"I can't eat!" said Elizabeth, looking up.
"You must, —" Winthrop answered.
In the same tone in which he had been acting. Elizabeth obeyed it as involuntarily.
"Who is the lady, Governor?" Karen ventured, when she had possessed herself of the cake-knife, and had got Winthrop fairly seated at his breakfast.
"This lady is the mistress of the place, Karen."
"The mistress! Ain't you the master?" — Karen inquired instantly.
"No. I have no right here any longer, Karen."
"I heered it was selled, but I didn't rightly believe it," the old woman said sadly. "And the mistress 'll be turning me away now?"
"Tell her no," whispered Elizabeth.
"I believe not, Karen, unless you wish it."
"What should I wish it for? I've been here ever since I come with Mis' Landholm, when she come first, and she left me here; and I want to stay here, in her old place, till I'm called to be with her again. D'ye think it'll be long, Governor?"
"Are you in haste, Karen?"
"I don't want fur to stay" said the old woman. "She's gone, and I can't take care o' you no longer, nor no one. I'd like to be gone, too — yes, I would."
"You have work to do yet, Karen. You may take as good care as you can of this lady."
Again Karen looked curiously and suspiciously at her, for a minute in silence.
"Is she one of the Lord's people?" she asked suddenly.
Elizabeth looked up on the instant, in utter astonishment at the question; first at Karen and then at Winthrop. The next thing was a back-sweeping tide of feeling, which made her drop her bread and her cup from her hands, and hide her face in them with a bitter burst of tears. Winthrop looked concerned, and Karen confounded. But she presently repeated her question in a half whisper at Winthrop.
"Is she? —"
"There is more company coming, Karen, for you to take care of," he said quietly. "I hope you have cakes enough. Miss Haye — I see the boat-load has arrived — will you go into the other room?"
She rose, and not seeing where she went, let him lead her. The front part of the house was unfurnished; but to the little square passage-way where the open door let in the breeze from the river, Winthrop brought a chair, and there she sat down. He left her there and went back to see to the other members of the party, and as she guessed to keep them from intruding upon her. She was long alone.
The fresh sweet air blew in upon her hot face and hands, reminding her what sort of a world it came from; and after the first few violent bursts of pain, Elizabeth presently raised her head to look out and see, in a sort of dogged willingness to take the contrast which she knew was there. The soft fair hilly outlines she remembered, in the same August light; — the bright bend of the river — a sloop sail or two pushing lazily up; — the same blue of a summer morning overhead; — the little green lawn immediately at her feet, and the everlasting cedars, with their pointed tops and their hues of patient sobriety — all stood nearly as she had left them, how many years before. And herself — Elizabeth felt as if she could have laid herself down on the doorstep and died, for mere heart-heaviness. In this bright sunny world, what had she to do? The sun had gone out of her heart. What was to become of her? What miserable part should she play, all alone by herself? She despised herself for having eaten breakfast that morning. What business had she to eat, or to have any appetite to eat, when she felt so? But Winthrop had made her do it. What for? Why should he? It was mere aggravation, to take care of her for a day, and then throw her off for ever to take care of herself. How soon would he do that? —
She was musing, her eyes on the ground; and had quite forgotten the sunny landscape before her with all its gentle suggestions; when Winthrop's voice sounded pleasantly in her ear, asking if she felt better. Elizabeth looked up.
"I was thinking," she said, "that if there were nothing better to be had in another world, I could almost find it in my heart to wish I had never been born into this!"
She expected that he would make some answer to her, but he did not. He was quite silent; and Elizabeth presently began to question with herself whether she had said something dreadful. She was busily taking up her own words, since he had not saved her the trouble. She found herself growing very much ashamed of them.
"I suppose that was a foolish speech," she said, after a few moments of perfect silence, — "a speech of impatience."
But Winthrop neither endorsed nor denied her opinion; he said nothing about it; and Elizabeth was exceedingly mortified.
"If you wanted to rebuke me," she thought, "you could not have done it better. I suppose there is no rebuke so sharp as that one is obliged to administer to oneself. And your cool keeping silence is about as effectual a way of telling me that you have no interest in my concerns as even you could have devised."
Elizabeth's eyes must have swallowed the landscape whole, for they certainly took in no distinct part of it.
"How are you going to make yourself comfortable here?" said
Winthrop presently; — "these rooms are unfurnished."
She might have said that she did not expect to be comfortable anywhere; but she swallowed that too.
"I will go and see what I can do in the way of getting some furniture together," he went on. "I hope you will be able to find some way of taking rest in the mean time — though I confess I do not see how."
"Pray do not!" said Elizabeth starting up, and her whole manner and expression changing. "I am sure you are tired to death now."
"Not at all. I slept last night."
"How much? Pray do not go looking after anything! You will trouble me very much."
"I should be sorry to do that."
"I can get all the rest I want."
"Where?"
"On the rocks — on the grass."
"Might do for a little while," said Winthrop; — "I hope it will; but I must try for something better."
"Where can you find anything — in this region?"
"I don't know," said he; "but it must be found. If not in this region, in some other."
"To-morrow, Mr. Landholm."
"To-morrow — has its own work," said he; and went.
"Will he go to-morrow?" thought Elizabeth, with a pang at her heart. "Oh, I wish — no, I dare not wish — that I had never been born! What am I to do with myself?"
Conscience suggested very quietly that something might be done; but Elizabeth bade conscience wait for another time, though granting all it advanced. She put that by, as she did Mrs. Nettley and Clam who both presently came where Winthrop had been standing, to make advances of a different nature.
"What'll I do, Miss 'Lizabeth?" said the latter, in a tone that argued a somewhat dismal view of affairs.
"Anything you can find to do."
"Can't find nothin, —" said Clam, "'cept Karen. One corner of the house is filled enough with her; and the rest ha'n't got nothin' in it."
"Let Karen alone, and take care of your own business, Clam."
"If I knowed what 'twas," said the persevering damsel. "I can't make the beds, for there ain't none; nor set the furnitur to rights, for the rooms is 'stressed empty."
"You can let me alone, at all events. The rooms will have something in them before long. You know what to do as well as any one; — if you don't, ask Mr. Landholm."
"Guess I will!" said Clam; "when I want to feel foolisher than
I do. Did the furnitur come by the sloop?"
"No. Mr. Landholm will send some. I don't care anything about it."
"Ha! then if he's goin' to send it," said Clam turning away, "the place 'll have to be ready for it, I s'pose."
Mrs. Nettley appeared in Clam's place. Elizabeth was still sitting on the door-step, and though she knew by a side view that one had given place to the other, she did not seem to know it and sat looking straight before her at the sunny landscape.
"It's a beautiful place," said Mrs. Nettley after a little pause of doubt.
"Very beautiful," said Elizabeth coldly.
"I did not know it was so beautiful. And a healthy place, I should suppose."
Elizabeth left the supposition unquestioned.
"You are sadly fatigued, Miss Haye," said Mrs. Nettley after a longer pause than before.
"I suppose I am," said Elizabeth rising, for patience had drawn her last breath; — "I am going down by the water to rest. Don't let any one follow me or call me — I want nothing — only to rest by myself."
And drawing her scarf round her, she strode through the rank grass to the foot of the lawn, and then between scattered rocks and sweetbriars and wild rose-bushes, to the fringe of cedar trees which there clothed the rocks down to the water. Between and beneath them, just where she came out upon the river, an outlooking mass of granite spread itself smooth and wide enough to seat two or three people. The sun's rays could not reach there, except through thick cedar boughs. Cedar trees and the fall of ground hid it from the house; and in front a clear opening gave her a view of the river and opposite shore, and of a cedar-covered point of her own land, outjutting a little distance further on. Solitude, silence, and beauty invited her gently; and Elizabeth threw herself down on the grey lichen-grown stone; but rest was not there.
"Rest!" — she said to herself in great bitterness; — "rest!
How can I rest? — or where can there be rest for me? —"
And then passionate nature took its will, and poured out to itself and drank all the deep draughts of pain that passion alone can fill and refill for its own food. Elizabeth's proud head bowed there, to the very rock she sat on. Yet the proud heart would not lay itself down as well; that stood up to breast pain and wrestle with it, and take the full fierce power of the blast that came. Till nature was tired out, — till the frame subsided from convulsions that racked it, into weary repose, — so long the struggle lasted; and then the struggle was not ended, but only the forces on either side had lost the power of carrying it on. And then she sat, leaning against a cedar trunk that gave her its welcome support, which every member and muscle craved; not relieved, but with that curious respite from pain which the dulled senses take when they have borne suffering as long and as sharply as they can.
It was hot in the sun; but only a warm breath of summer air played about Elizabeth where she sat. The little waves of the river glittered and shone and rolled lazily down upon the channel, or curled up in rippling eddies towards the shore. The sunlight was growing ardent upon the hills and the river; but over Elizabeth's head the shade was still unbroken. A soft aromatic smell came from the cedars, now and then broken in upon by a faint puff of fresher air from the surface of the water. Hardly any sound, but the murmur of the ripple at the water's edge and the cheruping of busy grasshoppers upon the lawn. Now and then a locust did sing out; he only said it was August and that the sun was shining hot and sleepily everywhere but under the cedar trees. His song was irresistible. Elizabeth closed her eyes and listened to it, in a queer kind of luxurious rest-taking which was had because mind and body would have it. Pain was put away, in a sort; for the senses of pain were blurred. The aromatic smell of the evergreens was wafted about her; and then came a touch, a most gentle touch, of the south river-breeze upon her face; and then the long dreamy cry of the locust; and the soft plashing sound of the water at her feet. All Elizabeth's faculties were crying for sleep; and sleep came, handed in by the locust and the summer air, and laid its kind touch of forgetfulness upon mind and body. At first she lost herself leaning against the cedar tree, waking up by turns to place herself better; and at last yielding to the overpowering influences without and within, she curled her head down upon a thick bed of moss at her side and gave herself up to such rest as she might.
What sort of rest? Only the rest of the body, which had made a truce with the mind for the purpose. A quiet which knew that storms were not over, but which would be quiet nevertheless. Elizabeth felt that, in her intervals of half-consciousness. But all the closer she clung to her pillow of dry moss. She had a dispensation from sorrow there. When her head left it, it would be to ache again. It should not ache now. Sweet moss! — sweet summer air! — sweet sound of plashing water! — sweet dreamy lullaby of the locust! — Oh if they could put her to sleep for ever! — sing pain out and joy in! —
A vague, half-realized notion of the fight that must be gone through before rest 'for ever' could in any wise be hoped for — of the things that must be gained and the things that must be lost before that 'for ever' rest could in any sort be looked forward to, — and dismissing the thought, Elizabeth blessed her fragrant moss pillow of Lethe and went to sleep again.
How she dreaded getting rested; how she longed for that overpowering fatigue and exhaustion of mind and body to prolong itself! And as the hours went on, she knew that she was getting rested, and that she would have to wake up to everything again by and by. It should not be at anybody's bidding.
"Miss 'Lizabeth! —" sounded Clam's voice in the midst of her slumbers.
"Go away, Clam!" said the sleeper, without opening her eyes.
"Miss 'Lizabeth, ain't ye goin' to eat nothin'?"
"No — Go away."
"Miss 'Lizabeth! — dinner's ready."
"Well! —"
"You're a goin' to kill yourself."
"Don't you kill me!" said Elizabeth impatiently. "Go off."
"To be sure," said Clam as she turned away, — "there ain't much company."
It was very vexing to be disturbed. But just as she was getting quiet again, came the tread of Mrs. Nettley's foot behind her, and Elizabeth knew another colloquy was at hand.
"Are you asleep, Miss Haye?" said the good lady a little timidly.
"No," said Elizabeth lifting her head wearily, — "I wish I were."
"There's dinner got ready for you in the house."
"Let anybody eat it that can. — I can't."
"Wouldn't you be better for taking a little something? I'm afraid you'll give way if you do not."
"I don't care," said Elizabeth. "Let me give way — only let me alone!"
She curled her head down determinately again.
"I am afraid, Miss Haye, you will be ill," said poor Mrs.
Nettley.
"I am willing," — said Elizabeth. "I don't care about anything, but to be quiet! —"
Mrs. Nettley went off in despair; and Elizabeth in despair also, found that vexation had effectually driven away sleep. In vain the locust sang and the moss smelled sweet; the tide of feeling had made head again, and back came a rush of disagreeable things, worse after worse; till Elizabeth's brow quitted the moss pillow to be buried in her hands, and her half-quieted spirit shook anew with the fresh-raised tempest. Exhaustion came back again; and thankfully she once more laid herself down to sleep and forgetfulness.
Her sleep was sound this time. The body asserted its rights; and long, long she lay still upon her moss pillow, while the regular deep-drawn breath came and went, fetching slow supplies of strength and refreshment. The sun quitted its overhead position and dipped towards Wut-a-qut-o, behind the high brow of which, in summer-time, it used to hide itself. A slant ray found an opening in the thick tree-tops, and shone full upon Elizabeth's face; but it failed to rouse her; and it soon went up higher and touched a little song sparrow that was twittering in a cedar tree close by. Then the shadows of the trees fell long over the grass towards the rocks on the east.
Elizabeth was awakened at last by a familiar adjuration.
"Miss 'Lizabeth! — you'll catch a Typhus, or an agur, or somethin' dreadful, down there! Don't ye want to live no more in the world?"
Elizabeth sat up, and rested her face on her knees, feeling giddy and sick.
"Don't ye feel bad?"
"Hush, Clam! —"
"I'm sent after ye," said Clam, — "I dursn't hush. Folks thinks it is time you was back in the house."
"Hush! — I don't care what folks think."
"Not what nobody thinks?" said Clam.
"What do you mean!" said Elizabeth flashing round upon her.
"Go back into the house. — I will come when I am ready."
"You're ready now," said Clam. "Miss 'Lizabeth, ye ain't fit for anything, for want of eatin'. Come! — they want ye."
"Not much," — thought Elizabeth bitterly, — "if they left it to her to bring me in."
"Are you sick, Miss 'Lizabeth?"
"No."
"He's come home," Clam went on; — "and you never saw the things he has brought! Him and me's been puttin' 'em up and down. Lots o' things. Ain't he a man!"
"'Up and down!'" repeated Elizabeth.
"Egg-zackly," — said Clam; — "Floor-spreads — what-d'ye- call'ems? — and bedsteads — and chairs. He said if he'd know'd the house was all stripped, he'd never have fetched you up here."
"Yes he would," said Elizabeth. "What do I care for a stripped house!" — "with a stripped heart," her thought finished it.
"Well don't you care for supper neither? — for that old thing is a fixin' it," said Clam.
"You must not call her names to me."
"Ain't she old?" said Clam.
"She is a very good old woman, I believe."
"Ain't you comin' Miss 'Lizabeth? They won't sit down without you."
"Who sent you out here?"
"Karen axed where you was; and Mrs. Nettley said she dursn't go look for you; and Mr. Landholm said I was to come and bring you in."
"He didn't, Clam! —"
"As likely as your head's been in the moss there, he did, Miss
'Lizabeth."
"Go yourself back into the house. I'll come when I am ready, and I am not ready yet."
"He ha'n't had nothin' to eat to-day, I don't believe," said Clam, by way of a parting argument. But Elizabeth let her go without seeming to hear her.
She sat with her hands clasped round her knees, looking down upon the water; her eyes slowly filling with proud and bitter tears. Yet she saw and felt how coolly the lowering sunbeams were touching the river now; that evening's sweet breath was beginning to freshen up among the hills; that the daintiest, lightest, cheeriest gilding was upon every mountain top, and wavelet, and pebble, and stem of a tree. "Peace be to thee, fair nature, and thy scenes!" — and peace from them seems to come too. But oh how to have it! Elizabeth clasped her hands tight together and then wrung them mutely. "O mountains — O river — O birds!" — she thought, — "If I could but be as senseless as you — or as good for something!"
CHAPTER XI.
When cockleshells turn silver bells,
When wine dreips red frae ilka tree,
When frost and snaw will warm us a',
Then I'll come doun an' dine wi' thee.
JEANNIE DOUGLASS.
The sun was low, near Wut-a-qut-o's brow, when at last slowly and lingeringly, and with feet that, as it were, spurned each step they made, Elizabeth took her way to the house. But no sooner did her feet touch the doorstep than her listless and sullen mood gave place to a fit of lively curiosity — to see what Winthrop had done. She turned to the left into the old keeping-room.
It had been very bare in the morning. Now, it was stocked with neat cane-bottomed chairs, of bird's-eye maple. In the middle of the floor rested an ambitious little mahogany table with claw feet. A stack of green window-blinds stood against the pier between the windows, and at the bottom on the floor lay a paper of screws and hinges. The floor was still bare, to be sure, and so was the room, but yet it looked hopeful compared with the morning's condition. Elizabeth stood opening her eyes in a sort of mazed bewilderment; then hearing a little noise of hammering in the other part of the house, she turned and crossed over to the east room — her sleeping-room of old and now. She went within the door and stood fast.
Her feet were upon a green carpet which covered the room. Round about were more of the maple chairs, looking quite handsome on their green footing. There was a decent dressing- table and chest of drawers of the same wood, in their places; and a round mahogany stand which seemed to be meant for no particular place but to do duty anywhere. And in the corner of the room was Winthrop, with Mrs. Nettley and Clam for assistants, busy putting up a bedstead. He looked up slightly from his work when Elizabeth shewed herself, but gave her no further attention. Clam grinned. Mrs. Nettley was far too intent upon holding her leg of the bedstead true and steady, to notice or know anything else whatever.
Elizabeth looked for a moment, without being able to utter a word; and then turned about and went and stood at the open door, her breast heaving thick and her eyes too full to see a thing before her. Then she heard Winthrop pass behind her and go into the other room. Elizabeth followed quickly. He had stooped to the paper of screws, but stood up when she came in, to speak to her.
"I am ashamed of myself for having so carelessly brought you to a dismantled house. I had entirely forgotten that it was so, in this degree, — though I suppose I must at some time have heard it."
"It would have made no difference, —" said Elizabeth, and said no more.
"I will return to the city to-morrow, and send you up immediately whatever you will give order for. It can be here in a very few days."
Elizabeth looked at the maple chairs and the mahogany table, and she could not speak, for her words choked her. Winthrop stooped again to his paper of screws and hinges and began turning them over.
"What are you going to do?" said Elizabeth, coming a step nearer.
"I am going to see if I can put up these blinds?"
"Blinds!" said Elizabeth.
"Yes. — I was fortunate enough to find some that were not very far from the breadth of the windows. They were too long; and I made the man shorten them. I think they will do."
"What did you take all that trouble for?"
"It was no trouble."
"Where did all these things come from?"
"From Starlings — I hadn't to go any further than that for them."
"How far is it?"
"Twelve miles."
"Twelve miles there and back!"
"Makes twenty-four."
"In this hot day! — I am very sorry, Mr. Landholm!"
"For what?" said he, shouldering one of the green blinds.
"You are not going to put those on yourself?"
"I am going to try — as I said."
"You have done enough day's work," said Elizabeth. "Pray don't, at least to-night. It's quite late. Please don't! —"
"If I don't to-night, I can't to-morrow," said Winthrop, marching out. "I must go home to-morrow."
Home! It shook Elizabeth's heart to hear him speak the old word. But she only caught her breath a little, and then spoke, following him out to the front of the house.
"I would rather they were not put up, Mr. Landholm. I can get somebody to do it."
"Not unless I fail."
"It troubles me very much that you should have such a day."
"I have had just such a day — as I wanted," said Winthrop, measuring with his eye and rule the blind and the window-frame respectively.
"Miss 'Lizabeth, Karen's got the tea all ready, she says," Clam announced from the door; "and she hopes everybody's tired of waitin'."
"You've not had tea! —" exclaimed Elizabeth. "Come then, Mr.
Winthrop."
"Not now," said he, driving in his gimlet, — "I must finish this first. 'The night cometh wherein no man can work.'"
Elizabeth shrank inwardly, and struggled with herself.
"But the morning comes also," she said.
Winthrop's eye went up to the top hinge of the blind, and down to the lower one, and up to the top again; busy and cool, it seemed to consider nothing but the hinges. Elizabeth struggled with herself again. She was mortified. But she could not let go the matter.
"Pray leave those things!" she said in another minute. "Come in, and take what is more necessary."
"When my work is done," said he. "Go in, Miss Elizabeth. Karen will give me something by and by."
Elizabeth turned; she could do nothing more in the way of persuasion. As she set her foot heavily on the door-step, she saw Clam standing in the little passage, her lips slightly parted in a satisfied bit of a smile. Elizabeth was vexed, proud, and vexed again, in as many successive quarter seconds. Her foot was heavy no longer.
"Have you nothing to do, Clam?"
"Lots," said the damsel.
"Why aren't you about it, then?"
"I was waitin' till you was about your'n, Miss 'Lizabeth. I like folks to be out o' my way."
"Do you! Take care and keep out of mine," said her mistress.
"What are you going to do now?"
"Settle your bed, Miss 'Lizabeth. It's good we've got linen enough, anyhow."
"Linen, —" said Elizabeth, — "and a bedstead, — have you got a bed to put on it?"
"There's been care took for that," said Clam, with the same satisfied expression and a little turn of her head.
Half angry and half sick, Elizabeth left her, and went in through her new-furnished keeping-room, to Karen's apartment where the table was bountifully spread and Mrs. Nettley and Karen awaited her coming. Elizabeth silently sat down.
"Ain't he comin'?" said Karen.
"No — I am very sorry — Mr. Landholm thinks he must finish what he is about first."
"He has lots o' thoughts," said Karen discontentedly, — "he'd think just as well after eatin'. — Well, Miss — Karen's done her best — There's been worse chickens than those be — Mis' Landholm used to cook 'em that way, and she didn't cook 'em no better. I s'pose he'll eat some by'm by — when he's done thinkin'."
She went off, and Elizabeth was punctually and silently taken care of by Mrs. Nettley. The meal over, she did not go back to her own premises; but took a stand in the open kitchen door, for a variety of reasons, and stood there, looking alternately out and in. The sun had set, the darkness was slowly gathering; soft purple clouds floated up from the west, over Wut-a-qut-o's head, which however the nearer heads of pines and cedars prevented her seeing. A delicate fringe of evergreen foliage edged upon the clear white sky. The fresher evening air breathed through the pine and cedar branches, hardly stirred their stiff leaves, but brought from them tokens of rare sweetness; brought them to Elizabeth's sorrowful face, and passed on. Elizabeth turned her face from the wind and looked into the house. Karen had made her appearance again, and was diligently taking away broken meats and soiled dishes and refreshing the look of the table; setting some things to warm and some things to cool; giving the spare plate and knife and fork the advantage of the best place at table; brushing away crumbs, and smoothing down the salt-cellar. "You are over particular!" thought Elizabeth; — "it would do him no harm to come after me in handling the salt-spoon! — that even that trace of me should be removed." She looked out again.
Her friend the locust now and then was reminding her of the long hot day they had passed through together; and the intervals between were filled up by a chorus of grasshoppers and crickets and katydids. Soft and sweet blew the west wind again; that spoke not of the bygone day, with its burden and heat; but of rest, and repose, and the change that cometh even to sorrowful things. The day was passed and gone. "But if one day is passed, another is coming," — thought Elizabeth; and tears, hot and bitter tears, sprang to her eyes. How could those clouds float so softly! — how could the light and shadow rest so lovely on them! — how could the blue ether look so still and clear! "Can one be like that?" — thought Elizabeth. "Can I? — with this boiling depth of passion and will in my nature? — One can —" and she again turned her eyes within. But nothing was there, save the table, the supper, and Karen. The question arose, what she herself was standing there for? but passion and will said they did not care! she would stand there; and she did. It was pleasant to stand there; for passion and will, though they had their way, seemed to her feeling to be quieted down under nature's influences. Perhaps the most prominent thought now was of a great discord between nature and her, between her and right, — which was to be made up. But still, while her face was towards the western sky and soft wind, and her mind thought this, her ear listened for a step on the kitchen floor. The colours of the western sky had grown graver and cooler before it came.
It came, and there was the scrape of a chair on the wooden floor. He had sat down, and Karen had got up; but Elizabeth would not look in.
"Are ye hungry enough now, Governor?"
"I hope so, Karen, — for your sake."
"Ye don't care much for your own," said Karen discontentedly.
Perhaps Winthrop — perhaps Elizabeth, thought that she made up his lack of it. Elizabeth watched, stealthily, to see how the old woman waited upon him — hovered about him — supplied his wants, actual and possible, and stood looking at him when she could do nothing else. She could not understand the low word or two with which Winthrop now and then rewarded her. Bitter feeling overcame her at last; she turned away, too much out of tune with nature to notice any more, unless by way of contrast, what nature had spread about her and over her. She went round the house again to the front and sat down in the doorway. The stars were out, the moonlight lay soft on the water, the dews fell heavily.
"Miss Lizzie! — you'll catch seven deaths out there! — the day's bad enough, but the night's five times worse," — Clam exclaimed.
"I shan't catch but one," Elizabeth said gloomily.
"Your muslin's all wet, drinchin'!"
"It will dry."
"I can hang it up, I s'pose; but what'll I do with you if you get sick?"
"Nothing whatever! Let me alone, Clam."
"Mis' Nettles! —" said Clam going in towards the kitchen, — "Mis' Nettles! — where's Mr. Landholm? — Governor Winthrop — here's Miss 'Lizabeth unhookin' all them blinds you've been a hookin' up."
"What do you mean, Clam?"
"I don't mean no harm," said Clam lowering her tone, — "but Miss 'Lizabeth does. I wish you would go and see what she is doing, Mr. Winthrop; she's makin' work for somebody; and if it ain't nobody else, it's the doctor."
Winthrop however sat still, and Clam departed in ignorance how he had received her information. Presently however his supper was finished, and he sauntered round to the front of the house. He paused before the doorway where its mistress sat.
"It is too damp for you there."
"I don't feel it."
"I do."
"I am not afraid of it."
"If the fact were according to your fears, that would be a sufficient answer."
"It will do me no harm."
"It must not; and that it may not, you must go in," he said gravely.
"But you are out in it," said Elizabeth, who was possessed with an uncompromising spirit just then.
"I am out in it. Well?"
"Only — that I may venture —" she did not like to finish her sentence.
"What right have you to venture anything?"
"The same right that other people have."
"I risk nothing," said he gravely.
"I haven't much to risk."
"You may risk your life."
"My life!" said Elizabeth. "What does it signify! —" But she jumped up and ran into the house.
The next morning there was an early breakfast, for which Elizabeth was ready. Then Winthrop took her directions for things to be forwarded from Mannahatta. Then there was a quiet leave-taking; on his part kind and cool, on hers too full of impassioned feeling to be guarded or constrained. But there was reason and excuse enough for that, as she knew, or guard and restraint would both have been there. When she quitted his hand, it was to hide herself in her room and have one struggle with the feeling of desolation. It was a long one.
Elizabeth came out at last, book in hand.
"Dear Miss Haye!" Mrs. Nettley exclaimed — "you're dreadful worn with this hot weather and being out of doors all day yesterday!"
"I am going out again," said Elizabeth. "Clam will know where to find me."
"If you had wings, I'd know where to find you," said Clam; "but on your feet 'taint so certain."
"You needn't try, unless it is necessary," said Elizabeth dryly.
"But dear Miss Haye!" pleaded Mrs. Nettley, — "you're not surely going out to try the sun again to-day?"
Elizabeth's lip quivered.
"It's the pleasantest place, Mrs. Nettley — I am quite in the shade — I can't be better than I am there, thank you."
"Don't she look dreadful!" said the good lady, as Elizabeth went from the house. "Oh, I never have seen anybody so changed!"
"She's pulled down a bit since she come," said Karen, who gave
Elizabeth but a moderate share of her good will at any time.
"She's got her mind up high enough, anyway, for all she's gone
through."
"Who hain't?" said Clam. "Hain't the Governor his mind up high enough? And you can't pull him down, but you can her."
"His don't never need," said Karen.
"Well — I don' know, —" said Clam, picking up several things about the floor — "but them high minds is a trial."
"Hain't you got one yourself, girl?" said old Karen.
"Hope so, ma'am. I take after my admirers. That's all the way
I live, — keeping my head up — always did."
Karen deigned no reply, but went off.
"Mis' Nettles," said Clam, "do you think Miss Haye 'll ever stand it up here all alone in this here place?"
"Why not?" said Mrs. Nettley innocently.
"I guess your head ain't high enough up for to see her'n," said Clam, in scornful impatience. And she too quitted the conversation in disgust.
CHAPTER XII.
'Resolve,' the haughty moralist would say,
'The single act is all that we demand.'
Alas! such wisdom bids a creature fly
Whose very sorrow is, that time hath shorn
His natural wings.
WORDSWORTH.
The book in Elizabeth's hand was her bible. It was the next thing, and the only thing to be done after Winthrop's going away, that she could think of, to begin upon the first chapter of Matthew. It was action, and she craved action. It was an undertaking; for her mind remembered and laid hold of Winthrop's words — "Ask honestly, of your own conscience and of God, at each step, what obligation upon you grows out of what you read." And it was an undertaking that Winthrop had set her upon. So she sought out her yesterday's couch of moss with its cedar canopy, and sat down in very different mood from yesterday's mood, and put her bible on her lap. It was a feeling of dull passive pain now; a mood that did not want to sleep.
The day itself was very like yesterday. Elizabeth listened a minute to the sparrow and the locust and the summer wind, but presently she felt that they were overcoming her; and she opened her book to the first chapter of Matthew. She was very curious to find her first obligation. Not that she was unconscious of many resting upon her already; but those were vague, old, dimly recognized obligations; she meant to take them up now definitely, in the order in which they might come.
She half paused at the name in the first verse, — was there not a shadow of obligation hanging around that? But if there were, she would find it more clearly set forth and in detail as she went on. She passed it for the present.
From that she went on smoothly as far as the twenty-first verse. That stopped her.
"And she shall bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name
Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins."
"'His people,' —" thought Elizabeth. "I am not one of his people. Ought I not to be?"
The words of the passage did not say; but an imperative whisper at her heart said "Ay!"
"His people! — but how can I be one of his people?" she thought again. And impatience bade her turn over the leaf, and find something more or something else; but conscience said, "Stop — and deal with this obligation first."
"What obligation? — 'He shall save his people from their sins.' Then certainly I ought to let him save me from mine — that is the least I can do. But what is the first thing — the first step to be taken? I wish Mr. Landholm was here to tell me. —"
She allowed herself to read on to the end of the page, but that gave her not much additional light. She would not turn over the leaf; she had no business with the second obligation till the first was mastered; she sat looking at the words in a sort of impatient puzzle; and not permitting herself to look forward, she turned back a leaf. That gave her but the titlepage of the New Testament. She turned back another, to the last chapter of the Old. Its opening words caught her eye.
"For behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch."
"The proud, and they that do wickedly — that is my character and name truly," thought Elizabeth. "I am of them. — And it is from this, and this fate, that 'his people' shall be delivered. But how shall I get to be of them?" Her eye glanced restlessly up to the next words above —
"Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not."
"'Then,' — in that day," — thought Elizabeth, "I can discern between them now, without waiting for that. — Winthrop Landholm is one that serveth God — I am one that serve him not. There is difference enough, I can see now — but this speaks of the difference at that day; another sort of difference. — Then I ought to be a servant of God —"
The obligation was pretty plain.
"Well, I will, when I find out how," — she began. But conscience checked her.
"This is not the first chapter of Matthew," she said then. "I will go back to that."
Her eye fell lower, to the words,
"But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings."
The tears started to Elizabeth's eyes. "This is that same who will save his people from their sins, — is it? — and that is his healing? Oh, I want it! — There is too much difference between me and them. He shall save his people from their sins, — I have plenty, — plenty. But how? — and what shall I do? It don't tell me here."
It did not; yet Elizabeth could not pass on. She was honest; she felt an obligation, arising from these words, which yet she did not at once recognize. It stayed her. She must do something — what could she do? It was a most unwelcome answer that at last slid itself into her mind. Ask to be made one of 'his people' — or to be taught how to become one? Her very soul started. Ask? — but now the obligation stood full and strong before her, and she could cease to see it no more. Ask? — why she never did such a thing in her whole life as ask God to do anything for her. Not of her own mind, at her own choice, and in simplicity; her thoughts and feelings had perhaps at some time joined in prayers made by another, and in church, and in solemn time. But here? with the blue sky over her, in broad day, and in open air? It did not seem like praying time. Elizabeth shut her book. Her heart beat. Duty and she were at a struggle now; she knew which must give way, but she was not ready yet. It never entered her head to question the power or the will to which she must apply herself, no more than if she had been a child. Herself she doubted; she doubted not him. Elizabeth knew very little of his works or word, beyond a vague general outline, got from sermons; but she knew one servant of God. That servant glorified him; and in the light which she saw and loved, Elizabeth could do no other but, in her measure, to glorify him too. She did not doubt, but she hesitated, and trembled. The song of the birds and the flow of the water mocked her hesitancy and difficulty. But Elizabeth was honest; and though she trembled she would not and could not disobey the voice of conscience which set before her one clear, plain duty. She was in great doubt whether to stand or to kneel; she was afraid of being seen if she knelt; she would not be so irreverent as to pray sitting; she rose to her feet, and clasping a cedar tree with her arms, she leaned her head beside the trunk, and whispered her prayer, to him who saves his people from their sins, that he would make her one of them, she did not know how, she confessed; she prayed that he would teach her.
She kept her position and did not move her bended head, till the tears which had gathered were fallen or dried; then she sat down and took up her book again and looked down into the water. What had she done? Entered a pledge, she felt, to be what she had prayed to be; else her prayer would be but a mockery, and Elizabeth was in earnest. "What a full-grown fair specimen he is of his class," she thought, her mind recurring again to her adviser and exemplar; "and I — a poor ignorant thing in the dark, groping for a bit of light to begin!" — The tears gathered again; she opened the second chapter of Matthew.
She looked off again to feel glad. Was a pledge entered only on her side? — was there not an assurance given somewhere, by lips that cannot lie, that prayer earnestly offered should not be in vain? She could not recall the words, but she was sure of the thing; and there was more than one throb of pleasure, and a tiny shoot of grateful feeling in her heart, before Elizabeth went back to her book. What was the next 'obligation'? She was all ready for it.
Nothing stopped her much in the second chapter. The 'next obligation' did not start up till the words of John the Baptist in the beginning of the third —
"Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
"What is repentance? — and what is the kingdom of heaven?" pondered Elizabeth. "I wish somebody was here to tell me. Repent? — I know what it is to repent — it is to change one's mind about something, and to will just against what one willed before. — And what ought I to repent about? — Everything wrong! Everything wrong! — That is, to turn about and set my face just the other way from what it has been all my life! — I might as good take hold of this moving earth with my two fingers and give it a twist to go westwards. —"
Elizabeth shut up her book, and laid it on the moss beside her.
"Repent? — yes, it's an obligation. Oh what shall I do with it! —"
She would have liked to do with it as she did with her head — lay it down.
"These wrong things are iron-strong in me — how can I unscrew them from their fastenings, and change all the out-goings and in-comings of my mind? — when the very hands that must do the work have a bent the wrong way. How can I? — I am strong for evil — I am weak as a child for good."
"I will try!" she said the next instant, lifting her head up — "I will try to do what I can. — But that is not changing my whole inner way of feeling — that is not repenting. Perhaps it will come. Or is this determination of mine to try, the beginning of it? I do not know that it is — I cannot be sure that it is. No — one might wish to be a good lawyer, without at all being willing to go through all the labour and pains for it which Winthrop Landholm has taken. — No, this is not, or it may not be, repentance — I cannot be sure that it is anything. But will it not come? or how can I get it? How alone I am from all counsel and help! — Still it must be my duty to try — to try to do particular things right, as they come up, even though I cannot feel right all at once. And if I try, won't the help come, and the knowledge? — What a confusion it is! In the midst of it all it is my duty to repent, and I haven't the least idea how to set about it, and I can't do it! O I wish Winthrop Landholm was here! —"
Elizabeth pondered the matter a good deal; and the more she thought about it, the worse the confusion grew. The duty seemed more imminent, the difficulty more obstinate. She was driven at last, unwillingly again, to her former ressource — what she could not give herself, to ask to have given her. She did it, with tears again, that were wrung from breaking pride and weary wishing. More quietly then she resolved to lay off perplexing care, and to strive to meet the moment's duty, as it arose. And by this time with a very humbled and quieted brow, she went on with her chapter. The words of the next verse caught her eye and her mind at once.
"For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight."
"Is not this it?" cried Elizabeth. "If I do my part — all I can — is not that preparing the way for him to do what I cannot do?"
She thought so, at any rate, and it comforted her.
"Miss 'Lizabeth," said Clam, just behind her, "Karen wants to know what time you'll have dinner?"
"I don't care."
"That's 'zackly Karen's time o' day," said Clam discontentedly.
"I don't care at all, Clam."
"And she says, what 'll you have?"
"Nothing — or anything. Don't talk to me about it."
"Ain't much good in choosing," said Clam, "when there ain't three things to choose from. How long can you live on pork, Miss 'Lizabeth?"
Elizabeth looked up impatiently.
"Longer than you can. Clam! —"
"Ma'am?"
"Let me alone. I don't care about anything."
Clam went off; but ten minutes had not gone when she was back again.
"Miss Lizzie, — Anderese wants to know if he'll go on cuttin' wood just as he's a mind to?"
"Anderese? — who's he?"
"Karen and him used to be brother and sister when they was little."
"What does he want?"
"Wants to know if he shall go on cuttin' wood just as ever."
"Cutting wood! — what wood?"
"I s'pect it's your trees."
"Mine! What trees?"
"Why the trees in the woods, Miss Lizzie. As long as they was nobody's, Anderese used to cut 'em for the fire; now they're yourn, he wants to know what he shall do with 'em."
"Let 'em alone, certainly! Don't let him cut any more."
"Then the next question is, where'll he go for something to make a fire?"
"To make a fire!"
"Yes, Miss Lizzie — unless no time 'll do for dinner as well as any time. Can't cook pork without a fire. And then you'd want the kettle boiled for tea, I reckon."
"Can't he get wood anywhere, Clam? without cutting down trees."
"There ain't none to sell anywheres — he says."
"What trees has he been cutting?" said Elizabeth, rousing herself in despair.
"Any that come handy, I s'pose, Miss Lizzie — they'll all burn, once get 'em in the chimney."
"He mustn't do that. Tell him — but you can't tell him— and I can't. —"
She hesitated, between the intense desire to bid him cut whatever he had a mind, and the notion of attending to all her duties, which was strong upon her.
"Tell him to cut anything he pleases, for to-day — I'll see about it myself the next time."
Two minutes' peace; and then Clam was at her back again.
"Miss Lizzie, he don't know nothin' and he wants to know a heap. Do you want him to cut down a cedar, he says, or an oak, or somethin' else. There's the most cedars, he says; but Karen says they snap all to pieces."
Elizabeth rose to her feet.
"I suppose I can find a tree in a minute that he can cut without doing any harm. — Bring me a parasol, Clam, — and come along with me."
Clam and the parasol came out at one door, and Anderese and his axe at another, as Elizabeth slowly paced towards the house. The three joined company. Anderese was an old grey- haired negro, many years younger however than his sister. Elizabeth asked him, "Which way?"
"Which way the young lady pleases."
"I don't please about it," said Elizabeth, — "I don't know anything about it — lead to the nearest place — where a tree can be soonest found."
The old man shouldered his axe and went before, presently entering a little wood path; of which many struck off into the leafy wilderness which bordered the house. Leaves overhead, rock and moss under foot; a winding, jagged, up and down, stony, and soft green way, sometimes the one, sometimes the other. Elizabeth's bible was still in her hand, her finger still kept it open at the second chapter of Matthew; she went musingly along over grey lichens and sunny green beds of moss, thinking of many things. How she was wandering in Winthrop's old haunts, where the trees had once upon a time been cut by him, she now to order the cutting of the fellow trees. Strange it was! How she was desolate and alone, nobody but herself there to do it; her father gone; and she without another protector or friend to care for the trees or her either. There were times when the weight of pain, like the pressure of the atmosphere, seemed so equally distributed that it was distinctly felt nowhere, — or else so mighty that the nerves of feeling were benumbed. Elizabeth wandered along in a kind of maze, half wondering half indignant at herself that she could walk and think at all. She did not execute much thinking, to do her justice; she passed through the sweet broken sunlight and still shadows, among the rough trunks of the cedars, as if it had been the scenery of dreamland. On every hand were up-shooting young pines, struggling oaks that were caught in thickets of cedar, and ashes and elms that were humbly asking leave to spread and see the light and reach their heads up to freedom and free air. They asked in vain. Elizabeth was only conscious of the struggling hopes and wishes that seemed crushed for ever, her own.
"She don't see nothin'," whispered Clam to Anderese, whom she had joined in front. "She's lookin' into vacancy. If you don't stop, our axe and parasol 'll walk all round the place, and one 'll do as much work as the other. I can't put up my awning till you cut down something to let the sun in."
The old man glanced back over his shoulder at his young lady.
"What be I goin' to do?" he whispered, with a sidelong glance at Clam.
"Fling your axe into something," said Clam. "That'll bring her up."
The old man presently stepped aside to a young sapling oak, which having outgrown its strength bent its slim altitude in a beautiful parabolic curve athwart the sturdy stems of cedars and yellow pines which lined the path. Anderese stopped there and looked at Elizabeth. She had stopped too, without noticing him, and stood sending an intent, fixed, far-going look into the pretty wilderness of rock and wood on the other side of the way. All three stood silently.
"Will this do to come down, young lady?" inquired Anderese, with his axe on his shoulder. Elizabeth faced about.
"'Twon't grow up to make a good tree — it's slantin' off so among the others." He brought his axe down.
"That?" said Elizabeth, — "that reaching-over one? O no! you mustn't touch that. What is it?"
"It's an oak, miss; it's good wood."
"It's a better tree. No indeed — leave that. Never cut such trees. Won't some of those old things do?"
"Them? — them are cedars, young lady."
"Well, won't they do?"
"They'd fly all over and burn the house up," said Clam.
"What do you want?"
"Some o' the best there is, I guess," said Clam.
"Hard wood is the best, young lady."
"What's that?"
"Oak — maple — hickory — and there's ash, and birch — 'tain't very good."
Elizabeth sighed, and led the way on again, while the old negro shouldered his axe and followed with Clam; probably sighing on his own part, if habitual gentleness of spirit did not prevent. Nobody ever knew Clam do such a thing.
"Look at her!" muttered the damsel; — "going with her head down, — when'll she see a tree? Ain't we on a march! Miss 'Lizabeth! — the tree won't walk home after it's cut."
"What?" said her mistress.
"How'll it get there?"
"What?"
"The tree, Miss Lizzie — when Anderese has cut it."
"Can't he carry some home?"
"He'll be a good while about it — if he takes one stick at a time — and we ain't nigh home, neither."
Elizabeth came to a stand, and finally turned in another direction, homewards. But she broke from the path then, and took up the quest in earnest, leading her panting followers over rocks and moss-beds and fallen cedars and tangled vines and undergrowth, which in many places hindered their way. She found trees enough at last, and near enough home; but both she and her companions had had tree-hunting to their satisfaction. Elizabeth commissioned Anderese to find fuel in another way; and herself in some disgust at her new charge, returned to her rock and her bible. She tried to go through with the third chapter of Matthew; and her eye did go over it, though often swimming in tears. But that was the end of her studies at that time. Sorrow claimed the rest of the day for its own, and held the whole ground. Her household and its perplexities — her bible and its teachings — her ignorance and her necessities, — faded away from view; and instead thereof rose up the lost father, the lost home, and the lost friend yet dearer than all.
"What's become of Miss Haye?" whispered Mrs. Nettley late in the evening.
"Don' know," answered Clam. "Melted away — all that can melt, and shaken down — all that can shake, of her. That ain't all, so I s'pose there's somethin' left."
"Poor thing! — no wonder she takes it hard," said the good lady.
"No," said Clam, — she never did take nothin' easy."
"Has she been crying all the afternoon?"
"Don' know," said Clam; "the eye of curiosity ain't invited; but she don't take that easy neither, when she's about it. I've seen her cry — once; she'd do a year o' your crying in half an hour."
CHAPTER XIII.
O Land of Quiet! to thy shore the surf
Of the perturbed Present rolls and sleeps;
Our storms breathe soft as June upon thy turf,
And lure out blossoms.
LOWELL.
They were days of violent grief which for a little while followed each other. Elizabeth spent them out of doors; in the woods, on the rocks, by the water's edge. She would take her bible out with her, and sometimes try to read a little; but a very few words would generally touch some spring which set her off upon a torrent of sorrow. Pleasant things past or out of her reach, the present time a blank, the future worse than a blank, — she knew nothing else. She did often in her distress repeat the prayer she had made over the first chapter of Matthew; but that was rather the fruit of past thought; she did not think in those days; she gave up to feeling; and the hours were a change from bitter and violent sorrow to dull and listless quiet. Conscience sometimes spoke of duties resolved upon; impatient pain always answered that their time was not now.
The first thing that roused her was a little letter from Winthrop, which came with the pieces of furniture and stores he sent up to her order. It was but a word, — or two words; one of business, to say what he had done for her; and one of kindness, to say what he hoped she was doing for herself. Both words were brief, and cool; but with them, with the very handwriting of them, came a waft of that atmosphere of influence — that silent breath of truth which every character breathes — which in this instance was sweetened with airs from heaven. The image of the writer rose before her brightly, in its truth and uprightness and high and fixed principle; and though Elizabeth wept bitter tears at the miserable contrast of her own, they were more healing tears than she had shed all those days. When she dried them, it was with a new mind, to live no more hours like those she had been living. Something less distantly unlike him she could be, and would be. She rose and went into the house, while her eyes were yet red, and gave her patient and unwearied attention, for hours, to details of household arrangements that needed it. Her wits were not wandering, nor her eyes; nor did they suffer others to wander. Then, when it was all done, she took her bonnet and went back to her old wood-place and her bible, with an humbler and quieter spirit than she had ever brought to it before. It was the fifth chapter of Matthew now.
The first beatitude puzzled her. She did not know what was meant by 'poor in spirit,' and she could not satisfy herself. She passed it as something to be made out by and by, and went on to the others. There were obligations enough.
"'Meek?'" said Elizabeth, — "I suppose if there is anything in the world I am not, it is meek. I am the very, very opposite. What can I do with this? It is like a fire in my veins. Can I cool it? And if I could control the outward seeming of it, that would not be the change of the thing itself. Besides, I couldn't, I must be meek, if I am ever to seem so."
She went on sorrowfully to the next.
"'Hunger and thirst after righteousness' — I do desire it — I do not 'hunger and thirst.' I don't think I do — and it is those and those only to whom the promise is given. I am so miserable that I cannot even wish enough for what I need most. O God, help me to know what I am seeking, and to seek it more earnestly! —"
"'Merciful?'" she went on with tears in her eyes — "I think I am merciful. — I haven't been tried, but I am pretty sure I am merciful. But there it is — one must have all the marks, I suppose, to be a Christian. Some people may be merciful by nature — I suppose I am. —"
"Blessed are the pure in heart."
She stopped there, and even shut up her book, in utter sorrow and shame, that if 'pure in heart' meant pure to the All- seeing eye, hers was so very, very far from it. There was not a little scrap of her heart fit for looking into. And what could she do with it? The words of Job recurred to her, — "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one."
Elizabeth was growing 'poor in spirit' before she knew what the words meant. She went on carefully, sorrowfully, earnestly — till she came to the twenty-fourth verse of the sixth chapter. It startled her.
"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon."
"That is to say then," said Elizabeth, "that I must devote myself entirely to God — or not at all. All my life and possessions and aims. It means all that! —"
And for 'all that' she felt she was not ready. One corner for self-will and doing her own pleasure she wanted somewhere; and wanted so obstinately, that she felt, as it were, a mountain of strong unwillingness rise up between God's requirements and her; an iron lock upon the door of her heart, the key of which she could not turn, shutting and barring it fast against his entrance and rule. And she sat down before the strong mountain and the locked door, as before something which must, and could not, give way; with a desperate feeling that it must — with another desperate feeling that it would not.
Now was Elizabeth very uncomfortable, and she hated discomfort. She would have given a great deal to make herself right; if a movement of her hand could have changed her and cleared away the hindrance, it would have been made on the instant; her judgment and her wish were clear; but her will was not. Unconditional submission she thought she was ready for; unconditional obedience was a stumbling-block before which she stopped short. She knew there would come up occasions when her own will would take its way — she could not promise for it that it would not; and she was afraid to give up her freedom utterly and engage to serve God in everything. An enormous engagement, she felt! How was she to meet with ten thousand the enemy that came against her with twenty thousand? — Ay, how? But if he were not met — if she were to be the servant of sin for ever — all was lost then! And she was not going to be lost; therefore she was going to be the unconditional servant of God. When? —
The tears came, but they did not flow; they could not, for the fever of doubt and questioning. She dashed them away as impertinent asides. What were they to the matter in hand. Elizabeth was in distress. But at the same time it was distress that she was resolved to get out of. She did not know just what to do; but neither would she go into the house till something was done.
"If Mr. Landholm were here! —"
"What could he do?" answered conscience; "there is the question before you, for you to deal with. You must deal with it. It's a plain question."
"I cannot" — and "Who will undertake for me?" — were
Elizabeth's answering cry.
Her heart involuntarily turned to the great helper, but what could or would he do for her? — it was his will she was thwarting. Nevertheless, "to whom should she go?" — the shaken needle of her mind's compass turned more and more steadily to its great centre. There was light in no other quarter but on that 'wicket-gate' towards which Bunyan's Pilgrim first long ago set off to run. With some such sorrowful blind looking, she opened to her chapter of Matthew again, and carelessly and sadly turned over a leaf or two; till she saw a word which though printed in the ordinary type of the rest, stood out to her eyes like the lettering on a signboard. "ASK." —