Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief,
Tho’ thou repent; yet I have still the loss.
The offender’s sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence’s cross.
* * * * *
As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by fortune’s dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
SHAKSPEARE--(SONNETS).
THE next morning Harry sat in sullen silence at the breakfast-table,
scarcely raising his head. Agnes and Rose, with faltering, timid
voices, never ceased addressing him. They pressed upon him the food
which he could not taste, they asked his opinion with tearful eyes and
a visible tremor on the most trifling matters, they laid caressing
hands upon his shoulders when they passed behind his chair; but these
affectionate acts were very visible. They could not conceal the
suppressed excitement of their great anxiety, nor their consciousness
that another crisis had come in Harry’s fate.
And even little Lettie stirred on her chair restlessly, like a
startled bird, and felt her heart leaping at her very throat, and
scarcely could speak for her parched lips and the strong beating of
this same little anxious heart. And no one knew what heavy throbs
beat against Martha’s breast--no longer fluttering and tremulous, but
heavy as a death-knell. She said little, it is true, but still she
addressed Harry sometimes as usual--as usual--perhaps with a tenderer
tone--though Harry made no answer, save in monosyllables, to any of
them all; and Martha very speedily rose from her place, and left the
room.
Another spasmodic attempt at conversation was made by Agnes and Rose,
but their own hearts beat so loudly in their ears, that they trembled
for Harry hearing them. Poor Harry! through those long slow moments
which were hours to them, he hung idly over the table, trifling with
his baby’s coral--and it was not until all endeavours at speech had
failed, and a total silence--a silence of the most intense and painful
excitement to his companions--had fallen upon them, that rousing
himself with an effort, and putting back the hair from his damp
forehead, he slowly rose and went away.
Katie Calder, not understanding all this, and slightly depressed by it,
had just stolen out of the room to gather up their books for school;
so no one, save the wistful Lettie, was left with the young wife and
Rose. They sat still for a short time in silence, eagerly listening to
Harry’s footsteps as he passed through the hall to his little library,
and closed the door; and then Agnes clasped her hands upon her side,
and gasped for breath, and said in a voice between a cry and a whisper:
“What will she say to him? Oh, what will Martha say to Harry, Rose?”
“I cannot tell--I cannot tell,” said Rose, wringing her hands. “Oh, if
it were only over! I could break my heart when I look at Harry--I could
break my heart!” And Rose put her hands over her face in just such a
passionate burst of restrained sobbing as had come upon Violet before.
After some time, they heard the slow footstep of Martha coming down the
stairs, and both of them ran to the door to whisper an entreaty to her
to “be gentle with Harry. Poor Harry!” They could scarcely say it for
tears.
When Martha entered the library, Harry lounging in the window-seat,
was languidly turning over a paper. He, poor Harry! was little less
excited than they were, and heats and chills came over him, and his
eye fell under Martha’s mother eye; but the second nature which had
risen like a cloud over that boy’s heart which still moved within him,
made him stubborn and defiant still. When she came in, he threw down
his paper with a slight start, as of impatience; and turning to her,
rapidly asked: “Well, Martha, what have you to say to me?”
“Am I to have liberty to say it, Harry?”
“What folly to ask me such a question,” said Harry, angrily. “Does my
sister need to make a formal affair of it, like this, when she has
anything to say to me? Sit down, Martha, and don’t look as if you came
to school me; I may not be able to bear _that_ very patiently, and I
should be sorry to hurt you. Sit down, and tell me what it is?”
Martha sat down with gathering coldness upon her face--coldness of the
face alone, a mask to hide very different emotions.
“I come to-day while you are full master of yourself, and are alone,”
she said, with slow and deliberate emphasis--Harry did not know that
she compelled herself to speak so, lest the burning tide of other words
should pour forth against her will--“to answer a question you asked
yesterday. You desired to know what your neighbours meant by ceasing to
seek you; Harry, I wish to tell you what they mean.”
Harry looked at her for a moment, as if about to speak, but rapidly
turning away eyes which could not meet the steady gravity of hers, he
took up his paper, and without looking at it, played with it in his
hand.
“They mean,” proceeded Martha, slowly, “that they do not choose to
extend the courtesies of ordinary life to one who scorns and never
seeks, the ordinary respect which is every man’s right who lives
without outward offence against God or man; they mean that they cannot
pretend to honour what you have set yourself to disgrace; they mean
that the name, the house, the family, which you can resign for the
meanest of earthly pleasures, have no claim of special regard upon
them. Your life is known in every peasant’s house; they talk of you at
the firesides of your labourers: they say, poor Allenders, and tell
each other how you are led away--Harry! I ask you what right you have
to be led away? You tell me you are not a child, and will not bear to
be schooled by me. What right have you, a man--a man, Harry--to suffer
any other man to lead you into evil? And this is what your neighbours
mean.”
Harry dashed the paper from him in sudden passion. “And what right
have you--what right have you? Martha, I have borne much: what right
have you to speak to me in such words as these?”
“God help me! the dearest right that ever mother had,” exclaimed
Martha, no longer slowly; “because my soul has travailed and agonized;
because I put my hopes upon you, Harry--my hopes that were once
shipwrecked, to be cast away again! Look at me, mind me all your life,
boy, before you defy me! Night and day, sleeping and waking, I have
carried you on my heart. When I was in my first youth, I cried with
strong crying, and pangs such as you never knew, for power and wealth,
and to win it with my hands. Who was it for, but you? Then I came to a
dearer hope. I thought _you_ would win it, Harry; and I would eat bread
out of your hands, and exult in you, and call upon the heavens and the
earth to see that you were mine. What of _my_ hopes? They are ill to
slay, but God has touched them, and they have died out of my heart. _I_
have failed, and _you_ have failed, and there is no more expectation
under the sun. But I call you to witness you are mine--bought with the
blood of my tears and my travail--my son, Harry--my son!”
He did not answer, he did not look at her, but only covered his face
with his hands.
“We are worsted, but we need not be destroyed,” continued Martha. “I
accept the failure that is past, and acquiesce in it, because it has
been God’s will--but God never wills that we should fail in the future,
Harry. God be thanked that _it_ lies continually before us, free of
stain. And hope is hard to me--maybe it is because my tribulations
have not wrought patience, that experience does not bring me hope. But
I will hope again--I will make another venture, and look for another
harvest, Harry, if you will bid me! Not like the last--God forbid that
it should be like the last! I will turn my face towards the needful
conquest we have to make--you and me--and hope for _that_, though it is
greater than taking a city. But Harry, Harry, I cannot bear to see you
sinking--harder than it is to them, who are weeping for you yonder, it
is to me who cannot shed a tear. Harry, am I to hope again?”
But sad and terrible was the gleam in Martha’s dry strained eyes; not
like sunshine but like lightning, was the feverish hope for which she
pleaded.
And Harry rose and took her hand, himself trembling with strong
emotion. “From this day henceforth,” he vowed, with a choking voice,
“never more, Martha, never more, can I forget myself, and them, and
you.”
And there fell upon Martha a sudden relief of weeping, such as her eyes
had not known for months. “You were once my boy, my bairn, Harry,” she
said, with a strange hysteric smile, “I cannot forget that you were my
bairn, my little brother--Harry--my hope!”
And Harry covered his face once more, and was not ashamed to weep.
Poor Harry! for ever under the evil which had crusted his nature over,
under all the pride, the jealousy, the self-assertion of conscious,
remorseful, unrepentant sin, the boy’s heart tender, fresh, and hopeful
still dwelt in his breast. Only God can reconcile these strange
contradictions; but when you reached to it--and many a time had this
added a pang to Martha’s sufferings--you could not choose but deem it
an _innocent_ heart.
By and by Martha left the room--left him there to meditate upon this
and on the past. Poor Harry’s heart lightened; in spite of himself, his
attention wandered from these things of solemn weight and interest to
little Harry playing under the walnut tree. Now and then, it is true,
he put his hand over his eyes, and made his face grave, and mused, and
even prayed; but anon his mind wandered again. The great excitement of
the last hour sank into repose, and Harry had seldom been so easily
amused with the little stumbles and misadventures of his child. At the
other window, Agnes and Rose, unable to see anything, with their sick
hearts and tearful eyes, sat in absorbed silence, looking out indeed,
but without noticing even the favourite boy. Above, Martha was kneeling
before God, in prayer which wrung not her heart only, but every fibre
of her strained frame. Upon the sunny road without, little Lettie went
silently to school, wiping a tear now and then from her cheek--all
for Harry; while Harry sat in the window of his library, the cloud
gone from his brow, and a smile upon his lip, watching his child at
play--with simple pleasure and interest, as if he himself were a child.
And then he opened the window, and called to little Harry. With a
sudden start, Agnes rose, and went out upon the lawn to read his face.
His face was cloudless, smiling, full of quiet satisfaction and repose;
and he had already begun to play with the child at the window. Agnes
had only time to telegraph that all was well to Rose, when Harry called
to her to get her bonnet and go out with him. With joy and relief she
ran into the house to obey, and Harry met her at the library door, and
said he wanted a little rest and relaxation to-day, and that she must
persuade Martha and Rose to let him row them down the river in the
neglected boat; and Agnes went up-stairs singing, and half weeping for
joy.