Who yeve him wherewith to scolaie.
Who yeve him wherewith to scolaie.
Who yeve him wherewith to scolaie.
Who yeve him wherewith to scolaie.
Nothing can be more true to nature than the mixture of pedantry and bashfulness in the manners of this anchoret of learning, and the tone of sententious morality and formal politeness which marks his language.
We now come to a “Serjeant of the Lawe,” a wise and learned magistrate, rich and yet irreproachable, with all the statutes at his fingers’ ends, a very busy man in reality, “but yet,” not to forget the inimitable touch of nature in Chaucer, “Asseemed besier than he was.” He is plainly dressed, as one who cares not to display his importance in his exterior.
Nor are preceding characters superior, in vividness and variety, to the figure of the “Frankelein,” or rich country-gentleman, who is next introduced: his splendid and hospitable profusion, and the epicurean luxuriousness of the man himself, are inimitably set before us. “Itsnewed in his houseof mete and drink.”
Then comes a number of burgesses, whose appearance is classed under one general description. These are a Haberdasher, Carpenter, Webbe (or Weaver,) Dyer, and Tapiser—
——Alle yelothed of o liverè,Of a solempes and gret fraternitè,—
——Alle yelothed of o liverè,Of a solempes and gret fraternitè,—
——Alle yelothed of o liverè,Of a solempes and gret fraternitè,—
——Alle yelothed of o liverè,
Of a solempes and gret fraternitè,—
that is, they all belong to one of those societies, ormestiers, which play so great a part in the municipal history of the Middle Ages. The somewhatcossurichness of their equipment, their knives hafted with silver, their grave and citizen-like bearing—all is in harmony with the pride and vanity, hinted at by the poet, of their wives, who think “it is full fayre to be yelepedMadame.”
The skill and critical discernment of the Cook are next described: “Well could he know a draught of London ale,” and elaborately could he season the rich and fantastic dishes which composed the “carte” of the fourteenth century. He joins the pilgrimage in hope that his devotion may cure him of a disease in the leg.
A turbulent and boisterous Shipman appears next, who is described with minute detail. His brown complexion, his rude and quarrelsome manners, his tricks of trade, stealing wine “from Burdeux ward, while that the chapman slepe,” all is enumerated; nor does the poet forget the seaman’s knowledge of all the havens “from Gothland to the Cape de Finistere,” nor his experience in his profession: “In many a tempest had his berd be shake.”
He is followed by a Doctour of Phisike, a great astronomer and natural magician, deeply versed in the ponderous tomes of Hippocrates, Hali, Galen, Rhasis, Averrhoes, and the Arabian physicians. His diet is but small in quantity, but rich and nourishing; “his study is but little onthe Bible,” and he is humorously represented as particularly fond of gold, “for gold in phisiks is a cordiall.”
Next to the grave, luxurious, and not quite orthodox doctor, enters the “Wife of Bath,” adaguerreotyped specimen of the femalebourgeoiseof Chaucer’s day; and bearing so perfectly the stamp and mark of her class, that, by changing her costume a little to the dress of the nineteenth century, she would serve as a perfect sample of her order even in the present day. She is equipped with a degree of solid costliness that does not exclude a little coquetry; her character is gay, bold, and not ever rigid; and she is endeavoring, by long and frequent pilgrimages, to expiate some of the amorous errors of her youth. She is a substantial manufacturer of cloth, and so jealous of her precedency in the religious ceremonies of her parish, that, if any of her female acquaintance should venture to go before her on these solemn occasions, “so wroth was she, that she was out of alle charitee.”
Contrasted with this rosy dame are two of the most beautiful and touching portraits ever delineated by the hand of genius—one “a pour Persoune,” or secular parish priest; and his brother in simplicity, virtue, and evangelic parity, a Plowman. It is in these characters, and particularly in the “Tale” put into the mouth of the former, that we most distinctly see Chaucer’s sympathy with the doctrines of the Reformation: the humility, self-denial, and charity of these two pious and worthy men, are opposed with an unstudied, but not the less striking pointedness, to the cheatery and sensuality which distinguish all the monks and friars represented by Chaucer. So beautiful and so complete is this noble delineation of Christian piety, that we will not venture to injure its effect by quoting it piecemeal in this place, but refer our readers to the volume in which the whole of Chaucer’s Prologue will be found at length.
Then we find enumerated a Reve, a Miller, a Sompnour (an officer in the ecclesiastical courts,) a Pardoner, a Manciple, and “myself,” that is, Chaucer.
The Miller is a brawny, short, red-headed fellow, strong, boisterous and quarrelsome, flat-nosed, wide-mouthed, debauched; he is dressed in a white coat and blue hood, and armed with sword and buckler.
His conversation and conduct correspond faithfully with such an appearance; he enlivens the journey by his skill in playing on the bagpipe.
The Manciple was an officer attached to the ancient colleges; his duty was to purchase the provisions and other commodities for the consumption of the students; in fact, he was a kind of steward. Chaucer describes this pilgrim as singularly adroit in the exercise of his business, taking good care to advantage himself the while.
Another of the most elaborately painted pictures in Chaucer’s gallery is the “Reve,” bailiff or intendant of some great proprietor’s estates. He stands before us as a slender, long-legged, choleric individual, with his beard shaven as close as possible, and his hair exceedingly short. He is a severe andwatchful manager of his master’s estates, and had grown so rich that he was able to come to his lord’s assistance, and “lend him of his owen good.” His horse is described, and even named, and he is described as always riding “the hindereat of the route.”
Nothing can surpass the nature and truthfulness with which Chaucer has described the Sompnour. His face is fiery red, as cherubim were painted, and so covered with pimples, spots, and discolorations, that neither mercury, sulphur, borax, nor any purifying ointment, could cleanse his complexion. He is a great lover of onions, leeks, and garlic, and fond of “strong win as red as blood;” and when drunk he would speak nothing but Latin, a few terms of which language he had picked up from the writs and citations it was his profession to serve. He is a great taker of bribes, and will allow any man to set at naught the archdeacon’s court in the most flagrant manner “for a quart of wine.”
The last of the pilgrims is the “Pardonere,” or seller of indulgences from Rome. He is drawn to the life, singing, to the bass of his friend the Sompnour, the song of “Come hither, love, to me.” The Pardoner’s hair is “yellow as wax,” smooth and thin, lying on his shoulders: he wears no hood, “for jollité;” that is, in order to appear in the fashion. His eyes (as is often found in persons of this complexion—note Chaucer’s truth to nature) are wide and staring like those of a hare; his voice is a harsh treble, like that of a goat; and he has no beard. Chaucer then enumerates the various articles of the Pardoner’s professional budget; and certainly there never was collected a list of droller relics: he has Our Lady’s veil, a morsel of the sail of St. Paul’s ship, a glass full of “pigges bones,” and a pewter cross crammed with other objects of equal sanctity. With the aid of these and the hypocritical unction of his address, he could manage, in one day, to extract from poor and rustic people more money than the Parson (the regular pastor of the parish) could collect in two months.
The number of the pilgrims now enumerated will be found by any one who takes the trouble to count them to amount to thirty-one, including Chaucer; and the poet describes them setting out on their journey on the following morning. Before their departure, however, the jolly Host of the Tabarde makes a proposition to the assembled company. He offers to go along with them himself, on condition that they constitute him a kind of master of the revels during their journey; showing how agreeably and profitably they could beguile the tedium of the road with the relation of stories. He then proposes that on their return they should all sup together at his hostelry, and that he among them who shall have been adjudged to have told the best story should be entertained at the expense of the whole society. This proposal is unanimously adopted; and nothing can be finer than the mixture of fun and good sense with which honest Harry Bailey, the host, sways the merry sceptre of his temporary sovereignty.
This then is the framework or scaffolding on which Chaucer has erected his Canterbury Tales. The practice of connecting together a multitude of distinct narrations by some general thread of incident is very natural and extremely ancient. The Orientals, so passionately fond of tale-telling, have universally—and not always very artificially—given consistency and connection to their stories by putting them into the mouth of some single narrator: the various histories which compose the Thousand and One Nights are supposed to be successively recounted by the untiring lips of the inexhaustible Princess Scheherezade; but the source from whence Chaucer more immediately adopted hisframingwas the Decameron of Boccaccio. This work (as it may be necessary to inform our younger readers) consists of a hundred tales divided into decades, each decade occupying one day in the relation. They are narrated by a society of young men and women of rank, who have shut themselves up in a most luxurious and beautiful retreat on the banks of the Arno, in order to escape the infection of the terrible plague then ravaging Florence.
If we compare the plan of Chaucer with that of the Florentine, we shall not hesitate to give the palm of propriety, probability, and good taste to the English poet. A pilgrimage was by no means an expedition of a mournful or solemn kind, and afforded the author the widest field for the selection of character from all classes of society, and an excellent opportunity for the divers humors and oddities of a company fortuitously assembled. It is impossible, too, not to feel that there is something cruel and shocking in the notion of these young, luxurious Italians of Boccaccio whiling away their days in tales of sensual trickery or sentimental distress, while without the well-guarded walls of their retreat thousands of their kinsmen and fellow-citizens were writhing in despairing agony. Moreover, the similarity of rank and age in the personages of Boccaccio produces an insipidity and want of variety: all these careless voluptuaries are repetitions of Dioneo and Fiammetta: and the period of ten days adopted by the Italian has the defect of being purely arbitrary, there being no reason why the narratives might not be continued indefinitely. Chaucer’s pilgrimage, on the contrary, is made to Canterbury, and occupies a certain and necessary time; and, on the return of the travelers, the society separates as naturally as it had assembled; after giving the poet the opportunity of introducing two striking and appropriate events—their procession to the shrine of St. Thomas at their arrival in Canterbury, and the prize-supper on their return to London.
Had Chaucer adhered to his original plan, we should have had a tale from each of the party on the journey out, and a second tale from every pilgrim on the way back, making in all sixty-two—or, if the Host also contributed his share, sixty-four. But, alas! the poet has not conducted his pilgrims even to Canterbury; and the tales which he has made them tell only make us the more bitterly lament the nonfulfillment of his original intention.
Before we speak of the narratives themselves, it will be proper to state that our poet continues todescribe the actions, conversation, and deportment of his pilgrims: and nothing can be finer than the remarks put into their mouths respecting the merits of the various tales; or more dramatic than the affected bashfulness of some, when called upon to contribute to the amusement of their companions, and the squabbles and satirical jests made by others.
These passages, in which the tales themselves are, as it were, incrusted, are called Prologues to the various narratives which they respectively precede, and they add inexpressibly to the vivacity and movement of the whole, as in some cases the tales spring, as it were, spontaneously out of the conversations.
Of the tales themselves it will be impossible to attempt even a rapid summary: we may mention, as the most remarkable among the serious and pathetic narratives, the Knight’s Tale, the subject of which is the beautiful story of Palamon and Arcite, taken from the Teseide of Boccaccio, but it is unknown whether originally invented by the great Italian, or, as is far more probable, imitated by him from some of the innumerable versions of the “noble story” of Theseus current in the Middle Ages. The poem is full of a strange mixture of manners and periods: the chivalric and the heroic ages appear side by side: but such is the splendor of imagination displayed in this immortal work, so rich is it in magnificence, in pathos, in exquisite delineations of character, and artfully contrived turns of fortune, that the reader voluntarily dismisses all his chronology, and allows himself to be carried away with the fresh and sparkling current of chivalric love and knightly adventure. No reader ever began this poem without finishing it, or ever read it once without returning to it a second time. The effect upon the mind is like that of some gorgeous tissue, gold-inwoven, of tapestry, in an old baronial hall; full of tournaments and battles, imprisoned knights, and emblazoned banners, Gothic temples of Mars and Venus, the lists, the dungeon and the lady’s bower, garden and fountain, and moonlit groves. Chaucer’s peculiar skill in the delineation of character and appearance by a few rapid and masterly strokes is as perceptible here as in the Prologue to the Tales: the procession of the kings to the tournament is as bright and vivid a piece of painting as ever was produced by the “strong braine” of mediæval Art: and in point of grace and simplicity, what can be finer than the single line descriptive of the beauty of Emilie—sosuggestive, and therefore so superior to the most elaborate portrait—“Up rose the sun, and up rose Emelie?”
The next poem of a serious character is the Squire’s Tale, which indeed so struck the admiration of Milton—himself profoundly penetrated by the spirit of the Romanz poetry—that it is by an allusion to the Squire’s Tale that he characterizes Chaucer when enumerating the great men of all ages, and when he places him beside Plato, Shakspeare, Æschylus, and his beloved Euripides: he supposes his Cheerful Man as evoking Chaucer—
And call up him who left half toldThe story of Cambuscan bold.
And call up him who left half toldThe story of Cambuscan bold.
And call up him who left half toldThe story of Cambuscan bold.
And call up him who left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold.
The imagery of the Squire’s Tale was certainly well calculated to strike such a mind as Milton’s, so gorgeous, so stately, so heroic, and imbued with all the splendor of Oriental literature; for the scenery and subject of this poem bear evident marks of that Arabian influence which colors so much of the poetry of the Middle Ages, and which probably began to act upon the literature of Western Europe after the Crusades.
In point of deep pathos—pathos carried indeed to an extreme and perhaps hardly natural or justifiable pitch of intensity—we will now cite, among the graver tales of our pilgrims, the story put into the mouth of the Clerke of Oxenforde. This is the story of the Patient Griselda—a model of womanly and wifely obedience, who comes victoriously out of the most cruel and repeated ordeals inflicted upon her conjugal and maternal affections. The beautiful and angelic figure of the Patient Wife in this heart-rending story reminds us of one of those seraphic statues of Virgin Martyrs which stand with clasped hands and uplifted, imploring eye, in the carved niches of a Gothic cathedral—an eternal prayer in sculptured stone—
——Patience on a monument,Smiling at Grief!
——Patience on a monument,Smiling at Grief!
——Patience on a monument,Smiling at Grief!
——Patience on a monument,
Smiling at Grief!
The subject of this tale is, as we mentioned some pages back, invented by Boccaccio, and first seen in 1374, by Petrarch, who was so struck with its beauty that he translated it into Latin, and it is from this translation that Chaucer drew his materials. The English poet indeed appears to have been ignorant of Boccaccio’s claim to the authorship, for he makes his “Clerke” say that he had learned it from “Fraunceis Petrarke, the laureat poéte.” Petrarch himself bears the strongest testimony to the almost overwhelming pathos of the story, for he relates that he gave it to a Paduan acquaintance of his to read, who fell into a repeated agony of passionate tears. Chaucer’s poem is written in the Italian stanza.
Of the comic tales the following will be found the most excellent—The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, a droll apologue of the Cock and the Fox, in which the very absurdity of some of the accompaniments confers one of the highest qualities which a fable can possess, viz. so high a degree of individuality that the reader forgets that the persons of the little drama are animals, and sympathizes with them as human beings; the Merchant’s Tale, which, like the comic stories generally, though very indelicate, is yet replete with the richest and broadest humor; the Reve’s Tale, and many shorter stories distributed among the less prominent characters. But the crown and pearl of Chaucer’s drollery is the Miller’s Tale, in which the delicate and penetrating description of the various actors in the adventure can only be surpassed by the perfectly natural yet outrageously ludicrous catastrophe of the intrigue in which they move.
There is certainly nothing, in the vast treasury of ancient or modern humorous writing, at once so real, so droll, and so exquisitelyenjouéin the manner of telling. It is true that the subject is not of the most delicate nature; but, though coarse and plain-speaking, Chaucer is never corrupt or vicious: his improprieties are rather the fruit of the ruder age in whichhe lived, and the turbid ebullitions of a rich and active imagination, than the cool, analyzing, studied profligacy—the more dangerous and corrupting because veiled under a false and morbid sentimentalism—which denies a great portion of the modern literature of too many civilized countries.
It is worthy of remark that all the tales are in verse with the exception of two, one of which, singularly enough, is given to Chaucer himself. This requires some explanation. When the poet is first called upon for his story, he bursts out into a long, confused, fantastical tale of chivalry, relating the adventures of a certain errant-knight, Sir Thopas, and his wanderings in search of the Queen of Faërie. This is written in the peculiar versification of the Trouvères (note, that it is the only tale in which he has adopted this measure,) and is full of all the absurdities of those compositions. When in the full swing of declamation, and when we are expecting to be overwhelmed with page after page of this “sleazy stuff,”—for the poet goes on gallantly, like Don Quixote, “in the style his books of chivalry had taught him, imitating, as near as he can, their very phrase”—he is suddenly interrupted by honest Harry Bailey, the Host, who plays the part of Moderator or Chorus to Chaucer’s pleasant comedy. The Host begs him, with many strong expressions of ridicule and disgust, to give them no more of such “drafty rhyming,” and entreats him to let them hear something less worn-out and tiresome. The poet then proposes to entertain the party with “a litel thinge in prose,” and relates the allegorical story of Melibœus and his wife Patience. It is evident that Chaucer, well aware of the immeasurable superiority of the newly-revived classical literature over the barbarous and now exhausted invention of the Romanz poets, has chosen this ingenious method of ridiculing the commonplace tales of chivalry; but so exquisitely grave is the irony in this passage, that many critics have taken the “Rime of Sir Thopas” for a serious composition, and have regretted it was left a fragment!
The other prose tale, (we have mentioned Melibœus,) is supposed to be related by the Parson, who is always described as a model of Christian humility, piety, and wisdom; which does not, however, save him from the terrible suspicion of being aLollard,i. e., a heretical and seditious revolutionist.
This composition hardly can be called a “tale,” for it contains neither persons nor events; but it is very curious as a specimen of the sermons of the early Reformers: for a sermon it is, and nothing else—a sermon upon the Seven Deadly Sins, divided and subdivided with all the pedantic regularity of the day. It also gives us a very curious insight into the domestic life, the manners, the costume, and even the cookery of the fourteenth century. Some critics have contended that this sermon was added to the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer at the instigation of his confessors, as a species of penitence for the light and immoral tone of much of his writings, and particularly as a sort of recantation, oramende honorable, for his innumerable attacks on the monks. But this supposition is in direct contradiction with every line of his admirable portrait of the Parson; and, however natural it may have been for the licentious Boccaccio to have done such public penance for his ridicule of the “Frati,” and his numberless sensual and immoral scenes, his English follower was “made of sterner stuff.” The friend of John of Gaunt, and the disciple of Wickliffe, was not so easily to be worked upon by monastic subtlety as the more superstitious andsensuousItalian.
The language of Chaucer is a strong exemplification of the structure of the English language. The ground of his diction will be ever found to be the pure, vigorous, Anglo-Saxon English of the people,inlaid—if we may so style it—with an immense quantity of Norman-French words. We may compare this diction to some of those exquisite specimens ofincrustingleft us by the obscure but great artists of the Middle Ages, in which the polish of metal or ivory contrasts so richly with the lustrous ebony.
The difficulty of reading this great poet is very much exaggerated: a very moderate acquaintance with the French and Italian of the fourteenth century, and the observance of a few simple rules of pronunciation, will enable any educated person to read and to enjoy. In particular it is to be remarked that the final lettere, occurring in so many English words, had not yet become ane mute; and must constantly be pronounced, as well as the termination of the past tense,ed, in a separate syllable. The accent also is more varied in its position than is now common in the language. Read with these precautions, Chaucer will be found as harmonious as he is tender, magnificent, humorous, or sublime.
Until the reader is able and willing to appreciate the innumerable beauties of the Canterbury Tales, it is not to be expected that he can make acquaintance with the graceful though somewhat pedantic “Court of Love,” an allegorical poem, bearing the strongest marks of its Provençal origin; or with the exquisite delicacy and pure chivalry of the “Flower and the Leaf,” of which latter poem Campbell speaks as follows, enthusiastically but justly:
“The Flower and the Leaf is an exquisite piece of fairy fancy. With a moral that is just sufficient to apologise for a dream, and yet which sits so lightly on the story as not to abridge its most visionary parts, there is, in the whole scenery and objects of the poem, an air of wonder and sweetness, an easy and surprising transition, that is truly magical.”
We cannot conclude this brief and imperfect notice of this great poet without strongly recommending all those who desire to know something of the true character of English literature to lose no time in making acquaintance with the admirable productions of “our Father Chaucer,” as Gascoigne affectionately calls him; the difficulties of his style have been unreasonably exaggerated, and the labor which surmounts them will be abundantly repaid, “it will conduct you,” to use the beautiful words of Milton, “to a hill-side; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.”
THE THREE SISTERS.
“Gabrielle, you should not stay out so late alone.”
“It isn’t late, sister dear, for a summer’s evening. The church clock struck eight just as I turned into the little path across the field.”
The first speaker, who was the eldest, raised her head from her work, and, looking at Gabrielle, said:
“For you it is too late. You are not well, Gabrielle. You are quite flushed and tired. Where have you been?”
“Nowhere but in the village,” Gabrielle said.
She paused a moment, then added, rather hurriedly:
“I was detained by a poor sick woman I went to see. You don’t know her, Joanna, she has just come here.”
“And who is she?” Joanna asked.
“She is a widow woman, not young, and very poor. She spoke to me in the road the other day, and I have seen her once or twice since. She had heard our name in the village, and to-night I promised her that you or Bertha would go and call on her. She has been very unhappy, poor thing. You will go, sister?”
“Certainly. You should have told me before. Go, now, and take off your bonnet. You have walked too quickly home on this hot night.”
Another lady entered the room just as Gabrielle was leaving it, and addressed her almost as the first had done:
“You are late, Gabrielle. What has kept you out so long?”
“Joanna will tell you,” Gabrielle answered. “I have only been finding some work for you, sister,” and with a smile she went away.
They were two stern, cold women—Joanna and Bertha Vaux. They lived together—they two and Gabrielle—in a dark old-fashioned house, close to a little village, in one of the southern counties of England. It was a pretty picturesque village, as most English villages are, with little clusters of white-washed, rose-twined cottages sprinkled through it, and a little rough-stone country church, covered to the very top of the spire so thickly with ivy, that it looked like a green bower. Here and there were scattered a few pleasant houses of the better sort, standing apart in sunny gardens, and scenting the air around with the smell of their sweet flowers.
But the house in which Joanna and Bertha and Gabrielle lived was always gloomy and dark and cold. It was a square brick house, with damp, unhealthy evergreens planted in front, upon which the sun never shone—summer or winter; the flags which paved the front of the door and the steps of the door, were greened over with cheerless moss; and fungi grew up in the seams of the pavement. The windows, with their thick, black, clumsy frames, almost all faced the north, so that the cold, dark rooms were never lighted up with sunshine; but looked even more dreary in the summer time, with the empty fireless grates, than on winter days. Yet the house seemed to suit well the tastes of the two elder of the Misses Vaux.
It had stood empty for some years before they took it; for its last occupier had committed suicide in one of the rooms—it was just the house for such a thing to have happened in—and the superstitious horror which the event created in neighborhood coupled with the dark and cheerless appearance of the house, were the causes why it remained so long unlet and so much neglected.
About six years ago, the Misses Vaux had come quite strangers to the village; and, in a short time were settled as tenants of the lonely house. They were young women then—not more than three and four-and-twenty; but already grave, severe, and stern. They dressed always in mourning, and rarely was a smile seen on their cold lips; but they spent their time almost entirely in performing acts of charity, in visiting the sick, and in making clothes for the poor. For miles round they were known and looked up to with mingled reverence and awe. But theirs was a strange, soulless charity—more like the performance of heavy penance than of acts of love.
There was a mystery about their antecedents. No one knew whence they came, or who they were; they had neither relations nor friends; they lived alone in their gloomy house, and only at long intervals—sometimes of many months—did they receive even a single letter. They were two sad, weary women, to whom life seemed to bring no pleasure, but to be only a burden, which it was their stern duty to bear uncomplainingly for a certain number of years.
Gabrielle—the beautiful, sunny-natured Gabrielle—was not with them when they first came to the village; but three years ago she had joined them, and the three had lived together since. She was then about fifteen;—a bright, joyous, beautiful creature, without a thought of sadness in her, or the faintest shadow of the gloom that rested on her sisters. Even now, although she had lived for three years in the chilling atmosphere that surrounded them, she was still unchanged, almost even as much a child—as gay, thoughtless, and full of joy, as when she first came. It reminded one of a snowdrop blooming in the winter, forcing itself through the very midst of the surrounding snow, to see how she had grown up with this cold, wintry environment. But the gloomy house looked less gloomy now that Gabrielle lived in it. There was one little room with a window looking to the south (one of three that had a sunny aspect,) which she took to be her own, and there she would sit for many hours, workingby the open window, singing joyously, with the sunlight streaming over her, and the breath of the sweet flowers that she had planted in a garden as close under her window as the sun would come, stealing deliciously into the room. It was quite a pleasant little nook, with a view far over green undulating hills and yellow waving corn-fields, which sparkled and glittered like plains of moving gold in the deep bright rays of the setting sun. And Gabrielle, sitting here and gazing on them, or roaming alone amongst them, was quite happy and light-hearted. Even her stern sisters were thawed and softened by her presence; and, I think, felt as much love for her as it was in their nature to feel for any one; for, indeed, it was impossible to resist altogether her cheering influence, which spread itself over every thing around her with the warmth of sunshine.
On this evening on which our tale begins, and for some days previous to it, Gabrielle had been graver and quieter than she often was. She joined her sisters now in the common sitting-room; and, with her work in her hand, sat down beside them near the window, but she answered their few questions about her evening ramble with only feigned gayety, as though she was occupied with other thoughts, or was too weary to talk; and, presently, as the twilight gathered round them, they all sank into silence. The one window looked across the road in which the house stood, to a dark plantation of stunted trees that grew opposite: a very gloomy place, which, even in the hottest summer-day, had always a chill, wintry feeling, and from which even now a damp air was rising; and, entering the open window, was spreading itself through the room.
“How unlike a summer evening it is in this room!” Gabrielle suddenly broke the silence by exclaiming almost impatiently. “I wish I could, even for once, see a ray of sunshine in it. I have often wondered how any one could build a house in this situation.”
“And do you never imagine that there are people who care less for sunshine than you do, Gabrielle?” Bertha asked, rather sadly.
“Yes, certainly, sister; but still it seems to me almost like a sin to shut out the beautiful heaven’s sunlight as it has been shut out in this house. Winter and summer, it is always alike. If it was not for my own bright little room up stairs, I think I never should be gay here at all.”
“Well, Gabrielle, you need not complain of the gloominess of this room just now,” Miss Vaux said. “At nine o’clock on an August evening I suppose all rooms look pretty much alike.”
“Oh, sister, no!” Gabrielle cried. “Have you never noticed the different kinds of twilight? Here, in this house, it is always winter twilight, quite colorless, and cold, and cheerless, but in other places, where the sun has shone, it is warm, and soft, and beautiful; even for an hour, or longer, after the sun has quite set, a faint rosy tinge, like a warm breath, seems to rest upon the air, and to shed such peace and almost holiness over every thing. That was the kind of twilight, I think of it so often, that there used to be at home. I remember, so very, very long ago, how I used to sit on the ground at my mother’s feet in the summer evenings, looking out through the open window at the dear old garden, where every thing was so very still and quiet that it seemed to me the very trees must have fallen asleep, and how she used to tell us fairy stories in the twilight. Sisters, do you remember it?” Gabrielle asked, her voice tremulous, but not altogether, so it seemed, with emotion that the recollection had called up.
“I do,” Miss Vaux said, in a voice clear and cold, and hard as ice. From Bertha there came no answer.
“It is one of the few things I recollect about her,” Gabrielle said again, very softly, “the rest is almost all indistinct, like a half-forgotten dream. I was only four years old, you say, Joanna, when she died?”
“You know it; why do you ask?” Miss Vaux said, harshly and quickly.
There was a pause. It was so dark that none of their faces could be seen, but one might have told, from the quick nervous way in which, unconsciously, Gabrielle was clasping and unclasping her hand, that there was some struggle going on within her. At last, very timidly, her voice trembling, though she tried hard to steady it, she spoke again.
“Sisters, do not be angry with me. Often, lately I have wished so very much to ask you some things about my mother. Oh, let me ask them now. Dear sisters, tell me why it is that you never speak to me, or almost allow me to speak, of her? Is it because it grieves you so much to think of her death, or is there any other cause”—her voice sank so low that it was almost a whisper—“why her name is never mentioned amongst us? I have kept silence about this for so long, for I knew you did not wish to speak of it; but, oh sisters, tell me now! Ought I not to know about my own mother?”
“Hush!” Miss Vaux said, in a voice stern and harsh. “Gabrielle, you do not know what you are asking. Let it be enough for you to learn that any thing I could tell you of your mother could give you nothing but pain to hear—pain which we would gladly spare you yet, knowing, as we so well do, the great bitterness of it. I ask you for all our sakes, yours as much as ours, never again be the first to mention your mother’s name!”
She had risen from her seat, and stood upright before Gabrielle, the outline of her tall, dark figure showing clearly against the window. In her voice there was not one trace of emotion; her whole manner was hard, and cold, and unimpassioned; like that of one who had, long ago, subdued all gentle feelings.
Gabrielle’s tears were falling fast, but she made no answer to Miss Vaux’s words. She stood much in awe of both her sisters, especially of the eldest, and knew well how hopeless all remonstrance with her would be.
After a few moments Bertha laid her hand on Gabrielle’s shoulder, saying, with something of gentleness in her voice:
“You distress yourself too much, my child. Trustmore in us, Gabrielle. We would try to keep sorrow from you; do not make it impossible.”
“Yes, yes; I know it is meant kindly toward me,” Gabrielle said, gently, “but you forget that I suffer from being in ignorance. I cannot forget that you are concealing something from me.”
“Which I would to God I could conceal from you forever,” Miss Vaux said. “Gabrielle, foolish child, do not seek for sorrow; it will come quickly enough of itself;” and she turned from her with some muttered words that her sister could not hear.
Gabrielle tried to speak again; but Bertha raised her hand warningly, and they were all silent; Gabrielle with her face bowed down upon her hands in the thick twilight.
“We will close the window and have lights,” Bertha said, after some time had passed; “the night air is getting cold.”
With a deep sigh Gabrielle rose, and drew down the open window, standing there for some minutes alone, and looking out upon the dark evergreen grove.
——
“I am going into the village,” Miss Vaux said. “If you will tell me where that poor woman lives you were speaking of last night, Gabrielle, I will call upon her now.”
“Let me go with you,” Gabrielle said quickly. “I told her we would come together. Wait for me one minute, and I will be ready.”
“I scarcely see the need of it. You are looking pale and ill, Gabrielle. I would advise you to stay in the house and rest.”
“I have a headache, and the air will do it good,” Gabrielle answered. “Let me go, sister?”
“As you will, then,” Miss Vaux said, and Gabrielle went away to dress.
She had not yet recovered her usual gay spirits; but was still grave, quiet, and apparently occupied with her own thoughts, and the two walked side by side, almost without speaking, along the little path over the field which lay between their house and the village. It was a very bright, sunny summer’s day; too hot, indeed, for walking, but beautiful to look at. The heat seemed to weary Gabrielle, she walked so very slowly, and was so pale.
“This is the house, sister. We go through the kitchen; she has the room above.”
They raised the latch and went in. No one was in the lower room; so they passed through, and ascended a low, narrow staircase, almost like a ladder, which rose abruptly from a doorway at the farther side, until they reached another door which stood facing them, without any landing between it and the highest step. Gabrielle knocked, and a faint voice from within answered—“Come in;” and she entered, followed by her sister. It was a very small room, and very bare of furniture; for there was little in it but a deal bedstead, an old table, and one or two odd ricketty chairs, in one of which—that boasted of a pair of broken arms, and something that had once been a cushion—sat the woman they had come to visit.
Gabrielle went quickly up to her, and taking her hand said in a low voice—
“I have brought my sister, as I promised—my eldest sister.”
The woman bowed her head without speaking then tried to rise from her seat, but she seemed very weak, and her hand trembled as she leaned on the arm of her chair.
“Do not rise, my good woman,” Miss Vaux said kindly; and her voice sounded almost soft—she was so used to attune it so as to be in harmony with a sick chamber—“do not rise; I see you are very weak,” and she drew a chair near, and sat down by her side
“You have come quite lately to the village, my sister tells me.”
“Quite lately, less than a week ago,” was the answer; but spoken in so low a voice that the words were scarcely audible.
“Were you ever here before? Have you any connection with the place?” Miss Vaux asked.
“No, none.”
“But you had probably some motive in coming here? Have you no relations or friends?”
“No, no,” the woman cried, suddenly bursting into tears, “I have no friends, no friends in the wide world.”
A gentle hand was laid on her shoulder; a gentle voice whispered some soft words in her ear, and the woman looked up into Gabrielle’s dark eyes, and murmured something between her sobs. Then they were all silent for a few moments.
“I think you are a widow,” Miss Vaux asked gently, when she had become calmer.
“Yes,” she answered slowly, as though the word had been dragged from her, so much it seemed to pain her to speak it.
“And have you any children?”
A moment’s pause, and then another “yes,” hardly intelligible from the choking sob which accompanied it.
Miss Vaux was silent, looking inquiringly into the woman’s face. It was partly turned from her, partly shaded with her thin hand; her large eyes looking up with a strange agonized look into Gabrielle’s eyes, her pale lips moving convulsively. Gabrielle’s face was almost as pale as hers; her look almost as full of agony.
Miss Vaux glanced from one to the other, at first with pity; then suddenly a quick change came over her face, a deep flush mounted to her brow, she darted from her seat, and—calm as she ordinarily was—her whole figure trembled as she stood before them, with her fierce gaze turned on them.
Pale as death, neither of them speaking, they bore her passionate look; quite motionless, too, except that Gabrielle had instinctively clasped the widow’s hand in hers, and held it tightly.
“Speak to me, Gabrielle!” Miss Vaux cried; and her voice, harsh, loud, and quivering with passion, echoed through the room—“tell me who this woman is?”
From the widow’s lips there burst one word—one word like a sudden bitter cry—“Joanna!”
She stretched out her arms imploringly, trying to grasp even her daughter’s dress; but Miss Vaux sprung from her, and stood erect in the center of the room; her tall figure drawn to its full height; her burning eye still turned with unutterable anger upon the crouching woman near her.
“You have dared to do this. You have dared to seek us out here, where we had hoped to hide ourselves from the scoffing of the bitter, heartless world; where we had tried by acts of charity, by suffering and penance, to blot out the recollection of the shame that you have brought upon us! Are we nowhere secure from you? What have we to do with you? You cast us off years ago.”
“Sister, sister,” cried Gabrielle’s imploring voice, “oh, remember, whatever she has done, that she is still our mother. Have mercy on her, for she cannot bear this!”
But sternly and coldly came Miss Vaux’s answer—
“Did she remember that we were her children when she left us? Did she remember that our father was her husband? We all loved her then—she was very dear to us—but she turned all our warm love into bitterness. She destroyed our happiness at one stroke, for ever; she blighted, without a pang, all the hope of our young lives; she branded us with a mark of shame that we can never shake off; she plunged an arrow into the heart of each of us, which lies festering there now. Are these things to be forgiven? I tell you it is impossible! I will never forgive her—I swore it by my father’s deathbed—never while I live! Gabrielle, this is no place for you. Come home with me.”
“Hear me first?” the mother cried, creeping from the seat in which she had sunk back, and cowering, with hidden face, had listened to her daughter’s words, “hear me before you go! I have deserved every thing—every thing you can say; but oh, from you it is bitter to hear it! Oh! my daughter, listen to me.” She flung herself at Miss Vaux’s feet, on the bare floor.
“You speak of the sorrows I have brought upon you—the sorrow and the shame; but have they equalled what I have endured? Day and night—day and night—through months and years—fourteen long years—oh, think of it! I have wished to kill myself, but I dared not do it; I have prayed fervently to die. Oh, no, no, stay and listen to me! My last hope—my last hope in heaven and earth is only with you. Oh, my daughter! you say you loved me once—will not one spark of the old love live again? I will try yet once more to move you to pity. I have not told you all. I have not told you how, in my agony, I tried to find rest and peace; how I sought it everywhere—wandering from place to place alone, in hunger and thirst, in cold and weariness, in poverty and wretchedness; finding none anywhere, until at last, worn out with misery, I wandered here. And here I saw Gabrielle, my beautiful child, my love, my darling!”
The wan face lighted up with passionate love, as she looked at her who was kneeling by her side.
“She believed me when I told her of my sorrow. She comforted me with such sweet words, that they sank like healing balm into my soul, as though an angel’s voice had spoken. Do not take her from me!”
“Mother, do not fear,” Gabrielle’s soothing voice whispered, “I will stay with you—did I not promise it?”
“Gabrielle!” cried Miss Vaux, “come with me, and leave her. The tie that once bound us to her she herself has severed for ever; we have nothing further to do with her. Gabrielle, come!”
“I cannot come. She is my mother. I cannot leave her.”
“And we are your sisters. To whom do you owe most? We have watched over you through your life; we have shielded you from sorrow; we have loved you almost with the love that she ought to have given you. You have been the single joy that we have had for years. Have you no love to give us in return for all we have given you? Oh, Gabrielle—my sister, I pray you!—I, who am so little used to entreat any one, I pray you for the sake of the love we have borne you—for the sake of the honor that is still left us—for the sake of all that you hold sacred—come, come back with us!”
A low moan burst from the mother’s lips; for Gabrielle, weeping bitterly, rose from her knees, and threw herself into her sister’s arms.
“Heaven bless you for this!” Miss Vaux exclaimed; but interrupting her in a broken voice, Gabrielle cried—
“You do not understand me. I cannot return with you. No, sister. Any thing—any thing else I will do, but I cannot forsake her in her penitence. Can you do it yourself? Oh! sister, will you not take her home?”
“I will not.”
There was a long pause, broken once or twice by the deep sobs that seemed bursting the mother’s heart. Then Miss Vaux spoke again, earnestly, even imploringly—
“Gabrielle, I ask you once more, for the last time, to return with me. Foolish child, think what you are doing. You are bringing down your father’s dying curse upon your head—you are piercing the hearts of those who love you with new and bitter sorrow; you are closing—willfully closing—against yourself the door that is still open to receive you; you are making yourself homeless—a wanderer—perhaps a beggar. Oh, my dear sister Gabrielle, think once more—think of all this!”
“Sister, spare me further; your words wound me; but I have decided, and I cannot return with you. My mother’s home is my home.”
“Then I say no more,” Miss Vaux exclaimed, while her whole figure shook. “May God forgive you for what you do this day!”
The door closed, and Gabrielle and her mother were left alone.
Gently and lovingly Gabrielle raised her from theground, led her to her seat, and tried to calm and soothe her—though she wept herself the while—with cheerful, tender words.
“Mother, are you not glad to have me with you—your own little Gabrielle? You said it would make you happy, and yet see how you are weeping. Hush! mother dear, hush! I will be always with you now, to nurse you, and take care of you, and comfort you, and you will get strong and well soon; and some day, mother, some day perhaps their hearts will soften, and they will forgive us both, and take us home to them, and we will all live again together, loving one another.” And Gabrielle tried to smile through the tears that were falling still.
“My child, I am weak and selfish,” the mother said. “I should have told you to go back to your home, and to leave me, but I could not do it. Yet even now my heart is reproaching me for what I have done. How are we to live? My Gabrielle, you do not know how I have struggled and labored, sometimes, only for a crust of bread.”
“Mother, you shall labor no more. My sisters are very just: all that is mine they will give me. We will live on very little; we will find out some quiet little village, where no one will know who we are, or where we came from, and there we will rest together. I will never leave you more—never more until death parts us.”
She hung upon her mother’s neck, kissing the pale brow and sunken cheek, and wiping away the tears that were yet falling: though more slowly and more calmly falling now.
——
“. . Of whom may we seek for succor, but of Thee, O Lord, who for our sins are justly displeased? . .
“. . earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life. . .”
“I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write. From henceforth blessed are the dead, which die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit, for they do rest from their labors.”
It was a burial in a village church-yard, and standing by an open grave there was one mourner only, a woman—Bertha Vaux. Alone, in sadness and silence, with few tears—for she was little used to weep—she stood and looked upon her sister’s funeral; stood and saw the coffin lowered, and heard the first handful of earth fall rattling on the coffin lid; then turned away, slowly, to seek her solitary house. The few spectators thought her cold and heartless; perhaps if they could have raised that black veil, they would have seen such sorrow in her face as might have moved the hearts of most of them.
The sun shone warmly over hill and vale that summer’s day, but Bertha Vaux shivered as she stepped within the shadow of her lonely house. It was so cold there; so cold and damp and dark, as if the shadow of that death that had entered it was still lingering around. The stunted evergreens, on which, since they first grew, no sunlight had ever fallen, no single ray of golden light to brighten their dark, sad leaves for years, looked gloomier, darker, sadder, than they had ever looked before; the very house, with its closed shutters—all closed, except one in the room where the dead had lain—seemed mourning for the stern mistress it had lost. A lonely woman now, lonely and sad, was Bertha Vaux.
She sat in the summer evening in her silent, cheerless room. It was so very still, not even a breath of wind to stir the trees; no voice of living thing to break upon her solitude; no sound even of a single footstep on the dusty road; but in the solitude that was around her, countless thoughts seemed springing into life; things long forgotten; feelings long smothered; hopes once bright—bright as the opening of her life had been, that had faded and been buried long ago.
She thought of the time when she and her sister, fifteen years ago, had come first to the lonely house where now she was; of a few years later—two or three—when another younger sister had joined them there; and it seemed to Bertha, looking back, as if the house had sometimes then been filled with sunlight. The dark room in which she sat had once been lightened up—was it with the light from Gabrielle’s bright eyes? In these long, sad fifteen years, that little time stood out so clearly, so hopefully; it brought the tears to Bertha’s eyes, thinking of it in her solitude. And how had it ended? For ten years nearly, now—for ten long years—the name of Gabrielle had never been spoken in that house. The light was gone—extinguished in a moment, suddenly; a darkness deeper than before had ever since fallen on the lonely house.
The thought of the years that had passed since then—of their eventlessness and weary sorrow; and then the thought of the last scene of all—that scene which still was like a living presence to her—her sister’s death.
Joanna Vaux had been cold, stern, and unforgiving to the last; meeting death, unmoved; repenting of no hard thing that she had done throughout her sad, stern life; entering the valley of the shadow of death fearlessly. But that cold death-bed struck upon the heart of the solitary woman who watched beside it, and wakened thoughts and doubts there, which would not rest. She wept now as she thought of it, sadly and quietly, and some murmured words burst from her lips, which sounded like a prayer—not for herself only.
Then from her sister’s death-bed she went far, far back—to her own childhood—and a scene rose up before her; one that she had closed her eyes on many a time before, thinking vainly that so she could crush it from her heart, but now she did not try to force it back. The dark room where she sat, the gloomy, sunless house, seemed fading from her sight; the long, long years, with their weary train of shame and suffering—all were forgotten. She was in her old, lost home again—the home where she was born; she saw a sunny lawn, embowered with trees, each tree familiar to her and remembered well, and she herself, a happy child, was standing there; andby her side—with soft arms twining round her, with tender voice, and gentle, loving eyes, and bright hair glittering in the sunlight—there was one!
Oh, Bertha! hide thy face and weep. She was so lovely and so loving, so good and true, so patient and so tender, then. “Oh! how could’st thou forget it all, and steel thy heart against her, and vow the cruel vow never to forgive her sin? Thy mother—thy own mother, Bertha! think of it.”
A shadow fell across the window beside which she sat, and through her blinding tears Bertha looked up, and saw a woman standing there, holding by the hand a little child. Her face was very pale and worn, with sunken eyes and cheeks; her dress was mean and poor. She looked haggard and weary, and weak and ill; but Bertha knew that it was Gabrielle come back. She could not speak, for such a sudden rush of joy came to her softened heart that all words seemed swallowed up in it; such deep thankfulness for the forgiveness that seemed given her, that her first thought was not a welcome, but a prayer.
Gabrielle stood without, looking at her with her sad eyes.
“We are alone,” she said, “and very poor; will you take us in?”
Sobbing with pity and with joy, Bertha rose from her seat and hurried to the door. Trembling, she drew the wanderers in; then falling on her sister’s neck, her whole heart melted, and she cried, with gushing tears,
“Gabrielle, dear sister Gabrielle, I, too, am all alone!”
The tale that Gabrielle had to tell was full enough of sadness. They had lived together, she and her mother, for about a year, very peacefully, almost happily; and then the mother died, and Gabrielle soon after married one who had little to give her but his love. And after that the years passed on with many cares and griefs—for they were very poor, and he not strong—but with a great love ever between them, which softened the pain of all they had to bear. At last, after being long ill, he died, and poor Gabrielle and her child were left to struggle on alone.
“I think I should have died,” she said, as weeping, she told her story to her sister, “if it had not been for my boy; andIcould so well have borne to die; but, Bertha, I could not leave him to starve! It pierced my heart with a pang so bitter that I cannot speak of it, to see his little face grow daily paler; his little feeble form become daily feebler and thinner; to watch the sad, unchildlike look fixing itself hourly deeper in his sweet eyes—so mournful, so uncomplaining, so full of misery. The sight killed me day by day; and then at last, in my despair, I said to myself that I would come again to you. I thought, sister—I hoped—that you would take my darling home, and then I could have gone away and died. But God bless you!—God bless you for the greater thing that you have done, my kind sister Bertha. Yes—kiss me, sister dear: it is so sweet. I never thought to feel a sister’s kiss again.”
Then kneeling down by Gabrielle’s side, with a low voice Bertha said:
“I have thought of many things to-day. Before you came, Gabrielle, my heart was very full; for in the still evening, as I sat alone, the memories of many years came back to me as they have not done for very long. I thought of my two sisters: how the one had ever been so good and loving and true-hearted; the other—though she was just, or believed herself to be so—so hard, and stern, and harsh—as, God forgive me, Gabrielle, I too have been. I thought of this, and understood it clearly, as I had never done before: and then my thoughts went back, and rested on my mother—on our old home—on all the things that I had loved so well, long ago, and that for years had been crushed down in my heart and smothered there. Oh, Gabrielle, such things rushed back upon me; such thoughts of her whom we have scorned so many years; such dreams of happy by-gone days; such passionate regrets; such hope, awakening from its long, long sleep—no, sister, let me weep—do not wipe the tears away: let me tell you of my penitence and grief—it does me good; my heart is so full—so full that I must speak now, or it would burst!”
“Then you shall speak to me, and tell me all, dear sister. Ah! we have both suffered—we will weep together. Lie down beside me; see, there is room here for both. Yes; lay your head upon me; rest it on my shoulder. Give me your hand now—ah! how thin it is—almost as thin as mine. Poor sister Bertha; poor, kind sister!”
So gently Gabrielle soothed her, forgetting her own grief and weariness in Bertha’s more bitter suffering and remorse. It was very beautiful to see how tenderly and patiently she did it, and how her gentle words calmed down the other’s passionate sorrow. So different from one another their grief was. Gabrielle’s was a slow, weary pain, which, day by day, had gradually withered her, eating its way into her heart; then resting there, fixing itself there for ever. Bertha’s was like the quick, sudden piercing of a knife—a violent sorrow, that did its work in hours instead of years, convulsing body and soul for a little while, purifying them as with a sharp fire, then passing away and leaving no aching pain behind, but a new cleansed spirit.
In the long summer twilight—the beautiful summer twilight that never sinks into perfect night—these two women lay side by side together; she that was oldest in suffering still comforting the other, until Bertha’s tears were dried, and exhausted with the grief that was so new to her, she lay silent in Gabrielle’s arms—both silent, looking into the summer night, and thinking of the days that were forever past. And sleeping at their feet lay Gabrielle’s child, not forgotten by her watchful love, though the night had deepened so that she could not see him where he lay.
——
“We will not stay here, sister,” Bertha had said. “This gloomy house will always make us sad. Itis so dark and cold here, and Willie, more than any of us, needs the sunlight to strengthen and cheer him, poor boy.”
“And I, too, shall be glad to leave it,” Gabrielle answered.
So they went. They did not leave the village; it was a pretty, quiet place, and was full of old recollections to them—more bitter than sweet, perhaps, most of them—but still such as it would have been pain to separate themselves from entirely, as, indeed, it is always sad to part from things and places which years, either of joy or sorrow, have made us used to. So they did not leave it, but chose a little cottage, a mile or so from their former house—a pleasant little cottage in a dell, looking to the south, with honeysuckle and ivy twining together over it, up to the thatched roof. A cheerful little nook it was, not over bright or gay, but shaded with large trees all round it, through whose green branches the sunlight came, softened and mellowed, into the quiet rooms. An old garden, too, there was, closed in all round with elm trees—a peaceful, quiet place, where one would love to wander, or to lie for hours upon the grass, looking through the green leaves upward to the calm blue sky.
To Gabrielle, wearied with her sorrow, this place was like an oasis in the desert. It was so new a thing to her to find rest anywhere: to find one little spot where she could lay her down, feeling no care for the morrow. Like one exhausted with long watching, she seemed now for a time to fall asleep.
The summer faded into autumn; the autumn into winter. A long, cold winter it was, the snow lying for weeks together on the frozen ground; the bitter, withering east wind moaning day and night through the great branches of the bare old elms, swaying them to and fro, and strewing the snowy earth with broken boughs; a cold and bitter winter, withering not only trees and shrubs, but sapping out the life from human hearts.
He was a little, delicate boy, that child of Gabrielle’s. To look at him, it seemed a wonder how he ever could have lived through all their poverty and daily struggles to get bread; how that little feeble body had not sunk into its grave long ago. In the bright summer’s days a ray of sunlight had seemed to pierce to the little frozen heart, and warming the chilled blood once more, had sent it flowing through his veins, tinging the pale cheek with rose; but the rose faded as the summer passed away, and the little marble face was pale as ever when the winter snow began to fall; the large, dark eyes, which had reflected the sunbeams for a few short months, were heavy and dim again. And then presently there came another change. A spot of crimson—a deep red rose—not pale and delicate like the last, glowed often on each hollow cheek; a brilliant light burned in the feverish, restless eye; a hollow, painful cough shook the little emaciated frame. So thin he was, so feeble, so soon wearied. Day by day the small, thin hand grew thinner and more transparent; the gentle voice and childish laugh lower and feebler; the sweet smile sweeter, and fainter, and sadder.
And Gabrielle saw it all, and bowing to the earth in bitter mourning, prepared herself for this last great sorrow.
The spring came slowly on—slowly, very slowly. The green leaves opened themselves, struggling in their birth with the cold wind. It was very clear and bright; the sun shone all day long; but for many weeks there had been no rain, and the ground was quite parched up.
“No, Willie, dear,” Gabrielle said, “you mustn’t go out to-day. It is too cold for you yet, dear boy.”
“But, indeed, it isn’t cold, mother. Feel here, where the sun is falling, how warm it is; put your hand upon it. Oh, mother, let me go out,” poor Willie said, imploringly. “I am so weary of the hours. I wont try to run about, only let me go and lie in the sunlight!”
“Not to-day, my darling, wait another day; perhaps the warm winds will come. Willie, dear child, it would make you ill, you must not go.”
“You say so every day, mother,” Willie said sadly, “and my head is aching so with staying in the house.”
And at last, he praying so much for it, one day they took him out. It was a very sunny day, with scarcely a cloud in the bright, blue sky; and Bertha and Gabrielle made a couch for him in a warm, sheltered corner, and laid him on it. Poor child, he was so glad to feel himself in the open air again. It made him so happy, that he laughed and talked as he had not done for months before; lying with his mother’s hand in his, supported in her arms, she kneeling so lovingly beside him, listening with a strange, passionate mingling of joy and misery to the feeble but merry little voice that, scarcely ever ceasing, talked to her.
Poor Gabrielle, it seemed to her such a fearful mockery of the happiness that she knew could never be hers any more for ever; but, forcing back her grief upon her own sad heart, she laughed and talked gayly with him, showing by no sign how sorrowful she was,
“Mother, mother!” he cried, suddenly clapping his little, wasted hands, “I see a violet—a pure white violet, in the dark leaves there. Oh, fetch it to me! It’s the first spring flower. The very first violet of all! Oh, mother, dear, I love them—the little sweet-smelling flowers.”
“Your eyes are quicker than mine, Willie; I shouldn’t have seen it, it is such a little thing. There it is, dear boy. I wish there were more for you.”
“Ah, they will soon come now. I am so glad I have seen the first. Mother, do you remember how I used to gather them at home, and bring them to papa when he was ill? He liked them, too—just as I do now.”
“I remember it well, dear,” Gabrielle answered softly.
“How long ago that time seems now,” Willie said; then, after a moment’s peace, he asked a little sadly, “Mother, what makes me so different now from what I used to be? I was so strong and wellonce, and could run about the whole day long; mother, dear, when shall I run about again?”
“You are very weak, dear child, just now. We mustn’t talk of running about for a little time to come.”
“No, not for a little time; but when do you think, mother?” The little voice trembled suddenly: “I feel sometimes so weak—so weak, as if I never could get strong again.”
Hush, Gabrielle! Press back that bitter sob into thy sorrowful heart, lest the dying child hear it!
“Do not fear, my darling, do not fear. You will be quite well, very soon now.”
He looked into her tearful eye, as she tried to smile on him, with a strange, unchildlike look, as if he partly guessed the meaning in her words, but did not answer her, nor could she speak again, just then.
“Mother, sing to me,” he said, “sing one of the old songs I used to love. I haven’t heard you sing for—oh so long!”
Pressing her hand upon her bosom, to still her heart’s unquiet beating, Gabrielle tried to sing one of the old childish songs with which, in days long past, she had been wont to nurse her child asleep. The long silent voice—silent here so many years—awoke again, ringing through the still air with all its former sweetness. Though fainter than it was of old, Bertha heard it, moving through the house; and came to the open window to stand there and listen, smiling to herself to think that Gabrielle could sing again, and half weeping at some other thoughts which the long unheard voice recalled to her.
“Oh, mother, I like that,” Willie murmured softly, as the song died away, “it’s like long ago to hear you sing.”
They looked into one another’s eyes, both filling fast with tears; then Willie, with childish sympathy, though knowing little why she grieved, laid his arm round her neck, trying with his feeble strength to draw her toward him. She bent forward to kiss him; then hid her face upon his neck that he might not see how bitterly she wept, and he, stroking her soft hair with his little hand, murmured the while some gentle words that only made her tears flow faster. So they lay, she growing calmer presently, for a long while.
“Now, darling, you have staid here long enough,” Gabrielle said at last, “you must let me carry you into the house again.”
“Must I go so soon mother? See how bright the sun is still.”