There is said to be a stage in sorrow, after which an addition can be
borne with apathy; but this the heart of Marion seemed never likely to
reach. It is a natural source of comfort, however, in mourning over the
loss of those we love, to find that they are appreciated and lamented
by others; and many kind letters of condolence on the death of Sir
Arthur reached the young mourner, from old companions and young
acquaintances. Some were written with overdone and inflated expressions
of sorrow, as if the writer had lost a parent of her own; and if the
occasion had been less heartbreaking to herself, Marion might almost
have smiled at their tone of exaggerated grief. Others wrote studied
compositions, so beautifully got up, and with such skilfully turned
periods, that the writer must have felt certain of Marion's "Life and
Correspondence" being hereafter collected and published; while others
concluded with "Yours, in haste," as an evident apology for neither
head nor heart being much enlisted on the occasion; but all were
received with grateful interest, being more or less a proof of kind
intentions, very soothing to the feelings of a solitary girl.
Each letter, as it came, caused her a palpitation of hope, followed by
a pang of disappointment; for every morning she arose with a confident
hope that now Richard Granville must certainly write, and every evening
closed in with an added weight of discouragement and sorrow; for now
indeed the roses of life seemed all to have faded, and the thorns only
to remain.
As Shakspeare observes, "every one can master a grief but he that has
it;" and among the many well-meaning but commonplace acquaintances who
came to gossip over the sorrows of Marion, and to ascertain exactly how
much Sir Arthur had left, there was not one to whom she could unveil
her feelings. Each of her well-intentioned visitors said a few words in
praise of Sir Arthur, enough to convince Marion that no one but herself
could appreciate the hundredth part of his inestimable worth--a
sentence or two then followed of pious reflection, obviously spoken
with restraint, and picked up by rote from some volume of religious
meditations, and the whole was generally concluded in a masterly
manner, by repeating a few texts of Scripture, strung together from a
concordance.
There is a solemn dignity in real grief, beside which all commonplace
or trifling consolations fall powerless and cold; but strangers in
return for their contributions of sympathy and comfort, evidently
expected from Marion an ostentatious display of affection, and were
often not a little disappointed, at the pale, still, concentrated
calmness of the lonely girl, who, subdued beneath the weight of her
recent sorrow, received visitors only when she felt able to do so with
composure, speaking to them with gentle, melancholy kindness, and
evidently endeavoring to derive all the comfort she could from their
society; yet often in the solitude which followed, did she feel
inclined to agree with an author, who remarks, that "_la pitie n'est
pas le plus due a celui qui pleure dans la solitude_."
Marion seemed to live in a dream, yet she gazed on the daylight and the
people moving about on their errands of pleasure or business, till she
felt that the whole was a sad reality. The common, every day routine of
life seemed strange and unnatural, amidst the agony of her first
sorrow, when the tomb had so recently closed over her earliest friend.
She felt as if nature herself should have suspended her ordinary
course, and as if the melancholy awe so impressed upon her own heart
should extend to everything animate or inanimate around--as if the very
sun itself should scarcely rise and shine as heretofore; and nothing
appeared to Marion so strange, as that sameness visible in the outward
world, contrasted with the mighty revolution in all her own inward
feelings. Marion tried to take a lesson in cheerful resignation, from
thinking sometimes of the many created by the same Almighty Father, and
yet suffering far more than she had ever done; and her eye fell one day
on a blind beggar, seated near her window, shivering with cold,
emaciated with hunger, solitary and deserted, shut out from the light
of day, friendless, homeless, and desolate, with none to sympathize in
his sorrows, or to cheer him by their affection. "Yet," thought Marion,
"that miserable being finds an object to live for, and would not
perhaps willingly die! God gives something to all his creatures; and
who makes me to differ from the most wretched. But bodily wants are not
the real sorrows of life! O no! The mind, when relieved from such
abject cares, has more leisure to grieve over withered hopes and
blighted affections; yet all trials, if rightly received, are but
blessings in disguise. It is well if, by tasting such sorrows as
mine--and they are many--I am taught to avoid the far greater and more
permanent evils of futurity. In this world, we are suspended over the
abyss of eternity, by a thread which grows more feeble every hour; and
all events should be welcome which are ordained by infinite wisdom, to
prepare me for that hour when my place on earth shall be vacant, and my
place in eternity--in a ceaseless eternity, shall be filled."
Time has wings, even when they move most heavily, and as day after day
passed slowly onwards, Marion felt more and more astonished to hear
nothing of Agnes, who had written but once, a very few days after her
departure from home, in gay and almost triumphant spirits, boasting of
the excessive attention she met with from all the party, of the
splendor in which they travelled, of the admiration she had herself
excited, and of several magnificent presents she had received from Lord
Doncaster. In a postscript to this letter, she expressed a careless,
patronizing hope, that poor, dear Sir Arthur was now convalescent; and
as for anything but a recovery, she seemed no more to doubt it than if
death had been altogether abolished. To Marion's surprise, when looking
at the signature of Agnes, a broad line had been drawn through the name
of Dunbar, and the whole was surrounded by a fantastic wreath of
flourishes, exactly imitating the very peculiar way in which Lord
Doncaster was accustomed usually to encircle his own autograph; and
much she marvelled what this uncommon device was intended to indicate,
though she secretly dreaded to hear the interpretation of it, which her
fears had at first suggested.
As the mind and heart become more matured in this world, they too often
become, from sad experience, more apprehensive of evil, and more
suspicious of earthly friendships; but it was otherwise with Marion in
respect to Richard Granville; though a dark curtain had fallen suddenly
between them, all intercourse was most unaccountably suspended, and the
very thought of his attachment, once a pleasure without alloy, was now
accompanied by a heavy, leaden depression and anxiety. She told herself
a thousand times over that all would hereafter be explained, and yet
her heart seemed turning to stone, while day after day dawned and
closed without a line to give her comfort or to reassure her heart.
In this state of wearing suspense a visiting card was brought to Marion
one morning of Captain De Crespigny's, accompanied by a letter which he
had brought from Sir Patrick, strongly urging on her, in almost
arbitrary terms, his earnest desire that she should reconsider her
decision against her friend, and no longer wasting her affections on a
penniless curate, who had proved himself undeserving of her,--bestow
them where they would be so much better appreciated, and where they
would exalt her to so distinguished a situation. Marion was astonished
to think how Sir Patrick could know that she had any cause of
dissatisfaction against Mr. Granville, whom she had never even named of
late; but resolute if possible to avoid meeting Captain De Crespigny,
she was denied again and again when he called, though to her surprise
he persevered in almost daily inquiring for her, and numbered his
visiting cards conspicuously on the corner till they amounted at last
to more than a dozen.
Marion was sitting alone one evening, beside her solitary hearth, and
to a spectator she would have seemed of more than earthly beauty,
though the cold tear stood unheeded on her cheek, while her memory had
become haunted by the ghost of departed happiness. She thought of her
deceased uncle in his silent grave, yet it seemed as if still she could
trace his step and hear his voice by her side. All was still as death,
her soul seemed wandering in a mysterious existence, amidst the
solitary and deserted world, and hope itself grew dim within her
breast. The flood-gates of memory were now unclosed, pouring into her
heart and spirit a ceaseless stream of old recollections, old scenes,
and recent sorrows; while the bright mirror of joy which had once shone
in radiant splendor before her eyes seemed now broken to shivers. No
one seemed destined hereafter to know the deep mine of thoughts and
affections which lay unspoken in her breast. She felt as if the summer
might shine in its brightness, the spring might be gay with the
blossoms of hope, but that her spring and summer would return in this
world no more, yet she believed and knew that it was better to witness
the death of every dear affection, and the burial of every promising
expectation, if, when thus blighted and withered upon earth, they
became rooted and strengthened for eternity.
"What empty shadows glimmer nigh!
They once were Friendship, Truth, and Love!
Oh! die to thought, to mem'ry die,
Since lifeless to my heart ye prove!"
Martin had brought in the tea-tray, and Marion scarcely noticed his
entrance or departure while mournfully gazing on the dim embers
expiring in the grate, when her attention became suddenly attracted by
hearing a carriage draw up close to the door, and her pale cheek grew
paler, when a moment afterwards her sister hurried into the room, and
with a strange, wild, hysterical smile, clasped her arms around Marion,
and locked her in a long embrace. Marion thought no grief too great for
the loss they had both sustained, and yet she became startled to
perceive that Agnes was actually shivering with agitation; that her
eyes were blood-shot, her hair dishevelled, her whole form shrunk and
altered, while her lips quivered for a moment as if she would have
spoken but could not articulate; and a look of unutterable anguish
swept across her pallid countenance. At length, burying her face on
Marion's shoulder, she exclaimed, in a voice of thrilling agony,
"I knew you would welcome me! I knew it, Marion! Cold and heartless as
I have been, you will not reproach me. You deserve a better sister."
"I could love none other so well," replied Marion, alarmed and shocked
at the unexpected excess of Agnes' grief. "We are all the world to each
other now, Agnes!"
"Yes! yes! Who ever dreamed it could come to this! You alone will pity
me, Marion! Here at least I shall find a refuge till I find one in the
grave! Do not look so alarmed, Marion! If I had brought disgrace to
this house, I never would have entered it again; but I have been duped,
made miserable, and, worse than all, ridiculous! The whole world will
laugh, and well they may; but in the living death I have brought upon
myself, still one friend remains who will never reproach me for my
folly. Dear kind Sir Arthur, too, if he had lived! Alas! Marion, I know
his value now; but I know it too late! To obtain his forgiveness, I
could follow him to the very grave."
Marion gasped for breath, and tried to suppress her emotion, that she
might compose the mind of Agnes, whose voice had become hollow, her
eyes were brightened by fever, and there was a frantic energy in her
tone and manner so tearfully agitating, that Marion entreated her to
postpone all farther discussion till she was better able to bear it;
but Agnes continued to pour forth her words like a gushing torrent.
"I shall be better when all is told! Hear me out now, Marion! Believe
me it is better! You remember Dixon!--that wretched woman who attempted
once to destroy me. She stole into my room at Mrs. O'Donoghoe's some
weeks ago. Imagine my horror and affright when she entered! Dixon
related to me her own history--seduced, ruined, and forsaken by Captain
De Crespigny. She fancied at first that he had deserted her for me; but
she has since discovered, as I have done, Marion, that he is attached
only to you!"
"It matters little, Agnes, who Captain De Crespigny fancies for a
passing hour, provided it be one whose happiness cannot be injured by
his caprice."
"Dixon added," continued Agnes, with a gasping sob of angry emotion,
"that Lord Doncaster had been equally deceived into believing that his
nephew liked me--that I was the only obstacle to his marrying the
heiress, Miss Howard; and his whole attentions at Harrowgate were paid
to expose my self-interestedness,--he had carried it on as a farce to
amuse an idle hour. The plot had amused him; and, after a time, he
became flattered by the consciousness that a girl, young, beautiful,
and admired, as I was, could be induced to accept him; but Mrs.
O'Donoghoe is now actually his mistress! Spare me, Marion, the
recapitulation of all that passed: it is too humbling, too dreadful.
She told me that Captain De Crespigny, the only man I ever loved, had
spoken of me to his uncle--as--as I deserved, with scorn, derision, and
censure! She repeated the whole scene, and I then saw myself as I am in
the sight of others--seared in heart, degraded, contemptible, wretched!
and oh! how ungrateful to those who were, indeed, my friends!"
Marion saw that Agnes, when she spoke, gazed at the portrait of Sir
Arthur; and tears sprang into the eyes of both, as they looked upon
that silent memorial of past worth and affection.
"My reputation must be irreparably injured in the world's eye by such
association!" continued Agnes, rapidly. "All is agony and horror! While
Dixon yet spoke, I hated myself and everything around. Shame and
mortification overpowered me! All became shadowy, confused, and
wavering in my thoughts. That night I was seized with fever and
delirium. A sick-nurse was placed to attend on me; and I am thankful to
find that Mrs. O'Donoghoe, with her party, instantly left the house. I
am ashamed to think what folly my ravings must have disclosed! The
worst horror of fever is, that it betrays all to others! I hovered on
the very brink of the grave! Oh! that I had been as fully prepared to
enter another world as I was to leave this! How happy are those whose
trials and mortifications are buried in the silent grave, and whose
pulse is no longer like mine--the knell of a living death! Life is,
indeed, an awful gift, with its deceitful hopes and consuming sorrows!"
"Yes, if we will not be satisfied with the happiness provided for us by
God himself; if we will persist in laying out a plan of life for
ourselves, and in being wretched when the infinite wisdom of our
Creator sees fit to alter it. Even now, Agnes, you may, if you choose,
have peace and cheerfulness. How much better it is, to lose all your
lovers, than to marry a bad husband! Let us live for each other; let us
improve our minds; let us console the many who are worse off than
ourselves; let us encourage one another in all the difficulties of
life; and, whatever is wanting to us now, we can look the more
thankfully forward to those regions of eternal joy, for which our
sorrows here are all sent on purpose to prepare us. Dear Agnes, for my
sake you must not despond."
"I ought not, Marion, while you are my sister! I hate the world and
every thing in it, but who would not love you," replied Agnes, in a
voice of dark and stormy grief, while no tear was on her cheek. "My
heart seems dry as summer dust! My body is a dreary sepulchre to my
mind, all dark, cold, and desolate. There is nothing in life worth
living for!"
Though little of Agnes' depression was really caused by Sir Arthur's
death, yet her grief became now as deep as crape and bombazine could
make it. She had not the generosity to struggle against her mortified
feelings, or to spare those of Marion, but from day to day her wayward
mind seemed to cherish the chagrin which inch by inch consumed her. No
gentle self-renunciation appeared in her sorrow, but she seemed to
fancy that in all the world there was no tear except of her
shedding,--no sigh but of her breathing,--and she forgot to observe how
Marion had banished all her own anxieties and cares while listening to
the egotism of grief in another, thus bearing the whole burden of both.
Agnes gradually delivered herself up to a state of peevish, listless,
apathetic despondency. If she attempted to read, her eyes looked only
on a wilderness of words without meaning; she had no taste for work,
not a correspondent in the world, and never had cared for a newspaper;
therefore unable to fix her attention on any employment, she proceeded
with sullen, mechanical indifference, through the ordinary routine of
life, without energy and without interest.
Agnes' mind was like a crushed butterfly, disfigured and valueless; all
its buoyant hopes and fantastic flights for ever at an end. She knew
not that sunshine of the heart, often divinely given amidst the darkest
hours of life, when inward peace, amidst external sorrow, might be
compared to a cheerful, quiet room, while a torrent and tempest are
raging unheeded around. Agnes mistakenly believed that the only
possible aggravation to her melancholy would arise, if her thoughts
were turned to religion, since hitherto she had seen in it nothing but
the gloomy terrors of futurity. She never had cultivated any taste for
reading that infallible balm to the depressed, and least of all would
she have thought of appealing to the Holy Scriptures for relief from
the cankering irritation of her proud but broken spirit, and nothing
had ever annoyed her more, than when Marion, one day, from the fulness
of her own heart, observed with soothing gentleness, that they should
be too grateful for the blessings bestowed, to repine for those which
were withheld, especially as affliction was generally the surest way to
amend the heart.
"Yes! but in mending you may break it," replied Agnes, discontentedly.
"My existence here is a living death, with nothing to care for, nothing
to hope for, nothing to do, meditating continually on my feelings,
hating life, and yet dreading death."
"But," replied Marion, laying her hand on the Bible, "here, Agnes, I
find enough to care for, enough to hope for, and more than enough to
do. No mortal being has all his wishes granted, and why should we
expect to be an exception? The world and its affections have deprived
us of peace, and this is the only guiding-star which can lead us to
find it again. If we were to study a portion of this volume together
every day----"
"Marion! I am surely melancholy enough already, without becoming
methodistical!" interrupted Agnes, impatiently. "I wept when I was
born; and every day since shews me I had cause to do so! If I ever do
get up my spirits again, I may perhaps read the Bible more carefully,
but, not while I feel so low and depressed."
"You remind me, Agnes, of Lady Towercliffe saying last year, that she
felt much too ill to see a doctor, but would send for one if she became
better. We find ourselves lonely and benighted now; but here is a
bright path of glory pointed out, and strength offered us to pursue
it."
"Well, Marion! if you must soar to the clouds, pray leave me to grovel
on the earth!" replied Agnes, peevishly. "You are so fond of reading
now, that, like Petrarch, your head will be pillowed on a book when you
die; but can you not talk of something more cheerful to me? Those
mournful subjects are fit only for a deathbed, or a tract. When people
talk to me of religion, I always feel like the felons at Newgate in the
condemned pew, with their coffins gaping at their elbow! What makes you
always talk so dismally about resignation now, Marion?"
"My own sorrows and your's, Agnes. We both need comfort, and neither of
us can find any, except in religion. 'God gives what bankrupt nature
never can.' The effect of time would be only to benumb our hearts; but
faith could restore them to cheerfulness."
"You might as well plant flowers on a tomb-stone, as attempt to enliven
me, Marion! It is a hopeless endeavor! No! the wing of hope is broken
within me for ever and ever. It is the misfortune of having too much
feeling! Life seems to me a cold and bitter blast, with all its events,
like snow-flakes, driving in my face. I have been brought into it
without my consent, and shall be torn from it against my will, while
Dream after dream ensues;
And still I dream that I shall still succeed,
And still am disappointed."
"Yet, Agnes, there is not probably a single living being with whom you
would change places!"
"Yes! hundreds! thousands!"
"Indeed! Would you take the looks, habits, tastes, age, health, and
conversation, of any other person who could be named, instead of your
own?"
"No! not exactly! Probably no person living would agree to such an
exchange, and least of all one who has in some respects such ample
reason to be satisfied," replied Agnes, with a complacent glance at the
mirror, which was not, however, so satisfactory as in former days; for
her eye had lost much of its lustre, the bloom had faded from her
cheek, and her very features looked crushed and contracted by the
gnawing effect of mortification. "I should like to have the fortune of
Caroline Howard, the rank of Charlotte Malcolm----"
"But Agnes! you are not entitled to expect such a pic-nic of happiness,
'made of ev'ry creature's best.' No; the more we look into life, the
more we shall see how equally distributed are its enjoyments--satiety
to the rich, contentment to the poor, and compensation of one kind or
other to all, for their various privations; but one only gift of God
makes life a blessing or a curse, according as it is given or withheld;
and it is only in proportion as we have the gifts of Divine grace
showered upon us, that we can measure our own happiness, or that of any
other mortal being."
Agnes's ill-humor was growing rapidly into misanthropy, and her sorrow
seemed never likely to be of that kind which "forgets to weep, and
learns to pray;" but Marion's more happily gifted mind clung to every
natural source of enjoyment which offered itself, being resolute, even
when she was not happy, for the sake of Agnes, to appear so. Marion's
sorrows taught her to feel tenfold for others; but the sympathies of
Agnes were concentrated entirely on herself.
There is not merely piety, but good humor also, in being happy; and
much ill-humor is invariably associated with that grief which refuses
to be consoled. Agnes had strewed her own path with thorns, and would
not be comforted; her heart had now the frozen coldness of an ice-bound
stream, on which the breeze might play, or the sun might shine, while
it still continued cold and cheerless as before; but Marion, resisting
all the selfish supineness of sorrow, found out many around to whom her
time could be made useful. With no schemes of worldly ambition, she
felt that there must be, in every heart, some object to live for; and
in her solitary walks, the very trees and flowers became her
companions, while the brightness of nature's coloring, the hum of bees,
the chirping of birds, the ripple of a pebbly stream, or the daisy she
picked on the grass, reminded her that there are simple pleasures she
was born to enjoy, and of which she had formerly been deprived during
the long years when her best feelings had been heartlessly wasted in
the tumult of education at Mrs. Penfold's. On first beholding any sign
of human life and enjoyment, it seemed to Marion strange and unnatural.
The joyous laugh of children at play in the fields grated harshly on
her ear; but before long, she pleased herself with listening to the
milk-girls gaily singing as they passed along the road, and was ready
to feel for that most desolate of all beings, the blind fiddler,
playing his melancholy tune on a rainy night. Religion was to Marion
now like the sun behind a fog. She knew that it would before long warm,
cheer, and revive her; yet for a time it seemed shorn of its brighter
beams, and, in the words of a Christian poet, she was ready to say,
"Give what Thou can'st, without Thee I am poor,
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away."
The emotion which Agnes felt on first returning home, had been only
like the last quiver of molten lead before it becomes cold and hard for
ever. She now grew daily more peevish and discontented, and, far from
affording any relief to Marion only aggravated her distress; for if
there were any subject more disagreeable than another to be harped
upon, she fastened on it with ceaseless irritability, continually
prophesying evil, and recollecting injuries. She took the most teazing
view of all subjects, attributed the worst motives to everybody's
conduct, and spoke with incessant and bitter invectives against all
those by whom she thought herself ill-treated. Far from forgiving
injuries, she seemed never, even for a moment, to forget them, while
the effect of her tedious vituperation was like that of a file upon
velvet, to the gentle Marion, who tried often to give a more Christian,
as well as a more cheerful turn, to their _tete-a-tete_ conversation.
It was singular that Agnes still evidently found a mysterious pleasure
in exercising to the utmost her powers of torturing; and in nothing did
she so deeply wound the feelings of Marion, as by constantly comparing
the conduct of Richard Granville to that of Captain De Crespigny,
speaking coldly of both, as being selfish, hypocritical, and deceitful.
Marion's whole heart shrank from allowing any resemblance, while once
or twice she spoke warmly and eloquently in defence of her absent
lover; but finding that this only lifted the veil which concealed her
own inmost feelings, and exposed them to one who made no generous use
of her confidence, she at length passively allowed Agnes to follow the
bent of her humor, and kept their discussions as much as possible on
indifferent topics, taking always as cheerful and contented a view as
she could of life.
"You know, Agnes," observed Marion one day, in answer to some peevish
lamentations of her sister's, "we might as well attempt to carry the
ocean in an oyster-shell, as to satisfy our immortal souls with
anything in this life. Christians must not let their imaginations run
wild after every fancy, but put on the strait-waistcoat of reason and
religion, to curb their inclinations. We should not only expect, but
desire the correction which is necessary, as much for us as for others.
You cannot expect all our years to be summers!"
"No!" replied Agnes, discontentedly; "but they need not all be winters!
You seem to think we are like the Indian savages, who must carry a
weight on their heads to make them upright."
"Yes, Agnes, I do!" added Marion, gently. "It often occurs to my mind
what a character mine must naturally have been, which has required so
much discipline to correct it; for every sorrow or anxiety I feel is
absolutely necessary for my good, I know, or it would not be sent.
Though the blossoms of hope lie withered at our feet, however, let us
reap the fruit hereafter, and who could wish to be fed with the
promises of spring, rather than with the fulfilment of autumn?"