PLEADING.
“Then be the question asked, the answer given,
As in the presence of the God of heaven;
All prejudice subdued, all pride laid low,—
‘Whence have I come, and whither will I go?’
_Whence have I come?_ what wandering steps have led
To this the painful desert that I tread?
From what neglected duties have I fled
Am I the sufferer from others’ sin,
Or bear my most insidious foe within?
_And whither would I go?_ where have I sought
Refuge from secret gloom and bitter thought?
Deep in the barren wilderness of pride?
Some crosses are from heaven sent,
And some we fashion of our own;
By envy, pride, and discontent
What thorns across our path are strown!
Not these the thorns that form the crown,
Not this the cross that lifts on high,—
Our sharpest trials we lay down
When sin and self we crucify!”
“I own it, dear Ida, I own it! I did wrong, very wrong. I felt that as
soon as the letter had passed from my hand; I must have been mad when I
sent it. I wrote to the London editor the next day to endeavour to stop
the publication, but the piece was already in type.”
Such, after a painful conference, was the confession which conscience
wrung from the Countess of Dashleigh.
Annabella was reclining on the sofa, her hair disordered, her eyes red
with weeping. Ida was kneeling beside her, and the magazine lay on the
floor.
“O Anna, Anna! why not own all this to your husband; throw yourself on
his mercy, entreat his forgiveness—”
“It would be of no use!” exclaimed Annabella; “that paper he never will
forgive. I have already merited his anger; I will not expose myself to
his contempt.”
“We may be objects of contempt when we wander from the line of duty, but
never when we are struggling back to it again. When we are lost in a
thorny labyrinth, what wiser, what nobler course can we pursue, than to
retrace every step of the way?”
“I can’t, I can’t,” gasped Annabella; “there is now a deep gulf between
me and my husband!”
“Which is widening every moment; which delay may render impassable!
It is yet spanned by a slender bridge of hope; but that bridge is
trembling,—shaking,—Annabella, if you hold back now, it may sink before
your eyes, and for ever!”
“What would you have me to do?” said the countess.
“Write a letter to the earl full of the humblest submission; tell him
with what real grief and contrition—”
“Ida, you do not know me!” cried Annabella, pushing the loose hair
impatiently back from her temples; “I cannot play the part of a penitent
child, begging pardon for having been naughty; I cannot cringe beneath
the rod, like a slave trembling before his master!”
“Anna!” exclaimed Ida, fixing on her cousin the earnest gaze of her
expressive eyes, “must the slender bridge—your last hope—be broken down
beneath the weight of your pride?”
“Pride,” observed the Countess, “has been termed the weakness of noble
natures.”
“Pride,—what is it,” exclaimed Ida, “as mirrored in the word of God?
Is it not of _the world_,—that world that _passeth away_; doth not the
Lord resist _the proud_, while giving _grace unto the humble_? Doth not
inspired truth declare that _before destruction the heart of man is
haughty, and before honour is humility_? Is not the Saviour’s blessing on
_the meek_, and on such as are _poor in spirit_? Why should I multiply
quotations? Your own heart must tell you, dear Anna, that if one thing
more than another stands between man and his Maker, and darkens the light
of Heaven, it is the baneful spirit of pride!”
“It is interwoven with my nature,” said the countess.
“The life-long battle of the Christian is with his fallen nature, but
it is a struggle in which he is not left alone. Nay, _a new heart_, a
new nature is given to those who seek it in earnest prayer; a new heart
filled with the Spirit of God, a new nature conformed to the likeness of
Him who was _meek and lowly_ in spirit. What are the Bible emblems of
those who are the soldiers and saints of the Lord? The lamb, the dove,
the little child! Can such be fit types of one who struggles against
lawful authority, and recoils from the duty of submission?”
Annabella was a little nettled. “I think,” she observed, with some
sarcasm in her tone, “that my saintly cousin is not yet herself so
perfect in this virtue of submission, as to entitle her so eloquently to
enforce it on another.”
Ida glanced up in surprise. She had not been aware that the quick
observation of her cousin had detected in her the lurking enemy of whose
presence she herself was scarcely aware, and against whom she was hardly
on her guard. But she could not deny the truth of the accusation so
suddenly brought against her, and was too earnest in the cause which she
was advocating to be silenced by a personal remark.
“Oh! my dear cousin!” she replied, her soft, dark eyes filling with
tears, “let not my errors be a stumbling-block in the way of those whom I
love. Look not at the miserable transcript, all stained and blotted with
human infirmity, but turn your eyes to the blessed Original which is set
before us, that we may copy its sacred features into our hearts and our
lives! What was the spirit of Christ? and hath not Truth declared that
_if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His_? Was it not
a spirit patient under suffering, meek under insult, a spirit ever ready
to forgive? Did He not love his enemies, bless them that cursed Him, and
do good to them that persecuted Him? Look on Him, dearest, look on Him,
till in the brightness of His glory sin appear all the darker and more
hateful! There is no pride in heaven, Annabella; we must throw away the
chain ere we reach that bright place, or we never can enter therein!
It is pride that is now shutting you out of your earthly home, barring
against you a husband’s heart, changing domestic peace to misery. Oh, how
terrible the thought that pride has shut out multitudes from an eternal
home, made them aliens from a heavenly Father, rendered them sharers in
the fate of that terrible being, who lost a seraph’s crown through his
pride! God grant,—God grant that neither you nor I may ever be reckoned
amongst them!”
The voice of Ida trembled with emotion, the large tears coursed down her
cheeks, and her hands were tight-clasped as if in earnest supplication.
It was a sister imploring a sister in danger to seek safety while safety
might be found, to tear from her heart the coiling serpent that was
lurking there only to destroy! Annabella could not be angry; she was
touched by that pleading look; the ice was beginning to thaw, and yet was
too strong readily to give way. What was she called upon to do? Not only
to forgive, but to entreat for forgiveness, to humble herself in the dust
before him to whom her proud spirit had never yet learned to bow! The
countess felt that it would be hardly possible so to stoop,—that even for
heaven itself she could scarcely sacrifice that which it would be hard to
part with, even as a right hand or a right eye! The momentary struggle
was fearful! Wringing her hands, Annabella exclaimed, “O Ida, you know
not how wretched you make me!”
“And who deserves to be wretched,” said Mrs. Aumerle, who happened at
this time to enter the room, “if not she who chooses no guide but her own
temper and caprice, who will listen to no advice—not even that of her
uncle and her pastor, and who publicly insults the husband whom she is
bound in duty to honour? Rise, Ida, rise,” continued the lady, to whose
plain sense of right and wrong Annabella’s conduct appeared unpardonable;
“I am ashamed to see you on your knees beside a girl who, if she were
fifty times a countess, has forfeited claim to our respect.”
Annabella sprang from her sofa, and with eyes wide open and lips apart,
stood listening, as her hostess, to Ida’s distress and dismay, finished
her rebuke to one whom she regarded as a spoiled, self-willed, obstinate
child.
“There is only one excuse for you, Anna, and that is to be found in
the indulgence and flattery to which you have been accustomed from the
cradle. You have been unfitted to take your proper place either as a wife
or the mistress of a household. You have made everything subservient to
your humour. But it is time to have done with such childish follies; it
is time to renounce the petulant pride which makes your family blush
for you! Mr. Aumerle is so indulgent, so unwilling to treat any one
harshly, that you are hardly aware, I suspect, how strongly he feels on
the subject; but I can assure you that he views your late step in the
same light as I do, and he has written to the earl to express to him his
strong disapprobation of your conduct.”
“Has he!” exclaimed the countess almost fiercely, “then this house is
no longer a place for me! I have stayed here too long already!” and
stretching out her hand to the bell-rope, she pulled it violently to
summon her maid. “I have been driven out of one home by unkindness, I
will not remain in another to be insulted by such language as you have
dared to address to me!” Again, with the force of passion, Annabella rang
the bell, and it was answered, not only by Bates but by Mabel, who ran
in alarmed by the second loud ring, and the sound of a voice raised in
anger.
“Bates,” cried the countess, “bring me what I may require for walking,
and then pack up my boxes, and follow me as soon as possible to the
cottage in which Dr. Bardon resides.”
“But—my lady—”
“At once!” cried the impatient countess.
“O Annabella, dearest Annabella, do not leave us!” exclaimed Mabel,
clinging to her cousin, while Ida, almost too much agitated to be
intelligible, joined her entreaties to those of her sister.
“Wait—if it were only one day—one hour—only till papa should return!”
But Annabella was inexorable. She had worked herself into that state
of passion in which remonstrance seems to have no effect but that of
adding fuel to the flame. The storm of anger was less intolerable to her
spirit than the state of doubt and self-reproach, which, like a chill,
dark mist was falling on her soul, when the words of Mrs. Aumerle roused
her from remorse to sudden resentment. The countess determined to seek
the dwelling of Bardon, where she felt assured of a welcome, and where
she would remain, as she declared, till she had formed arrangements
with friends in London. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Annabella had
sufficient resources of her own to render her in pecuniary concerns quite
independent of others. She had just arrived at the age which gave her
free disposal of these resources, though it had certainly not proved, in
her case, to be an age of discretion. It was foreseeing the difficulties
and dangers that must beset the wealthy and wilful girl, whose vanity
would render her the ready dupe of interested flatterers, that had made
the vicar anxious to keep her beside him, until the kindly offices
of mutual friends should re-unite her to her husband. This was now
impossible. Annabella, closing her ears to remonstrance, and her heart to
tenderness, quitted the home of her uncle with an expressed determination
never to revisit it again. She would not even suffer her cousins to
accompany her, but with sullen resolution set out on her lonely walk.
Ida watched her receding figure with a very heavy heart. “It might have
been so different,” she murmured to herself; “her heart was touched,
her pride was giving way, when—” and turning towards the spot where her
step-mother stood, Ida could not refrain from the exclamation, “it was
your coming that changed all!” Without lingering for a reply to the
hastily spoken word, Ida sought solitude in the quiet arbour where she
had, as we have seen, held converse with her sister upon subjects high
and holy. Ida’s only companions now were bitter meditations. She had
reproached her father’s wife, but was her own conscience clear even as
regarded Annabella? Ida recalled with deep distress her own misgivings on
the day on which the countess must have written her fatal paper.
“If I had only spoken to her then,—if I had only pleaded with her then,
before the irrevocable step had been taken, oh! it would never have come
to this!” and with the anguish of unavailing regret, Ida Aumerle mourned
over her sin of omission.