Chapter XXX: The Union of Sorrow

At early dawn Joshua Leonard and his wife were astir. Neither of them had slept daring the night, still no words had passed between them, save when the low voice of the wife rose in the darkness asking her husband if he slept. A deep sigh was sometimes the sole answer, but once or twice he said, “Yes, wife; I am awake,” and that was all.

When the daylight came, and the two could see each other face to face, Mrs. Leonard began to cry; the pale and locked features upon the pillow near her seemed so strange that she was almost afraid.

Joshua said, “Hush, hush!” very mournfully, and, getting up, built a fire and went out to the well with the tea-kettle in his hand; but, for the first time in his life, he walked like an old man, and the well-pail slipped from his hold twice as he attempted to lower the bucket down to the water.

When he came in, his wife sat on the hearth shivering. She watched him as he swung the kettle to its trammel, and left it enveloped in clouds of smoke, through which little streaks of flame shot and curled like vipers.

“It’s no use,” she said, drearily; “I can’t get breakfast this morning; and as for eating, the first mouthful would choke me.”

Joshua was standing, with his eyes on the struggling fire. His hands were locked, and falling loosely before him. The plaintive misery in his wife’s voice penetrated to his heart.

“I was thinking of you,” he said, tenderly. “It seems as if I should never eat again.”

The housemother grew strong when she saw his weakness, and rising, she said, with some energy,

“Come, Joshua: we must neither eat nor rest till Amy is found.”

He took his hat from its nail, and she put on her bonnet; so the two went heavily forth in search of the lost one.

It was a misty, raw morning: clouds of fog lay heavily on the meadows, the grass was sodden with moisture, and the trees shed storms of cold rain from the branches when the wind swept them. Once more they searched in the saw-mill and around the falls for some signs of her presence. Every thing was still and dreary, but they found no trace of her progress in that direction. This gave them hope; for the earth was moist, and tracks must have been left had she passed that way. The fear that some trace which the darkness had concealed would present itself had haunted the man with dread all night; now his courage rose, for he felt sure that Amy was alive.

“Come,” he said, taking his wife by the hand; “we will not stop till she is found.”

So, leaving the cabin behind them, they walked down the road, looking to the right and left, as they had done the night before, half-expecting to find Amy in the shelter of some stone wall, or crouching in some crook of the fence.

After a while they saw a man coming along the highway, toiling heavily onward, as if he, too, carried a burden of age or care which sunk his feet in the moist clay of the road.

Leonard stopped suddenly and stood still, with his feet planted sternly in the road and his face growing hard as iron.

It was the elder Arnold.

“Maybe he’s found our Amy,” said Mrs. Leonard, softly. “Don’t look that way, Joshua; he isn’t to blame.”

Her words awoke a memory in Joshua’s heart. He recollected the day when the old man coming along the road had warned and advised him against the visits of his son. No, his wife said truly, the poor, unhappy father was not to blame; but it was terrible to meet him nevertheless.

Slowly and steadily the two fathers approached one another. Both were pale, the eyes of both were full of stern sorrow. Arnold made a motion as if to hold out his hand, but drew it back, shrinking within himself. There was a struggle in Leonard’s bosom, but at last he tore away from the evil feelings that bound him, and reached forth his hand.

The features of Arnold began to quiver; two great tears rolled down his cheeks as he met the proffered grasp.

“She’s safe. Your child is safe.”

Leonard wrung the hand in his grasp, and, looking at his wife, tried to smile.

“Where,—where is she?” cried Mr. Leonard.

“At my house,—with my wife. She came in the night, worn out and wet through; poor, poor child!”

“At your house!” said Leonard, sternly, withdrawing his hand.

“Yes, brother; and that is the right place for my son’s wife; for, as the Lord liveth, no other woman shall bear his name or darken my door!”

Here Mrs. Leonard began to cry, and sobbed out a crowd of disjointed ejaculations, that were pathetic only from the deep feeling they betrayed.

“Brother,” said Leonard, “God has smitten us both in the heart of our pride. I know how to feel for you now. I am humbled, God help me!”

“Let’s go, Joshua,—let’s go. I want to see my child. Is she coming home? Does she pine to see us? Has she cried her heart out? What did she say? How does she look? Why don’t you tell me something about my daughter, Brother Arnold?”

Mrs. Leonard’s impatience was not to be restrained. She waited for no answer to her inquiries, but hurried on; and the two men followed her, conversing gravely and sadly on the way.

Amy, exhausted and worn out, slept heavily that morning. As the chill went out from her system, a sense of protection and comfort stole over her. The great burden of her secret had dropped away. The very worst had come upon her, and after that every human soul knows something of repose. So Amy fell into a long, deep slumber, dreamless and still as death. Mrs. Arnold’s gentle words had given her infinite consolation. She was, at all times, a dependent and clinging creature, more ready to endure and suffer than to act; and the mere physical comfort of a warm, soft bed under his father’s roof had been enough to hush her sufferings into repose, for the time at least.

Thus, when Mrs. Leonard stole on tip-toe into that large chamber, and moved softly towards the bed, Amy did not awake; but this new presence disturbed her, and, turning on the pillow, she began to cry in her sleep, till the gush of her own sobs grew so violent that she awoke.

“Amy!”

“Mother, is it you? What ails me? I have been dreaming such miserable dreams. It’s time to get up and help about breakfast, I suppose? Has father gone to the saw-mill?”

“Amy, my own child!”

“Why, you’ve been crying, too. How strange you look with a bonnet on, and—and—oh, mother! I remember it all now.”

The poor girl cowered down in the bed with her frightened eyes turned on her mother, and seemed to hold her breath.

Mrs. Leonard bent over her and rained soft kisses on her face.

“Chirk up, my dear, chirk up. Nobody shall hurt you, or put you down while I live, and while your father lives, for he’s a host in Israel. Don’t cry, darling—don’t cry, or you’ll set me a-going, and I can’t bear any more on it. There, there!”

“You have left father to come and find me. Go back, mother; he has no one but you now.”

“No, dear!”

“He wished me dead,—I heard it; but it is the hardest thing on earth to die when one wishes it. You can’t get rid of the life that is in you without doing such horrid things; then the darkness beyond is so fearful. Tell him I tried to die, but hadn’t the courage to do what would stop my heart-beatings. Tell him I’d give the world to see him, but now I’m weak and couldn’t bear it. If he will only wait a little and not curse me, perhaps God will be merciful and take me out of his sight; I won’t even pray to live, only for comfort to him and you, dear mother. Tell him this, and oh, ask him to forgive me after I’m dead. I won’t plead for it now: but he might then.”

“Be still, Amy, or you’ll break my heart. It was a wicked word, and over in a minute. We searched for you nearly all night,—your father and I,—up and down, till it seemed as if we should drop in our tracks.”

“What! he,—my father!—my father!” murmured Amy, melting into a flood of tears, her very soul given up to tender regrets. “Oh, mother! has he forgiven me? Will he—will you have a little faith, a little forbearance with me? I have done wrong, very, very wrong; have deceived you, been disobedient. But oh, if I could tell you all,—if you would believe me without telling. Just forgive, and trust, and wait.”

“We have forgiven on trust, or without trust, no matter, Amy, what has happened. So long as God forgives his children we must stand by ours. It’s nature, and it’s religion. God doesn’t lay little darling babies into our arms to have them turned out-of-doors for the first sin. Them’s my sentiments, and they’re your father’s, too; we agreed on that last night in the saw-mill,—he and I.”

“And you were searching for me there? Oh, if I had but known it!” sobbed Amy.

“Perhaps it was all for the best, dear. If you hadn’t come to this house, maybe the old man and your father mightn’t have made up. As it is, I must say Mr. Arnold has behaved beautifully. He says that no other woman shall ever have his son’s name, or darken his door.”

“Did Mr. Arnold say that, mother?” cried the young girl, seizing her mother’s arm with both hands.

“Yes; and Miss Arnold says it too. And as for Hagar, she near about upset us with kindness. She’s got some toast and tea afore the fire waiting for you to wake up.”

“I thought last night, that Hagar was the only friend I had in the wide, wide world. Oh, mother, you are very good to forgive me.”

“There, there. Kiss me once more, then try to get up and dress. I didn’t tell you, but father’s down-stairs.”

Instead of being elated, Amy shrunk down into her bed again. There was something in the idea of meeting her father that made her tremble.

“Don’t take on so. He won’t give you a cross look, to say nothing of hard words,” said the mother, marking the change with the quick sympathy of her sex.

“I know that; but his kindness, I can’t bear it while he believes——Oh, mother! what can I do?”

With broken conversation like this, the mother and child spent a few more minutes together, before they went down to the room in which Joshua Leonard sat waiting for them.

Few words passed between the father and daughter. Strange to say, the nervous timidity which had marked Amy’s demeanor during the last few weeks, had, to a certain extent, disappeared. She was very weary, it is true, and the saddened whiteness of her face was touching to behold, but her look was clear and truthful. There was nothing of shame in the depths of those eyes; on the contrary, every thing about her seemed pure as a lily; no shadow of guilt or shame could be found on her white forehead. She was grieved, heart-broken, but what seemed a consciousness of innocence gave gentle dignity to her movements.

With so much proof against her, and before a word of denial had passed her lips, the father took comfort from her appearance. She came up to him and knelt softly at his feet.

“Father,” she said, folding her hands meekly before her.

Leonard laid one hand on her head. With all his strength, he could not help blessing her whom he had intended only to forgive. His own honest heart bore witness in her favor, the idea of guilt connected with his child lost its force the moment she appeared. It was a moral conviction altogether independent of knowledge or reason. He _felt_ that something pure and true lay at the bottom of this trouble.

“Father, may I go home with you and mother?”

“God forgive me the bitterness which drove you away, my child. I, who was so harsh against your fault, have prayed God, and still pray that he will forgive my own. Yes, come with us, Amy.”

“Father, let me look in your eyes.”

“Well, child!”

“You look into mine and almost smile. People accuse me—they believe in my fault—it is great, but not as they think, father; I would not go home, I could not live if all they suspect were true. You believe me, father. Something tells you this, or the old look would not come back to your face?”

He kissed her upon the forehead.

Then she stood up with more strength than had been witnessed in her demeanor for weeks and weeks.

Leonard was half-relieved. The innocent face of his child had its benign effect, but there was a delicate reticence in her nature which checked the questions that rose to his lips; for, with all his rude strength, this man shrunk from the interrogatories that might, he believed, have won her entire confidence.

While his wife had been in Amy’s chamber, Arnold and Leonard had conversed together, about the best means of bringing something of good out of the shame that had fallen so suddenly upon them. At first Leonard sternly expressed his determination to seek the young man, and force an honorable atonement for the shame he had wrought; but Arnold knew his son better, and implored the wronged father to remain at home and leave the matter to him. Leonard yielded at last, but only with a reservation, if the father, with his lawful authority, failed, then the wronged man would take the matter in his own hands. Thus it was settled, and the Arnolds entered upon their preparations for what was, in those days, an important journey.

When Amy heard this, the flush and tremor of excitement came back. She stood a moment disturbed with stormy thought, and then with quick resolve spoke:

“Father, I must go with Mr. Arnold.”

“You, my poor child!”

“It is right,—it is my duty. I must see him, though it kills me, I must go.”

“She is right,” said Mrs. Arnold, who had opened a door unnoticed, and stood on the threshold as Amy spoke. “She is no longer a helpless child, brother Leonard! See how strong the thought has made her. The day after to-morrow a sloop leaves the river; in that we take passage. Amy goes too. You will trust us, Leonard, and with God’s help all shall be well.”

Leonard looked irresolute. Amy saw it.

“Father, I pray you let me go.”

Leonard’s face cleared up. “Yes,” he said, “but not without us—your mother and I—the sloop is large enough for us all.”

Mrs. Arnold came close to Leonard as he spoke. “Brother,” she said, gently laying a hand on his shoulder, “trust Amy with me, your old friend; I know Benedict well: no power can coerce him. He would defy heaven itself. But there are many generous qualities in his heart: leave them with his mother. The boy loves me, and I solemnly believe loves her. If sterner power is needed, Arnold will use it, have no fear; but as we will in all things do our utmost to protect your child, I beseech you put no unnecessary humiliation on ours.”

“You are right, sister,” said Leonard, touched to the heart by her motherly appeal. “God forgive me if any lurking vengeance made me wish to confront the young man! It is a hard thing to keep down a rebellious spirit.”

“For my sake, for hers,” pleaded the gentle matron. “You cannot strike him without breaking a poor mother’s heart.”

“I will stay at home: do with our child according to your will: the mother and I can only wait and pray.”

Thus it was settled, and with calmer hearts than they had ever expected to know again, the Leonards returned home and reinstated Amy on the hearth-stone, from which she had been driven in the first storm of their sorrow.