University of Virginia Library

4. IV.

True and firm and self-reliant as was the nature of
Asenath Mitchenor, the thought of resistance to her
father's will never crossed her mind. It was fixed that
she must renounce all intercourse with Richard Hilton;
it was even sternly forbidden her to see him again during
the few hours he remained in the house; but the sacred
love, thus rudely dragged to the light and outraged, was
still her own. She would take it back into the keeping
of her heart, and if a day should ever come when he
would be free to return and demand it of her, he would
find it there, unwithered, with all the unbreathed perfume
hoarded in its folded leaves. If that day came not, she
would at the last give it back to God, saying, “Father,
here is Thy most precious gift, bestow it as Thou wilt.”

As her life had never before been agitated by any
strong emotion, so it was not outwardly agitated now.

The placid waters of her soul did not heave and toss
before those winds of passion and sorrow: they lay in
dull, leaden calm, under a cold and sunless sky. What
struggles with herself she underwent no one ever knew.
After Richard Hilton's departure, she never mentioned
his name, or referred, in any way, to the summer's companionship
with him. She performed her household duties,
if not cheerfully, at least as punctually and carefully
as before; and her father congratulated himself that the
unfortunate attachment had struck no deeper root. Abigail's
finer sight, however, was not deceived by this external
resignation. She noted the faint shadows under the
eyes, the increased whiteness of the temples, the unconscious
traces of pain which sometimes played about the
dimpled corners of the mouth, and watched her daughter
with a silent, tender solicitude.

The wedding of Moses was a severe test of Asenath's
strength, but she stood the trial nobly, performing all the
duties required by her position with such sweet composure
that many of the older female Friends remarked to
Abigail, “How womanly Asenath has grown!” Eli
Mitchenor noted, with peculiar satisfaction, that the eyes of
the young Friends—some of them of great promise in the
sect, and well endowed with worldly goods—followed her
admiringly. “It will not be long,” he thought, “before
she is consoled.”

Fortune seemed to favor his plans, and justify his
harsh treatment of Richard Hilton. There were unfavorable
accounts of the young man's conduct. His father

had died during the winter, and he was represented as
having become very reckless and dissipated. These reports
at last assumed such a definite form that Friend
Mitchenor brought them to the notice of his family.

“I met Josiah Comly in the road,” said he, one day
at dinner. “He's just come from Philadelphia, and
brings bad news of Richard Hilton. He's taken to drink,
and is spending in wickedness the money his father left
him. His friends have a great concern about him, but it
seems he's not to be reclaimed.”

Abigail looked imploringly at her husband, but he
either disregarded or failed to understand her look. Asenath,
who had grown very pale, steadily met her father's
gaze, and said, in a tone which he had never yet heard
from her lips—

“Father, will thee please never mention Richard Hilton's
name when I am by?”

The words were those of entreaty, but the voice was
that of authority. The old man was silenced by a new
and unexpected power in his daughter's heart: he suddenly
felt that she was not a girl, as heretofore, but a
woman, whom he might persuade, but could no longer
compel.

“It shall be as thee wishes, Asenath,” he said; “we
had best forget him.”

Of their friends, however, she could not expect this
reserve, and she was doomed to hear stories of Richard
which clouded and embittered her thoughts of him. And
a still severer trial was in store. She accompanied her

father, in obedience to his wish, and against her own desire,
to the Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia. It has
passed into a proverb that the Friends, on these occasions,
always bring rain with them; and the period of her
visit was no exception to the rule. The showery days of
“Yearly Meeting Week” glided by, until the last, and she
looked forward with relief to the morrow's return to
Bucks County, glad to have escaped a meeting with
Richard Hilton, which might have confirmed her fears
and could but have given her pain in any case.

As she and her father joined each other, outside the
meeting-house, at the close of the afternoon meeting, a
light rain was falling. She took his arm, under the capacious
umbrella, and they were soon alone in the wet
streets, on their way to the house of the Friends who entertained
them. At a crossing, where the water pouring
down the gutter towards the Delaware, caused them to
halt, a man, plashing through the flood, staggered towards
them. Without an umbrella, with dripping, disordered
clothes, yet with a hot, flushed face, around which the
long black hair hung wildly, he approached, singing to
himself with maudlin voice a song that would have been
sweet and tender in a lover's mouth. Friend Mitchenor
drew to one side, lest his spotless drab should be brushed
by the unclean reveller; but the latter, looking up, stopped
suddenly face to face with them.

“Asenath!” he cried, in a voice whose anguish
pierced through the confusion of his senses, and struck
down into the sober quick of his soul.

“Richard!” she breathed, rather than spoke, in a low,
terrified voice.

It was indeed Richard Hilton who stood before her,
or rather—as she afterwards thought, in recalling the interview—the
body of Richard Hilton possessed by an
evil spirit. His cheeks burned with a more than hectic
red, his eyes were wild and bloodshot, and though the
recognition had suddenly sobered him, an impatient,
reckless devil seemed to lurk under the set mask of his
features.

“Here I am, Asenath,” he said at length, hoarsely.
“I said it was death, didn't I? Well, it's worse than
death, I suppose; but what matter? You can't be more
lost to me now than you were already. This is thy doing,
Friend Eli,” he continued, turning to the old man, with a
sneering emphasis on the “thy.” “I hope thee's satisfied
with thy work!”

Here he burst into a bitter, mocking laugh, which it
chilled Asenath's blood to hear.

The old man turned pale. “Come away, child!” said
he, tugging at her arm. But she stood firm, strengthened
for the moment by a solemn feeling of duty which trampled
down her pain.

“Richard,” she said, with the music of an immeasurable
sorrow in her voice, “oh, Richard, what has thee
done? Where the Lord commands resignation, thee has
been rebellious; where he chasteneth to purify, thee turns
blindly to sin. I had not expected this of thee, Richard;
I thought thy regard for me was of the kind which would

have helped and uplifted thee,—not through me, as an
unworthy object, but through the hopes and the pure desires
of thy own heart. I expected that thee would so
act as to justify what I felt towards thee, not to make my
affection a reproach,—oh, Richard, not to cast over my
heart the shadow of thy sin!”

The wretched young man supported himself against
the post of an awning, buried his face in his hands, and
wept passionately. Once or twice he essayed to speak,
but his voice was choked by sobs, and, after a look from
the streaming eyes which Asenath could scarcely bear to
meet, he again covered his face. A stranger, coming
down the street, paused out of curiosity. “Come, come!”
cried Eli, once more, eager to escape from the scene.
His daughter stood still, and the man slowly passed on.

Asenath could not thus leave her lost lover, in his despairing
grief. She again turned to him, her own tears
flowing fast and free.

“I do not judge thee, Richard, but the words that
passed between us give me a right to speak to thee. It
was hard to lose sight of thee then, but it is still
harder for me to see thee now. If the sorrow and pity I
feel could save thee, I would be willing never to know any
other feelings. I would still do anything for thee except
that which thee cannot ask, as thee now is, and I could
not give. Thee has made the gulf between us so wide
that it cannot be crossed. But I can now weep for thee
and pray for thee as a fellow-creature whose soul is still
precious in the sight of the Lord. Fare thee well!”

He seized the hand she extended, bowed down, and
showered mingled tears and kisses upon it. Then, with a
wild sob in his throat, he started up and rushed down the
street, through the fast-falling rain. The father and
daughter walked home in silence. Eli had heard every
word that was spoken, and felt that a spirit whose utterances
he dared not question had visited Asenath's tongue.

She, as year after year went by, regained the peace
and patience which give a sober cheerfulness to life. The
pangs of her heart grew dull and transient; but there were
two pictures in her memory which never blurred in outline
or faded in color: one, the brake of autumn flowers
under the bright autumnal sky, with bird and stream making
accordant music to the new voice of love; the other
a rainy street, with a lost, reckless man leaning against an
awning-post, and staring in her face with eyes whose unutterable
woe, when she dared to recall it, darkened the
beauty of the earth, and almost shook her trust in the
providence of God.