University of Virginia Library

THE PRIDE OF SARAH WORTHINGTON.

I took up one of the papers published in the city which is
nearest to Clovernook, and turning, as is the habit of women,
to that part which chronicles the main points in all domestic
histories, I read, that Sarah Worthington was dead; “after a
painful illness, aged nineteen years, three months, and eleven
days.” I read it more than once, to satisfy all questionings of
my unwilling heart; but there could be no error; the street,
the incidental revelations of the stricken family, every thing
confirmed the first impression that had stolen through my eyes
to my shrinking consciousness. The old truth was again asserted
by some friend, in the often repeated verse which followed,
that

How like a peal of thunder awakening us from some pleasant
dream, when the dashing of the rain at the window, the
howling of the tempest on the hill, and the blank darkness
about us, take the place of the soft voice that was in our ears,
and the smile that warmed our hearts, leaving us for a moment
startled and bewildered, comes intelligence of the death of
a friend, whom we left a few weeks, or it may be a few days
ago, in the enjoyment of vigorous health.

After the first burst of surprise and sorrow, we fall into a
train of melancholy musing—when, and under what circumstances
was our last meeting with the dead—what did she say,
and how did she look? was it morning or evening? and was

our language and manner kind, or reserved and formal? How
many instances we recall in which kind words might have been
said that were not said, or kind actions performed that were
not performed! If it be a near relation who is gone, how much
of harshness and coldness and indifference we have to reproach
ourselves for, and how we are tortured with exaggerations of our
short comings, and idle regrets.

Who of us all cannot remember some pale lips from which
we would give all the world to hear the blessed words, “You
are forgiven.” For myself, there is one darker memory than
all the rest—one, perpetually recurring, and from which I shrink
away, afraid to think. Mountains, and woods, and waters,
darken between me and the solitary grave of one who was my
dearest friend, yet against whom I sinned—not with any premeditated
wrong—but from childish ignorance and sudden passion.
My lost one! if your dying hands had been laid upon
my head in forgiveness as well as in blessing, my irrepressible
grief might long ago have been stilled—that blessing, meant
for innocency, falling upon guilt, has been my curse.

All the long summer time I knew that she was dying, yet I
put off the day of confession. Now she would be better and
talk of the future, and, accustomed to rely on all she said, I
would grow hopeful, and in its brightening the dreadful error
was almost forgot; and when she grew too weak to take me in
her arms, as she had always done before, and lay all the day
looking from the open window at the clouds and the grass, and
I knew instinctively that she must leave us before long, I was
more than ever afraid to speak. I could not embitter her sufferings
with a knowledge of my early injustice. Sometimes
my sisters would go away from her chamber for an hour, or
even for a day, for youth is apt to be inconsiderate; but I was
there always, bringing the cup of water, wrapping doubly the
chilly hands and feet, or smoothing the counterpane. A strong
fascination would not allow me to leave, but when she praised
my devotion I would go aside and weep.

So the time went on, and I said not, I have done wrong, I
have sinned against you, sweet friend, and against heaven; till
at last the dull shadows of autumn swept across the face of the

summer, and my watching was all done, and the smile which
they said was so life-like and loving looked reproachful to
me.

At night, I am lifted to “the litter of close-curtained sleep”
by the phantoms that come up from the grave; waking, in the
morning, I go down under the long years, full of pains and sorrows
and disappointments, and folding back the shround, cry out
to the dust for forgiveness. In vain! There is no green hollow
in the wilderness, no blank sands of the desert, that to me would
not be haunted. God, will the tormentor cross the threshold
of the grave, clouding the pure radiance of eternity with the
curse that has spread mildew along the summer of my mortal
existence! Shall the ashes of life's roses never be taken from
my head, nor the sackcloth unbound from my bosom?

But I meant not this digression—I know not that she of
whom my little story chiefly is, she who has gone down to death
and up to judgment before me, may plead against me anything
at all. I mean by this no argument for the better actions
of my riper years. I have perhaps learned to check impatience
of temper and impetuosity of speech, but I fear I am farther off
from heaven now than when I used to think the slender tree-tops
close against the skies.

It was the midst of the harvest—the fragrance of the newly
cut hay made all the air delicious, for the sythe had been busy
all day in the wide meadows, and along their flat smooth surfaces,
and up and down the hills, lay the straight, thick swaths
—paths for the starlight and beds for the tired winds, for the
stars were peeping, one after another, above the edges of the
tree-tops, and the airs, searcely awake, gave no murmur to the
thick and dusty foliage.

Resting on the summit of the eastern hill stood the full moon,
looking very large, and so pale that “the man with the bag of
thorns” was distinctly visible, else my juvenile employment—
for we were playing Hide and Seek—made my childish fancy
more sharp in apprehension than it was wont to be.

Let me see—there were half a dozen of us: Ward, my little
nephew, nine years old then; Robert, a distant cousin, a young
man of unusual beauty of character; Sarah Worthington, and
Ellie, and Hal, and I. A merry party we were, and our laughter
called up the echoes from the high hills away across the
orehard and the pasture field and the thick woods. Little green
stacks were heaped all about the yard; how sweet they made
the air, and what nice hiding places they were, especially where
the shadows of the peach trees fell darkly over and about them.
Ward enjoyed the frolic vastly, though he felt that he was
caught less often than cousin Robert. It seems to me but yesterday,
so fresh is it all in my memory—memory, that sometimes
is so good an angel. Down in the past are scattered
fountains, sealed with dark rocks almost always, from which it
is sweet to drink. The game of hide and seek, the time, the
place, our abandonment of care, and our taking up for a moment
childish actions, and in part, childish feelings, are pleasant
to those who have come up into the noon of the world. New
grave-mounds, the grass creeping over one, and the other fresh
and new, darken to-day between me and that time. Away in
the west stands an old ruinous church; I have seen it once or
twice, and it is one of those things which, once seen, are never
forgotten. It has stood there a long time, for I can remember
it was in little better state of preservation than now as long
ago as I can remember. The oaks and walnuts that grow there
throw shadows over the graves of the pioneers, whose piety
prompted the rude skill, that, earlier than the Revolution,

for the temple about which they are sleeping. The living have
almost deserted it now; the swallows go in at the broken windows
and build their nests where they will; the thousand nails
in the strong double door are rusty and black; the woodwork,
never painted, discolored by time to a sort of pearly gray; the
weatherboards, in places decaying and dropping off. There was
never belfry nor spire, and the steep mossy roof retains still
one or two of those angular projections of framework, which
are only seen on very old houses in the country—placed there
probably for the convenience of the builders. Once in a long
time some itinerant preacher—some wilderness-crying John,
girt about with zeal, pauses in the village for a Sabbath, and
the children of the house, where for a time he abides, bear to all
the neighbors—all persons living within a circuit of four or five
miles—the intelligence, that at eleven o'clock on Sunday there
will be a sermon in the old church. At the appointed time the
congregation gather, slow and calm. But Robert is not there.
Nor loud denunciation, nor soft admonition, nor trembling hymn,
provokes the sleeping dust.

And the lady of his love, she, who took off the white bridal
crown for the muffling mourning veil, does she go apart and on
the simple headstone read his name, the shelter of whose love
death has broken away? I know not—nor is it well perhaps to
pause and inquire.

Full of health and hope he was, the night of our gamesome
frolic in the moonlight. He had passed the twilight with one
dearer than any of us, and was in genial mood, for in loving
one we learn to love all. Scarcely could any of us get home
to the doorsteps, from our retreats under the lilacs or behind the
stacks of hay, without being caught, and paying the penalty
prescribed by the childish law. Even Sarah, usually so stately,
unbent from her dignity that night, and, when Robert was to be
overtaken, ran more nimbly than when he was to be the pursuer.
She was a beautiful girl, and I have called her stately,
dignified, but she was also silent, unsocial, selfish. I think there
was nothing in the world she loved, unless it were her little
dog—to this she was always kind, giving it all the caresses and
endearing words she had for anything. Mother nor brother nor
any human being seemed ever to have found the way to her
heart, and she spoke of her kindred with more than the indifference
she gave the veriest stranger. Sometimes she would put
her arms about me, and seem to love me, but the warm gush
of feeling, if, for the moment, it really were such, would be in a
moment put down with an iron will, and between us there was
a sea of ice.

For a long time I marvelled whether the milk which is naturally
in human nature had been thinned by some untimely

frost, or whether it had always been as now. She spoke of no
past season of sunshine, of no future hope, and to the present,
a stock or a stone was not more indifferent. Little children
that may scarcely plead in vain to any one for love, were thrown
upon her care in vain. What they really required she performed,
indeed, but lower than duty there was no softer feeling.

I would have solved the problem of her nature. I could
never learn that she even felt pride in anything, unless perhaps
in the scorn she bestowed on her fellow creatures.

Her hair, thick and luxuriant, and black as night, hung, when
she loosened it from the braids in which it was commonly confined,
and shook it over her shoulders, as she often did, almost
to her feet. With what a queen-like manner I have seen her
toss the dark masses from her forehead, and folding her arms
across her bosom, pace backward and forward through her
chamber, with no word, but, as if musing on the destruction of
empires, scaring away, often until after midnight,

One night I remember well, late in December, still and intensely
cold, we had been sitting an hour before the glowing
grate, talking of this and that, and I perceived, silently, at the
time, that Sarah had not once said during our conversation that
she hated any person or thing, and it was rare that she talked
without doing so. She was tall, straight as an arrow, and
seemed to possess a constitution that would resist the chances
and changes of many years. I speak again of her beauty, for I
know not whether it was this or her indifference, for we reach
for the inaccessible always, that gave her the power of fascination:
all who knew her admired, many even loved her. But
the heartstrings of her worshippers were ever destined to tremble
with the torture of her careless hand. Of these worshippers
we had been speaking that night; I, with intent of bringing out
her feelings, she, because I talked to her. Amongst other things,
I chanced to say, “There is one of your admirers, Sarah, whom
you have not seen; to-morrow, if you will, I shall give myself
the pleasure of making him known to you. Who knows but
that he is destined to bear from a hundred lovers the prize?”

“It may be, indeed it's probable, very probable,” she replied
sarcastically, and placing her hand on her heart, added, laughingly,
“I think I begin to feel susceptible—where is he? tell
me this hour, this moment! I am all impatience.”

“Calm yourself,” I said, speaking in the same vein, “and I
will tell you `the color of his hair, and the garment he doth
wear, and the day of the month he's to marry unto you,' as our
spinning-girl, Sally, used to say when she charmed the moon.”

“Delay is torture,” she said with assumed earnestness, and
suddenly throwing herself on her knees, exclaimed, “Where, O,
where is this Endymion, that, like the pale Phœbus, hunting in
a grove, I may stoop and kiss my sweetest?”

“You know lawyer D——,” said I, meaning to interrogate.

The playfulness was gone, and standing erect, she asked in a
tone I shall never forget—“Who told you I did?”

I explained briefly what I meant to say, and seating herself
majestically, a little way from me, she replied sententiously
and coldly, that she slightly knew him.

“Our young friend is reading with D——,” I said; “we
shall find him at the office in Fourth-street, when we go to town
—shall we call?”

“No,” was all her answer, and presently making the fire, which
was growing dim, an excuse, I sought my pillow and seemed
to sleep, for I felt that farther conversation would be an annoyance.

Left alone, Sarah took the comb from her hair, one of the
most elaborate and expensive of the then newest style, and
throwing it on the floor at her feet, shook down her black
tresses, and in her thin night-dress began walking to and fro
across the room. In one of the turns the comb broke beneath
her tread, but she stooped not nor seemed in any way to heed it.
The lamp burned low, and flickered, and went out; the ashes
gathered gray over the coal, and the frost whitened on the
panes, so very cold it was, but neither the darkness nor the
freezing atmosphere seemed to trouble her at all. The clock
had struck twelve and one and two; and dropping on her
knees, before the window, she scratched away the frost, and flattening
her cheek against the cold glass, looked earnestly forth

into the street. The lights were all gone from the windows,
and only once in a long while sounded a step on the frozen
ground below.

So still was she, and so strange had been her conduct, that I
was half afraid. At last I ventured to speak, not as though I
had been conscious of her manner all the night, but rather as if
she were but then missed.

“Pray, don't disturb me,” she said, “I am talking with the
angels.”

Satisfied that she was neither dead nor insane, for strange
speech was habitual to her, and exhausted with the mental oppression
I had endured, I fell asleep, and though I dreamed that
a skeleton was in my bed with me, I did not wake till morning.
When I did so, I was half buried in the heavy tresses of Sarah,
who, stooping over me, bade me awake, adding, “You know
we are to make that call which is perhaps to decide my destiny.”

Before the appointed time arrived, however, she had framed
some excuse, which I received without a question, and the visit
was not made, nor then nor ever.

I have since seen D—, much and often; talked with him
of life and death, and love; but of love he spoke calmly as of
a client. He is forty, or nearly so, handsome, wealthy, influential,
grave in manner, but of an iron will that nor hope nor fear
nor hate nor love may stir from its bent. His deep blue eyes
would look as coldly and steadily on dying loveliness as on the
veriest wretch that ever lived and fattened, if he so resolved. He
is unmarried and a universal favorite. But no matter what he
is—I have solved the problem that once baffled me—

as I did so. Poor Sarah! I had sometimes blamed, but I only
pitied her now.

It was but this morning I read her obituary, and I cannot yet
think of her as pale, or sick, or dead. What did she think of
at the last? and what did she say? did her thoughts ever cross
the wild mountains and search me out? Mine have gone back

to her a thousand times. As she went down step by step into
those silent palaces whither we all are going, did she lean more
upon the love of kindred? did she see more clearly than in life,
God's purposes in the great wo about her heart? I know
not, I only know that her locks will never again fall about my
bosom, nor her voice call me to wake.

I know not whether she sleeps beneath a stately monument
in the dark vaults, or under the swelling mound; but I know
that to her pillow the mockery of no smile may come, nor to
her heart the delusive sweetness of hollow and unmeaning
words.