Part 6

Mrs. Vernon opened her desk and wrote to her daughter. The letter was a short one, but full of tenderness, rather hinting at than openly telling of the feeble state of her own health, and her longing desire to have her child beside her again.

Flora received that note the next morning; in the evening, just as the first tremulous star appeared in the darkening sky, Flora's step was on the threshold of her home.

*CHAPTER XI.*

*DOUBTS.*

"Sweeter, lovelier, dearer than ever!" thought Mrs. Vernon, as she pressed her daughter closer and closer in her fond embrace. When the flush of excitement at the first meeting had passed away, the eye of affection observed that Flora had become paler and thinner, that there was a thoughtful, preoccupied expression on her gentle brow, as though her mind were wandering far away; but there was deeper feeling in those soft blue eyes, more beaming sweetness in that smile, than even her mother had ever seen before.

Flora retired early to her room, pleading the fatigue of her journey. She had scarcely been able to give even the semblance of attention to the multifarious questions of Emma on the amusements and fashions of London, and had answered them almost at random; but when she found herself in her own apartment, the door closed, and only Mrs. Vernon beside her, she threw herself again on her mother's bosom, buried her glowing face on her parent's neck, and, trembling with joyful emotion, uttered, in scarcely articulate accents, "Mother, dear mother, he has spoken!"

"Sir Amery Legrange!" faltered Mrs. Vernon.

"I must tell you all," continued Flora, without raising her head. "It was yesterday--only yesterday--at Richmond. I did not know--I had scarcely dreamed--oh, mother!" she exclaimed suddenly, bursting into tears of delight, "I never never believed it possible to be so--" the bright, sparkling drops told the rest.

Mrs. Vernon grew very cold. There was a sinking at her heart and a rising in her throat, which made her for the moment unable to speak.

"And he will be a son to you, mother, the most tender and dutiful of sons! He will never separate us--he is so generous--so good!"

"And is he"--said Mrs. Vernon, speaking slowly, as if fearful to break by one word the spell of happiness thrown around her daughter--"is he one who holds the same blessed faith in which your dear father lived and died?"

Flora was silent for a short space. "He does act, I believe--indeed, I know--he does not in all things hold the same opinions as those which I have been taught; he is too candid, too honourable to make false professions; he--he does not view everything in the same light which you do; but his character, his life are beyond reproach; his actions prove that his creed cannot be far wrong! It is from you, mother, that I have learned to value deeds far more than words. Was it not our Saviour himself who said, '_By their fruits ye shall know them?_'"

"He did so, my child; and where the fruits of the Spirit are found, there we may be sure that a blessing abides. But the first fruit is love, supreme love towards God, the love of the redeemed for their Redeemer, of pardoned sinners for their Saviour: where this is wanting, what cause have we to hope that the soul has been 'born again' unto God?"

Flora raised her head: her cheek was painfully flushed, and the tears of joy which had glistened on her lashes were followed by bitter drops, as she exclaimed, "Some one has been prejudicing you against him; some one has been maligning him, mother!"

"It is himself, then," replied Mrs. Vernon, calmly; "I have been reading 'The Master-Mind.'"

"And do you not think it beautiful--sublime--the transcript of a noble heart, an exalted mind?"

"Not the heart of one converted--not the mind of a Christian!"

There was a long and most painful silence. Flora was wounded to the quick, and that by a hand that she loved. Blinded by her affection, she regarded Sir Amery with an enthusiastic admiration which could see no fault, a tender devotion which would have regarded the sacrifice of life itself but a small one for his sake. Every fibre of her loving heart seemed to have twined itself round its new idol, and to breathe even a slighting word of _him_ was to wrench and lacerate those tender heart-strings. She again buried her face, but this time it was not on the bosom of her mother.

"Mamma, you know not how wretched you make me with your doubts!"

"My child--my own child--I would give my life's blood to render you happy!" Mrs. Vernon took the cold hand of Flora, and pressed it convulsively to her heart. "But I cannot--I dare not--trust you to one who is not treading the same path towards heaven: I cannot--dare not--let you break the command which bids our unions be '_only in the Lord_.'"

"You will refuse your consent?" exclaimed Flora, starting to her feet, and gazing on her mother with a look of wild dismay.

"Oh, God help me!--God guide me!" murmured the unhappy parent, pressing her hand tightly over her brow.

"You will refuse your consent?" repeated Flora, more wildly and passionately than before. "Mother, mother! you know not what you are doing!--you may break my heart, you may lay me in my grave; but"--her manner suddenly changed to one of clinging, confiding affection, as she sank at the feet of her mother, and looked imploringly up into her face--"but you will not, dear mother, you will not; you will let us be happy together. When you see him--when you know him--all these terrible doubts will pass quite away; you will look on him as I look--you will love him: only wait till he comes--till to-morrow."

"To-morrow! is he coming?" gasped the lady.

"Mother, dearest mother, you are trembling!"

"Oh, this is a very, very bitter cup! God give me strength to drink it," exclaimed the widow.

"He will bring sunshine with him; he will plead his own cause--"

"Thankful, most deeply, profoundly thankful will I be, Flora, if he can indeed satisfy my mind that he is a faithful servant of our divine Master! I can pass over minor differences--the outer garb of religion--the forms which man hath appointed--we may hold various opinions here, and yet be one in the Lord. But if I find that my fears are but too true--that Sir Amery, gifted and noble as he is, has chosen a path of his own, which is not the narrow one which leadeth alone unto life; that he rests upon a hope of his own, which is not trust in the merits of his Saviour; that he has formed a standard of his own, which is not the standard of the Word of Truth; whatever grief, whatever anguish it may cost me, my duty is plain before me--I must not resign the treasure committed by God to my charge to the keeping of one who is not His disciple."

And so they parted, the mother and the daughter, and many and bitter were the tears which wet their pillows that night. Mrs. Vernon sought and found relief in prayer--Flora, in thoughts of him whose idolized image stood between her and the light of Heaven.

*CHAPTER XII.*

*DECISION.*

Before sunset on the following day, while yet the bright orb darted his beams, like glittering lances, through openings in the foliage, and the jasmine blossoms trembled in the breeze and scattered their silver stars on the ground, an elastic step trod the path which led to the door of Laurel Bank--a tall graceful form ascended the steps; and the children in the garden wonderingly gazed from a distance on the lordly stranger who came, an unwonted visitor, to their home.

How fast throbbed one trembling heart at the sight of that form, the sound of that footstep! Flora had spent an exciting and agitating day. She had been for hours alone with her mother, those fatal volumes before them which they had perused with such different feelings. Flora had listened, argued, and wept, her judgment half convinced, but her heart altogether unpersuaded. Sir Amery was still the hero of her fancy, the idol of her affection. His very imperfections, like broken rocks in wild scenery, were to her invested with a charm which made the virtues of others appear tame. If he had errors, she thought, they were the errors of a noble mind, the wanderings of a glorious river, pursuing its bright course at its own free pleasure, not confined to one long, dull, straight line, like a canal made by measure and rule.

"And oh, my mother!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands, "think of the privilege, the blessing, of helping to draw such a noble spirit nearer to religion and to God!--of winning him to love what I love--to serve whom I serve! How can I, weak and helpless as I am, so benefit my fellow-creatures as by employing such influence as Providence has given me over the heart of one of the most gifted of men, to lead him to devote his high powers to the cause of piety and virtue? Does not this appear to be the special work which God has appointed me to do? is it not for this that I have been given favour in the eyes of one so far above me in all things? I have heard Mr. Ward preach upon providential calls, doors of usefulness opened to God's servants, opportunities offered which it is sin to neglect: is not a door now opened to me, an opportunity granted of serving the Lord in a wider sphere than I could ever hope to occupy here?"

"My child, your feelings and not your judgment now speak. A plain commandment of the Almighty is before you--'_Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers._' Do you believe that in breaking the law of your God you can expect his blessing, that blessing without which it were as impossible for one being to change the heart of another, as it would be to bring waters from the stony rock or call up fire from the ocean?"

"But," pleaded Flora through her tears, "did not the apostle write that '_the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife; for what knowest thou, O wife! whether thou shalt save thy husband?_' is not such a blessed hope as this held out to encourage feeble women like me?"

"It was held out to such as were themselves converted after marriage, to such as had already formed the tie which bound them to unbelievers, before the grace of God was shed abroad in their own hearts. Can you mention a single verse in the Bible that encourages us to do evil that good may come, to break God's law that we may aid others to keep it?"

Flora looked down and sighed heavily.

"Oh, my daughter! while you hopefully regard the effect which your influence may have upon the man whom you love, you forget the influence which he will assuredly exercise over yourself. You trust that you will be the means of drawing him nearer to the Lord--you overlook the danger that he will draw your own heart away. When we wilfully throw ourselves into temptation, what assurance can we have that the Almighty will preserve us from its effects? Who dare say, 'I will stand fast in the Lord,' when, through our tenderest affections, our closest ties, the danger presses on our souls?"

Little did Sir Amery dream of the cloud that was rising to darken the sky which was so bright before him! Little did he dream of the conflict which awaited him, as with an exulting heart he approached the home of his beloved! He knew that her heart was his own; and from her family, judging by his knowledge of the world, he deemed that he could have nothing to fear. He was conscious of high talent, and of that strange, undefined power over the feelings and passions of others which is exercised but by few, and which makes its possessor take a lofty position in society even when not, as was the case with himself, entitled to such by birth. Sir Amery knew that he might contract a brilliant alliance--that, in the object of his choice, rank, wealth, and beauty, might unite, and that the proudest families in the land would deem connection with him an honour. He knew all this; and when he who had been the observed of all observers--admired, envied, courted--he whose fame had spread into distant lands, whose works were quoted in foreign tongues--when he turned from the glittering circles of fashion to choose for his bride a simple maiden, who possessed neither rank nor riches, he felt that the world might regard his disinterested attachment as romantic folly. But for the world's opinions on the subject he cared little; he was almost satiated with its applause, and he was content, and more than content, to stoop from his pinnacle of fame, to rest on one gentle, loving heart, that he could make entirely his own, and mould according to his will.

Had the idea been suggested to Sir Amery that his suit for the hand of Flora would meet with opposition in her home, he would have smiled at it as something more improbable than the wildest flights of his fancy; but the thought that such opposition might be dangerous, nay, successful--that his hopes might be blighted, his happiness marred, and that by an instrument so feeble as the conscientious scruples of a merchant's widow--such thought would have been at once dismissed from his mind as beyond the bounds of possibility. When, therefore, the anxious, trembling mother, received him with an emotion of which he at first misinterpreted the cause--when, by an effort which sent back the blood to her heart, she told him of her doubts, of her fears, shrinking from meeting the bright eye which rested so keenly upon her--the first sentiment awakened in his breast was one of surprise, succeeded by something akin to indignation. Was he to be called upon to explain his views, to give an account of his opinions! Were the depths of his mind to be sounded by the feeble thread of a woman's judgment! What was it to her what he thought or believed--it was not to be expected that she should understand _him_! Why was theology dragged in at all, where the question was between heart and heart! "Such matters might suit," as he observed, with a sarcastic smile, "the discussion of grave doctors at convocation, but could scarcely occupy now the attention of him whose mind was absorbed by but one object--the deep, passionate love which he bore towards her in whom all his hopes of happiness centred!"

Sir Amery had at first suspected Mrs. Vernon of throwing frivolous difficulties in the way, in order to enhance the value of the prize which he sought, and to prevent the baronet from feeling that the merchant's daughter was too easily won. Flora's silent anguish, however, and her mother's quiet decision, soon undeceived him on this point. He saw that the danger was real, the opposition which he encountered, sincere. He then changed his position altogether; and dropping the calm, almost sarcastic manner in which he had at first replied to Mrs. Vernon, he burst into a strain of fervid, glowing eloquence, pouring forth those impassioned words which excite the feelings and confound the judgment. He pleaded his own cause as those only can plead whose more than life is at stake.

To Flora, such words were irresistible. If doubts or scruples had been raised in her mind, they were swept in a moment away, as the rushing cataract, dashing from a height, whirls along the autumn leaves that have dropped on its surface! But as easily could that roaring cataract break the arch of the rainbow that glistens at its foot, as the torrent of eloquence to which she listened warp the settled judgment of the parent. She needed not to be persuaded that Sir Amery loved--she believed Flora to be worthy of the warmest affection which ever glowed in the heart of man; but no sentence which he uttered altered her conviction that he was one who, however gifted with earthly wisdom, was yet a stranger to the knowledge which alone can make man wise unto salvation.

Sir Amery read in the expression of her sad eye that, as far as regarded Mrs. Vernon, all that he had spoken had been uttered in vain. Repressing the fierce resentment which swelled in his breast, he addressed himself more exclusively to Flora, whose tears were her only reply. Mrs. Vernon saw that the love of her only child for one whom, some few weeks before, she had met as a stranger, was overcoming even that affection which had grown with her growth and strengthened with her strength; she felt herself the only barrier between her daughter and a danger to which Flora was blind, and she dreaded lest that barrier might be passed. Her nerves overstrained, her feelings wounded, her fears for the moment overmastering her faith, Mrs. Vernon sank back on her chair, the paleness of death overspread her face, a feint sigh burst from her whitening lips!

The sight of her mother in this state roused all that deep affection which Flora had ever borne towards her parent. In a moment she was at her side, supporting her drooping head, covering the pallid brow with her tears.

"Oh, mother, mother!" she sobbed forth, "look not thus. I will do anything--everything that you will! Leave me, leave me, Sir Amery!" she continued, in tones of passionate grief; "I never can--I never will--marry without the consent of my mother!"

"You do not bid me despair?" exclaimed Sir Amery, grasping the unresisting hand which trembled in his. "Flora, you do not bid me despair?"

"Go--go. Perhaps a time may come--perhaps--only leave me--for pity's sake, leave me!"

"You shall be obeyed," replied Sir Amery, pressing her hand fervently to his lips; "Flora, my heart's life, you shall be obeyed. But notwithstanding all the obstacles which narrow-minded bigotry would raise up between us, did all the powers of earth combine to separate those whose hearts are united, love like mine should trample down those obstacles, and, in defiance of the opposition of the world, you should be mine: yes, Flora, idol of my soul! you shall be mine!"

He was gone!--gone with burning words on his lips, passionate, indignant emotions in his heart: he was gone, and left desolation behind him!

*CHAPTER XIII.*

*THE MOTHER'S TRIAL.*

"Sweet are the uses of adversity," writes the great poet of Nature. Experience confirms the blessed truth proclaimed by Revelation, that "they who sow in tears shall reap in joy." The lips that meekly kiss the rod find that, like Aaron's, it will blossom, and bear the fruits of peace, and even joy. Sorrow has so often been the step to sanctification, that we can scarcely wonder that the means have sometimes been mistaken for the end--that it has been thought that grief has in itself some purifying power, until much suffering on earth is almost regarded as a passport to heaven!

And yet how mistaken is this view!--how contrary to the warning in the Scriptures, that there is a sorrow of the world that worketh death? If some tears are like the dew that descends on the earth, shedding fertility and beauty on all sides, others are like the waters of the Dead Sea, bitter and unblessed: buried joys lie beneath, and a desert spreads around!

Such were the tears of Flora, on this blighting of her fondest hopes--this separation from him whom she regarded as the lode-star of her existence. Earth to her held nothing more to live for. All was a weary blank like that before the darkened eyes of the blind. She no longer found pleasure in aught that had pleased her before: her flowers drooped neglected, her instrument was dumb, her books were unopened, her pencil untouched. And as with her pleasures, so with her duties--all were alike disregarded. The poor listened in vain for her well-known step; her pupils wondered at her absence from the school; Emma openly complained of unkindness and neglect; while her children were shunned by Flora, or their presence endured with scarce concealed dislike and irritation. She noticed not, cared not, for the improvement wrought in them by Mrs. Vernon's patient care; she only felt that their noisy merriment jarred on her wounded spirit; she was almost angry to think that they were happy! Flora was a changed being--changed even to her mother. The parent's fond glance never met an answering smile; her tender words received short, sullen answers. Flora saved no pang to the gentle breast which maternal love gave her such power to wound. Not that she uttered a murmur--pride would not have suffered that; but there was reproach in the downcast, tearful eye--reproach in the tone of the mournful voice, in the languid step, the drooping form. By neglect of her own health, by sullen yielding to despair, Flora was revenging herself upon her mother.

And what was the state of her heart towards her heavenly Father? Alas! could the thoughts and feelings of the unhappy Flora have been written down, she would have started and trembled to see how near the breathings of a repining, gloomy spirit approached to blasphemy! She deemed herself hardly, unmercifully dealt with. She marvelled why she had been raised for a moment to the very pinnacle of human felicity, to be dashed down into the deep gulf of despair! Was the Almighty indeed a pitying Father? Had He led her into the paths of peace? Had He not rather filled her cup with bitterness, and withered her soul with disappointment? Nay, was it not religion that lay at the root of all her misery? Were not the conscientious misgivings of her mother as the worm that had destroyed the gourd that she delighted in? Had Mrs. Vernon's views been less strict and puritanical--less _bigoted_, as Flora called them, in the anguish of her soul--would not her daughter have been the happiest of women?--would not she herself have been the proudest of mothers?

Such thoughts were sinful, marked with the deepest stain of ingratitude; yet Flora indulged in them freely. She almost accused Providence in secret of having exposed her to trials beyond what she could bear; unmindful of the fact that she had herself, in impatience of petty annoyances, chosen the path which, however flowery at first, she had found to be strewn with sharp thorns. If she was conscious that her faith was growing weak, and her love towards God becoming cold, she laid the blame upon the cruel circumstances of the position in which the Almighty had placed her. She had loved and served the Lord--at least so she deemed--when she was happy; but when His hand lay so heavy upon her, she was ready to forget all past mercies, all present blessings, all bright hopes of a blissful future. With Jonah her spirit exclaimed, "I do well to be angry:" with Elijah, "It is enough; take away my life!" Impatient to throw down the burden which her unchastened will refused to sustain, she longed, almost prayed, for death--little deeming in her present state how unfit she was to die. The sun of trial was now indeed glowing with intense and burning heat on the seed which had been sown in rocky ground; the plant which had shown in the world's eye so fair, unwatered by grace, having no root in itself, in the time of temptation withered away.