forget my folly, but let us not part in coldness.” He took her hand
again, as he spoke: “I perhaps deserve punishment for my selfishness in
thus asking the heart when I could not claim the hand; when I am gone,
some happier lover will perhaps ask both and then—”
“He will be denied,” interrupted Edith, hastily, turning her agitated
face towards her suitor. “This is no time for maiden coyness, Edward;
your happiness and mine are both at stake, and therefore I tell you,
what till this moment was unknown even to myself, that my affections are
in your keeping.”
“Dearest, dearest Edith, then am I supremely happy; I ask no more; let
the only bond between us be the secret one of cherished love.”
“Not so, Edward; you have promised your father not to enter into any
engagement, but I am bound by no such restraints. You are, and must
remain free from all other bonds than those of feeling, but if it will
add to your happiness to be assured of my faith during your absence, I
pledge you my word that my hand shall be yours whenever you come to
claim it.”
“But your parents, Edith,—what will they say, if they find you clinging
to a remembered lover, and perhaps rejecting some advantageous
settlement?”
“They will suffer me to pursue my own course, Edward, and will be
satisfied with any thing that binds me to my childhood’s home. I am too
much the companion of my parents to be looked upon in the light of an
intruder, when I prolong the period of filial dependence.”
“Then be it so, dearest; bound by no outward pledge, we will cherish our
affection within our hearts, and since we must part, you will still
gladden your quiet home with your sweet presence, while I will wander
forth to win the fortune which can alone secure me my future happiness.”
Three weeks after this interview, Edward Ellis sailed for Smyrna, and
Mrs. Pemberton, as she witnessed the ill-disguised agitation of the
lovers, was compelled to acknowledge that “after all, she really
believed, if Edward had staid, there would have been a match between him
and Edith.”
But Edith buried within her own bosom, her newly awakened emotions. Her
manner was always so quiet, that if her step did become less light, and
her voice grow softer in its melancholy cadence, it was scarcely noticed
by her thoughtless companions. She had learned that she was beloved,
only in the moment of separation, and therefore there were few tender
and blissful recollections to beguile the weary days of absence; but
“Woman’s love can live on long remembrance
And oh! how precious is the slightest thing
Affection gives, and hallows!”
She was one of those gentle beings who draw from the font of tenderness
within their own bosoms, a full draught of sympathy for the sufferings
and wants of others. She returned to her self-denying duties with a more
thoughtful spirit and a more loving heart. Her character, always full of
goodness and truth, seemed to assume an elevation of feeling, such as
nothing but a pure and unselfish attachment can ever create. A desire to
become in all respects, worthy of him whom she loved, gave a new tone to
all her impulses, and her vivid sense of duty became blended with her
earnest desire to merit her future happiness. Edward wrote very
punctually to his young friend Charles Pemberton, and every letter
contained some message to Edith, but she alone could detect the secret
meaning of the apparently careless lines. They afforded sufficient
nutriment to the love which was rapidly becoming a part of her very
being; and Edith was content to abide her time!
In the mean time Mrs. Pemberton, who became an adept in match-making,
busied herself in providing for her younger girls, and was fortunate
enough to secure two most eligible offers. Caroline, at eighteen became
the wife of a promising young lawyer, while Maria, who was nearly two
years younger, married at the same time a prosperous merchant, who had
lately set up his carriage and, as he had no time to use it himself,
wanted a wife to ride in it. Mrs. Pemberton was in ecstasies, for she
had succeeded in all her plans. Edith was still at home, as a sort of
house keeper, head cook, chief nurse, etc. etc., sharing every body’s
labors and lightening every body’s troubles, while the two giddy girls
who had resolved not to become useful as long as they could avoid the
necessity of it, were respectably settled in their own homes. She was
never tired of extolling the talents of one son-in-law, and the fine
fortune of the other, while she spoke of Edith as “that dear good girl,
who, I am happy to say, is a confirmed old maid, and will never leave
her mother while she lives.” But this manœuvre did not discourage
several from seeking the hand of the gentle girl. Her father wondered
when she refused two of the most unexceptionable offers, and even her
mother felt almost sorry, when she declined the addresses of an elderly
widower, endowed with a fortune of half a million, and a family of fine
children. But a total want of congeniality of feeling in all her
immediate friends, had taught Edith a degree of reserve which seemed
effectually to conceal her deepest feelings. She was patient and
trustful, she considered herself affianced in heart, and though
conscious that not even the tie of honor, as the world would consider
it, bound her lover to his troth, she felt no misgivings as to his
fidelity. She trod the even tenor of her way, diffusing cheerfulness and
comfort around her, thinking for every body, remembering every thing and
forgetting only herself. None sought her sympathy or assistance in vain;
in her own family—in the chamber of sickness or death, among her
friends,—in the hovel of poverty and distress, she was alike useful and
kindly. Every one loved her, and even those who tested her powers of
endurance most fully, almost idolized the unselfish and affectionate
daughter and sister.
Years passed on, and brought their usual chances and charges. Caroline
became a mother, and fancied that her cares were quite too heavy for her
to bear alone. Edith was therefore summoned to assist and soon found
herself occupying a similar station in her sister’s nursery to that
which she had long filled at home. The baby was often sick and always
cross; nobody but Edith could manage him, and therefore Edith took the
entire charge of him, while the mother paid visits and the nurse
gossiped in the kitchen. Maria too began to assert claims upon her. She,
poor thing, was entirely too young for the duties she had undertaken.
Thoughtless, fond of dress, and profuse in household expenditure, she
had no idea of systematic housekeeping, and Edith was called in to place
matters on a better footing. But before Maria had attained her
eighteenth year, her family was rather liberally increased by the
addition of twin daughters, and again the agency of the useful sister
was required. Her girlhood had been consumed amid womanly cares, and now
her years of blooming womanhood were to be wasted in supplying the
deficiencies of those who had incurred responsibilities which exceeded
their powers. Yet Edith never thought of murmuring. She had been so long
accustomed to live for others that self-sacrifice had now become
habitual, and she never dreamed too much might be asked of or granted by
sisterly affection.
It is a common remark that the years seem to grow shorter as we advance
in life, and they who could once exclaim “_a whole year!_” in accents of
unqualified alarm at its length, at last find themselves referring to
the same space in the careless tone of indifference as “_only a year_.”
Twelve months had seemed almost an eternity to Edith when her lover
first bade her farewell, and the time that intervened between his
letters to her brother seemed almost endless. But as she became
engrossed in new cares, and her youth began to slip by, the years seemed
to revolve with greater speed, even although Charles was now in a
distant part of the country and the correspondence between him and her
lover if it was still continued, never met her eye. She had formed an
intimacy with Edward’s mother, and, as the old lady was very fond of
needle-worked pin-cushions, net purses, worsted fire screens, and all
such little nick nacks if obtained without expense, Edith was soon
established in her good graces. She was thus enabled to see Edward’s
letters to his parents, and though they were very business-like
commonplace affairs, not at all resembling a lady’s beau-ideal of a
lover’s epistle, still Edith was satisfied. It was strange that so
strong, so abiding, so pervading a passion should have taken possession
of a creature so gentle, so almost cold in her demeanor. But the calmest
exterior often conceals the strongest emotions, and, if the flow of
Edith’s feelings was quiet it was only because they worked for
themselves a deeper and less fathomable channel.
Seventeen years,—a long period in the annals of time, and a longer in
the records of the heart;—seventeen years passed ere Edward Ellis
returned to his native land. He had left it a romantic warm-hearted
youth and he returned a respectable, intelligent, wealthy man. The
ambition which would have led him to seek literary fame, had been
expended in search of other distinctions in the world of commerce. He
had become a keen observer of men and an acute student of the more
sordid qualities of human nature—in a word, he had devoted his fine
energies to the acquisition of wealth, and as his father predicted, he
had so well availed himself of his opportunities that he was both an
enlightened and rich merchant. But the romance of his early days had
long since passed away. The imaginative student was concealed or rather
lost in the man of the world. Thrown upon his own resources, in a
foreign land, and surrounded by strangers he had learned to think and
act for himself. He had acquired the worldly wisdom which enabled him to
study his own interests, and it is not strange that selfishness should
have mingled its alloy with his naturally amiable character. During his
long sojourn abroad no claims had been made upon his affections, he had
lived unloving and unloved, and the warm current of his feelings seemed
gradually to have become chilled. When seen through the mist of absence,
or viewed through the long vista of time, the familiar faces of his
distant home, faded into vague and indistinct images. He returned to the
scenes of his youth with a feeling of strangeness and the remembrances
at every step of his approach were rather mournful than pleasant to his
soul.
Edward Ellis had been several days at home, he had fully answered all
the claims filial and fraternal duty, and received the congratulations
of the friends who are always found ready to note one’s good fortune,
ere he bent his steps towards the dwelling of Edith Pemberton. His
feelings in this as in most other things were materially altered. His
early passion, like his aspirations after fame, had become but as a
dream of the past, a shadow of some unattainable felicity. The hope
which once made his love a source of anticipated happiness, had long
since faded from his sight, and as time passed on, a tender and
melancholy interest, such as one feels when regarding the youthful dead,
was the only emotion which the recollection of Edith could inspire. He
had outlived the affection which he had designed to be the measure of
their existence. The flower had been blighted by the cold breath of
worldliness, and so many sordid interests had occupied his heart since,
that every trace of its beauty was lost forever. Not with a wish to
revive old feelings, but from a morbid restless unsatisfied yearning
towards the past, Ellis betook himself to the abode of his once loved
Edith.
As he entered the hall, and ere the servant could announce his name, a
young lady emerged from the drawing-room, and met him face to face. He
started in unfeigned surprise, as he exclaimed:—
“Miss Pemberton!—Edith—can it be possible?”
The lady looked a little alarmed, and opening the door through which she
had just passed said:—
“My name is Margaret, sir; did you wish to see sister Edith?”
He answered in the affirmative, and as he took his seat while the
sylph-like figure of the beautiful girl disappeared, he could not help
glancing at the mirror, where a moment’s reflection soon convinced him
that the years which had so changed him could scarcely have left Edith
untouched. The thought that Margaret whom he had left almost an infant
should have thus expanded into the lovely image of her sister, prepared
him in some measure for other changes.
Edith had expected his visit with a flutter of spirits most unusual and
distressing. She was conscious that he would find her sadly altered in
person, and she had been trying to school herself for the interview,
which she well knew must be fraught with pain even if it brought
happiness. But when her young sister came to her with a ludicrous
account of the strange gentleman’s droll mistake, her prophetic soul,
which had acquired the gift of prescience from sorrow, saw but too
plainly the cloud upon her future. She descended to the drawing-room
with a determination to control her emotions, and, to one so accustomed
to self command, the task though difficult was not impossible. The
meeting between the long parted lovers was painful and full of
constraint. In the emaciated figure, and hollow cheek of her who had
long passed the spring of life, Ellis saw little to awaken the
associations of early affection, for the being who now appeared before
him scarcely retained a trace of her former self. Time, and care, and
the wearing anxiety of hope deferred had blighted the beauty which under
happier circumstances might have outlived her youthfulness. Edith was
now only a placid pleasant looking woman with that indescribable air of
mannerism which always characterises the single lady of a certain age,
and as Ellis compared her present appearance with that of her blooming
sister, who bore a most singular resemblance to her, he was tempted to
feel a secret satisfaction in the belief that her heart was as much
changed as her person.
And what felt Edith at this meeting? She had lived on one sweet hope,
and had borne absence, and sorrow, and the wasting of weary expectancy
with the patience of a loving and trusting heart. It is true that, as
years sped on, she lost much of the sanguine temper which once seemed to
abbreviate time and diminish space. It is true that as time stole the
bloom from her cheek and the brightness from her eye, many a misgiving
troubled her gentle bosom, and the shadow of a settled grief seemed
gradually extending its gloom over her feelings. But still hope
existed,—no longer as the brilliant sunshine of existence,—no longer
as the only hope which the future could afford,—but faded and dim—its
radiance lost in the mist of years, yet still retaining a spark of its
early warmth. She had many doubts and fears but she still had pleasant
fancies of the future, which, cherished in her secret heart, were the
only fountains of delight in the dreary desert of her wasted feelings.
But now all was at an end. They had met, not as strangers, but, far
worse, as estranged friends. The dream of her life was rudely
broken—the veil was lifted from her eyes,—the illusion which had given
all she knew of happiness, was destroyed forever. In the words of him
who has sounded every string of love’s sweet lyre, she might have
exclaimed in the bitterness of her heart:—
“Had we but known, since first we met,
Some few short hours of bliss,
We might in numbering them, forget
The deep deep pain of this;
But no! our hope was born in fears
And nursed ’mid vain regrets!
Like winter suns, it rose in tears,
Like them, in tears it sets.”
Mrs. Pemberton at first formed some schemes, founded on the remembrance
of Edward’s former liking for Edith, but when she learned his error
respecting Margaret she began to fancy that if her eldest daughter was a
little too old, the younger was none too young to make a good wife for
the rich merchant. She expressed her admiration of his expanded figure,
extolled his fine hair, which happened to be a well made wig, was in
raptures with his beautiful teeth which owed their brilliancy to the
skill of a French dentist, and, in short, left no means untried to
accomplish her end. But she was doomed to disappointment. It is not easy
to kindle a new flame from the ashes of an extinguished passion. There
was a secret consciousness, a sense of dissatisfaction with himself,
that made Ellis rather shrink from Edith’s society, and threw an air of
constraint over his manner towards the whole family. He was not happy in
the presence of her who appeared before him as a spectre of the past,
bearing reproaches in its melancholy countenance, and after a few
embarrassed attempts at carelessness in his intercourse with her, he
ceased entirely to visit the family.
No one ever knew what Edith suffered, for no one suspected her
long-cherished attachment. Her step became languid, her cheek sunken,
her eye unnaturally bright, and when at length, a hacking cough fastened
itself upon her lungs, every body said that Edith Pemberton was falling
into a consumption. Some attributed it to a cold taken when nursing her
sister through a dangerous illness,—others thought she had worn out her
health among her numerous nephews and nieces. But the worm lay at the
root of the tree and though the storm and the wind might work its final
overthrow, the true cause of its fall was the gnawing of the secret
destroyer. Gradually and quietly and silently she faded from among the
living. Friends gathered round her couch of suffering and the
consolations of the Book of all truth smoothed her passage to the tomb.
With a world of sorrow and care sinking from her view, and an eternal
life of happiness opening upon her dying eyes, she closed her useful and
blameless life.
On the very day fixed upon for his marriage with a young and fashionable
heiress, Edward Ellis received a summons to attend, as pall bearer, the
funeral of Edith Pemberton. Of course he could not decline, and as he
beheld the earth flung upon the coffin which concealed the faded form of
her whom he had once loved, the heart of the selfish and worldly man was
touched with pity and remorse. But he turned from Edith’s grave to his
own bridal and in the festivities of that gay scene soon forgot her who,
after a life spent in the service of others, had fallen a victim to that
chronic heart-break which destroys many a victim never numbered in the
records of mortality.
Gentle reader, I have told you a simple story, but one so like the
truth, that you will be tempted to conjecture that the real heroine has
been actually known to you. Will not the circle of your own acquaintance
furnish an Edith Pemberton?—a gentle, lovely and loveable woman, who
leads a life of quiet benevolence, and whose obscure and peaceful
existence is marked by deeds of kindness, even as the windings of a
summer brook are traced by the freshness of the verdure and flowers that
adorn its banks? Have you never met with one of those persons on whose
gravestone might be inscribed the beautiful and touching lines of the
poet Delille?
“Joyless I lived yet joy to others gave!”
And when you have listened to the bitter jest, the keen sarcasm and the
thoughtless ridicule which the young and gay are apt to utter against
“_the old maid_,” has it never occurred to you that each of these
solitary and useful beings may have her own true tale of young and
disappointed affection?
* * * * *
TO AN ANTIQUE VASE.
BY N. C. BROOKS.
In the cabinet of M. Villaneu is an antique vase of elegant
proportions and beautiful workmanship that was fished up from
the sea. It is wreathed with coral and madripore, in the most
grotesque manner. The play of Imagination I hope will not be
considered too free in supposing it had been used in ancient
sacrifices, at the founding of cities, and the revels of
royalty.
Ages have passed since, amid the gale,
A votive gift to the god of the sea
Thou wert cast where the Tyrian’s broidered sail
O’er the Adrian wave swept wildly free:
And we muse, as we gaze on thy tarnished gleam,
On the vanished past in a quiet dream.
Where ancient temples once flashed with gold
Thou hast stood with the priest at the holy shrine—
Where in amber wreaths the incense rolled,
Thou hast shed thy treasure of votive wine:
Now the temples are fallen—the altars lone,
And the white-robed priest and his gods are gone.
Where the augur waved and the monarch prayed
Thy font has the full libation poured;
And when the city walls were laid
The palace rose and the castle towered:
But they sunk by the engine and Time’s dark flood,
And the wild grass waves where the columns stood.
In the festal halls where eyes grew bright,
And pulses leaped at the viol’s sound,
Thou hast winged the hours with mystic flight,
As the feast and the mazy dance went round:
Now mosses the mouldering walls encrust,
And the pulseless hearts of the guests are dust.
Yes creeds have changed, and forms have grown old—
Empires and nations have faded away
Since the grape last purpled thy shining gold;
And grandeur and greatness have met decay
Since the beaded bubbles of old did swim,
Like rubies, around thy jewelled brim.
* * * * *
THE OLD WORLD.
BY GEORGE LUNT.
There was once a world and a brave old world,
Away in the ancient time,
When the men were brave and the women fair,
And the world was in its prime;
And the priest he had his book,
And the scholar had his gown,
And the old knight stout, he walked about
With his broadsword hanging down.
Ye may see this world was a brave old world,
In the days long past and gone,
And the sun it shone, and the rain it rained,
And the world went merrily on.
The shepherd kept his sheep,
And the milkmaid milked the kine,
And the serving-man was a sturdy loon
In a cap and doublet fine.
And I’ve been told in this brave old world,
There were jolly times and free,
And they danced and sung, till the welkin rung,
All under the greenwood tree.
The sexton chimed his sweet sweet bells,
And the huntsman blew his horn,
And the hunt went out, with a merry shout,
Beneath the jovial morn.
Oh, the golden days of the brave old world
Made hall and cottage shine;
The squire he sat in his oaken chair,
And quaff’d the good red wine;
The lovely village maiden,
She was the village queen,
And, by the mass, tript through the grass
To the May-pole on the green.
When trumpets roused this brave old world,
And banners flaunted wide,
The knight bestrode the stalwart steed,
And the page rode by his side.
And plumes and pennons tossing bright
Dash’d through the wild mêlée,
And he who prest amid them best
Was lord of all, that day.
And ladies fair, in the brave old world,
They ruled with wondrous sway;
But the stoutest knight he was lord of right,
As the strongest is to-day.
The baron bold he kept his hold,
Her bower his bright ladye,
But the forester kept the good greenwood,
All under the forest tree.
Oh, how they laugh’d in the brave old world,
And flung grim care away!
And when they were tired of working
They held it time to play.
The bookman was a reverend wight,
With a studious face so pale,
And the curfew bell, with its sullen swell,
Broke duly on the gale.
And so passed on, in the brave old world,
Those merry days and free;
The king drank wine and the clown drank ale,
Each man in his degree.
And some ruled well and some ruled ill,
And thus passed on the time,
With jolly ways in those brave old days
When the world was in its prime.
* * * * *
THOUGHTS ON MUSIC.
BY HENRY COOD WATSON.