Thou changest not, but I am changed,
Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged;
The visions of my youth are past,
Too bright, too beautiful, to last.
BRYANT.
More than two years had passed since Edith's visit to the old woman of
the cliff. Changes had taken place in all the personages of my little
tale; but in Edith they were most apparent. She who had sung all day as
the birds sing, because she could not help it, at nineteen had learned
to reflect and to analyze; a sensitive conscience had taken the place of
spontaneous and impulsive virtue; and the same heart that could be happy
all day long in nursing a young chicken, or watching the opening of a
flower, or carrying food to a poor old woman, now closed her days with
_thinking_, and moistened her pillow with unbidden tears.
It is the natural course of womanhood. Ah! that we could always be
children. We have seen that after Edith had learned the story of the
Lady Ursula, she began to solve some of the mysteries of life. She had
since turned over many of its leaves, all fair with innocence and truth,
but she had not yet found an answer to the question, "Why do we suffer?"
The change that had taken place in young Seymore was deeper and sterner,
but not so apparent. Externally, he was the same beautiful youth that he
was when we introduced him to our kind readers, in his attic.
Since then, he had had much to struggle with; but poverty had not been
his greatest temptation. He could not indeed hope to be exempt from the
bitter experience of almost all who at that time were scholars.
To this very day, the sons of clergymen, and many of the most
distinguished men in New England, have held the plough in the intervals
of their preparation for the university. How many poor mothers have
striven, and labored, and denied themselves all but the bare necessaries
of life, that their sons might gain that sole distinction in New
England,--an education at one of the colleges.
Poverty was not his greatest trial. When he first saw Edith, her timid
and innocent beauty had made an impression on his fancy, that all his
subsequent dreams in solitude, and his lonely reveries, had only served
to deepen. She seemed to embody all his imaginations of female
loveliness. He had, indeed, never before seen a beautiful girl, and he
had no acquaintance with women, except his grandmother.
The remembrance of his mother came softened to him, like something
unconnected with earth; and when he thought of the darkened chamber, the
pale, faint smile, her hand on his head, and her solemn consecration of
him to the church, on her death-bed, he felt a sensation of awe that
chilled and appalled him.
After his acquaintance with Edith and her father, life wore a brighter
hue. His efforts to gain an education to distinguish himself were
redoubled. Mr. Grafton aided in every way; and with the sympathy of his
kind friend came the image of his beautiful daughter. His labors were
lightened, his heart cheered, by the thought that she would smile and
approve.
Thus days of bodily labor were succeeded by nights of study; and, for
some time, with his youth and vigorous health, this was hardly felt as
an evil. But we have seen, in our first chapter, that he had moments of
despondency, and of late they had been of more frequent occurrence.
At such times, the remembrance of his mother, and her solemn dedication
of him to the church, came back with redoubled power, and the time he
had spent in lighter literature, in poetry, and even his dreams of
Edith, seemed to him like sins. A darker and less joyous spirit was
gradually overshadowing him. A morbid sensitiveness to moral evil, an
exaggerated sense of his own sins, and of the strict requisitions of the
spirit of the times, clouded his natural gayety.
His visits to the parsonage, indeed, always dissipated his fears for a
little time. Edith received him as a valued friend, and he returned to
his studies, cheered by her smiles, and sustained by new hopes.
He never analyzed the cause of this change, or the nature of his
feelings: but, when he thought of his degree at the college, it was her
sympathy and her approbation that came first to his mind; and, when he
sent his thoughts forward to a settlement and a parsonage like that of
his venerable friend's, it would have been empty, and desolate, and
uninhabitable, if Edith had not been there.
It was in Edith's beloved father that a year had made the saddest
change. The winter had been unusually severe, and the snow deep. His
parish was much scattered, and it was his custom to visit them on
horseback; and, in the deepest snows, and most severe storms, he had
never refused to appear at their bedsides, or to visit and comfort the
afflicted. He had lived, and labored, and loved among his simple flock,
but he now felt that his ministry was drawing towards a close.
In March, he had returned from one of his visits late at night, and much
wet and fatigued. The next morning he found himself ill with a lung
fever. It left him debilitated, and much impaired in constitution; and a
rapid decline seemed the almost inevitable consequence at his advanced
age.