Behold I see the haven now at hand
To which I mean my wearie course to bend.
Vere the maine shete, and beare up with the land,
The which afar is fairly to be kend,
And seemeth safe from storms that may offend.
FAERY QUEEN.
AGNES, with her relieved and lightened spirits, goes cheerfully about
her domestic business now, and has learned to drive the little old
gig, and sometimes ventures as far as Stirling to make a purchase, and
begins to grow a little less afraid of spending money. For some time
now, Agnes has given up the “opening”--given it up at Martha’s special
desire, and with very little reluctance, and no one does “opening”
now at Allenders, except sometimes Martha herself, in her own room,
when she is alone. These three years have paid Miss Jean’s thousand
pounds, and one of Macalister’s four, and Mr. Macalister is very happy
to leave the rest with Miss Allenders, who, when her fourth harvest
comes, has promised to herself to pay Mr. Buchanan. For assiduous work,
and Martha’s almost stern economy, have done wonders in these years;
and the bold Armstrong boasts of his crops, and his cattle now, and is
sometimes almost inclined to weep with Alexander, that there is no more
unfruitful land to subjugate and reclaim.
But before her fourth harvest time, Martha has intimated to Sir John
Dunlop’s factor that it was her brother’s intention to make an offer
for the little farm of Oatlands, now again tenantless, and Armstrong
does not long weep over his fully attained success; though Oatlands has
little reformation to do, compared with Allender Mains. And Harry’s
model houses are rising at Maidlin Cross; sagacious people shake their
heads, and say Miss Allenders is going too far, and is not prudent.
She is not prudent, it is very true--she ventures to the very edge and
utmost extent of lawful limits--but she has never ventured beyond that
yet, nor ever failed.
And Harry’s name and remembrance lives--strangely exists and acts
in the country in which Harry himself was little more than a subject
for gossip. To hear him spoken of now, you would rather think of some
mysterious unseen person, carrying on a great work by means of agents,
that his chosen privacy and retirement may be kept sacred, than of
one dead to all the business and labour of this world; and there is a
certain mystery and awe about the very house where Harry’s intentions
reign supreme, to be considered before everything else. So strong
is this feeling, that sometimes an ignorant mind conceives the idea
that he lives there yet in perpetual secrecy, and by and bye will
re-appear to reap the fruit of all these labours; and Geordie Paxton
shakes his head solemnly, and tells his neighbours what the “auld man”
says--that Allenders cannot rest in his grave till this work he began
is accomplished; and people speak of Harry as an active, existing
spirit--never as the dead.
It is more than a year now since Rose’s marriage, and not far from
five since Harry’s death, and there is a full family circle round the
drawing-room fireside, where Mrs. Charteris has been administering a
lively little sermon to Lettie about the extravagance of destroying
certain strips of French cambric; (“It would have cost five-and-twenty
shillings a yard in my young days,” says the old lady), with which
Lettie has been devising some piece of ornamental work for the
adornment of Agnes. But Lettie’s execution never comes up to her ideal,
and the cambric is destroyed for ever; though Katie Calder, looking on,
has made one or two suggestions which might have saved it.
“For you see, my dear, this is _waste_,” said Mrs. Charteris; “and ye
should have tried it on paper first, before you touched the cambric.”
“So I did,” said Lettie, nervously; “but it went all wrong.”
And Rose smiles at the childish answer; and Mrs. Charteris bids Violet
sit erect, and keep up her head. Agnes is preparing tea at the table.
Martha, with little Sandy kneeling on the rug before her, playing with
a box of toys which he places in her lap, sits quietly without her
work, in honour of the family party; and Uncle Sandy is telling Katie
Calder all kinds of news about her companions in Ayr.
Why is Lettie nervous? Cuthbert at the table is looking over a new
magazine, which has just been brought in from Stirling with a supply of
other books ordered by their good brother; and constant longing glances
to this magazine have had some share in the destruction of Lettie’s
cambric. But Lettie is sixteen now, and Agnes thinks she should not be
such a child.
“Here is something for you,” says Cuthbert, suddenly. “Listen, we have
got a poet among us. I will read you the ballad of the ‘Lady’s Well.’”
“She sat in her window like a dream,
She moved not eye nor hand;
Her heart was blind to the white moonbeam,
And she saw not the early morning gleam
Over the dewy land;
Nor wist she of aught but a tale of wrong,
That rang in her ears the dim day long.
Her hair was like gold upon her head,
But the snow has fallen there;
And the blush of life from her face has fled,
And her heart is dumb, and tranced, and dead,
Yet wanders everywhere--
Like a ghost through the restless night,
Wanders on in its own despight.
But hither there comes a long-drawn sigh--
A thrill to her form, a light to her eye:
Only a sigh on the wind, I wiss;
Keep us and guard us from sounds like this!
For she knew in the breath, for a mystic token,
The words of the rede, by that graybeard spoken.
The bridal robes are glistening fair
In the gray eventide,
Her veil upon her golden hair,
And so goes forth the bride--
Who went before to guide astray
All wayfarers from this way;
Whose the voice that led her hence,
How that graybeard came, and whence;
Known were these to her alone,
And she told the tale to none.
The fountain springs out of the earth,
Nor tells what there it sees;
And the wind with a cry, ’twixt grief and mirth,
Alights among the trees.
She sat her down upon the stone,
Her white robes trailed o’er the cold green turf,
Her foot pressed on the dreary earth,
Alone, alone, alone.
Not an ear to hear, not a voice to tell,
How the lady passed from the Lady’s Well.
The lady sat by the Lady’s Well.
When the night fell dark and gray;
But the morning sun shone in the dell,
And she had passed away.
And no man knew on the coming morrow
Aught but the tale of an unknown sorrow;
And nought but the fountain’s silver sound,
And the green leaves closing in around,
And a great silence night and day,
Mourned for her vanishing away.
But peace to thee, Ladie, lost and gone!
And calm be thy mystic rest.
Whether thou dwellest here unknown,
Or liest with many a kindred one,
In the great mother’s breast;
The woe of thy curse has come and fled,
Peace and sweet honour to our dead!”
But Lettie, growing red and pale, dropping the paper pattern which
Mrs. Charteris has cut for her, and casting sidelong, furtive glances
round upon them all from under her drooped eyelids, trembles nervously,
and can scarcely keep her seat. When Cuthbert comes to the end there
is a momentary silence, and Martha looks with wonder on her little
sister, and Agnes exclaims in praise of the ballad, and wonders who can
possibly know the story so well. Then follows a very free discussion on
the subject, and some criticism from Cuthbert; and then Martha suddenly
asks: “It is your story, Lettie, and you don’t often show so little
interest. How do you like it? Tell us.”
“I--I canna tell,” said Lettie, letting all her bits of cambric fall,
and drooping her face, and returning unconsciously to her childish
tongue; “for--it was me that wrote it, Martha.”
And Lettie slid down off her chair to the carpet, and concealed the
coming tears, and the agitated troubled pleasure, which did not quite
realize yet whether this was pain or joy, on Martha’s knee.
Poor Lettie! many an hour has she dreamed by the Lady’s Well--dreamed
out grand histories for “us all,” or grander still
“----Resolved
To frame she knows not what excelling thing
And win she knows not what sublime reward
Of praise and honour----”
But just now the sudden exultation bewilders Lettie; and there is
nothing she is so much inclined to do as to run away to her room in the
dark, and cry. It would be a great relief.
But the confession falls like lightning upon all the rest. Cuthbert,
with a burning face, thinks his own criticism the most stupid in
the world. Rose laughs aloud, with a pleasure which finds no other
expression so suitable. Agnes, quite startled and astonished, can do
nothing but look at the bowed head, which just now she too had reproved
for stooping. And Mrs. Charteris holds up her hands in astonishment,
and Katie claps hers, and says that she kent all the time. But Martha,
with a great flush upon her face, holds Lettie’s wet cheeks in her
hands, and bends down over her, but never says a word. Children’s
unpremeditated acts, simple words and things have startled Martha more
than once of late, as if a deeper insight had come to her; and now
there is a great motion in the heart which has passed through tempests
innumerable, and Martha cannot speak for the thick-coming thoughts
which crowd upon her mind.
That night, standing on the turret, Martha looks out upon the
lands of Allenders--the lands which her own labour has cleared of
every overpowering burden, and which the same vigorous and unwearied
faculties shall clear yet of every encumbrance, if it please God. The
moonlight glimmers over the slumbering village of Maidlin--over the
pretty houses of poor Harry’s impatient fancy, where Harry’s labourers
now dwell peacefully, and know that their improved condition was the
will and purpose of the kindly-remembered dead. And the little spire
of Maidlin Church shoots up into the sky, guarding the rest of him,
whose memory no man dares malign--whose name has come to honour and
sweet fame, since it shone upon that tablet in the wall--and not one
wish or passing project of whose mind, which ever gained expression in
words, remains without fulfilment, or without endeavour and settled
purpose to fulfil. And Martha’s thoughts turn back--back to her own
ambitious youth and its bitter disappointment--back to the beautiful
dawn of Harry’s life--to its blight, and to its end. And this grand
resurrection of her buried hopes brings tears to Martha’s eyes, and
humility to her full and swelling heart. God, whose good pleasure it
once was to put the bar of utter powerlessness upon her ambition, has
at last given her to look upon the work of her hands--God, who did not
hear, according to her dimmed apprehension, those terrible prayers for
Harry which once wrung her very heart, gave her to see him pass away
with peace and hope at the end, and has permitted her--her, so greedy
of good fame and honour--to clear and redress his sullied name. And now
has been bestowed on Martha this child--this child, before whom lies
a gentle glory, sweet to win--a gracious, womanly, beautiful triumph,
almost worthy of an angel--and the angels know the dumb, unspeakable
humility of thanksgiving which swells in Martha’s heart.
So to all despairs, agonies, bitternesses, of the strong heart which
once stormed through them all, but which God has chastened, exercised,
at length blessed, comes this end. Harvest and seedtime in one
combination--hopes realized, and hopes to come; and all her children
under this quiet roof, sleeping the sleep of calm, untroubled rest--all
giving thanks evening and morning for fair days sent to them out of the
heavens, and sorrow charmed into sweet repose, and danger kept away.
But though Martha’s eyes are blind with tears, and her heart calls upon
Harry--Harry, safe in the strong hand of the Father, where temptation
and sorrow can reach him never more--the same heart rises up in the
great strength of joy and faith, and blesses God: Who knoweth the
beginning from the end--who maketh His highway through the flood and
the flame--His highway still, terrible though it be--who conducts into
the pleasant places, and refreshes the failing heart with hope; and the
sleep which He gives to His beloved, fell sweet and deep that night
upon the wearied heart of Martha Muir.
THE END.
LONDON: Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street.
Corrections
The first line indicates the original, the second the correction.
p. 90
to her ttle sister
to her little sister
p. 115
that is my concern--your’s is
that is my concern--yours is
p. 239
the pain of them mingled wlth
the pain of them mingled with
p. 275
ROMEO AND JULIE T.
ROMEO AND JULIET.
p. 287
since Mr. Hairy ame first
since Mr. Hairy came first
Erratum
In chapter numbering, Chapter III is missing.