Two lives;

Front matter

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

NEW YORK.

D. APPLETON &;۩. 200 BROADWAY,

Chapter I

LIFE IN THE SOUTH. THE VOW.

“ Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.”

Midsummer Might's Dream.

“ A mansion where domestic love And truth breathe simple kindness to the heart.”

Mrs. Gilman.

Beneficent Nature, how often does the heart of man, crushed beneath the weight of his sins or his sorrows, rise in reproach against thine unchanged serenity l

We sin, and call on darkness to cover our shame, — but at morning hour the sun goes forth, “ rejoicing as a strong man to run a race.” We lay our loved ones in the earth ; and while we weep above their graves, the light shines merrily there, and calls forth the gay flowers of spring to deck the sod ; and we reproach thee because thou dost not, like us, struggle against the will of Universal Love, — because thou dost not cease to give forth from thy motherbosom food, and light, and warmth, to all thy children,— because, even while we murmur at thee, thou continuest to smile upon us and to send sweet and softening influences into our hearts from thy serene aspect.

It was feelings such as we have described which made 1* the young Grace Elliot draw her veil more closely around her, as she issued from her home to pay a parting visit to the newly-made grave of her father, accompanied by her scarce less bereaved and sorrowing cousin, Isabel Douglass. And surely never did impatient heart shut out a lovelier landscape than that home presented on this May morning. The verdant bank on which the house was built sloped gently down to a broad river on whose tranquil bosom the sunbeams lay in a column of golden light, wooing the eye farther and farther on, till at the distance of five miles it was met by ocean’s wide expanse. If the glance was averted from this magnificent prospect, it rested upon oaks which had flung their gigantic arms above that spot before the memory of living man, and which still promised in their undecaying grandeur to wave their sombre drapery above many successive generations. Even when Grace looked sadly down she found the glad sun mirrored in the full cup of many a flower which Nature, prodigal of beauty, had strown at her feet, while, at every movement, her dress shook from some shrub the starry dews with which Night had robed it.

In this abode of loveliness had Grace first seen the light, and here, at five years old, had Isabel found a home and a father with her mother’s brother, Mr. Elliot. Left a widower in the prime of life, this gentleman had placed his household and his infant daughter under the matronly care of his elder sister, Miss Elliot, who had resided with him but a few months when the death of Isabel’s mother sent her too to claim an interest in the maiden’s kindly heart. Time had passed lightly over that quiet family. They were not gay, for the master of a mansion ordinarily gives the tone to his household, and Mr. Elliot could not be gay — the memory of his wife dwelling ever as a shadow at his side. Still it was a shadow of grace and beauty, mel.

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lowing and subduing, but not obscuring the brightness of his life. He had ever a cheerful word for his children and a kindly smile for his dependants.

Such wras the serene atmosphere in which Grace and Isabel had grown to the dawn of womanhood — Grace being now fifteen and Isabel one year older. The first cloud that rose in their sky had burst in wild tempest over their heads. The father and the guardian had been stricken dow n in his strength, and they were now weeping over his grave. Yet not alone for him fell their tears. His death had been the signal for many sorrows. His will had committed them during their minority to the charge of his only brother, who, having married a lady of New York, resided in that city. To-morrow they were to leave their beloved home in the warm, ' friendly South, for one in a colder clime, — and the dwellers in that clime for whose society they must exchange that of tHeir kind indulgent aunt, might they not prove that

“ The cold in clime are cold in blood?”

Even the servants who had been familiar to them for years — who had ministered to their childish wants, borne with their childish caprices, and shared their childish sports — claimed a place in their memories and their regrets. Arrived, however, at the grassy knoll surrounded by a white paling and shaded by pines and cedars, which had been for more than a century the burial-place of the Elliots, all were for a time forgotten, except him who lay within the little mound at their feet. What a rushing flood of memories overwhelm the heart at such moments ! How life-like are the pictures in which every varying expression of those now unchanging features passes before us ! We remember the glad smile with which they welcomed us, and we feel that there is no joy in returning to a home where that is not — we recall the tender glances which soothed our childish griefs, and we are ready to submit tc any of life’s innumerable ills to win back to our darkened world that one beam of heavenly light — we see again the brow shadowed by some fault of ours, and our souls are bowed down with unutterable sorrow, and we cry to Heaven ir_ our anguish for some voice from the world of spirits to assure us that the shadow has passed away. Grace Elliot sank on her knees beside her father’s grave, and sobbed with convulsive agony, while Isabel stood beside her in deep and overpowering, if less tempestuous grief. Alarmed at last by the wild and increasing agitation of Grace, she put her arm around her, and strove gently to draw her away.

“ Let me alone, Isabel !” Grace exclaimed ; “ let me die here, for there are none left to love me now.”

“ There are many left to love you, Grace ; for their sakes go with me — we will not go quite away, only go to yonder spring where you can bathe your swollen face, and you can come back again if you desire it.”

Grace did not stir.

“ Then, for his sake who would have been grieved to see you abandoning yourself thus to your sorrow, come with me, Grace,” said Isabel, subduing her voice to a reverential whisper ; and Grace rose, and leaning on her cousin, suffered her to lead her away.

They passed beyond the enclosure to a slight elevation, from whose summit grew a- lofty magnolia shading a spring of the clearest water. Near this spring Isabel seated her cousin, and placing herself at her side, supported her head upon her shoulder, while she dipped her hand in the cool fount and pressed it to her burning brow. For some time Grace remained quite still, with closed eyes — then, her features becoming suddenly convulsed again, she sobbed

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ft out, “ Oh ! it is bitter to feel that there are none left to love you.”

“ You cannot feel that, dear Grace,” said Isabel, soothingly, “ remember our kind aunt.”

“ But we leave her to-morrow.”

“ Yes ; but then we go to another uncle and aunt, who, I do not doubt, will be very kind to us.”

“ I did not speak of kindness ; strangers may be kind to us, but they cannot love us, and my grief is that I shall be separated from all that have known and loved me.” And with somewhat of petulance in her manner, Grace raised her head from her cousin’s shoulder, and withdrew herself from her supporting arm.

Isabel’s face flushed, and an expression of wounded feeling passed over it. It was gone, however, in a moment — resentment to his child could not exist so near her uncle’s grave — and she drew Grace again to her side, as she asked, “ Will you be so separated while I am with you ?”

“ You did not say any thing of yourself,” said Grace, evasively.

“ What could I say that you did not already know, dear Grace ? Have we not played together, and studied together, had the same dear friends, and shared the same joys and sorrows ? and how can we help loving each other dearly ?”

Isabel kissed her cousin fondly, and an expression of pleasure — almost a smile — stole over the features of Grace, as nestling closer to the bosom on which she rested, she said softly, “ Promise always to love me so, dear Isabel, and I shall not mind going away.”

“ I do promise, dear Grace, to love you always as a true sister. And now let us go home, for Aunt Nancy’s sake — she was so much afraid that this visit would make you ill. Come, dear Grace, — come, for my sake.”

Grace was always subdued by tenderness, and though she turned her tearful eyes towards the burial-ground and uttered a reluctant “ O Isabel ! — must we go?” she offered no resistance to the gentle force which drew her from her seat and guided her towards her home.

Aunt Nancy, — as Isabel and Grace had been accustomed to call Miss Elliot, — was the very embodiment of all kindly and gentle feelings. The years which had changed the soft, rich brown of her luxuriant hair into gray, and destroyed the fine proportions of her once slender and graceful form, had not dimmed the light of her clear blue eye, or stolen from her countenance its expression of contentment and benevolence, the impress of a mind grateful for her own lot, and desirous to extend the happiness she enjoyed to others. Her brother’s death had been a deep affliction to her, yet scarcely, perhaps, harder to endure than the approaching parting with her nieces, the nurslings of her love, for whom, for more than twelve years, she had lived. Had the proposal to send them away been made by her brother during his life, she would have opposed it strongly, though aware that in their native state, Georgia, at that period, the requisites to the completion of an accomplished education could with difficulty be commanded. But the wishes of the dead were sacred in her eyes, and though the preparations for their departure, which had engaged her on the morning of their visit to the family burial-place, had kept vividly before her for hours the thought of her coming loneliness, no murmur had mingled with her regret. In the presence of Isabel and Grace, Miss Elliot had hitherto commanded herself to speak cheerfully, but many tears had fallen in secret at the thought of the cold and distant home to which she was about to consign them. For Grace especially had she sorrowed,— not that her love for her was greater, but that she

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thought her less able to bear even the shadow of unkind, ness.

Never had Isabel been made to feel herself an alien to the hearts that had adopted her. Often had the stranger, entertained by Mr. Elliot, been surprised to hear one of the two lovely children sporting around him, call him uncle. That one word was the only visible distinction between the child born in his house and her who had found a shelter there from the desolation of her own home. Yet Mr. Elliot could not but feel a deeper love for the child of his own gentle wife, who smiled upon him with her soft eyes, and spoke to him in her very tones ; and Miss Elliot regarded Grace with that peculiar tenderness felt by a mother for the youngest and feeblest of her offspring — a feeling engendered by that delicacy of constitution which caused the friends of Grace to experience, for years, the most trembling anxiety for her health, and even for her life. The same kind words were spoken to Isabel and to Grace, but when they were addressed to the latter, the voice assumed a tenderer tone — the same affectionate looks were turned on them, but they lingered longest upon Grace. Even their nurses, if there was a contest between the children for a toy, would say, “ Gib ’em to your cousin, Miss Isabel — you won’t fret your poor, sick cousin.”

As Grace grew older, her constitution acquired vigor, and now all remains of its early feebleness seemed to have passed away ; but the gentle tones and melting looks and yielding love had become a habit to those around her, and a necessity to her. Child of the sun, she was chilled by a passing shadow.

There was nothing in what we have described to check the young, warm impulses of Isabel. She had never been repulsed from the arms which embraced her cousin — cold unkindness had never forced a tear to her, sunny eyes.

If she sometimes saw that her cousin was an object of greater consideration than herself, she also saw that it wai for a reason which commended itself to her understanding, and won the assent of her generous heart — she was a sufferer. To this claim Isabel yielded without compulsion, and thus the same circumstances which made constant demonstrations of tenderness necessary to Grace, rendered Isabel independent of them. To her, love was like the air of Heaven — invisible, intangible, it yet encircled her soul, and she knew it, for in it was her life ; but for Grace its depths must be stirred, and soft breezes must ever assure her of its presence. Alas ! that those gentle breezes should ever become a wild and desolating tempest !

Miss Elliot had seen Isabel and Grace depart on the sad visit of the morning with reluctance, and when they proposed, in the afternoon, to walk to that part of the plantation on which the houses inhabited by the negroes on Mr. Elliot’s estate were situated, she strenuously opposed it.

“ I cannot consent to it, my dear children,” she said, “ you both need rest and quiet before you set out on your journey. Your head is burning now, Grace, and any farther agitation will make you ill. After you are gone, I will go around to all the negroes and bid them good-by for you.”

She had drawn Grace to her bosom, and tears shone in the eyes of both at the thought of how soon that time would arrive.

“ But Aunt Nancy,” said Isabel, “ we promised Maum Hagar to see her again before we went — if you do not like to have Grace go, I will go alone and tell her — ”

“ I think I ought to go,” interposed Grace ; “ I may nevei see her again.”

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“ Then, my darlings, I will go with you,” said Aunt Nancy, whose kindly nature could not oppose itself to such a reason.

The negro houses were about half a mile distant from their home, and they could just catch a glimpse of the setting sun through the rich foliage of surrounding trees when they reached them. The first in the group was that occupied by Maum Hagar, an aged woman who had teen for several years quite blind, and by one of her grand-daughters who attended on her. The old woman was sitting in the warm May air before her door, clad in a clean though coarse wrapper and petticoat, and wearing on her head a handkerchief striped with blue — not disposed in the turbanlike fashion common to the younger servants, but knotted beneath the chin. Her eyes were open, and there was nothing in their appearance that indicated blindness. As she heard approaching footsteps, she turned her face in the direction whence they came — a smile passed over her face a moment after, and she said with evident pleasure, “ ’Tis my good young ladies come to see ole Maum Hagar for de last time.”

“ For the last time before we go away, Maumer,” answered Grace, as she laid her small, white hand in the dark-colored one stretched out to her, — “ but we are coming back again in four years, and I want to know what we shall bring for you.”

“ Ah, my missis ! before four years go, Hagar hope to be where she’ll neber hab no more want.”

“ Do you want any thing now, Maum Hagar ?” asked Miss Elliot kindly.

“ No, missis, not’in’ — not’in’ ’cept sometimes to go to my rest — so many handsome, rich, strong people, all gone before, and here ole wortless Hagar yet, cumb’rin’ de ground.”

“ Don’t talk so sadly, Maumer,” said Isabel, “ you know we all love you, and Grace and I would be grieved indeed if we thought we were never to see you again.”

“ My good young missis, dat must be as de Lord will, and we wont griebe for him will.”

A few minutes after, the old woman placed her hand on the head of Grace, and then passing it slowly over her face, said, “ Ah, Miss Grace, you bery like your poor ’ma — jist sich long curly hair she been hab. Well, you couldn’t be like a better or a handsomer lady — I often see her sweet smile, and I tink she must hab dat same smile now in Heaben. Miss Isabel’s de tallest yet,” she continued, raising her other hand to Isabel’s face, “ and I tink she fabor de Elliots — don’t she, Miss Nancy ?”

“ I think she does,” said Miss Elliot.

“Well ! you’re like a good family, and a kind and a handsome one too, my dear child. You been both good young ladies to me — de Lord bless you both, and make His good word what you read so often to ole Hagar your comfort ; and if I neber hear your sweet voices here agen, may I hear ’em singing God’s praises in Heaben. Amen.”

The old woman’s sightless balls were lifted to the sky, and tears rolled down her cheeks, while the two girls sobbed aloud. As she concluded, she raised a hand of each to her lips, and Aunt Nancy, saying to her that she would see her again to-morrow, led them away.

As the evening passed on, a painful oppression lay upon Miss Elliot’s heart. She became silent, and her looks, tender and mournful, rested now on Grace and now on Isabel, but they lingered longer on the first. The sound of the horn summoning the negroes of the plantation to their house of prayer, seemed to rouse her from her long reveryj and after glancing at the mantel clock, which

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id pointed to the hour of nine, she rose and rang a small bell. Almost immediately, the servants employed about the house, twelve or fourteen in number, — some with heads blanched by age, and others at the very opening of life, — entered, bringing with them a bench, on which they seated themselves. Isabel had placed on a table before her aunt a large Bible. Miss Elliot drew it towards her, and read one of those psalms in which David pours forth in strains at once lofty and touching, his sorrow and his faith — his disappointment in all earthly expectation, and his hope and trust in God. She closed the book, and all, servants and mistresses, knelt together before Him who is no respecter of persons ; and she, who since Mr. Elliot’s death had been a priestess in that household, offered up, in the name of all, thanksgiving and praise to Him who had protected them through the day, and earnest prayer for His continued guardianship. Especially did she commend to His fatherly guidance those who were going far from them. The feelings whose expression to man had been so carefully repressed, were now laid bare before Him to whom it is our delightful privilege to confess our sins, and reveal our sorrows — our “ High Priest, who can be touched with a feeling of our infirmities.” She prayed for God’s compassion on the human love which clung so closely to His gifts, that it feared* to trust them for a season again to His keeping. In the simplest language, — for Aunt Nancy pretended to no scholarship, — she entreated Him to go with their loved ones, to fulfil to them His own gracious promise that He would be a Father to the fatherless, to guard them from all evil, but, above all, from sin. “ Our love would cry, Father ! let light and gladness be ever around them ; but if Thou in Thy wisdom shouldst encompass them with darkness, be Thou still a light within their hearts, and make Thy word a lamp unto their feet.” She who thus presented the desires of her own heart and of every other, in that little assemblage, had found strength in prayer ; her voice, at first low and faltering, became composed, though deeply earnest, while the objects of her supplication knelt weeping beside her, and more than one sob from the servants’ bench told that the feelings she expressed had found an echo there.

Immediately after the evening devotions, Grace retired for the night. Miss Elliot accompanied her to her room, and dismissing her usual attendant, assisted her to undress. How many tender associations were connected with that simple act ! Memory pictured Grace as she lay, long years ago, a helpless infant in her arms, with that same cherub smile which still lighted her face in hours of joy, dimpling her round, fair cheek, and with those soft blue eyes pleading for love, even as now they seemed to do ; and as she held her to her bosom and kissed her tenderly, in answer to that plea, her heart tremblingly asked when and how they should meet again.

Isabel was still in the parlor in which they had spent the evening when her aunt returned there. She had removed the candles to another room, and stood at a window looking out upon the landscape lighted by the soft beams of the young May moon.” Absorbed in her own thoughts, Miss Elliot stood beside her before she was aware of her entrance.

“ Oh, Aunt Nancy !” she exclaimed, “ how I long foi one glance at the book of fate, just to see whether, when Grace and I return to our home four years hence, we shall find every thing here exactly as we leave it.”

“ Is it quite certain that Grace and you will return four years hence ?”

“ As certain as our lives. You know, by my uncle's will, we are to be both considered of age inthat time ; and

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when once we are free to act as we please, what can hinder our return V 1

“ Your own pleasure ; you may not then desire to come.”

“ Aunt Nancy ! Can you believe that we shall so soon forget our earliest friend, and this dear, beautiful home !”

As Isabel spoke, she took her aunt’s hand, and drawing it through her arm, held it pressed close against her heart.

“ No, my child,” answered Miss Elliot, with emotion, “ I do not fear that you can forget us, but you may find dearer friends and a more beautiful home.”

“ Look there !” said Isabel, pointing from the window, “ and acknowledge the last to be impossible ; and for the first, ask yourself, Aunt Nancy, whether four years are likely to erase the impressions of twelve.”

“ Those twelve years were years of childhood ; their traces were light and feeble, compared with the deep, earnest emotions of womanhood, on which you are just entering. But it is not your feelings to me that occupy my thoughts and awaken my deepest anxiety now, Isabel. Your love is very precious to me, but I can leave that, as well as all other earthly good that concerns myself only, to God’s disposal. It is your happiness, — yours and Grace’s, — that I find it hard to commit to Him. In the next four years, that happiness, as far as earth is concerned, may be decided — nay, the associations you form in those years may extend their influence into eternity.” Miss Elliot paused for a moment, as if overcome by the vision that presented itself to her view ; then, clasping Isabel to her bosom, she cried, “ Oh, Isabel ! how can I leave you with strangers during these years !”

“ God will go with us, Aunt Nancy,” said Isabel softly, her cheerful, brave spirit subdued to somewhat of awe by the emotion of her usually gentle, quiet aunt.

2*

“ Thank you, my child, for recalling to me my only comfort, and promise me, Isabel, that you will seek His blessing, earnestly, constantly.”

“ I will,” whispered Isabel, — her head still resting on that kindly bosom.

“ Then I need not fear for you, Isabel, for He is ever found of those who seek Him ; but, indeed, my apprehensions have ever been less for you than for Grace — she* is so helpless, so dependent ; wrhat will she do among strangers ?”

“ I shall be with her, Aunt Nancy.”

“ True ! and you must love her and watch over her very tenderly, Isabel ; her father was very good to you.”

“ Good, indeed! Was I not as his own child to him while he lived, and has he not provided most generously for my future wants ? Oh, Aunt Nancy ! I never was half grateful or affectionate enough to him while he lived,” cried the weeping Isabel, with a sudden access of that remorseful tenderness with which the dead are often remembered.

“ Then, Isabel, make it up by your devotion to his darling Grace, and his spirit will bless you ; you can thus repay all that either he or I have done for you.”

Isabel’s was a nature not easily wrought to the expres sion of strong emotion, but it was capable of a generous and lofty enthusiasm which, once excited, set at defiance all the dictates of a selfish reserve. Now, raising her clasped hands and streaming eyes upward, she exclaimed, “ Here, then, Aunt Nancy, where you and my beloved uncle received me and sheltered me from every breath of unkindness, do I promise to devote myself to your Grace, with more than a sister’s love. If she be sick or in sorrow, I will nurse and sooth her so tenderly that she will dream you are beside her; her happiness shall be as dear

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to me as my own — nay, dearer ; for remembering that I owe all to her father, I will hold no possession too valua. ble, no feeling too powerful, no hope too dear, to be relinquished, if her happiness demand the sacrifice.”

“ Hush ! hush !” exclaimed Miss Elliot, painfully impressed by the strength of Isabel’s language and the earnestness of her manner.

“ The promise is made, dear aunt, in the presence of God, to you and to the dead,” said Isabel, solemnly. She felt that a vow was upon her soul. It was a vow to be remembered long after, amid tears more bitter than any she had this day shed.

CHAPTER II. “ Hence, vain deluding joys

The brood of folly, without father bred !

How little you bested,

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys.”

Milton.

“ 1 am always sorry, Matilda, to interfere in any way with your enjoyments, but you must feel the utter impropriety of a party in our house at present — so soon after my brother’s death, and when we are expecting to receive his orphan daughter.”

“ It is because we expect your nieces so soon that I de sire to have the party over at once ; I should otherwise have been quite willing to wait a few weeks longer. As to your brother’s death rendering it improper, I must say, Mr. Elliot, that I do not agree with you. If I had put on mourning it would certainly ; but, as you dispensed with my wearing that, I did not think it necessary to decline invitations, and of course that which did not prevent my accepting invitations cannot be pleaded as an excuse for my declining to return them.”

Mr. Elliot looked annoyed, but turned to his newspaper, and sipped his chocolate in silence.

“ How soon do you think your nieces can be here ?” asked his wife.

“ They were to sail on the twentieth. The average length of voyages from Savannah at this season is eight days.”

“ By the twenty-eighth then they will probably be here, and this is the seventeenth. Suppose I send out my invitations for Tuesday next, the twenty-second. It will require rapid work to get all my arrangements made by that time, but I would make any exertion rather than wound the feelings of poor Grace. I cannot disappoint those who have a right to expect a party from me, but I will have it over, and all signs of it cleared away, before the girls arrive. Will that do ?” And Mrs. Elliot, who was never satisfied with herself when acting against her husband’s expressed opinion, though her dissatisfaction seldom led her to sacrifice to his approval her pleasures or her popularity, asked this question with real anxiety, which was expressed both in her tone and manner. Mr. Elliot’s face flushed for a moment, and he looked up, probably with the intention of expostulating again on the propriety of giving the party at all, but a glance at his wife’s earnest countenance seemed to change his purpose, and he replied, “ If the party must be given, it had certainly better be as early as that. ’