talking of that night; "and yet it seems a long long while ago. We count
by changes and events within us. Not by years."
"Yet we have years to count by, too, since Marion was with us," returned
Grace. "Six times, dear husband, counting to-night as one, we have sat
here on her birth-day, and spoken together of that happy return, so
eagerly expected and so long deferred. Ah when will it be! When will it
be!"
Her husband attentively observed her, as the tears collected in her
eyes; and drawing nearer, said:
"But Marion told you, in that farewell letter which she left for you
upon your table, love, and which you read so often, that years must pass
away before it _could_ be. Did she not?"
She took a letter from her breast, and kissed it, and said "Yes."
"That through those intervening years, however happy she might be, she
would look forward to the time when you would meet again, and all would
be made clear: and prayed you, trustfully and hopefully to do the same.
The letter runs so, does it not, my dear?"
"Yes, Alfred."
"And every other letter she has written since?"
"Except the last--some months ago--in which she spoke of you, and what
you then knew, and what I was to learn to-night."
He looked towards the sun, then fast declining, and said that the
appointed time was sunset.
"Alfred!" said Grace, laying her hand upon his shoulder earnestly,
"there is something in this letter--this old letter, which you say I
read so often--that I have never told you. But to-night, dear husband,
with that sunset drawing near, and all our life seeming to soften and
become hushed with the departing day, I cannot keep it secret."
"What is it, love?"
"When Marion went away, she wrote me, here, that you had once left her a
sacred trust to me, and that now she left you, Alfred, such a trust in
my hands: praying and beseeching me, as I loved her, and as I loved you,
not to reject the affection she believed (she knew, she said) you would
transfer to me when the new wound was healed, but to encourage and
return it."
"--And make me a proud, and happy man again, Grace. Did she say so?"
"She meant, to make myself so blest and honored in your love," was his
wife's answer, as he held her in his arms.
"Hear me, my dear!" he said.--"No. Hear me so!"--and as he spoke, he
gently laid the head she had raised, again upon his shoulder. "I know
why I have never heard this passage in the letter, until now. I know why
no trace of it ever shewed itself in any word or look of yours at that
time. I know why Grace, although so true a friend to me, was hard to win
to be my wife. And knowing it, my own! I know the priceless value of the
heart I gird within my arms, and thank GOD for the rich possession!"
She wept, but not for sorrow, as he pressed her to his heart. After a
brief space, he looked down at the child, who was sitting at their feet,
playing with a little basket of flowers, and bade her look how golden
and how red the sun was.
"Alfred," said Grace, raising her head quickly at these words. "The sun
is going down. You have not forgotten what I am to know before it sets."
"You are to know the truth of Marion's history, my love," he answered.
"All the truth," she said, imploringly. "Nothing veiled from me, any
more. That was the promise. Was it not?"
"It was," he answered.
"Before the sun went down on Marion's birth-day. And you see it, Alfred?
It is sinking fast."
He put his arm about her waist; and, looking steadily into her eyes,
rejoined,
"That truth is not reserved so long for me to tell, dear Grace. It is to
come from other lips."
"From other lips!" she faintly echoed.
"Yes. I know your constant heart, I know how brave you are, I know that
to you a word of preparation is enough. You have said, truly, that the
time is come. It is. Tell me that you have present fortitude to bear a
trial--a surprise--a shock: and the messenger is waiting at the gate."
"What messenger?" she said. "And what intelligence does he bring?"
"I am pledged," he answered her, preserving his steady look, "to say no
more. Do you think you understand me?"
"I am afraid to think," she said.
There was that emotion in his face, despite its steady gaze, which
frightened her. Again she hid her own face on his shoulder, trembling,
and entreated him to pause--a moment.
"Courage, my wife! When you have firmness to receive the messenger, the
messenger is waiting at the gate. The sun is setting on Marion's
birth-day. Courage, courage, Grace!"
She raised her head, and, looking at him, told him she was ready. As she
stood, and looked upon him going away, her face was so like Marion's as
it had been in her later days at home, that it was wonderful to see. He
took the child with him. She called her back--she bore the lost girl's
name--and pressed her to her bosom. The little creature, being released
again, sped after him, and Grace was left alone.
She knew not what she dreaded, or what hoped; but remained there,
motionless, looking at the porch by which they had disappeared.
Ah! what was that, emerging from its shadow; standing on its threshold!
that figure, with its white garments rustling in the evening air; its
head laid down upon her father's breast, and pressed against it to his
loving heart! Oh, God! was it a vision that came bursting from the old
man's arms, and with a cry, and with a waving of its hands, and with a
wild precipitation of itself upon her in its boundless love, sank down
in her embrace!
"Oh, Marion, Marion! Oh, my sister! Oh, my heart's dear love! Oh, joy
and happiness unutterable, so to meet again!"
It was no dream, no phantom conjured up by hope and fear, but Marion,
sweet Marion! So beautiful, so happy, so unalloyed by care and trial, so
elevated and exalted in her loveliness, that as the setting sun shone
brightly on her upturned face, she might have been a spirit visiting the
earth upon some healing mission.
Clinging to her sister, who had dropped upon a seat, and bent down over
her: and smiling through her tears, and kneeling close before her, with
both arms twining round her, and never turning for an instant from her
face: and with the glory of the setting sun upon her brow, and with the
soft tranquillity of evening gathering around them: Marion at length
broke silence; her voice, so calm, low, clear, and pleasant, well-tuned
to the time.
"When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now, again--"
"Stay, my sweet love! A moment! Oh Marion, to hear you speak again."
She could not bear the voice she loved so well, at first.
"When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now, again, I loved
him from my soul. I loved him most devotedly. I would have died for him,
though I was so young. I never slighted his affection in my secret
breast, for one brief instant. It was far beyond all price to me.
Although it is so long ago, and past and gone, and everything is wholly
changed, I could not bear to think that you, who love so well, should
think I did not truly love him once. I never loved him better, Grace,
than when he left this very scene upon this very day. I never loved him
better, dear one, than I did that night when _I_ left here."
Her sister, bending over her, could only look into her face, and hold
her fast.
"But he had gained, unconsciously," said Marion, with a gentle smile,
"another heart, before I knew that I had one to give him. That
heart--yours, my sister--was so yielded up, in all its other tenderness,
to me; was so devoted, and so noble; that it plucked its love away,
and kept its secret from all eyes but mine--Ah! what other eyes were
quickened by such tenderness and gratitude!--and was content to
sacrifice itself to me. But I knew something of its depths. I knew the
struggle it had made. I knew its high, inestimable worth to him, and his
appreciation of it, let him love me as he would. I knew the debt I owed
it. I had its great example every day before me. What you had done for
me, I knew that I could do, Grace, if I would, for you. I never laid my
head down on my pillow, but I prayed with tears to do it. I never laid
my head down on my pillow, but I thought of Alfred's own words, on the
day of his departure, and how truly he had said (for I knew that, by
you) that there were victories gained every day, in struggling hearts,
to which these fields of battle were as nothing. Thinking more and more
upon the great endurance cheerfully sustained, and never known or cared
for, that there must be every day and hour, in that great strife of
which he spoke, my trial seemed to grow light and easy: and He who knows
our hearts, my dearest, at this moment, and who knows there is no drop
of bitterness or grief--of anything but unmixed happiness--in mine,
enabled me to make the resolution that I never would be Alfred's wife.
That he should be my brother, and your husband, if the course I took
could bring that happy end to pass; but that I never would (Grace, I
then loved him dearly, dearly!) be his wife!"
"Oh, Marion! oh, Marion!"
"I had tried to seem indifferent to him;" and she pressed her sister's
face against her own; "but that was hard, and you were always his true
advocate. I had tried to tell you of my resolution, but you would never
hear me; you would never understand me. The time was drawing near for
his return. I felt that I must act, before the daily intercourse between
us was renewed. I knew that one great pang, undergone at that time,
would save a lengthened agony to all of us. I knew that if I went away
then, that end must follow which _has_ followed, and which has made us
both so happy, Grace! I wrote to good Aunt Martha, for a refuge in her
house: I did not then tell her all, but something of my story, and she
freely promised it. While I was contesting that step with myself, and
with my love of you, and home, Mr. Warden, brought here by an accident,
became, for some time, our companion."
"I have sometimes feared of late years, that this might have been,"
exclaimed her sister, and her countenance was ashy-pale. "You never
loved him--and you married him in your self-sacrifice to me!"
"He was then," said Marion, drawing her sister closer to her, "on the
eve of going secretly away for a long time. He wrote to me, after
leaving here; told me what his condition and prospects really were; and
offered me his hand. He told me he had seen I was not happy in the
prospect of Alfred's return. I believe he thought my heart had no part
in that contract; perhaps thought I might have loved him once, and did
not then; perhaps thought that when I tried to seem indifferent, I tried
to hide indifference--I cannot tell. But I wished that you should feel
me wholly lost to Alfred--hopeless to him--dead. Do you understand me,
love?"
Her sister looked into her face, attentively. She seemed in doubt.
"I saw Mr. Warden, and confided in his honor; charged him with my
secret, on the eve of his and my departure. He kept it. Do you
understand me, dear?"
Grace looked confusedly upon her. She scarcely seemed to hear.
"My love, my sister!" said Marion, "recall your thoughts a moment:
listen to me. Do not look so strangely on me. There are countries,
dearest, where those who would abjure a misplaced passion, or would
strive against some cherished feeling of their hearts and conquer it,
retire into a hopeless solitude, and close the world against themselves
and worldly loves and hopes for ever. When women do so, they assume that
name which is so dear to you and me, and call each other Sisters. But
there may be sisters, Grace, who, in the broad world out of doors, and
underneath its free sky, and in its crowded places and among its busy
life, and trying to assist and cheer it and to do some good,--learn the
same lesson; and, with hearts still fresh and young, and open to all
happiness and means of happiness, can say the battle is long past, the
victory long won. And such a one am I! You understand me now?"
Still she looked fixedly upon her, and made no reply.
"Oh Grace, dear Grace," said Marion, clinging yet more tenderly and
fondly to that breast from which she had been so long exiled, "if you
were not a happy wife and mother--if I had no little namesake here--if
Alfred, my kind brother, were not your own fond husband--from whence
could I derive the ecstasy I feel to-night! But as I left here, so I
have returned. My heart has known no other love, my hand has never been
bestowed apart from it, I am still your maiden sister: unmarried,
unbetrothed: your own old loving Marion, in whose affection you exist
alone, and have no partner, Grace!"
She understood her now. Her face relaxed; sobs came to her relief; and
falling on her neck, she wept and wept, and fondled her as if she were a
child again.
When they were more composed, they found that the Doctor, and his sister
good Aunt Martha, were standing near at hand, with Alfred.
"This is a weary day for me," said good Aunt Martha, smiling through her
tears, as she embraced her nieces; "for I lose my dear companion in
making you all happy; and what can you give me in return for my Marion?"
"A converted brother," said the Doctor.
"That's something, to be sure," retorted Aunt Martha, "in such a farce
as--"
"No, pray don't," said the Doctor, penitently.
"Well, I won't," replied Aunt Martha. "But I consider myself ill-used. I
don't know what's to become of me without my Marion, after we have lived
together half-a-dozen years."
"You must come and live here, I suppose," replied the Doctor. "We
sha'n't quarrel now, Martha."
"Or get married, Aunt," said Alfred.
"Indeed," returned the old lady, "I think it might be a good speculation
if I were to set my cap at Michael Warden, who, I hear, is come home
much the better for his absence, in all respects. But as I knew him when
he was a boy, and I was not a very young woman then, perhaps he mightn't
respond. So I'll make up my mind to go and live with Marion, when she
marries, and until then (it will not be very long, I dare say) to live
alone. What do _you_ say, Brother?"
"I've a great mind to say it's a ridiculous world altogether, and
there's nothing serious in it," observed the poor old Doctor.
"You might take twenty affidavits of it if you chose, Anthony," said his
sister; "but nobody would believe you with such eyes as those."
"It's a world full of hearts," said the Doctor; hugging his younger
daughter, and bending across her to hug Grace--for he couldn't separate
the sisters; "and a serious world, with all its folly--even with mine,
which was enough to have swamped the whole globe; and a world on which
the sun never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles that
are some set-off against the miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields;
and a world we need be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it
is a world of sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies
beneath the surface of His lightest image!"
You would not be the better pleased with my rude pen, if it dissected
and laid open to your view the transports of this family, long severed
and now reunited. Therefore, I will not follow the poor Doctor through
his humbled recollection of the sorrow he had had, when Marion was lost
to him; nor will I tell how serious he had found that world to be, in
which some love deep-anchored, is the portion of all human creatures;
nor how such a trifle as the absence of one little unit in the great
absurd account, had stricken him to the ground. Nor how, in compassion
for his distress, his sister had, long ago, revealed the truth to him,
by slow degrees; and brought him to the knowledge of the heart of his
self-banished daughter, and to that daughter's side.
Nor how Alfred Heathfield had been told the truth, too, in the course of
that then current year; and Marion had seen him, and had promised him,
as her brother, that on her birth-day, in the evening, Grace should know
it from her lips at last.
"I beg your pardon, Doctor," said Mr. Snitchey, looking into the
orchard, "but have I liberty to come in?"
Without waiting for permission, he came straight to Marion, and kissed
her hand, quite joyfully.
"If Mr. Craggs had been alive, my dear Miss Marion," said Mr. Snitchey,
"he would have had great interest in this occasion. It might have
suggested to him, Mr. Alfred, that our life is not too easy, perhaps;
that, taken altogether, it will bear any little smoothing we can give
it; but Mr. Craggs was a man who could endure to be convinced, Sir. He
was always open to conviction. If he were open to conviction now,
I--this is weakness. Mrs. Snitchey, my dear,"--at his summons that lady
appeared from behind the door, "you are among old friends."
Mrs. Snitchey having delivered her congratulations, took her husband
aside.
"One moment, Mr. Snitchey," said that lady. "It is not in my nature to
rake up the ashes of the departed."
"No my dear," returned her husband.
"Mr. Craggs is--"
"Yes, my dear, he is deceased," said Mr. Snitchey.
"But I ask you if you recollect," pursued his wife, "that evening of
the ball. I only ask you that. If you do; and if your memory has not
entirely failed you, Mr. Snitchey; and if you are not absolutely in your
dotage; I ask you to connect this time with that--to remember how I
begged and prayed you, on my knees--"
"Upon your knees, my dear?" said Mr. Snitchey.
"Yes," said Mrs. Snitchey, confidently, "and you know it--to beware of
that man--to observe his eye--and now to tell me whether I was right,
and whether at that moment he knew secrets which he didn't choose to
tell."
"Mrs. Snitchey," returned her husband, in her ear, "Madam. Did you ever
observe anything in _my_ eye?"
"No," said Mrs. Snitchey, sharply. "Don't flatter yourself."
"Because, Ma'am, that night," he continued, twitching her by the sleeve,
"it happens that we both knew secrets which we didn't choose to tell,
and both knew just the same, professionally. And so the less you say
about such things the better, Mrs. Snitchey; and take this as a warning
to have wiser and more charitable eyes another time. Miss Marion, I
brought a friend of yours along with me. Here! Mistress."
Poor Clemency, with her apron to her eyes, came slowly in, escorted by
her husband; the latter doleful with the presentiment, that if she
abandoned herself to grief, the Nutmeg Grater was done for.
"Now, Mistress," said the lawyer, checking Marion as she ran towards
her, and interposing himself between them, "what's the matter with
_you_?"
"The matter!" cried poor Clemency.
When, looking up in wonder, and in indignant remonstrance, and in the
added emotion of a great roar from Mr. Britain, and seeing that sweet
face so well-remembered close before her, she stared, sobbed, laughed,
cried, screamed, embraced her, held her fast, released her, fell on Mr.
Snitchey and embraced him (much to Mrs. Snitchey's indignation), fell on
the Doctor and embraced him, fell on Mr. Britain and embraced him, and
concluded by embracing herself, throwing her apron over her head, and
going into hysterics behind it.
A stranger had come into the orchard, after Mr. Snitchey, and had
remained apart, near the gate, without being observed by any of the
group; for they had little spare attention to bestow, and that had been
monopolised by the ecstasies of Clemency. He did not appear to wish to
be observed, but stood alone, with downcast eyes; and there was an air
of dejection about him (though he was a gentleman of a gallant
appearance) which the general happiness rendered more remarkable.
None but the quick eyes of Aunt Martha, however, remarked him at all;
but almost as soon as she espied him, she was in conversation with him.
Presently, going to where Marion stood with Grace and her little
namesake, she whispered something in Marion's ear, at which she started,
and appeared surprised; but soon recovering from her confusion, she
timidly approached the stranger, in Aunt Martha's company, and engaged
in conversation with him too.
"Mr. Britain," said the lawyer, putting his hand in his pocket, and
bringing out a legal-looking document, while this was going on, "I
congratulate you. You are now the whole and sole proprietor of that
freehold tenement, at present occupied and held by yourself as a
licensed tavern, or house of public entertainment, and commonly called
or known by the sign of the Nutmeg Grater. Your wife lost one house,
through my client Mr. Michael Warden; and now gains another. I shall
have the pleasure of canvassing you for the county, one of these fine
mornings."
"Would it make any difference in the vote if the sign was altered, Sir?"
asked Britain.
"Not in the least," replied the lawyer.
"Then," said Mr. Britain, handing him back the conveyance, "just clap in
the words, 'and Thimble,' will you be so good; and I'll have the two
mottoes painted up in the parlour, instead of my wife's portrait."
[Illustration]
"And let me," said a voice behind them; it was the stranger's--Michael
Warden's; "let me claim the benefit of those inscriptions. Mr.
Heathfield and Dr. Jeddler, I might have deeply wronged you both. That
I did not, is no virtue of my own. I will not say that I am six years
wiser than I was, or better. But I have known, at any rate, that term
of selfreproach. I can urge no reason why you should deal gently
with me. I abused the hospitality of this house; and learnt my own
demerits, with a shame I never have forgotten, yet with some profit
too I would fain hope, from one," he glanced at Marion, "to whom I
made my humble supplication for forgiveness, when I knew her merit and
my deep unworthiness. In a few days I shall quit this place for ever.
I entreat your pardon. Do as you would be done by! Forget, and forgive!"
TIME--from whom I had the latter portion of this story, and with whom I
have the pleasure of a personal acquaintance of some five and thirty
years' duration--informed me, leaning easily upon his scythe, that
Michael Warden never went away again, and never sold his house, but
opened it afresh, maintained a golden mean of hospitality, and had a
wife, the pride and honor of that country-side, whose name was Marion.
But as I have observed that Time confuses facts occasionally, I hardly
know what weight to give to his authority.
THE END.
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