Miriam Coles Harris

“ Missy saw all this, and much more, of their life, and wondered, as she lay on the lounge that had been brought for her into her mother's room. She saw and wondered, at the interested happy lives of the women in long black dresses, who came and went, in their gliding, silent way, in and out of her mother's room. She could not help seeing, that in the offices, to which the inevitable bell was always calling them, there was no monotony, not so much weariness as in the one-day-in-seven service in a country parish. ”

“ A whole fair sunshiny day is nothing to it. The sudden brilliancy and freshness are worth all the gloom that have made them so dazzling. There was not a tree in the park that afternoon, not a flower on the lawn, that did not shine and sparkle with a brightness it had never worn before. There was a fine coolness too, in the fresh wind, soft and June-like as it was.
"Is it too late for a ride?" asked Josephine, stepping out on the piazza where we were all sitting. "A ride on horseback would be delightful, would it not?"
"Delightful!" echoed Ella Wynkar. ”

“ Then Missy watched while her mother, with a look of more open suffering than was usual with her, leaned her head back upon the pillows, and pressed her hands silently together. "How pretty she is, poor mamma," she thought. "Every one admires her, though she is so faded and suffering. Beauty is a great gift," and then she began slowly to walk up and down, gazing in at the windows as she passed them, and looking at the picture framed by the hangings within. The light of the fire and the light of the lamp both fell on the reclining figure of her mother. ”

“ Hollenbeck, She welcomed me very cordially, and led me up the steps of the piazza, where the young ladies stood. Terrible young ladies! I shook with fear of them. I felt as if I did not know anything, as if I did not look well, as if my clothes were hideous. I should not have been afraid of young or old men, nor of old women; but they were just my age, just my class, just my equals, or ought to have been, if I had had any other fate than Uncle Leonard and Varick-street. ”

“ As one might feel who had buried himself yet living—who had pulled the coffin-lid down on his own head, and heard the devils eagerly filling the grave up and laughing at their work—and at each new shovelful of heavy clay had felt the distance between him and life grow shorter, and felt the weight press heavier and heavier, and the horror and the darkness grow tighter and tighter around him, and the remorse, and the helplessness, and the terror—so I felt that hideous night, and so I feel whenever I remember it. ”

“ Missy did not know whether she liked the voice or not. She could only listen and wonder. It was an experience—something new come into her life. She felt, in an odd sort of way, how small her knowledge of people was; how much existed from which she had been shut out.
"I've lived among people just like myself all my life; it's contemptible," she thought. "No wonder I am narrow. A woman lives such a stupid life at home."
She sat down and talked with Mrs. Andrews. Mrs. Andrews! What a prosaic name for this exotic plant; as if one called a Fritallaria Imperialis a potato. ”

“ If there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents, what must there be of demoniac triumph in the vaults of hell, when another yields to sin—a fresh soul is lost! What mad exultation and unholy joy must have echoed in the regions of the damned, as the last cry of the murdered man died away among the whispering tree-tops and gloomy depths of Hemlock Hollow! and Victor Viennet pressed his blood-stained hand before his eyes to blot out the image that now neither time, nor sleep, nor anything save death could efface from his guilty vision. ”

“ We are young, Pauline. You are a child, a very child. I am in the very flush and strength of manhood. There is half a century of suffering in me yet: this frame, this brain, will stand the wear of the hard years to come but too, too well. There is no hope of death. There is no hope in life. ”

“ When your heart is broken by this sorrow; when you sink under the weariness of life without him, then we can talk together in one language, and you can understand me. But it will be too late—Oh, mamma, hear me—but what is the use of talking!—remember how young he is, how little of life he knows! Think how useful, how honorable, his work might be. I cannot comprehend you; I cannot think what magic there is about this idea of the monastic life. Why must St. John be better than other men of his generation? Why cannot he serve God and live a good life as better men have done before him? ”

“ I do not choose to believe in many people. I choose to believe in you; therefore you can do me a kindness by keeping alive in my heart a little faith in human nature. I have many cares to harass me in the present; much that is sad to remember of the past. By your youth and cheerfulness you can brighten the one; by your gentleness and sympathy you can soothe the recollections of the other. Youth is gone from me forever, but you can be the link between it and me, and keep it in sight a little longer. ”

“ It is scarcely possible to love life and see good days with the same zest after this sorrowful journey. It abates one's relish for enjoyment, it tempers one's thirst for present pleasures; it loosens one's hold upon things mundane. That is the certain good it does, and the uncertain, how infinite!
Poor Missy felt like a penitent child, after that illness of hers. ”

“ The house was so still; the servants were all downstairs; the ticking of the clock on the nursery mantelpiece was all the sound that broke the stillness, and that, so regular, so monotonous, was worse than silence. It was a time
"For thought to do her part,"
for conscience and reason to be heard. Should I go into the world and try to forget it? Should I leave the little helpless child asleep there, in charge of a woman I distrusted and disliked, and go where music and pleasure would drown the dread for her that was gnawing at my heart? ”

“ Goneril had had two children in her early disastrous marriage; one had died, and one had lived to go to destruction in his father's steps, so she always bore about with her a sore heart, and the passionate love of children, which she could not repress, she always fought down fiercely with both hands. Her sharp words did not soothe Missy much. She cried and cried as if there were nothing left to live for, and the fact that Mr. Andrews was there and was trying to make her hear him above Goneril's tirade, did not help matters in the least. ”

“ I don't suppose I shall ever be particularly happy again, but there is something higher than mere happiness that I can try to gain, and make myself worthy of that communion of saints in which I have been taught to believe; stretching through earth and heaven, of all kindreds and peoples and tongues, among whom I have no present comrade, it is true, but there is one saint at rest, who has no other care than her child's peace—who loved me better than all the world beside, when she was here—who will not forget her love and tenderness in the rest that she has entered into. ”

“ You will find, too late, that you have not counted the cost; that you cannot bear the strain of feeling—a living death—a grave that the grass never grows over. Time can't heal a wound that is always kept open. You are mad, mamma, you are mad. We cannot bear this thing. Look at it, as you will when your enthusiasm cools."
"I have looked at it, Missy, for many months, through silent nights and days. It is no new thought to me. My dear, I have many lonely hours; I have much suffering, which abates enthusiasm. Through loneliness and suffering, I have had this thought for my companion. ”

“ I am not a man given to fancies, am I, Shenstone? A life as cold as the last twenty years of mine has been, does not look much like the pursuit of fancies. You have known—who better?—the bitterness that poisoned the very fountain-head of my youth; you have seen how it has tainted the current of my whole life; how that after years of suffering and self-denial, it only needs a word, a recollection of the past to bring the bitter flood back upon my heart. You know all this, and yet you deny me the only charm I see in life; the only light that gilds the dark future! ”

“ Patient doing of duty against the grain may be better than not doing duty at all, but it always writes a weary mark across the face. That mark which her mother's face had borne, ever since Missy could remember it, was gone.
Weary no doubt she often was, for her hand and brain were rarely idle now; but it was the healthy weariness that brings the sleep of the just, and wipes out toil with rest. Neither did Missy understand—how could she?—the bliss of those hours spent in the little gallery that overlooked the empty and silent church. ”

“ Victor Viennet should give up the woman he loved, and only buy a promise of continued silence at a heavy price. The girl should lose her lover; in any case he promised himself that. If Victor refused to give her up, a whisper in his ear of what he knew of her secret, would damp his ardor and bring pride to weigh down the balance as he wished. And her pride, if even Victor's infatuation led him to prefer exposure and disgrace to separation, would never suffer her to marry a man, who, from the first she had never loved, now stripped of his name and honor. ”

“ It seemed to her that it would be intolerable to watch out these hours of darkness and silence; she must penetrate them. She felt as if her solicitude and wretchedness would be half gone if the night were lifted, and the day come again. Ten o'clock struck—eleven—the outsiders, one by one, dropped off. There were left two or three men who had been hired by some of the gentlemen to watch the night out by the bonfire; Mr. Andrews' own man, the Varians' man, and Missy and Goneril. Eliza, the nurse, worn out and useless, had gone to bed. ”

“ Perhaps because I had been a willful, sensitive, and passionate child myself, I knew how to appreciate the disadvantages under which poor little Essie labored. I knew what exquisite tenderness and gentleness were necessary to guard that sensitiveness from turning into the very gall of bitterness, and that quick temper from becoming the uncontrollable and damning passion that would blight her whole life. More watchful care, more prayerful earnestness, does such a child's rearing require, than if she had been laid upon her mother's love, a moaning cripple, or a blind and helpless sufferer. ”

“ She knew what all Yellowcoats was saying about Mr. Andrews and his cousin, for they said that to her openly. And she surmised what they did not say openly to her, to wit: that the cause of her own unhappy looks was her disappointment in the matter. How can one help unhappy looks? One can help unhappy words; one can do all sorts of things that are meant to mean happy acts, but how to keep the cloud off one's face at all hours and moments, is an art yet in the bowels of time. Missy knew she looked unhappy, and she knew she could not dissemble it. ”

“ We, "two daughters of one race"—the same blood flowing in our veins—the same woman's heart beating in our bosoms—why was it that I was forbidden every good, tempted of the devil, driven into evil, and she, unfeeling and light-hearted, smiled down at me from her secure height of happiness, wore carelessly the love that I would have died to win, played thoughtlessly with it in my jealous sight, and made a jest of what was life and death to me. ”

“ Is there any one who has ever been sick "away from home," among strangers, courteous and attentive, perhaps, but whose courtesy and attention were of duty, not love, that cannot understand what it was to be lying, day after day, in a "home" like mine, knowing it was the only one I had a right to, or a hope of, this side heaven, and knowing, through all the exaggerating excitement of fever, and the languid hopelessness of slow convalescence, that in it there was no one to whom the care of me was not a penance, that no hour was so grudged as that spent by my bedside? ”

“ I could not help overhearing Phil ask, as I left the breakfast-room. I longed to hear Josephine's reply; but an inconvenient sentiment of honor prevented my stopping to listen for it. I could not, however, avoid being auditor to the lazy laugh that it elicited from Phil, and the blood mounted to my temples at the sound.
"I wonder if they think me stupid or sulky," I said to myself. "I wonder if they ever thought how it must feel to be a stranger in the midst of people who know and understand each other. I wonder if I ever shall be one of them." ”

“ But such sound was wanting; a more vacant, drearier silence reigned without than within the room; through the long hall and distant corridors, not a footfall, not a motion; the rustle of my own dress awoke the only echoes. I dared not look toward the end of the hall that I had learned so much to dread; but starting forward and leaning over the balusters I called "Kitty," in a voice that would fain have been stentorian, but was in actual fact a whisper. ”

“ And hoped for, you know longingly, in the old days of wretchedness."
"That's past, Arthur, thank God's good grace; and life is no longer a penance to you; and that it never may be again, God in His mercy grant, and spare you what I dreaded for you. God bring you higher than I stand, but by a gentler way, if it be His will! Arthur, it was a fiercer struggle than even you can understand, in which my faith was born. It was a conflict that lasts through most men's lives, that I passed through at one dire struggle, and died unto the world forever. ”

“ Moment after moment crept on; every movement of the stranger—even his heavy breathing—were as distinct as if he had been within reach of my hand, and the least motion on my part—the faintest rustle of my dress, or of the branches of the thicket—would, of course, be as audible to him, and most dangerous to me; indeed, if he were to turn this way, I could hardly hope to escape detection, for my light drapery, only half hid behind the dark thicket, would inevitably betray me. How long this would last—how determined he could be in his vigil—I dreaded to conjecture. ”

“ I was parting from the lover to whom they all fancied I was devoted, but it was shame, and not love, that brought the blood into my cheeks to meet his first caress. I did not move or raise my eyes till the sound of carriage-wheels died away down the avenue. Then the treacherous color receded slowly from my face, and left it white as marble. Conquering as best I might the giddy faintness that came over me, I walked steadily into the parlor, where the whispering and amazed group of ladies still stood. Not heeding Josephine's, "Well, my dear, we weren't quite prepared for this! ”

“ I know perhaps, better than you do, the trials that lie before you; so when I tell you that you will have need of all the courage, and self-denial, and resolution that you are mistress of, to keep you from that darkest of all lives—the life of a worldly woman—you must remember, I have seen many plays played out—have watched the opening and ending of more careers than one, the bloom and blight of more than one young life. ”

“ I thought, with a bitter sigh, "in December I shall be of age, it will be a glorious thing to be my own mistress! To begin the world when I've lost all interest in it—to do as I please when there's nothing on earth that pleases me—to be free from restraint and authority, and from all human love and care! To be independent! ”

“ The wretched woman need not have concealed herself with such desperate fear; no one felt any heart to search her out, or revenge on her the death of her little charge. No one of that sad household but knew, in their hearts, that there was a sin at more than her door—a sin that lay heavy in proportion to its unnaturalness and strangeness.
Those were wretched nights and days that followed little Esther's death. The vehement grief that, in the first hours of amazement and remorse, had burst from the miserable mother, was succeeded by a calm more unnatural and more alarming. ”

“ I tried to pacify and divert her, but received no word in answer, till, from the window, we saw the party enter the sleigh, and after a moment of adjusting sleigh-robes and furs, the fine horses started spiritedly forward, to the music of their own merry bells; then, with a violent scream, the child threw herself upon the floor, and shook from head to foot with a passion that many men and women pass through life without experiencing. Such tempests cannot fail to blight the souls they sweep over; they bow the cracking forest, and strip it of its leaves ”

“ I tried in vain to reassure myself and soothe him, but I quailed before a nature, beside the strength of whose passion, all that I had known or seen of despair and desperation faded into insignificance. A weak man can sin weakly, and bewail it feebly and with tears: a strong man, who is hurried into crime by the very intensity and strength, of his nature, turns fiercely upon the remorse that besets him; the very gall of bitterness is his repentance—blood and curses are the tears he sheds. ”

“ Rutledge's name, I listened as if it were impossible that I could call on him in vain. But no voice nor answer came; the swaying branches moaned loudly as the angry wind swept through them; the swollen stream rushed by with a mournful sound; the dead leaves fluttered in the fitful blast: this was my answer—this was all the help my appeals would gain. With a cry of anguish, I cast myself down upon the earth, and sent to heaven such a prayer as only despair and mortal terror can wring from the heart. ”

“ Then a little arm crept round my neck, the soft eye opened for a moment, a sigh stirred the bosom that my forehead touched, and, as the arm relaxed its faint clasp, I knew that Essie was a stranger and an alien no longer, but was where it were better for us all to be—where there is peace, eternal, unbroken, beyond the reach of sin forever. ”

“ If he doubts it—if he questions whether the same blood runs in our veins, show him the only souvenir I have to leave you—the picture of my father. Ask him if he remembers Alice Rutledge's lover. He will not need more damning proof; it came to me like a message from the dead—it may go to him as such. Tell him that a murderer wrenched it from his victim's dying grasp; that it has struck awe to his guilty soul at every glance; that it has hurried him on to perdition. ”

“ That particular afternoon, as the declining sun lighted up the dark massive house, and the fine old trees, nearly bare though they were, and the winding paths of the garden and broad fields beyond, Rutledge seemed to me the realization of all I had ever dreamed or read, of beauty and of stateliness. I walked slowly down the garden; the faint smell of some lingering grapes on the arbor overhead perfumed the air; the dead leaves rustled under my feet, alone breaking the stillness peculiar to an autumn afternoon, unprofaned by the many murmurs of insect-life, or the animating song of summer bird. ”