It was the eve of the New Year. The snow had folded its white mantle
over the earth, and in the gardens, where the flowers had hidden their
fragile beauty from the ruthless fingers of the Frost King, it gleamed
whitely from amid the sombre foliage of the hardy evergreens. On lawn
and terrace it lay in uneven drifts, tossed at will by the chilling
winter winds. Pendant from tree and shrub hung glittering icicles, and
on the window panes the frostwork looked like the invisible effort of
some fairy spirits, that a breath from mortals would dissolve.
The bright New Year is ever welcomed as a season of enjoyment for those
who have happy homes, where friends meet around well-laden boards, to
return thanks for past prosperity, and form plans for future happiness.
But to others, friendless, forsaken, and perhaps weary of a life of
ill-requited toil, the retrospection is often inexpressibly mournful.
Alone in her room, at her friend's humble cottage, sat Clemence
Graystone, watching for the noiseless incoming of another year. The
light gleamed redly out from the blazing wood fire, lighting up the
small apartment with its cheerful glow, but failed to call anything like
warmth or color to the marble face that drooped low with its weight of
painful thought.
The morrow was to be her wedding day. She raised her head and glanced
around the room, which was filled with all the paraphernalia of the
wedding toilet.
An undefined dread took possession of her. It seemed as though this
happiness, that appeared so near, was yet to elude her. A mirror stood
where she could behold her own image. A sadness stole over the girl's
spirit as she looked at the semblance of herself there reflected. As she
gazed, she seemed to be communing with some invisible presence, and she
found herself pitying the young face in the mirror, as if it were
another than her own.
While she looked sorrowfully, a second shadow became dimly outlined
behind it. Clemence started in momentary terror. The thought occurred to
her of the old-time superstition connected with this illusion. She
remembered that an old nurse had told her in childhood that it was an
omen of death to behold this spectral shadow. In spite of her freedom
from vulgar superstition, her lips grew colorless, and her heart beat
with alarm. She sank down again into her chair, cowering close to the
cheerful fire.
An hour passed thus. The clock struck twelve. The girl roused herself
again at this--remembered that this was to be the most eventful day of
her existence. "I must retire," she soliloquized; "it will never do to
have pale cheeks or troubled thoughts for my wedding day. Would that I
could make myself beautiful for his dear sake."
A smile of hope and joy wreathed the lips of the soft-eyed dreamer. She
paced the floor absently backward and forward, with far-off gaze; then
knelt at her bedside and breathed to the kind All Father a prayer for
guidance and strength for what might come to her.
Clemence Graystone's future seemed, for the first time since her
father's sudden death, to hold in it somewhat of happiness for her
portion. The dreary waste had changed to a smiling landscape, that
glowed beneath skies of a roseate hue. There was surely nothing now to
fear. With the love of one powerful to protect her from life's ills,
means to lavish upon the wistful-eyed child who had grown each day
deeper into her affections, and a firm, trusting faith in the guidance
of One who ruleth over the world He has created, a faith that had kept
her from despair in the darkest hour, and made her young life beautiful;
with hope beckoning, with smiling eyes, to the crowning glory of
womanhood, this girl, who had suffered so much from fate, ought to have
been content and happy. But the mysterious shadow of her coming doom
brooded darkly over her.
At length, inspired with a sudden feeling, for which she could hardly
account, Clemence rose, and seated herself at her writing-desk. If she
had been given to spiritual sympathies, she would have said that her
hand was controlled by some unseen power. As it was, there was a look of
awe upon the pallid face that bent to the task, and the girl was whiter
than the paper before her, as she wrote thus:
MY DEAREST FRIEND: Something within me, a strange, mysterious
influence, the whisperings, perhaps, of some angel spirit sent to
call me hence, impels me to write these few words of farewell.
If nothing should happen me, if my life should flow on tranquilly
into the valley of peace that my fond fancy pictured, then I will
keep this to laugh over, as the wild vagaries of an over-wrought,
excited imagination. But, if death should find me at my labor of
love, you will know how irrevocably my heart has been given to you,
and realize somewhat of the depths of that affection which my lips
have never dared to frame. Oh, my darling, had I been permitted to
live, I would have worshipped you; and if God calls me, I will
still hover around you, and be the first to welcome one I loved to
Heaven. All that you have been to the weary-hearted girl, you will
never know. Life seemed hopeless, but your affection has made it a
dream of happiness. I have wanted to tell you how deeply your image
was graven on my heart; how one face that was dear to me haunted my
sleeping and waking dreams. I would have lived for you, and can die
breathing a blessing for your future.
There is one other that I have cared for as a mother would the babe
she carried in her bosom. My patient, tender-eyed Ruth--watch over
her when I am gone. Sometimes, when thinking of this hour, I have
prayed that its bitterness might be averted. Realizing the agony of
parting, the cruel severing of the clinging tendrils of unselfish
affection, I have shrunk from the trial. But now I feel that my
strength is sufficient, even unto the end. Though I walk through
the "valley of the shadow of death," I do not fear, for I can
behold the light that breaks beyond, "over the delectable
mountains."
My own Love! Strive to meet me there. Others have gone before--the
fond eyes that watched over my cradle, the mother who nursed me
during the hours of helpless infancy, and he who sheltered and
protected my early youth with tenderest care. I shall know and love
them again. The thought makes me happy.
I have one last request to make. During my years of loneliness,
when I have met with so much to dishearten and discourage me in my
efforts to earn an honest livelihood, I have learned to pity the
struggling, self-supporting ones of my sex, as only those can pity
and sympathize who have suffered from a similar cause. I have often
wished that I had means to provide a home, not for "fallen women,"
but for those patient toilers who are breasting the cruel,
overwhelming waves of adversity. There are many such, thrown from
loving homes upon the charities of a cold and selfish world. It is
my desire to benefit them, and, with this end in view, I would
leave the money which has so lately come to me, to be expended in
the erection of a home to shelter helpless and unprotected women,
who are incapable of self-support, either wholly or in part.
This is no school-girl fancy, but a plan long matured, formed from
experience and observation. It is a sorrowful fact, that has come
within my own knowledge, that more than one delicately-reared girl,
having an innate love of virtue and horror of vice, has fallen into
infamy from this cause. They have resorted to crime from a total
inability to sustain themselves in even the humblest manner, or
provide the coarsest food and clothing by their own unaided
efforts. I would be glad to give what means and influence I may
possess for so worthy an object, and I trust you to carry out these
my last wishes.
I can write no more. God be with and comfort you, my own, own love.
That was all. The pen dropped from the nerveless grasp. Clemence bent
her head wearily on the table, and fell into a trance-like slumber.
The night waned. The dawn of the New Year found the pale sleeper with
her golden head still pillowed on her arm, and the last words that the
slender fingers would ever trace, waiting for the coming of one to break
the spell of silence, that had hushed the pale-browed sleeper into
everlasting rest.
CONCLUSION.
"Dead! dead! dead!" moaned Ulrica Hardyng, bending in agony over the
lifeless form, and looking vainly for some answering gleam of
recognition in the blue eyes, that had ever beamed upon her with glances
of love and sympathy.
And this was the end of all these months of working and waiting, which
was to be crowned with a glorious fruition that had filled all hearts
with joyous anticipation.
But there was no time for idle sorrow. A little white-robed figure, with
great wild eyes, and tangled curls falling over dimpled shoulders, stole
into the room, and flung herself at the feet of the still figure, that
drooped now in the woman's arms; and then a cry rang through the house,
so fraught with anguish, that people hurrying by, in the early morning
light, stood with startled faces, and questioned as to its cause, then
reverently entered the house of woe.
Below, in the little parlor of the cottage, they laid all that was
mortal of Clemence Graystone, and there, he who had hastened to meet the
loved one, passed the long hours of that New Year's day alone with his
dead.
Grief, like joy, should be sacred from stranger eyes, and we will not
linger over the scene, but glide softly from the place that has been
made desolate by the dread presence of the destroyer.
They buried the young teacher by the side of the child she had loved in
life, and whose sad dream was thus fulfilled. The people whom she had
come among, only to be slighted, and more than that, persecuted with
malignant energy, united at her death in awarding the meed of praise
they had denied her in life. It mattered little, though, to one who had
left the cares and trials of earth behind, what remorseful tears were
shed over her mortal remains. It was all over now, and the troubled
heart had found peace, and that pure joy which "floweth like a river."
In the little cemetery at Waveland there is one carefully-tended spot,
that is the shrine at which a little group of sable-clad mourners meet,
to mingle their tears and prayers together. Two of them are elderly
women, who greet each other as "Alicia" and "Ulrica," and the others, a
grave-faced man, leading by the hand a young, delicate-looking girl, are
Ruth, and her guardian, Wilfred Vaughn.
The marble slab before which they kneel, bears this upon its pure
surface: "Clemence Graystone, aged 21 years." And underneath, the simple
but expressive words, "At rest."
THE END.