I told my father the history of my youth and womanhood, of my marriage
and widowhood, with feelings similar to those with which I poured out my
soul into the compassionate bosom of my Heavenly Father. He listened,
pitied, wept over, and then consoled me.
"He must prove himself worthy of so sacred a trust," said he, clasping
me to his bosom with all a father's tenderness, and all a mother's love,
"before I ever commit it to his keeping. Never again, with my consent,
shall you be given back to his arms, till 'the seed of the woman has
bruised the serpent's head.'"
"I will never leave you again, dear father, under any circumstances,
whatever they may be. Rest assured, that come weal, come woe, we will
never be separated. Not even for a husband's unclouded confidence, would
I forsake a father's sacred, new-found love."
"We must wait, and hope, and trust, my beloved daughter. Every thing
will work together for the good of those that love God. I believe that
now, fully, reverentially. Sooner or later all the ways of Providence
will be justified to man, and made clear as the noonday sun."
He looked up to heaven, and his fine countenance beamed with holy
resignation and Christian faith. Oh! how I loved this dear, excellent,
noble father! Every hour, nay, every moment I might say, my filial love
and reverence increased. My feelings were so new, so overpowering, I
could not analyze them. They were sweet as the strains of Edith's harp,
yet grand as the roaring of ocean's swelling waves. The bliss of
confidence, the rapture of repose, the sublimity of veneration, the
tenderness of love, all blended like the dyes of the rainbow, and
spanned with an arch of peace the retreating clouds of my soul.
"When shall we go to Grandison Place?" he asked. "I long to pour a
father's gratitude into the ear of your benefactress. I long to visit
the grave of my Rosalie."
"To-morrow, to-day,--now, dear father, whenever you speak the word;
provided we are not separated, I do not mind how soon."
He smiled at my eagerness.
"Not quite so much haste, my daughter. I cannot leave to Richard the
sole task of ministering to the soul of my unhappy brother. His
conscience is quickened, his feeling softened, and it may be that the
day of grace is begun. His frame is weak and worn, his blood feverish,
and drop by drop is slowly drying in his veins. I never saw any one so
fearfully altered. Truly is it said, that 'the wages of sin is death.'
Oh! if after herding with the swine and feeding on the husks of earth,
he comes a repentant prodigal to his father's home, it matters not how
soon he passes from that living tomb."
My father's words were prophetic. The prisoner's wasted frame was
consuming slowly, almost imperceptibly, like steel when rust corrodes
it. Richard and my father were with him every day, and gathered round
him every comfort which the law permitted, to soften the horrors of
imprisonment. Not in vain were their labors of love. God blessed them.
The rock was blasted. The waters gushed forth. Like the thief on the
cross, he turned his dying glance on his Saviour, and acknowledged him
to be the Son of God. But it was long before the fiery serpents of
remorse were deadened by the sight of the brazen reptile, glittering
with supernatural radiance on the uplifted eye of faith. The struggle
was fearful and agonizing, but the victory triumphant.
Had he needed me, I would have gone to him, and I often pleaded
earnestly with my father to take me with him; but he said he did not
wish me to be exposed to such harrowing scenes, and that Richard
combined the tenderness of a daughter with the devotion of a son. Poor
Richard! his pale cheeks and heavy eyes bore witness to the protracted
sufferings of his father, but he bore up bravely, sustained by the hope
of his soul's emancipation from the bondage of sin.
The prisoner must have had an iron constitution. The wings of his spirit
flapped with such violence against its skeleton bars, the vulture-beak
of remorse dipping all the time into the quivering, bleeding heart, it
is astonishing how long it resisted even after flesh and blood seemed
wasted away. Day after day he lingered; but as his soul gradually
unsheathed itself, clearer views of God and eternity played upon its
surface, till it flashed and burned, like a sword in the sunbeams of
heaven.
At length he died, with the hand of his son clasped in his, the bible of
Therésa laid against his heart, and his brother kneeling in prayer by
his bedside. Death came softly, gently, like an angel of release, and
left the seal of peace on that brow, indented in life by the
thunder-scars of sin and crime.
After the first shock, Richard could not help feeling his father's death
an unspeakable blessing, accompanied by such circumstances. In the grave
his transgressions would be forgotten, or remembered only to forgive. He
must now rise, shake off the sackcloth and ashes from his spirit, and
put on the beautiful garments of true manhood. The friends, who had
taken such an interest in his education, must not be disappointed in the
career they had marked out. Arrangements had been made for him to study
his profession with one of the most eminent lawyers of Boston, and he
was anxious to commence immediately, that he might find in mental
excitement an antidote to morbid sensibility and harrowing memory.
My father's wishes and my own turned to Grandison Place, and we prepared
at once for our departure. I had informed Mrs. Linwood by letters of the
events which I have related, and received her heart-felt
congratulations. She expressed an earnest desire to see my father, but
honored too much the motives that induced him to remain, to wish him to
hasten. Now those motives no longer existed, I wrote to announce our
coming, and soon after we bade adieu to one of the most charming abodes
of goodness, hospitality, and pure domestic happiness I have ever known.
"You must write and tell me of all the changes of your changing
destiny," said Mrs. Brahan, when she gave me the parting embrace; "no
one can feel more deeply interested in them than myself. I feel in a
measure associated with the scenes of your life-drama, for this is the
place of your nativity, and it was under this roof you were united to
your noble and inestimable father. Be of good cheer. Good news will
come, wafted from beyond the Indian seas, and your second bridal morn
will be fairer than the first."
I thanked her with an overflowing heart. I did not, like _her_, see the
day-star of hope arising over that second bridal morn, but the sweet
pathetic minor tone breathed in my ear the same holy strain:--
"Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid;
Star of the East, the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid."