_BRIDE’S PERPLEXITIES_
But if Eustace suffered from doubts and fears, even when embarked
upon a cause which he fully believed to be that of right and justice,
other people were not exempt from their share of perplexity and mental
distress, and certainly the youthful Lady Bride was no exception
to this rule. For her, things seemed to have come hardly. Just as
she was deprived of the loving counsels and tender training of a
mother whom she literally adored, was she confronted by problems and
questions which had never entered into her inner life before, and which
threatened at times to upheave many of her most cherished notions, or
to land her in a perfect sea of doubt and bewilderment.
True, she had not grown up in actual ignorance of the questions
beginning to agitate the world, but hitherto she had regarded them, as
it were, from an infinite distance: they had not penetrated to her own
sphere. She could regard them in perspective, and moralise upon them in
an abstract fashion totally distinct from that which confronted her,
now that they had in a sense intruded into her very home, and risen
up in altogether unexpected proportion before her eyes. Calm as she
appeared to the eyes of those about her, remote and aloof as Eustace
felt her to be, dwelling in a world of her own, and hardly awake to
the throbbing life of that other world of which he was a member,
she was in reality far more aware of its pulsating life than he ever
dreamed, and far more perplexed by the problems of the times than
he as yet suspected. Pity and love for the humble and poor had been
instilled into Bride’s heart by her mother from her earliest years,
and it was a lesson not likely to be ignored now that she was left so
lonely and desolate in her palatial home. Towards her father she felt
a deep and reverential affection and compassion, and they had drawn
a very little nearer together during this time of common sorrow; but
the habits of a lifetime are seldom broken through, even when there
is willingness to break them, and the Duke found himself unable to
open his heart to his young daughter, as he had learned to do to his
gentle wife, even when he was conscious that if the effort could be
made it would be abundantly rewarded. He was gentle towards her, and
more tender than he had ever been in his life before, but there was no
impulse of confidence between them. It was just as hard for Bride to
try to speak to him out of her heart (as she had been wont to do to her
mother) as for him to cast off his reserve before her; so that when
perplexities arose within her, the girl had to fight them out alone,
and increasingly hard did she find the battle as day by day fresh
thoughts and problems presented themselves before her mental vision.
Mr. St. Aubyn might have helped her, but she was timid of seeking him
out. She felt towards him a deep and reverential affection. She had
always hung upon his words when he visited her mother, and the two
talked together long and earnestly of the coming crisis in the world’s
history of which both were keenly conscious, and for which both were
preparing themselves in different measure. But the girl had never
opened her own heart to the clergyman, or indeed to any person except
her mother, and she did not know how to make the first advance now,
although feeling often in sore need of guidance and help.
But there was still one person to whom she sometimes spoke when the
sense of the burden became greater than she could bear, and that was
to the old gardener, Abner Tresithny. She had a great respect, and
indeed affection, for the faithful old servant, who from childhood
had always been ranked as one of her friends, so that the habit of
reserve had not extended to her intercourse with him. Bride had her
own outdoor pursuits in the garden, which Abner superintended with his
advice and assistance, and as the pair worked together in greenhouse or
potting-shed, they often talked of many other matters than the plants
they tended. Bride had gained much of her insight into human nature
and the state of the village from Abner; and now when Saul’s fervid
discourses had stirred up so much excitement there, it was natural that
the matter should be mentioned, and that other things of a kindred
nature should be discussed.
Abner had been pained and grieved by his grandson’s (apparently sudden)
development, and Bride saw that the subject was a sore one with him.
With her ready tact she avoided the point which most pained the old
man, and opened her heart to him on the subject which had been with her
night and day for many a long week now, and which will raise itself
before each one of us with a ceaseless iteration so long as this state
of sin and misery lasts in the world.
“O Abner, can we wonder?--can we blame them so very much if they do
rise in rebellion and revolt? Why is it--ah! why is it that some--not
just a few here and there, but hundreds and thousands--even millions
of human beings are born into the world to a life of hopeless misery,
degradation, and poverty, from which not one man in a thousand has
power to raise himself? My cousin has been telling me things--I have
heard him and my father talking--and it goes to my very heart to think
what it all means. I know--oh! I can never doubt it--that in every
human soul there is the power to live the higher life by the grace
of the Spirit of God; but oh! Abner, how is it, humanly speaking,
possible that this germ of heavenly fire should be developed in such
surroundings? How can those encompassed by every physical misery and
degradation ever lift their hearts and their hopes heavenward? How
can it be looked for? And why does God permit such awful inequalities
in the destinies of His children? If He loves us all--as we know He
does--why, oh! why are these things allowed?”
The pain in her face and in her voice plainly showed how deeply she had
taken to heart what she had gleaned of late respecting the condition
of a large section of the population at that time. Abner looked at his
young mistress with a world of sympathy in his steady, deep-set eyes,
and slowly shook his head.
“There be many of us ask that same question, my Ladybird, as we go
on in life, and none of us can rightly answer it. And yet may be the
answer is under our hand all the while. It is the sin of man that
brought the curse into the world; and ever since the hardness of man’s
heart has been making him choose the evil and the curse instead of the
way of the Lord and the blessing, and every generation sinks the world
deeper and deeper into the slough.”
“I know, I know that. Sin is at the root of all,” answered Bride, with
quick eagerness, “but that does not seem to answer everything. It is
the awful inequalities of the world that frighten me, and the sense of
the terrible gulf that seems to divide such lives as mine from those
of the miserable women and children born in the midst of a squalor and
misery of which my cousin tells me I can have no conception. We are all
born in sin, but we are not all born to utter want and wretchedness.
God loves all His children alike: why should such things be? Oh, why
should they be?”
She clasped her hands together in a passion of perplexity and pain.
The eyes which were so deep and inscrutable to Eustace were full of
a pleading intensity of gaze, as though she would wring an answer to
her appeal from the heavens themselves. Abner looked at her with a
softening of the lines of his rugged face; and as he steadily pursued
his task of cleansing from blight a great camellia tree that stood in
the centre of the conservatory, he made an answer that was eminently
characteristic of him, and which roused the instant interest of the
girl.
“My Ladybird, I think we can none of us rightly answer such a question,
because the ways of the Almighty are past finding out, and we can by no
stretch of our poor finite minds hope to understand the eternal wisdom
of the Infinite. And yet, inasmuch as we have God’s own word that we
are made in His image, we can just get here and there a glimpse into
the workings of His mind; and I often think that a gardener at his toil
gets a clearer bit of insight into His dealings than some others can
do.”
“Oh, tell me how,” cried Bride, who dearly loved to listen to Abner’s
deductions from the world of nature to the realm of human experience.
She had been used to listening to his allegories from childhood, and
always found in them food for thought and farther research.
Quietly pursuing his task, as was his way when thinking most deeply,
Abner took up his parable again.
“It sometimes comes to me like this, my lady, when I am amongst my
flowers and plants and seeds, and folks come to me and say, ‘Abner, why
do you do this?’ and ‘Abner, why do you do that?’ Look at the little
seeds as they lie on your hand--seeming so like to one another that
even the best of us would be puzzled to know some kinds apart; but
when they grow up, how different they appear, and how different they
have to be treated! Some are hardy things, and are put out to face
the biting winds and cruel snows of winter, and nothing given them
for protection, whilst others are tenderly protected from the least
hardship, and grow up in the soft warm air of the hot-house, watered
and tended and watched over like petted children. Is it because the
gardener loves one sort of seed more than another that he treats them
so differently? What sort of a garden would he have when the summer
came had he put the tender hot-house seeds out in the cold ground, and
tried to grow the hardy seedlings in a hot-house? And then again, see
how the different plants are treated as they grow up under the same
gardener’s eye. Look at these great specimen heliotropes and fuchsias
and petunias. How were they treated when they were young?--pinched
in, trained, clipped, kept back, as it seemed, in every possible way,
everything against them, everything, as one would say, taken from them,
till the right stature and height and growth had been attained, and
then encouraged to bud and break where it had been decided they should;
and now see the beautiful graceful trees--a joy to the eye and to the
heart--covered with blossom, rejoicing as it seems in their beauty, the
pride of the gardener who seemed at first so cruel to them, so resolved
to keep them barren and unlovely.”
Bride drew a long breath and clasped her hands together. She had asked
sometimes deep down in her heart why her own life had been left so
desolate by the death of her mother. Was she in some sort finding an
answer now? Was it perhaps for her ultimate good and for the glory of
God that she was thus heavily chastened in her youth?
Abner had made a slight pause, but now he continued, speaking in the
same slow way, with the same rather remarkable choice of words for a
man of his class.
“And again, look at another class of plants--look at our bulbs. Does
not the gardener find a quiet nook for them in the garden where they
will never be disturbed, and put them in, and let them come up year
after year undisturbed and unmolested? Is it because he loves them
more that he leaves them to bloom at their own time and in their own
fashion, and does not even cut down their leaves when the blooming
season is over? Why is he so cruel (as the ignorant folk might put it)
to some of his plants, and so tender to others? Why does he treat them
so differently? Why do some grow up and flourish for a season only,
and are rooted up and cast away at its close, whilst others remain
year by year in the ground, or are tended in warmth and luxury in the
glass homes provided for them? Why such inequalities when originally
all start alike from a tiny seed germ, one of which scarce differs from
another? Is it because the gardener is partial or cruel? or because he
knows as no untrained person can, what is best for each, and how in the
end, after patient waiting and watching, the most perfect garden will
arise up under his hand? And if this is so in our little world, can we
not understand that it must be something the same in the great garden
of God--that kingdom of Christ for which we are waiting and watching,
and for which He is working in His own all-powerful and mysterious way?
Ah! how often I think of that as I go about my daily toil--that reign
of the Lord’s upon earth, when the wilderness shall blossom as the
rose, where sorrow and pain and sin shall be done away, and we shall
see the meaning of all those things which perplex and bewilder us now,
and understand the love in the Father’s heart, although the discipline
seemed hard to understand at the first.”
Bride raised her eyes with the light shining in them which the thought
of the coming kingdom of the Lord always brought there.
“Ah! yes,” she said softly, “we shall know then--we shall understand
then--we shall see face to face. O Abner, would that that day might
come quickly! Ah! why does not God hear the cry of His people in their
trouble and perplexities, and send forth the Great Deliverer? Are we
not praying for His appearing hour by hour and day by day? Why does He
tarry so long?”
Abner slowly shook his head. He understood perfectly those utterances
of the girl, which from time to time filled Eustace with absolute
bewilderment. One result of the awakening of spiritual perception,
and of the unceasing prayer which had been offered up by all sorts
and conditions of men for many years, had been a deep and earnest
conviction that the Second Advent was at hand, that the French
Revolution was but the commencement of the Great Apostasy of the latter
days, and that the times of the end were approaching. Amongst all the
confusion of prophetic interpretation stirring the minds of men and
raising up countless differences of opinion and beliefs as to what
was coming upon the earth, there stood out one paramount conviction
which attracted multitudes to adhere to it, which was that before the
final judgments were to be poured upon the earth, as foretold in the
Revelation according to St. John, there would be a gathering together
of the first-fruits to Christ--the dead and living saints called alike
to meet Him in the air, and thus escape the horrors that were coming
upon the world--the company typified in Scripture as the hundred and
forty-four thousand sealed ones standing with the Lamb upon Mount
Zion before the last vials of wrath are poured out, and before the
resurrection of the multitude whom no man can number, who have come
scathlessly through the great tribulation of the days of Antichrist.
This had been the unshaken conviction of the Duchess, and Bride had
received it from her mother with an absolute trust. Abner, like many
men of his class and race, was equally filled with a devout hope
and expectation of living to see the Lord appear without sin unto
salvation. The wave of revived spirituality and personal faith which
had swept over the West-Country with the advance of Methodism a
generation before, had, as it were, prepared the minds of men for a
fresh development of faith in the fulfilment of God’s prophetic word.
Methodism itself had already begun to fossilise to a certain extent
into a system, and had been rent by faction and split into hostile
camps; but this new wave of awakened spirituality was sweeping over the
land with all its first strength, and destined in one form or another
to do a great work in the Church. The thought and the hope of the
Kingdom was one so familiar and so congenial to those who had accepted
it, that already they were striving after the life of the Kingdom in
the present world of sorrow and sin. To Bride it was the very source
and centre of all her happiness in life, and anything that turned her
thoughts back to it again brought solace and comfort with it; so that
even the hope that the darkness and perplexity around her would be
explained and made clear in the Kingdom, and that what she now saw with
pain and shrinking would at last prove to be God’s way of bringing good
out of the mass of evil engendered by the sin and disobedience of man,
brought a measure of comfort with it, and Bride walked through the
sunny gardens in a deep reverie, looking around her at the awakening of
nature with a strange but intensely real hope that it was but the type
and foretaste of another and more wondrous resurrection, in which she
might be counted worthy to have a share, perhaps even before this same
young year had run its appointed course.
Her meditations were interrupted by the sudden appearance at her side
of her cousin Eustace. How he came she knew not. She had not observed
his approach, but here he was walking beside her; and as she raised
her eyes for a moment to his face, she was aware that it wore an
expression of strange concentration, whilst at the same time in his
voice there was a tone which she did not remember ever to have heard
there before.
“Bride,” he said, speaking more abruptly than usual, “you know that I
am going away soon?”
“I had heard something of it. I did not know the day was fixed. I think
you must feel glad. There is so little to do at Penarvon--for one like
you.”
“I fear your father thinks I have done too much, as it is,” answered
Eustace hastily. “Bride, have I made him hate me? Has he spoken with
disapproval of me to you?”
“Oh, no!” answered Bride. “My father seldom speaks disparagingly of any
one who is not there to defend himself. He would say nothing to me that
he did not say to you; and if he did. I could not repeat it, of course.”
“No,” answered Eustace quickly; “I was wrong in asking; but I was
nervously afraid, I think, lest he should have said something to do
hurt to my cause. Bride, are you sorry I am going away? Will you miss
me when I am gone?”
He spoke with covert eagerness, almost with excitement, and Bride was
puzzled at the note of emotion in his voice, and paused to consider her
answer. She was always transparently truthful and sincere, and although
brought up to show courtesy to all with whom she came in contact, she
had never taught herself to utter the platitudes and shallow untruths
of society, and chose her words with care when appealed to in such a
fashion.
“I think I shall miss you,” she answered, looking reflectively before
her. “It will seem strange not to see your face at table, or to have
some one to talk to in the evenings. I think father will miss you too.
He likes to converse with one who knows the world and can understand
him. Perhaps you will come again some day, Eustace?”
“Do you ask it, Bride?” he questioned, his voice quivering.
“I have no power to invite guests to Penarvon,” she answered gently.
“My father has never given me leave to do so; but I think he will be
glad to think you will come again: he has so few belonging in any way
to him now.”
“Would you be glad, Bride?” he asked, in the same tense and almost
impassioned way; “that is what I wish to know. Would you be glad to
think that I should come again soon?”
Something in his tone aroused in Bride a vague sense of shrinking and
distaste. She could not understand exactly what produced this feeling;
but at that moment her impulse was to leave her cousin hastily and fly
to the shelter of her own room. That being impossible, she could only
retire into the shell of her own impenetrable reserve, and Eustace was
at once aware that some of the light had gone out of her eyes, and that
she very slightly drew away from him.
“I do not know,” she said very quietly; “that depends upon so many
things. You have been very kind, Eustace, and yet you have done things
which have brought great trouble to us. If you could learn to be a
comfort to my father, I would welcome you gladly again; but you can
hardly expect it when you trouble and distress him.”
“Bride, Bride, do not speak so! do not drive me to despair!” cried
Eustace suddenly, losing his long-preserved self-control. “Do you not
know that I love you, that I have loved you almost ever since I saw you
first three months ago? Oh, my love, my life, only love me in return,
and do what you will with me! I am yours, body and soul, and together
we will walk through life, and yours shall be the guiding and directing
will, for you are the guiding star of my life! Bride, Bride! hear me!
Be my wife, and I will be in the future what you will. You shall rule
my life for me. Only let me know that your love is mine, and I care for
nothing else!”
She understood then, and the surprise of it all held her mute and
spellbound. Perhaps no maiden in the length and breadth of the land
had grown up more oblivious of the thought of love and marriage than
Lady Bride Marchmont. No young companions had she ever known to suggest
such ideas. Her mother had preserved the guarded silence on the subject
that mothers are wont to do whilst their daughters are yet young, and
her father had followed his wife’s example. She had seen the best and
happiest side of married life in the tender love and dependence of her
parents; but as a thing applied to herself she had never given it a
thought, and now she recoiled from this passionate appeal with a sense
of shrinking and distaste which she found it difficult to refrain from
expressing in words that would inflict pain on the man before her. She
did not wish to pain him. She was woman enough to know that he meant to
do her honour by this proffer of love and service; but he had utterly
failed to awaken any answering chord in her heart, and she felt that he
ought not to have spoken as he had done, or to use such arguments to
her.
“No, Eustace,” she said, not ungently, as he tried to take her hand.
“You must not speak to me so. It is not right. It is not even manly.
I think you can know very little of me when you speak of offering
yourself to me body and soul, or tell me that you care for nothing
else if you can have my love. Do you think I can love any one, save
with the love of a deep pity, who can place a mere earthly love before
everything else, and talk as though his soul were his own to give
into the keeping of another? Do you think I like to hear you say that
you would even abandon a cause which seemed to you holy and just and
right, simply because you think I may not approve it? Do you wish to
make of me your conscience-keeper? O Eustace! think what such words
mean!--think what treachery they imply, not only to God but to man, and
I am sure you yourself will be ashamed of them.”
“I can think of nothing but that I love you, Bride,” broke in Eustace,
hotly and passionately, his heart moved by the wonderful beauty of the
woman before him; her utter unconsciousness of the wild passions of
love and tenderness stirring within him only rousing him to a sense of
wilder resolve to win her at all cost. “I love you! I love you! I love
you! All my religion, all my faith, all my happiness here or hereafter
are comprised within the limits of those three little words. I love
you! Surely you will not tell me in return that you hate me, and would
spurn me from your presence. O Bride, my life, my love! do not say that
you have no love to give me in return.”
There was something so appealing in his voice that her heart was
touched with compassion, though with no answering response. She let him
possess himself of her hand, but it lay cool and passive in his hot
clasp.
“I do not hate you, Eustace--why should I? I do not hate any living
thing. I do not spurn you. I do not spurn your love.”
“My darling, ten thousand thanks for that sweet word. If my love is not
spurned, surely it will some day be returned! Bride, you will at least
let me hope that?”
“I cannot help what you hope,” she answered, with childlike frankness.
“But, Eustace, I do not think I can ever love you as you wish, and
I can never, never, never be your wife unless I do. I like you as a
cousin; but indeed that is all. I do not understand what it is that
makes you wish to marry me. We should be very unhappy together--I am
quite sure of that.”
“Ah! no, Bride! Do not speak so. Unhappy, and with you!”
“I should be very unhappy,” answered the girl steadily, “and you
_ought_ to be, Eustace, if you really knew what love meant.”
He looked at her in amaze; that _she_ should be speaking to _him_ of
the nature of love with that look of divine compassion in her eyes was
a thing altogether too strange and perplexing. Her very attitude and
quiet composure told of a heart unruffled as yet by any touch of human
passion, and yet she was turning upon him and rebuking him for his
ignorance. It was she who broke the momentary pause, seeming almost to
read his thoughts.
“You wonder how I know perhaps, but, ah! if you had seen my father and
mother together you would have understood. If you had known what love
there was between my mother and me, you would understand. Do not I know
what love is? Ah! do I not? It is the power to lay bare the innermost
sanctuary of your soul, and to know that you will be understood,
helped, strengthened, comforted. It is the knowledge that thoughts
too deep, and hopes too wonderful and mysterious for words are shared
together, and can be whispered of together without being tarnished by
the poor attempt to reduce them to speech; the consciousness that in
everything we are in accord, that we are often thinking the same things
at the same moment; the knowledge that the deeper and deeper we go
the more and more sympathy and sweet accord there is between us; that
not only are we one in opinion about temporal and changing things,
but knit close, close together in soul and spirit as well, sharing
the same faith, the same hope, the same love! Ah! Eustace! if you had
known such a love as that, you could never think that there would be
happiness for you and me in linking our lives together!”
He stood silent, almost abashed, before her, marvelling alike at
her eloquence and at the insight displayed of a union of spirit, of
which Eustace was forced to admit that he had not thought. To win
Bride as his wife, to set her up as his object of adoring love, had
seemed all-sufficient to him hitherto. Now it suddenly dawned upon
him that with such a woman as this, that would be but the travesty
and mockery of happiness. She was right and he was wrong: without a
deeper sympathy and love than any which had come into his philosophy
as yet, marriage would be a doleful blunder. He would be no nearer to
her than before--perhaps farther away. He must learn to share with her
that inner and mystic life of which he saw glimpses from time to time
when she opened out for a moment and showed him what lay below the calm
surface of her nature. Either he must share that with her, or wean
her away from it; replacing mysticism with philanthropy, fanaticism
with practical benevolence, objective with subjective religion. One of
those two ends must be accomplished before he could hope to win the
desire of his heart. As he stood in the bright spring sunshine facing
her, he became suddenly aware of that, and a new light leaped into his
eyes--the light of battle and of resolve. He would win her yet, but
it must be by slower steps than any he had contemplated hitherto. She
was worthy of better things than becoming a mere dreamer and nunlike
recluse. It should be his to lead her steps to surer ground, to show
her that there was a higher Christianity than any of which she had
hitherto dreamed. Not now--not all at once, but he would come again
and begin upon a surer foundation. He looked into her eyes, and gently
taking her hand before she had time to draw it away, he said quietly--
“Do not be afraid, Bride; I see that you judged more wisely than I.
You are right and I am wrong, and I will go away and trouble you no
more in the present; but the time will come when I shall return, and I
trust that by slow and sure degrees we shall draw so closely together
that you will no longer shrink from me in fear and trembling. You are
very young, sweet cousin, and there are many things you have yet to
learn. It is a beautiful thing, I doubt not, to hold commune in the
spirit with the higher world; but we are set in our place here below
for something I hold to be more truly noble than that. We are set in
a world of sin and misery that we may gird our armour upon us and
fight the battle with this sin and misery--fight it for our poor and
afflicted brethren, as they cannot fight it for themselves. That is the
true Christianity; that is the highest form of religious devotion. You
can read it for yourself in your Bible--‘True religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this, to visit the widows and orphans in
their affliction’--to be ministers, in fact, of mercy and blessing in
any sphere, of which one is given as the type.”
“Yes,” answered Bride very softly, “and to keep himself unspotted from
the world.”
She looked straight at Eustace as she spoke, and he looked back at her,
marvelling at the extraordinary depth and beauty of those dark eyes. He
longed, as he had never longed before, to take her in his arms and hold
her to his heart; but he knew that he must not, so with a great effort
he restrained himself, and kept back the words of passionate love which
rose to his lips.
“Yes,” he answered steadily; “and for your sweet sake, Bride, I will
strive to do even that--evil and full of temptation as my world is.”
“Not for my sake, Eustace, not for my sake,” she replied, with an
earnestness he scarcely understood; “that would be indeed a vain
resolve. If you cannot yet strive in the power and might of the Risen
and Ascended Lord, whom you deny, strive at least in the power of the
right you own and believe in, though you know not from whence it comes.”
He looked at her in some amaze.
“Why do you say I deny your Risen Saviour, Bride?”
“Because I heard you with your own lips do so, in effect if not in
actual words. You spoke of His miracles as being ordinary gifts
of healing exaggerated by the devotion of His followers; of the
Transfiguration being a like delusion--men awakened from sleep seeing
their Master standing in the glory of the sunrise, and mistaking the
morning mists for other luminous figures beside Him. You said that the
Resurrection had been accounted for by the theory that the Saviour did
not die, but was taken from the Cross in a state of trance, from which
He recovered in the tomb.”
A flush mounted quickly into Eustace’s face.
“You mistake me, Bride,” he answered hastily. “We were discussing--Mr.
St. Aubyn and I--some of the teachings of various philosophers and
thinkers, and I was explaining to him how Paulus had extended to the
New Testement the method which Eichhorn had applied to the Old. I
was not defending the theory, but merely stating it as a matter of
speculation amongst men of a certain school.”
Bride looked at him intently.
“If that is so, I am thankful and glad; but I heard too much not to
know very well where your sympathies and convictions lie. If you do not
follow the impious teachings of this Paulus, you are very far along
the road which does not lead to the Father’s house. No, Eustace; let
us talk no more of this--it is only painful to both. I shall never
convince you; but I shall pray for you. And now farewell. I trust when
next we meet it will be without this sense of unutterable distance
between us; but it must be you to change--for I never shall.”
She turned and left him standing there in the sunshine. That same day
Eustace took leave of Penarvon, and commenced his backward journey to
London.
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