Eliot briefly related the affair at Mrs. Archer’s. He saw a smile on Washington’s lips when he spoke of his hearty coadjutor “the gen’ral.” He concluded by saying he trusted he had not offended by following what seemed to him the imperative dictates of humanity.
“No, my friend—no,” replied Washington, not unmoved; “war too often cuts us off from the humanities—in God’s name let’s perfect them when we may. I am engaged now, come to me again this evening.”
Eliot left his commander somewhat relieved, but still not without deep anxiety for Linwood. He had reason for solicitude. No man that ever lived more jealously guarded against the appearance of evil than Washington. One who kept with his exactness the account with conscience, might, in ordinary circumstances, have afforded to be careless of appearances, and regardless of public opinion; but he was aware that his reputation belonged to his country, that it was identified with the cause he had espoused, the cause of liberty and popular government; and how has that glorious cause profited by it? Heralded by his spotless name, it has gone forth to restore the order of God’s providence; to abase the high, and raise up those that were bowed down; to break the golden sceptre, to overthrow thrones, to open Bastiles, to unbind chains, to 251reclaim the deserts that man had made, and to sow at broadcast the seeds of knowledge, virtue, and happiness!
The issue of Eliot’s second interview with Washington is already known, so far as it appeared by the despatches sent to New-York. He had the consolation of being assured that not a shadow of distrust remained on Washington’s mind. Never man more needed solace in some shape than did Eliot at this conjuncture of his affairs. On first going to his quarters he found there a packet from his mother. He pressed it to his lips, and eagerly broke the seal. The following is a copy of his mother’s letter.
“My dear Son,—I perceive by your letters of the first, which, thanks to a kind Providence, have duly come to hand, that it is now nearly three months since you have heard from us. Much good and much evil may befall in three months! Much good have I truly to be grateful for: and chiefly that your life and health have been thus precious in the sight of the Lord, and that you have received honour at the hand of man (of which our good Dr. Wilson made suitable mention in his prayer last Sabbath); and, as I humbly trust, approval from Him who erreth not.
“We have had a season of considerable worldly anxiety. The potato-crop looked poorly, and our whole harvest was cut off by the blight in the rye, which, as you see in the newspapers, has been fatal through Massachusetts. This calamity has been greatly aggravated by the embargo they have laid on their flour in the southern states. The days seemed to be coming upon us when ‘plenty should be forgotten in our land, and sore famine overspread the borders thereof.’—Our people have been greatly alarmed, and there have been fasts in all our churches, at which the carnally-minded have murmured, saying it would be time enough to fast when the famine came. It is indeed a time of 252desolation in our land—‘there is no more in our streets the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness—the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride’—the step of the father and the brother are no more heard on our thresholds, and we stretch our ears for tidings of battles that may lay them in the dust. Think you, my son, that our children’s children, when they bear their sheaves rejoicing, will remember those who sowed in tears, and with much patience and many prayers?
“For my own part, my dear Eliot, I have had but little part in this worldly anxiety, for divers reasons which you will presently see. One care eats up another.” (Bessie’s name was here written and effaced.) “Let me tell you, before I forget it, that the Lord has smiled on our Indian corn. I had an acre put in the south meadow, which you know is a warm soil, and Major Avery tells me it will prove a heavy yield. He is a kind neighbour (as indeed we all try to be in these times), and called yesterday to ask me to get into his wagon, and take a ride, saying it would cheer me up to see the golden ears peeping out of their seared and rustling leaves; but I did not feel to go.”—(Here again Bessie’s name was written, and again effaced—the tender mother shrunk from giving the blow that must be given.) “Do not have any care, dear Eliot, about our basket and our store; they are sufficiently filled. The children are nicely prepared for winter, even to their shoes. Just as I was casting about to see how I should get them made, there being no shoemaker left short of Boston, Jo Warren came home, his term of service having expired, and he, as he says, ‘liking much better the clack of his hammer and lap-stone than bloody soldiering.’
“My dear son, I have written thus far without touching on the subject which fills heart and mind, day and night. I felt it to be suitable to mention the topics above; but I knew if I left them to the last you would read without reading, and thereby lose the little comfort they might give you. Fain would I finish here! God grant you may receive with submission what follows.—You 253know, that never since you went away have I been able to hold out any encouragement to you about your poor sister. The dear child struggled, and struggled, but only exhausted her strength without making any headway; I shall always think it was from the first more weakness of body than any thing else, for she had such a clear sense of what was right, and this it was that weighed her down—a for ever tormenting sense that she was wasting in idle feelings the life and faculties that God had given to her. She tried to assist me in family duties, but she moved about like a machine; and often her sewing would drop from her hands, and she would sit silent and motionless for hours.
“In the first part of Herbert Linwood’s visit she was more like her former self—old feelings seemed to revive, and I had hopes—but oh! they were suddenly dashed, for immediately on his going away she seemed to have such self-reproach—such fear that she had foregone her duty, and had for ever forfeited your confidence. All night she was feverish and restless, and during the day she would sit and weep for hours together. She never spoke but to accuse herself of some wrong committed, or some duty unperformed. When the clock struck she would count the strokes, and you could see the beatings of her heart answer to each of them, and then she would weep till the hour came round again. Dr. Wilson and some of our godly women hoped she was under conviction; but I did not favour their talking to her as often as they wished, for I knew that her health was much broken, her mind hurt, and that in this harp of a thousand strings (as Dr. Watts says) there were many they did not understand.
“Through the summer her flesh has wasted away till she seemed but the shadow of her former self. Her eyes appeared larger, and as the shadows deepened about them, of a deeper blue than ever—sometimes as I looked at her she startled me; it seemed to me as if all of mortality were gone, and I were standing in the presence of a visible spirit. There was such a speaking, 254mournful beauty about her, that even strangers—rough people too—would shed tears when they looked at her.
“She never spoke of—. If the children mentioned his name, or but alluded to him, she seemed deaf and palsied. She never approached the honeysuckle window where they used to sit. She never touched the books he read to her—her favourite books; and, one after another, she put away the articles of dress he had noticed and admired. Still with all these efforts she grew worse, till her reason seemed to me like the last ray of the sun before its setting.
“Two weeks ago she brought me a small box, enveloped and sealed, and asked me to keep it for her; ‘be sure,’ she said, ‘and put it where I cannot find it—be sure, mother.’ From this moment there was a change—it seemed as if a pressure were taken off—from hour to hour her spirits rose—she talked with more than her natural quickness and cheerfulness—joined in the children’s sports, and was full of impracticable plans of doing good, and wild expectations of happiness to all the world. I saw a fearful brightness in her eye. I knew her happiness was all a dream; but still it was a relief to see the dear child out of misery. I hoped, and feared, and lived on, trembling from hour to hour. Last night she asked me for her box, and when she had taken it she threw her arms around me, and
looked in my face smiling—O! what a wild, strange smile it was. She then kissed the children and went to her room. She has scarcely been in bed five minutes together for the last fortnight; and as she did not come to breakfast in the morning, I hoped she was still sleeping, and truly thankful for this symptom that her excitement was abating, I kept the house still. Ten o’clock came, and not yet a sound from her room—an apprehension darted through my mind—I ran up stairs—her room was empty, her bed untouched.
“On the table, unsealed, was the packet I enclose to you. I read it, and was relieved of my worst fear. Our kind neighbours 255went yesterday in search of her, but in vain—last evening we heard the tramp of a horse to the door, and it proved to be Steady. He has been kept in the home-pasture all the fall; and it seems the poor child, who you know is so timid that she never before rode without you or—at her side, had put on the saddle and bridle, and started in the night. How far she rode we can only conjecture from Steady appearing quite beat out. Major Avery judges he may have travelled eighty miles, out and home. You will conclude with me that it is Bessie’s intention to go to New-York; and when I think of her worn and distracted condition, and the state of the country through which she must pass, filled with hostile armies and infested with outlaws, do I sin in wishing she were dead beneath her father’s roof? If anything can be done, you will devise and execute—my head is sick with thinking, and my heart faint with sorrowing. Farewell, my beloved son. Let us not, in our trouble, forget that we are all, and especially the poor, sick, wandering lamb of our flock, in the hands of a good Being who doth not willingly afflict us.—Your loving, grieving mother,
“S. Lee.”
The first part of Bessie’s letter appeared to have been written at intervals, and some weeks antecedent to the conclusion. It was evidently traced with a weak and faltering hand, and had been drenched with her tears. She began:
“Dear brother Eliot” (the word “dear” was effaced and re-written): “I am but a hypocrite to call you ‘dear’ Eliot, for all permitted affections are devoured by one forbidden one. The loves that God implanted have withered and died away under the poisonous shadow of that which has been sown in my heart—think you by the evil spirit, Eliot? I sometimes fear so. I used to love our overkind mother; and for our little brothers and sisters my heart did seem to be one fountain of love, ever 256sweet, fresh, and overflowing; and you, xoh Eliot, how fondly—proudly I loved you!—and now, if I were to see you all dead before me, it would move me no more than to see the idle leaves falling from the trees.”
“I have read your letters over and over again, till they have fallen to pieces with the continual dropping of my hot tears; but every syllable is imprinted on my heart. You did not believe your ‘sister would waste her sensibility, the precious food of life, in moping melancholy.’ Oh, Eliot, how much better must I have appeared to you than I was! I have been all my life a hypocrite. You believed ‘my mind had a self-rectifying power,’ and I imposed this belief on you! I am ready, now, to bow my head in the dust for it. ‘Love,’ said your letter, ‘can never be incurable when it is a disease: that is to say, when its object is unworthy.’ Ah, my dear brother, there was your fatal mistake. It was I that was unworthy—it was your simple sister that, in her secret, unconfessed thoughts, believed he loved her, knowing all the while that his lot was cast with the high, the gifted, the accomplished—with such as Isabella Linwood, and not with one so humble in condition, so little graced by art as I am. I do not blame him. Heaven knows I do not. ‘Self-rectifying power!’ Eliot, talk to the reed, that has been uprooted and borne away by the tides of the ocean, of its ‘self-rectifying power!’”
A long interval had elapsed after writing the above; and the subsequent almost illegible scraps indicated a mind in ruins.
“Oh, Eliot, pray—pray come home! They are all persecuting me. The children laugh at me, and whistle after me; and when I am asleep, they blow his name in my ears. Mother looks at me, and will not speak.”
257“They have printed up all the books. Even the Bible has nothing but his name from beginning to end. I can never be alone; evil spirits are about me by day and by night;—my brother, I am tormented.”
“Eliot, my doom is spoken! Would that it were to cut down the cumberer of the ground! but, no: I am to stand for ever on the desolate shore, stricken and useless, and see the river of life glide by. The day, as well as the night, is solitary; and there is no joyful voice therein.”
“Oh, memory!—memory!—memory! what an abyss of misery art thou! The sun rises and sets—the moon rolls over the sky—the stars glide on in their appointed paths—the seasons change, but no change cometh to me—the past, the past is all—there is no present, no future!”
“I remember hearing Dr. Wilson preach about sin deserving infinite punishment, because it was against an Infinite Being. I did not comprehend him then—now I do. In vain I raise my faded eyes and fevered hands to God.”
The remainder was written in a more assured and rapid hand.
“Eliot, you have seen those days, have you not? when clouds gathered over the firmament; when, one after another, each accustomed and dear object was lost in their leaden folds, when they grew darker and came nearer, till you felt yourself wrapped about in their chilling drapery, and you feared the blessed sun was blotted out of Heaven. Suddenly God’s messenger hath come forth—the clouds have risen at his bidding, and unveiled his beautiful works. The smiling waters and the green fields, one 258after another, have appeared—the silvery curtain has rolled up the mountain’s side, and then melted away and left the blue vault spotless. Such darkness has oppressed me; such brightness is now above and around me. Dear Eliot how glad you will be! My spirits dance as they did in my childhood. The days are all clear, and the nights so beautiful, that I would not sleep if I could. Shame to those who steep themselves in the dull and brutish oblivion of sleep, when the intelligences of Heaven are abroad on the moonbeams, calling to the wakeful spirit to leave the drowsy world and join their glorious company—to career from star to star, and commune in the silence of night with their creator. Oh, Eliot! I have heard the music ‘of the young eyed cherubim;’ and I have learned secrets—wonderful secrets of the offices and relations of spirits, if I were sure you would believe them—but no, you cannot. The mind must be prepared by months of suffering—it must pass a dark and winding way to reach (while yet on earth) the bright eminence where I stand. But take courage, brother; when you pass the bounds of time you will hear, and see, and know what I now do.
“You will wonder how I have escaped the manacles that so long bound me. I cannot explain all now; but thus much I am permitted to say, that they were riveted by certain charms: and I cannot be assured of my freedom till I myself return them to him from whom they came—to him who has so long been the lord of my affections and master of my mind. Then, and not till then, shall I be the ‘self-rectified’ being you blindly but truly predicted. I must go to New-York; but mind, dear brother, and indulge no idle fears for me. Do you remember once, when we read Comus together, wishing your sister might, like the sweet lady there, be attended by good spirits—dear Eliot, I am. I cannot always see them through this thick veil of mortality, but I can both hear and feel them.
“Our good mother pesters me so. Should you think, brother, that a being accompanied as I am could eat and drink, and lie 259down and sleep as other mortals do? Oh, no! And, besides, are they not all the time praying that the Lord would send corn into their empty garners; and yet, poor dull souls, they cannot see their prayer is answered, when I am fed and satisfied with bread from Heaven—sweet, spiritual food!
“I shall set forward to-night when they are all steeped in this sleep they would fain stupify me with. I have not hinted to our mother my purpose, because, dear Eliot, since you are gone she is quite different from what she was. I would say it to none but you in the world; but the truth is, she has grown very conceited, and would not believe one word of my superior knowledge. I do not blame her. The time i
s coming when the scales will fall from her eyes. Farewell, dear brother,—‘angels guard thee,’ as Jasper used to say;—I can write his name now with a steady hand—what a change! They do guard me—the blessed angels! Once more, fear nothing, Eliot. In going, I am attended by that ‘strong siding champion, conscience;’ if I stay, he will desert me.”
Eliot’s manliness was vanquished, and he wept like a child over his sister’s letter. He bitterly reproached himself for having left home. He bitterly reproached himself for not having foreseen the danger of her long, exclusive, and confiding intercourse with Meredith. He was almost maddened when he thought of the perils to which she must have been exposed, and of his utter inability to save her from one of them. The only solacing thought that occurred to him was the extreme improbability that her fragile and exhausted frame could support the fatigues she must encounter, and that even now, while he wept over her letter (a fortnight had elapsed since it was written), her gentle spirit might have entered upon its eternal rest.
261CHAPTER XXII.
“This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the
English colonies, probably, than in any other
people of the earth.”—BURKE.
Meredith’s last interview with Isabella, broken off so inopportunely by her mother, had left him perplexed and disappointed. His love for her, if analyzed, might have exhibited much of the dross that belongs to a selfish and worldly spirit,—pride and vanity, and something perhaps yet lower than these; still it was a redeeming sentiment, and if it had not force enough to conquer all that was evil in him, it at least inspired some noble aspirations.
He had been apprized of his mother’s arrival by a sort of official note which she sent him from the Narrows, the amount of which was, “that she had come out because she could see no prospect of an end to the atrocious war—that she had brought her dear niece, Lady Anne, because it was as impossible to separate from her as to prolong her own cruel absence from her son.” Meredith interpreted this note as readily as if he were reading a conventional diplomatic cipher, and thus re-read it. “The term of my dear niece, Lady Anne’s mourning, is nearly expired—she will have scores of suitors, and her fortune will pass out of the family; while you, my dear son, are throwing yourself away upon the broken-down Linwoods—the only hope is in my crossing the horrible Atlantic, and braving storms and privateers.”
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