Winter Evening Tales, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [i love reading books TXT] 📗

in the Silver Cliff."

"Won't you give me that letter, and let me destroy it, William? It was written to the wrong Smith."

"It was written to the wrong Smith, but it was given to the right Smith. Still, Eleanor, if you will say one little word to me, you may do what you like with the letter."

Then Eleanor whispered the word, and the blaze of the burning letter made a little illumination in honor of their betrothal kiss.



THE STORY OF MARY NEIL.

Poverty has not only many learned disciples, but also many hidden saints and martyrs. There are humble tenements that are tabernacles, and desolate, wretched rooms that are the quarries of the Almighty--where with toil and weariness and suffering the souls He loves are being prepared for the heavenly temple.

This is the light that relieves the deep shadow of that awful cloud of poverty which ever hangs over this rich and prosperous city. I have been within that cloud, wet with its rain of tears, chilled with its gloomy darkness, "made free" of its innermost recesses; therefore I speak with authority when I say that even here a little child may walk and not stumble, if Jesus lead the way or hold the hand.

Nay, but children walk where strong men fall down, and young maidens enter the kingdom while yet their parents are stumbling where no light from the Golden City and "the Land very far off" reaches them. Last winter I became very much interested in such a case. I was going to write "Poor Mary Neil!" but that would have been the strangest misnomer. Happy Mary Neil! rises impetuously from my heart to contradict my pen.

And yet when I first became acquainted with her condition, she was "poor" in every bitter sense of the word.

A drunkard's eldest daughter, "the child of misery baptized with tears," what had her seventeen years been but sad and evil ones? Cold and hunger, cares and labors far beyond her strength sowed the seeds of early death. For two years she struggled amid such suffering as dying lungs entail to help her mother and younger brothers and sisters, but at last she was compelled to make her bed amid sorrow and suffering which she could no longer assuage by her helpful hands and gentle words.

Her religious education had not been quite neglected, and she dimly comprehended that through the narrow valley which lay between Time and Eternity she would need a surer and more infallible guide than her own sadly precocious intellect. Then God sent her just the help she needed--a tender, pitiful, hopeful woman full of the love of Jesus.

Souls ripen quickly in the atmosphere of the Border Land, and very soon Mary had learned how to walk without fearing any evil. Certain passages of Scripture burned with a supernatural glory, and made the darkness light; and there were also a few hymns which struck the finest chords in her heart, and


"'Mid days of keenest anguish
And nights devoid of ease,
Filled all her soul with music
Of wondrous melodies."


As she neared the deeper darkness of death, this was especially remarkable of that extraordinary hymn called "The Light of Death," by Dr. Faber. From the first it had fascinated her. "Has he been here that he knows just how it feels?" she asked, wonderingly, and then solemnly repeated:


"Saviour, what means this breadth of death,
This space before me lying;
These deeps where life so lingereth,
This difficulty of dying?
So many turns abrupt and rude,
Such ever-shifting grounds,
Such strangely peopled solitudes,
Such strangely silent sounds?'"


Her sufferings were very great, and sometimes the physical depression exerted a definable influence on her spiritual state. Still she never lost her consciousness of the presence of her Guide and Saviour, and once, in the exhaustion of a severe paroxysm, she murmured two lines from the same grand hymn:


"Deeper! dark, dark, but yet I follow:
Tighten, dear Lord, thy clasp."


Ah! there was something touching and noble beyond all words, in this complete reliance and perfect trust; and it never again wavered.

"Is it very dark, Mary dear?" her friend said one morning, the last for her on earth.

"Too dark to see," she whispered, "but I can go on if Christ will hold my hand."

After this a great solemnity shaded her face; she lost all consciousness of this world. The frail, shadowy little body lay gray and passive, while that greatest of all struggles was going on--the struggle of the Eternal out of Time; but her lips moved incessantly, and occasionally some speech of earth told the anxious watchers how hard the conflict was. For instance, toward sundown she said in a voice strangely solemn and anxious:


"Who are we trying to avoid?
From whom, Lord, must we hide?
Oh! can the dying be decoyed,
With the Saviour by his side?"


"Loose sands and all things sinking!" "Are we near eternity?" "Can I fall from Thee even now?" and ejaculations of similar kind, showed that the spiritual struggle was a very palpable one to her; but it ended in a great calm. For two hours she lay in a peace that passeth understanding, and you would have said that she was dead but for a vague look of expectancy in the happy, restful face. Then suddenly there was a lightening of the whole countenance; she stretched out her arms to meet the messenger of the King, and entered heaven with this prayer on her lips:


"Both hands, dear Lord, both hands.'"


Don't doubt but she got them; their mighty strength lifted her over the dark river almost dry shod.


"Rests she not well whose pilgrim staff and shoon
Lie in her tent--for on the golden street
She walks and stumbles not on roads star strewn
With her unsandalled feet."




THE HEIRESS OF KURSTON CHACE.

Into the usual stillness of Kurston Chace a strange bustle and excitement had come--the master was returning with a young bride, whom report spoke of as "bewitchingly beautiful." It was easy to believe report in this case, for there must have been some strong inducement to make Frederick Kurston wed in his sixtieth year a woman barely twenty. It was not money; Mr. Kurston had plenty of money, and he was neither ambitious nor avaricious; besides, the woman he had chosen was both poor and extravagant.

For once report was correct. Clementina Gray, in tarlatans and flowers, had been a great beauty; and Clementina Kurston, in silks and diamonds, was a woman dedicated, by Nature for conquest.

It was Clementina's beauty that had prevailed over the love-hardened heart of the gay old gallant, who had escaped the dangers of forty seasons of flirtation. He was entangled in the meshes of her golden hair, fascinated by the spell of her love-languid eyes, her mouth like a sad, heavy rose, her faultless form and her superb manners. He was blind to all her faults; deaf to all his friends--in the glamour of her enchantments he submitted to her implicitly, even while both his reason and his sense of other obligations pleaded for recognition.

Clementina had not won him very easily; the summer was quite over, nearly all the visitors at the stylish little watering-place had departed, the mornings and evenings were chilly, every day Mr. Kurston spoke of his departure, and she herself was watching her maid pack her trunks, and in no very amiable temper contemplating defeat, when the reward of her seductive attentions came.

"Mr. Kurston entreated the favor of an interview."

She gladly accorded it; she robed herself with subtle skill; she made herself marvelous.

"Mother," she said, as she left her dressing-room, "you will have a headache. I shall excuse you. I can manage this business best alone."

In an hour she came back triumphant. She put her feet on the fender, and sat down before the cheerful blaze to "talk it over."

"It is all right, mother. Good-by to our miserable shifts and shabby-genteel lodgings and turned dresses. He will settle Kurston Chace and all he has upon me, and we are to be married next month."

"Impossible, Tina! No modiste in the world could get the things that are absolutely necessary ready in that time."

"Everything is possible in New York--if you have money--and Uncle Gray will be ready enough to buy my marriage clothes. Besides, I am going to run no risks. If he should die, nothing on earth could console me for the trouble I have had with him, but the fact of being his widow. There is no sentiment in the affair, and the sooner one gets to ordering dinners and running up bills, the better."

"Poor Philip Lee!"

"Mother, why did you mention him? Of course he will be angry, and call me all kinds of unpleasant names; but if he has a particle of common sense he must see that it was impossible for me to marry a poor lawyer--especially when I had such a much better offer. I suppose he will be here to-night. You must see him, mother, and explain things as pleasantly as possible. It would scarcely be proper for me, as Mr. Kurston's affianced wife, to listen to all the ravings and protestations he is sure to indulge in."

In this supposition Clementina was mistaken. Philip Lee took the news of her engagement to his wealthy rival with blank calmness and a civil wish for her happiness. He made a stay of conventional propriety, and said all the usual polite platitudes, and then went away without any evidence of the deep suffering and mortification he felt.

This was Clementina's first drop of bitterness in her cup of success. She questioned her mother closely as to how he looked, and what he said. It did not please her that, instead of bemoaning his own loss, he should be feeling a contempt for her duplicity--that he should use her to cure his passion, when she meant to wound him still deeper. She felt at moments as if she could give up for Philip Lee the wealth and position she had so hardly won, only she knew him well enough to understand that henceforward she could not easily deceive him again.

It was pleasant to return to New York this fall; the news of the engagement opened everyone's heart and home. Congratulations came from every quarter; even Uncle Gray praised the girl who had done so well for herself, and signified his approval by a handsome check.

The course of this love ran smooth enough, and one fine morning in October, Grace Church saw a splendid wedding. Henceforward Clementina Kurston was a woman to be courted instead of patronized, and many a woman who had spoken lightly of her beauty and qualities, was made to acknowledge with an envious pang that she had distanced them.

This was her first reward, and she did not stint herself in extorting it. To tell the truth, Clementina had many a bitter score of this kind to pay off; for, as she said in extenuation, it was impossible for her to allow herself to be in debt to her self-respect.

Well, the wedding was