RENUNCIATION.
"Only the best composed and worthiest heart
God sets to act the hardest, constantest part."
--SAMUEL.
A week later the dreaded confession of her vow had been made by
Shanno to her mother, and in spite of Lady Bryn Afon's heart-broken
tears and entreaties, and refusal to believe that the shadow of the
curse could possibly have fallen upon that pure young life, she held
fast to her resolution, never to marry him whom she loved with all
the intensity and devotion of her true woman's heart, never to hand
on the curse of Ap Gryffyth to future generations, but to be herself
its last innocent victim,--to offer up herself and her love as a
sacrifice to Him who alone knew all it cost her to make it, and to
trust to His love and to Percival's unalterable devotion, which she
never dreamed of doubting, to sustain her through the coming weary
years of life which might remain to her. How bitter it was to her,
apart from her own bitter suffering, to inflict such grievous pain on
the mother who had given up so much for her, it would be hard to
tell; and over Lady Bryn Afon's agony of sorrow and disappointment,
and misery at the sight of her darling's ill-concealed suffering, we
must draw a veil. It yet remained to break the still unsuspected
truth to her lover, and bracing every nerve for the painful task,
sorely mistrusting the while her own powers of endurance when put to
so fiery a test, she set out with him one bright evening for the
mystic pool, with feet that trembled beneath her from bodily weakness
as well as mental anguish. As yet Percival had waited patiently,
cherishing every mark of returning health which he could note day by
day in her appearance, wondering often at the signs of suffering and
weakness which, in Lady Bryn Afon, only seemed to increase daily as
her daughter regained strength, but ascribing them only to her long
anxious watching, and the added care she must needs feel on the
departure of her faithful physician, whom, for her husband's sake,
she dared no longer keep at Shanno's bedside, when once he could
honestly assure her that all fear for her life was past. Also
Percival could well ascribe such marks of suffering on the mother's
part to her natural grief at so cruel a revealing of her long-hidden
secret; and with the strong self-repression into which he had long
schooled himself, he waited, asking no question till Primrose herself
should be able to give him the explanation he so longed for, of the
strange effect the knowledge of the curse had produced upon her.
"I had a strange presentiment of evil concerning you, sweetheart," he
said, as they slowly climbed the steep green slopes towards Craig
Aran Peak, "on that evening when, as your mother has told me, you
wandered out to the Robbers' Cavern, and witnessed the gipsy's dying
struggles. And in the lonely darkness of the night it gathered new
force, and greatly tormented me, insomuch that when at last I fell
into uneasy slumbers, fearful dreams haunted me. I dreamed that you
were in great agony of spirit, and longing for my presence, while I
was powerless to come to you; and in my misery I called your name
loudly twice or thrice, and so awoke with the sound of my own voice
ringing in my ear, conscious that in that matter it had been no mere
dream, but that I had verily called your name aloud in the darkness.
My own words, 'Shanno, Shanno!' seemed to re-echo through my silent
chamber, and as they died away I lay down again peacefully, feeling
that the spell of my evil dream was broken, and resting in calm
assurance of your safety."
Primrose had listened with bated breath. "I knew it was truly your
voice I heard, my beloved," she said eagerly, "and no delusion of my
excited fancy! Twice I heard my name, spoken in your own loved
tones, but full of pain and sad entreaty, ring through the silent
mountains, as I knelt in my misery over the dark pool's brink, about
to plunge into its depths, there to end for ever my intolerable
agony; and as I listened, spellbound, the mountain-echoes all around
took up the cry, till the very air was filled with your voice,
Percival, your voice crying my name in soft sad music among the dark
lonely hill-tops! As clearly as I now hear you speak to me, your
cry, 'Shanno, Shanno!' was borne to me upon the midnight breeze, and
it saved me from the dark grave where my poor crazed brain thought to
find the only rest this miserable earth afforded! But for that cry
of yours, my beloved, through which God in His mercy spoke to me, I
should ere now have surely shut myself out from His presence and from
your pure love to all eternity!--unless, think you, Percival, my deed
might perchance have found pardon in the sight of Him who saw all my
utter misery, and knew it was fast turning my poor weak brain?"
"I do verily so believe, sweetheart," he answered earnestly, "and so
I pray you dwell no more on so terrible a moment of your life, and
think only of His mercy in calling you back from so untimely a grave,
and of His sympathy with our human love, in suffering me thus
mysteriously to be His instrument in saving you! Yet I cannot fully
understand such utter woe as the gipsy's tale brought upon you.
Could not the thought of my sheltering love, so soon to be wholly
bestowed on you, chase away the terrors which her horrible words,
and, I doubt not, equally horrible appearance, caused your tender
heart to suffer? Could you not rest assured that your mother's care
and love for you had doubtless undone the curse for ever, and that
our home would be the sweet foundation of a new life and happiness,
in which all the shame and suffering endured by your forefathers
should be utterly forgotten? Did you lose all faith, dear heart, in
your faithful physician, and the happy assurance he had given us of
the blessed life, humanly speaking, before us?"
"His human speech has erred, beloved," answered Primrose in a low
trembling voice, "and his human knowledge has failed, being, alas,
too weak for so great extremity! Till I knew the nature of the curse
I believed most truly that in our dear Rhiwallon's skilful hand lay a
power which had not in vain laid your own and my mother's fears to
rest, and that the vague disquieting shadows of my girlhood--long
since, until recalled in horrid vividness by the gipsy's words,
forgotten in the joy of my love for you--were indeed, as she assured
me, but the faint reflection of her own sad sufferings. And you--oh,
Percival!--you, as well as my poor mother, both knowing well the
nature of the curse, believed it too! I know you did in your most
secret heart feel all your fears dispelled wholly and for ever--those
fears which have traced these lines on your dear face, Percival, at
which I have of late oft secretly wondered, till now I see their just
cause!--or ne'er would you have spoken to me a year since those sweet
words which have given me such bliss unutterable that I have
forgotten aught else! But Percival, my beloved!--oh, God help me,
for I know not how to speak the words which must give him such bitter
pain!--you did not know, nor did my poor mother realise that in her
whom you loved the curse you believed dead still lived; that her
childish happiness and girlhood's joy had been from time to time
darkened by a strange and secret shadow, haunting her with nameless
terrors and vague, unknown temptation, until, two years since, in
your pure presence, it fled away, as she thought, for ever, and all
recollection of it was swallowed up in the sunlight of her great love
for you. Oh, Percival, had she but known for one moment only, as she
now knows, the true meaning of that mysterious shadow, she would have
fled for ever from your presence, ere she suffered you to pour upon
her the wealth of your love, which she must now bid you take back,
and waste no more on one who bears her blighted name! Oh, look not
so strangely, my beloved! Only tell me here, in this same spot where
we first looked upon each other's face, and exchanged our vows of
love, that you forgive me for the sorrow I cause you; for indeed,
indeed it was in ignorance I let you love me, and it has been in the
sweetness of our mutual love that I have so utterly forgotten the
shadow, as never once to have recalled it to mind till now, when its
bitter meaning has been thus rudely revealed to me! Would I had not
made so light of it to my mother, but my love had indeed so wholly
chased away its pain! Percival, you suffer, my beloved, and I must
with ruthless hand inflict the bitter pain! But see--I am strong--I
speak calmly! Perchance my heart is already broken, and I am dead to
its pain. Percival, Percival, speak to me!"
As the meaning of her words gradually forced itself into his
unwilling brain, the young chaplain's face had grown whiter and
whiter, and seemed turning into very stone before her eyes, in the
misery which, with iron hand, he was controlling until he had heard
all. "Sweetheart," he answered, with the sudden, desperate eagerness
of a drowning man catching at a straw, "this cannot be! The shock of
your new knowledge, and the illness it has brought upon you, has
over-wrought your nerves, and caused you to attach to those passing
clouds of temptation or depression, of which you speak, and which
haunt us all betimes, a meaning with which there is no need, no
reason to clothe them! I pray you, an you love me, suffer my
devotion to chase them for ever from this fair mind, which, God
forbid, should dwell to its hurt upon this past sad history! Shanno,
Shanno, I will not believe that your sweet life must be darkened by
this evil from which you have been so tenderly shielded! It is not
without much thought upon the matter that I have asked for your love,
and looked forward to a life with you, in which the curse shall be
undone for ever! Can you not trust that in the deep study I have
ever given to this matter, and in the far stronger confidence we all
place in the yet more learned studies of our beloved physician, I
could not have blinded my eyes to aught of ill that might in the
future befall you and yours? I am satisfied, my darling, that all
shall be well, and would bid you in this matter rest on Rhiwallon's
judgment, if love itself bid you fear to rest on mine own, and to
wait patiently, as I will likewise wait, till this passing shadow of
doubt shall have rolled away."
"It can never roll away, Percival!" she answered in a low but firm
voice. "You have verily believed all to be safe and well, because
you believed the curse in me to be wholly dead. It is not dead, and
I would to God I had sooner known its nature, that I might have
spared you this pain! Rhiwallon's marvellous cure may be for the
healing of others, but over the woe of our miserable house it has
proved itself powerless! The shadows of my youth were no deception,
Percival, but in my ignorance I knew not their cause, nor to what
dark temptation the evil spirit prompted me. Now I know it by its
own terrible name, and I will ne'er suffer others after me to bear
the woe my father has borne, and which, though it has been mercifully
spared to me, may descend with deadly hand upon my children. 'The
sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children even unto the
third and fourth generation!' So it has been in our unhappy house,
Percival, and so, I fear me, it must ever be. It is true that in me
the sin has borne no fruit, and does but lie a hidden root of evil in
my soul, alas, long forgotten in this dream of bliss, and ne'er till
now understood! Yet here in me it lies, a fatal inheritance, and
with me it shall perish. I will never marry you, Percival! I can
better bear to see you suffer now with a bitter pain that comes
straight from the hand of God, than hereafter with the pain and shame
which your own wife or child might bring upon you. And for me--oh,
my God, let me not think upon my own suffering! let this poor heart
fail, and yield even now in its bitter misery! Percival, Percival,
say you can forgive me, or my heart must break!" And the unnatural
calmness giving way at last, she flung herself into his arms, and
wept bitterly.
"You bid me take back my love, sweetheart," he said. "I can no more
so do than cause yon sun to cease shining at your bidding! An no
earthly marriage may be ours, yet no power can sever the sweet union
of our souls, which, perchance, being more wholly given to God's
service here on earth, shall so be only the more closely joined
together in Him to all eternity. There is in heaven no 'marrying nor
giving in marriage,' yet I trow, the promise that we shall be 'as the
angels' hath in it the hid secret of a deeper love and bliss than our
earth-bound hearts can yet imagine. Can we, dear heart, but wear our
cross bravely here, our future crown will be but the brighter, and
our love shine with greater radiance. Yet--oh, my sweet wife--whom
now in a few short days I hoped to call mine own--my spirit fails me
in this dark hour of suffering! How can we bear our severed lives
through the weary years that lie before us? Is there yet for us no
hope, nowhere for us in this bright world one gleam of light in our
darkness? Nay, Primrose, I cannot take your bitter words for truth.
In three days will be our looked-for wedding-day! I cannot let you
go! I will defy these horrid shades of evil, and you shall be mine
here as well as in eternity! No ill shall have power to touch the
loved wife who is to be the light of my home, the God-given treasure
to lead me ever nearer Him!"
"Then let me lead you now, dear heart!" cried Primrose, through her
bitter tears. "It is even now this higher path of duty that we are
called to tread--a painful, stony path, which leads away from all the
fair hopes so soon to have been realised--from that dear home for
which we have together looked and longed, and which is so nearly
ours--and yet a path we must tread, Percival, even if with bleeding
feet and breaking hearts! It is a bitter struggle to keep my vow,
Percival, and sorely am I tempted to believe this new grief of ours
to be but an idle dream, from which I shall presently awake to find
all sunlight as before; but in the very depths of my heart I know my
vow to be right in the sight of God. Tempt me no more, beloved!
Here, where the vision of the fair immortal maiden first touched the
secret springs of your heart, must you vow, as she of old, to forsake
all mortal longing, and retain only in your heart that love which is
eternal, in whose unalterable light we may yet walk this weary earth
with footsteps lightened by a tender, loving friendship, which none
may sever, and which shall bind us even in this present world in an
unseen bond, which is but the shadow of that which shall be
hereafter."
But the chaplain, gazing down upon the sweet, upturned face, glowing
with a beauty which surely was of heaven itself, turned away his eyes
in unspeakable agony. His heart was not yet ready for the sacrifice,
and his whole nature rose in rebellion against the taking up of this
cross, from which his secret reason and conscience told him there was
no escape. Alone he must wrestle, as she had done in her own first
agony, ere he could say he was willing to bid farewell to the earthly
treasure his hand had so nearly grasped, and to which his heart clung
with only the greater tenacity because of its own wearisome
struggles--struggles never confessed to her he loved, but which had
already torn his heart for many a day in the past months with their
perplexing conflict; the intense love, which bade him at any price
seek to make his new-found treasure his own, warring secretly with
the oft-recurring dread lest this earthly love should tempt him to
forsake that special work he had vowed to God as a free-will
offering--that work so sorely needed among His outcast and suffering
ones, yet so little recognised by the world, or even by his brother
clergy, and which might bring upon him sore obloquy and grievous
trial, hard to bear for himself, and which his soul had shrunk from
asking a loved one to share with him. And then that yet sorer
struggle waged between his own heart and that cruel burden of the
curse, which had for a time stood before him as insuperable a barrier
between himself and happiness as it now stood before her he loved!
But for Rhiwallon and his firm assurance, even Lady Bryn Afon's
pleadings and tears would not have moved him to confess his love,
but, while loving Primrose with a deep, unalterable devotion, he
would have kept his secret for ever buried in his own breast,
pursuing alone till death his solitary course and combat with evil.
Now that in his perfect confidence in the physician's judgment he had
long since forgotten these past grievous struggles of the soul, and
that the ever-deepening knowledge of Shanno's perfect sympathy and
deep affection, which, through good report and ill, would keep her
ever at his side, had long made him feel with heartfelt thankfulness
that his decision had been well, the sudden blow fell with
unutterable agony, and crippled every thought but the one which
echoed with passionate cry through every fibre of his being--"I
cannot give her up! I cannot drink this bitter cup--take up this
heavy cross--it is impossible!"
"Primrose," he said, after a long silence, during which she had
waited in agony for his next words, "Primrose, I cannot answer you
now. I must be alone with God, and pray Him to vouchsafe me that
calmness of spirit in which alone I can judge rightly. My brain
whirls, and my heart is sick with pain. Shanno, Shanno," and his
face grew yet whiter in sudden agony, "you have not ceased to love
me? I can bear all but that!"
"Methinks I have but loved you more since I have vowed ne'er to be
your wife," said Primrose sadly. Then, flinging herself into his
arms, she sobbed convulsively. "Oh, Percival, do not doubt me! To
all eternity you are my one and only love! You weep, Percival? Oh,
my God, this is verily the bitterness of death!" And in the presence
of such utter woe the bright mid-day sun veiled his face beneath a
fleecy cloudlet, and the very birds hushed their song, and built in
silence their nests amid the thorn bushes. And presently, in the
mysterious stillness of the lonely mountains, it seemed to the
chaplain that a voice spoke sweetly in his ear, and said in wondrous
loving accents; "As thou hast been granted to bear in thy mortal
frame a mark of My human likeness, so shalt thou be likewise
accounted worthy to bear in thy soul the mark of My sufferings. Take
up thy cross and follow Me." And the chaplain fell on his knees by
the dim, dark lake, and bowed his head in mute submission, rising
presently, weary as a child from his bitter conflict, yet conscious
within himself of the dawning of a strange new strength.
He turned away in silence, took Shanno's hand, and mechanically they
descended together the steep hillside towards the farm. On the
threshold he stopped, and looked long and earnestly into her face.
"Sweetheart," he said, "my heart is rent in twain with sorrow, and in
the selfishness of my own grief I have forgotten yours, and suffered
my own weak tears to open afresh those wounds with which your tender
heart yet bleeds. But have a little patience with me, sweet one, and
you shall presently see me strong and brave to aid these weary feet
of yours along the stony path which we must tread in mutual sacrifice
of our earthly love, yet which perchance the light of a holy
friendship may gladden beyond our struggling hearts' present power to
conceive. Fain would I overcome by all the arguments love can offer
the decision you have made, yet my secret conscience, warring against
my rebellious heart, sternly bids me take up the cross you have
already laid upon your own tender shoulders, and bear it ever bravely
at your side. For love of me, dear heart, I see these golden locks,
alas, already sprinkled with grey! For love of you I will henceforth
strive to bury in my own breast the woe you bid me bear, and help you
with all the strength God gives me to walk worthily in that solitary
path He has called you to tread for His sake."
"Then you do indeed truly forgive me, and believe in your heart I
have done well?" cried Primrose. "Oh, Percival, my love, my love, in
my heart of hearts I know my vow is right in the sight of God, and
can I but know also that it is right in your dear eyes, I can bear
the rest!"
For a moment the chaplain covered his face with his hands and
trembled with the bitter force of his soul's conflict; then, raising
his pure, upturned face to heaven, a light, surely not of earth,
irradiated his beautiful countenance as he murmured in the words of
that holy saint whose sayings he ever treasured in his heart,
"Christ's whole life was a cross and martyrdom, and dost thou seek
rest and joy for thyself?" Then, turning to her he loved, with that
light still glowing in his deep, dark-fringed eyes, he said,
"Sweetheart, to 'do after the good and leave the evil' shall ever be
our motto, and since for us the sweet joys of earth, so good in
themselves, and so blessed of God, are yet for us two mysteriously
pronounced by Him as evil, we will together forsake them lovingly for
His sake, and with steadfast hearts walk hand in hand bravely through
this present life in the hallowed paths of friendship, and in His
great mercy wait for the full fruition of our love in the world to
come."