Matilda, after a long silence, in which she was endeavouring, but in vain,
to arrange her ideas and calm the incessant beating of her heart, said,
timidly and abruptly, with her eyes fixed on the carpet--"Do you think,
ma'am, that if Ellen had ever been very, _very_ naughty and saucy to _you_,
who are so good to _her_, that you could ever really in your heart forgive
her?"
"I certainly should consider it my duty to punish her for her
disobedience, by withholding my usual expressions of love and my general
indulgences from her; but I should undoubtedly forgive her, because, in the
first place, God has commanded me to forgive all trespasses, and in the
second, my heart would be drawn naturally towards my own child."
"But surely, dear Mrs. Harewood, it is worse for an _own_ child to behave
ill to a parent than any other person?"
"Undoubtedly, my dear, for it unites the crime of ingratitude to that of
disobedience; besides, it is cruel and unnatural to be guilty of insolence
and hard-heartedness towards the hand which has reared and fostered us all
our lives--which has loved us in despite of our faults--watched over our
infancy--instructed our childhood--nursed us in sickness, and prayed for
us before we could pray for ourselves."
"My mamma has done all this for me a thousand times," cried Matilda,
bursting into tears of bitter contrition, which, for some time, Mrs.
Harewood suffered to flow unrestrained; at length she checked herself, but
it was only to vent her sorrow by self-accusation--"Oh, ma'am! you cannot
think how very ill I have behaved to my dear, dear mother--I have been
saucy to her, and bad to every body about me; many a time have I vexed her
on purpose; and when she scolded me, I was so pert and disobedient--you can
form no idea how bad I was. If she spoke ever so gently to me, I used to
tell my papa she had been scolding me, and then he would blame her and
justify me; and many a time I have heard deep sighs, that seemed to come
from the very bottom of her heart, and the tears would stand in her sweet
eyes as she looked at me. Oh, wicked, wicked child that I was, to grieve
such a good mamma! and now we are parted such a long, long way, and I
cannot beg her pardon--I cannot show her that I am trying to be good;
perhaps she may die, as poor papa did, and I shall never, _never_ see her
more."
The agonies of the repentant girl, as this afflictive thought came over
her mind, arose to desperation; and Mrs. Harewood, who felt much for her,
endeavoured to bestow some comfort upon her; but poor Matilda, who was ever
violent, even in her better feelings, could not, for a long time, listen to
the kind voice of her consoler--she could only repeat her own faults,
recapitulate all the crimes she had been guilty of, and display, in
all their native hideousness, such traits of ill-humour, petulance,
ungovernable fury, outrageous passion, and vile revenge, as are the
natural offspring of the human heart, when its bad propensities are matured
by indulgence, particularly in those warm countries, where the mind
partakes the nature of the soil, and slavery in one race of beings gives
power to all the bad passions of another.
At length the storm of anguish so far gave way, that Mrs. Harewood was able
to command her attention, and she seized this precious season of penitence
and humility to imprint the leading truths of Christianity, and those plain
and invaluable doctrines which are deducible from them, and evident to the
capacity of any sensible child, without leading from the more immediate
object of her anxiety; as Mrs. Harewood very justly concluded, that if she
saw her error as a child, and could be brought to conquer her faults as
such, it would include every virtue to be expected at her time of life, and
would lay the foundation of all those which we estimate in the female
character.
"Oh," cried Matilda, sobbing, "if I could kneel at her feet, if I could
humble myself lower than the lowest negro to my dear mamma, and once hear
her say she forgave me, I could be comforted; but I do not like to be
comforted without this; I am angry at myself, and I ought to be angry."
"But, my dear little girl," replied Mrs. Harewood, "though you cannot thus
humble yourself in your body, yet you are conscious that you are humbled in
your mind, and that your penitence will render you guarded for the time to
come; and let it be your consolation to know, though your mother is absent,
the ears of your heavenly Father are ever open to your sorrows; and that,
if you lament your sins to him, he will assuredly accept your repentance,
and dispose the heart of your dear mother to accept it also. I sincerely
pity you, not as heretofore, for your folly, but for your sorrow; and in
order to enable you to comprehend what I mean by repenting before God, I
will compose you a short prayer, which will both express your feelings,
and remind you of your duty towards yourself and your mother."
Matilda received this act of kindness from her good friend with real
gratitude; and when she had committed it to memory, and adopted it in
addressing Almighty God, she found her spirits revive, with the hope that
she should one day prove worthy of that kind parent, whom, when she lived
with her, she was too apt to slight and disobey. As her judgment became
more enlightened, she saw more clearly into the errors of her past
education, and became perfectly aware that the love of her too-indulgent
father had been productive of innumerable pains, as well as faults. She
found herself much more happy now than she had ever been in her life; yet
she had never so few indulgences--she had no slaves to wait on her, no
little black children to execute her commands and submit to her temper; she
was not coaxed to the dainties of a luxurious table, nor had costly clothes
spread before her to court her choice, nor any foolish friend to repeat all
she said, as if she were a prodigy of wit and talent; and all these things,
she well remembered, were accorded to her as a kind of inheritance in
Barbadoes; but, along with them, she remembered having violent passions, in
which she committed excesses, for which she afterwards felt keen remorse,
because she saw how they wounded her mother, and shamed even her doting
father--ill-humour and low spirits, that rendered every thing irksome to
her, and many pains and fevers, from which she was now entirely free; and
she found, in the conversation, books, and instructions of her young
friends, amusement to which nothing she had enjoyed before would bear
comparison; for what in life is so delightful as knowledge, except the
sense of having performed some particular benefit to our fellow-creatures?