Caroline Lee Hentz

“ Shadows will always be peopled with phantoms, and darkness is to me the shadow of the grave.”
“I am sorry to hear you say so, Helen,” said the young doctor, taking her hand, and leading her along the shadowy path, “and yet you feel safe with me. You fear not when I am with you.”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Helen, involuntarily drawing nearer to him—“I never fear in your presence. Midnight would seem noonday, and all phantoms flee away.”
“And yet, Helen,” he cried, “you have a friend always near, stronger to protect than legions of angels can be. Do you realize this truth?” ”

“ Then stroking back the black and shining hair from her high, bold brow, he added,
“You are mistaken, Mittie, if you do not think that we love you. I love you with a father’s tender affection; I have never given you reason to doubt it. If I show more love for Helen, it is only because she is younger, smaller, and winds herself more closely around me by her loving, affectionate ways; she seems to love me better, to love us all better. That is the secret, Mittie; it is love; cling to our hearts as Helen does, and we will never cast you off.” ”

“ Louis is a bold and noble boy. I fear not for him. His reason even now has the strength of manhood. Mittie has very little sensibility or imagination; too little of the first I fear to be very lovable. But perhaps it will be better for her in the end. Helen is all sensibility and imagination. I tremble for her. I am haunted by a strange apprehension that my memory will be a ghost that she will seek to shun. Oh! Miss Thusa, you cannot think how painful this idea is to me. I want her to love me when I am gone, to think of me as a guardian angel watching over and blessing her. ”

“ Mittie that annoyed and pained her. The gleam of kindness with which she had greeted her had all gone out, and left dullness and darkness in its stead. She could not get near her heart. At every avenue it seemed closed against her, and resisted the golden key of affection as effectually as the wrench of violence.
“She must love me,” thought Helen, pursuing her way towards Miss Thusa’s, and picking up here and there a yellow leaf that came fluttering down at her feet. “I cannot live in coldness and estrangement with one I ought to love so dearly. ”

“ It gave a spring to the dormant energies of Helen, and a check to the vengeance of Mittie.
The winter glided imperceptibly away, and as imperceptibly vernal bloom and beauty stole over the face of nature.
In the spring of the year, Miss Thusa always engaged in a very interesting process—that is, bleaching the flaxen thread which she had been spinning during the winter. She now made a permanent home at Mr. Gleason’s, and superintended the household concerns, pursuing at the same time the occupation to which she had devoted the strength and intensity of her womanhood. ”

“ Helen feared that Miss Thusa would be offended, especially as Louis joined merrily in the chorus—and she looked at Alice as if her glance had power to check her. But she did not know all the windings of Miss Thusa’s heart. Any one like Alice, marked by the Almighty, by some peculiar misfortune, was an object not only of tenderness, but of reverence in her eyes. The blasted tree, the blighted flower, the smitten lamb—all touched by the finger of God, were sacred things—and so were blindness and deafness—and any personal calamity. ”

“ Louis felt the blood mounting to his temples, as the soft hand of Alice analyzed the outline of his face, and lingered in his hair. It seemed to him a cherub was fluttering its wings against his cheek, diffusing a peace and balminess that no language could describe.
Alice, who had yielded involuntarily to the movement of Helen, drew her hand blushingly away.
“I cannot imagine how any one can see without touching,” said Alice, “how they can take in an image into the soul, by looking at it far off. ”

“ As it was summer, the blazing fire no longer illuminated the hearth, but a little lamp, whose rays flickered in the wind that faintly murmured in the chimney. Miss Thusa sat spinning by the open window, in the light of the solemn stars, and as she waxed more and more eloquent, she seemed to derive inspiration from their beams. She could see one twinkling all the time in the little gourd of water, swinging from her distaff, and in spite of her preference for the dark and the dreadful, she could not help stopping her wheel, to admire the trembling beauty of that solitary star. ”

“ She tried to call up a bloom to her pale cheek, and a smile to her quivering lip, but she was no adept in the art of dissimulation, and when she entered the sitting room, Helen was the first to notice her altered countenance. It was fortunate for all present that Alice had seated herself at the piano, at the solicitation of Louis, and commenced a brilliant overture.
Alice had always loved music, but now that she had learned it as an art, in all its perfectness, it had become the one passion of her life. She lived in the world of sound, and forgot the midnight that surrounded her. ”

“ To be locked up alone in the darkness! Helen felt as if she had heard her death-warrant, and pale even to blueness, she leaned against her mother, incapable of articulating the prayer that trembled on her ashy lips.
“Give her to me,” said Miss Thusa, “I will take her up stairs and stay with her till you come.”
“Oh, no, there is no fire in the room, and you will be cold. Mr. Gleason, the child is sick and faint. She has scarcely any pulse—and look, what a blue shade round her mouth. Helen, my darling, do tell me what is the matter with you.” ”

“ There was a gray, old rock by the way-side, that looked exactly as if it belonged to Miss Thusa’s establishment. Arthur Hazleton seated Helen there, and threw himself on the moss at her feet.
“I am going away to-morrow,” said he, “and I feel as if I had much to say. I leave you exposed to temptation; and to put you on your guard, I must say perhaps what you will think unauthorized. You know so little of the world—are so guileless and unsuspecting—I cannot bear to alarm your simplicity; and yet, Helen, you cannot always remain a child.” ”

“ It was the best flax I ever had, in the first place. When I pulled it out and wound it round the distaff, it looked like ravelled silk, it was so smooth and fine. Then there’s such a powerful quantity of it. Well, it’s my winter’s work.”
Poor Miss Thusa! You had better take one more look on those beautiful, silvery rings—for never more will your eyes be gladdened by their beauty! There is a worm in your gourd, a canker in your flower, a cloud floating darkly over those shining filaments.
It is astonishing how wantonly the spirit of mischief sometimes revels in the bosom of childhood! ”

“ Forgive me, Helen—love is not the growth of our will. ’Tis a flower that springs spontaneously in the human heart, of celestial fragrance, and destined to immortal bloom.”
“If I thought you really loved me,” said Helen, in a [195] softened tone, shrinking from the fascination of his glance, and the sorcery of his voice, “I should feel great and exceeding sorrow—for it would be in vain. But the love that I have imagined is of a very different nature. Slowly kindled, it burns with steady and unceasing glory, unchanging as the sun, and eternal as the soul.” ”

“ Where, I say, is the loving, trusting being I loved and adored? You watch me with the vigilance of hatred, the intensity of revenge. Every word and look have been misconstrued, every action warped and perverted by prejudice and passion. You are jealous, frantically jealous of a mere child, with whom I idly amused myself one passing moment. You have made your parents look coldly and suspiciously upon me. You have taught me a bitter lesson.”
Every drop of blood forsook the cheeks of Mittie. She felt as if she were congealing—so cold fell the words of Clinton on her burning heart. ”

“ One day as Helen tripped up and down the velvet sward by her side, admiring the silky white skeins spread multitudinously there, Miss Thusa, gave an oracular nod, and said she believed that was the last watering, that all they needed was one more night’s dew, one more morning sun, and then they could be twisted in little hanks ready to be dispatched in various directions.
“I am proud of that thread,” said Miss Thusa, casting back a lingering look of affection and pride as she closed the gate. “It is the best I ever spun—I don’t believe there is a rough place in it from beginning to end. ”

“ Arthur’s sternly upbraiding eye softened into an expression of the deepest sorrow, not unmingled with contempt, on beholding the degradation of this splendidly endowed young man. He reminded him of a fallen angel, with his glorious plumage all soiled and polluted with the mire and corruption of earth. He never had had faith in his integrity; be believed him to be the tempter of Louis, the deceiver of Mittie, reckless and unprincipled where pleasure was concerned, but he did not believe him capable of such a daring transgression. ”

“ Poor little Helen, as she looked at her pale, agonized face, and saw the terror imprinted there, she remembered what she had once said to Miss Thusa, of being after death an object of terror to her child, and she felt a sting that no language could express. She longed to stretch out her feeble arms, to fold them round this child of her prayers and fears, to carry her with her down the dark valley her feet were treading, to save her from trials a nature like hers was so ill-fitted to sustain. ”

“ As they rapidly approached, she recognized her brother, and knew that the young gentleman who accompanied him must be his friend, Bryant Clinton. The steed on which he was mounted was black as a raven, and the hair of the young man was long, black, and flowing as his horse’s sable mane. As he came near, reining in the high mettled animal, while his locks blew back in the breeze, enriched with the same golden lustre with which every thing was shining, Mittie suddenly remembered Miss Thusa’s legend of the black horseman, with the jetty hair entwined in the maiden’s bleeding heart. ”

“ She looked from her to Mittie, the cold, insensible Mittie, whose large, black eyes, serious, but not sad, [45] were riveted upon her through the white fringe of the curtain, and another sting sharper still went through her heart.
“Oh! my child,” she would have said, could her thoughts have found utterance, “forget me if you will—mourn not for me, the mother who bore you—but be kind, be loving to your little sister, more young and helpless than yourself. You are strong and fearless—she is a timid, trembling, clinging dove. Oh! be gentle to her, for my sake, gentle as I have ever been to you. ”

“ The pomp and aristocracy of Clinton’s appearance and manners had made him unpopular in the neighborhood, and it is not strange that a man whom he had never condescended to notice should triumph in his disgrace. He looked on with vindictive pleasure while Clinton, after a useless resistance, produced the gold he had secreted, but Arthur turned away his head in shame. He could not bear to witness the depth of his degradation. His cheek burned with painful blushes, as the gold clinked on the table, ringing forth the tale of Clinton’s guilt. ”

“ She looked up to the moon, shining so high, so lone on the pale azure of a wintry heaven, and felt an impulse to kneel down and worship it, as the loveliest, holiest image of the Creator’s goodness and love. How tranquil, how serene, how soft, yet glorious it shone forth from the still depths of ether! What a divine melancholy it diffused over the sleeping earth! Helen felt as she often did when looking up into the eyes of Arthur Hazleton. ”

“ I could envy Lily, when the beautiful angel came and bore her away on his shining wings.”
“I think with Alice,” said the young doctor, “that it is far from being a gloomy tale, and the impression it leaves is salutary. The young girl, walking by faith, over the narrow bridge that spans the abyss of death, the waiting angel, and upward flight, are glorious emblems of the spirit’s transit and sublime ascent. We are all blind, and wander in darkness here, but when we look back, like Lily, on the confines of the spirit-land, we shall see with an unclouded vision.” ”

“ When the last beam of the sinking sun glanced upon her distaff, turning the fibres to golden filaments, Miss Thusa paused, and the crank gave a sudden, upward jerk, as if rejoiced at the coming rest. Putting her wheel carefully in its accustomed corner, she descended the stairs, and bent her steps to the bleaching ground. She met Helen at the gate, who remembered the trysting hour.
“Bless the child,” cried Miss Thusa, with a benevolent relaxation of her harsh features, “she never forgets any thing that’s to do for another. Never mind getting the watering-pot now. ”

“ Ill and weary as she was, Helen could not help noticing the astonishing improvement in Mittie’s appearance, the life, the glow, the sunlight of her countenance. She gazed upon her with admiration and delight.
“How handsome you have grown, Mittie,” said she, “and I doubt not as good as you are handsome. And you look so much happier than you used to do. Oh! I do hope we shall love each other as sisters ought to do. It is so sweet to have a sister to love.” ”

“ Helen was less exquisitely fair, less beautiful than Alice, but hers was an eye of sunbeams and shadows, that gave wonderful expression to her whole face. Some one has observed that “every face is either a history or a prophecy.” Child as Helen was, hers was both. You could read in those large, pensive, hazel eyes, a history of past sufferings and trials. You could read, too, in their deep, appealing, loving expression, a prophecy of all a woman’s heart is capable of feeling or enduring. ”

“ Mittie, I entreat you to come with me; I entreat you with the sincerity of a friend, the earnestness of a brother. I will never breathe to a human being the mystery of Clinton’s escape. I will guard your reputation with the most jealous vigilance. Not even my blind Alice shall be considered a more sacred trust than you, if you confide yourself to my protecting care. ”

“ He apologized for the freedom he had taken so sportively and naturally, that Helen felt it would be ridiculous in her to assume a resentment she did not feel, and yielding to her passionate admiration for flowers, she wreathed them again round her sun-bright locks.
It was thus the trio approached the house. Mittie saw them from the window, and the keenest pang she had ever known penetrated her heart. She saw the beech tree shorn of its morning garland, that garland which was blooming triumphantly on her sister’s brow. ”