Chapter 14

"High minds of native pride and force, Most deeply feel thy pangs, remorse."--_Scott._

"Lord, at Thy feet ashamed I lie, Upward I dare not look-- Pardon my sins before I die, And blot them from Thy book."--_Hymn._

When Mittie awoke from the wild dream of delirium, she was weak as a new-born infant. For a few moments she imagined herself the inhabitant of another world. The deep quietude of the apartment, its soft, subdued, slumberous light, the still, watching figures seated by her bedside, formed so strong a contrast to the gloomy cell, with its chill, damp air, and glimmering lamp--its rough keeper and agitated inmate--that cell which, it appeared to her, she had just quitted. Two fair young forms, with arms interlaced, and heads inclined towards each other, the one with locks of rippling gold, the other of soft, wavy brown, seemed watching angels to her unclosing eyes. She felt a soft pressure on her faintly throbbing pulse, and knew that on the other side, opposite the watching angels, a manly figure was bending over her. She could not turn her head to gaze upon it, but there was a benignity in its presence which soothed and comforted her. Other forms were there also, but they faded away in a soft, hazy atmosphere, and her drooping eye-lids again closed.

In the long, tranquil slumber that followed, she passed the crisis of her disease, and the strife-worn, wandering spirit returned to the throne it had abdicated.

And now Mittie became conscious of the unbounded tenderness and care lavished upon her by every member of the household, and of the unwearied attentions of Arthur Hazleton. Helen herself could not have been more kindly, anxiously nursed. She, who had believed herself an object of indifference or dislike to all, was the central point of solicitude now. If she slept, every one moved as if shod with velvet, the curtains were gently let down, all occupation suspended, lest it should disturb the pale slumberer;--if she waked, some kind hand was ever ready to smooth her pillow, wipe the dew of weakness from her brow, and administer the cordial to her wan lips.

"Why do you all nurse me so tenderly?" asked she of her step-mother, one night, when she was watching by her. "Me, who have never done any thing for others?"

"You are sick and helpless, and dependent on our care. The hand of God is laid upon you, and whosoever He smites, becomes a sacred object in the Christian's eyes."

"Then it is not from love you minister to my weakness. I thought it could not be."

"Yes, Mittie. It is from love. We always love those who depend on us for life. Your sufferings have been great, and great is our sympathy. Pity, sympathy, tenderness, all flow towards you, and no remembrance of the past mingles bitterness with their balm."

"But, mother, I do not wish to live. It were far kinder to let me die."

It was the first time Mittie had ever addressed her thus. The name seemed to glide unconsciously from her lips, breathed by her softened spirit.

Mrs. Gleason was moved even to tears. She felt repaid for all her forbearance, all her trials, by the utterance of this one little word, so long and so ungratefully withheld. Bending forward, with an involuntary movement, she kissed the faded lips, which, when rosy with health, had always repelled her maternal caresses. She felt the feeble arm of the invalid pass round her neck, and draw her still closer. She felt, too, tears which did not _all_ flow from her own eyes moisten her cheek.

"I do not wish to live, mother," repeated Mittie, after this ebullition of sensibility had subsided. "I can never again be happy. I never can make others happy. I am willing to die. Every time I close my eyes I pray that my sleep may be death, my bed my grave."

"Ah! my child, pray not for death because you have been saved from the curse of a granted prayer. Pray rather that you may live to atone by a life of meekness and humility for past errors. You ought not to be willing to die with so great a purpose unaccomplished, since God does not now _will_ you to depart. You mistake physical debility for resignation, weariness of life for desire for heaven. Oh, Mittie, not in the sackcloth and ashes of _selfish_ sorrow should the spirit be clothed to meet its God."

Mittie lay for some time without speaking, then lifting her melancholy black eyes, once so haughty and brilliant, she said--

"I will tell you why I wish to die. I am now humbled and subdued--conscious and ashamed of my errors, grateful for your unexampled goodness. If I die now, you will shed some tears over my grave, and perhaps say, 'Poor girl! she was so young, and so unhappy--we remember her faults only to forgive them.' But if I live to be strong and healthy as I have been before, I fear my heart will harden, and my evil temper recover all its terrible power. It seems to me now as if I had been possessed by one of those fiends which we read of in the Bible, which tore and rent the bosom that they entered. It is not cast out--it only sleeps--and I fear--oh!--I dread its wakening."

"Oh, Mittie, only cry, 'Thou Son of David, have mercy on me--' only cry out, from the depths of a contrite spirit--and it will depart, though its name be legion."

"But I fear this contrition may be transitory. I do pray, I do cry out for mercy now, but to-morrow my heart may harden into stone. You, who are so perfect and pious, think it easy to be good, and so it is, on a sick bed--when gentle, watching eyes and stilly steps are round you, and the air you breathe is embalmed with blessings. With returning health the bosom strife will begin. Your thoughts will no longer centre on me. Helen will once more absorb your affections, and then the serpent envy will come gliding back, so cold and venomous, to coil itself in my heart."

"My child--there is room enough in the world, room enough in our hearts, and room enough in Heaven, for you and Helen too."

She spoke with solemnity, and she continued to speak soothingly and persuasively till the eyes of the invalid were closed in slumber, and then her thoughts rose in silent prayer for that sin-sick and life-weary soul.

Mittie never alluded to Clinton in her conversation with her mother. There was only one being to whom she now felt willing to breathe his name, and that was Arthur Hazleton. The first time she was alone with him, she asked the question that had long been hovering on her lips. She was sitting in an easy chair, supported by pillows, her head resting on her wasted hand. The reflection of the crimson curtains gave a glow to the chill whiteness of her face, and softened the gloom of her sable eyes. She looked earnestly at Arthur, who knew all that she wished to ask. The color mounted to his cheek. He could not frame a falsehood, and he feared to reveal the truth.

"Are there any tidings of him?" said she; "is he safe--or has his flight been discovered? But," continued she in a lower voice, "you need not speak. Your looks reveal the whole. He is again imprisoned."

Arthur bowed his head, glad to be spared the painful task of asserting the fact.

"And there is no hope of pardon or acquittal?" she asked.

"None. He _must_ meet his doom. And, Mittie, sad as it is--it is just. Your own sense of rectitude and justice will in time sanction the decree. You may, you must pity him--but love, unsupported by esteem, must expire. You are mourning now over a bright illusion--a fallen idol--a deserted temple; but believe me, your mourning will change to joy. The illusion is dispelled, that truth may shine forth in all its splendor; the idol thrown down that the living God may be enthroned upon the altar; the temple deserted that it may be filled with the glory of the Lord."

"You are right, Arthur, in one thing--would to God you were in all. It is not love I now feel, but despair. It is dreadful to look forward to a cold, unloving existence. I shudder to think how young I am, and how long I may have yet to live."

"Yours is the natural language of disappointed youth. You have passed through a fiery ordeal. The sore and quivering heart shrinks from the contact even of sympathy. You fear the application of even Gilead's balm. You are weak and languid, and I will not weary you with discussion; but spring will soon be here; genial, rejoicing spring. You will revive with its flowers, and your spirit warble with its singing birds. Then we will walk abroad in the hush of twilight--and if you will promise to listen, I will preach you a daily sermon, with nature for my text and inspiration too."

"Ah! such sermons should be breathed to Helen only. She can understand and profit by them."

"There is room enough in God's temple for you and Helen too," replied Arthur. Mittie remembered the words of her step-mother, so similar, and was struck by the coincidence. Her own views seemed very selfish and narrow, by contrast.

The flowers of spring unfolded, and Mittie did indeed revive and bloom again, but it was as the lily, not the rose. The love tint of the latter had faded, never to blush again.

There was a subdued happiness in the household, which had long been a stranger there.

Louis, though his brow still wore the traces of remorse, was happy in the consciousness of errors forgiven, confidence restored, and good resolutions strengthened and confirmed. He devoted himself to his father's business with an industry and zeal more worthy of praise, because he was obliged to struggle with his natural inclinations. He believed it his father's wish to keep him with him, and he made it his law to obey him, thinking his future life too short for expiation. There was another object, for which he also thought life too short, and that was to secure the happiness of Alice--whom he loved with a purity and intensity that was deepened by her helplessness and almost infantine artlessness. He knew that her blindness was hopeless, but it seemed to him that he loved her the more for her blindness, her entire dependence on his care. It would be such a holy task to protect and cherish her, and to throw around her darkened life the illuminating influence of love.

She was still with them, and Mrs. Hazleton had been induced to leave the seclusion of the Parsonage, and become the guest of Mrs. Gleason. It must have been a strong motive that tempted her from the hallowed shades, which she had never quitted since her husband's death. Reader, can you conjecture what that motive was?

A very handsome new house, built in the cottage style, had been lately erected in the vicinity of Mr. Gleason's, under the superintendence of the young doctor, and rumor said that he was shortly to be married to Helen Gleason. Every one thought it was time for _him_ to be married, if he ever intended to be, but many objected to her extreme youth. That, however, was the only objection urged, as Helen was a universal favorite, and Arthur Hazleton the idol of the town.

Arthur had never made Helen a formal declaration of love. He had never asked her in so many many words, "Will you be my wife?" As imperceptibly and gracefully as the morning twilight brightens into the fervor and glory of noonday, had the watchfulness and tenderness of friendship deepened into the warmth and devotion of perfect love. Helen could not look back to any particular scene, where the character of the friend was merged into that of the lover. She felt the blessed assurance that she was beloved, yet had any one asked her how and when she first received it, she would have found it difficult to answer. He talked to her of the happiness of the future, of _their_ future, of the heaven of mutual trust and faith and love, begun on earth, in the kingdom of their hearts, till it seemed as if her individual existence ceased, and life with him became a heavenly identity. There were other life interests, too, twining together, as the following scene will show.

The evening before the wedding-day of Arthur and Helen, as Mrs. Hazleton was walking in the garden, gathering flowers and evergreens for bridal garlands to decorate the room, Louis approached her, hand in hand with her blind child.

"Mrs. Hazleton," said he with trembling eagerness, "will you give me your daughter, and let us hallow the morrow by a double wedding?"

"What, Alice, my poor blind Alice!" exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton, dropping in astonishment the flowers she had gathered. "You cannot mean what you say--and her misfortune should make her sacred from levity."

"I do mean it. I have long and ardently wished it. The consciousness of my unworthiness has till now sealed my lips, but I cannot keep silence longer. My affection has grown too strong for the restraints imposed upon it. Give me your daughter, dearer to me for her blindness, more precious for her helplessness, and I will guard her as the richest treasure ever bestowed on man."

Mrs. Hazleton was greatly agitated. She had always looked on Alice as excluded by her misfortune from the usual destiny of her sex, as consecrated from her birth for a vestal's lot. She had never thought of her being wooed as a wife, and she repelled the idea as something sacrilegious.

"Impossible, Louis," she answered. "You know not what you ask. My Alice is set apart, by her Maker's will, from the sympathies of love. I have disciplined her for a life of loneliness. She looks forward to no other. Disturb not, I pray thee, the holy simplicity of her feelings, by inspiring hopes which never can be realized."

"Speak, Alice," cried Louis, "and tell your mother all you just now said to me. Let me be justified in her eyes."

Alice lifted her downcast, blushing face, while the tears rolled gently from her beautiful, sightless eyes.

"Mother, dear mother, forgive me if I have done wrong, but I cannot help my heart's throbbing more quickly at the echo of his footsteps or the music of his voice. And when he asked me to be his wife and be ever with him, I could not help feeling that it would make me the happiest of human beings. Oh, mother, you cannot know how kind, how good, how tender he has been to me. The world never looks dark when he is near."

Alice bowed her head on the shoulder of Louis, while her fair ringlets swept in shining wreaths over her face.

"This is so unexpected!" cried Mrs. Hazleton. "I must speak with your parents."

"I come with their full consent and approbation. Alice will take the place of Helen in the household, and prevent the aching void that would be left."

"Alas! what can Alice do?"

"I can love him and pray for him, mother, live to bless him, and die, too, for his sake, if God requires such a sacrifice."

"Is not hers a heavenly mission?" cried Louis, taking the hand which rested on his arm, and laying it gently against his heart. "This little hand, whose touch quickens the pulsations of my being, will be a shield from temptation, a safeguard from sin. What can I do for her half so precious as her blessings and her prayers? If I am a lamp to her path, she will be a light to my soul. 'What can Alice do?' She can do every thing that a guardian angel can do. Give her to me, for I need her watchful cares."

"I see she is yours already," cried the now weeping mother, "I cannot take away what God has given. May He bless you, and sanctify this peculiar and solemn union."

Thus there was a double wedding on the morrow.

"But she had no wedding dress prepared!" says one

A robe of pure white muslin was all the lovely blind bride wished, and that she had always ready. A wreath of white rose-buds encircling her hair, completed her bridal attire. Helen wore no richer decoration. Spotless white, adorned with sweet, opening flowers, what could be more appropriate for youth and innocence like theirs?

Mittie wore the same fair, youthful livery, and a stranger might have mistaken her for one of the brides of the evening--but no love-light beamed in her large, dark, melancholy eyes. She would gladly have absented herself from a scene in which her blighted heart had no sympathy, but she believed it her _duty_ to be present, and when she congratulated the wedded pairs, she tried to smile, though her smile was as cold as a moonbeam on snow.

Helen's eyes filled with tears at the sight of that faint, cold smile. She thought of Clinton, as he had first appeared among them, splendid in youthful beauty, and then of Clinton, languishing in chains, and doomed to long imprisonment in a lonely dungeon. She thought of her sister's wasted affections, betrayed confidence, and blasted hopes, and contrasting _her_ lot with her own blissful destiny, she turned aside her head and wept.

"Weep not, Helen," said Arthur, in a low voice, divining the cause of her emotion, and fixing on the retiring form of Mittie his own glistening eye; "she now sows in tears, but she may yet reap in joy. Hers is a mighty struggle, for her character is composed of strong and warring elements. Her mind has grasped the sublime truths of religion, and when once her heart embraces them, it will kindle with the fire of martyrdom. I have studied her deeply, intensely, and believe me, my own dear Helen, my too sad and tearful bride, though she is now wading through cold and troubled waters, her feet will rest on the green margin of the promised land."

And this prophecy was indeed fulfilled. Mittie never became gentle, amiable and loving, like Helen, for as Arthur had justly said, her character was composed of strong and warring elements--but after a long and agonizing strife, she did become a zealous and devoted Christian. The hard, metallic materials of her nature were at last fused by the flame of divine love. She had passed through a baptism of fire, and though it had blistered and scarred, it had purified her heart. Christianity, in her, never wore a serene and joyous aspect. Its diadem was the crown of thorns, its drink often the vinegar and gall. It was on the Mount of Calvary, not of Transfiguration, that she beheld her Saviour, and her God.

Had she been a Catholic, she would have worn the vesture of sackcloth, and slept upon the bed of iron, and even used the knotted scourge in expiation of her sins, but as the severe simplicity of her Protestant faith forbade such penances, she manifested, by the most rigid self-denial and strictest devotion, the sincerity of her penitence and the fervor of her faith.

Was Miss Thusa forgotten? Did she sleep in her lonely grave unhonored and unmourned?

In a corner of Helen's own room, conspicuous in the mids of the elegant, modern furniture that adorns it, there stands an ancient brass-bound wheel. The brass shines with the lustre of burnished gold, and the dark wood-work has the polish of old mahogany. Nothing in Helen's possession is so carefully preserved, so reverently guarded as that ancestral machine.

Nor is this the only memento of the aged spinster. In the grave-yard is a simple monument of gray marble, which gratitude and affection have erected to her memory. Instead of the willow, with weeping branches, the usual badge of grief--a wheel carved in bas relief perpetuates the remembrance of her life-long occupation. Below this is written the inscription--

"She laid her hands to the spindle, and her hands held the distaff."

"She opened her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue was the law of kindness."

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