Chapter XII (2)

We have said that every outer sign of woe was there--all but that which great sorrows set flowing, but the greatest dry up--she shed no tears! Tears are things for which a preparation of the heart is needful; they are granted to anxiety for the future, or lament for the past. They flow with reminiscences of our own, or with the example of others; they are sent to separations we have long dreaded, and to disappointments we can not forget; they come when our hearts are softened, or when our hearts are wearied; but, in the first amazement of unlooked-for woe, they find no place: the cup that is suddenly whelmed over lets no drop of water escape.

It was evident, however, through all the unruliness of such distress, that the sufferer was a creature of gentle and considerate nature; in the whirlpool which convulsed every faculty of her mind, the smooth surface of former habits was occasionally thrown up. Though the hand which sought to support her was cast aside with a restless, excited movement, it was sought the next instant with a momentary pressure of contrition. Though the head was turned away one instant from the whisper of consolation with a gesture of impatience, yet it was bowed the next as if in entreaty of forgiveness. Poor creature! what effort she could make to allay the storm which was rioting within her was evidently made for the sake of those around. With so much and so suddenly to bear, she still showed the habit of forbearance.

Meanwhile night had far advanced; many had been the inquiries and expressions of sympathy made at Mrs. H----'s door; but now, one by one, the parties retired each to their rooms. Few, however, rested that night as usual; however differently the terrible picture might be carried on the mind during the hours of light, it forced itself with almost equal vividness upon all in those of darkness. The father struggling to reach the child, and then throwing up his arms in agony, and that fair little head borne about unresistingly by the waves before they covered it over--these were the figures which haunted many a pillow. Or, if the recollection of that scene was lulled for a while, it was recalled again by the weary sound of those footsteps which told of a mourner who rested not. Of course, among the number and medley of characters lying under that roof, there was the usual proportion of the selfish and the careless. None, however, slept that night without confessing, in word or thought, that life and death are in the hands of the Lord; and not all, it is to be hoped, forgot the lesson. One young man, in particular, possessed of fine intellectual powers, but which unfortunately had been developed among a people who, God help them! affect to believe only what they understand, was indebted to this day and night for a great change in his opinions. His heart was kind, though his understanding was perverted; and the thought of that young, lovely, and feeble woman, on whom a load of misery had fallen which would have crushed the strongest of his own sex, roused within him the strongest sense of the insufficiency of all human aid or human strength for beings who are framed to love and yet ordained to lose. He was oppressed with compassion, miserable with sympathy, he longed with all the generosity of a manly heart to do something, to suggest something, that should help her, or satisfy himself. But what were fortitude, philosophy, strength of mind? Mockeries, nay, more, imbecilities, which he dared not mention to her, nor so much as think of in the same thought with her woe. Either he must accuse the Power who had inflicted the wound, and so deep he had not sunk, or he must acknowledge His means of cure. Impelled, therefore, by a feeling equally beyond his doubting or his proving, he did that which for years German sophistry had taught him to forbear; he gave but little, but he felt that he gave his best--he _prayed_ for the suffering creature, and in the name of One who suffered for all, and from that hour God's grace forsook him not.

But the most characteristic sympathizer on the occasion was Sir Thomas ----, the fine old gentleman who had shouted so loudly from the balcony. He was at home in this valley, owned the whole range of hills on one side of the lake from their fertile bases to their bleak tops, took up his abode generally every summer in this hotel, and felt for the stricken woman as if she had been a guest of his own. Ever since the fatal accident he had gone about in a perfect fret of commiseration, inquiring every half-hour at her door how she was, or what she had taken. Severe bodily illness or intense mental distress had never fallen upon that bluff person and warm heart, and abstinence from food was in either case the proof of an extremity for which he had every compassion, but of which he had no knowledge. He prescribed, therefore, for the poor lady every thing that he would have relished himself, and nothing at that moment could have made him so happy as to have been allowed to send her up the choicest meal that the country could produce. Not that his benevolence was at all limited to such manifestations; if it did not deal in sentiment, it took the widest range of practice. His laborers were dispatched round the lake to watch for any traces of the late catastrophe; he himself kept up an hour later planning how he could best promote the comfort of her onward journey and of her present stay; and though the good old gentleman was now snoring loudly over the very apartment which contained the object of his sympathy, he would have laid down his life to save those that were gone, and half his fortune to solace her who was left.

Some hours had elapsed, the footsteps had ceased, there was quiet, if not rest, in the chamber of mourning; and, shortly after sunrise, a side door in the hotel opened, and she who had been as a sister to the stranger, never seen before, came slowly forth. She was worn with watching, her heart was sick with the sight and sounds of such woe, and she sought the refreshment of the outer air and the privacy of the early day. It was a dawn promising a day as beautiful as the preceding; the sun was beaming mildly through an opening toward the east, wakening the tops of the nearest hills, while all the rest of the beautiful range lay huge and colorless, nodding, as it were, to their drowsy reflections beneath, and the lake itself looked as calm and peaceful as if the winds had never swept over its waters, nor those waters over all that a wife and mother had loved. Man is such a speck on this creation of which he is lord, that had every human being now sleeping on the green sides of the hills, been lying deep among their dark feet in the lake, it would not have shown a ripple the more. Miss Campbell, meanwhile, wandered slowly on, and though apparently unmindful of the beauty of the scene, she was evidently soothed by its influence. All that dreary night long had she cried unto God in ceaseless prayer, and felt that without His help in her heart, and His word on her lips, she had been but as a strengthless babe before the sight of that anguish. But here beneath His own heavens her communings were freer; her soul seemed not so much to need Him below, as to rise to Him above; and the solemn dejection upon a very careworn, but sweet face, became less painful, but perhaps more touching. In her wanderings she had now left the hotel to her left hand, the boatman's clay cottage was just above, and below a little rough pier of stones, to an iron ring in one of which the boat was usually attached. She had stood on that self-same spot the day before and watched Captain H---- and his little son as they walked down to the pier, summoned the boatman, and launched into the cool, smooth water. She now went down herself, and stood with a feeling of awe upon the same stones they had so lately left. The shores were loose and shingly, many footsteps were there, but one particularly riveted her gaze. It was tiny in shape and light in print, and a whole succession of them went off toward the side as if following a butterfly, or attracted by a bright stone. Alas! they we're the last prints of that little foot on the shores of this world! Miss Campbell had seen the first thunderbolt of misery burst upon his mother; she had borne the sight of her as she lay stunned, and as she rose frenzied, but that tiny footprint was worse than all, and she burst into a passionate fit of tears. She felt as if it were desecration to sweep them away, as if she could have shrined them round from the winds and waves, and thoughtless tread of others; but a thought came to check her. What did it matter how the trace of his little foot, or how the memory of his short life were obliterated from this earth? There was One above who had numbered every hair of his innocent head, and in His presence she humbly hoped both father and child were now rejoicing.

She was just turning away when the sound of steps approached, and the boatman's wife came up. Her features were coarse and her frame was gaunt, as we have said, but she was no longer the termagant of the day before, nor was she ever so. But the lower classes, in the most civilized lands, are often, both in joy and grief, an enigma to those above them; if nature, rare alike in all ranks, speak not for them, they have no conventional imitation to put in her place. The feeling of intense suspense was new to her, and the violence she had assumed had been the awkwardness which, under many eyes, knew not otherwise how to express or, conceal; but she had sound Scotch sense, and a tender woman's heart, and spoke them both now truly, if not gracefully.

"Ye'll be frae the hotel, yonder?" she said; "can ye tell me how the puir leddy has rested? I was up mysel' to the house, and they tell't me they could hear her greeting!"

Miss Campbell told her in a few words what the reader knows, and asked for her husband.

"Oh! he's weel eneugh in body, but sair disquieted in mind. No that he's unmindfu' of the mercy of the Lord to himsel', but he can no just keep the thocht away that it was he wha helped those poor creatures to their end." She then proceeded earnestly to exculpate her husband, assuring Miss Campbell that in spite of the heavy wind and the entangled rope, all might even yet have been well if the gentleman had kept his seat. "But I just tell him that there's Ane above, stronger than the wind, who sunk them in the lake, and could have raised them from it, but it was no His pleasure. The puir leddy would ha' been nane the happier if Andrew had been ta'en as well, and I and the bairns muckle the waur." Then observing where Miss Campbell stood, she continued, in a voice of much emotion, "Ah! I mind them weel as they came awa' down here; the bairnie was playing by as Andrew loosened the boat--the sweet bairnie! so happy and thochtless as he gaed in his beautiful claes--I see him noo!" and the poor woman wiped her eyes. "But there's something ye'll like to see. Jeanie! gang awa' up, and bring the little bonnet that hangs on the peg. Andrew went out again with the boat the night, and picked it up. But it will no be dry."

The child returned with a sad token. It was the little fellow's cap; a smart, town-made article, with velvet band, and long silk tassel which had been his first vanity, and his mother had coaxed it smooth as she pulled the peak low down over his fair forehead, and then, fumbling his little fingers into his gloves, had given him a kiss which she little thought was to be the last!

"I was coming awa' up wi' it mysel', but the leddy will no just bear to see it yet."

"No, not yet," said Miss Campbell, "if ever. Let me take it. I shall remain with her till better friends come here, or she goes to them;" and giving the woman money, which she had difficulty in making her accept, she possessed herself of the cap, and turned away.

She soon reached the hotel, it was just five o'clock, all blinds were down, and there was no sign of life; but one figure was pacing up and down, and seemed to be watching for her. It was Sir Thomas. His sympathy had broken his sleep in the morning, though it had not disturbed it at night. He began in his abrupt way:

"Madam, I have been watching for you. I heard you leave the house. Madam, I feel almost ashamed to lift up my eyes to you; while we have all been wishing and talking, you alone have been acting. We are all obliged to you, madam; there is not a creature here with a heart in them to whom you have not given comfort!"

Miss Campbell tried to escape from the honest overflowings of the old man's feelings.

"You have only done what you liked: very true, madam. It is choking work having to pity without knowing how to help; but I would sooner give ten thousand pounds than see what you have seen. I would do any thing for the poor creature, any thing, but I could not look at her." He then told her that his men had been sent with the earliest dawn to different points of the lake, but as yet without finding any traces of the late fatal accident; and then his eyes fell upon the cap in Miss Campbell's hand, and he at once guessed the history. "Picked up last evening, you say--sad, sad--a dreadful thing!" and his eyes filling more than it was convenient to hold, he turned away, blew his nose, took a short turn, and coming back again, continued, "But tell me, how has she rested? what has she taken? You must not let her weep too much!"

"Let her weep!" said Miss Campbell; "I wish I could bid her. She has not shed a tear yet, and mind and body alike want it. I left her lying back quiet in an arm-chair, but I fear this quiet is worse than what has gone before!"

"God bless my heart!" said Sir Thomas, his eyes now running over without control. "God bless my heart! this is sad work. Not that I ever wished a woman to cry before in my life, if she could help it. Poor thing! poor thing! I'll send for a medical man: the nearest is fifteen miles off!"

"I think it will be necessary. I am now going back to her room."

"Well, ma'am, I won't detain you longer, but don't keep all the good to yourself. Let me know if there is any thing that I, or my men, or," the old gentleman hesitated, "my money, madam, can do, only don't ask me to see her;" and so they each went their way--Sir Thomas to the stables to send off man and horse, and Miss Campbell to the chamber of mourning.

She started as she entered; the blind was drawn up, and, leaning against the shutter, in apparent composure, stood Mrs. H----. That composure was dreadful; it was the calm of intense agitation, the silence of boiling heat, the immovability of an object in the most rapid motion. The light was full upon her, showing cheek and forehead flushed, and veins bursting on the small hands. Miss Campbell approached with trembling limbs.

"Where is the servant?"--"I did not want her."

"Will you not rest?"--"I _can not_!"

Miss Campbell was weary and worn out; the picture before her was so terrible, she sunk on the nearest chair in an agony of tears.

Without changing her position, Mrs. H---- turned her head, and said, gently, "Oh, do not cry so! it is I who ought to cry, but my heart is as dry as my eyes, and my head is so tight, and I can not think for its aching; I can not think, I can not understand, I can not remember, I don't even know your name, then why should this be true? It is I who am ill, they are well, but they never were so long from me before." Then coming forward, her face working, and her breath held tightly, as if a scream were pressing behind, "Tell me," she said, "tell me--my husband and child--" she tried hard to articulate, but the words were lost in a frightful contortion. Miss Campbell mastered herself, she saw the rack of mental torture was strained to the utmost. Neither could bear this much longer. She almost feared resistance, but she felt there was one way to which the sufferer would respond.

"I am weary and tired," she said; "weary with staying up with you all night. If you will lie down, I will soon come and lie by your side."

Poor Mrs. H---- said nothing, but let herself be laid upon the bed.

Three mortal hours passed, she was burnt with a fever which only her own tears could quench; and those wide-open, dry eyes were fearful to see. A knock came to the door, "How is she now?" said Sir Thomas's voice, "The doctor is here: you look as if you wanted him yourself. I'll bring him up."

The medical man entered. Such a case had not occurred in his small country practice before, but he was a sensible and a kind man, and no practice could have helped him here if he had not been. He heard the whole sad history, felt the throbbing pulse, saw the flush on the face, and wide-open eyes, which now seemed scarcely to notice any thing. He took Miss Campbell into another room, and said that the patient must be instantly roused, and then bled if necessary.

"But the first you can undertake better than I, madam." He looked round. "Is there no little object which would recall?--nothing you could bring before her sight? You understand me?"

Indeed, Miss Campbell did. She had not sat by that bed-side for the last three hours without feeling and fearing that this was necessary; but, at the same time, she would rather have cut off her own hand than undertaken it. She hesitated--but for a moment, and then whispered something to Sir Thomas.

"God bless my heart!" said he: "who would have thought of it? Yes. I know it made me cry like a child."

And then he repeated her proposition to the medical man, who gave immediate assent, and she left the room. In a few minutes she entered that of Mrs. H---- with the little boy's cap in her hand, placed it in a conspicuous position before the bed, and then seated herself with a quick, nervous motion by the bed-side. It was a horrid pause, like that which precedes a cruel operation, where you have taken upon yourself the second degree of suffering--that of witnessing it. The cap lay there on the small stone mantle-piece, with its long, drabbled, weeping tassel, like a funeral emblem. It was not many minutes before it caught those eyes for which it was intended. A suppressed exclamation broke from her; she flew from the bed, looked at Miss Campbell one instant in intense inquiry, and the next had the cap in her hands. The touch of that wet object seemed to dissolve the spell; her whole frame trembled with sudden relaxation. She sank, half-kneeling, on the floor, and tears spouted from her eyes. No blessed rain from heaven to famished earth was ever more welcome. Tears, did we say? Torrents! Those eyes, late so hot and dry, were as two arteries of the soul suddenly opened. What a misery that had been which had sealed them up! They streamed over her face, blinding her riveted gaze, falling on her hands, on the cap, on the floor. Meanwhile the much-to-be-pitied sharer of her sorrow knelt by her side, her whole frame scarcely less unnerved than that she sought to support, uttering broken ejaculations and prayers, and joining her tears to those which flowed so passionately. But she had a gentle and meek spirit to deal with. Mrs. H---- crossed her hands over the cap and bowed her head. Thus she continued a minute, and then turning, still on her knees, she laid her head on her companion's shoulder.

"Help me up," she said, "for I am without strength." And all weak, trembling, and sobbing, she allowed herself to be undressed and put to bed.

Miss Campbell lay down in the same room. She listened till the quivering, catching sobs had given place to deep-drawn sighs, and these again to disturbed breathings, and then both slept the sleep of utter exhaustion, and Miss Campbell, fortunately, knew not when the mourner awoke from it.

Oh, the dreary first-fruits of excessive sorrow! The first days of a stricken heart, passed through, writhed through, ground through, we scarcely know or remember how, before the knowledge of the bereavement has become habitual--while it is still struggle and not endurance--the same ceaseless recoil from the same ever-recurring shock. It was a blessing that she was ill, very ill; the body shared something of the weight at first.

Let no one, untried by such extremity, here lift the word or look of deprecation. Let there not be a thought of what she ought to have done, or what they would have done. God's love is great, and a Christian's faith is strong, but when have the first encounters between old joys and new sorrows been otherwise than fierce? From time to time a few intervals of heavenly composure, wonderful and gracious to the sufferer, may be permitted, and even the dim light of future peace discerned in the distance; but, in a moment, the gauntlet of defiance is thrown again--no matter what--an old look, an old word, which comes rushing unbidden over the soul, and dreadful feelings rise again only to spend themselves by their own violence. It always seems to us as if sorrow had a nature of its own, independent of that whereon it has fallen, and sometimes strangely at variance with it--scorching the gentle, melting the passionate, dignifying the weak, and prostrating the strong--and showing the real nature, habits, or principles of the mind, only in those defenses it raises up during the intervals of relief. With Mrs. H---- these defenses were reared on the only sure base, and though the storm would sweep down her bulwarks, and cover all over with the furious tide of grief, yet the foundation was left to cling to, and every renewal added somewhat to its strength.

Three days were spent thus, but the fourth she was better, and on Miss Campbell's approaching her bed-side, she drew her to her, and, putting her arms round her neck, imprinted a calm and solemn kiss upon her cheek.

"Oh! what can I ever do for you, dear friend and comforter? God, who has sent you to me in my utmost need, He alone can reward you. I don't even know your name; but that matters not, I know your heart. Now, you may tell me all--all; before, I felt as if I could neither know nor forget what had happened, before, it was as if God had withdrawn His countenance; but now He is gracious, He has heard your prayers."

And then, with the avidity of fresh, hungry sorrow, she besought Miss Campbell to tell her all she knew; she besought and would not be denied, for sorrow has royal authority, its requests are commands. So, with the hand of each locked together, and the eyes of each averted, they sat questioning and answering in disjointed sentences till the whole sad tale was told. Then, anxious to turn a subject which could not be banished, Miss Campbell spoke of the many hearts that had bled, and the many prayers that had ascended for her, and told her of that kind old man who had thought, acted, and grieved for her like a father.

"God bless him--God bless them all; but chiefly you, my sister. I want no other name."

"Call me Catherine," said the faithful companion.

Passionate bursts of grief would succeed such conversations; nevertheless, they were renewed again and again, for, like all sufferers from severe bereavements, her heart needed to create a world for itself, where its loved ones still were, as a defense against that outer one where they were not, and to which she was only slowly and painfully to be inured, if ever. In these times she would love to tell Catherine--what Catherine most loved to hear--how that her lost husband was both a believer and a doer of Christ's holy word, and that her lost child had learned at her knee what she herself had chiefly learned from his father. For she had been brought up in ignorance and indifference to religious truths, and the greatest happiness of her life had commenced that knowledge, which its greatest sorrow was now to complete.

"I have been such a happy woman," she would say, "that I have pitied others less blessed, though I trust they have not envied me." And then would follow sigh on sigh and tear on tear, and again her soul writhed beneath the agony of that implacable mental spasm.

Sometimes the mourner would appear to lose, instead of gaining ground, and would own with depression, and even with shame, her fear that she was becoming more and more the sport of ungovernable feeling. "My sorrow is sharp enough," she would say, "but it is a still sharper pang when I feel I am not doing my duty under it. It is not thus that _he_ would have had me act." And her kind companion, always at hand to give sympathy or comfort, would bid her not exact or expect any thing from herself, but to cast all upon God, reminding her in words of tenderness that her soul was as a sick child, and that strength would not be required until strength was vouchsafed. "Strength," said the mourner, "no more strength or health for me." And Miss Campbell would whisper that, though "weariness endureth for a night, joy comes in the morning." Or she would be silent, for she knew, as most women do, alike how to soothe and when to humor.

It was a beautiful and a moving sight to see two beings thus riveted together in the exercise and receipt of the tenderest and most intimate feelings, who had never known of each other's existence till the moment that made the one dependent and the other indispensable. All the shades and grades of conventional and natural acquaintanceship, all the gradual insight into mutual character, and the gradual growth into mutual trust, which it is so sweet to look back upon from the high ground of friendship, were lost to them; but it mattered not, here they were together, the one admitted into the sanctuary of sorrow, the other sharing in the fullness of love, with no reminiscence in common but one, and that sufficient to bind them together for life.

Meanwhile the friend without was also unremitting in his way. He crossed not her threshold in person, nor would have done so for the world, but his thoughts were always reaching Mrs. H---- in some kind form. Every delicate dainty that money could procure--beautiful fruits and flowers which had scarce entered this valley before--every thing that could tempt the languid appetite or divert the weary eye was in turn thought of, and each handed in with a kind, hearty inquiry, till the mourner listened with pleasure for the step and voice. Nor was Miss Campbell forgotten; all the brief snatches of air and exercise she enjoyed were in his company, and often did he insist on her coming out for a short walk or drive when the persuasions of Mrs. H---- had failed to induce her to leave a room where she was the only joy. But now a fresh object attracted Sir Thomas's activity, for after many days the earthly remains of one of the sufferers were thrown up. It was the body of the little boy. Sir Thomas directed all that was necessary to be done, and having informed Miss Campbell, the two friends, each strange to the other, and bound together by the interest in one equally strange to both, went out together up the hill above the hotel, and were gone longer than usual. The next day the intelligence was communicated to Mrs. H----, who received it calmly, but added, "I could have wished them both to have rested together; but God's will be done. I ought not to think of them as on earth."

The grave of little Harry H---- was dug far from the burial-ground of his fathers, and strangers followed him to it; but though there were no familiar faces among those who stood round, there were no cold ones; and when Sir Thomas, as chief mourner, threw the earth upon the lowered coffin, warm tears fell upon it also. Miss Campbell had watched the procession from the window, and told how the good old man walked next behind the minister, the boatman and his wife following him, and how a long train succeeded, all pious and reverential in their bearing, with that air of manly decorum which the Scotch peasantry conspicuously show on such occasions. And she who lay on a bed of sorrow and weakness blessed them through her tears, and felt that her child's funeral was not lonely.

From this time the mourner visibly mended. The funeral and the intelligence that preceded it had insensibly given her that change of the same theme, the want of which had been so much felt at first. She had now taken up her burden, and, for the dear sakes of those for whom she bore it, it became almost sweet to her. She was not worshiping her sorrow as an idol, but cherishing it as a friend. Meanwhile she had received many kind visits from the minister who had buried her child, and had listened to his exhortations with humility and gratitude; but his words were felt as admonitions, Catherine's as comfort. To her, now dearer and dearer, every day she would confess aloud the secret changes of her heart; how at one time the world looked all black and dreary before her, how at another she seemed already to live in a brighter one beyond; how one day life was a burden she knew not how to bear, and another how the bitterness of death seemed already past. Then with true Christian politeness she would lament over the selfishness of her grief, and ask where Miss Campbell had learned to know that feeling which she felt henceforth was to be the only solace of her life--viz., the deep, deep sympathy for others. And Catherine would tell her, with that care-worn look which confirmed all she said, how she had been sorely tried, not by the death of those she loved, but by what was worse--their sufferings and their sins. How she had been laden with those misfortunes which wound most and teach least, and which, although coming equally from the hand of God, torment you with the idea that, but for the wickedness or weakness of some human agent, they need never have been; till she had felt, wrongly no doubt, that she could have better borne those on which the stamp of the Divine Will was more legibly impressed. She told her how the sting of sorrow, like that of death, is sin; how comparatively light it was to see those you love dead, dying, crippled, maniacs, victims, in short, of any evil, rather than victims of evil itself. She spoke of a heart-broken sister and a hard-hearted brother; of a son--an only one, like him just buried--who had gone on from sin to sin, hardening his own heart, and wringing those of others, till none but a mother's love remained to him, and that he outraged. She told, in short, so much of the sad realities of life, in which, if there was not more woe, there was less comfort, that Mrs. H---- acknowledged in her heart that such griefs had indeed been unendurable, and returned with something like comfort to the undisturbed sanctity of her own.

About this time a summons came which required Sir Thomas to quit the valley in which these scenes had been occurring. Mrs. H---- could have seen him, and almost longed to see him; but he shrunk from her, fearing no longer her sorrow so much as her gratitude.

"Tell her I love her," he said, in his abrupt way, "and always shall; but I can't see her--at least, not yet." Then, explaining to Miss Campbell all the little arrangements for the continuation of the mourner's comfort, which his absence might interrupt, he authorized her to dispose of his servants, his horses, and every thing that belonged to him, and finally put into her hands a small packet, directed to Mrs. H----, with instructions when to give it. He had ascertained that Mrs. H---- was wealthy, and that her great afflictions entailed no minor privations. "But you, my dear, are poor; at least, I hope so, for I could not be happy unless I were of service to you. I am just as much obliged to you as Mrs. H---- is. Mind, you have promised to write to me and to apply to me without reserve. No kindness, no honor--nonsense. It is _I_ who honor _you_ above every creature I know, but I would not be a woman for the world; at least, the truth is, I _could_ not." And so he turned hastily away.

And now the time approached when she, who had entered this valley a happy wife and mother, was to leave it widowed and childless, a sorrowing and heavy-hearted woman, but not an unhappy one. She had but few near relations, and those scattered in distant lands; but there were friends who would break the first desolation of her former home, and Catherine had promised to bear her company till she had committed her into their hands.

It was a lovely evening, the one before their departure. Mrs. H---- was clad for the first time in all that betokened her to be a mourner; but, as Catherine looked from the black habiliments to that pale face, she felt that there was the deepest mourning of all. Slowly the widow passed through that side-door we have mentioned, and stood once more under God's heaven. Neither had mentioned to the other the errand on which they were bound, but both felt that there was but one. Slowly and feebly she mounted the gentle slope, and often she stopped, for it was more than weakness or fatigue that made her breath fail. The way was beautiful, close to the rocky bed and leafy sides of that sweetest of all sweet things in the natural world, a Scotch burn. And now they turned, for the rich strip of grass, winding among bush and rock, which they had been following as a path, here spread itself out in a level shelf of turf, where the burn ran smoother, the bushes grew higher, and where the hill started upward again in bolder lines. Here there was a fresh-covered grave. The widow knelt by it, while Catherine stood back. Long was that head bowed, first in anguish, and then in submission, and then she turned her face toward the lake, on which she had not looked since that fatal day, and gazed steadily upon it. The child lay in his narrow bed at her feet, but the father had a wider one far beneath. Catherine now approached and was folded in a silent embrace; then she gave her that small packet which Sir Thomas had left, and begged her to open it on the spot. It was a legal deed, making over to Mary H----, in free gift, the ground on which she stood--a broad strip from the tip of the hill to the waters of the lake. The widow's tears rained fast upon it.

"Both God and man are very good to me," she said; "I am lonely but not forsaken. But, Catherine, it is you to whom I must speak. I have tried to speak before, but never felt I could till now. Oh, Catherine! stay with me; let us never be parted. God gave you to me when He took all else beside; He has not done it for naught. I can bear to return to my lonely home if you will share it--I can bear to see this valley, this grave again, if you are with me. I am not afraid of tying your cheerfulness to my sorrow; I feel that I am under a calamity, but I feel also that I am under no curse--you will help to make it a blessing. Oh! complete your sacred work, give me years to requite to you your last few days to me. You have none who need you more--none who love you more. Oh! follow me; here, on my child's grave, I humbly entreat you, follow me."

Catherine trembled; she stood silent a minute, and then, with a low, firm voice, replied, "Here, on your child's grave, I promise you. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God." She kept her promise and never repented it.

LIFE OF BLAKE, THE GREAT ADMIRAL.

Robert Blake was born at Bridgewater, in August, 1599. His father, Humphrey Blake, was a merchant trading with Spain--a man whose temper seems to have been too sanguine and adventurous for the ordinary action of trade, finally involving him in difficulties which clouded his latter days, and left his family in straitened circumstances: his name, however, was held in general respect; and we find that he lived in one of the best houses in Bridgewater, and twice filled the chair of its chief magistrate. The perils to which mercantile enterprise was then liable--the chance escapes and valorous deeds which the successful adventurer had to tell his friends and children on the dark winter nights--doubtless formed a part of the food on which the imagination of young Blake, "silent and thoughtful from his childhood," was fed in the "old house at home." At the Bridgewater grammar-school, Robert received his early education, making tolerable acquaintance with Latin and Greek, and acquiring a strong bias toward a literary life. This _penchant_ was confirmed by his subsequent career at Oxford, where he matriculated at sixteen, and where he strove hard, but fruitlessly, for scholarships and fellowships at different colleges. His failure to obtain a Merton fellowship has been attributed to a crotchet of the warden's, Sir Henry Savile, in favor of tall men: "The young Somersetshire student, thick-set, fair-complexioned, and only five feet six, fell below his standard of manly beauty;" and thus the Cavalier warden, in denying this aspirant the means of cultivating literature on a little university oatmeal, was turning back on the world one who was fated to become a republican power of the age. This shining light, instead of comfortably and obscurely merging in a petty constellation of Alma Mater, was to become a bright particular star, and dwell apart. The avowed liberalism of Robert may, however, have done more in reality to shock Sir Henry, than his inability to add a cubit to his stature. It is pleasant to know, that the "admiral and general at sea" never outgrew a tenderness for literature--his first-love, despite the rebuff of his advances. Even in the busiest turmoil of a life teeming with accidents by flood and field, he made it a point of pride not to forget his favorite classics. Nor was it till after nine years' experience of college-life, and when his father was no longer able to manage his _res angusta vitæ_, that Robert finally abandoned his long-cherished plans, and retired with a sigh and last adieu from the banks of the Isis.

When he returned to Bridgewater, in time to close his father's eyes, and superintend the arrangements of the family, he was already remarkable for that "iron will, that grave demeanor, that free and dauntless spirit," which so distinguished his after-course. His tastes were simple, his manners somewhat bluntly austere; a refined dignity of countenance, and a picturesque vigor of conversation, invested him with a social interest, to which his indignant invectives against court corruptions gave distinctive character. To the Short Parliament he was sent as member for his native town; and in 1645, was returned by Taunton to the Long Parliament. At the dissolution of the former, which he regarded as a signal for action, he began to prepare arms against the king; his being one of the first troops in the field, and engaged in almost every action of importance in the western counties. His superiority to the men about him lay in the "marvelous fertility, energy, and comprehensiveness of his military genius." Prince Rupert alone, in the Royalist camp, could rival him as a "partisan soldier." His first distinguished exploit was his defense of Prior's Hill fort, at the siege of Bristol--which contrasts so remarkably with the pusillanimity of his chief, Colonel Fiennes. Next comes his yet more brilliant defense of Lyme--then a little fishing-town, with some 900 inhabitants, of which the defenses were a dry ditch, a few hastily-formed earth-works, and three small batteries, but which the Cavalier host of Prince Maurice, trying storm, stratagem, blockade, day after day, and week after week, failed to reduce or dishearten. "At Oxford, where Charles then was, the affair was an inexplicable marvel and mystery: every hour the court expected to hear that the 'little vile fishing-town,' as Clarendon contemptuously calls it, had fallen, and that Maurice had marched away to enterprises of greater moment; but every post brought word to the wondering council, that Colonel Blake still held out, and that his spirited defense was rousing and rallying the dispersed adherents of Parliament in those parts." After the siege was raised, the Royalists found that more men of gentle blood had fallen under Blake's fire at Lyme, than in all other sieges and skirmishes in the western counties since the opening of the war.

The hero's fame had become a spell in the west: it was seen that he rivaled Rupert in rapid and brilliant execution, and excelled him in the caution and sagacity of his plans. He took Taunton--a place so important at that juncture, as standing on and controlling the great western highway--in July, 1644, within a week of Cromwell's defeat of Rupert at Marston Moor. All the vigor of the Royalists was brought to bear on the captured town; Blake's defense of which is justly characterized as abounding with deeds of individual heroism--exhibiting in its master-mind a rare combination of civil and military genius. The spectacle of an unwalled town, in an inland district, with no single advantage of site, surrounded by powerful castles and garrisons, and invested by an enemy brave, watchful, numerous, and well provided with artillery, successively resisting storm, strait, and blockade for several months, thus paralyzing the king's power, and affording Cromwell time to remodel the army, naturally arrested the attention of military writers at that time; and French authors of this class bestowed on Taunton the name of the modern Saguntum. The rage of the Royalists at this prolonged resistance was extreme. Reckoning from the date when Blake first seized the town, to that of Goring's final retreat, the defense lasted exactly a year, and under circumstances of almost overwhelming difficulty to the besieged party, who, in addition to the fatigue of nightly watches, and the destruction of daily conflicts, suffered from terrible scarcity of provisions. "Not a day passed without a fire; sometimes eight or ten houses were burning at the same moment; and in the midst of all the fear, horror, and confusion incident to such disasters, Blake and his little garrison had to meet the storming-parties of an enemy brave, exasperated, and ten times their own strength. But every inch of ground was gallantly defended. A broad belt of ruined cottages and gardens was gradually formed between the besiegers and the besieged; and on the heaps of broken walls and burnt rafters, the obstinate contest was renewed from day to day." At last relief arrived from London; and Goring, in savage dudgeon, beat a retreat, notwithstanding the wild oath he had registered, either to reduce that haughty town, or to lay his bones in its trenches.

Blake was now the observed of all observers; but, unlike most of his compeers, he abstained from using his advantages for purposes of selfish or personal aggrandizement. He kept aloof from the "centre of intrigues," and remained at his post, "doing his duty humbly and faithfully at a distance from Westminster; while other men, with less than half his claims, were asking and obtaining the highest honors and rewards from a grateful and lavish country." Nor, indeed, did he at any time side with the ultras of his party, but loudly disapproved of the policy of the regicides. This, coupled with his influence, so greatly deserved and so deservedly great, made him an object of jealousy with Cromwell and his party; and it was owing, perhaps, to their anxiety to keep him removed from the home sphere of action, that he was now appointed to the chief naval command.

Hitherto, and for years afterward, no state, ancient or modern, as Macaulay points out, had made a separation between the military and the naval service. Cimon and Lysander, Pompey and Agrippa, had fought by sea as well as by land: at Flodden, the right wing of the English was led by her admiral, and the French admiral led the Huguenots at Jarnac, &c. Accordingly, Blake was summoned from his pacific government at Taunton, to assume the post of "General and Admiral at Sea;" a title afterward changed to "General of the Fleet." Two others were associated with him in the command; but Blake seems at _least_ to have been recognized as _primus inter pares_. The navy system was in deplorable need of reform; and a reformer it found in Robert Blake, from the very day he became an admiral. His care for the well-being of his men made him an object of their almost adoring attachment. From first to last, he stood alone as England's model seaman. "Envy, hatred, and jealousy dogged the steps of every other officer in the fleet; but of him, both then and afterward, every man spoke well." The "tremendous powers" intrusted to him by the Council of State, he exercised with off-handed and masterly success--startling politicians and officials of the _ancien régime_, by his bold and open tactics, and his contempt for tortuous by-paths in diplomacy. His wondrous exploits were performed with extreme poverty of means. He was the first to repudiate and disprove the supposed fundamental maxim in marine warfare, that no ship could attack a castle, or other strong fortification, with any hope of success. The early part of his naval career was occupied in opposing and defeating the piratical performances of Prince Rupert, which then constituted the support of the exiled Stuarts. Blake's utmost vigilance and activity were required to put down this extraordinary system of freebooting; and by the time that he had successively overcome Rupert, and the minor but stubborn adventurers, Grenville and Carteret, he was in request to conduct the formidable war with Holland, and to cope with such veterans as Tromp, De Witt, De Ruyter, &c.

On one occasion only did Blake suffer ever a defeat; and this one is easily explained by--first, Tromp's overwhelming superiority of force; secondly, the extreme deficiency of men in the English fleet; and, thirdly, the cowardice or disaffection of several of Blake's captains at a critical moment in the battle. Notwithstanding this disaster, not a whisper was heard against the admiral either in the Council of State or in the city; his offer to resign was flatteringly rejected; and he soon found, that the "misfortune which might have ruined another man, had given him strength and influence in the country." This disaster, in fact, gave him power to effect reforms in the service, and to root out abuses which had defied all his efforts in the day of his success. He followed it up by the great battle of Portland, and other triumphant engagements.

Then came his sweeping _tours de force_ in the Mediterranean; in six months he established himself as a power in that great midland sea, from which his countrymen had been politically excluded since the age of the Crusades--teaching nations, to which England's very name was a strange sound, to respect its honors and its rights; chastising the pirates of Barbary with unprecedented severity; making Italy's petty princes feel the power of the northern Protestants; causing the pope himself to tremble on his seven hills; and startling the council-chambers of Venice and Constantinople with the distant echoes of our guns. And be it remembered, that England had then no Malta, Corfu, and Gibraltar as the bases of naval operations in the Mediterranean: on the contrary, Blake found that in almost every gulf and island of that sea--in Malta, Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, Algiers, Tunis, and Marseilles--there existed a rival and an enemy; nor were there more than three or four harbors in which he could obtain even bread for love or money.

After this memorable cruise, he had to conduct the Spanish war--a business quite to his mind; for though his highest renown had been gained in his conflicts with the Dutch, he had secretly disliked such encounters between two Protestant states; whereas, in the case of Popish Spain, his soul leaped at the anticipation of battle--sympathizing as he did with the Puritan conviction, that Spain was the devil's stronghold in Europe. At this period, Blake was suffering from illness, and was sadly crippled in his naval equipments, having to complain constantly of the neglect at home to remedy the exigencies of the service. "Our ships," he writes, "extremely foul, winter drawing on, our victuals expiring, all stores failing, our men falling sick through the badness of drink, and eating their victuals boiled in salt water for two months' space" (1655). His own constitution was thoroughly undermined. For nearly a year, remarks his biographer, "he had never quitted the 'foul and defective' flag-ship. Want of exercise and sweet food, beer, wine, water, bread, and vegetables, had helped to develop scurvy and dropsy; and his sufferings from these diseases were now acute and continuous." But his services were indispensable, and Blake was not the man to shrink from dying in harness. His sun set gloriously at Santa Cruz--that miraculous and unparalleled action, as Clarendon calls it, which excited such grateful enthusiasm at home. At home! words of fascination to the maimed and enfeebled veteran, who now turned his thoughts so anxiously toward the green hills of his native land. Cromwell's letter of thanks, the plaudits of parliament, and the jeweled ring sent to him by his loving countrymen, reached him while homeward bound. But he was not again to tread the shores he had defended so well.

As the ships rolled through the Bay of Biscay, his sickness increased, and affectionate adherents saw with dismay that he was drawing near to the gates of the grave. "Some gleams of the old spirit broke forth as they approached the latitude of England. He inquired often and anxiously if the white cliffs were yet in sight. He longed to behold once more the swelling downs, the free cities, the goodly churches of his native land.... At last, the Lizard was announced. Shortly afterward, the bold cliffs and bare hills of Cornwall loomed out grandly in the distance. But it was too late for the dying hero. He had sent for the captains and other great officers of his fleet, to bid them farewell; and while they were yet in his cabin, the undulating hills of Devonshire, glowing with the tints of early autumn, came full in view.... But the eyes which had so yearned to behold this scene once more were at that very instant closing in death. Foremost of the victorious squadron, the _St. George_ rode with its precious burden into the Sound; and just as it came into full view of the eager thousands crowding the beach, the pier-heads, the walls of the citadel, &c, ready to catch the first glimpse of the hero of Santa Cruz, and salute him with a true English welcome--he, in his silent cabin, in the midst of his lion-hearted comrades, now sobbing like little children, yielded up his soul to God."