"What a noble forest!" cried Annie, as she gazed with rapturous
admiration on a noble specimen of the engraver's art--so noble, indeed,
that the absence of color seemed hardly to be felt. It was a
richly-wooded scene, with interesting figures forming a procession in
the centre and foreground of the landscape. The original might have been
painted by Ruysdaël. "Those old oaks," she exclaimed, "with their
gnarled and crooked branches, look as though they might have formed part
of the Druidical groves whose solemn mysteries inspired even the
arrogant Roman with awe. This picture, however, belongs to a later
period--that of the Crusades, perhaps, for here is a procession in which
appear figures in the long robe of the monk, and I think I can discern a
cross on that banner borne at their head. But what, dear Aunt Nancy,
could you possibly find in our land of yesterday, to associate with such
a scene?"
"Our people may be of yesterday, Annie, but our land bears no marks of
recent origin. The most arrogant boaster of the Old World may feel
himself humbled as he stands within the shadow of our forests, and looks
up to trees which we might almost fancy to have waved over the heads of
'the patriarchs of an infant world?'"
"And you have seen some such forests, and on the branches of these old
trees 'hangs a tale' which you will tell us. Is it not so, Aunt Nancy?"
"I have seen such a forest, and I have a sketch of certain events
occurring within its circle. The narrative was given me by my friend,
Mrs. H., who was acquainted with the parties. You will find it in her
handwriting in the compartment of my desk from which you took the
engraving."
Annie found the paper, and I saw a quiet smile pass around as she read
aloud its title. Mr. Arlington, at my request, took the reader's place,
and we spent our evening in listening to
THE HISTORY OF AN OLD MAID.
It is an almost universal belief among those who have faith in man's
immortality, that when his spiritual nature has been divested of its
present veil--the bodily organization by which it at pleasure reveals or
conceals itself--it shall be manifested to all at a glance in the
unsullied beauty of holiness, or the dark deformity of vice. Shall our
vision extend further? Shall we read the soul's past history? Shall we
know the struggles which have given strength to its powers? The fears
which have shadowed, and the hopes which have lighted, its earthly path?
Shall we learn the unspoken sacrifices which have been laid on the altar
of its affections or its duty? Shall we see how a single generous
impulse has shaped the whole course of its being, and been as a heavenly
flame, to which every selfish desire and feeling have been committed in
noiseless devotion? If this be so, how many such records shall be
furnished by the life of woman? How often shall it be found, that from
such a flame has risen the light with which she has brightened the
existence of others!
Meeta Werner was the daughter of industrious, honest Germans, who had
emigrated to the western part of Pennsylvania when she was a child of
only seven years old. Only a quarter of a mile from the spot on which
Carl Werner had fixed his residence lived a brother German, Franz
Rainer. Franz was a widower, with one child, a son, named Ernest. He was
a hard, stern man, and the first smiles which had lighted the existence
of the young Ernest were caught from the sprightly Meeta and her
kind-hearted mother. The children became playfellows and friends. It was
a wild country in which they lived. A very short walk from their own
doors brought them into a forest which seemed to their young
imaginations endless; where gigantic trees interlaced their branches,
and with their green foliage shut out the sun in summer, or in winter
reflected it in dazzling brightness, and a thousand gorgeous colors,
from the icicles which cased their leafless branches and pendent twigs.
There was not a footpath, a sunny hill or flowery dell, for miles around
their homes, which had not been trodden together by Meeta Werner and
Ernest Rainer before their acquaintance was a year old. Now they would
come home laden with wood-flowers, and now they might be seen treading
wearily back from some distant spot, with baskets filled with
blackberries, or with the dark-blue whortleberries. There were no
schools in the neighborhood, but they had been taught by their fathers
to read and write their own language, and Ernest afterwards acquired
some knowledge of English from the good pastor who had accompanied the
emigrants from Germany, and who acted as their interpreter when they
required one. Having access to few books, they seemed likely to grow up
with little more learning than might be gathered from their own
observation of the world around them; but when Ernest was eighteen and
Meeta fifteen years of age, circumstances occurred which gave an
entirely new coloring to their lives.
Franz Rainer had not always been so stern and hard as he now seemed. He
had married imprudently, in the world's acceptation of that term; that
is, he had made a portionless but lovely girl his wife, and in doing so
had incurred his father's lasting displeasure. He had been banished from
a home of plenty with a small sum, "to keep him from starving," he was
told. With that sum and a young delicate wife he sailed for America, and
found a home for himself and his boy, and a grave for his wife, in the
forests of Pennsylvania. Too proud to seek a reconciliation with those
who had cast him off, he had held no communication with his own family
after leaving Germany; and it was not till Ernest was, as we have said,
eighteen, that the silence of his home was broken by what seemed a voice
from the past. After many hindrances and delays, and passing through
many hands for which it had not been intended, a letter reached him from
a merchant in Philadelphia, who had been requested to institute a search
for Franz by his only brother. The old Rainer was dead, and the family
estate had descended to this brother, a scholar and a man of solitary
habits. Finding himself growing old in a lonely home, and retaining some
kindly memory of the brother in whose companionship his childhood had
been passed, he wished him to return to Germany, and again dwell with
them in the house of their fathers. To this Franz would by no means
consent. His nature was cast in too stern a mould to re-knit at a word
the ties which had been so violently sundered. He consented, however,
after some correspondence with his brother, to send Ernest to Germany,
to be educated there; at least, to receive such an education as could be
gained in four years; for he insisted that at the end of that time he
should return to America, and remain there while his father lived.
"After my death, if he choose to return to the home from which his
father was banished, he may," wrote the still resentful Franz.
And how was this change in all the prospects of his life received by the
young Ernest and his companion Meeta? By him with mingled feelings;
regret, joy, fear, hope, by turns ruled his soul. The regret was all for
Meeta and her mother; they were the sources of all his pleasant
memories; and as he gazed upon Meeta's hitherto bright face, now
clouded with sorrow, and kissed from her cheek the first tears he had
ever known her to shed for herself, he was ready to give up all his fair
prospects abroad and live with her for ever. Meeta herself, however,
gave a new direction to his thoughts, by generously turning from the
subject of her grief in parting, to dwell on the idea of the delight
with which they would meet again, and especially on her peculiar
pleasure in seeing Ernest come back "riding in a grand coach, with
servants following him on horseback, as she remembered to have seen in
Germany, and knowing enough to teach Parson Schmidt himself!" After
listening to such prophecies, Ernest no longer expressed any desire to
remain with Meeta; he contented himself, instead, with promising to
return as soon as he could, and with winning from her a promise that,
come when he might, she would be his wife. This was not a new thought or
a new word to either. They could scarcely tell themselves when the idea
had first arisen in their minds that they would one day live together,
and be what Carl Werner and his wife were to each other. They had even
chosen a site for their house; and Ernest had more than once of late
expressed the opinion that they were old enough to inform their parents
of their intentions; but the more timid Meeta objected. Now, however,
she could refuse Ernest nothing, and before the day of parting came they
had made a _confidante_ of Meeta's mother, and from her the two fathers
had learned the desires of their children. Carl Werner heard the story
with a smile; but a denser shadow gathered on the dark brow of Franz.
For a moment something of his father's pride was in his heart; but his
own blighted life arose before him, and he said, "The boy may do as he
pleases. No man has a right to control another on such a subject."
The sun had not yet risen, though its rays were gilding the few light
clouds that flecked the eastern sky, when Meeta and Ernest stood
together beneath an old oak which had long been their favorite
"trysting-tree," to say those words and give and receive those last
looks which are among life's most sacred treasures. Smiles and blushes
mingled with tears on Meeta's cheek as Ernest pressed her to his bosom,
kissed her again and again, and promised that his first letter from
Germany should be addressed to her, and that in exactly four years from
that date he would be again beneath that tree, to claim her promise to
be his for ever. The voice of Carl Werner, who was to accompany Ernest
the first stage of his journey, startled them in the midst of their
adieus; and bursting from the arms of her companion, Meeta plunged
deeper into the woods to escape her father's eye. When Carl returned in
the evening he handed her a small parcel, saying, "There's some foolery
that Ernest bought for you, Meeta. Silly boy! I hope they'll teach him
in Germany to take better care of his money!"
The parcel contained a very plain locket, with one of Ernest's dark
curls inclosed in it. Plain as it was, it seemed to Meeta, as it
probably had seemed to Ernest, a magnificent present; yet she valued
more the few simple words written on the paper which enveloped it: "For
Meeta, my promised wife." Four months passed away before Meeta heard
again of her lover. Then there came a letter to her, which was full of
the great cities through which Ernest had passed, the home to which he
had come, and the new life which was opening to him there. In his
descriptions his uncle seemed a very grand gentleman, and his uncle's
housekeeper almost as grand a lady. He told of the new wardrobe which
had been provided for him, the acquaintances to whom he had been
introduced, and the studies he had commenced. And in all this Meeta saw
but the first step towards that grandeur which she had predicted for
him, and she rejoiced.
Four or five such letters were received by Meeta, each full of her
lover himself; but they came at lengthening intervals, and during the
third year she received from him only messages sent through his father,
though every message still conveyed a promise to write soon. The letters
of Ernest showed that he had made great advances in scholarship during
his residence in Germany, and to all but Meeta herself, and perhaps her
mother, they gave equal evidence that his heart was not with the home or
the friends he had left in America. But no shadow ever passed over the
transparent face of Meeta. Ernest was to her still the frank, ardent,
simple-hearted boy whom she had loved so long and so truly. She was
still his promised wife. Her quick sensibility to all which touched him
made her feel that there was a change in the tone with which her father
named him, and an expression, half of anger, half of pity, on his face
when she alluded to him. It was an expression which gave her pain,
though she did not understand its meaning; and she ceased to speak of
Ernest, lest she should call it up; but his locket lay next her heart,
his letters were well-nigh worn away with frequent reading, and no day
passed in which she did not visit the oak beneath which they had parted,
and beneath which she fondly believed they were to meet again.
During the fourth year of Ernest's absence his letters to his father
became more frequent, and sometimes inclosed a few lines to Meeta. To
both he expressed a strong desire to stay one more year abroad, alleging
that to interrupt his studies now would be to render all his past labors
unavailing. There was hardly a struggle in Meeta's mind in yielding her
almost matured hopes to what seemed so reasonable a wish of Ernest; but
the elder Rainer was not so easily won to compliance. Urgent
representations from his brother as well as Ernest, did at length,
however, induce him to consent to the absence of his son for another
year.
This was an important year to Meeta. It brought her an acquaintance
through whom her dormant intellect was aroused, and her manners fitted
for something more than the rude life by which she had been hitherto
surrounded. This was Mrs. Schwartz, the wife of a young pastor, who had
come to assist Mr. Schmidt in those duties to which his advancing years
rendered him unequal. Mrs. Schwartz was a woman of no ordinary stamp.
Highly educated, with an intense enjoyment of every form of beauty and
grace, she saw something of them embellishing the homeliest employments
and most common life with which a sentiment of duty was connected.
Severe illness had confined her to her bed for many weeks soon after her
arrival, and before she had been able to establish that perfect domestic
economy, which renders the daily and hourly inspection and interference
of the mistress of a mansion needless to the comfort of its inmates.
During this period, Meeta, whose sympathies had been deeply interested
in the stranger, nursed her, and planned for her, and worked for her,
until she made herself a place in her heart among her life-friends. As
Mrs. Schwartz saw her moving around her with such busy kindness, the
thought often arose in her mind, "What can I do for her?" This is a
question we seldom ask ourselves of any one sincerely without finding an
answer to it.
We have said that Meeta had access to few books in early life; we might
have added that she had little opportunity of hearing the conversation
of persons more cultivated than herself. Thus were the two great sources
of intellectual development sealed to her. She had a thoughtful, earnest
mind. She loved the beautiful world around her, and the GREAT BEING who
made and sustained that world. But if the contemplation of these things
awakened thoughts of a higher character than the daily baking and
brewing, milking and scrubbing in her father's house, she had no
language in which to clothe them, and vague and undefined, they fleeted
away like the morning mists, leaving no impress of their presence. Her
acquaintance with Mrs. Schwartz, and the conversation she sometimes
heard between her and her husband, gave to these shadows substance and
form, and awakened a new want in Meeta's soul--the want of knowledge. As
in all else, Ernest was present in this. He would doubtless be
intelligent, wise, like Mr. Schwartz, and how could she be his
companion? Something of these new experiences in Meeta was divined by
Mrs. Schwartz, and with a true womanly tact she became her teacher
without wounding her self-love. The road to knowledge once opened to
Meeta, her advance on it was rapid. How could it be otherwise, when
every step was bringing her nearer to Earnest! The elevation and
refinement of mind which Meeta thus acquired impressed themselves on her
agreeable features. Her dark eyes became bright with the soul's light,
and her whole aspect so attractive, that her old friends exclaimed, as
they looked upon her, "How handsome Meeta Werner grows, she who used to
be so plain!"
After a time these superficial observers thought they had found the
cause of this change in Meeta's change of costume, for a new sense of
beauty had been awakened in her, under whose guidance her dark hair was
brought in soft silken braids upon her cheeks, wound gracefully around
her well-shaped head, and sometimes ornamented with a ribbon or a
cluster of wild flowers: while her dresses where remodelled so as to
resemble less the fashion which her mother and her sister emigrants had
imported thirteen years before from Germany, and to give a more natural
air to her really fine figure.
"How wonderfully Meeta has improved," said Mr. Schwartz, one evening to
his wife, as he looked after the retreating form of her friend.
"Yes, and I am truly rejoiced that she has so improved before her lover
returns to claim her."
"I wish he could have taken away with him such an impression as our
handsome and intelligent Meeta would now make. He would have been much
more likely to remain constant to her. There must be a painful contrast
between the cultivated and graceful women he has known in Germany, and
his memory of his early love."
"Love is a great embellisher," said Mrs. Schwartz, with a gay smile, and
the conversation passed to more general topics.
The fifth year of Ernest's absence was gone, and still he came not; but
he was coming soon, at least so his father said, though he did not show
Meeta the letters on which he founded his assertion. It was the first
time he had withheld them; a circumstance the more remarkable, because
of late he seemed to regard Meeta with greater affection and confidence
than he had ever done before. He now sought her society, and seemed
pleased and even proud of the connection to which he had at first
consented with some reluctance. It was very soon after the reception of
the letter from Ernest to which we have alluded, that Franz Rainer's
health began to fail, and that so rapidly, that Meeta feared Ernest
could not arrive in time to see him. She was to the old man an angel of
consolation, and he clung to her as to his last hope. In pity to his
lonely condition, her own parents were willing to spare her for a time,
and Meeta, that she might take care of him by night as well as by day,
had removed to his house a week before Ernest's arrival. He came not
wholly unwarned of the sorrow that awaited him, for he had found a
letter from Meeta at the house of the merchant in Philadelphia through
whom he had corresponded with his father, tenderly yet plainly revealing
her fears, and urging him to hurry homeward without delay. He travelled
with little rest or refreshment for two days and nights, and arrived
late on the third day at his father's house. It was a still summer
evening, and while the old man slept, Meeta sat near him in the only
parlor the house afforded, reading by a shaded night lamp. She heard
the sound of carriage wheels, and paused to listen; the sound ceased; a
shadow darkened the moonlight which had been streaming through an open
window, and then Ernest, the playfellow of her childhood, the lover of
her youth, stood before her; but how changed, how gloriously changed
thought Meeta, even in that hour of hurry and agitation. They gazed on
each other in silence for a moment, and then Meeta with a bright smile,
yet in a whisper, for even then she forgot not the dying man, asked:
"Do you not know me, Ernest?"
"Meeta!" he ejaculated, as he took the hand she extended to him, but
dropping it almost immediately, he said anxiously: "My father! he lives,
Meeta?"
"He does, Ernest, and may live, I think _will_ live, for many days yet."
"Thank GOD! then I shall see him again!"
The conversation had till now been in whispers, but Ernest uttered his
ejaculation of thankfulness aloud. There was a movement in the old man's
room, a sound, and Meeta glided to his side.
"Who were you talking with, my daughter?" he murmured feebly. For many
days Franz Rainer had called Meeta daughter, as though he found pleasure
in recalling the tie between them.
"With one who tells me Ernest has arrived, and will see you soon," said
Meeta.
"It is Ernest himself. I knew his voice: Ernest, my son!" And the old
man's tones were loud and strong, as Meeta had heard them for days. In
another moment, Ernest was bending over his father, and they were gazing
on each other with a tenderness whose very existence they had not before
suspected. Tears were rolling down the face of the once stern old man,
as he pressed his son's hand again and again, and murmured blessings on
him, and thanks to GOD for his safe return; and Ernest, as he marked the
death-shadow on his father's brow, felt that a tie was tearing away
which had been woven more intimately than he had supposed with his
heart's fibres. The weeping Meeta composed herself that she might soothe
them.
"Ernest, I cannot let you stay longer here; I am your father's nurse."
"My nurse, my daughter, my all, Ernest; your gift to me, my son, which,
thank GOD! you have come in time to receive again from my hands. Take
her to you, Ernest."
The old man held Meeta's hand clasped in his own towards his son, and
Ernest touched it, but so slightly and with a hand so cold, that Meeta
looked up in alarm. There was a beseeching expression in the eyes that
met hers; a look which she did not understand, and yet on which she
acted.
"Ernest," she said, "you are fatigued to death, and your father has been
too much agitated already. Go, I pray you, for the present; I cannot
leave your father, but you will find coffee and biscuits by the kitchen
fire, and there is a bed prepared in your own room. Good-night; we shall
meet again to-morrow," she added with a smile to the old man.
Ernest gave her a more cordial glance and pressure of the hand than she
had yet received from him; told his father that he would only snatch an
hour's sleep and be with him again, and left the room.
"Go with him, Meeta; you must have much to say."
"Nothing that we cannot say as well to-morrow. And now you must take
another sleeping draught, for I see Ernest has carried off all the
effect of your last."
Meeta spoke cheerfully, yet her heart was sad, she scarcely knew why.
She would not think Ernest unkind, yet how different had been their
meeting from that which fancy had so often sketched for her!
Franz Rainer fell asleep, and again Meeta returned to the parlor. A lamp
was still burning there, and by its dim light she saw the form of Ernest
extended on a settee with his cloak and valise for his bed and pillow.
At first she drew timidly back into the chamber, but as the slight noise
she had made before perceiving him, had failed to disturb him, she felt
assured that he slept soundly, and an irresistible desire arose in her
heart to draw near him, and look at him more closely than she had yet
ventured to do. She stood beside him; her heart bounded against the
locket, his gift, which lay in its accustomed place, as she marked with
a quick eye how the handsome but uncouth stripling had expanded into the
man of noble proportions, whose features had, like her own, acquired a
new character under the refining touch of intellect. Meeta looked on him
till her eyes grew dim with tears pressed from a heart full of emotion,
compounded of happy memories and glad hopes, shadowed by disappointment
and saddened by doubt. Above all other feelings, however, rose the
undying love which had "grown with her growth, and strengthened with her
strength." Suddenly, by an irrepressible impulse, she laid her hand
softly on the dark locks of waving hair which clustered over his broad
brow, and breathed in low, tender accents, "My Ernest!"
On leaving his father's room, Ernest had thrown himself on his hard
couch, not to sleep, but to rest; and when slumber overpowered him, he
had yielded to it unwillingly, and with the determination to be on the
alert and ready to arise on the first summons. Sleep that comes thus,
howsoever it may continue through other disturbing causes, rarely
resists a touch, or the sound of our own name, and light as was Meeta's
touch, and low as were her tones, Ernest was partially aroused by them.
He stirred, and she would have retreated noiselessly from his side, but
as his eyes unclosed, they fell upon her with an expression of such
rapturous love as she had never seen in them before, and in an instant
he had encircled her form with his arm, and drawn her to his bosom. In
glad surprise she rested there a moment; it was but a moment.
"Sophie--my Sophie!" were the murmured words that met her ear, and gave
her strength to burst from his embraces and glide rapidly, noiselessly
back into the darkened chamber. There, sheltered by the darkness, she
could see Ernest raise himself slowly up from his couch, look almost
wildly around him, and then seemingly satisfied that he had only
dreamed, sink back again to rest.
A dream it had indeed been to him; a shadow of the night; to Meeta a
dark cloud, in whose gloom she was henceforth to walk for ever. Hours of
conversation could not so fully have revealed the truth to Meeta as
those simple words: "Sophie--my Sophie!" uttered by Ernest in such a
tone of heart-worship. Ernest loved with all the fond idolatry which she
had thought of late belonged not to man's affections; but he loved
another. Jealousy; the bitter consciousness of her own slighted love;
the memory of his vows; the crushing thought that she was nothing to him
now; that while he had been the life of her life, another had filled his
thoughts and ruled his being, created a wild tempest in her soul. All
was still around her. The sick man, the tired Ernest slept; and without,
not even the rustling of a leaf disturbed the repose of Nature. She
seemed to herself the only living thing in the universe; and to her,
life was torture. An hour passed in this still concentrated agony, and
she could endure it no longer; she must be up and doing; she would wake
Ernest; she would tell him the revelation she had made; upbraid him with
her blighted life, and leave him. Let him send for his Sophie; what did
she, the outcast, the rejected, there in his house?--why should she
nurse his father? She arose and approached again the couch of Ernest;
she was about to call to him, but she was arrested by the expression of
agony in his face. His brow was contracted, and as she continued to
gaze, low moans issued from his quivering lips. Ernest too was a
sufferer; how that thought softened the hard, cold, icy crust that had
been gathering around her heart! The bitterness of pride and jealousy
gave place to tenderer emotions. Tears gathered in her eyes, and
stealing softly back to her sheltered seat, she wept long and silently.
"In sorrow the angels are near;" and Meeta's heart was now full of
sorrow, not of anger. Sad must her life ever be, but what of that, if
Ernest could be happy? Perhaps he suffered for her; the good, true
Ernest. It might be that only in dreams he had told his love to Sophie,
bound to silence, painful silence, by his vows to her. She then could
make him happy, and was not that her first desire? If it were not, her
love was a low, selfish, unworthy love, and she would pray that it might
be purified. She did pray, not as she would have done an hour before, to
be taken out of the world, but that she might be made meet to do the
will of her FATHER while in the world. She prayed for herself, for
Ernest; and sweet peace stole into her heart, and before the morning
light came, she had resolved not to leave the old man who loved her,
during his few remaining days, yet not to keep Ernest in doubt of his
own freedom. She was impatient that he should awake, and fell asleep
imagining various modes of making her communication to him. Exhausted by
mental agitation even more than by watching, she slept long and heavily.
When she awoke, Ernest was shading the window at her side, through which
the sun was shining brightly into the room. As she moved he looked at
her kindly, and said:
"I am afraid I awoke you, Meeta, when I meant only to prolong your sleep
by shutting out this light."
"I have slept long enough," was all that Meeta could say. The old Rainer
was awake, and dreading above all things some allusions from him to the
supposed relations of Ernest and herself, she hastened from the room and
busied herself in the preparation of breakfast. Having seen that meal
placed upon the table, she returned to the sick room and begged that
Ernest would pour out his own coffee, while she did some things that
were essential to his father's comfort. She lingered till Ernest came to
see whether he could take her place, and then, as the old man slept
peacefully, and she could make no further excuse, she accompanied him
back to the table. The breakfast, a mere form to Meeta at least,
proceeded in silence, or with only a casual remark from Ernest, scarcely
heard by her, on the weather, the rapidity with which he had travelled,
or his father's condition. Suddenly Meeta seemed to arouse herself as
from a deep reverie:
"Why do you not talk to me of Sophie?" she said, attempting to speak
gayly, though one less embarrassed than Ernest could not have failed to
note the tremulousness of her voice, and the quivering of the pallid lip
which vainly strove to smile.
But Meeta's agitation was as nothing to that of Ernest. For a moment he
gazed upon her as though spell-bound, then dropping his face into his
clasped hands, sat actually shivering before her. It was plain that
Ernest had not lightly estimated his obligations to her. If he had
sinned against them he had not despised them, and this conviction gave
new strength to Meeta. She rose for the hour superior to every selfish
emotion. Laying her hand upon his arm, she said, gently:
"Be not so agitated, Ernest; can you not regard me as your friend, and
talk to me as you did in old days of all that disturbs you; and why
should you be disturbed at my speaking of--of your Sophie? You do not
suppose that--you know that--in short, Ernest, we cannot be expected to
feel now as we did five years ago; but surely that need not prevent our
being friends."
Meeta had been herself too much confused of late, to remark her
companion. When she now ventured with great effort to meet his eyes, she
found them fixed upon her with an expression of lively admiration and
grateful joy.
"Meeta, dear Meeta!" he exclaimed, seizing her hand and kissing it. "You
give me new life. I have been a miserable man for weeks past, torn by
conflicting claims upon my heart and my honor. You had claims on both,
Meeta; sacred claims, which I could never have asked you to forego; and
so had Sophie, for though I resisted long, there came a moment of mad
passion, of madder forgetfulness, in which, abandoning myself to the
present, I sought and obtained an avowal of her love. It was scarcely
over ere I felt the wrong I had done. I revealed that wrong to her; pity
me, Meeta! I told her all--your claims, your worth. To you I resolved to
be equally frank, and my only hope was in your generosity. But my father
had never suffered me to doubt that your heart was still mine, and
though I was assured that you would enable me to fulfil my obligations
to Sophie, I feared, I mean, I could not hope, that it would be without
any sacrifice; I mean without any regrets on your part."
Ernest paused in some embarrassment; but Meeta could not speak, and he
resumed:
"You have made me perfectly happy, Meeta, which even Sophie could not
have done, had I been compelled in devoting myself to her to relinquish
the friend and sister of my childhood."
"Always regard me thus, Ernest, as your friend and sister, and I shall
be satisfied."
Meeta had risen to return to the sick room, but Ernest caught her hand
and held her back, while he said:
"But you must see my Sophie, Meeta; you must know her and then you will
love her too. She will be here soon with her sister, Mrs. Schwartz."
"Mrs. Schwartz her sister? Then my last doubt is removed Ernest. She is
worthy of you."
"Worthy of me!" And Ernest would have run into all a lover's rhapsodies
on this text, but Meeta had escaped from him.
Hitherto Meeta's life had been one of quietness, of inaction, and now in
a few short weeks ages of active existence seemed crowded. One object
she had set before her as the great aim of her life; it was to secure
Ernest's happiness and preserve his honor. She understood now the
coldness with which her father had of late named him. It was essential
to her peace that this coldness should not deepen into anger. Not even
in her own family then must she have rest from the strife between her
inner and her outer life. Sympathy she must not have, since sympathy
with her was almost inseparably connected with reproach of Ernest. Time
had another lesson to teach, and Meeta soon learned it; that in a combat
such as she had to sustain, no half-way measures would suffice, that she
must not drive her griefs down to the depths of her heart, shutting them
there from every human eye, but she must drive them out of her heart. We
talk of feigning cheerfulness, of wearing a mask for the world and
throwing it off in solitude, and we may do this for a week, a month, a
year, but those who have a life-grief to sustain, from whose hearts hope
has died out, know that there are only two paths open to them in the
universe; to lie down in their despair and breathe out their souls in
murmurs against their GOD, and lamentations over their destiny; or,
humbly kissing the rod which has smitten them, to go forth out of
themselves, where all is darkness and woe, and find a new and happier
life in living for and in others. And thus did Meeta.
We may not linger over the details of the next few weeks of her
existence. The old Rainer died; died blessing his children, Ernest and
Meeta, and praying for their happiness. Often would Ernest have told him
all; but Meeta kept back a disclosure which would have given him pain.
"Do not disturb him now, Ernest," she said; "he will know all soon, and
bless your Sophie from heaven, where there is no sorrow."
Meeta returned home, and exhaustion won for her a few days rest; rest
even from her mental struggles; but when the funeral was over, and
things returned to their usual routine, she felt that she must prepare
her father and mother to receive Ernest in the character in which they
were henceforth to regard him. She found strength for this in her lofty
purpose and her simple dependence upon Heaven, and her voice did not
falter nor her color change as she said to her mother:--
"Do you not think Ernest is much altered?"
"Yes, he is greatly improved."
"Improved! Well, he may be so to the eyes of others, but--"
"Is he not as tender to you, my daughter?" asked the sensitive mother.
"That is not it," said Meeta, coloring for the first time: "we neither
of us feel as we once did; it was a childish folly to suppose that we
should. I have told Ernest that I could not fulfil our engagement, and
he is satisfied."
Madame Werner looked long at her daughter, but Meeta met the glance
firmly.
"And is this all, Meeta?"
"All! What more would you have, dear mother?"
"And are you happy, Meeta?"
"Happier than I should be in marrying Ernest now, dear mother."
Madame Werner explained all this to her husband, at her daughter's
request. He was not grieved at it. "Ernest," he said, "had never valued
Meeta as she deserved. He was glad she had shown so much spirit."
Meeta had a more difficult task to perform. Mrs. Schwartz's sister has
come at last. She came from Germany at the same time with Ernest, but
stopped to make a visit to another sister in Philadelphia, and arrived
here only last night. "I will go and see her," said Meeta one morning to
Madame Werner. She went. As she approached the house, there came through
the open windows the sound of an organ, accompanied by a rich and highly
cultivated voice. Meeta would not pause for a moment, lest she should
grow nervous. It was essential to Ernest's happiness that Sophie should
be friendly with her; and the difficulties were of a nature which, if
not overcome at once, would not be overcome at all. Meeta entered the
small parlor without knocking, and found herself _tête-à-tête_ with the
musician; a young, fair girl, delicately formed, with beautiful hands
and arms, and pleasing, pretty face. As she saw the visitor, her song
ceased. Meeta smiled on her, and extending her hand, said: "You are
Sophie--Ernest's Sophie?"
"And you," said the fair girl, with wondering eyes, "are--"
"Meeta."
This was an introduction which admitted no formality, and when Mrs.
Schwartz entered half an hour later, she was surprised to find those so
lately strangers conversing in the low and earnest tones which betoken
confidence, while the lofty expression on the countenance of the one,
and the moist eyes and flushed cheeks of the other, showed that their
topic was one of no ordinary interest.
Six months passed rapidly away, and then Ernest felt that he might,
without disrespect to his father's memory, bring home his bride. Their
engagement had been known for some time, and had excited no little
surprise; though perhaps less than the continued and close friendship
between them and Meeta. Many improvements in Sophie's future home had
been suggested by Meeta's taste, and Ernest had acquired such a habit of
consulting her, that no day passed without an interview between them. At
length the evening preceding the bridal-day had arrived, and Ernest and
Sophie had gone to secure Meeta's promise to officiate as bridesmaid in
the simple ceremony of the morrow. They were to be married at the
parsonage, in the presence of a few witnesses only, and were immediately
to set out on an excursion which would occupy several weeks. They had
urged Meeta to accompany them, but she had declined. "But she cannot
refuse to stand up with me--do you think she can?" said Sophie to her
sister, as she prepared to accompany Ernest to Carl Werner's.
"I do not think she _will_ refuse," Mrs. Schwartz replied.
"You do not think she will!" repeated Mr. Schwartz, in an accent of
surprise, to his wife, when Ernest and Sophie had left them. "How does
that consist with your idea of Meeta's love for Ernest?"
"It perfectly consists with a love like Meeta's; a love without any
alloy of selfishness. Dear Meeta! how little is her nobleness
appreciated! Even I dare not let her see that she is understood by me,
lest I should wound her delicate and generous nature."
There was a pause, and then Mr. Schwartz said, hesitatingly, "If it be
as you think, Meeta is a noble being; but----"
"If it be!" interrupted Mrs. Schwartz, with warmth. "Can you doubt it?
Have you not seen the loftier character which her generous purpose has
impressed upon her whole aspect? the elevation--I had almost said the
inspiration, which beams from her face when Ernest and Sophia are
present? Sophie is my sister, and I love her truly; yet I declare to
you, at such times I have looked from her to Meeta, and wondered at what
seemed to me Ernest's infatuation."
"Sophie is fair, and delicate, and accomplished, the very
personification of refinement, natural and acquired, and the antipodes
of all which Ernest, ere he saw her, had begun to dread in the untaught
Meeta of his memory. I am not surprised at all at his loving Sophie, but
I cannot at all understand how the simple and single-hearted Meeta can
feign so long and so well, as on your supposition she has done."
"Feign! Meeta feign! I never said or thought such a thing. A course of
action lofty as Meeta's must have its foundation deep in the heart, in
principles enduring as life itself. Had Meeta's been the commonplace
feigned satisfaction with Ernest's conduct to which pride might have
given birth, she would have been fitful in her moods; alternately gay or
gloomy; generous and kind, or petulant and exacting. The serenity, the
composure of countenance and manner which distinguish our Meeta, spring
from a higher, purer source. It is the sweet submission of a chastened,
loving spirit, which can say to its FATHER in Heaven:--
'BECAUSE my portion was assign'd,
Wholesome and bitter, THOU art kind,
And I am blessed to my mind.'"
"A state of feeling to be preferred certainly to the gratification of
any earthly affection; but I scarcely see how it can accord with Meeta's
continued love of Ernest."
"That is because you do not separate love from the selfish desires with
which it is too generally accompanied. Meeta loves Ernest so truly, so
entirely, that she cannot be said to yield her happiness to his, but
rather to find it in his; his joy, his honor, are hers."
"And can woman feel thus?" asked Mr. Schwartz, as he looked with
admiration upon his wife, her cheeks glowing and her eyes lighted with
the enthusiasm of a spirit akin to Meeta's.
"There are many mysteries in woman which you have yet to fathom," said
Mrs. Schwartz, with a smile.
To the good pastor and his wife, the next day, even Sophie was a less
interesting object of contemplation than Meeta, who stood at her side.
She was pale, very pale, and dressed with even more than usual
simplicity; yet there was in her face so much of the soul's light, that
she seemed to them beautiful. Her congratulations were offered in
speechless emotion. The brotherly kiss which Ernest pressed upon her
cheek called up no color there, nor disturbed the graceful stillness of
her manner; and when Sophie, who had really become sincerely attached to
her, threw herself into her arms, she returned her embrace with
tenderness, whispering as she did so, "Make Ernest happy, Sophie, and I
will love you always!"
And now what have we more to tell of Meeta? It cannot be denied that
there were hours of darkness, in which the joyous hopes and memories of
her youth rose up vividly before her, making her present life seem sad
and lonely in contrast. But these visitors from the realm of shadows
were neither evoked nor welcomed by Meeta. Resolutely she turned from
the dead past, to the active, living present, determined that no shadow
from her should darken the declining days of her father and mother. She
is the light of their home, and often they bless the Providence which
has left her with them. What would they have done without her cheerful
voice to inspire them in bearing the burdens of advancing life?
But not only in her home was Meeta a consolation and a blessing. The
poor, the sick, the sorrowing, knew ever where to find true sympathy and
ready aid. She was the "Lady Bountiful" of her neighborhood. But there
was one house where more especially her presence was welcomed; where no
important step was taken without her advice; where sorrow was best
soothed by her, and joy but half complete till she had shared it. This
house was Ernest Rainer's. To him and Sophie she was a cherished sister,
to whose upright and self-forgetting nature they looked up with a
species of reverence; and to their children she was "Dear Aunt Meeta!
the kindest and best friend, except mamma, in the world!"
How many more useful, more noble, or happier persons than our old maid
can married life present? Is she not more worthy of imitation than the
"Celias" and "Daphnes" whose delicate distresses have formed the staple
of circulating libraries, or than those feeble spirits in real life,
who, mistaking selfishness for sensibility, turn thanklessly from the
blessings and coldly from the duties of life, because they have been
denied the gratification of some cherished desire?