The Grahams were all at home again, and Eugene and his bride had
been for several weeks fairly settled in their elegant new house.
Beulah had seen none of the family since their return, for her time
was nearly all occupied, and as soon as released from school she
gladly hurried out to her little home. One evening as she left the
academy Mr. Graham's spirited horses dashed up to the gate, and the
coachman handed her a note. It was from Mrs. Graham.
"MISS BENTON:
"Cornelia is quite indisposed, and begs that you will call and see
her this afternoon. As it threatens rain, I send the carriage.
"S. GRAHAM."
Beulah crumpled the note between her fingers, and hesitated. The
coachman perceived her irresolution, and hastened to say:
"You needn't be afraid of the horses, miss. Miss Nett' rides so much
they are tamed down."
"I am not at all afraid of the horses. Has Cornelia been sick since
her return from the North?"
"Why, miss, she came home worse than ever. She has not been
downstairs since. She is sick all the time now."
Beulah hesitated no longer. Mrs. Graham met her at the door, and
greeted her more cordially than she had done on any previous
occasion. She looked anxious and weary, and said, as she led the way
to her daughter's apartment:
"We are quite uneasy about Cornelia; you will find her sadly
altered." She ushered Beulah into the room, then immediately
withdrew.
Cornelia was propped up by cushions and pillows in her easy-chair;
her head was thrown back, and her gaze appeared to be riveted on a
painting which hung opposite. Beulah stood beside her a moment,
unnoticed, and saw with painful surprise the ravages which disease
had made in the once beautiful face and queenly form. The black,
shining hair was cut short, and clustered in thick, wavy locks about
the wan brow, now corrugated as by some spasm of pain. The cheeks
were hollow and ghastly pale; the eyes sunken, but unnaturally large
and brilliant; and the colorless lips compressed as though to bear
habitual suffering. Her wasted hands, grasping the arms of the
chair, might have served as a model for a statue of death, so thin,
pale, almost transparent. Beulah softly touched one of them, and
said:
"Cornelia, you wished to see me."
The invalid looked at her intently, and smiled.
"I thought you would come. Ah, Beulah, do you recognize this wreck
as your former friend?"
"I was not prepared to find you so changed; for until this afternoon
I was not aware your trip had been so fruitless. Do you suffer
much?"
"Suffer! Yes; almost all the time. But it is not the bodily torture
that troubles me so much--I could bear that in silence. It is my
mind, Beulah; my mind."
She pointed to a chair; Beulah drew it near her, and Cornelia
continued:
"I thought I should die suddenly; but it is to be otherwise The
torture is slow, lingering. I shall never leave this house again,
except to go to my final home. Beulah, I have wanted to see you very
much; I thought you would hear of my illness and come. How calm and
pale you are! Give me your hand. Ah, cool and pleasant; mine parched
with fever. And you have a little home of your own, I hear. How have
things gone with you since we parted? Are you happy?"
"My little home is pleasant, and my wants are few," replied Beulah.
"Have you seen Eugene recently?"
"Not since his marriage."
A bitter laugh escaped Cornelia's lips, as she writhed an instant,
and then said:
"I knew how it would be. I shall not live to see the end, but you
will. Ha, Beulah! already he has discovered his mistake. I did not
expect it so soon; I fancied Antoinette had more policy. She has
dropped the mask. He sees himself wedded to a woman completely
devoid of truth; he knows her now as she is--as I tried to show him
she was before it was too late; and, Beulah, as I expected, he has
grown reckless--desperate. Ah, if you could have witnessed a scene
at the St. Nicholas, in New York, not long since, you would have
wept over him. He found his bride heartless; saw that she preferred
the society of other gentlemen to his; that she lived only for the
adulation of the crowd; and one evening, on coming home to the
hotel, found she had gone to the opera with a party she knew he
detested. Beulah, it sickens me when I think of his fierce railings,
and anguish, and scorn. He drank in mad defiance, and when she
returned greeted her with imprecations that would have bowed any
other woman, in utter humiliation, into the dust. She laughed
derisively, told him he might amuse himself as he chose, she would
not heed his wishes as regarded her own movements. Luckily, my
parents knew nothing of it; they little suspected, nor do they now
know, why I was taken so alarmingly ill before dawn. I am glad I am
to go so soon. I could not endure to witness his misery and
disgrace."
She closed her eyes and groaned.
"What induced her to marry him?" asked Beulah.
"Only her own false heart knows. But I have always believed she was
chiefly influenced by a desire to escape from the strict discipline
to which her father subjected her at home. Her mother was anything
but a model of propriety; and her mother's sister, who was Dr.
Hartwell's wife, was not more exemplary. My uncle endeavored to curb
Antoinette's dangerous fondness for display and dissipation, and she
fancied that, as Eugene's wife, she could freely plunge into
gayeties which were sparingly allowed her at home. I know she does
not love Eugene; she never did; and, assuredly, his future is dark
enough. I believe, if she could reform him she would not; his
excesses sanction, or at least in some degree palliate, hers. Oh,
Beulah, I see no hope for him!"
"Have you talked to him kindly, Cornelia? Have you faithfully
exerted your influence to check him in his route to ruin?"
"Talked to him? Aye; entreated, remonstrated, upbraided, used every
argument at my command. But I might as well talk to the winds and
hope to hush their fury. I shall not stay to see his end; I shall
soon be silent and beyond all suffering. Death is welcome, very
welcome."
Her breathing was quick and difficult, and two crimson spots burned
on her sallow cheeks. Her whole face told of years of bitterness,
and a grim defiance of death, which sent a shudder through Beulah,
as she listened to the panting breath. Cornelia saturated her
handkerchief with some delicate perfume from a crystal vase, and,
passing it over her face, continued:
"They tell me it is time I should be confirmed; talk vaguely of
seeing preachers, and taking the sacrament, and preparing myself, as
if I could be frightened into religion and the church. My mother
seems just to have waked up to a knowledge of my spiritual
condition, as she calls it. Ah, Beulah, it is all dark before me;
black, black as midnight! I am going down to an eternal night; down
to annihilation. Yes, Beulah; soon I shall descend into what
Schiller's Moor calls the 'nameless yonder.' Before long I shall
have done with mystery; shall be sunk into unbroken rest." A ghastly
smile parted her lips as she spoke.
"Cornelia, do you fear death?"
"No; not exactly. I am glad I am so soon to be rid of my vexed,
joyless life; but you know it is all a dark mystery; and sometimes,
when I recollect how I felt in my childhood, I shrink from the final
dissolution. I have no hopes of a blissful future, such as cheer
some people in their last hour. Of what comes after death I know and
believe nothing. Occasionally I shiver at the thought of
annihilation; but if, after all, revelation is true, I have
something worse than annihilation to fear. You know the history of
my skepticism; it is the history of hundreds in this age. The
inconsistencies of professing Christians disgusted me. Perhaps I was
wrong to reject the doctrines because of their abuse; but it is too
late now for me to consider that. I narrowly watched the conduct of
some of the members of the various churches, and, as I live, Beulah,
I have never seen but one who practiced the precepts of Christ. I
concluded she would have been just what she was without religious
aids. One of my mother's intimate friends was an ostentatious,
pharisaical Christian; gave alms, headed charity lists; was
remarkably punctual in her attendance at church, and apparently very
devout; yet I accidentally found out that she treated a poor
seamstress (whom she hired for a paltry sum) in a manner that
shocked my ideas of consistency, of common humanity. The girl was
miserably poor, and had aged parents and brothers and sisters
dependent on her exertions; but her Christian employer paid her the
lowest possible price, and trampled on her feelings as though she
had been a brute. Oh, the hollowness of the religion I saw
practiced! I sneered at everything connected with churches, and
heard no more sermons, which seemed only to make hypocrites and
pharisees of the congregation. I have never known but one exception.
Mrs. Asbury is a consistent Christian. I have watched her, under
various circumstances; I have tempted her, in divers ways, to test
her, and to-day, skeptic as I am, I admire and revere that noble
woman. If all Christians set an example as pure and bright as hers,
there were less infidelity and atheism in the land. If I had known
even half a dozen such I might have had a faith to cheer me in the
hour of my struggle. She used to talk gently to me in days past, but
I would not heed her. She often comes to see me now; and though I do
not believe the words of comfort that fall from her lips, still they
soothe me; and I love to have her sit near me, that I may look at
her sweet, holy face, so full of winning purity. Beulah, a year ago
we talked of these things. I was then, as now, hopeless of creeds,
of truth, but you were sure you would find the truth. I looked at
you eagerly when you came in, knowing I could read the result in
your countenance. Ah, there is no peace written there! Where is your
truth? Show it to me."
She twined her thin, hot fingers round Beulah's cold hand, and spoke
in a weary tone. The orphan's features twitched an instant, and her
old troubled look came back, as she said:
"I wish I could help you, Cornelia. It must be terrible, indeed, to
stand on the brink of the grave and have no belief in anything. I
would give more than I possess to be able to assist you, but I
cannot; I have no truth to offer you; I have yet discovered nothing
for myself. I am not so sanguine as I was a year ago, but I still
hope that I shall succeed."
"You will not; you will not. It is all mocking mystery, and no more
than the aggregated generations of the past can you find any
solution."
Cornelia shook her head, and leaned back in her chair.
"Philosophy promises one," replied Beulah resolutely.
"Philosophy! Take care! That hidden rock stranded me. Listen to me.
Philosophy, or, what is nowadays its synonym, metaphysical systems,
are worse than useless. They will make you doubt your own individual
existence, if that be possible. I am older than you; I am a sample
of the efficacy of such systems. Oh, the so-called philosophers of
this century and the last are crowned heads of humbuggery! Adepts in
the famous art of"
"'Wrapping nonsense round,
With pomp and darkness, till it seems profound.'"
"They mock earnest, enquiring minds with their refined,
infinitesimal, homeopathic 'developments' of deity; metaphysical
wolves in Socratic cloaks. Oh, they have much to answer for! 'Spring
of philosophy!' ha! ha! They have made a frog pond of it, in which
to launch their flimsy, painted toy barks. Have done with them,
Beulah, or you will be miserably duped."
"Have you lost faith in Emerson and Theodore Parker?" asked Beulah.
"Yes; lost faith in everything and everybody, except Mrs. Asbury.
Emerson's atheistic fatalism is enough to unhinge human reason; he
is a great and, I believe, an honest thinker, and of his genius I
have the profoundest admiration. An intellectual Titan, he wages a
desperate war with received creeds, and, rising on the ruins of
systems, struggles to scale the battlements of truth. As for Parker,
a careful perusal of his works was enough to disgust me. But no more
of this, Beulah--so long as you have found nothing to rest upon. I
had hoped much from your earnest search; but since it has been
futile, let the subject drop. Give me that glass of medicine. Dr.
Hartwell was here just before you came. He is morose and haggard;
what ails him?"
"I really don't know. I have not seen him for several months--not
since August, I believe."
"So I supposed, as I questioned him about you; and he seemed
ignorant of your movements. Beulah, does not life look dreary and
tedious when you anticipate years of labor and care? Teaching is not
child's sport. Are you not already weary in spirit?"
"No, I am not weary; neither does life seem joyless. I know that I
shall have to labor for a support; but necessity always supplies
strength. I have many, very many sources of happiness, and look
forward, hopefully, to a life of usefulness."
"Do you intend to teach all your days? Are you going to wear out
your life over primers and slates?"
"Perhaps so. I know not how else I shall more easily earn a
subsistence."
"I trust you will marry, and be exempted from that dull, tedious
routine," said Cornelia, watching her countenance.
Beulah made a gesture of impatience.
"That is a mode of exemption so extremely remote that I never
consider it. I do not find teaching so disagreeable as you imagine,
and dare say at fifty (if I live that long) I shall still be in a
schoolroom. Remember the trite line:"
"'I dreamed, and thought that life was beauty
I woke, and found that life was duty'"
"Labor, mental and physical, is the heritage of humanity, and
happiness is inseparably bound up with the discharge of duty. It is
a divine decree that all should work, and a compliance with that
decree insures a proper development of the moral, intellectual, and
physical nature."
"You are brave, Beulah, and have more of hope in your nature than I.
For twenty-three years I have been a petted child; but life has
given me little enjoyment. Often have I asked, Why was I created?
for what am I destined? I have been like a gilded bubble, tossed
about by every breath! Oh, Beulah! often, in the desolation of my
heart, I have recalled that grim passage of Pollok's, and that that
verily I was that
"'Atom which God
Had made superfluously, and needed not
To build creation with, but back again
To nothing threw, and left it in the void,
With everlasting sense, that once it was!'"
"My life has not been useful, it has been but joyless, and clouded
with the shadow of death from my childhood."
Her voice was broken, and tears trickled over her emaciated face.
She put up her thin hand and brushed them away, as if ashamed of her
emotion.
"Sometimes I think if I could only live, and be strong, I would make
myself useful in the world--would try to be less selfish and
exacting, but all regrets are vain, and the indulged child of luxury
must take her place in the pale realms of death along with the
poverty-stricken and laboring. Beulah, I was in pain last night, and
could not sleep, and for hours I seemed to hear the words of that
horrible vision: 'And he saw how world after world shook off its
glimmering souls upon the sea of Death, as a water-bubble scatters
swimming lights on the waves.' Oh! my mind is clouded and my heart
hopeless, it is dismal to stand alone as I do, and confront the
final issue, without belief in anything. Sometimes, when the
paroxysms are severe and prolonged, I grow impatient of the tedious
delay, and would spring, open-armed, to meet Death, the deliverer."
Beulah was deeply moved, and answered, with a faltering voice and
trembling lip:
"I wish I could comfort and cheer you; but I cannot--I cannot! If
the hand of disease placed me to-day on the brink beside you, I
should be as hopeless as you. Oh, Cornelia! it makes my heart ache
to look at you now, and I would give my life to be able to stand
where you do, with a calm trust in the God of Israel; but--"
"Then be warned by my example. In many respects we resemble each
other; our pursuits have been similar. Beulah, do not follow me to
the end! Take my word for it, all is dark and grim."
She sank back, too much exhausted to continue the conversation, and
Beulah rose to go.
"Can't you stay with me?" said the feeble girl.
"No; my companionship is no benefit to you now. If I could help you
I would not leave you at all."
She pressed her lips to the forehead furrowed by suffering, and
hastened away.
It was dusk when she reached home, and, passing the dining room,
where the tea table awaited her arrival, she sought her own
apartment. A cheerful fire blazed in welcome; but just now all
things were somber to her vision, and she threw herself into a chair
and covered her face with her hands. Like a haunting specter,
Cornelia's haggard countenance pursued her, and a dull foreboding
pointed to a coming season when she, too, would quit earth in
hopeless uncertainty. She thought of her guardian and his skeptical
misanthropy. He had explored every by-path of speculation, and after
years of study and investigation had given up in despair, and
settled down into a refined pantheism. Could she hope to succeed
better? Was her intellect so vastly superior to those who for
thousands of years had puzzled by midnight lamps over these
identical questions of origin and destiny? What was the speculation
of all ages, from Thales to Comte, to the dying girl she had just
left? Poor Beulah! For the first time her courage forsook her, and
bitter tears gushed over her white cheeks. There was no stony
bitterness in her face, but an unlifting shadow that mutely revealed
the unnumbered hours of strife and desolation which were slowly
bowing that brave heart to the dust. She shuddered, as now, in self-
communion, she felt that atheism, grim and murderous, stood at the
entrance of her soul, and threw its benumbing shadow into the inmost
recesses. Unbelief hung its murky vapors about her heart, curtaining
it from the sunshine of God's smile. It was not difficult to trace
her gradual progress if so she might term her unsatisfactory
journey. Rejecting literal revelation, she was perplexed to draw the
exact line of demarcation between myths and realities; then followed
doubts as to the necessity, and finally as to the probability and
possibility, of an external, verbal revelation. A revealed code or
system was antagonistic to the doctrines of rationalism; her own
consciousness must furnish the necessary data. But how far was
"individualism" allowable? And here the hydra of speculation reared
its horrid head; if consciousness alone furnished truth, it was but
true for her, true according to the formation of her mind, but not
absolutely true. Admit the supremacy of the individual reason, and
she could not deny "that the individual mind is the generating
principle of all human knowledge; that the soul of man is like the
silkworm, which weaves its universe out of its own being; that the
whole mass of knowledge to which we can ever attain lies potentially
within us from the beginning; that all truth is nothing more than a
self-development."
She became entangled in the finely spun webs of ontology, and knew
not what she believed. Her guardian's words rang in her ears like a
knell. "You must accept either utter skepticism, or absolute,
consistent pantheism."
A volume which she had been reading the night before lay on the
table, and she opened it at the following passage:
"Every being is sufficient to itself; that is, every being is, in
and by itself, infinite: has its God, its highest conceivable being,
in itself. The object of any subject is nothing else than the
subject's own nature taken objectively. Such as are a man's thoughts
and dispositions, such is his God! Consciousness of God is self-
consciousness; by his God, you know the man, and by the man, his
God: the two are identical! Religion is merely the consciousness
which a man has of his own, not limited, but infinite, nature; it is
an early form of self-knowledge. God is the objective nature of the
understanding."
Thus much Feuerbach offered her. She put down the book and leaned
her head wearily on her hands. A light touch on her arm caused her
to glance up, and Mrs. Williams' anxious face looked down at her.
"What is the matter with you, Beulah? Are you sick?"
"No; I am as well as usual." She hastily averted her head.
"But something troubles you, child!"
"Yes; a great many things trouble me; but I am used to troubles, you
know, and can cope with them unaided."
"Won't you tell me what they are, Beulah?"
"You cannot help me, or I would. One cause of sorrow, however, is
the approaching death of a friend whom I shall miss and mourn.
Cornelia Graham cannot live much longer. I saw her this evening, and
found that she has become sadly altered."
"She is young to die," said the matron, with a sigh.
"Yes; only twenty-three."
"Perhaps her death will be the means of reclaiming my poor boy."
Beulah shook her head, and Mrs. Williams added:
"She has lived only for this world and its pleasures. Is she afraid
of the world to come? Can she die peacefully?"
"She will die calmly, but not hopefully. She does not believe in
Christianity."
She felt that the matron was searching her countenance, and was not
surprised when she said falteringly:
"Neither do you believe in it. Oh, Beulah! I have known it since you
came to reside under the same roof with me, and I have wept and
prayed over you almost as much as over Eugene. When Sabbath after
Sabbath passed, and you absented yourself from church, I knew
something was wrong. Beulah, who has taught you infidelity? Oh, it
would have been better that you too had followed Lilly, in the early
days when you were pure in heart! Much as I love you, I would rather
weep over your grave than know you had lived to forget God."
Beulah made no reply; and, passing her hands tenderly over the
girl's head, she continued:
"When you came to me, a little child, I taught you your morning and
evening prayers. Oh, Beulah! Beulah! now you lay down to sleep
without a thought of prayer. My child, what is to become of you?"
"I don't know. But do not be distressed about me; I am trying to do
my duty just as conscientiously as though I went to church."
"Don't deceive yourself, dear child. If you cease to pray and read
your Bible, how are you to know what your duty is? How are you to
keep yourself 'pure and unspotted from the world'? Beulah, a man
without religion is to be pitied; but, oh! a Godless woman is a
horror above all things. It is no marvel you look so anxious and
hollow-eyed. You have forsaken the 'ways of pleasantness and the
paths of peace.'"
"I am responsible to no one for my opinions."
"Yes, you are; responsible to God, for he has given truth to the
world, and when you shut your eyes, and willingly walk in darkness,
he will judge you accordingly. If you had lived in an Indian jungle,
out of hearing of Gospel truth, then God would not have expected
anything but idolatry from you; but you live in a Christian land; in
the land of Bibles, and 'to whom much is given, much will be
expected.' The people of this generation are running after new
doctrines, and overtake much error. Beulah, since I have seen you
sitting up nearly all night, pouring over books that rail at Jesus
and his doctrines, I have repented the hour I first suggested your
educating yourself to teach. If this is what all your learning has
brought you to, it would have been better if you had been put out to
learn millinery or mantua-making. Oh, my child, you have been my
greatest pride, but now you are a grief to me!"
She took Beulah's hand in hers, and pressed her lips to it, while
the tears fell thick and fast. The orphan was not unmoved; her
lashes were heavy with unshed drops, but she said nothing.
"Beulah, I am fifty-five years old; I have seen a great deal of the
world, and, I tell you, I have never yet known a happy man or woman
who did not reverence God and religion. I can see that you are not
happy. Child, you never will be so long as you wander away from God.
I pray for you; but you must also pray for yourself. May God help
you, my dear child!"
She left her, knowing her nature too well to hope to convince her of
her error.
Beulah remained for some time in the same position, with her eyes
fixed on the fire, and her forehead plowed by torturing thought. The
striking of the clock roused her from her reverie, and, drawing a
chair near her desk, she took up her pen to complete an article due
the next day at the magazine office. Ah, how little the readers
dreamed of the heavy heart that put aside its troubles to labor for
their amusement! To-night she did not succeed as well as usual; her
manuscript was blurred, and, forced to copy the greater part of it,
the clock struck three before she laid her weary head on her pillow.