infant. Though Mrs. Manly had assured her there was no cause of alarm,
she felt there was no reliance on her judgment; and the excessive
paleness and languor of its countenance, excited an anxiety its
peaceful slumbers could not entirely relieve. "It is all over,"
thought she, "a relapse in sin is always a thousand times more
dangerous than the first yielding. She is at this moment blazoning her
disgrace, and there will be no restraining influence left. Oh!
unfortunate Manly! was it for this you sacrificed home, friends, and
splendid prospects, and came a stranger to a strange land!" Absorbed
in the contemplation of Manly's unhappy destiny, she remained till the
company dispersed, and Mrs. Manly dragged her weary footsteps to her
chamber. Completely exhausted by her efforts to command her bewildered
faculties, she threw herself on the bed, and sunk into a lethargy; the
natural consequence of inebriation. The infant, disturbed by the
sudden motion, awakened, with a languid cry, expressive of feebleness
and pain. Emily raised it in her arms, endeavoured to soothe its
complaining; but it continued restless and wailing, till the blood
gushed afresh through the bandage. Greatly alarmed, she shook Mrs.
Manly's arm, and called upon her to awake. It was in vain; she could
not rouse her from her torpor. Instantly ringing the bell, she
summoned the nurse, who was revelling, with the other servants, over
the relics of the feast, and told her to send immediately for a
physician. Fortunately there was one in the neighbourhood, and he came
speedily. He shook his head mournfully when he examined the condition
of the child, and pronounced its case beyond the reach of human skill.
The injury produced by the fall had reached the brain. The very depth
of its slumbers was but a fatal symptom of approaching dissolution.
The tears of Emily fell fast and thick on the pallid face of the
innocent victim. She looked upon its mother--thought upon its father,
and pressed the child in agony to her bosom. The kind physician was
summoned to another chamber of sickness. He had done all he could to
mitigate, where he could not heal. Emily felt that this dispensation
was sent in mercy. She could not pray for the child's life, but she
prayed that it might die in the arms of its father; and it seemed that
her prayer was heard. It was a singular providence that brought him
that very night--a week sooner than he anticipated--urged on by a
restless presentiment of evil; a dread that all was not well.
Imagination, however, had not pictured the scene that awaited him. His
wife, clothed in her richest raiments, and glittering with jewels,
lying in the deep torpor of inebriation. Emily, seated by the side of
the bed, bathed in tears, holding in her lap the dying infant, her
dress stained with the blood with which the fair locks of the child
were matted. What a spectacle! He stood for a moment on the threshold
of the apartment, as if a bolt had transfixed him. Emily was not
roused from her grief by the sound of his footsteps, but she saw the
shadow that darkened the wall, and at once recognised his lineaments.
The startling cry she uttered brought him to her side, where, kneeling
down over his expiring infant, he gazed on its altering features and
quivering frame with a countenance so pale and stern, Emily's blood
ran cold. Silently and fixedly he knelt, while the deepening shades of
dissolution gathered over the beautiful waxen features and the dark
film grew over the eyes, so lately bright with that heavenly blue,
which is alone seen in the eyes of infancy. He inhaled its last, cold,
struggling breath; saw it stretched in the awful immobility of death;
then slowly rising, he turned towards the gaudy figure that lay as if
in mockery of the desolation it had created. Then Manly's imprisoned
spirit burst its bonds. He grasped his wife's arm, with a strength
that might have been felt, even were her limbs of steel, and calling
forth her name in a voice deep and thrilling as the trumpet's blast,
he commanded her to rise. With a faint foretaste of the feeling with
which the guilty soul shall meet the awakening summons of the
archangel, the wretched woman raised herself on her elbow, and gazed
around her with a wild and glassy stare. "Woman," cried he, still
retaining his desperate grasp, and pointing to the dead child,
extended on the lap of the weeping Emily, "woman! is this your work?
Is this the welcome you have prepared for my return? Oh! most
perjured wife and most abandoned mother! You have filled, to
overflowing, the vials of indignation; on your own head shall they be
poured, blasting and destroying. You have broken the last tie that
bound me--it withers like flax in the flame. Was it not enough to
bring down the gray hairs of your father to the grave? to steep your
own soul in perjury and shame, but that fair innocent must be a
sacrifice to your drunken revels? One other victim remains. Your
husband--who lives to curse the hour he ever yielded to a syren, who
lured him to the brink of hell!"
He paused suddenly--relaxed his iron hold, and fell back perfectly
insensible. It is an awful thing to see man fall down in his strength,
struck, too, by the lightning of passion. Anne sprang upon her feet.
The benumbing spell was broken. His last words had reached her naked
soul. She believed him dead, and that he had indeed died _her_ victim.
Every other thought and feeling was swallowed up in this belief; she
threw herself by his side, uttering the most piercing shrieks, and
rending her sable tresses, in the impotence of despair. Poor Emily! it
was for her a night of horror; but her fortitude and presence of mind
seemed to increase with the strength of the occasion. She turned her
cares from the dead to the living. She bathed with restorative waters
the pale brow of Manly; she chafed his cold hands, till their icy
chill began to melt in the warmth of returning animation. All the
while his wretched wife continued her useless and appalling ravings.
The morning dawned upon a scene of desolation. In one darkened room
lay the snowy corpse, dressed in the white garments of the grave; in
another, the almost unconscious Manly, in the first stages of a
burning fever; Anne, crouched in a dark corner, her face buried in her
hands; and Emily, pale and wan, but energetic and untiring, still the
ministering and healing spirit of this house of grief. Yes! darkness
and mourning was in that house; but the visitation of God had not come
upon it: Pestilence had not walked in the darkness, nor Destruction,
at the noon-day hour. Had Anne resisted the voice of the tempter, her
child might have still smiled in his cherub beauty; her husband might
have still presided at his board, and she, herself, at his side; if
not in the sunshine of love, in the light of increasing confidence.
Her frame was worn by the long, silent struggles of contending
passions, hopes, and fears. This last blow prostrated her in the
dust. Had _Anne resisted the voice of the tempter_, all might yet have
been well; but having once again steeped her lips in the pollution,
the very consciousness of her degradation plunged her deeper in sin.
She fled from the writhing of remorse to the oblivious draught. She
gave herself up, body and soul, irredeemably. She was hurrying on,
with fearful strides, to that brink from which so many immortal beings
have plunged into the fathomless gulf of perdition.
Manly rose from the couch of sickness an altered man: his proud spirit
was humbled--chastened--purified. Brought to the confines of the
unseen world, he was made to feel the vanity--the nothingness of
this--and while his soul seemed floating on the shoreless ocean of
eternity, the billows of human passion sunk before the immensity, the
awfulness of the scene. The holy resolutions, formed on what he
believed his death-bed, did not vanish with returning health. He saw
the bitter cup prepared for him to drain, and though he prayed that it
might be permitted to pass from him, he could say, in the resignation
of his heart, "Not my will, oh, Father! but _thine_ be done." He
looked upon his degraded wife rather with pity, than indignation. He
no longer reproached her, or used the language of denunciation. But
sometimes, in her lucid intervals, when she witnessed the subdued
expression of his once haughty countenance--his deep paleness--the
mildness of his deportment to all around him; the watchful guard he
held over his own spirit; and all this accompanied by an energy in
action--a devotedness in duty--such as she had never seen before--Anne
trembled, and felt that he had been near unto his Maker, while she was
holding closer and closer companionship with the powers of darkness.
The wall of separation she had been building up between them, was it
to become high as the heavens--deep as the regions of irremediable
woe?
Emily was no longer their guest. While Manly lingered between life and
death, she watched over him with all a sister's tenderness. Insensible
to fatigue--forgetful of sleep--and regardless of food, she was
sustained by the intensity of her anxiety; but as soon as his
renovated glance could answer her attentions with speechless
gratitude, and he became conscious of the cares that had done more
than the physician's skill in bringing him back to life, she gradually
yielded to others the place she had occupied as nurse--that place,
which she who should have claimed it as her right, was incapacitated
to fill. When Manly was restored to health, Emily felt that she could
no longer remain. There was no more fellowship with Anne; and the
sympathy that bound her to her husband she could not, with propriety,
indulge. Manly, himself, did not oppose her departure; he felt it was
best she should go. She took with her the little Anne, with the
grateful consent of her father. The opposition of the mother was not
allowed to triumph over what Manly knew was for the blessing of his
child. "Let her go," said he, mildly, but determinately; "she will not
feel the want of a mother's care."
* * * * *
It was a dark and tempestuous night. The winds of autumn swept against
the windows, with the mournful rustle of the withered leaves,
fluttering in the blast: the sky was moonless and starless. Everything
abroad presented an aspect of gloom and desolation. Even those who
were gathered in the halls of pleasure, felt saddened by the
melancholy sighing of the gust; and a cold, whispered mortality
breathed into the hearts of the thoughtless and gay. It was on this
night that Manly sat by the dying couch of Anne. Every one is familiar
with the rapid progress of disease, when it attacks the votary of
intemperance. The burning blood soon withers up the veins; the
fountain, itself, becomes dry. Fearfully rapid, in this instance, had
been the steps of the destroyer. Here she lay, her frame tortured with
the agonies of approaching dissolution, and her spirit strong and
clear from the mists that had so long and so fatally obscured it. She
saw herself in that mirror which the hand of truth holds up to the eye
of the dying. Memory, which acquires, at that awful moment, such
supernatural power, brought before her all the past--the _wasted
past_--the _irretrievable past_. Her innocent childhood--her bright
and glowing youth; her blasted womanhood, seemed embodied to her eyes.
Her father rose from his grave, and standing by her bedside, waving
his mournful locks, warned her of her broken oath. Her little infant,
with his fair hair dabbled with blood, came gliding in its shroud, and
accused her of being its murderer. Her husband! As her frenzied spirit
called up this last image, she turned her dim eye to him, who was
hanging over her couch with a countenance of such grief and
compassion, the dry agony of her despair softened into a gush of
remorseful tenderness: "Oh! no--no!" cried she, in difficult accents,
"you do not curse me; you live to pardon the wretch who has undone
herself and you. Oh! could I live over the past; could I carry back to
our bridal the experience of this awful hour, what long years of
happiness might be ours!"
The recollection of what she had been--of what she _might have
been_--contrasted with what she then was, and with what she still
_might be_, was too terrible. Her agonies became wordless. Manly knelt
by her side: he sought to soothe her departing spirit by assurances of
his own pardon; and to lead her, by penitence and prayer, to the feet
of Him, "in whose sight the heavens are not clean." He poured into her
soul the experience of his, when he had travelled to the boundaries of
the dark valley: his despair--his penitence, and his hopes. He spoke
of the mercy that is boundless--the grace that is infinite--till the
phantoms, accusing conscience called up, seemed to change their
maledictions into prayers for her behalf. Her ravings gradually died
away, and she sunk into a troubled sleep.
As Manly gazed upon her features, on which death was already fixing
its dim, mysterious impress,--those features whose original beauty was
so fearfully marred by the ravages of intemperance,--the waters of
time rolled back, and revealed that green, enchanted spot in life's
waste, where he was first gilded by her presence. Was that the form
whose graceful movements then fascinated his senses; or those the
eyes, whose kindling glances had flashed like a glory over his soul?
The love, then so idolatrous and impassioned--so long crushed and
buried--rose up from the ruins to hallow the vigils of that solemn
night.
The morning dawned, but the slumbers of Anne were never to be broken,
till the resurrection morn. In the bloom of life--the midst of
affluence--with talents created to exalt society, and graces to adorn
it; a heart full of warm and generous impulses; a husband as much the
object of her pride as of her affections; children, lovely in their
innocence, she fell a sacrifice to one brutalizing passion. Seldom,
indeed, is it that woman, in the higher walks of life, presents such a
melancholy example; but were there but _one_, and that one Anne
Weston, let her name be revealed, as a beacon, whose warning light
should be seen by the daughters of the land.
* * * * *
Another year glided by. The approach of another autumn, found Manly
girded for enterprise. He had marked out a new path, and was about to
become a dweller of a young and powerful city, born on one of the
mighty rivers of the West. His child could there grow up, unwithered
by the associations of her mother's disgrace. Amidst the hopes and
anticipations gathering around a new home, in a new land, his own
spirit might shake off the memories that oppressed its energies. He
was still young. The future might offer something of brightness, to
indemnify for the darkness of the past.
He once more sought the native place of his unhappy wife; for his
child was there, under the cherishing care of Emily Spencer. He passed
that ball-room, in whose illuminated walls his destiny was sealed. The
chamber selected for the traveller's resting-place was the one where
the prophetic dream had haunted his pillow. His brow was saddened by
the gloom of remembrance, when he entered the dwelling-place of his
child; but when he saw the bright, beautiful little creature, who
sprang into his arms, with spontaneous rapture, and witnessed the
emotion that Emily strove vainly to conquer, he felt he was not alone
in the world: and the future triumphed over the past. He unfolded all
his views, and described the new scenes in which he was soon to become
an actor, with reviving eloquence.
"Are you going to carry me there too, father?" said the little girl,
whose earnest blue eyes were riveted on his face.
"Are you not willing to go with me, my child? or must I leave you
behind?"
"I should like to go, if you will take Emily, but I cannot leave her
behind," cried the affectionate child, clinging to that beloved
friend, who had devoted herself to her with all a mother's tenderness.
"We will not leave her," exclaimed Manly, a warm glow spreading over
his melancholy features, "if she will go with us, and bless our
western home."
Emily turned pale, but she did not speak--she could not, if her
existence had depended upon it. She was no sickly sentimentalist, but
she had ardent affections, though always under the government of
upright principles. Her mind was well balanced, and though passion
might enter, it was never suffered to gain the ascendancy. From her
earliest acquaintance with Manly, she had admired his talents, and
respected his character; but the idea of _loving_ the husband of her
friend, never entered her pure imagination. It was not till she saw
him borne down by domestic sorrow, on the bed of sickness, thrown by
the neglect of his wife on her tenderness and care, that she felt the
danger and depth of her sympathy. The moment she became aware of her
involuntary departure from integrity of feeling she fled, and in the
tranquillity of her own home, devoted to his child the love she
shuddered to think began to flow in an illegitimate channel. That
Manly ever cherished any sentiments towards her, warmer than those of
esteem and gratitude, she did not believe, but now he came before her,
freed by heaven from the shackles that bound him, and duty no longer
opposed its barrier to her affections, her heart told her she could
follow him to the ends of the earth, and deem its coldest, darkest
region, a Paradise, if warmed and illumed by his love! The simplicity
of childhood had unveiled the hearts of each to the other. It was not
with the romance of his earlier passion that Manly now wooed Emily
Spencer to be his wife. It was love, approved by reason, and
sanctified by religion. It was the Christian, seeking a fellow
labourer in the work of duty; the father, yearning for a mother to
watch over an orphan child--the man awakened to the loftiest, holiest
purposes of his being.
In a beautiful mansion, looking down on one of the most magnificent
landscapes unfolded in the rich valley of the West, Manly and Emily
now reside. All the happiness capable of being enjoyed around the
household shrine is theirs--and the only shade that ever dims their
brows, is caused by the remembrance of the highly gifted--but
ill-fated Anne.
THE BLIND GIRL'S STORY.
All is still and solitary--the lamp burns on the table, with wasting
splendour. The writing-desk is open before me, with the last letter
unfolded--the letter I have cherished so fondly, though every word
seems an arrow to my conscience. I cannot solace myself by the act,
yet I must give utterance to the feelings with which my heart is
bursting. On these unwritten sheets I will breathe my soul--I will
trace its early history, and, perchance, _his_ eye may see them when
mine are veiled in a darkness deeper than that which once sealed them.
Yet what shall I write? How shall I commence? What great events rise
up in the records of memory, over which imagination may throw its rich
empurpling dyes? Alas! mine is but a record of the heart--but of a
_blind_ girl's heart--and that Being who bound my eyes with a fillet
of darkness, till the hand of science lifted the thick film, and
flooded them with the glories of creation, alone knows the mysteries
of the spirit he has made. _His_ eye is upon me at this moment, and as
this awful conviction comes over me, a kind of deathlike calmness
settles on the restless sea of passion. Oh! when I was blind, what was
my conception of the All-seeing eye! It seemed to me as if it filled
the world with its effulgence. I felt as if I, in my blindness, were
placed in the hollow of that rock where Moses hid, when the glory of
the Lord passed by. Would that no daring hand had drawn me from that
protecting shade! The beams that enlighten me have withered up the
fountains of joy, and though surrounded by light, as with a garment,
my soul is wrapped in the gloom of midnight. I was a blind
child--blind from my birth--with one brother, older than myself, and a
widowed father--for we were motherless--motherless, sisterless--yet
blind. What a world of dependence is expressed in these few words!
But, though thus helpless and dependent, I was scarcely conscious of
my peculiar claim to sympathy and care.
My father was wealthy, and my childhood was crowned with every
indulgence that wealth could purchase, or parental tenderness devise.
My brother was devotedly attached to me, giving up all his leisure to
my amusement--for I was looked upon as hallowed by the misfortune
which excluded me from communion with the visible world--and my wishes
became laws, and my happiness the paramount object of the household.
Heaven, perhaps, as a kind of indemnification for depriving me of one
of the wonted blessings of life, moulded me in a form which pleased
the fond eyes of my relatives, and, as it was my father's pride to
array me in the most graceful and becoming attire, my sightless eyes
being constantly covered by a silken screen, I was a happy child. If
it had not been for the epithet, _poor_, so often attached to my name,
I should never have dreamed that mine was a forlorn destiny. "My
_poor_ little blind girl," my father would exclaim, as he took me in
his lap, after his return from his business abroad--"My _poor_ little
sister," was the constant appellation given me by my affectionate
brother, yet I was happy. When he led me in the garden, through the
odorous flowers, I felt a kind of aching rapture at the sweetness they
exhaled--their soft, velvet texture, was ecstasy to the touch, and the
wind-harps that played amid the branches of the trees were like the
lyres of angels to my ears. Then the songs of birds, with what
thrilling sensations would I listen to these harmonists of nature,
these winged minstrels of God's own choir, as they lifted their
strains of living harmony in the dim corridors of the woods! They
painted to me the beauty of the world, and I believed them--but I
could conceive of nothing so beautiful as sound. I associated the idea
of everything that was lovely with music. It was my passion, and also
my peculiar talent. Every facility which art has furnished to supply
the deficiencies of nature was given me, and my progress was
considered astonishing by those who are not aware of the power and
acuteness of touch bestowed upon the sightless. I love to linger on
the days of my childhood, when sunshine flowed in upon my heart in one
unclouded stream. The serpent slumbered in the bottom of the
fountain--had no one gone down into its depths, its venom might have
slumbered yet.