"A little cottage built of sticks and weeds,
In homely wise, and walled with sods around,
In which a witch did dwell, in loathly weedes
And wilful want, all careless of her needes;
So choosing solitairie to abide. Far from all neighbours."
SPENSER.
I wish I were a painter, or a poet, to describe a little sheltered nook
on the sea-shore, where devotion would retire to worship, love to dwell
in thought on the beloved, or sorrow to be soothed to rest. It was a
small cove, sheltered on the north by high, overhanging cliffs, that ran
out into the ocean in a bold headland. Opposite these rocks the land
sloped gently down, and the ocean, lulled to rest, came in like a spent
and wearied child, and rippled on a smooth, white sand.
The top of the cliff was covered with many-colored shrubbery. The
drooping branches of the birch, the sumac, and the aspen, tinted with
the rich coloring of autumn, hung half way down the cliff, and were
reflected, like a double landscape, in the water. At sunset, the entire
glassy surface was burnished with the red and yellow rays of the setting
sun; and when the young moon, like a fairy boat, just rested on the
surface, it was a scene of beauty that could not be surpassed in any
country.
Immediately under the cliff, and sheltered like a swallow's nest, was
the smallest of human habitations; so dark, and old, and moss-grown,
that it seemed a part of the rock against which it rested. It consisted
of one room: a door and single pane of glass admitted the light, and the
nets hanging around, and an old boat drawn up on the beach, indicated
that it was the shelter of a fisherman.
The Indian summer still continued, and a few mornings after the little
journey, Edith was induced, by the soft beauty of the weather, to visit
the cove. It was a walk of two miles, but the inhabitants of the cottage
were among the poor of her father's parish, and she was never a stranger
in their cottages.
The brilliant sun gave to the ever-changing ocean the tints of emerald
green, royal purple, crimson, and sapphire, and made a path of light,
fit for angels' footsteps. The tide was out, and the smooth beach
glittered in the morning sun. The ocean, as far as the eye could reach,
was smooth as glass. It was not then, as now, white with the frequent
sail: a solitary vessel was then a rare occurrence, and hailed with
rapture, as bringing news from _home_. The white-winged curlew was
wheeling around in perfect security, and the little bay was dotted, in a
few spots, with fishermen's boats. The absence of the old boat from the
beach showed that the owner of the cottage was among them.
Edith was sorry her friend the fisherman was absent, for the old woman
who kept his house was a virago; and, indeed, was sometimes thought
insane. Although Edith's moral courage was great, she possessed that
physical timidity and sensitiveness to outward impressions that belongs
to the poetic temperament.
She lingered in her walk, watching the curlews, and listening to the
measured booming of the waves as they touched the shore and then
receded. The obvious reflection that comes to every mind perhaps came to
hers, that thus succeed and are scattered the successive generations of
men. No; she was thinking that thus arrive and depart the days of her
solitary existence; thus uniformly, and thus leaving no trace behind.
Will it be always thus? she sighed; and her eyes filled with tears. Her
revery was interrupted by a rough voice behind her.
"What have you done, that God should grant you the happiness to weep?"
said the old woman, who now stood at her side.
Edith was startled, for the woman's expression was very wild, but she
answered mildly, "Is that so great a boon, mother, that I should deserve
to lose it?"
"Ask her," she said, "whose brain is burning, and whose heart is like
lead, what she would give for one moist tear. O God! I cannot weep."
Whatever timidity Edith felt when she first saw the malignant expression
of the old woman's countenance, was now lost in pity. She knew that the
poor creature's reason was impaired, and she thought this might be one
of her wild moments.
She laid her hand gently on her arm, and said, with a smile, "Nanny, I
have come on purpose to visit you. Let us go into the house, and you
shall tell me what you think, and all you want to make you comfortable
for the winter."
Nanny looked at Edith almost with scorn. "Tell you what I think!" she
said. "As well might I tell yonder birds that are hovering with white
wings in the blue sky. What do you know of sorrow? but you will not
always be strangers. Sorrow is coming over you; I see its dark fold
drawing nearer and nearer."
A slight shudder came over Edith, but she smiled, and said, soothingly,
"I came to talk with you about yourself; let my fate alone for the
present."
"Ah! no need to shake the glass," answered Nanny; "grief is coming soon
enough to drink up your young blood. The cheek that changes like yours,
with sudden flushing, withers soonest; not with age, no, not, like mine,
with age, but blighted by the cold hand of unkindness; and eyes, like
yours, that every emotion fills with sudden tears, soon have their
fountains dry, and then, ah! how you will long and pray for one drop, as
I do now!"
They had entered the poor hovel, and the old woman, who had been
speaking in a tone of great excitement, now turned and looked full at
Edith: her beauty seemed to awake a feeling of envious contempt.
The contrast between them was indeed great. Edith stood in the narrow
door, blooming with youth and health. Her dark hair, which contrasted so
beautifully with her soft blue eye, had lost its curl by the damp air,
and she had taken off her bonnet to put back the uncurled tresses.
The old woman had seated herself in an old, high-backed chair, and, with
her elbows on her knees, looked earnestly at Edith. Her face might once
have been fair; but it was now deeply wrinkled, and bronzed with smoke
and exposure. Her teeth were gone, and her thin, shriveled lips had an
expression of pain and suffering; while her eyes betrayed the envy and
contempt she seemed to feel towards others.
"Ah," she said, "gather up your beautiful shining locks. How long, think
you, before they will be like mine? But mine were once black and glossy
as yours; and now look at them."
She took down from under her cap her long, gray hair, and spread it over
her breast. It was dry and coarse, and without a single black hair. She
laid her dark, bony hand on Edith's white arm.
"Sorrow has done this," she said,--"not time: it has been of this color
for fifty years."
"And have you then suffered so much?" said Edith,--and her eyes filled
with tears.
The old woman saw that she was pitied, and a more gentle expression came
into her eyes, as she fixed them on Edith.
"My child," she said, "we can learn to bear sorrow, bereavement, the
death of all that are twined with our own souls, old age, solitude,--all
but remorse--_all but remorse_;" and the last word was pronounced almost
in a whisper.
"And cannot you turn to God?" said Edith; "cannot you pray? God has
invited all who are sinners to come to him."
She stopped; for she felt her own insufficiency to administer religious
consolation.
"And who told you I was so great a sinner?" said the old woman, all her
fierceness returning immediately.
Edith had felt herself all the comfort of opening her heart in prayer to
God; but she was abashed by the old woman: she said only timidly and
humbly, "Why will you not confide in my father? Tell him your wants and
your misery, and he will pray for you, and help you."
"Tell him! and what does he know of the heart-broken? Can he lift the
leaden covering from the conscience? Can he give me back the innocence
and peace of my cottage home in the green lanes of England, or the
blessing of my poor old father?" And, while an expression of the deepest
sadness passed over her face,--"Can he bring back my children, my
beautiful boys, or bid the sea give up its dead? No, no; let him preach
and pray, and let these poor ignorant people hear him; and let me,--ah,
let me lie down in the green earth."
Edith was shocked; and the tears she tried in vain to suppress forced
themselves down her cheeks.
"Poor child!" said the old woman; "you can weep for others, but yours is
the fate of all the daughters of Eve: you will soon weep for yourself.
With all your proud beauty and your feeling heart, you cannot keep your
idols: they will crumble away, and you will come at last to what I am."
Edith tried to direct her attention to something else. She looked around
the cottage, which had not the appearance of the most abject poverty.
The few articles of furniture were neat, and in one corner stood a
comfortable-looking bed. A peat fire slumbered on the hearth, and many
dried and smoked fish were hanging from the beams.
She said, very mildly, "I came, Nanny, to see if you did not want
something to make you comfortable for the winter. My father sent me, and
you must tell me all you want."
"I want nothing," said the old woman; "at least for myself. All your
blankets cannot keep the cold from the heart."
At this moment, a little girl about five years old came running into the
cottage, with a basket of blackberries she had been picking on the
cliffs above the house. Edith was well known to her, as she was to all
the children of the parish. The little girl went up to her and presented
the blackberries, and then ran to her grandmother with the air of a
favored child, as if she were sure of a welcome.
An expression that Edith had never seen, a softened expression of deep
tenderness, came over the face of the old woman.
"I was going to speak of this child," she said. "I feel that I shall
soon be _there_,"--and she pointed towards the earth,--"and this child
has no friend but me."
The little girl, meantime, had crept close to the old woman, and laid
her head on her shoulder. The child was not attractive: her feet and
legs were bare, and her dress was ragged and much soiled; but covering
her eyes and forehead was a profusion of golden-colored ringlets; and,
where her skin was not grimmed with dirt and exposure to the sea air, it
was delicately white.
There was something touching in the affection of the poor orphan for the
old woman; and the contrast, as they thus leant on each other, would
have arrested the eye of a painter.
Edith promised to be a friend to her grandchild, and then entreated
Nanny to see her father, and confide her sorrows to him. This she
steadily refused; and Edith left her, her young spirits saddened by the
mystery and the grief that she could not understand. As she walked home,
she thought how little the temper of the old woman was in harmony with
the external beauty that environed her. The beauty was marred by sin and
grief. And even in her own life, pure as it was, how little was there to
harmonize with the exquisite loveliness around her!
Edith was not happy: the inward pulse did not beat in harmony with the
pulse of nature. She was not happy, because woman, especially in youth,
is happy only in her affections. She felt within herself an infinite
capacity of loving, and she had few to love, Her heart was solitary. Her
affection for her father partook too much of respect and awe; and that
for Dinah had grown up from her infancy, and was as much a matter of
habit as of gratitude. She longed for the love of an equal, or rather of
some one she could reverence as well as love. How she wished she could
have been the companion of the Lady Ursula!
Edith was beginning to feel that she had a soul of infinite longings;
but she had not yet learnt its power to create for itself an infinite
and immortal happiness; and the beauty of nature, that excited without
filling her mind, only increased her loneliness.
It is after other pursuits and other friends have disappointed us, that
we go back to the beautiful teachings of nature; and, like a tender
mother, she receives us to her bosom.
"O, nature never did betray
The heart that loved her."
She alone is unchangeable. We may confide in her promises. I have
planted an acorn by a beloved grave: in a few years I returned, and
found a beautiful oak overshadowing it.
Nature is liberal and impartial as she is faithful. The green earth
offers a home for the eyes of the poorest beggar; the soft and purifying
winds visit all equally; the tenderly majestic stars look down on him
who rests in a bed of down, and on him whose pallet is the naked earth;
and the blue sky embraces equally the child of sorrow and of joy.
The teachings of nature are open to all. The poor heart-broken mother
sees, in the parent leaves that enfold the tender heart of the young
plant, and in the bird that strips her own breast of its down to shelter
her young from the night air, the same instinct that teaches her to
cherish the child of sorrow. He who addressed the poor and illiterate
drew his illustrations from nature: the lily of the field, the fowls of
the air, and the young ravens, he made his teachers to those who, like
him, lived in the open air, and were peculiarly susceptible to all the
influences of nature.
To return from this digression. Perhaps my readers will wish to know
more of poor Nanny, as she was called.
Nothing was known of her early history. She had come from the mother
country four years before, with this little child, then an infant, and
had taken a lodging in the poor fisherman's hut. She said the little
girl was her grandchild, and all her affections were centred in her. She
was entirely reserved as to her previous history, and was irritated if
any curiosity was expressed about it, though she sometimes gave out
hints that she had been an accomplice and victim of some deed for which
she felt remorse. As she was quite harmless, and the inhabitants were
much scattered, she was unmolested, and earned a scanty living by
picking berries, fishing, and helping those who were not quite as poor
as herself. Edith visited her often, and Mr. Grafton, though she would
not acknowledge him as a spiritual guide, ministered to all her temporal
wants.