True and firm and self-reliant as was the nature of Asenath Mitchenor,
the thought of resistance to her father's will never crossed her mind.
It was fixed that she must renounce all intercourse with Richard Hilton;
it was even sternly forbidden her to see him again during the few hours
he remained in the house; but the sacred love, thus rudely dragged to
the light and outraged, was still her own. She would take it back into
the keeping of her heart, and if a day should ever come when he would be
free to return and demand it of her, he would find it there, unwithered,
with all the unbreathed perfume hoarded in its folded leaves. If
that day came not, she would at the last give it back to God, saying,
“Father, here is Thy most precious gift, bestow it as Thou wilt.”
As her life had never before been agitated by any strong emotion, so it
was not outwardly agitated now. The placid waters of her soul did not
heave and toss before those winds of passion and sorrow: they lay in
dull, leaden calm, under a cold and sunless sky. What struggles
with herself she underwent no one ever knew. After Richard Hilton's
departure, she never mentioned his name, or referred, in any way, to the
summer's companionship with him. She performed her household duties, if
not cheerfully, at least as punctually and carefully as before; and her
father congratulated himself that the unfortunate attachment had struck
no deeper root. Abigail's finer sight, however, was not deceived by this
external resignation. She noted the faint shadows under the eyes, the
increased whiteness of the temples, the unconscious traces of pain which
sometimes played about the dimpled corners of the mouth, and watched her
daughter with a silent, tender solicitude.
The wedding of Moses was a severe test of Asenath's strength, but
she stood the trial nobly, performing all the duties required by her
position with such sweet composure that many of the older female Friends
remarked to Abigail, “How womanly Asenath has grown!” Eli Mitchenor
noted, with peculiar satisfaction, that the eyes of the young
Friends--some of them of great promise in the sect, and well endowed
with worldly goods--followed her admiringly.
“It will not be long,” he thought, “before she is consoled.”
Fortune seemed to favor his plans, and justify his harsh treatment
of Richard Hilton. There were unfavorable accounts of the young man's
conduct. His father had died during the winter, and he was represented
as having become very reckless and dissipated. These reports at last
assumed such a definite form that Friend Mitchenor brought them to the
notice of his family.
“I met Josiah Comly in the road,” said he, one day at dinner. “He's
just come from Philadelphia, and brings bad news of Richard Hilton. He's
taken to drink, and is spending in wickedness the money his father left
him. His friends have a great concern about him, but it seems he's not
to be reclaimed.”
Abigail looked imploringly at her husband, but he either disregarded
or failed to understand her look. Asenath, who had grown very pale,
steadily met her father's gaze, and said, in a tone which he had never
yet heard from her lips--
“Father, will thee please never mention Richard Hilton's name when I am
by?”
The words were those of entreaty, but the voice was that of authority.
The old man was silenced by a new and unexpected power in his daughter's
heart: he suddenly felt that she was not a girl, as heretofore, but a
woman, whom he might persuade, but could no longer compel.
“It shall be as thee wishes, Asenath,” he said; “we had best forget
him.”
Of their friends, however, she could not expect this reserve, and she
was doomed to hear stories of Richard which clouded and embittered her
thoughts of him. And a still severer trial was in store. She accompanied
her father, in obedience to his wish, and against her own desire, to the
Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia. It has passed into a proverb that the
Friends, on these occasions, always bring rain with them; and the period
of her visit was no exception to the rule. The showery days of “Yearly
Meeting Week” glided by, until the last, and she looked forward with
relief to the morrow's return to Bucks County, glad to have escaped a
meeting with Richard Hilton, which might have confirmed her fears and
could but have given her pain in any case.
As she and her father joined each other, outside the meeting-house, at
the close of the afternoon meeting, a light rain was falling. She took
his arm, under the capacious umbrella, and they were soon alone in the
wet streets, on their way to the house of the Friends who entertained
them. At a crossing, where the water pouring down the gutter towards
the Delaware, caused them to halt a man, plashing through the flood,
staggered towards them. Without an umbrella, with dripping, disordered
clothes, yet with a hot, flushed face, around which the long black hair
hung wildly, he approached, singing to himself with maudlin voice a
song that would have been sweet and tender in a lover's mouth. Friend
Mitchenor drew to one side, lest his spotless drab should be brushed by
the unclean reveller; but the latter, looking up, stopped suddenly face
to face with them.
“Asenath!” he cried, in a voice whose anguish pierced through the
confusion of his senses, and struck down into the sober quick of his
soul.
“Richard!” she breathed, rather than spoke, in a low, terrified voice.
It was indeed Richard Hilton who stood before her, or rather--as she
afterwards thought, in recalling the interview--the body of Richard
Hilton possessed by an evil spirit. His cheeks burned with a more than
hectic red, his eyes were wild and bloodshot, and though the recognition
had suddenly sobered him, an impatient, reckless devil seemed to lurk
under the set mask of his features.
“Here I am, Asenath,” he said at length, hoarsely. “I said it was death,
didn't I? Well, it's worse than death, I suppose; but what matter? You
can't be more lost to me now than you were already. This is THY doing,
Friend Eli,” he continued, turning to the old man, with a sneering
emphasis on the “THY.” “I hope thee's satisfied with thy work!”
Here he burst into a bitter, mocking laugh, which it chilled Asenath's
blood to hear.
The old man turned pale. “Come away, child!” said he, tugging at her
arm. But she stood firm, strengthened for the moment by a solemn feeling
of duty which trampled down her pain.
“Richard,” she said, with the music of an immeasurable sorrow in
her voice, “oh, Richard, what has thee done? Where the Lord commands
resignation, thee has been rebellious; where he chasteneth to purify,
thee turns blindly to sin. I had not expected this of thee, Richard; I
thought thy regard for me was of the kind which would have helped and
uplifted thee,--not through me, as an unworthy object, but through the
hopes and the pure desires of thy own heart. I expected that thee would
so act as to justify what I felt towards thee, not to make my affection
a reproach,--oh, Richard, not to cast over my heart the shadow of thy
sin!”
The wretched young man supported himself against the post of an awning,
buried his face in his hands, and wept passionately. Once or twice he
essayed to speak, but his voice was choked by sobs, and, after a look
from the streaming eyes which Asenath could scarcely bear to meet, he
again covered his face. A stranger, coming down the street, paused out
of curiosity. “Come, come!” cried Eli, once more, eager to escape from
the scene. His daughter stood still, and the man slowly passed on.
Asenath could not thus leave her lost lover, in his despairing grief.
She again turned to him, her own tears flowing fast and free.
“I do not judge thee, Richard, but the words that passed between us give
me a right to speak to thee. It was hard to lose sight of thee then, but
it is still harder for me to see thee now. If the sorrow and pity I feel
could save thee, I would be willing never to know any other feelings. I
would still do anything for thee except that which thee cannot ask, as
thee now is, and I could not give. Thee has made the gulf between us so
wide that it cannot be crossed. But I can now weep for thee and pray for
thee as a fellow-creature whose soul is still precious in the sight of
the Lord. Fare thee well!”
He seized the hand she extended, bowed down, and showered mingled tears
and kisses upon it. Then, with a wild sob in his throat, he started up
and rushed down the street, through the fast-falling rain. The father
and daughter walked home in silence. Eli had heard every word that was
spoken, and felt that a spirit whose utterances he dared not question
had visited Asenath's tongue.
She, as year after year went by, regained the peace and patience which
give a sober cheerfulness to life. The pangs of her heart grew dull and
transient; but there were two pictures in her memory which never blurred
in outline or faded in color: one, the brake of autumn flowers under the
bright autumnal sky, with bird and stream making accordant music to the
new voice of love; the other a rainy street, with a lost, reckless man
leaning against an awning-post, and staring in her face with eyes whose
unutterable woe, when she dared to recall it, darkened the beauty of the
earth, and almost shook her trust in the providence of God.