else went; but had it not been for Mrs. Wentworth, she would never
have mentioned it.
The captain declared that if she had the slightest desire, it was a
command to him, and the tickets were accordingly purchased.
Late in the afternoon, Captain Wentworth sat in the dining-room,
reading. As the sun drew near the horizon, and the light grew fainter,
he sat down in a recess by a window, and the curtain falling down,
completely concealed him. In this position he remained while the
twilight darkened around him, and no longer able to read, he gave
himself up to those dark and gloomy reflections which had lately
filled his mind. He thought of the hours when, tossed upon the foaming
billows, he had turned in heart towards his home,
"And she, the dim and melancholy star,
Whose ray of beauty reached him from afar,"
rose upon the clouds of memory, with soft and gilding lustre. Now he
was safely anchored in the haven of his hopes and wishes, but his soul
was drifted by storms, wilder than any that swept the boisterous seas.
The very effort of preserving outward calmness, only made the tempest
fiercer within. This new instance of his wife's unconquerable levity
and heartlessness, filled him with despair. He believed her too much
demoralized by vanity and love of pleasure, ever to return to her duty
and allegiance as a wife.
While indulging these bitter feelings, Miss Hart and Mrs. Wentworth
entered the dining-room, unaware of his presence. Miss Hart, as usual,
was speaking in an earnest, confidential tone, as if she feared some
one was listening to her counsels.
"I beg, I entreat," said she, "that you would rally your spirits, and
not let the world see that you are cast down by his ill treatment. All
the fashionable people will be there tonight, and you must remember
that many eyes will be upon you; and pray don't wear that horrid
unbecoming dress, it makes a perfect fright of you, muffling you up to
the chin."
"It is no matter," replied Mrs. Wentworth, despondingly, "I don't care
how I look--the only eyes I ever really wished to charm, now turn from
me in disgust; I'm weary of acting the part of a hypocrite, of smiling
and chattering, and talking nonsense, when I feel as if my heart were
breaking. Oh! that I had not weakly yielded my better reason to that
fear of the world's censure, which has been the ruin of my happiness."
"I would never suffer my happiness to be affected one way or the
other," cried Miss Hart, "by a man who showed so little tenderness or
delicacy towards me. I wonder your affection is not chilled, nay
utterly destroyed by his harshness and despotism."
"Oh! you little know the strength or depth of a woman's love, if you
deem it so soon uprooted. My heart yearns to be admitted once more
into the foldings of his--a hundred times have I been tempted to throw
myself into his arms, implore his forgiveness, and entreat him to
commence a new life of confidence and love."
Miss Hart began to laugh at this romantic speech, but the laugh froze
on her lips when she saw the window-curtains suddenly part, and
Captain Wentworth rushing forward, clasp his astonished wife in his
arms, exclaiming "Jane, dear Jane, that life is begun!" He could not
utter another word.
When, after a few moments of intense emotion, he raised his head,
tears which were no stain upon his manhood, were glistening on his
dark cheek. Miss Hart looked on with feelings similar to those which
we may suppose animate the spirits of darkness, when they witness the
restoration of man to the forfeited favour of his Maker. There was
wormwood and bitterness in her heart, but her undaunted spirit still
saw a way of extrication from all her difficulties.
"Really, Captain Wentworth," exclaimed she, laughing violently, "the
next time you hide yourself behind a curtain, you must draw your boots
under; I saw the cloven foot peeping out, and spoke of you as I did,
just to see what Mrs. Wentworth would say, and I thought very likely
it would have a happy result--I am sure this is a finer scene than any
we shall see at the theatre."
"That you have deceived me, Miss Hart," answered the captain, "I
acknowledge to my shame, but my eyes are now opened. My situation was
accidental; no, I should say providential, for I have made
discoveries, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. Jane, I
have been harsh and unjustly suspicious, I know, and richly deserve
all I have suffered; but from the first hour of my return, this
treacherous friend of yours, discovering the weakness of my character,
has fanned the flame of jealousy, and fed the fires that were
consuming me. I despise myself for being her dupe."
"Oh! Miss Hart," cried Mrs. Wentworth, "how could you be so cruel? you
whom I so trusted, and thought my best and truest friend!"
"I have said nothing but the truth to either," cried Miss Hart boldly,
seeing all subterfuge was now vain, "and you had better profit by it.
Everybody has a weak side, and if they leave it unguarded and open to
the attacks of the enemy, they have no one to blame but themselves. I
never made you jealous, Captain Wentworth, nor your wife credulous;
and, as I leave you wiser than I found you, I think you both ought to
be very much obliged to me."
Thus saying, with an unblushing countenance, she left the apartment,
and recollecting the next morning that a certain lady had given her a
most pressing invitation to visit her, she departed, and no one said
"God bless her."
Henry, who had seen full as much as he desired of her, hardly knew
which rejoiced him more, her departure or his sister's happiness.
Indeed the last seemed the consequence of the first, for never was
there such a transformation in a household. There was blue sky for
stormy clouds--spring gales for chill east winds--love and joy for
distrust and sorrow.
Henry had seen the physician and minister whom Miss Hart had mentioned
as the lovers of Lois Carroll. The _young physician_ happened to be a
bald, broad-faced man, with a long nose, which turned up at the end,
as if looking at his forehead, and the _young_ minister, a man whose
hair was frosted with the snow of sixty winters, and on whose
evangelical countenance disease had written deeper lines than those of
age. Charles, too, the lover-cousin, proved to be an only brother,
whose lingering hours of disease she had soothed with a Christian
sister's holy ministration. Henry became a frequent, and, as he had
reason to believe, a welcome visiter, at the house. He found Lois
skilled in all the graceful accomplishments of her sex--her mind was
enriched with oriental and classical literature, her memory stored
with the brightest and purest gems of genius and taste; yet, like the
wise men of the East, who brought their gold and frankincense and
myrrh to the manger of the babe of Bethlehem, she laid these precious
offerings in lowliness of spirit, at the feet of her Redeemer. All at
once, Henry perceived a cloud come over the confidence in which he was
established there. The good aunt was cold and distant; Lois, though
still gentle and kind, was silent and reserved, and he thought he
caught her melting blue eyes fixed upon him more than once with a sad
and pitying expression.
"What has occurred?" asked he with the frankness so peculiar to
him--when for a moment he was left alone with her "I am no longer a
welcome guest."
"Forgive us," answered Lois, her face mantling with earnest blushes,
"if we feel constrained to deny ourselves the pleasure we have derived
from your society. As long as we believed you the friend of religion,
though not her acknowledged votary, our hearts acknowledged a sympathy
with yours, and indulged a hope that you would ere long go goal for
goal with us for the same immortal prize. But an infidel, Mr. More!
Oh! my soul!" continued she, clasping her hands fervently together,
and looking upward, "come not thou into his secret!"
"An infidel!" cried Henry, "and do you believe me such, and condemn me
as such, unheard, without granting me an opportunity of vindication?"
"We would not have admitted the belief from an authority less
respectable. The intelligence came from one who had been an inmate of
your family, and expressed for you the warmest friendship. We were
told that you ridicule our faith, make the Bible a scorn and mockery,
and expose us as individuals to contempt and derision."
"It must have been that serpent of a Miss Hart!" exclaimed Henry,
trembling with passion; "that scorpion, that fiend in woman's form,
whose path may be traced by the slime and the poison she leaves
behind! The lips which could brand _you_, Lois, as a hypocrite, would
not leave my name unblackened. My sister received her into her
household, and her domestic happiness came near being the wreck of her
malignant arts--I could give you any proof you may ask of her
falsehood and turpitude."
"I ask none," cried Lois, with an irradiated countenance, "I believe
your assurance, and rejoice in it. I cannot describe the pain, the
grief I felt that one so kind to others, could be so cruel to
himself."
Lois, in the godly simplicity of her heart, knew not of the warmth
with which she spoke, or of the vivid expression that lighted up her
eyes. Henry thought if ever there was a moment when he could dare to
address her as a being born to love, and to be loved with human
tenderness, it was the present. He began with faltering lips, but in
the intensity of his feelings he soon forgot everything, but the
object for which he was pleading, with an ardour and a vehemence that
made the unsophisticated Lois tremble. She trembled and wept Her
heart melted before his impassioned declaration, but she feared to
yield immediately to its dictates.
Their course of life had hitherto been so different, their early
associations, their pursuits and habits--she dreaded lest he should
mistake the fervour of his attachment for her, for the warmth of
religious sentiment, and that the temptations of the world would
resume their influence over his heart. "Let us still be friends," said
she, smiling through her tears, "till time has more fully unfolded our
characters to each other. We are as yet but acquaintances of a day, as
it were, and if we hope to pass an eternity together, we should pause
a little before we become fellow-travellers in our pilgrimage. The
love of a Christian," continued she, a holy enthusiasm illuminating
her face, "cannot be limited to the transient union of this world--it
soars far, far beyond it, illimitable as space, and everlasting as the
soul's existence." Henry felt, while listening to this burst of
hallowed feeling, that to possess the love of Lois Carroll here,
without a hope of reunion beyond the grave, would be a dark and
cheerless destiny, compared to the glorious hopes that now animated
his being.
It was about two years after this, Miss Hart took passage in the
stage, and started for the habitation of some obscure relative who
lived in a distant town. She had gone from family to family, indulging
her odious propensity, flattering the present, and slandering the
absent, till, her character becoming fully known, all doors were
closed against her, and she was compelled to seek a home, among
kindred she was ashamed to acknowledge. "Whose beautiful country-seats
are those?" asked a fellow-passenger, pointing to two elegant
mansions, that stood side by side as if claiming consanguinity with
each other. "The first belongs to Captain Wentworth, and the other to
Mr. Henry More, his brother-in-law," answered Miss Hart, putting her
head from the window, as they passed--"you must have heard of them."
"No," said the stranger; "is there anything remarkable connected with
them?" "Nothing," replied she, with one of her significant shrugs,
"only the captain is one of your dark Spanish Knights, who lock up
their wives, and fight everybody who looks at them; and his lady likes
every other gentleman better than her husband--and they could not
agree, and the whole city were talking about them, so he took her into
the country, and makes her fast and pray, and do penance for her sins.
The other gentleman, Mr. More, married a low, ignorant girl, who had
never been accustomed to good society; so, being ashamed to introduce
her among his friends, he immured himself in the country also. They
say he is so wretched in his choice, he has turned a fanatic, and
there is some danger of his losing his reason." At this moment one of
the horses took fright, and springing from the road, the stage was
upset, with a terrible crash. Miss Hart, whose head was projecting
from the window, was the only one who was seriously injured. She was
dreadfully bruised and mangled, and carried insensible into Captain
Wentworth's house. The stranger, whose curiosity was excited by the
description he had just heard, and seeing the inhabitants of both
dwellings were gathering together in consequence of the accident,
assisted in carrying her, and lingered as long as he could find a
reasonable excuse for doing so. "I believe that young woman's jaw is
broken," said he, when he rejoined his fellow-passengers; "and it is a
judgment upon her--I know there is not a word of truth in what she has
been saying. If ever domestic happiness, as well as benevolence, dwelt
on earth, I verily believe it is in those two families."
It was long before Miss Hart recovered her consciousness, and when she
did, and endeavoured to speak, she felt such an excruciating pain in
her jaw, as prevented her utterance. It seemed a remarkable instance
of the retribution of Providence, that she should be afflicted in the
very part which she had made an instrument of so much evil to others.
Her jawbone was indeed broken, and there she lay, writhing in agony,
incapable of speech, indebted to the beings she hated because she had
injured, for the cares that prolonged her miserable existence. She
could not speak, but she could see and hear, and her senses seemed
sharpened by the bondage of her tongue. Mrs. Wentworth, and Lois too,
hovered round her, with gentle steps and pitying looks, and the
tenderest alleviations; and for this she might have been prepared. But
when, through the shades of evening, she heard the deep voice of the
once haughty and ungovernable Captain Wentworth, breathing forth
humble and heartfelt prayers, while his wife knelt meek and lowly by
his side, when she heard the gay and gallant Henry More, reading with
reverence God's holy word, and joining with Lois in hymns to the
Redeemer's praise, she rolled her eyes in wild amazement, and her dark
spirit was troubled within her. "There seems a reality in this,"
thought she. "The worldling become the saint, and the lion transformed
into the lamb! How happy they look, while I--poor, wretched, mangled
creature that I am!" Paroxysms of agony followed these reflections,
for which there seemed no mitigation.
She lingered for a long time speechless and in great suffering, but at
length recovered with a frightful distortion in the lower part of the
face. When she first beheld herself in a mirror, the shock was so
great as to produce delirium, and when that subsided, a gloom and
despair succeeded, from which they vainly endeavoured to rouse her by
the soothings of sympathy and the consolations of religion. She felt
that, like Cain, she must carry about an indelible brand upon her
face, and cried like him, in bitterness of spirit, "My punishment is
greater than I can bear." It was intolerable to her to look upon the
fair, serene countenances of Mrs. Wentworth and Lois, and to see too
the eyes of their husbands follow them with such love and delight, and
then to draw the contrast between them and her own disfigured beauty
and desolate lot. She expressed a wish to be sent to her relatives,
and the wish was not opposed. She received from them a grudging
welcome, for they had felt her sting, and feared that serpent tongue
of slander, whose ancestral venom is derived from the arch reptile
that lurked in the bowers of Eden.
Woe to the slanderer!--To use the language of the wise man, "her end
is bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword--Her feet go
down to death, her steps take hold on hell!"
THE SHAKER GIRL.
It was on a Sunday morning, when Roland Gray entered the village of
----. Though his mind was intent on the object of his journey, he
could not but admire the singular neatness and uniformity of the
houses, the velvet smoothness of the grass on the wayside, and the
even surface of the street, from which every pebble seemed to have
been removed. An air of perfect tranquillity reigned over the
whole--not a being was seen moving abroad, not a human face beaming
through the windows; yet far as the eye could reach, it roamed over a
vast, cultivated plain, covered with all the animated hues of
vegetation, giving evidence that the spirit of life was there, or had
been recently active. "Surely," thought Roland, "I have entered one of
those cities, described in the Arabian Nights, where some magician has
suddenly converted the inhabitants into stone. I will dismount and
explore some of these buildings--perchance I shall find some man, who
is only half marble, who can explain this enchantment of silence." He
had scarcely dismounted, and fastened his horse to a part of the
snow-white railing which guarded every avenue to the dwellings, when
he saw a most singular figure emerging from one, and approaching the
spot where he stood. It was a boy of about twelve years old, clad in
the ancient costume of our forefathers--with large breeches, fastened
at the knees with square shining buckles--a coat, whose skirts were of
surprising breadth, and a low-crowned hat, whose enormous brim shaded
his round and ruddy visage. Roland could not forbear smiling at this
extraordinary figure, but habitual politeness checked his mirth. He
inquired the name of the village, and found to his surprise he was in
the midst of one of those Shaker establishments, of whose existence,
and of whose singular doctrines, he was well aware, but which, his own
home being remote, he had never had an opportunity of witnessing.
Delighted with the circumstance, for the love of novelty and
excitement was predominant in his character, he determined to avail
himself of it to its fullest extent. An old man, dressed in the same
obsolete fashion, came up the path and accosted him:
"Are you a traveller," said he, "and seeking refreshments? If so, I am
sorry you have chosen this day, but nevertheless we never refuse to
perform the rites of hospitality."
Roland confessed he had no claims upon their hospitality, having
partaken of a hearty breakfast two hours before in a town not far
distant, and he wondered within himself why they had not mentioned the
vicinity of this interesting establishment; forgetting that to those
who live within the reach of any object of curiosity, it loses its
interest. It is said there are some, who live where the echo of
Niagara's eternal thunders are ringing in their ears, who have never
gazed upon its foam. "If you come to witness our manner of worship,
young man," said the elder, "and come in a sober, godly spirit, I give
you welcome. The world's people often visit us, some, I am sorry to
say, to scoff and to jest; but you have an honest, comely countenance,
and I trust are led by better motives."