SOARING ABOVE PRIDE.
“By grace divine my heart towards Thee draw,
By due afflictions check presumptuous pride,
With hope and love turn fell despair aside,
And make my chief delight Thy holy law!”
ROBERT TUDOR TUCKER.
The great red sun, like a huge globe of fire, was sinking in the west,—I
would have said the horizon, but that word gives the idea of a point
nearly level with the eye, while the orb appeared far beneath them to
the travellers in the _Eaglet_. The red light tinted with a fiery glow
the lower hemisphere of the balloon, which was all that met the eye of
the earl, for he had cautiously abstained for many hours from glancing
downwards towards the earth.
Dashleigh was now perfectly calm, though silent and thoughtful. That
one fearful day had effected upon the young nobleman the work of years.
Deeply solemn were his reflections. With a conscience neither dead nor
unenlightened, the earl had needed no prophet to decipher for him the
fiery “letters on the wall” of affliction. Heavily and yet more heavily
had descended on him the Almighty’s chastening hand, and every blow had
evidently been aimed at his pride! Had he not been humiliated in the
presence of his friend,—satirized by his wife, ridiculed by the world,
and had he not now by an unconquerable weakness, which a girl would have
blushed to betray, been the actual cause of the fearful position in
which he and his companions appeared! Bitter, bitter was the humiliation
of the proud man! Had he been destitute of the faith which supports,
and the hope which cheers, Dashleigh would have been utterly crushed by
the successive strokes laid upon him. But in him there was much of the
gold, which beneath the hammer “does not break, but extend.” Dashleigh
resembled less the son of Kish whom trial drove into fierce despair,
than the haughty Assyrian king who, having endured that most humbling
degradation which was the appointed punishment for pride, “lifted up” his
“eyes unto heaven,” and “blessed the most High,” with a spirit subdued.
Strangely had passed the day; as light as the feather down, the balloon
floated in the ocean of air. The party in the car had partaken of the
slight refreshment which had been provided, in little expectation that
even that would be required during a two hours’ expedition. Beverage
there was none, for the wine had exploded both the bottles from the cause
mentioned in a preceding chapter. The lips of each of the sufferers was
parched and dry, and a painful sensation of thirst was added to the
trials of the hour.
Augustine and Mabel had exhausted all their inventive powers in
contriving means to cut an opening in the ball of the balloon. Several
attempts had been made, but all had ended in disappointment. The knife,
flung upwards with a steady hand, had glanced back from the varnished
silk, and fallen through depths which the mind shuddered to calculate.
Every effort but strengthened the conviction that all effort was
unavailing.
There had been silence for a long time in the car,—silence of which
dwellers upon earth can scarcely form a conception. There was here no
rustling leaf, no buzz of an insect’s wing to break the awful stillness!
Motion itself was impalpable, being unaccompanied by the slightest sound!
“Augustine,” said the earl, raising himself on his elbow, for he still in
a reclining posture occupied the lower part of the car, “do you believe
that you can hide from me the fact that you have no power over the
balloon; that our condition is hopeless?”
“Nay,” replied his friend, “let us never despair. The gas may yet find
some vent. There was never yet balloon made so air-tight that it would
not leak in the course of time.”
Mabel thought that she had never seen the pale, delicate features of the
earl invested with such true dignity, as when with low, but distinct
utterance he made his reply: “I would rather look the danger in the face.
My brain is not dizzy now,—none are dizzy who look above rather than
below them. I have a presentiment that we shall never reach the ground
alive.”
Not a word was uttered in contradiction or reply, and the earl continued
in the same calm, deliberate tone: “Death is a great preacher, Augustine;
he tells us startling truths! He tarnishes with a touch the gilding on
objects that once appeared to us bright! He levels the prince and the
peasant. He has been preaching to me a soul-searching sermon, and from a
very solemn text.”
“What is the text?” inquired Augustine, while Mabel bent forward to
listen.
“_The loftiness of man shall be bowed down and the haughtiness of man
shall be laid low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day._”
Again there was solemn, deathlike silence! Perhaps, as Mabel and her
uncle sat watching the last edge of the sun’s disc disappear, and the sky
gradually darken into night, the self-reliant genius, the high-spirited
girl, were secretly applying to themselves the sublime words of the
prophet of Judah.
While twilight still lingered, a thought struck Mabel. She remembered
that she had brought with her an envelope ready directed to her sister,
with a sheet of blank paper enclosed, for her fancy had been pleased
with the idea of dating a letter from “the clouds.” Making a table of
her seat in the car, Mabel knelt down, and with a pencil wrote a sad
and touching farewell to the parent and sister so tenderly loved. Many
names were kindly remembered in that note, for the proud spirit of Mabel
was softened and subdued by the pressure of trial, and no one was then
recalled to her mind but with a feeling of kindness. To her step-mother
Mabel sent a long message. She confessed her fault with frank regret,
and asked the pardon of Mrs. Aumerle, not only for the last act of open
disobedience which was now so fearfully punished, but for a long course
of petty provocations, for sullen looks, and proud retorts, and bitter
words spoken against her; Mabel entreated forgiveness for all. Her tears
dropped fast upon the sheet—the first tears which she had shed on that
day, but she dashed them hastily from her eyes. Mabel then folded the
note and kissed it, as if believing that the paper might bear to her
home the impress of that last token of love; then she dropped her letter
over the side of the car, watching it as it descended, and picturing to
herself the grief and tenderness with which it would be received, and
read, and treasured up as a mournful memorial of her of whose fate it
might be the only record.
Dashleigh had watched the action of his young companion, and now drew
from his vest a small but very elegant pocket-book, which bore on one
side an embossed gold shield, on which his name was engraved, surmounted
by his coronet. This was the first gift of affection which the young
nobleman had received from his affianced bride. It had been his constant
companion since the hour when he had received it from her hand. Dashleigh
opened the book, and gazed for some moments on the inscription written
on the fly-leaf, though the thickening darkness would have rendered it
difficult to decipher, had he not known every syllable by heart. The
earl then, rather by feeling than sight, traced two words on one of the
blank pages, reclasped the book, and gave it to Mabel with an expressive
movement of the hand. Sadly and silently she dropped into the dark abyss
the love token of the unhappy Annabella.
More than an hour elapsed before the silence again was broken. The thin
air of these upper regions had become intensely cold, and Mabel shivered
in her spring attire. The balloon was drifting steadily on before the
night breeze, as was marked by its dark globe appearing to blot out one
constellation after another from the sky as it swept on, the sole object
that broke the immense expanse of the star-lit heavens.
“I think,” observed Mabel with a heavy sigh, “that all in my father’s
house must now be met together for evening prayers.” She paused, as fancy
brought before her eye the warm lighted room, the curtains drawn, the
lamp-light falling on so many dear familiar faces! Mabel thought how her
father’s voice would tremble as he uttered his fervent supplications for
those in such awful peril, and how Ida would try to smother her bursting
sobs, that she might not unnerve him by the sound of her distress.
“They will be praying for us,” continued Mabel; “should we not pray
together—even here?”
“None have more need of prayer,” murmured the earl; Augustine’s head was
bowed in assent.
“God is with us—even in this awful, awful height where no human being can
approach us,” faltered Mabel.
“Augustine Aumerle,” said Lord Dashleigh, “do you lead our evening
devotion.”
“Any one rather than me!” exclaimed Augustine; “none so unfit—so
unworthy—so incapable!”
And there was truth in these strange words. To the gifted scholar, the
eloquent orator, the language of prayer was not familiar, the spirit of
prayer had long, alas! been unknown! Augustine had indeed, during his
visit to his brother, usually joined in the family devotions, but he had
done so from courtesy to man, not from reverence for God. Unconvinced
of the weakness or sinfulness of his own nature, he had sought neither
pardon nor aid; he had felt no need of a divine sustaining power, for
he had contentedly rested on his own. Augustine had made an idol of
Intellect, with Pride for its priest, under the much abused name of
Reason. What marvel that with all his knowledge Augustine knew not how to
pray!
The earl felt the difficulty almost as strongly as his friend, though
from a different cause. He had never been disturbed by a doubt on the
subject of religion, and had from his earliest youth regarded revealed
truth with reverence, and acts of worship with respect; but he had
carried even into his devotion the cold formality which naturally
followed an overweening sense of personal dignity. Dashleigh had been
a regular attendant at church; but with the shy reserve of his nature,
it would have seemed to him, till that night, impossible to have poured
forth in the hearing of man an extempore prayer to his God. But where
Pride is humbled, the spirit of supplication may rest. Never had the peer
so felt before the littleness of personal distinctions; never, therefore,
before had his heart been so attuned to simple prayer. As Augustine
shrank from leading the devotions, which each one present felt would be
at once the source of comfort and the fulfilment of duty, the nobleman,
with folded hands, repeated aloud the first petitions in the Litany
which instinct rather than memory suggested to his mind. Augustine and
his young niece in low and earnest tones echoed the cry for mercy upon
miserable sinners; and when it was followed by the comprehensive prayer,
“in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour
of death, and in the day of judgment—_Lord, deliver us!_” arose in solemn
unison from three voices and three hearts. Never had the supplication
been more earnestly, more fervently breathed.
The Lord’s Prayer concluded the brief service, which for the time made
that little car appear as a floating temple. The chill cloudy solitude
seemed less terrible when the name of the Giver of all good, the Fount of
all blessings, had sounded within it. Those who had prayed together, felt
their souls more knit together, and more prepared to meet with firmness
whatever the dark, drear night might bring. Philosophy had brought no
comfort, earthly rank no relief, but the sense of the presence of a
heavenly Father was as balm to the suffering sinking soul.