
a nine days' wonder, Paris heard no more of Aline Wentworth.
CHAPTER V.
“The bands are ranked — the chosen van
Of Tartar and of Mussulman,
The full of hope, misnamed forlorn,
Who hold the thought of death in scorn,
And win their way by falchion's force,
Or pave the path with many a corse,
O'er which the conquering brave must rise,
Their stepping-stone the last who dies.”
Siege of Corinth.
“Ah, few shall part where many meet;
The snow shall be their winding sheet,
And every turf beneath their feet
Shall be a soldier's sepulchre.”
Campbell.
It was the morning of June 18th, 1815, eight years after the
close of our last chapter. The star of Napoleon had set, meantime; —
he had spent at Elba a night turbulent with fearful
dreams, and now it seemed to be once more ascending to its
zenith; once more the “man of destiny” was at the head of a
French army, and the broad field of Waterloo resounded to the
wild, triumphant cry, “Vive l' Empereur!”
O, what a grand mental panorama passes before our eyes,
conjured, as by a spell, by that one word, Waterloo! We seem
once more to hear the shrieks which caused old men's hair to
stiffen years afterwards in their dreams at night; to live over
those terrible moments when the enemy was hidden by fire and
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smoke, and, seeing nothing, you could only track his presence by
a dull, heavy, rumbling sound, the echo of his tread in the solid
earth, jarring both men and horses; the silence, after a heavy
charge of artillery, broken only by the groans of the dying.
And yet men call war glorious, and speak of battles as a
splendid pastime. Ah! it may seem so, when the fight is raging,
the horses prancing, the bugles sounding; but to die in
battle, — to be left for hostile feet to spurn, hostile cavalry to
trample, and the vulture to swoop upon at last!
It makes one's blood run cold to think of it. It is not the
mere dying; many seek that, and the brave man fears it nowhere;
but it is to die with no fond hand to brush back the
heavy locks from the fevered brow, no gentle voice to murmur
words of strength and love; to have no grave nor any to weep
for us; no prayer, no farewell, nor any blessing! O, may God
save all I love from a fate like this!
But the battle of Waterloo was a glorious battle, as battles
go; and ever before our mind's eye, when its name is called,
rises one figure, tall and stately. Connected as imperishably
with this great battle as that of Napoleon himself, is the name
of the “Bravest of the Brave.”
How he looked, that morning! The white plumes on his helmet
nodded with the heavy dew; his gorgeous uniform glittered
in the light of the morning sun, and he himself, reining up his
proud steed, seemed, with his Herculean stature and bold mien,
as some warlike presence, that had risen out of the earth for
the defence of his country's rights, and the green fields of his
fathers.
The day was nearly ended when was made the last memorable
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charge of the Old Guard, — such a charge as time never before
witnessed. Ney had five horses shot beneath him, and then,
chafing like a lion, fought on foot, at the head of his advancing
legions. But now, for the first time in his life, he, the Invincible,
was borne down by superior numbers. France and the
empire were in his hands, and he struggled mightily to wrest
them from the grasp of destiny; but in vain. The “Bravest of
the Brave” had fought his last battle!
In a lowly prison-cell we next find him. He had been condemned
to be shot as a traitor, and was awaiting his doom with
the calmness of a hero. A single lamp burned dimly in his cell,
as he sat there alone, with his head bowed on his hands.
Suddenly a key turned in the rusty lock, the door swung open
on its hinges, and Julie stood before him, with her three fair children.
He was so intensely absorbed in thought, that he did not
even look up until he felt his wife's arms about his neck, her
tears warm upon his face.
“Julie!” he exclaimed; “Heaven be thanked for so much
mercy! I die to-morrow at ten, and I had not thought to see
you here.”
“Die! No, dearest, I am come to tell you you shall not die
I will go to the king to-morrow, and pray him, on my bended
knees, to spare your life. We will go anywhere, — into any
island or desert, so he but leave that; and he will not, he dare
not, refuse it to your wife!”
Ney turned his large blue eyes on her with a mournful smile,
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for he knew the Bourbons; but he would not deprive her of this
last, faint hope; so he said, quietly,
“Well, Julie, call my children to me; it will do no harm to
bid them farewell, and I can unsay it when you shall have won
me my life to-morrow.” Then, turning to his children, he added,
solemnly, “Ernest, Julie, Michael, your father blesses you! Be
good children; be faithful to God, to your mother and to France.
Your father has loved France, — do you love her; never remember
how I died, but love your country, and do not disgrace my
memory. You, Ernest and Michael, be good to your mother and
sister, — so only will the good God prosper you.”
Then he clasped them each separately in his arms, and blessed
them; and, turning to his wife, he gave her many words of earnest
and tender counsel. In the midst of his discourse, the
turnkey came to the door, and the hour for their interview was
ended.
“God bless you, Julie!” whispered the hero, amid his choking
sobs; “bear it like a soldier's wife, my poor child, and teach our
children to love their father's memory.”
Already had the jailer led the children from the apartment,
and now, with his key in his hand, he stood impatiently waiting
for the mother.
“Go, Julie, — go, darling!” whispered the Marshal, as he
strained her to his heart in a last embrace. At length she
glided from his arms; but she turned, ere she reached the door,
and whispered,
“Do not fear, dearest; I shall see the king, and you will be
free to-morrow.”
“Yes, free!” cried the hero, as the door rolled together on
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its hinges, and shut out Julie from his sight forever; “yes, free;
and I, too, shall see the King to-morrow; but it will be Him
before whom the power of the Bourbons is as dust!” And
then a sense of utter, overpowering desolation came upon him,
and he sank back on his pallet, more exhausted by this last interview
with his wife and children than he had been by five hundred
battles.
At five minutes before ten the next morning, the rosy glow of
the sunshine flooded the king's drawing-room, and fell upon the
pale, deathly face of a woman crouching at his feet, with three
small children clinging to her robe.
O, how the rich glow of the sunlight mocked her as she knelt
there, in her anguish, pleading for life, but for life! O, how
she cursed, in her aching heart, the cold, freezing French politeness,
that could keep her there in her sorrow and answer nothing!
Ah! there is a cup of trouble for thee to drain, Julie, — sharp,
bitter trouble; but rest will come after it, — sunny days, when
the past will be but a half-forgotten memory of sorrow; when
thou shalt be again a bride, when other lips than his shall press
on thine their homage to thy beauty, — and what of him?
A proud, stern man stood alone among his foes. Long,
glittering lines of soldiery were drawn up on either side of
him, muskets were flashing in the sunlight, and in the distance
rolled the surging tide of human beings hungry for death.
Noble, free, unshackled, he stood there, and spoke, with
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his hand upon his manly heart, those few, bold words, which
shall be remembered as long as tales are read, or gallant deeds
are told:
“I declare, before God and man, that I have never betrayed
my country; — may my death render her happy! Vive la
France!”
Then, gazing around over the assembled throng, his eye fell
on a carriage, drawn up at a little distance, where, in mourning
robes, with her long veil thrown back, sat Aline Wentworth.
It was the first time he had gazed on that face, with
its strangely-glorious eyes, since their last parting at New
York.
Who shall say whether it seemed to him a ministering angel,
or an avenging spirit? Who shall say how much of the old
love awoke in the hero's heart, in that long, thrilling gaze?
He said nothing — nothing save that one word, “her,” hissed
through his clenched teeth. Then, turning to the soldiers, he
calmly bared his noble breast, and cried, “My comrades, fire
on me!”
Words worthy a hero, — whose reply was the flash of muskets,
and that brave heart was still!
At that moment, a shriek, a woman's shriek, wild, terrible,
unearthly, swelled upon the air, and Aline Wentworth's proud
soul passed before its Judge!
Who shall say whether his spirit called not to hers, as it
winged its flight toward heaven? Who shall say that they, in
this life so strangely parted, met not above? Her woman's
heart, strong in its anguish, strong in its hopeless love, could
beat no longer when its idol ceased to live.
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His wife could live on, his children could look calmly upon
the murderers of their father, his comrades who had stood by
his side in so many battles could aim coolly at his heart;
but Aline Wentworth, the strong-minded, proud, high-souled
American woman, lived but in his life, and was faithful to the
“Bravest of the Brave” in death.
Note. — Recent discoveries have induced a belief that Marshal Ney
was, in reality, an American, though it suited his designs to appear of
French parentage. In thus grouping together a few scenes from his
private life, I have but performed a labor of love; and I offer its result
as a humble tribute to a great man's memory.
-- -- p655-439
BESSIE GREEN.
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“O, what a terrible thing it is to have everybody hate
me!”
The words were childish, and the speaker was little past her
tenth year. She was a strange-looking object, as she sat, in
the dim twilight, at the window of an old-fashioned farm-house.
It was Thanksgiving day, and the good people of Ryefield
were making merry, far and wide.
There were bright fires upon the spacious hearths, and spruce-boughs
and branches of asparagus waved over the red-framed
looking-glasses, and above the windows hung twigs of holly,
with their bright red berries.
But nowhere wore the spruce-boughs a brighter green, or
the holly-berries a deeper red, than in the old farm-house of
Grandfather Morgan, as he was called, for thrice five miles
around.
In the old-fashioned parlor there were groups of happy children:
young men and maidens, just arrived at the awkward
stage of blushes, and supererogatory hands; meek-eyed mothers,
and bold, sturdy-looking farmers, in home-made trousers and
cow-hide boots.
On either side of the hearth-stone sat old Grandfather Morgan
and his wife, and between them the fire danced and sparkled, and
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the bright flames wound themselves round the ruddy back-log, in
a thousand caressing folds.
But one there was to whose eye there came no light, to
whose cheek there came no flush; for there was no mother's hand
to brush back the heavy tresses from her brow, no mother's lips
to murmur blessings over her, or rest softly on her upturned
cheek.
So there, in the lonely kitchen, with her young face pressed
closely against the narrow window-pane, sat little Bessie Green,
sometimes sighing fitfully, as sounds of mirth and childish laughter
floated to her ears, through the half-closed doors of the other
room.
She was by no means a pretty child. Her brow was not particularly
smooth, soft or low; nor was her hair in the least similar
to braided sunshine. Her eyes were not blue as the Indian
seas; nor yet did her fair cheek flush like the heart of a summer
rose, beneath the shadow of long, golden lashes.
There was no charm in her elfin features to win your heart;
and yet, if you believed in goblins and fairies, you would look
twice at the almost unearthly face, peering from beneath the
tangled masses of her black hair. The hair itself might have
been made passable by good management; as it was, her face
had no recommendation, save that her wild black eyes were lit
by a kind of bold fearlessness, which all the contumely incidental
to her situation had not been able to subdue.
And yet it seemed a strange thing that one so young, so innocent,
should be so utterly alone. Strange that even Grandfather
Morgan's kind eyes grew stern as he looked on her, and young
faces darkened as she joined their circle.
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Stranger still, when you knew that Grandmother Morgan had
borne the poor child's mother beneath her heart.
Amy Morgan had been called the fairest flower of Ryefield,
from the time she first opened her blue eyes to the light of a
midsummer morning. Fifteen summers had she roamed through
moor and meadow-land; fifteen winters had she sat by her
father's side, in the fire-shine at the farm-house, or the high-backed
pew at church, on a Sabbath day.
She was the very impersonation of the spirit of gladness; and
yet, low down in her soul, was a spring of unquiet waters, of
whose existence she had never dreamed, in the sunshine of her
innocent young heart.
Flowers — fresh, warm heart-flowers — were springing there,
which no hand had gathered; and the wild tide of passion lay
hushed and still, like some sunny lake, which has never mirrored
the face of mortal.
But, like the charmed existence of the sleeping-beauty, this
heart-sleep was destined to have an end, when there should appear
some cavalier daring enough to break through the hedge of
thorns, and kiss into the warmth and life of passion the untold
dreams and fancies walking through the shadowy aisles of her
heart, like nuns through the aisles of a convent.
One day she had been out to gather flowers, when she met a
stranger in the forest. You could scarcely have imagined a
fairer picture than was Amy. On the green grass beside her
lay her simple straw hat, tied round with a blue ribbon. Her
lap was full of wild-flowers, and she was telling, school-girl like,
impossible fortunes with the leaves of a forget-me-not, when her
reveries were interrupted by a rich, musical voice. Looking up,
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she encountered the bold black eyes of the handsome stranger.
He addressed her in a strain of a playful gallantry, as new as it
was pleasing. Fairy, and sprite, and princess, were among the
high-sounding titles with which he dignified her, until at last she
faltered, between her blushes,
“O no, sir, you are mistaken; I am only Amy Morgan, daughter
of the farmer who lives in yonder brown cottage.”
“And I, sweet maiden, — I am only Clarence Green, passed-midshipman
in the United States service; so let us sit down
upon this bank, and get acquainted, since we 've met here, on
the very hunting-grounds of the fairies.”
If Amy had been startled at first, his respectful manner, and
the open glance of his black eyes, were sufficient to reässure her;
and she sat by his side, on the green bank, without withdrawing
the trembling hand he had prisoned in his own.
And there, for many a summer day, they met, till love, deep
and all-absorbing, took possession of sweet Amy Morgan, till, at
her lover's bidding, she would have laid down even life itself.
O, bitter, in this deceitful world, is almost always the recompense
of a love like this!
Grandfather Morgan frowned when he saw the handsome
stranger wandering by Amy's side over the fields, and lifting
her slight form over the swollen brooks; but Amy was his darling,
and the expression of his dislike was suppressed.
“Next month, Amy, when the fruit gets heavy and falls
down, and the ripe peaches blush in the autumn sunshine, you
shall be my bride,” whispered Clarence Green, as he sat by
Amy's side.
And then, with whispered words of endearment and
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supplication, he won her, who already loved and trusted, to give him all
that woman can give, and more than she can give without dashing
every drop of joy from the chalice of her life.
Clarence Green had no time to prove whether the love he had
professed was true, whether he would have called Amy wife ere
the waning of the autumn moon; for, in less than one short week,
he was thrown from the back of his horse, upon a pile of sharp
stones, and killed.
Amy uttered few words of lamentation, but the rose faded
from her cheek, and her face grew thinner and more spiritual.
Months had passed; and, one night, toward the close of February,
she stole, with her noiseless footfall, into the old kitchen,
and, kneeling at the feet of her stern father, sobbed out, in broken
words, the story of her shame.
For a moment Grandfather Morgan sat silent; then his voice
broke forth, not in words of pity or mercy, but in half-stifled
curses on the destroyer of his child.
Tears of bitter agony coursed over Amy Morgan's pale cheeks,
and, clasping her hands, she pleaded, “O, father, dear father, do
not curse the dead! Let your anger fall on me, for I deserve it,
but not on Clarence! If he had lived, I should have been his
wife; and now, even now, would I lay down this guilty, miserable
life, to call him back but for one short hour! O, father, do
not curse him, or I shall die here on the stone hearth at your
feet!”
But the tide of wrath burned fiercely in the father's heart,
and, even as she knelt there, with her hands clasped and the
tears streaming over her cheeks, with one blow of his arm he
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felled her to the earth, and the blood gushed from her parted
lips, in a warm red stream, over her white garments.
The repentant father caught her to his heart, and bore her to
her own little room; but when he called on her to forgive him,
to look on him once more, she only muttered incoherent ravings
of agony.
That night, amid the storm and tempest and the fierce howl of
angry winds, Bessie Green was born. Fit welcome for a child
of shame! Not even her mother's voice could arouse poor Amy
from the stupor into which she seemed to have fallen. Only
once she spoke coherently. It was when they put her baby in
her arms.
“It has its father's eyes,” she murmured, as she strained it convulsively
to her breast. “The world is cold for thee, my motherless
one! I 've nothing to give thee but a name; let them call
thee Bessie Green!”
And then, still holding her child, she closed her eyes, as if in
prayer; her breath grew shorter and shorter, and her soul
passed forth upon the wing of the tempest, to the throne of Him
who said to one of old time, “Go, daughter; sin no more!”
Bitter was the repentance of Farmer Morgan over the grave
of his dead child; strange that it softened not his heart toward
the living.
But no; the little Bessie looked on them with her father's
eyes, and scarcely the mother's blood which flowed in her veins
kept her from being the object of hatred, as she surely was of
dislike. When Grandmother Morgan looked at her, the sweet
face of her Amy, with its golden curls, seemed to arise in
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contrast to the pale, still child, with her elf-locks and gypsy-like
eyes.
Bessie never played like other children. Sometimes she would
watch the wind-driven clouds, sometimes hold a feather up to be
swayed by the breeze, sometimes read by the firelight strange
tales of ghosts and goblins, that no one knew how she had contrived
to pick up. But her dearest pleasure was to steal out to
her mother's grave, where a white cross had been raised, bearing
no inscription but that sweet name, Amy, and weep there with
her lips pressed to the cold marble, calling on the dead by every
endearing title that she could recall.
She had grown up entirely unaccustomed to be loved or petted;
and yet she felt her loneliness keenly, this gay Thanksgiving
night, with so many young and happy hearts around her.
For a long time she sat in the dimly-lighted kitchen, with her
face pressed to the window; and then, starting up, she stole away
into her own little room, up stairs. The moon had risen now, and
by its light she took from her pine bureau a gold locket, containing
the blended hair of both her parents, and fastened it around
her neck.
Then, wrapping herself in her shawl, she stole out into the
keen, frosty air of the winter evening. The snow had fallen
heavily the night before, and it lay now upon the ground, sometimes
in drifts, sometimes in broad, white sheets.
But onward sped the poor, lonely child, over bank and hollow,
until at last she reached the village church-yard, and knelt beside
her mother's grave, with her lips pressed against the cold head-stone.
For a half-hour she continued kneeling there, sobbing out her
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love and grief; and then, at last, she started and hurried away,
but in a direction opposite to her grandfather's farm-house. The
one purpose was strong in her mind, to escape from such coldness
and misery.
The next morning Bessie Green was missed from the old homestead.
A few inquiries were made for her; but the search was
neither active nor long sustained, and in a few days her fate had
nearly ceased to be an object of wonder or anxiety.
Ten years had passed; and one afternoon, late in the winter,
the village sewing-society had assembled at Grandfather Morgan's.
The usual topics of village interest had been discussed. It had
been “allowed” that “Anna Ellis' new silk dress was the most extravagantest
thing ever seen in those parts;” and that it was “a
burnin' shame for that Anna Ellis to have sich a dress, when
everybody in Ryefield knew her father was only a poor blacksmith,
and she herself put on the airs of a city young lady.”
Then it had been decided that Charlotte Lincoln had turned
off 'Squire Knight's son, because he was seen coming out of the
tavern on a Sunday night.
The gossip of the village having been consummated, a lady
present, who had been visiting in New-York, remarked that she
had there heard the distinguished vocalist Clara Fisher, and engrossed
the rest of the afternoon in a description of melodies
which, according to her account, were but little inferior to those
in the Swedish legend, where Father Alfus passes a century,
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thinking it but a day, as he listens to the song of the bird of
Paradise.
Great, therefore, was the surprise of the good people of Ryefield,
when, at their next sewing-society, it was announced, by the
same indisputable authority, that the illustrious vocalist, at whose
concerts, it was confidently reported, a hundred dollars had
been paid for a single seat, was coming to give a free concert,
her last for the season, in the old Presbyterian church, in their
own humble village.
Time passed on, and the report was confirmed by the arrival
of an orchestra, and the putting up of some printed handbills.
Everything having been made ready, the lady herself came
also. Dressed in black and closely veiled, she was handed by
her servant from her travelling-carriage, and up the steps of the
only hotel of which the village could boast.
Her meals were served in her own room, by her own servants;
and though everybody was at the church a half-hour before the
appointed time, yet the singer was not seen, until, at seven o'clock
precisely, she stepped from behind the curtain, and walked forth
upon the stage; how and when she came there being, to this day,
a mystery to the good people of Ryefield.
She was habited in a close-fitting robe of black velvet, cut
low in the neck. Her shoulders seemed fair as statuary, as they
shone through the scarf of illusion lace which enveloped her
figure like a mantle of dew-drops. Her hair was looped back
in heavy braids, and in its folds nestled a single japonica. Her
features were regular, but you could scarcely tell what was their
contour; for, in looking at her, one noticed nothing but those
dark eyes — eyes which, having been once seen, would haunt your
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dreams for many a night, and could never again be forgotten.
But when her voice burst upon the air, in a strain of low,
thrilling sweetness, earth itself was forgotten in a dream of
heaven!
She had chosen, for the most part, simple, touching ballads,
such as “Auld Robin Gray,” and Dunn English's song of “Ben
Bolt;” but when at last she concluded the entertainment with
“Allan Percy,” faintly warbled, she received from the audience,
not enthusiastic cheers; not, as in her southern concerts, bouquets
of exotics knotted round with diamonds; but the richer tribute
of tears, and sighs, and stifled sobs.
Meekly she bowed her graceful head, with the tear-drops resting
on her lashes, and passed behind the curtain. Slowly, half
sadly, the people rose, as if under the spell of an enchantress;
and thus ended Clara Fisher's concert at Ryefield.
The next day, the orchestra and the instruments and the
travelling-carriage disappeared, and it was supposed the veiled
lady had accompanied them.
That evening Grandfather and Grandmother Morgan sat alone
before their brightly-blazing fire, their chairs drawn close together.
They had been talking of the previous evening's entertainment,
and Grandmother Morgan said it seemed to her as if
the angels in heaven were singing in chorus.
“Wife,” whispered the old man, as he pushed his chair a little
nearer hers, “did the singer's voice remind you of any you
ever heard before?” and he bent his lips close to her ear.
“Amy,” gasped the old woman, from between her closed
teeth.
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It was the first time that word had been spoken between them
for years, and it seemed like the opening of a coffin.
“Yes, Amy,” answered the old man; “her voice seemed
strangely like that of our poor dead girl.”
Then, for a time, there was silence between them. At last the
old woman said,
“Husband!”
“Well, wife?”
“I have been thinking, mayhap, we did n't treat that poor child
Bessie as well as we ought. She, poor thing, was not to blame
for her father's misdeeds, and we ought to have been all the
kinder to her because she was lonesome-like. I wish I could
know where she is, before I die.”
“Wife,” answered the old man, “it 's just twenty years to-night,
since Amy died. We shall sleep beside her long before twenty
more years have passed.”
At this moment there was a light tap on the outer door, and
the singer, Clara Fisher, stood before them. Drawing a chair
to the fire, she said, in a singularly musical tone, while her face
was turned from the light, “You had a grandchild once, named
Bessie Green. May I tell you of her, or do you hate her name
even now?”
“O, tell us, tell us!” cried both at once, with trembling eagerness;
and Grandfather Morgan added, “We have been unjust to
the poor child; God grant we may have her forgiveness before
we die!”
The singer's voice was husky when she commenced to speak;
but it soon grew clear and strong.
“Thanksgiving night,” she said, “Thanksgiving night, a little
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more than ten years ago, this poor child, Bessie Green, sat weeping
by your kitchen window. There was light and life around
her; but no one seemed to remember her existence, and she was
very desolate. At last she went forth into the cold night air,
with but one purpose in her childish heart, to steal away from
the mirth and joy around her. She wandered on, on, until at
last, when it seemed as if her trembling limbs could bear her
weight no longer, she met a kind physician returning homeward
from a midnight ride. The moon shone down upon her, full and
clear, and the good man stopped his horse, at the sight of the
little figure tottering through the drifting snow.
“`Where are you going, my little one?' he asked, kindly. —
`Anywhere, sir,' was the reply. `I don't know where, myself.' —
`Are you not very tired?' — `Yes, sir, very.' — `Would you like to
ride home with me?' — `O, thank you, yes, sir!' and the strong,
kind arms lifted her upon the horse, and, clasping the stranger's
neck, she fell fast asleep as she rode away.
“He would have brought the child back to you; but she prayed
so earnestly to remain, that he ceased his persuasions, and
whispered to his meek-eyed wife, as he looked on his own six
hungry boys, `God will provide for them, dear love!'
“In the early spring there came to the little cottage an old
college friend of the doctor's. The stranger was a celebrated
musician, and, one day, hearing Bessie singing to herself, he
said that, as surely as the great Father had given to every one
of his creatures a proper vocation, music was hers; and he offered
to take her with him, and have her instructed.
“Dr. Maitland called her to his side. `Hard as 't will be to
part with you, my Bessie,' he said, `I think it best that you
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should go. But we will never send our little girl away; do as
you please.'
“For a while the poor child hesitated; she was loved at Maitland
cottage, and to her love brought a strange blessedness; but
her child-heart comprehended that it was best to go, and, timidly
raising her dark eyes, she placed her hand in that of Ernest
Fisher.
“He gave her a thorough musical education; and when he died
bequeathed to her his name and his renown, all he had to bestow.
She went before the public, with the one purpose warm in her
heart, of winning wealth and fame, that you might love her; for
I, dear parents,” — and she sank on her knees before them, — “I
am Bessie Green! In every triumph, my heart has longed for
love, the pure, sweet love of kindred. I have wealth and fame
now; all, all are yours, — only bless me once, and call me your
dear child before I die!”
But the voices were choked with tears that would have murmured
blessings on her, and the hands trembled that were laid
upon her bowed head. At last, they sank upon their knees beside
their beautiful child, and together, in the silence, they prayed —
the reünited!
