 | V. My third book |  |
5. V.
There came a new minister to Mayfield, a worthy
man, who dwelt quietly in the parsonage with his wife
and his six children. He had not old Parson Blake's
place in their hearts, consecrated by the memories of
a lifetime, nor had they pride in his eloquence and
tenderness for his youth and enthusiasm, as during
Walter Fairfield's brief sojourn among them; still
there was mutual good feeling between pastor and
people, and, save in one quiet household, all things
went on as before.
This autumn and the winter which followed were a
very trying time to Elinor Trumbull. She had a
strong consciousness of duty. Earnestly she strove to
be in all things the same to her grandparents as before
her brief, bright dream of love; but something was
wanting. The fullness of the old content would never
come back again. For the second time in the red
house in the hollow was a buried name. Walter Fairfield
was never mentioned there. Mary Grant had
once commenced to say a few words of comfort to her
granddaughter, but the expression on Elinor's face
stopped her — it was so full of hopeless suffering.
After that she only silently pitied the sorrow she had
no power to soothe.
Elinor never uttered a single complaint. She performed
all the little housewifely duties which had formerly
fallen to her share: she went regularly to the
church on the hill-top—listened quietly to the new
pastor's preaching. But Mary Grant's tears fell as she
her simple wardrobe, that they might better fit
the figure growing so very fragile and thin now. Her
step lost its accustomed lightness; her voice never
rang through the house with its old, gay melody.
When her seventeenth birth-day was ushered in on
the wings of storm and tempest, it found her no longer
a girl, but a woman, prematurely grave, and thoughtful,
and silent. The delicate summer bloom was gone
from the blossom, the subtle fragrance vanished, and
there was but a poor consolation in thinking life's autumn
might ripen it into fruit.
One day Mary Grant called her husband's attention,
when they were alone, to Elinor's languid step and
wasting cheek. An expression of sudden pain crossed
the elder's face for the moment—a look as if conscience
were forcing upon him an unwelcome truth, and then
he answered, with easy self-delusion,
“It's not strange. It's a hard winter. The girl
will be herself again when the spring opens.”
And so the months passed on, and once more the
slow, reluctant feet of the New England spring stole
over the mountains, and the crocus and the violet
started up in her footprints. Once more the brooks,
set free from their winter chains, began to babble—the
plow-boy whistled at his task—the birch hung out her
tassels, and the lilacs in Elder Grant's yard burst into
purple bloom; but this time there were no long, pleasant
walks over the hills. She had no strength for
them—that pale, silent girl, whom the spring had surprised
as she sat nursing her sorrow.
As the days grew longer and brighter, the blue sky
overhead more intensely clear and blue, Mary Grant,
day she seemed to move more feebly about the house,
until at last she seldom moved any more, but lay all
day on a lounge, which, perhaps, with a secret care for
her comfort, the elder had bought at an auction sale.
She did not seem unhappy, for the one hope, mightier
than earthly love, stronger than earthly grief, was
gently guiding her tired feet—so early tired with the
crooked paths of life—toward the “distant hills” of
heaven. And Moses Grant saw it at last; the great
fear struck to his heart that his pride would have a second
victim—that another young, fair face would lie
beneath the drifting leaves of this year's autumn. Did
not conscience speak to him then?
He came home one day with a strange look on his
face. He held in his hand a large, business-like epistle.
He beckoned his wife into the kitchen. She left
Elinor lying upon the lounge in the best room, and
closed the door after her.
“What is it, father?” she said, in pitying tones, going
to her husband's side. “Has some great trouble
come over us?”
“The hand of the Lord is laid upon me, Mary. I
am punished for my sin. I killed Margaret, I have
wellnigh killed her child, and yet, listen, wife, Margaret
was true—Margaret was pure.”
“Oh, thank God! thank God!” burst involuntarily
from the mother's lips as she sank upon her knees.
The vail of her life's greatest sorrow was rent away,
and she seemed to see her child, her last child, her
pure, innocent, blessed child, as she named her in her
heart, waiting for her in heaven. But her cry of
thanksgiving fell on unheeding ears.
Moses Grant spoke earnestly:
“Yes, Mary, God has suffered this knowledge to
come to me in the eleventh hour, just to show me that
I, who dared to call myself His servant, have been but
a hard, unmerciful tyrant, after all; fearing earthly
disgrace more than I feared him. Oh, Mary, is it too
late to save our child?”
“God grant it may be in time,” Mary Grant faltered;
“but tell me how the knowledge came to you.
Are you sure of its truth?”
“Look there! see with your own eyes Margaret's
marriage certificate; and listen! I will read you this
letter which I have received from Gilbert Trumbull.
It seems his lawyer wrote it for him when he was dying.
It says:
“`Mr. Grant,—I have not been a good man. I
feel this now, lying here on my death-bed, and I confess
it to you the more readily because I do not believe
that at heart you are a one whit better one. I must
speak plainly and bluntly, for I have no time for circumlocution.
I have hardly strength enough left to
dictate this to Richard Huntley, my attorney. I have
made a brave effort to forgive every body; but it has
been the hardest of all to forgive you; for your harshness,
your sinful pride, killed my beautiful Margaret.
You never loved as I loved her—I, her lover, her husband.
There! you will start at that word, I foresee;
you will start again at the marriage certificate enfolded
in this letter. We were married secretly, as you will
perceive, while I was in your very neighborhood. I
bound Margaret, when I left her, by a solemn oath,
not to make it known until she had my permission.
you, and never thought of disputing the will of any
one she loved. My father was dead. I was dependent
for all my hopes of future fortune and support on
my mother, a very proud, resolute woman. She had
a grand match in contemplation for me at that time.
I knew it would be no easy matter to reconcile her to
its failure, and if she should know just then that I had
married as she would have thought so far below me,
much as she loved me she would have cast me off forever.
This, to a true man, would have been no great
matter compared with causing Margaret one hour of
trouble, one agony of humiliation. But I was not a
true man. I was helpless and imbecile, for I had never
been brought up to depend on myself. But I must
hasten, for my strength is failing me.
“`I kept Margaret advised, through a friend, of all
my movements, and when you crushed her with the
weight of your scorn and contumely, she fled to me.
I welcomed her. God knows I did, for I loved her!
I took care of her in secret, and I should have made
her happy had not your displeasure haunted her. Toward
the last I was obliged to leave her for a few
weeks. In that time she fled—fled because she was
dying of a wild longing to throw herself at your feet
and beg your forgiveness. She told me this in a note
she left for me. It was full of love, stained with her
tears, blotted with her kisses. In it she said she would
not, in any extremity, betray our marriage until she
had my permission. She must have walked nearly all
the way to you, since, thinking all her needs were provided
for, I had left her but a few dollars.
“`You know the rest. I have a friend in your
concerned Margaret and her child. God in heaven
knows how sincerely I mourned her. Had she lived,
I should have acknowledged her as my wife. The
child would have been brought up as Elinor Trumbull's
namesake should have been; but, since Margaret
was dead, I preferred to leave her baby to you. I
had never seen the little one. It was not natural I
should have any very strong love for her, and to give
her up saved me a great deal of embarrassment. My
mother died without knowing that I had ever been
married, and I inherited her fortune. It will all be
the child's. I leave her that and my name as the best
amends I can make for the neglect of my lifetime.
“`Believe that I loved Margaret by this token: I
have been faithful to her memory—I have lived alone
all my days since I lost her.
“`After I am dead, Richard Huntley will send you
this letter, along with a copy of my will, and a miniature
I had painted of Margaret and myself by stealth,
while she was with me. The child may like it. I
suppose I am not good enough for my blessing to avail
her much; but she has it, that young girl whom I have
never seen—Margaret's child and mine. I die in peace
with all men, even you.
“There are a few lines more in the lawyer's hand,
to say that he died twenty-four hours after that letter
was dictated; and the will is inclosed, by which Elinor
falls heir to fifty thousand dollars.”
“But how he insulted you. I can not bear that!”
exclaimed the wife, her first wifely thought a jealous
one of her husband's honor.
“Nay, Mary, he but spoke the truth. I have been
a self-deceiver. The judgment of the Lord is visiting
me now, and I see my sin. I killed her—he said truly
—oh, Margaret—my child Margaret!”
“I want to see it, husband—the picture.”
“Well, here, only don't show it to me. I don't want
to see her eyes—poor Margaret.”
The mother took it from his hand and looked at it
in silence. It was Margaret, in her youth, her love,
her beauty, only there was an unwonted shade of sadness
in the clear eyes and about the flexible mouth.
Beside her face Gilbert Trumbull's was painted—handsome,
fascinating, brilliant—the face in which Margaret's
eyes had seen heaven. Mary Grant looked at
the two steadily for a few moments through her tears,
and then, without saying a word, holding the picture
still in her hand, she went in to Elinor.
“My child,” she said, in faltering tones, “would you
like to see your mother's picture?”
A hot flush rose to the girl's cheek, but she stretched
out her hand for the miniature.
“That is your father, too, darling. Nay, Elinor,
you needn't blush so to look on them; for, see this,
child—here is something worth more to you than all
the gold that comes with it, your mother's marriage
certificate.”
Elinor Trumbull clasped the paper with convulsive
energy. She looked at it with eager gaze, reading it
over and over again. Then it dropped from her nerveless
fingers, her eyes shut together, and her stricken
heart, for the first time, uttered the wail of its anguish.
“Oh, Walter, Walter!” was the low cry which rung
helplessly through the room. Mary Grant knelt beside
She was not repulsed. She drew that young head to
her old, loving bosom, and Elinor wept there, at last,
like a grieved child.
“Oh!” she murmured, after a time, “I might have
married him—I should not have disgraced him, after
all. What was it you said about gold, grandmother?”
“You have inherited fifty thousand dollars, dear
child. Your father's will came with his letter and
these things I have shown you.”
“His letter! my father's letter! Why don't you
give it to me?”
Mary Grant put the girl from her, and laid her tenderly
back on the lounge. Then she went out, closing
the door behind her.
“Father,” she said, “Elinor wants to see that letter.
I think she has a right to.”
“Yes, Mary, take it. Her seeing it can not make
my shame any greater. Leave me alone for a while;
I am trying to see my way clear.”
And so Mary Grant carried Gilbert Trumbull's letter
in to his child. The girl read it, pausing tenderly
over the passages where her father wrote of his love
for her young mother, pressing the sheet to her lips
where he invoked his blessing—a dying man's blessing—upon
her. Then, folding it up, she put it in her
bosom, and sank back again upon her pillow.
“You are very tired, darling,” said her grandmother's
gentle voice.
“Yes, very—but oh! so thankful. It is such a blessing
that this knowledge came to me before I died, that
I might reverence my dead mother's memory as much
as I had always loved it.”
“Before you die! Oh, Elinor, you must not say
that; you will break my heart.”
This was the first time any allusion had been made
between them to the slow decay of Elinor's powers.
Mary Grant had trembled long before the phantom of
this very fear, but every nerve quivered when it took
to itself a voice and stood unmasked before her. Elinor
saw it, and soothingly laid her hand—alas! so very
thin and white now—on the withered one of the old
woman.
“Yes, dear grandmother, we may as well meet it
bravely. I have known it a long time; but, thank
God, I shall die happy now. You will explain all this
mystery to Walter, and he will know I am worthy of
his loving. He will be mine in heaven.”
There were a few moments of solemn silence, and
then Mary Grant murmured, falteringly,
“Elinor, will you, can you forgive your grandfather?”
“As I hope God will forgive me. His punishment
will be heavy enough at the best. His sinful pride
will soon lay a second victim beside my poor mother,
and, seeing this, he will repent in dust and ashes. God
forbid that a word or look of mine should add one pang
to his self-reproach.”
While these words were trembling on her lips, the
door opened, and the old man came in, with his humbled,
heart-stricken face, and his bowed head. He
came up to her, and, for the first time in all his life, Moses
Grant knelt by a woman's side.
“Elinor, child,” he cried out, beseechingly, lifting up
his withered, trembling hands, “God has shown me
my crime as it is; can you, whom I have wronged,
forgive me?”
“Fully, freely, and love you also, as your last child
should.”
He drew her close to him. He held her in his arms,
as he had never done before, even in the days of her
innocent babyhood. He murmured blessings over her
—tender, caressing words, such as no one could have
thought his stern lips would ever utter—and when
he lifted up his head, Elinor's cheek was wet with tears
which were not her own.
“I will go now and write to Walter,” he said, in
more hopeful tones.
The young girl turned her face toward the wall, to
hide the anguish which convulsed her slight frame
when the beloved name was uttered.
“It is of no use, now,” she said, sadly; “we do not
know where he is, and if we did, it is all too late.”
“Oh, Elinor, you must not say that. God will not
chasten me so heavily. It is not too late. It shall not
be too late. You shall see him.”
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