Three months had passed since that awful Christmas Day. Angela was
heart-broken, and, after the first burst of her despair, turned herself
to the only consolation which was left her. It was not of this world.
She did not question the truth of the dreadful news that Lady Bellamy
had brought her, and, if ever a doubt did arise in her breast, a glance
at the ring and the letter effectually quelled it. Nor did she get
brain-fever or any other illness; her young and healthy frame was too
strong a citadel to be taken out of hand by sorrow. And this to her was
one of the most wonderful things in her affliction. It had come and
crushed her, and life still went on much as before. The sun of her
system had fallen, and yet the system was not appreciably deranged. It
was dreadful to her to think that Arthur was dead, but an added sting
lay in the fact that she was not dead too. Oh! how glad she would have
been to die, since death had become the gate through which she needs
must pass to reach her lover’s side.
For it had been given to Angela, living so much alone, and thinking so
long and deeply upon these great mysteries of our being, to soar to the
heights of a noble faith. To the intense purity of her mind, a living
heaven presented itself, a comfortable place, very different from the
vague and formularised abstractions with which we are for the most part
satisfied; where Arthur and her mother were waiting to greet her, and
where the great light of the Godhead would shine around them all. She
grew to hate her life, the dull barrier of the flesh that stood between
her and her ends. Still she ate and drank enough to support it, still
dressed with the same perfect neatness as before, still lived, in
short, as though Arthur had not died, and the light and colour had not
gone out of her world.
One day—it was in March—she was sitting in Mr. Fraser’s study reading
the “Shakespeare” which Arthur had given to her, and in the woes of
others striving to forget her own. But the attempt proved a failure;
she could not concentrate her thoughts, they would continually wander
away into space in search of Arthur.
She was dressed in black; from the day that she heard her lover was
dead, she would wear no other colour, and as she gazed, with her hands
idly clasped before her, out at the driving sleet and snow, Mr. Fraser
thought that he had never seen statue, picture, or woman of such sweet,
yet majestic beauty. But it had been filched from the features of an
immortal. The spirit-look which at times had visited her from a child
now continually shone upon her face, and to the sight of sinful men her
eyes seemed almost awful in their solemn calm and purity. She smiled
but seldom now, and, when she did, it was in those grey eyes that the
radiance began: her features scarcely seemed to move.
“What are you thinking of, Angela?”
“I am thinking, Mr. Fraser, that it is only fourteen weeks to-day since
Arthur died, and that it is very likely that I shall live another forty
or fifty years before I see him. I am only twenty-one, and I am so
strong. Even this shock has not hurt me.”
“Why should you want to die?”
“Because all the beauty and light has gone out of my life; because I
prefer to trust myself into the hands of God rather than to the tender
mercies of the world; because he is there, and I am here, and I am
tired of waiting.”
“Have you no fear of death?”
“I have never feared death, and least of all do I fear it now. Why, the
veriest coward would not shrink back when the man she loved was waiting
for her. And I am not a coward, and if I were told that I must die
within an hour, I could say, ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the
feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!’ Cannot
you understand me? If all your life and soul were wrapped up in one
person, and she died, would you not long to go to her?”
Mr. Fraser made no reply for a while, but in his turn gazed out at the
drifting snow, surely not more immaculately pure than this woman who
could love with so divine a love. At length he spoke.
“Angela, do you know that it is wrong to talk so? You have no right to
set yourself up against the decrees of the Almighty. In His wisdom He
is working out ends of which you are one of the instruments. Who are
you that you should rebel?”
“No one—a grain, an atom, a wind-tossed feather; but what am I to do
with my life, how am I to occupy all the coming years?”
“With your abilities, that is a question easy to answer. Work, write,
take the place in scholastic or social literature which I have trained
you to fill. For you, fame and fortune lie in an inkstand; your mind is
a golden key that will open to your sight all that is worth seeing in
the world, and pass you into its most pleasant places. You can become a
famous woman, Angela.”
She turned upon him sadly.
“I had such ideas; for Arthur’s sake I wished to do something great;
indeed I had already formed a plan. But, Mr. Fraser, like many another,
when I lost my love I lost my ambition too; both lie buried in his
grave. I have nothing left to work for; I do not care for fame or money
for myself, they would only have been valuable to give to him. At
twenty-one I seem to have done with the world’s rewards and
punishments, its blanks and prizes, its satisfactions and desires, even
before I have learnt what they are. My hopes are as dull and leaden as
that sky, and yet the sun is behind it. Yes, that is my only hope, the
sun is behind it though we cannot see it. Do not talk to me of
ambition, Mr. Fraser. I am broken-spirited, and my only ambition is for
rest, the rest He gives to His beloved——”
“Rest, Angela! that is the cry of us all, we strive for rest, and here
we never find it. You suffer, but do not think that you are alone,
everybody suffers in their degree, though perhaps such as you, with the
nerves of your mind bared to the roughness of the world’s weather, feel
mental pain the more acutely. But, my dear, there are few really
refined men and women of sensitive organization, who have not at times
sent up that prayer for rest, any rest, even eternal sleep. It is the
price they pay for their refinement. But they are not alone. If the
heart’s cry of every being who endures in this great universe could be
collected into a single prayer, that prayer would be, ‘Thou who made
us, in pity give us rest.’”
“Yes, we suffer, no doubt, all of us, and implore a peace that does not
come. We must learn
“‘How black is night when golden day is done,
How drear the blindness that hath seen the sun!’
“You can tell me that; but tell me, you who are a clergyman, and
stronger to stand against sorrow than I, how can we win even a partial
peace and draw the sting from suffering? If you know a way, however
hard, tell it me, for do you know,” and she put her hand to her head
and a vacant look came into her eyes, “I think that if I have to endure
much more of the anguish which I sometimes suffer, or get any more
shocks, I shall go mad? I try to look to the future only and to rise
superior to my sorrows, and to a certain extent I succeed, but my mind
will not always carry the strain put upon it, but falls heavily to
earth like a winged bird. Then it is that, deprived of its higher food,
and left to feed upon its own sadness and to brood upon the bare fact
of the death of the man I loved—I sometimes think, as men are not often
loved—that my spirit almost breaks down. If you can tell me any cure,
anything which will bring me comfort, I shall indeed be grateful to
you.”
“I think I can, Angela. If you will no longer devote yourself to study,
you have only to look round to find another answer to your question as
to what you are to do? Are there no poor in these parts for you to
visit? Cannot your hands make clothes to cover those who have none? Is
there no sickness that you can nurse, no sorrow that you can comfort? I
know that even in this parish there are many homes where your presence
would be as welcome as a sunbeam in winter. Remember, Angela, that
grief can be selfish as well as pleasure.”
“You are right, Mr. Fraser, you always are right; I think I am selfish
in my trouble, but it is a fault that I will try to mend. Indeed, to
look at it in that light only, my time is of no benefit to myself, I
may as well devote it to others.”
“If you do, your labour will bring its own reward, for in helping
others to bear their load you will wonderfully lighten your own. Nor
need you go far to begin. Why do you not see more of your own father?
You are naturally bound to love him. Yet it is but rarely that you
speak to him.”
“My father! you know he does not like me, my presence is always a
source of irritation to him, he cannot even bear me to look at him.”
“Oh, surely that must be your fancy; probably he thinks you do not care
about him. He has always been a strange and wayward man, I know, but
you should remember that he has had bitter disappointments in life, and
try to soften him and win him to other thoughts. Do this and you will
soon find that he will be glad enough of your company.”
“I will try to do as you say, Mr. Fraser, but I confess I have only
small hopes of any success in that direction. Have you any parish work
I can do?”
Nor did the matter end there, as is so often the case where parish work
and young ladies are concerned. Angela set to her charitable duties
with a steady determination that made her services very valuable. She
undertook the sole management of a clothing club, in itself a maddening
thing to ordinary mortals, and had an eye to the distribution of the
parish coals. Of mothers’ meetings and other cheerful parochial
entertainments, she became the life and soul. Giving up her mathematics
and classical reading, she took to knitting babies’ vests and socks
instead; indeed, the number of articles which her nimble fingers turned
out in a fortnight was a pleasant surprise for the cold toes of the
babies. And, as Mr. Fraser had prophesied, she found that her labour
was of a sort which brought a certain reward.