PLEASANT DAYS AND PLEASANT TEACHINGS.
The next morning Turner called, and I told him my mournful adventure. He
seemed greatly interested, and, after listening very attentively, sunk
into a train of thought, still holding me on his knee. At last he
addressed Maria,
“This may prove a good thing for the child,” he said. “It is strange we
never thought of it before. The curate’s daughter is just the companion
for Zana, and as they teach her at home it is possible—but we will think
more of it.”
Turner placed me on the floor as he spoke, and, taking Maria on one
side, conversed with her for some time. Meanwhile I was eager to reach
the parsonage once more—I felt that Cora would be expecting me—that I
might even be wanted by the broken-hearted man, whose grief had filled
my whole being with sympathy.
I ran up stairs, put on my bonnet and little black silk mantilla with
its rich garniture of lace, and pulling Turner by the coat, gave him and
Maria a hasty good morning.
“Wait,” said the kind old fellow, seizing my hand—“wait a bit, and I
will go with you. All that I dread,” he continued, turning to Maria, “is
the questions that he will naturally ask.”
“Oh, but you can evade them,” answered Maria.
“Yes, by telling all that I absolutely know, nothing more nor less, and
that every servant at Greenhurst can confirm; I must stick to simple
facts, no conjectures nor convictions without proof; no man has a right
to ask them.”
I had gathered a basket of fruit that morning before the dew was off,
and buried the glowing treasure beneath a quantity of jessamine and
daphna blossoms, for some intuition told me that pure white flowers were
most fitted for the house of mourning. With this precious little basket
on my arm, I waited impatiently for Turner to start, if he was indeed
going with me. But there were hesitation and reluctance in his manner,
though at last he yielded to my importunity, and we set out.
It was a pleasant walk, and my enjoyment of its beauty was perfect. I
had an object, something to fix my heart upon; the dreamy portion of my
life was over; I began to know myself as a thinking, acting being.
We entered the parsonage. Mr. Clarke was in the parlor, sitting in the
easy-chair exactly as I had left him the day before, with his silk robe
on—and his eyes, heavy with grief, were bent upon the floor. Emboldened
by the affection which had sprung up in my heart for this lone man, I
went up to him as his own child might have done, and kissed the hand
which fell languidly by his side.
He did not lift his eyes, but resting his hand on my head, whispered
softly,
“Bless thee—bless thee, my poor orphan.”
He evidently mistook me for his own child.
“It is not little Cora, only me,” I said—“me and Mr. Turner.”
He looked up, saw Turner standing near the door, shook his head sadly,
and dropped into the old position.
I swept the white blossoms, to one end of my basket and exposed the
cherries underneath, red and glowing as if the sunshine that had ripened
them were breaking back to the surface again.
“I picked them for you my ownself,” I said, holding up the basket—“for
you and Cora.”
Poor man, his lips were white and parched; it is probable he had not
tasted food all the previous day! With a patient, thoughtful smile he
took a cluster of the cherries, and my heart rose as I saw how much the
grateful fruit refreshed him.
“This is a strange little creature,” he said at last, addressing Turner.
“She was with us yesterday; it seemed as if God had sent one of his
cherubs. Truly of such is the kingdom of heaven!”
Dear old Turner, how his face began to work.
“She is a good girl—a very good girl. We’ve done all we could to spoil
her like two old fools, her bonne and I; but somehow she’s too much for
us; as for the spoiling, it isn’t to be done.”
I saw Cora through an open door, and laying a double handful of the
cherries on her father’s robe, ran toward her. She looked pale, poor
thing, and her sweet eyes were dull and heavy. She was in a little room
that opened to the parlor, and, still in her long linen night-gown, and
with her golden curls breaking from a tiny muslin cap, lay upon the
cushions of a chintz sofa; for, it seems, she had refused to be taken
entirely from her father, and he had spent his night in the easy-chair.
“Her head was aching terribly,” she said; “she had been awake some time,
but papa was so still that it frightened her. She was afraid that he had
gone to sleep like her mother, and never would wake up again.”
The quick sympathies of girlhood soon rendered us both more cheerful.
She began to smile when her father’s voice reached us, and refreshed her
sweet lips with my cherries, in childish forgetfulness of the sorrow
that had rendered them so pale.
“I’m so glad you have come,” she said, leaving the sofa; and gathering
up her night-gown till both rosy little feet were exposed upon the
matting, she ran to a side door and looked out, calling, “Sarah
Blake—Sarah Blake!”
A servant girl, plump and hearty, with little grey eyes, and cheeks red
as the cherries in my basket, answered the summons. She looked upon me
with apparent curiosity and evident kindness, and taking Cora in her
arms, said, “so this is the strange little lady.”
“Isn’t she nice?” whispered Cora. “Isn’t she like a star?”
“Yes, she is a nice playmate; I’m glad you’ve found her, Miss Cora, only
one would like to know just who she is.”
I sat down on the matting, as the door closed after them, and taking up
the white flowers, began to weave them into a crown. It was an
irresistible habit, that of sorting and combining any flowers that came
within my reach. I often did this unconsciously, and with a sort of
affectionate carefulness, for the rude handling of a blossom gave me
pain. It seemed to me impossible that they did not suffer as a child
might; so, with a light touch, I wove my garland thick and heavy with
leaves and blossoms. I never felt lonely when flowers were my
companions. They seemed to me like a beautiful alphabet which God had
given, that I might fashion out with them the mystic language of my own
heart.
The voices of Turner and the curate reached me from the next room. They
were conversing in a low tone, but I could hear that the stricken man
was shaking off the apathy of his grief. There was interest and depth in
his tone. As they talked, the door, which had been but half on the
latch, swung open a little, and I heard him say,
“It is a strange and touching history. Have you made any effort to learn
how she came in this forlorn condition?”
“Every effort that a human being could make.”
“And you have literally no information beyond the morning when you took
her from the door-step?”
“None whatever.”
“Cannot she herself remember enough to give some clue?”
“Illness must have driven everything from her memory. The mere effort to
recollect seems to shake her very existence. I will never attempt it
again.”
“She _must_ be of good birth,” said the curate, thoughtfully, “never did
human face give more beautiful evidence of gentle blood.”
“I never doubted that,” answered Turner, quickly.
“Strange, very strange,” murmured the curate.
“Is there any hope that you will aid us, sir?” said Turner, who used few
words at any time, and evidently found the prolonged deliberations of
the curate annoying.
“How can you ask?” replied the curate, gently. “I thought that was
settled long ago. Were she the poorest vagrant that ever craved alms, I
would do my best to aid her. As it is, can I ever forget yesterday? Mr.
Turner, we sometimes _do_ find angels in our path. This one we shall not
entertain unawares, I know that she will prove a blessing to this
desolated house.”
I dropped the flowers in my lap, and began to listen breathlessly. His
beautiful faith in my future—his solemn trust in the good that was in
me, fell like an inspiration upon my soul. From that hour my devotion to
that good man and his daughter was a religious obligation—yes, a
religious obligation before I knew what religion meant.
“Ah! if _she_ had only been near to help us,” said the curate, and his
eyes filled with those quiet, dewy tears with which God first waters a
grief-stricken heart before he lets in the sunshine to which it has
become unused—tears and sunshine that sometimes freshen the soul again
with more than the brightness of childhood.
A strange thought came over me. I laid down the wreath and glided softly
to the curate’s chair.
“They told us yesterday that she had gone to God,” I whispered, looking
in his face with a sort of holy courage. “Is God so far off that she
cannot help us?”
The curate gazed at me with a strange expression at first, then a
beautiful smile parted his lips, and laying both hands on my head, he
looked in my face still smiling, while his eyes slowly filled.
That moment little Cora came in. Her father reached forth his hand and
drew her arm around my neck.
“Little children, love one another,” he said, and falling back in his
chair, with the smile still upon his lips, he closed his eyes, but great
tears forced themselves from under the lids and rolled slowly downward.
I drew back with the child, and with our arms interlinked we glided into
the next room. I took up my crown of white blossoms, and, as if she read
the thought in my bosom, Cora whispered, “Mamma, is it for her?” We
stole through the parlor again, and went out. The curate sat with his
eyes closed, and Turner had an elbow on each knee, with both hands
supporting his forehead.
Without speaking a word, Cora and I turned an angle of the church and
entered the grave-yard. It looked more cheerful than it had appeared the
day before. Long glances of sunshine shot across it, and some stray
birds had lost themselves in the cypress trees, and seemed trying to
sing their way out.
We laid our garland down upon the bleak, new grave of Cora’s mother,
just over the spot where we knew her cold heart was sleeping. Its faint
perfume spread like an angel’s breath all over the grave, and we went
softly away, feeling that she knew what we had done.
From that day my life was divided between the parsonage and the only
home I had ever known. Turner had proved a more efficient consoler of
the curate than a thousand sermons could have been. In the hour of his
deepest grief, he had opened a new channel for his affections as new
means of usefulness. The overpowering anguish, that had almost swept him
from the earth in twenty-four hours, never returned again. He would
often say, looking upon us children with a peaceful smile,
“She is with God, and He is everywhere.”
None but a good man could have been so easily won from such a grief by
the simple power to aid others, for his wife had been the most devoted
and loving creature that the sun ever shone upon, and her death was
sudden as the flash of lightning that darts from a summer cloud. A
disease of the heart, insidious and unsuspected till the moment of her
death, left her lifeless, in the morning, upon the pillow to which she
had retired at night with trusting prayers and innocent smiles.
Thus I became the pupil of Mr. Clarke—the sister, nay, more than the
sister of his child; and now, heart and mind, my whole nature began to
expand. My profound ignorance of life was slowly enlightened. The
history of my native land was no longer a sealed book. I began to
comprehend the distinctions that existed in society—the principles of
government, the glorious advantages which follow each step that nations
take toward freedom. I confess it took me a long time to comprehend why
one man should, without effort of his own, possess lands which stretched
from horizon to horizon, like Lord Clare, while others, who toiled from
sun to sun, could scarce secure the necessaries of existence; nor have I
yet solved the question satisfactorily to my sense of right.
No life can be really monotonous in which taste is gratified and
knowledge acquired; certainly not where the heart is allowed to put
forth its natural affections and weave them around worthy objects.
Cora and I took our lessons together, but she had little of that eager
thirst for knowledge which possessed me. Gentle, caressing and indolent,
to escape her lessons was a relief, while I devoured mine, and found
time for the gratification of a thousand fancies that she was ready to
praise, but unwilling to share.
It is said that women of opposite natures are most likely to find
sympathy with each other. I do not believe this, either in men or women.
In order to perfect companionship, tastes, habits, intellectual
aspirations, nay, even physical health must assimilate.
I believe no human being ever loved another more thoroughly than I loved
Cora Clarke. To say that I would have given my life to save hers would
be little, for life is not always the greatest sacrifice one human soul
can make to another. But I would have yielded up any one of the great
hopes of my existence, could the sacrifice have secured her happiness.
But in less than three years I had outgrown Cora’s companionship. My
love, though unbounded, had a sense of protection in it. It was the
caressing attachment of a mother for her child, or an elder sister for
her orphan charge.
Strange as it may seem, the companionship so essential to my character
was found more thoroughly in the father than the child. He never wearied
of teaching, and I never remember to have become tired of learning. My
appreciation of all his arguments—and they were vast—was perfect. My
love for him was more than that of a daughter for her parent.
From the time I first entered his house, I felt a conviction that, in
some way, the love that I bore for these two persons would be brought
into powerful action—that I should be called upon to support them in
great troubles, and that my own destiny was in some mystical way bound
up in them. Thus time passed happily enough, till I reached my eleventh
year. Lord Clare was still abroad in the far east, it was said, and I
had begun to think of him as one dwells upon the characters in a
history. The name had become familiar now, and I ceased to feel any
extraordinary interest in it such as had first impressed me.
Certainly I knew something of his history. Mr. Clarke had told me of the
sudden and singular death which had overtaken Lady Clare on the night of
her marriage, and of the great probability that the earl would never
marry again, in which case his sister, and through her his nephew, the
Etonian, would come in possession of the title and several large estates
entailed with it.
One thing, I remember, interested me a good deal, for I was at the time
informing myself regarding the hereditary privileges of the British
nobility, and it was fixed upon my memory that this particular title,
and its estates, descended alike to male or female heirs, as they
happened to fall in succession, while a large property, acquired by Lord
Clare’s marriage, might be disposed of by deed or will.