University of Virginia Library

THE STRANGE LADY.

In a quiet little valley, scooped among the river hills, where
there was always a murmur and always mist, creeping over the
turf, and reaching softly from bough to bough, sometimes darkened
with shadows, and sometimes streaky with sunlight, stands
a desolate and ruinous cabin, where once dwelt a person, called
by her neighbors, the strange lady; by herself, Mrs. Clifford.
All the summer the grass in this pretty scene was nearly covered
with flowers—king-cups, and red anemonees, and pale daisies—
while the hedge of sassafras, that ran up the slopes, shook with
the melody of a thousand birds, especially when the rosy twilight
of morning faded into the clear light of day.

A little way from the cabin door, by a wall of gray stone, where
the morning-glory hung blue-bells in the sunshine and the wild
rose climbed and blossomed, a spring of bright clear water
washed over its mossy rim, and rippled like a skein of silver
down until it lost itself in deeper and darker waves.

The valley seems less beautiful now; for though nature is
lovely always, humanity gives it a deeper charm, lost, fallen,
and ruined as it is. There is a moaning and a wailing in the
deep bosom of the earth, that were not there when the wings of
the angels cleft open the golden clouds which hung between the
lower and the upper heaven, ere, with but the ruins of immortality,
the sinful ones went out from Paradise, waking, with
their slightest footsteps, the awful echoes of the grave. Sin,
sin! the world because of thee is darkened from her early glory,
and in all her beautiful borders there are hearts that can only
lay their great burdens aside on the starry threshold of eternity.

Whether the shadow of previous transgression, I know not,

but very evidently some mystery hung over the history of Mrs.
Clifford. She came to live in the cabin, no one knew whence,
clad in the deepest mourning, and seemingly with no light in
her heart but that which went from the face of her cherub boy,
just beginning to smile back to the smile of his fair but desolate
mother. Her furniture was comprised in a few simple
articles, such as suited so humble a home: a bed, a few chairs
and a table, a little crockery and a cradle, making all except a
shelf of books—some of them old and worn, and some glittering
in gold and velvet. In the former was written, in a light,
graceful hand, “Mary Wilford,” and in the latter, in heavier
and firmer characters, “To Mary, from L. C.”

Often, in the pleasant weather, the pale lady might be seen
sitting in the shadow of the elm that grew close by her door
and trailed its lithe boughs against the eaves—whereon the
milk-white doves sunned their plumage as the day went down,
and about which the steel-blue swallows circled and twittered
very tamely; often, with her book, and him whose electric
touches not unfrequently drew her attention quite away from
its pages, she sat there, hour after hour, till the shining
beams that burnt through the tree-tops went down, and the star
of love stood blushing on the threshold of the night. Then,
retiring within doors, as the laughter and gay pranking of the
little one were hushed, she would sing fragments of songs, in a
voice sweet and low, but always deeply pensive, till the dimpled
little hands were folded in sleep.

There was seldom any light in her cabin. In summer the
moonlight streamed pale and cold through the open door, and
the bat flitted in and out as it would, and the owl complained
from the elm to the winds, that stopped not for its song of sorrow,
but kept running to and fro—now laughing among the
thick leaves, and now crying dismally from the tops of the hills.
In winter the embers only threw a faint glow over the little
window, darkened with the matted vines of creepers and sweetbrier,
that, interwoven, clambered over the cabin side, unpruned
and untrained.

For a time there were many rumors and surmises about the
strange lady; but gradually they died away. The visits of the

neighbors, whether prompted by kindness or curiosity, were at
length discontinued; for, though they were received in a manner
singularly sweet and gentle, they were never returned;
and, finally, her seclusion was only broken by the old woman
who carried milk to her. She, however, declared that the
strange lady had always a kind word for her, and that a glimpse
of the “little darling” made her happier all day.

As the child grew older, he was often seen toddling about in
a simple slip and straw hat, with his hands full of dandelions
and daisies, while his mother sat under the elm, frequently
looking from her volume to see that he strayed not too far; for
the child seemed to love solitude even more than the mother.
And, as years went by, he would sit alone, watching the dancing
of the motes in the sunshine, and the circling and wheeling of
the swallows about the cabin roof. He loved the clouds and
the mists best of all things, and stole often to the nooks least
haunted with birds, most shut from the sunshine. He had his
mother's melancholy in his deep eyes; even his smile was sad,
whether from predisposition, or from habit and association, I
cannot tell. He cared little for books, and his mother, to
whose lightest wish he was accustomed to yield, could only
with difficulty persuade him to learn to read.

Requiring less of her care and attention as he grew, the
golden threads which had for a time woven themselves through
the web of her life, faded out; the songs that used to lull the
baby to sleep were forgotten; the favorite volumes had no
longer any charm, and lay in her lap unopened all the day.
She came forth to the elm shadow less frequently, and with a
fainter step. A little in the future, time was turning the dark
furrow of that valley, where the weary have their rest.

Nine years had gone by since Mrs. Clifford came to the cabin,
and her child scarcely knew that beyond the dark hem of hills
and woods that girdled his world there was another and a
harsher one.

The swallows were gone, the leaves on the elm-tree were
yellow, and dropping silently, one by one, to the ground—it
was the middle of autumn. All day the young lad had been
in the woods, listening to the dropping of the nuts, and the dull

moaning of the winds, as they covered the flowers with dead
leaves. Gray, heavy clouds spread over all the face of heaven,
and, at the fall of night, the rain began to patter on the roof, in
pleasant and mournful music. The child returned from his
deeper isolation, sat under the tree, bright drops occasionally
lodging in his golden curls, or plashing on his cheek. He was
wondering whether the stars were swept from the sky, or whether,
beyond the storm, they burned brightly on.

“My child, my child, will you not come to me?” called the
low voice of his mother, more lowly and sorrowfully than it had
ever called before. In a moment he was by her side; and with
her thin, cold fingers, she parted the bright curls that the winds
had blown about his forehead, and kissed him many times,
before she said, “I am going a long journey very soon—it may
be to-night—and shall never come back to you any more. I
am weary and worn, and am going where they never say, I am
sick. The good Father will put his arms about you, if you
love him, when mine embrace you no longer.” She sank back
on her pillow, and was still, though her eyes turned not from
the child, hanging over her like a young bough stricken suddenly
into stone. Scarcely knew he what the mystery was of
which she spoke, but he shuddered with the instinctive dread
which all feel when death is very near. The darkness had
never seemed so terrible; and, as the dead vines creaked
against the window, and the storm beat against the roof, he was
afraid. “Mother!” he called, at first softly, then louder, and
more loud, but she did not answer. He put his hands on her
forehead, and it felt cold and damp. He kissed her lips; and,
when she returned not his kisses, he knew she was dead.

As childhood will, he tried to push the awful reality away.
He thought of the dropping nuts, of the white mists that curtained
the hills, and of sunshine and the birds. Suddenly he
remembered a nest that, in the spring, was under the gloomy
arch of an old bridge, near the woodland, where every day he
went to watch the growth of the nestlings, but one bright afternoon
he had found they were gone, and the empty nest half
crumbled away. Returning mournfully home, he stopped under
a tree, from which, with the fluttering among the boughs, a

shower of bright blossoms rained in his face, followed by a gush
of delicious music, and, looking up, he saw his lost birds.
When he had told this story to his mother, he remembered that
she said, “We go thus from the dark arches of sorrow, when
our mortal habitations fell away, to sing among the flowers of
the trees of Paradise forever and ever.” And with this sacred
recollection he fell asleep. And so—one to awake and take
upon her brows the crown of immortality, and one the thorny
crown of earthly sorrow—they slept.

There were not so many at the funeral as came to my grandfather's,
and young Clifford had no home any more; yet He
who “giveth sleep to his beloved” holds an invisible shield
over their children, and the strange lady, living alone and silent
long, had filled the neighborhood with a mystical sweet affection
for her child. He is a man now, and his breast is bossed all
over with hearts.