It was a lovely afternoon, in the fall of the year; that season by many deemed the most melancholy of them all. The fallen leaves, the decay of vegetation, the absence of flowers, the trees shorn of their summer glory, are to some such painful emblems of man’s estate, that they shrink in strange and melancholy trembling from the calm and pensive aspect of autumn, as if the death of nature whispered of their own. Yet it is not so. Autumn, even in its sadness, looks beyond the grave, and breathes of immortality. The shorn tree will put on its gala dress again; the withered hedge will send forth the loveliest flowers. Earth, burdened now in seeming with its emblems of decay, in reality derives thence her nourishment and strength, and will spring up again, bright and beautiful, strong and smiling in her reawakened joy. And shall man alone, amid the creation of Omnific love, pass hence for ever? No, oh, no! As a flower to bloom and be cut down, so as a flower will he burst forth again in a lovelier world and never-ending spring.
The day was well suited for such consoling musing; there was a balmy freshness in the air, a clearness in the atmosphere, in the cloudless expanse of azure, stretching above and around; a warmth and glow in the sun, even as he approached the west, unusual to the season. And there was beauty, too, in the landscape; or the fountain of enjoyment which Nature had unsealed in our hearts, bathed the scene in its own bright colouring, as in those exquisite lines of Coleridge:—
* * * “We receive but what we give,
And in our hearts alone does Nature live;
Ours her wedding garment, and ours her shroud,
And would we ought receive of higher worth
Than that inanimate, cold world allow’d
To the poor, loveless, ever-anxious crowd?
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud,
Enveloping the earth.”
The trees lifted up their graceful heads to the circling heaven; every branch and every spray clearly defined against the blue; so still, so moveless, they looked like pencil-sketches of exquisite delicacy and softness. Then often, as in beautiful relief, started up a gigantic holly, every leaf green and glossy as in the richness of summer, with clusters of its bright scarlet berries standing out against the dark leaf, like sprays of coral. Ever and anon, a break in the hedge displayed towering hills and far-stretching meadows, green and glistening from the late rains; while bold crags, chained by the grey lichen and golden stonecrop, and patches of gloomy firs, frowning like grim shadows in the sunshine, proclaimed the mountainous district to which we were approaching, and heightened, by contrast, the beauty all around. There was something in the whole aspect of Nature so calm, so cheerful, bereft as she was of every flower and leaf, and all her rich summer hoards, that made us compare her to one on whom affliction has fallen with a heavy hand, whose flowers of life are withered, but who can yet lift up heart and brow, with serene and placid faith, to that heaven where the vanished flowers wait her smile again.
The very sounds, too, were in unison with the scene. The sweet note of many an English bird, not in full chorus of melody, as in the warmth and luxury of summer, but one or two together, answered by others as they floated to and fro in the field of azure, or paused a moment on the quivering spray. Then came the twinkling gush of a silvery stream, seeming, by its blithesome voice, to rejoice in its increase of waters from previous heavy rains. Then, sparkling and leaping in the glittering rays, like a shower of silver, a rustic watermill became visible through the trees; the music of its splash and foam bringing forth the voice of memory yet more thrillingly than before, for it was a sound of home. We paused; when suddenly another sound floated on the air, of more mournful meaning. It was the solemn toll of a church bell, distinct though distant, possessing all that simple sanctity peculiar to the country—that voice of wailing which comes upon the heart as if the departed, whom it mourns, had had its dwelling there, claiming kindred alike with our sorrows and our joys. We hurried on, and just as we neared the ivy-mantled church, the solemn chanting of a psalm by several young and most sweet voices sounded in the dim distance, and becoming nearer and more near, proclaimed the approach of the funeral train. The peculiar mode of tolling the bell, as is customary in those primitive districts of the north of England, had already betrayed the sex of the departed, and with foreboding spirits we listened for the age. We counted twenty-one of those mournful chimes, and then they sunk in silence solemn as their sound.
The church was situated midway on the ascent of a hill, or rather mount, guarded by a thick grove of yews and firs, their sad and pensive foliage assimilating well with the olden shrine. The ivy had clambered over the slender buttress, clustering round the old square belfry, decking age with beauty, and moss and lichen pressed forth in fantastic patches on the roof. The green earth was filled with lowly graves, thickly twined with evergreen shrubs and hardy flowering plants. Headstones and marble tombs there were; some so crusted over by the cold finger of Time, that even the briefest record of those who slept beneath was lost for ever; and others gleaming pure and white in the declining sun, seeming to whisper hope and faith in the very midst of desolation and death.
The clergyman stood at the churchyard gate, waiting the arrival of the corpse. He was leaning against the stone pillar which held the hinges of the gate, his head buried in his hands, and his bowed and drooping aspect breathing a more than common love. His figure was so peculiarly youthful, we wondered at his full canonical costume.
The psalm continued; now low, as mourning the departed—now in solemn rejoicing that a ransomed soul was free. The snow-white pall which covered the coffin, the white dresses and hoods of the bearers and the young girls, who, to the number of eight or ten, headed the train, confirmed the mournful tale which the bell had already told. A young girl of one-and-twenty summers was passing to her last long home. There were but few chief mourners, and these seemed struggling to subdue their grief to the composed and holy stillness meet for such an hour. As the train entered the last winding path of the ascent, the bell began again to toll, and the sound seemed to rouse the young minister from his all-absorbing grief. He started, with a visible shudder, and the expression of agony that his face revealed haunted us for many a long day. There was a strong effort at control; and he turned to meet the corpse, repeating, as he did so, in low impressive tones, part of the burial service. He walked at the head of the train to the place appointed—the centre of a little cluster of yews; and there, in silent awe, we watched the ceremony of the interment.
An aged minister had been among the train of mourners, and, as they entered the churchyard, had approached the officiating clergyman, evidently entreating to perform the melancholy office in his stead. The reply was merely a strong grasp of the hand and a mournful shake of the head; and the old man fell back to his place, his eyes still fixed on his young brother, and gradually they filled with large tears, which fell unconsciously, and seemed more for the living than the dead. Once only the service was wholly inarticulate, and the old man drew near hurriedly, as fearing the calm of mental torture must at length give way; but still he struggled on, though the tone in which the awful words—“earth to earth, and dust to dust,” now at length pronounced, was as if the very spirit had been wrung to give them voice. Never did the sound of filling in the grave fall with such cold and heavy weight on our hearts as at that moment; yet still, spell-bound, we lingered.
The early twilight of autumn had deepened the beautiful blue of the heavens, as the service concluded, and with low, subdued chant the mourning train departed. The slender forms of the young girls, in their snowy robes, gleaming strangely and fitfully through the darkening shadows of the winding paths; their sweet, young voices sounding almost like spirit music, as they faded, fainter and more faint in the far distance.
Still the young clergyman remained, pale, rigid, moveless, gazing on the newly-turned earth, till he fancied he was alone with the homes of the dead; and then, with a low, smothered groan of anguish, he flung himself on the damp grave, clasping it with his outstretched arms, pressing his cold lips upon it, his whole frame quivering with the effort to restrain his bursting sobs. The old man hurried forwards and laid his trembling hand on his arm, the tears streaming down his furrowed face the while, and with faltering accents conjured him to take comfort, for his poor mother’s sake.
“I will, I will,” was the agonized reply. “Leave me, leave me to my God. He will bring peace. I see but the cold grave now; but faith will come again. She is free, rejoicing. She will know now how much, how faithfully—but leave me, leave me now.” And the old man turned sorrowingly away; and softly and sadly, for such grief might not bear a witness, we departed also—our last lingering glance revealing the youthful mourner kneeling in voiceless supplication on the sod.
To the aged minister so often mentioned we were indebted for that true English hospitality, still so warmly proffered in these “nooks of the world,” and in listening to the following sad and simple story, the evening hours sped on.
Lucy Lethvyn was the daughter of a rich merchant, in one of our large commercial cities of the north of England. The village of Elmsford had been the site alike of her childhood and happy school-days; and so associated was it with hours of peace and joyance, far removed from the strife and confusion around her city home, that her wonted summer visit to its shades and flowers was ever welcomed with delight.
At the Vicarage of Elmsford, then occupied by our venerable host, Mr. Evelyn, Mrs. Lethvyn and her daughters were constant visitors; and there it was that Nevil Herbert, the young clergyman who had so deeply interested us, again met Lucy after a lapse of seven years. Formerly they had been frequent companions, from the near relationship of their parents; and Nevil had been accustomed to think of Lucy as the gentle, artless, affectionate little girl of ten summers, he had last beheld her. Her occasional letters, breathing the same fresh, child-like spirit, increased this illusion. She had called him brother, and often wished he had indeed been such; and he had laughingly acknowledged and promised to value the relationship. In those seven years of separation, however, Nevil’s lot had changed. At eighteen he lost his father, and the same stroke cast him and his mother penniless on the cold world. A rich relation promised to give him a collegiate education, preparatory to his taking orders, a living being in his gift. The offer, benevolently made as it was, might not be rejected; though to Nevil, the parting with his mother, for her also to endure the miseries of dependence, was fraught with such anguish, that he would willingly have worked for her in the meanest capacity, so that she might still feel free.
Mrs. Herbert was, however, much too unselfish to permit this; she soothed, urged, and in part comforted him, by the anticipation of the time when they might be once again together, assuring him that to contribute to that joyful end, much more painful alternatives could be borne than the one that she had chosen.
On all that Nevil Herbert had to endure in college, we have no space to linger. Suffice it he was poor—he was dependent; and however lavish may be the kindness and benevolence bestowed, it will not take away the sting contained in these two words, or permit the taking that station in the world for which such spirits pine. It is strange how often poverty will change to reserve, and bitterness, and pride, dispositions which in affluence would have been humble, and loving, and open as the day. And sad, oh! how bitterly sad it is that the cold, heartless world should fling such scorn and contempt upon that word, and shrink from the children of poverty, noble-gifted though they be, as they would from crime, and, by a thousand nameless slights and petty provocations, add a hundred-fold to the misery already theirs. Philosophy may preach, and religion soothe; but while such things are, poverty must ever be regarded as a doom of horror and of dread.
Nevil Herbert’s peculiarly sensitive nature caused him to feel these evils even more keenly than the multitude so situated; and therefore the rest and peace of the vicarage of Elmsford was, indeed, to him almost heaven upon earth. There nothing ever galled him, but all around breathed the balm of that true sympathy and appreciation, which, raising the drooping spirit to its proper level, restores its self-esteem, and consequently its happiness.
Nevil was just two-and-twenty when his ideal of female loveliness and innocence burst upon him in most exquisite reality, through the child-like loveliness and artlessness of Lucy. Alike the favourites of the vicar, he rejoiced to see them together, and never dreamed that to his petted Nevil danger might thence accrue. To him Lucy was still a child, as so she was to herself and all around her, but to one, and that one, unhappily, was Nevil. He guessed not her influence till he returned to his solitary studies, and then he felt, too keenly, that, despite his every resolution, he loved—and loved in vain; not only from their different stations, but that it was still only as a brother she regarded him.
The next recess found them again together, more closely than before, for Lucy was the old man’s guest equally with himself; but a change had come upon her—not towards Nevil, but in herself. The child had sprung into the woman—the incipient germs of thought and feeling burst into the full-blossomed flowers. There was a deeper tone in her sweet voice, a more intense light in her radiant eye, a fuller sentiment in her bright smile. Yet to Nevil’s eye alone these things were visible. None other, even of those who loved her best, saw the change; but Nevil read by the light of his own feelings, and they told him she, too, loved—and loved another.
It was even so, and from her own lips the artless tale was poured into his ear. She called and felt him brother, and claimed his sympathy as such; feeling that, did she conceal anything which concerned her happiness from one so true, and kind, and good as Nevil Herbert, she wronged him, and deserved to lose his friendship altogether; and even at such a moment Nevil’s martyr spirit did not forsake him. The hand, indeed, was cold and damp which pressed the fairy one held out to him, as she spoke, but the lip did not quiver, nor the voice falter, in which he assured her that her confidence was not misplaced—that her happiness and interest were dear to him as his own.
A few weeks brought Mr. and Mrs. Lethvyn and Mordaunt Lyndsey to the vicarage. Handsome, intelligent, and animated, there was much in the latter to possess and win. He had been Lucy’s partner at her first ball, and by the magic charm of his varied conversation, the magnetic power which fascinates at a first interview, and calling forth the yearning to know more, gradually changes into earnest and lasting love, fixed that evening indelibly on her mind and heart.
It is in vain to argue either on the birth, the nature or the duration of love. It may spring into existence unconsciously; becoming so completely part of our being, that it remains unknown until some sudden shock of joy or grief awakens us from our rest, and dooms us to an almost overpowering sense of joy or an equal intensity of grief; or one little hour may reveal depths within the human heart, whose existence was never known before—will awaken restless, baseless imaginings, that linger, strengthening with every interview, till the earthly fate is fixed for ever. And how may we argue on this, how seek its explanation? Yet who, that hath once opened the wide, mysterious volume of the human heart, will deny that so it is?
It was so with Lucy. She who had remained free and child-like in her intercourse with Nevil Herbert (though her character assimilated with his far more than with Lyndsey’s), was chained and bound for ever beneath the magic of Mordaunt Lyndsey’s voice and smile. The spell of their first interview lingered to the second, and each day, each week strengthened Lucy’s love.
Mordaunt Lyndsey was an orphan, and not rich enough to wed a portionless bride; but, unlike Nevil, as he knew not the privation and bitterness of dependence, so was he utterly ignorant of those finely organized feelings which could debar his association with the wealthier than himself. He made his way in the world, for he had good connections, well-sounding friends, and so was courted and received. It was some little time before Mr. Lethvyn could give his consent to their union, his ambition looking higher for his Lucy, but his paternal affection was stronger than his ambition; and perceiving how completely her happiness was bound up with Mordaunt’s, for whom he himself felt prepossessed, he not only gave unqualified approval, but settled on his darling a portion almost startling in its profuseness, and promised his influence to get Mordaunt entered as partner in the firm. Lucy was still so young, that her parents prevailed on Lyndsey, though very much against his inclination, to wait six months, and celebrate their nuptials with the completion of her eighteenth year.
It had been with perfect sincerity that Nevil Herbert had promised Lucy to comply with her artless entreaty; and, like Mordaunt, not only for her dear sake, but from the same honourable and religious principles which actuated all his conduct. Why, he asked himself, should he hate and shun a fellow-creature because he was happier than himself? and could he have esteemed as he wished, and hoped to do, young Lyndsey, this principle would have been followed by a friendship as disinterested as was felt by man.
But this could not be. Rendered watchful and penetrative by his pure and most unselfish affection, a very, very brief interval of intimate association convinced him that Mordaunt was not a character worthy of one like Lucy. She would need, as a wife, tenderness as unvarying as it was exclusive, sympathy in all her high, pure feelings, as in detestation of all worldliness and art; encouragement in her simple duties and tastes; in a word, love as faithful, as clinging, as constant as her own, and this Nevil saw Mordaunt could not give. Even now, Lucy was not the world to him as he was to her, and Herbert could not argue that such difference was but in nature, that man could not love as woman; for his own aching spirit told him the creed was false.
Time passed. The Lethvyns and Mordaunt returned to their city homes, and Nevil to his solitary studies. Weeks sped on to months, the eventful day was near at hand, and Lucy’s bridal attire nearing its completion. The nuptials were to be on a scale almost princely; for as princes did Lethvyn’s ambitious spirit regard the merchants of England, forgetting, in his vast schemes and golden visions, that the wealth of yesterday may be poverty the morrow. The expected bridal was the talk of the city; anxiety for her child’s happiness the only thought of the mother; love for Mordaunt the sole existence of Lucy; and therefore it was not very strange that by these severally interested parties Lethvyn’s unusually harassed countenance and excited manner were unnoticed. Ten days before that appointed for the bridal, however, the blow fell—the firm failed. Lethvyn was utterly and irretrievably ruined, unable, by the dishonest conduct of one of the partners, even to pay one shilling in the pound.
The usual excitement which such events in provincial cities always create, was heightened by the universal sympathy for the principal sufferers. Lethvyn’s profuse benevolence and affability having made him generally beloved, many pressed forward eager to prove what they felt; but the unfortunate man turned from them with a heart-sickness, a loathing of himself and the whole world, which no human consolation could remove.
That her father should be so prostrated by his failure was a matter of grief, but scarcely of surprise, to Lucy; but that it could in any way affect Mordaunt, was a mystery she could not solve. Loving him, and him alone, with such love that she cared not how lowly was their dwelling—nay, rejoicing that she could now prove her love in a hundred little caressing ways, which in a wealthier and more influential station would be denied her—how could the thought enter her pure mind, that in his affection her wealth had equal resting with herself?—that his ardent desire for the speedy celebration of their marriage originated as much to possess her dowry as herself? the insecure tenure of merchants’ wealth never having for one instant faded from his mind.
To Elmsford, at the earnest entreaty of Mr. Evelyn, the ruined family retired; but vain were all exertions of his friends to rouse Mr. Lethvyn from his despondency; he drooped and drooped, and there were times when he would fix his eyes on his Lucy with such an expression of intense suffering, of foreboding misery, that she would fly to him, fold her arms about his neck, and weep, and then conjure him to tell her what he feared; and then he would fold her closer and closer, the big tears rolling down cheeks on which the furrows of age had been hollowed in a single week, but the cause of such emotion never found a voice.
Too soon, however, did the cause reveal itself. With every manifestation of strong feeling and real affection, Mordaunt Lyndsey confessed that to give Lucy the home and comforts which he felt she so deserved and needed, he had not the adequate means. They were both still young, and he would go abroad, seek his fortune in India, where a lucrative situation had been offered him; and if, indeed, his Lucy would love him still, through absence, and distance, and time, he would in a few brief years either send for her to join him, or return for her himself, as circumstances would permit.
Pale, rigid, almost breathless, Lucy sat while her lover spoke, her hands pressed tightly one over the other, and every feature still almost to sternness; but as he fixed the full glance of his eyes on hers—and they seemed to glisten in tears as he called her name in that accent of love which ever thrilled through her heart and frame—she fell upon his bosom, and, with a passionate burst of weeping, besought him not to leave her. Were there not some sweet spots in England—oh! surely there were—where they might live, even with his moderate means, in comparative affluence? Solitude, privation—all more welcome, rather than part with him.
“And so sacrif............