MILLICENT HERITAGE AT THE YEARLY MEETING.
Two years have passed, and not one of these marriages has taken
place. Causes have been at work which no one without the eye of a
seer could well have detected, and yet they all lay in the nature
of things. To trace out their operation into events will require
some considerable detail. Let us begin at Fair Manor. There we
saw everything tending apparently to a happy issue. The strongest
affection existed betwixt Dr. Leroy and the fair Millicent. Dr.
Leroy was every day extending his practice, and through it his
reputation and usefulness. The brief hours that he could steal from
his duties he spent at Fair Manor, and the happy lovers might be
seen taking their rides together in the neighbouring country. They
often alighted at Woodburn Grange and at Bilts’ Farm, and brought an
atmosphere of gladness with them. Many pleasant evenings were spent
by this little circle of friends at Fair Manor. The marriage of the
doctor and Millicent was regarded as a near event. In the very month,
however, of May of the year following Letty Woodburn’s marriage,
the Heritages went up to the Friends’ yearly meeting. Mr. and Mrs.
Heritage had frequently gone on these occasions, for Mr. Heritage
had his banking connections in the capital, at whose houses he saw
the most influential Friends in the kingdom, and Mrs. Heritage had
often what was called in the Friends’ language, a concern upon her
in relation to that annual national assembling. Her appearances, as
they are termed, in the ministry, both in inspirational speaking
and in supplication, that is, in preaching and prayer, were often
very powerful and extraordinary. In them, she often rose into the
loftiest and most solemn strains of eloquence. Sometimes these
depicted the general, spiritual, and moral condition of the Society;
sometimes they were directed to the states of particular individuals,
and opened up in such force and startling discernment the minor
trials, tendencies, temptations and perils of some person or persons
un-named, as caused a silence like death to fall on the meeting,—a
hush, in which the spirit of the Allseeing seemed to hover awfully
and palpably over it; and in one instance, suicide itself was said
to have been driven in horror from the soul which contemplated it.
Sometimes the very walls of the meeting-house have seemed to shake
under the rush and thunder of the power thus mysteriously let loose
over the assembly by the words of a woman, and the whole of the
assembled Quakerism then left the place in a still and reflective
mood, giving only a fervid shake of the hand to each other and
saying, but not till they had reached their particular abodes,—“that
was a very precious opportunity.”
Around Mr. and Mrs. Heritage the most orthodox persons moved, and
the most orthodox spirit reigned during these great annual visits,
and they returned home much refreshed and invigorated for the daily
trials of life. Sylvanus Crook would say of them, on such occasions,
that the dews of Hermon and of Carmel seemed to have fallen on them,
and that they had evidently been in the Lord’s banqueting-house,
where His banner over them was love.
They had never before taken Millicent with them; but they thought,
as she was likely soon to leave their protecting roof and guidance,
it were well that she should see one of these great gatherings; see
the order and wisdom in which everything was administered, and hear
the gifted ministers, both men and women, from all parts of the
kingdom, and make acquaintance with their particular friends and
their children. To Millicent, who had spent the greater part of her
life in the society of a country town, this visit was the occasion
of much delightful anticipation and some nervousness. She had heard
of the enormous wealth of some of the London Friends, and that their
style and mode of living much differed from their own simple habits.
She had an inward shrinking from undergoing the criticism of young
men and women who lived in the centre of life and intelligence, and
whose eyes must be quick to detect any of the slightest evidences of
country breeding. The roar and bustle of London at first confounded
her. All appeared hurry, noise, and the long-sought-after perpetual
motion. The millionaire bankers, the Messrs. Barrington, were the
London agents of her father. They lived a few miles out of town; but
at these times their houses were so full of their relatives and most
intimate connections, that they did not ask the Heritages to take
up their quarters with them. They went to airy and ample private
lodgings in the outskirts of the city, yet within a short drive to
meeting; and Mr. Samuel Barrington, Mr. Heritage’s particular friend,
and through whom he generally transacted business, invited them to
dine and spend the evenings with them after the meetings were over,
as often as, according to his phrase, was agreeable to them; and when
the yearly meeting was concluded, Millicent was to make a visit of
some weeks at their house.
Except to a young lady Friend, no idea can be given of the impression
which the first view, and the subsequent attendances of the yearly
meetings, made on Millicent. The silence, the calmness, the order
with which several hundreds of Friends, men and women, assembled
was something very imposing to a youthful imagination. True,
Millicent had seen a simple image of this fuller assembly in the
quarterly meetings of her own county; but there she knew almost every
individual, their history and connections. There still existed a
plainness of manner and of mind, a sort of equality of character and
condition, that was familiar to her thoughts. Here came together a
class of persons of a position, a wealth, and an education to which
she was unaccustomed, and which made her feel as if she were a novice
in a higher range of life.
The general aspect of the assembly was plain. The men were almost
wholly dressed in the peculiar garb and cut of the Society, still,
with differences, advancing from the most marked and almost grotesque
formality of costume to a very near approach to the fashion, but
the plainest fashion, of the outer world. Amongst the women, the
distinctions were still more prominent. There was a delightfully neat
and pure character of dress throughout the whole female side of the
meeting, for the men and women sate separated. A general tendency to
dove-colour prevailed in both dresses and bonnets; but the younger
portion displayed a smarter tint of colour, even in the dove, and a
certain elegance of style, especially in the bonnets, which showed
that taste, and even fashion, could no more be excluded from the
younger branches of the Friend world, especially the affluent Friend
world, than light and air. Youth and beauty would assert their
rights as strongly, if unobtrusively, as the more solemn attributes
of strong sense, and spiritual development in the older members.
Millicent saw with great delight the many charming faces enclosed by
the exquisitely neat and often white bonnets. Other young ladies had
abandoned the silk bonnet, and assumed straw ones, though of a modest
style, and furnished only with the simplest ribbon to tie them with.
No gay bows and ultra-fashion makes had yet dared to invade that
ancient sanctuary of plainness and worldly abnegation. In our day
all that rigid stand by the order in the outward has fallen like the
leaves of autumn, and has not reappeared at spring. The Friend has,
in a majority of cases, assimilated himself to the world; and it is
a still more satisfactory truth, that the world has, in many things,
interiorly assimilated itself to the Friend.
During the course of the yearly meeting, both in the general meetings
for worship and in the separate meetings to which the ladies retired
to transact their own affairs—for Quakerism was the first institution
to invite woman to consider that she had affairs which she could
best transact, and that she had faculties intended for use—Millicent
saw, with the lively interest of youth, the long row of ministers in
the gallery at the head of the meeting, men and women, and heard,
sometimes with astonishment, the addresses there made by persons of
both sexes. None, however, appeared to greater advantage than her
own mother; and the high admiration in which she found her held,
gave her a deep feeling of gratified pride. In the women’s meetings
she was equally struck with the ability with which certain ladies
addressed this assembly on matters of business, and the practical
eloquence to which they had attained. These meetings, and the society
which she enjoyed in the evenings at different houses of wealthy
and leading Friends, impressed her with a high idea of the solid
merits and highly moral and philanthropic tone of the Society. She
heard continually discussed those great topics of humanity which
have always occupied the mind and aims of Friends. Opposition to
slavery and the slave-trade and to war, plans and operations for
the reform of prisons, for the extension of education amongst the
poor, were everywhere the subjects of conversation. On these points
there were manuscripts read and tracts handed about; and though they
had no foreign missions—not being able, on their peculiar religious
principles, to establish such works for the propagation of the faith,
or to co-operate in those established by other bodies of Christians,
unless they were directly moved thereto by the spirit—yet they had
“public Friends,” as they termed them, occasionally in America or the
West Indies, or elsewhere, who were under concern to minister there,
and from one or other of these favoured individuals had letters,
which they read for the edification of the rest.
Such was the aspect which the Society wore to Millicent during the
continuance of the great meeting, which lasted about ten days. She
saw, wherever she went, abundant evidence of wealth in the houses
of the leading Friends, united to a certain plainness of style.
The furniture was good, handsome, and substantial, but made no
pretensions to splendour or fashionable elegance. No works of
art adorned those plain walls, except everywhere one large framed
engraving, which, from its subject, had procured for it the privilege
of breaking through the Friends’ law concerning painting and
sculpture,—a law with them as strict as that of the Jews,—it was the
Treaty of William Penn with the American Indians, from the picture
by Benjamin West. This engraving was familiar to Millicent in her
own father’s dining-room, and greeted her here in every considerable
house that she entered. It was well worthy of such an honour, as the
memorial, to use the words of Voltaire, “of the only treaty ever made
without an oath, and the only one which never was broken.” It was
deserving of its universal honour, as perhaps the grandest practical
disproof which genuine Christian principle has ever triumphantly
given to the sophistries and the aggressive crimes of _soidisant_
Christian governments. It was deserving of this pre-eminent
distinction, for that great action represented by it still towers
aloft, high above the highest moral reach of the most vaunted
statesman. Well, therefore, was it in the Friends to break a little
law regarding art, in order to exalt that great eternal law of God,
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,”—whether that neighbour be
found in the city dwelling or in the wild forest of untutored man. It
was an everyday testimony of the Friends that they at least, on some
occasions, really believed the words of the Universal Father, that he
is no respecter of persons.
But the Yearly Meeting was over, the Friends were hurrying
simultaneously away to their different, and many of them very
distant, homes by the long coach journeys of those days. Mr. and
Mrs. Heritage had taken a loving leave of their dear child, and
she was the guest of Mr. Samuel Barrington, at his suburban house.
This was truly a very pleasant home. It was a large old country
brick-house, in extensive grounds. The family consisted of Mr. and
Mrs. Barrington, one son, Edmund, and three daughters, all grown up.
Two other sons were married, and lived not far off.
The routine of the household very much resembled that of Fair Manor,
and of most Friends of that day. Immediately after breakfast, the
whole household assembled, and Mr. Barrington read a chapter from the
Bible. This over, the carriage appeared at the door, which drove the
father and son to business. Dinner was on the table at two o’clock,
for the city Friends had not yet fallen into the fashionable evening
hours for that meal, even the fashionable hour being rarely later
than five o’clock. The gentlemen dined in town, and returned to tea
at six. During the day the ladies amused themselves for some hours
with their needlework and talk, or took Millicent for a drive, to
call on some other Friends, or made a shopping visit to the city.
After tea, Mr. Edmund would propose a ride, in which Millicent and
one or more—perhaps all—of his sisters would accompany him. They
were extremely kind to Millicent, and she soon found herself a
marked object of attention. Her peculiar style of beauty—that fair
complexion, and those clear blue eyes, in combination with those long
dark eyelashes, those finely-arched and jetty eyebrows, and rich
raven hair,—that oriental _tout ensemble_ was extremely piquant,
even to the sober young men of the Society. Then it was whispered
that she was a very wealthy heiress, which by no means detracted
from her charms; and the quiet grace and modesty of her manners were
in themselves, unknown to her, as _distingué_ as if she had been
Lady Millicent, instead of simple Millicent, the Friends’ Child, as
Elizabeth Drury was fond of calling her.
By degrees it dawned on Millicent that there was a side to the
Friends’ life in London, at least amongst the opulent, of which
she had not dreamed. The Misses Barrington, in their conversations
in their own room, launched into topics which at first startled
Millicent. They asked her if she had ever been at the theatres,
the opera, or at morning and evening concerts? With unfeigned
surprise, she replied, “Oh, certainly not! Surely no Friends went to
such places!” A pleasant smile passed over the faces of the young
ladies: and one of them said to Millicent, patting her gently on the
shoulder, “Oh, dear Simplicity! don’t thou think we all do nothing
but attend meetings and study prison discipline!” They informed her
that they frequently went to all these places of amusement.
“But,” said Millicent, “it is against the rules of the Society.
What do your parents say? How do you answer the Queries?” (Certain
queries put to and answered by each particular and monthly meeting,
regarding the maintenance of the principles and practices of the
Society.)
“My dear child,” said the young Friends, “we leave the meetings to
settle all that. They don’t know, in fact,—though perhaps they guess
a little,—half of what we do: why should they? We don’t want to break
any moral law, but we cannot live like nuns in a convent when all the
London stream of rational enjoyments is flowing around us.”
“But your dear parents,” said Millicent, “what do they say? Surely
they do not approve of such indulgences? Why, I heard Mrs. Barrington
myself in the meeting, advocating the careful adherence to our great
testimonies, as she called them.”
“Dear, good mother!” said these gay young Quakeresses—“yes, she
advocates paying all the tithes of mind and conscience, though those
are the only tithes Friends will pay, and we advocate seeing a
little pleasure whilst we are young. We don’t interfere with her
advocacy, and only wish her not to interfere with our little snatches
of amusement.”
Millicent was all astonishment; but her young friends assured her
that they were not peculiar in these habits—plenty of young Friends
indulged in the same.
“But,” said Millicent, “are you not very much stared at in such
public places in your Friend’s dress?”
There was a general burst of merriment,—“Oh, dear, dear little
Simplicity,” said they, “we should no doubt attract a tolerable share
of attention if we did sport our Friends attire there: but dress does
not grow fast to our bodies. We can suit the dress to the occasion.
We have the warrant of an apostle, for ‘being all things to all men.’”
Millicent was shocked. “No, don’t quote Scripture,” she said, “that
is worse than all.”
“Forgive me,” said the one who used the expression, “it was wrong;
but, dear Millicent, we do not wish thee to do anything which
thou thinkst is wrong. We, however, see no wrong in an occasional
indulgence in a good moral play or opera, with excellent music. We
believe them all capable of strengthening what is good in us.”
Millicent shook her head. “But I want to know,” she continued, “what
your parents say—do they willingly permit you to go to such places?”
“We don’t ask them,” said the young ladies, “we don’t want to hurt
their feelings; perhaps they know all about it, and don’t want to see
too deeply, knowing that we would do nothing really wrong. But to
leave them as unconcerned as possible, we generally go to tea at one
of our brothers and drive thence.”
“Dear! dear!” said Millicent, with a sigh, “I wonder what my dear
mother would say to all this?”
“Oh, she would not like it, of course,” said the ladies; “but then
she has lived so much in the country, and in the strictest habits of
Friendism, that she cannot do otherwise; and yet all these things may
be, and we firmly believe are, very innocent.” Edmund, their brother,
treated Millicent’s scruples still more lightly.
“Why,” he said, “my dear young friend, you don’t pin your faith,
surely, on all the old fogies stickle about. We must rub a little of
this country rust off you. You don’t think we are such very wicked
people, do you?”—he forgot his thee and thou in speaking of such
things. “But never mind, don’t trouble your little head about these
matters; all things come naturally.”
And Millicent saw every reason to regard her young friends as good
and conscientious in most essential respects. They were extremely
benevolent, and the sums of money which the family spent on
philanthropic objects would have been the fortune of many people.
They introduced her to Mrs. Fry, and accompanied her to that lady’s
meetings with the prisoners in Newgate. They took her to sewing
meetings, and book-meetings, and to many a poor abode that they
visited with comfort and intelligence. The more she saw of them, the
more her heart drew near to them in sympathy. They were what some
classed as “Gay Friends,” but they were, notwithstanding their vast
wealth and position, extremely unassuming and amiable. But gradually
Millicent found the circle of her intercourse widening and extending
into the regions beyond Quakerdom. She was invited with them not only
to drive to the houses of the married brothers, where a much more
affluent display of plate, wines, and men-servants was found, but
to their aristocratic friends at the West-end, where the splendour
and luxury astonished her. In these parties her young companions no
longer retained a trace of the Quaker costume or language. She had
observed that Edmund when going to business or to meeting, wore the
collarless coat; but when he went out in an evening it was in the
full dress of ordinary society. To avoid bringing their departures
too prominently before the eyes of their parents, they generally
dressed at the house of one of the married brothers, and there
changed their dress on their return. Did Mr. and Mrs. Barrington
know this? It was a point that Millicent could never clear up, but
she rather imagined that they were willingly ignorant, deeming that
a current was running in modern society, with which their children
mixed, which it was useless to oppose. They were early people, too,
like the past generation, and were in bed long before the young
people returned from their evening parties.
By degrees the charms of this life had produced their effect on
Millicent. The scenes of luxurious affluence that she witnessed; the
tables loaded with silver or silver-gilt plate,—a fortune almost
in itself; the elegance of the whole array of the dinner-tables,
the trains of richly-liveried servants; the waiting perfect to a
movement; the after drawing-room company the music, the introduction
to distinguished people, the marked notice which she herself excited,
were not without their effect upon a poetical and sensitive nature
like that of Millicent Heritage. She seemed to live in a new world—in
a fairy land—in a dream rather than a reality, and was enchanted by
it, whilst she continued to ask herself whether she ought to be so.
The time fixed for her visit had expired; but it was renewed at
the earnest request of her friends, both old and young. It was
impossible, they said, for her to go yet, she had seen nothing of
London. Her mother wrote rather anxiously, fearing that her dear
Millicent was leading too gay a life, though with such good people:
and yet, with a nice instinct, Millicent had not indulged in her
letters home in more than a dry and matter-of-fact account of her
doings. She had said that the Barringtons saw a deal of company, and
that the splendour and luxury that she witnessed was truly wonderful.
Her mother hoped that so much grandeur would not spoil her for her
own simple, unostentatious life at home.
One day Mr. Edmund Barrington told Millicent that he had a treat for
her. On the morrow Handel’s “Messiah” was to be performed, and he had
taken tickets for his sisters, for her, and for himself. Millicent
objected that she was sure her parents would not like her to go, and,
therefore, they must please to leave her at home with Mrs. Barrington.
“What!” said Edmund, “do you object to _sacred_ music? Can there
possibly be anything wrong in listening to music so pure, so
edifying, so ennobling? It was a perfect perversion of intellect to
object to such a thing. She must go. He would not hear of anything
else.” His sisters joined in the assertion, that it would be really
high treason against virtue itself not to go. Millicent made a strong
resistance, but it was a sense of duty battling with the innate
tastes of her nature, and she went.
“Good and right as it is,” said Edmund Barrington, “don’t tell your
mother about it. She cannot surmount her educational prejudices, and
why trouble her?”
Millicent was, however, troubled. Charmed as she was by the noble
music, which bore her away in a trance-like state to regions of new
and lofty pleasure, she could not avoid feeling that it was wrong
to conceal anything from her mother. The uneasy feeling hung about
her, and came often in the midst of the pleasantest society with a
painful start. But there were other influences at work, which, though
she did not perceive them, were yet acting upon her. Everywhere
Edmund Barrington was at hand to accompany her into society—to ride
out with her. To take her to see sights in London, with one or more
of his sisters. One evening he told her that he had brought her a
trifling present, and put into her hand a case containing a gold
bracelet with a diamond clasp of a very beautiful pattern. Millicent
was dumb with amazement. Recovering a little her self-possession, she
thanked him very earnestly, but said that it was impossible for her
to accept it. It was of too great a value as a gift from a friend
whose friendship had yet been of so short a duration. Besides, she
could never wear it. To her it would be useless. To some other friend
of his it might be different.
The colour rose into Mr. Barrington’s face; he looked deeply
chagrined, and said, “Nonsense, Millicent! you can wear it at least
here, and at home you can keep it to remind you of your friends in
London.”
“Oh! I shall never need anything to remind me of my dear, kind
friends; of the happy time I have spent here. But please excuse me
receiving this. My parents would regard it as a proof of my folly and
vanity.”
“No,” said Mr. Barrington, “do not offend me—do not wound me by the
refusal of so trifling a token of my regard.”
He hurried away, and Millicent, in deepest trouble, sought one of
his sisters to express her embarrassment to. She found them all
together, and with some confusion and with gushing tears, begged of
them to prevail on their brother to receive the bracelet back, and
give her something of less value as a testimony of his friendship.
But the sisters unanimously expressed their pleasure in the gift;
were charmed with its beauty, and told her that she thought too much
of its mere money value. They instantly clasped it on her wrist,
declared it was the very thing which she wanted on occasions of high
dress, and that she must by no means hurt their brother’s feelings
by declining it. They all, they said, wanted to give her something
in memory of this visit, so dear to them. They then replaced the
bracelet in its case, kissed her affectionately, and one of them
carrying it into her bedroom, placed it on the toilette-table.
Dark and sleepless was that night to Millicent Heritage. The gift
of the bracelet opened her eyes to what they might have been opened
long before, the assiduous attentions and zealous courtesies of
Edmund Barrington: the more than ordinary affection of his sisters.
It was not the gift which startled her, but the state of her own
feelings which it revealed to her. She could not see without terror
the dimness of the image of Dr. Leroy in her heart, the space and
intensity which that of Edmund Barrington had assumed there. The
agreeable person, the courteous manners, the good sense and happy
gaiety of this young man living amongst the proud, the powerful, the
intellectually and politically distinguished, and destined to so
immense a fortune, and who had been ever ready to attend, to serve,
and to introduce her wherever enjoyment or social honour were to be
found, had gained, unperceived by her, a hold on her regard, that
only now stood revealed in its fullest proportions. What had made
her so supremely happy in this visit—in this family? The love, she
said to herself, of every individual in it. Mr. and Mrs. Barrington
had treated her with the tenderness of parents. The daughters had
received and treated her as one of them; the son, rather haughty
as he was generally deemed, had been all devotion—a devotion never
relaxing, always finding some new occasion of affording her
pleasure. And Dr. Leroy? She saw with shame and compunction that
her correspondence with him had declined. His letters had to her
been as frequent as ever, as glowing with affection; but hers—they
had certainly become fewer and colder. She had excused herself for
not writing oftener, or at greater length, by the constant round
of engagements in which she lived, and promised him ample details
of what she called her adventures on her return. But were these
assurances capable of satisfying the quick sense of a genuine lover?
She knew that they had not been so. Dr. Leroy had complained, though
in the gentlest and kindest manner, that the gaieties and friends of
London seemed to have utterly eclipsed the sober life and friends
of the country. Her mother had just now written that she was afraid
Millicent had not been very attentive to Dr. Leroy, who seemed out
of spirits, and who confessed that he seldom heard from her.
All her sins rushed over her memory and conscience. She hastened
away to her bedroom: opened the drawer in which she kept the letters
of her family and of Frank Leroy, and saw to her shame that there
were many of his letters that she had scarcely read, many that she
had never answered—some, actually with their seals unbroken. She
sank down in a chair, and sat long motionless as in a trance. But in
that outwardly trance-like state, her mind was in full and fiercest
activity. She asked herself whether then such a change had really
taken place in her. Whether she was prepared to abandon an ardent
lover, a noble-spirited man, and to attach herself to a person of but
yesterday’s acquaintance? Could she really be so fickle! She wished
to break the spell of such strange enchantment, and seized pen and
paper, and wrote a long letter to Dr. Leroy—but on reading it over,
she was terrified to perceive that it was but words, words, words—the
old life and love did not exist in it. It was like the dead shell of
the chrysalis; the winged Psyche of love had flown—whither? Ah! too
well she could follow and find it.
The bell for dinner rang, and she hurried down-stairs to take her
part in the conversation as best she might. Every one observed her
silence, her absence of mind, her want of interest in what was
passing—and asked whether she was unwell, or had received bad news.
To plead indisposition would have been to bring immediate attentions
of the most perplexing kind upon her. She had no ill-tidings to
report, and could only excuse herself by saying that she thought she
was a little fatigued. This enabled her to retire early, and she sat
down and wrote a letter to her mother, begging to be forgiven for
the apparent neglect to herself and Dr. Leroy, but that the bustle
of London, and its hurrying stream of engagements she thought had
turned her head. Ah! poor thing! it would have been well had this
been all, but they had turned something more serious—her heart!
The next day was Sunday, and whatever might be the social licence
with which the young Barringtons overleaped the pale of the Society
on the week-days, they all duly attended the morning meetings in
town. The large family carriage regularly rolled up to the Meeting
House gates in Houndsditch, and they descended to an hour and a
half’s quiet musing of some sort in that still and shady tabernacle.
Ah! that stillness! How little it suited the beating heart and
tortured bosom of Millicent Heritage. Charles Lamb says, that he
once got into a Quaker’s meeting, and never went through such a
process of spiritual inquisition before. He found himself asking
himself more questions in one short hour, than he could have answered
in a year. What, then, must have been the condition of Millicent
Heritage? Loving, sensitive, educated in a straight line of honour,
purity, and truth—and guilty? Who shall depict the tortures of that
age-long hour and a half? She went back to her past life; to its
peace, its innocence, her deep enjoyment of existence and of nature;
and then she turned a scared eye on the purple cloud and rapturous
whirlwind in which she had lately been floating far above the
darkened scenes and landscapes of the past. What would her father
and mother say—if she proved faithless to her most solemn vows and
most sacred engagements? Could she really give up Dr. Leroy for
another—honourable, gifted, learned, and amiable as he was? Ay,—but
that was no longer the question; did she, could she still love him?
The answer from that strange thing, the heart, made a thrill of
sickening cold pass through her. There was a spirit in it that mocked
her; a chill that she could not cast out, a fire in another quarter
of it, that she could not command. A sense of despair seized her that
was more terrible than death, she prayed to die, and had she been
alone, could have flung herself on the floor and cried aloud for
death.
At this moment arose an aged woman in the gallery opposite to her.
She was clad in the simplest garb of grey, and over it a light cloak
of grey. She laid down her bonnet of the most rigorously antiquated
make and material, and displayed a coarse muslin cap over her grey
hair, as destitute of grace or ornament as any human hand could
fashion. Millicent knew her well. She was from Ireland, and bore the
unambitious name of Grubb.
In a voice clear and solemn she said, “Whosoever shall offend one of
these little ones, which believe in me, it were better for him that
a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the
depth of the sea. Woe unto the world, because of offences! for it
must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the
offence cometh! Therefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut
them off, and cast them from thee; for it is better to enter into
life halt and maimed rather than having two hands, to be cast into
everlasting fire. And if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast
it from thee: for it is better for thee to enter into life with one
eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell-fire.”
In words at first slow and with pauses between, as if the inspiration
came but measuredly, she described the soul that is tempted by
ambition, by avarice, or by the very affections of its weak nature to
sin against itself or others. She drew a picture of the temptation
of Judas Iscariot to betray even the Lord of Life, and the agonies
of remorse that afterwards seized on him. She described him as
hastening to the Sanhedrim, and flinging down the price of blood in
the midst of the priests and scribes, and their taunt of “See thou
to that!” As she warmed in her discourse, her language became rapid,
loud, impassioned,—her small, slender frame seemed to expand, to
rise, as it were, into the air, and all the spirit of the prophet
to be upon her. She drew a picture of the horrors of such a soul
as, tempted by the passions, pleasures, or even otherwise innocent
endearments of life, selling what was sacred for the mere coinage of
self-indulgence, and condemning the righteous to injury and woe!
At that word she suddenly stopped. There was a silence as of death.
Dropping abruptly from the high-wrought pitch of inspired passion,
she went on again in a tone of deep and solemn feeling, saying, “If
there be a soul here thus hard beset by a strong temptation of any
kind, to betray the innocent, or to sell the pure uprightness of a
precious and immortal spirit, let him or _her_”—and she seemed to
pause on the latter word—“pause, and cut off the offending part, even
should it be some tender, quivering portion of the heart itself,
and preserve unscathed the glorious, eternal heritage of a good
conscience!”
A deep sigh seemed to issue from the bosom of the whole united
congregation. There was a breathing, as of a sudden relief, and
after a short silence the meeting broke up. Many a one asked of his
neighbour for whom this could be meant. There was one who could
have answered; but she was walking as in a dream. She entered the
waiting carriage, shrunk into a corner, only answering, “A most awful
sermon!” to a question of what she thought of it. She hastened to her
chamber, and there found a relief in a torrent of tears, and in vows
to stand firm to her duty, if it cost her her life.