Miriam's Sorrow

Front matter

VOL. EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY THE CALEDONIAN PRESS, " The National Institution for Promoting the Employment of Women in the Art of Printing," HANOVER STREET. BY MES. MACKENZIE-DANIEL, AUTHOR OF "AFTER LONG YEARS," "MARRYING FOR MONEY," ETC. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON : T. C. NEWBY, 30 WELBECK STEEET, CAVENDISH SQUARE. MDCCCLXIII. [The Tight of Translation is reserved.) CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME. CHAP. PAGE I. Mary Loder, . , . . . 1 H. Janet's News, 15 EH. Golden Dreams, .... 35 IV. At Schwartzen, .... 43 V. Ending of the Summer Days, . . 55 VI. In the Woods, .... 64 VPI. " The Little Convent Girl," . . 76 VIII. A Broken Honeymoon, . . . 87 IX. The Young Wife's Resolve, . . 97 X. News of Miriam's Flight, . . . 116 VOL. II. A CONTENTS. vi CHAP. PAGE XL A New Arrival at Schwartzen, . 132 XII.

The Lodger at Dover, . . . 143 XIII. The Promise I would not make, . 157 XIV. Sour Grapes, 168 XV. Patient and Nurse, . . . . 182 XVI. Weary of all Things, . . . 195 XVII. " Poor Old John," .... 210 XVIII. My Evening Guest, .... 220 XIX. Husband and Wife, .... 233 XX. John's Bad Manners, . . .254 XXI. A Near View of Pauline's Hero, . 267 XXII. A Winter's Walk, .... 283 XXIII. A Soul at PvEst, . . . .297 XXIV. The Last,

Chapter I. Mary Lodek

The summer days AA-ifch all their golden promise — those summer days which Stephen had once said would pass only too quickly — were entirely gone before the disease Avhich had laid so powerful a grasp upon me relaxed its hold, and left me with just a little remnant of life, to gaze out wonderingly upon the changed world. What I saw first when the power of in telligent vision returned was an unfamiliar room containing unfamdiar objects, amongst VOL. II. B the rest a woman of quiet, matronly aspect, sitting working at a table by the Avindow ; against which, as I turned my heavy eyes in that direction, a shower of autumn leaves were being drifted from some tad trees whose heavy branches I could see swaying in the chdl autumn wind. After an illness such as mine had been, the mental faculties can only by slow degrees regain their strength, the mental emotions require time to gather up their usual force ; and thus it is that the most crushing sorrow becomes endurable to the physically prostrate, because the weakening of the body must bring with it the weakening of every passion which affects the mind.

My recodections of the scenes that had immediately preceded my dizziness at the post-office, was at first very confused and in distinct. Even when memory brightened and I could plainly recal what I believed to have been the appearance of Stephen Howard's ghost, this belief affected me in a much less MARY L0DER. 3 agonizing degree than it had done at the time of its originally impressing me. I felt too near the borders of the spirit world my self, to have a very keen regret at the idea that he whom I had so wholly loved had passed into it before me. I had no wish to ask questions of the pale, calm woman sitting sewing; at the table. I took it for granted that she was there to watch over me, and for the present I was content through half shut eyes to gaze at those waving trees, and at the old broAvn leaves which they shook in disdain from their still youthful branches, and de posited, till some fiercer northern breeze should bear them quite away, on my fittle window sill.

In spite of the deep melancholy attendant on this mood there was a kind of forlorn luxury in it that made me unwilling to have it disturbed, and a sigh of irritation (or what would have been irritation had I possessed a grain of strength) escaped me as the woman suddenly laid aside her work and came very softly and on tiptoe to look at her patient " Do you feel better, my dear ?" she asked in as calm and composed a tone as if I had gone to sleep Avith a headache only half an hour before. "Yes, thank you, but what has been the matter with me, and why am I here V I had no choice but to ask questions now, and since she had disturbed me, I was resolved she should have enough of them. " My dear, you haA7e had the fever very badly, and you were taken so suddenly Avith a fainting fit in the street that it was thought desirable to carry you into a house at once.

Our house was nearer than your hotel, and besides it would not have done to alarm Mrs. HoAvard, who was only just out of danger her self. My husband knew you before. He is an English clergyman, and I am his Avife, Mrs. Loder. My daughter Mary has been your chief nurse, but we have been ail of us very happy in assisting to take care of you." While this good woman spoke I was struggling to clear my brain of the mists that would gather around it. Every Avord she uttered appeared to increase the confusion of my ideas ; her words travelled faster than my powers of comprehension could fodow them. She saw at length that I was yet too weak to endure being talked to, and after looking very closely into my eyes and carefudy feeling my skin, which double examination appeared perfectly satisfactory, she told me to go to sleep again like a good child, and that she would send Mary to sit beside me.

" But indeed you must ted me something more before you go," I said, holding fast the hand Avith which she had been smoothing the bed-clothes ; " where is Mrs. Howard now, and what — what has happened to her step-son V Mrs. Loder opened her eyes as widely as such calm, quiet eyes could ever be supposed to open : " Mrs. Howard was ordered change of air the moment she was able to leave her room, and her step-son has taken her to Germany : Ave write to them about you every day." I felt my heart give one tumultuous bound, and then a sudden faintness came over me. Mrs. Loder hastened to the table for some medicine, of which she compeded me to swadow what seemed an enormous quantity ; but I was better Avhen I had taken it and told her that I would now try to go to sleep, a resolution that met her entire approval as she testified by immediately darkening the room and hurrying away from me.

How long I slept after this I have no idea, but it appeared to me about half a life-tinie, and when I awoke from that fud and perfect repose I knew at once that my strength was coming back, and that, howeATer near I might have been to the " other world," I had returned, or was returning, to bear my part a bttle longer in the joys and sorrows of this. Everything around me looked brighter than it had done when first I unclosed my eyes the day before. A few gleams of autumn sunshine were stealing through the closed Vene tian blinds, several vases of fresh, lovely flowers decorated the exquisitely neat and orderly apartment, and softly chiming bells — Sabbath beds I felt sure they must be — floated on the quiet air and were the only sounds of any kind that reached me from Avithout. The room being large and the light in it so subdued, it was some minutes after I awoke and had lain in really intense enjoyment of my position, before I became aware that I was not alone.

I did not see any one at first, but I heard a voice, Ioav and Avonderfudy sAveet mingling with the distant bells — both gaining rather than losing by being heard together and both calculated to draw the most earth bound thoughts, at least for the time, from a Avorld of human passion and unrest. Some of the words I then listened to as in a dream I haA7e always remembered They were these : ' My rest is in heaven, my rest is not here, Then why should I tremble when trials are near ? Be hushed my sad spirit the worst that can come But shortens thy journey and hastens thee home. ' It is not for me to he seeking my bliss Or building my hopes in a region like this ; I look for a kingdom that hands have not piled, I pant for a country by sin undenled.' I have said that I listened to the singer of these verses, and others that fodowed them, as in a dream ; but even a dream has often impressed me Avith a sense of greater reality than did the circumstances by which I was now surrounded.

It was ad so new and strange to me, so unlike any former experience, so suggestive of those higher and better things which I had accustomed myself to put aside for a more conA-enient season, that, mingling as it did Avith the novel train of ideas that were born of extreme physical Aveakness, it was surely no wonder that I half questioned whether I Avere Avell awake, and required stronger proof than the evidence of my oaati enfeebled senses to assure me of the reality of the whole scene. By and bye the singer's voice became suddenly hushed, and immediately after (and just as I had made up my mind to ask her to go on) a small, thin figure advanced from some shadowy corner of the room, and stood at the head of my bed, earnestly contemplating me. " Hoav unlike her mother," was my first thought (for of course I guessed my present companion to be Mary Loder), and then I felt constrained, as absolutely constrained as if I had been mesmerized, to gaze back at her Avith ad my powers of gazing, before I could speak a word.

A small thin figure, as I have already said, neither graceful nor the reverse ; just such a little neat, unpretending, common-place figure as one sees every day, and would never think of looking at tAvice if the face belonging to it were of the same familiar cast. Perhaps nature had originally so arranged it in the case of Mary Loder. There was nothing, as I afterwards discovered, in the construction of her features to make them seem out of keeping with the quiet unassuming figure I have just described ; but the two remarkable points about her were striking enough to arrest the whole attention at the first glance, and to give the beholder an impression that he Avas looking at one of the most singular and even startling faces in the Avorld. Yet these points related only to the eyes and to the hair ; the first, which were large and very dark, protruding to such an extent from the head that they appeared literally as if they must presently drop from the face altogether, and the last being of an almost snoAvy whiteness, though so thick, waA-ing and luxuriant, that it would have betrayed, if nothing else had done so, the extreme youth of its owner.

Nobody could have guessed Mary Loder to be aboA-e twenty ; and she Avas in reality two years less than that. The sweet voice I had just experienced such pleasure in listening to, Avas the first thing that roused me from the utter surprise her appearance had excited. " You have had a delightful sleep," she said, in pleasant if not very cheerful accents, " and are feeling, I hope, a great deal better — ready for some breakfast and a visit from mamma, I must go and ted her you are awake." " But you Avid come back ." I asked, conscious still of the powerful, though half painful, attraction which had first draAvn me to look at this young girl so intently, and really ap prehensive of having wounded her by my close observation. " Oh, yes," she replied kindly, " I shad stay Avith you all the morning whde the others are at church.

It is Sunday, you know." " I fancied so from the beds we hear, and from the style of your singing. You must sing to me again by and bye." " Wdhngly — do you like hymns ?" " Sometimes — oh, of course, always on Sun days." It was not a smde that hoA7ered on Mary's lip as I said this, but it was something infinitely sad and infinitely sweet, that I recaded afterwards when I knew more about her and her principles. " / like them every day," she said gently ; " but you must have your breakfast now, so while I get it mamma shad come and speak a word to you." miriam's sorroav. Mrs. Loder entered almost immediately, dressed for church, and with the same quiet kindly smile upon her face, that it had worn the clay before. She expressed her pleasure at my rapid amendment, prophesied that I should be down-stairs in a day or two, and then suddenly walked to the door to see if it was fast closed, returning Avith a graver and sadder look to her previous station by the bed.

" Mary wid be your companion for this morning, my dear," she commenced in rather an agitated voice ; " and as young people when they get together are apt to talk freely, I must warn you to avoid two subjects — droAvn ing and apparitions. Four years ago (though, God knows, it seems but yesterday) a young brother, to Avhom our Mary was passionately attached, lost his life at sea by falling over board on a dark night ; and about that time she imagines he appeared to her with his hair all dripping and his face deadly pale — also that he spoke to her, though what he said she has never repeated. The next morning when I went into her room I found her in a raging fever, which kept her hovering between life and death for nearly six weeks. When youth and a naturady good constitution triumphed at length over disease, her pretty chesnut hair had ad turned white, and her eyes, which had been unusually full before, had assumed the strange and painful appearance you remark in them now.

Since our residence abroad her nerves have partiady regained their tone, but life, as life, has ceased to have any interest for her ; and but for the deep and all-influenc ing piety which by the grace of God has sprung up in her heart during the last two years, I believe she would sink into a state of hopeless melancholy, which would soon carry her to the grave. As it is she is far from being unhappy and I am sure the world does not contain a more unselfish, kinder, gentler being than our poor Mary. She is coming now, so that you Avill remember Avhat I have told you, my dear, and avoid the slightest allusion, that could cad up any memory con nected with the past." The mother — rendered sacred in my eyes by this her great sorrow — wiped away a few patient tears as Mary entered the room again ; and haA7ing charged me to make a hearty breakfast, and warned her daughter against letting me talk too much, she bade us both good-bye, and left us together for the long Sabbath morning.

Chapter II

janet's neavs. The conAiction that Mary Loder Avas des tined to exercise an influence over my future life, or at least to be, in some unmistakable way, associated Avith it, grew and greAV with every hour I spent in her society. Strange as the assertion may appear, she was the first decidedly pious person with whom I had ever been brought in contact. Of course, I had known both men and women who were caded " serious," and Avho attended scrupulously to all the outward observances of their religion, but one who acted up to her profession, who ready and truly walked straight on in the " narrow path " which the Gospel has mapped out as essential to be pursued by those who would fodow their Divine Master, I had never met till now ; and the study of such a character was very strange and interesting to me.

At first I was inclined to think that the great shock she had sustained four years ago, with ad its attendant mental and physical suffer ings, had imparted a morbid tinge to her mind Avhich led her to exaggerate the requirements of the religion that had appeared to spring out of the ashes of this early trouble ; but the more I knew of her the more her extraordinary, though always rational, earnestness impressed me Avith a con\iction that she was right and moderate in Avhatever she said and did, and that I myself, and all others who were less in earnest concerning the one thing needful, were wrong. Had Mary begun by preaching to me, by teding me I was a great sinner and in need of immediate repentance and reformation, I have no doubt I should have turned from her impatiently, and thought her (as we are apt to think those who find fault with us) a very troublesome and tedious person, indeed.

But she did nothing of the sort. Her mission was to win rather by example than by precept, and the lovely spirit of charity which dwelt within her inclined her to think the very best of everybody around her. Even amongst the most sincere Christians I cannot believe there are many like Mary Loder, and far from con sidering her as the type of a class, I am con strained to look upon her as an exceedingly rare exception — as one of the very, \7ery few to whom the Spirit is given in abundant measure, and who, but for that golden chord of universal loA7e which binds them to our sin-sick world, in the tender hope of winning other weary souls to heaven, would at once spread their bright wings and flee aAvay. From each member of that excedent, simple-hearted famdy I received, as my health and strength returned, the utmost kindness.

As a stranger they had taken me in — as a VOL. IL C daughter they cherished and watched over me — feeling themselves, they warmly declared, more than repaid by the pleasure I so mani festly experienced in being Avith them, and in the strong interest their dear Mary had from the \7ery first taken in me. Their only regret was that OAviug to a promise exacted by Mrs. HoAvard from Mr. Loder, I was to be restored to her protection the very moment the doctor should declare me in a fit state for traveding. They ad wanted to keep me after I was in a condition to enjoy the quiet home amusements and recreations they themselves indulged in, and thought it hard to send me from them at the very first appearance of retujrning bloom upon my white cheeks. My own feelings and Avishes on this subject were exceedingly varied and capricious.

I thoroughly Liked the Loders ; I was grateful for their disinterested kindness to me ; I en joyed being with Mary in a degree that sur prised even myself ■ I longed to ramble with her in the lovely spots she told me of far beyond the town, and to inhale the pure moun tain breezes that had already, coming in at my AvindoAV, seemed to impart strength and vigour to my weakened body : but then, on the other hand, what a time it was since I had seen Stephen — Avhat ages appeared to have elapsed since that eventful evening when his aA7owal of attachment had been interrupted by the news of Mrs. Howard's sudden dlness, and how strong at times was the old yearning to feel sure that we belonged to each other, and that as far as mutual affection was concerned nothing could come between us. Little by little the genuine humility which had belonged to me at our first acquaintance, making his serious regard for me appear a thing impos sible, had vanished quite away ; months of prosperity and such spoiling as I received both from Mrs. Howard and from Stephen himself, had done their work, and converted me into a very self-complacent young lady, indeed ; and few, if any, doubts troubled me as to my fitness to become the wife of a man Avho, in Avorldly position as well as personal merit, Avas undoubtedly far above me.

I did want very much, and increasingly as the remaining mists of physical prostration cleared from my brain, to be Avith him once more, and to have renewed the exquisite happiness I had always found in his society. When this longing came most powerfully upon me I could not feign interest in any thing happening around me. Mary Loder soon discovered that there were times when even her conversation wearied and oppressed me, and when, do what I would, I could not conceal my restless yearning for the order to move on. One day she said, taking my idle hand half timidly, but wholly loA-ingly, into her own : " I knoAv you want to be away from us at this moment, Emily ; your eyes and heart haAre traveded miles and mdes beyond our sheltering mountains which, beautiful as they are, cannot be compared to the fairyland you are gazing into.

Dear Emily, do not be vexed AATith me if I guess more than you would Avish to tell me. People say I have a great talent for reading the hearts of those I very much care for, and you know I very much care for you — " "Thank you, Mary," I replied Avith a crimsoning face, for it instantly occurred to me that I had made revelations during the delirium of fever which had guided my young nurse in her guessings ; "I do believe you like me, and I believe too that though we are soon to part now we shall certainly meet again, when you will become, perhaps, even more my 'good angel' than you have been at present." I spoke half jestingly, and because I wanted to get away from the subject Mary had touched upon ; but she dear, earnest child ! received my words as if they had been seri ously uttered, and her pale, meek face brightened all over.

"Ah, Emily," she exclaimed, what a pri vilege, what an honour I should esteem it, to miriam's sorroaa7. 22 be ever, under any circumstances, of the slightest real use to you. If you are happy in this life I shall not be — my work is not amongst the happy ones — but if sorrow and disappointment reach you, if the sun and the moon groAV dark and you cease to dwed in your bright fairyland beyond our hoary moun tains, then perhaps you Avdl remember that I have suffered bitterly myself, and that above everything else I love to sympathize with those on whom also the rod has faden heavily." " Yes," I said, lightly answering the words I had lightly felt — " I will come to you, my little tender-hearted Mary, if ever any dire disaster OArertakes me. I should never be a saint I am afraid like you, but indeed and in truth, whether happy in this world or other- Avise, I should be glad to imbibe more of your blessed spirit, and to be taught of you how best to serve the God who is so good to me.

" Ask Him to teach you this Himself, clear," she said, A7ery gravely and earnestly — " and lose no time about it, lest the evd days come upon you before you have a place to shelter in. Oh, Emdy, it is harder than you can imagine, very cruedy hard to pass through the fire or through the water before you have a Divine Friend to enter it with you." Mary rarely alluded, even in the most distant manner, to her own past trial. Her voice shook now strangely as she spoke, and after bending to press one hurried kiss upon my face, she ran quickly from the room, leaving me to ponder on all we had been talking about. Not very long, however, did I reflect either upon the " evil days" she had aduded to, or upon the Divine Friend whose love she had exhorted me to secure ; for ten minutes after the daughter's abrupt departure, the mother came into my room with a large packet of letters that had just arrived from Germany, and in devouring their contents I forgot that there could be any but good days in store for me, or that I needed at present any more tender or efficient friendship than that which these letters plainly declared to be my own.

Mrs. Howard -wrote briefly but very kindly, expressing the long anxiety she had suffered on my account, and her heartfelt gratitude at the last news she had received of me. I must now lose no time, she added, in hastening to the place where she and Stephen were most impatiently waiting for me — it was a German town celebrated for some particular Avaters which she had been ordered to drink and bathe in. Within a day's journey of this place was Schvvartzen,and here we Avere ad to proceed as soon as possible after my arrival. Stephen would have come to fetch me but that he had been really ill himself, something less alarming than the fever AA'hich had done enough in attacking tAvo of the famdy — (I liked that phrase especially) — but serious enough to render care and quiet very necessary, and to account partially, not entirely though, for the depression of spirits Avhich his step-mother had observed in him ever since he joined her again after his Paris trip.

Of course it was only natural, Mrs. Howard thought, that Stephen should share in her anxiety about myself. Before leaA-ing me he had gone at least a dozen times to Mr. Loder's to reiterate the charges already most emphaticady given concerning the care they had faithfudy pro mised to take of me. She had herself been extremely unwdling to go from B — at all whde I Avas there, but her health imperatively demanded immediate change, and Stephen had felt it his duty to accompany her. There was nothing more of any importance in the letter, except the information that Mr. Loder had agreed to find an escort for me as far as the first German town, where Porson was to meet me and take me on to his mistress. The fact of Stephen's illness, while it caused me to long more ardently than ever to be with him, inclined me to judge him very leniently for not having added one line to his step-mother's communication.

He kneAv that we should meet in a few days, and it would be so infinitely sweeter to say ad that re mained to be said betAveen us than to write any portion of it. Was there not enough in Mrs. Howard's letter to fid me with renewed hope and gladness ? Till the present moment I had not known of my kind friend's frequent visits to Mr. Loder's whde I was lying in the first critical stage of my illness. They had only told me that Mr. Howard brought me in a lured car riage to their house, having found, me faint ing at the post-office close by, and that they had suggested my being intrusted to their care, on discovering the nature of the malady that had attacked me. I had always belie\-ed that Stephen must have yielded reluctantly to the necessity of committing me to the tender mercies of comparative strangers, and noAV I thought I could trace his fears and his struggles more clearly than ever, and I Avas quite disposed to agree with Mrs. Howard that the coming on of his own dlness was not the sole cause of the depression she referred to.

In truth I had a fund of bright and hopeful thoughts to fad back upon by and bye. Just now they must not be indulged, because there are two or three letters from home, en closed in Mrs. Howard's packet, claiming my immediate attention. One from my mother (a very rare pleasure, by the bye, for poor mamma, with ail her household duties, was the worst of correspon dents) wondering at my long silence, and ex pressing a variety of maternal anxieties on the subject of her truant daughter. Another (a very few lines, though) from my father, re proving me mildly for neglecting to write to them, and thus occasioning them all — mamma particularly — much uneasiness. At the end of this letter was added in John Livingston's hand these words : " I am trying to fulfil the charge you left with me, Emmy, but circum stances that I cannot now explain render this more difficult than we could either of us have anticipated.

I fear there is something very, very wrong with the person in whom we are both interested. — J. L." Last of ad there was a tolerably curious epistle from my sister Janet, containing, amongst much unimportant gossipping in telligence, the following rather striking information : " As for Miriam Clyne, who I imagine was fast becoming a special favourite of yours, I haAre only to say that I for one don't believe in that young lady, and what is more, I am almost sure papa himself is beginning to mis trust her. EA-er since you left she has been in a pining, miserable state, that is enough to give anybody the horrors who has the misfor tune to live in the same house with her ; but about six weeks ago she began to look so very ill and to have such frequent fainting fits that both papa and Mr. Clyne were alarmed for her life, and made sure she was going into a decline, or something equally interesting.