 | VI. My third book |  |
6. VI.
The letter which the elder wrote that afternoon told
Walter Fairfield the whole story—the fearful wrong
—the penitence which would fain make feeble restitution
by confession. He laid bare in it his stricken,
humbled heart.
No one at Mayfield knew Walter Fairfield's present
location. There was but one hope of the letter's reaching
him. The elder directed it, on the outside, to the
care of the Principal of the Theological Seminary
where the young man had been fitted for the ministry.
God would speed it—that it might find him—might be
in time to save the young life trembling in the balance.
That night, when Mary Grant told her granddaughter
that the letter had been sent, and in what wise it
had been directed, a longing hope took possession of
Elinor that it would reach him, would bring him there
before she died—that she might look once more into
his loving eyes—that his voice, none but his, might
murmur the last prayer over her grave. During the
weeks that followed, this hope never left her, and,
though unconsciously to herself, it seemed to be leading
her feet backward a little from the brink of the
dark river over whose waters she had thought so soon
to journey to the country of everlasting life lying beyond.
Her step grew a little less weary and feeble. She
lay less frequently, as days passed on, upon the lounge,
and sat oftener in the arm-chair by the window, where
she could watch the road winding down the hill. It
had been four weeks since the receipt of her father's
letter, and now it was midsummer. The little village
among the mountains was gay with blossoms and verdure—vocal
with bird-songs—sweet with the incense
of summer flowers. How pleasantly the world looked
to Elinor, sitting by the window; the world, which
she thought so soon to leave, brightened now with
the radiance of sunset. The landscape seemed, as she
sat there, so calm and peaceful, with not a living thing
to mar the perfectness of its repose.
But the quiet is broken now. A rider comes dashing
down the hill, fast, fast, fast. It seemed dangerous.
Elinor is very weak; she dares not look at him. She
chair, but she listens—she can not help that. The
rider rides swiftly on. He has stopped now in front
of the house. He opens the little wicket gate. He
comes up the walk—into the door. Courage! trembling
heart. Open your eyes, Elinor Trumbull. He
springs to her side—he folds her close in his arms, calling
her his poor little sorrow-stricken darling, his pride,
his wife, his best-loved Elinor; thanking God that he
can hold her now as he had never hoped to hold her
again on earth.
Weak as Elinor was, she did not faint. There was
power in that voice to rouse, instead, every faculty
into its fullest life. Strength seemed to flow out from
him into her own exhausted being. She clung to him
in silent rapture.
When the passionate joy of meeting had grown
calmer, Walter Fairfield told his story. The summons,
he said, came to him in the far West. After
leaving Mayfield he had gone there, and striven to
absorb himself in the arduous duties of a missionary
preacher. He had worked night and day: it was his
only consolation. On his return from a three days'
tramp in the woods he had found the elder's letter.
At its first reading his heart had swelled with wrath.
A Cain among all other men he had felt Moses Grant
would be to him henceforth. His soul rebelled against
the sinful, worldly pride which had sacrificed the
whole life of two who loved one another to a selfish,
cowardly fear of disgrace. Then he read it again, and
the heartbroken tone of sincere penitence, of despairing,
self-despising humility which pervaded it, moved
him to pity; and then all thought of Moses Grant was
to see his Elinor alive. He had traveled night and
day. He was with her now, and she lived still—she
would live. God would grant her life to his prayers.
His love should call her back—she should be his own
yet—his wife.
He was no professed worker of miracles, and yet, as
she listened to his words, the crimson tint stole back
into the fair cheek of his betrothed, and she seemed to
feel a sense of returning strength, a faith in the reality
of his prediction.
Moses Grant met the young minister with outward
calmness. In his letter he had poured forth his remorse,
his sorrow, his penitence. Neither of them
ever alluded to it afterward. Only in the hand-clasp
between them—full on the one side of timid self-abasement,
on the other of pity, forgiveness, encouragement
— there was a silent reconciliation. Mary
Grant sobbed out her welcome with murmured blessings,
and choking pauses, and many tears, and that
night the four knelt together in peace before the throne
of Him who looks on human weakness with the eyes
of heavenly pity.
Elinor's health improved rapidly. Before the summer
roses under the parlor window had faded, she
twined from them a wreath for her bridal, and another
garland, which she hung in the pleasant August morning—a
daughter's reverent farewell—over the low
head-stone which marked her mother's grave. She
went there leaning upon her husband's arm, and, lifting
to him her relying eyes, she murmured,
“I wonder if she knows, up in heaven, how happy
her daughter is this hour?”
The farewell between the old people and their children
was full of tender peace and love, and the elder
and his wife stood together at the wicket gate, watching
them with moist eyes as they rode up the hill.
Moses Grant was not too proud to weep now.
The next Sunday, after the sermon was over, the
congregation was requested to wait, and there, before
them all, an old man, bowing his gray head in shame
and sorrow, laid down his eldership in the Mayfield
church, and bewailed the sin which made him unworthy,
in his own eyes, to wear it longer. A very
old book saith, “Whoso humbleth himself shall be
exalted,” and perchance that seemed to angel eyes the
hour most worthy of pride of all Moses Grant's earthly
life.
Walter Fairfield spent that winter at the South with
his young wife; but cheerful letters came now and
then, telling the old people of Elinor's renewed health
and strength, and promising to bring her back blooming
and happy.
In the early spring Parson Stevens received an unexpected
call to a larger salary and wider sphere of
usefulness, procured, some said, through Mr. Fairfield's
influence. Accepting it, he went away with his wife
and his six children. Walter Fairfield came back in
good time to take his place. Elinor's fortune would
more than satisfy all their wants, and they chose to
settle down with the people of his first love—to live
and die among them.
To Elinor no other spot could be half so dear as the
quiet village among the mountains, where, for her, the
star had risen which rises but once—the star of love,
whose light was to bless all her happy life on earth,
keeping for her in the Beyond.
And so, after all its pride, and pain, and passion, rest
came at last to Moses Grant's life. The old man and
his old wife live quietly still in the shadow of the
mountains, in whose shadow they were born; and by-and-by,
when their willing feet have drawn nigh to
the fathomless river, kind hands will lay them gently
down to their last sleep, beside Margaret's grave, in
the little church-yard on the hill-top.
| VI. My third book | |