Helen and Arthur Part 25

"I can do nothing now," said she, "but who knows what the morrow may bring forth?"

"Who, indeed!" thought Louis, as he wended his solitary way homeward. "I know not why it is, but I cannot help having some reliance on the promises of this singular old woman. It was my perfect confidence in her truth and integrity that drew me to her. What her resources are, I know not; I fear they exist only in her own imagination; but if she should befriend me in this, mine extremity, may the holy angels guard and bless her. Alas! it is mockery for me to invoke them."

The next day when he returned to her cabin, he found her spinning with all her accustomed solemnity. He blushed with shame, as he looked round on the appearance of poverty that met his eye, respectable and comfortable poverty, it is true--but for him to seek a.s.sistance of the inmate of such a dwelling! He must have thought her a sorceress, to have believed in the existence of such a thing. He must have been maddened to have admitted such an idea.

"Forgive me, Miss Thusa," said he, with the frankness of the _boy_ Louis, "forgive me for plaguing you with my troubles. I was not in my right senses yesterday, or I should not have done it. I have resolved to have no concealments from my father, and to tell him all."

Miss Thusa dipped her hand in a pocket as deep as a well, which she wore at her right side, and taking out a well-filled and heavy purse, she put it in the hand of Louis.

"There is something to help you a little," said she, without looking him in the face. "You must take it as a present from old Miss Thusa, and never say a word about it to a human being. That is all I ask of you--and it is not much. Don't thank me. Don't question me. The money was mine, honestly got and righteously given. One of these days I'll tell you where it came from, but I can't now."

Louis held the purse with a bewildered air, his fingers trembling with emotion. Never before had he felt all the ignominy and all the shame which he had brought upon himself. A hot, scalding tide came rus.h.i.+ng with the cataract's speed through his veins, and spreading with burning hue over his face.

"No! I cannot, I cannot!" he exclaimed, dropping the purse, and clenching his hands on his brow. "I did not mean to beg of your bounty.

I am not so lost as to wrench from your aged hand, the gold that may purchase comfort and luxuries for all your remaining years. No, Miss Thusa, my reason has returned--my sense of honor, too--I were worse than a robber, to take advantage of your generous offer."

"Louis--Louis Gleason," cried Miss Thusa, rising from her seat, her tall, ancestral-looking figure a.s.suming an air of majesty and command--"listen to me; if you cast that purse from you, I will never make use of it as long as I live, which won't be long. It will do no good to a human being. What do I want of money? I had rather live in this little, old, gray hut than the palace of the Queen of England. I had rather earn my bread by this wheel, than eat the food of idleness. Your father gives me fuel in winter, and his heart is warmed by the fire that he kindles for me. It does him good. It does everybody good to befriend another. What do I want of money? To whom in the wide world should I give it, but you and Helen? I have as much and more for her. My heart is drawn powerfully towards you two children, and it will continue to draw, while there is life in its fibres or blood in its veins. Take it, I say--and in the name of your mother in heaven, go, and sin no more."

"I take it," said Louis, awed into submission and humility by her prophetic solemnity, "I take it as a loan, which I will labor day and night to return. What would my father say, if he knew of this?"

"He will not know it, unless you break your word," said Miss Thusa, setting her wheel in motion, and wetting her fingers in the gourd. "You may go, now, if you will not talk of something else. I must go and get some more flax. I can see all the ribs of my distaff."

Louis knew that this was an excuse to escape his thanks, and giving her hand a reverent and silent pressure, he left the cabin. Heavy as lead lay the purse in his pocket--heavy as lead lay the heart in his bosom.

Helen met him at the door, with a radiant countenance.

"Who do you think is come, brother?" she asked.

"Is it Clinton?" said he.

"Oh! no--it is Alice. A friend of her brother was coming directly here, and she accompanied him. Come and see her."

"Thank G.o.d! _she_ cannot see!" exclaimed Louis, as he pa.s.sed into the presence of the blind girl.

Though no beam of pleasure irradiated her sightless eyes, her bright and heightening color, the eager yet tremulous tones of her voice a.s.sured him of a joyous welcome. Alice remembered the thousand acts of kindness by which he had endeared to her the very helplessness which had called them forth. His was the hand every ready to guide her, the arm offered for her support. His were the cheering accents most welcome to her ears, and his steps had a music which belonged to no steps but his. His image, reflected on the retina of the soul, was beautiful as the dream of imagination, an image on which time could cast no shadow, being without variableness or change.

"Thank G.o.d," again repeated Louis to himself, "that she cannot see. I can read no reproach in those blue and silent orbs. I can drink in her pure and holy loveliness, till my spirit grows purer and holier as I gaze. Blessings on thee for coming, sweet and gentle Alice. As David charmed the evil spirit in the haunted breast of Saul, so shall thy divine strains lull to rest the fiends of remorse that are wrestling and gnawing in my bosom. The time has been when I dreamed of being thy guide through life, a lamp to thy blindness, and a stay and support to thy helpless innocence. The dream is past--I wake to the dread reality of my own utter unworthiness."

These thoughts rose tumultuously in the breast of the young man, in the moment of greeting, while the soft hand of the blind girl lingered tremblingly in his. Without thinking of the influence it might have on her feelings, he sought her presence as a balm to his chafed and tortured heart, as a repose to his worn and weary spirit, as an anodyne to the agonies of remorse. The grave, sad glance of his father; the serious, yet tender and pitying look of his step-mother; and the pensive, melting, sympathizing eye of Helen, were all daggers to his conscience. But Alice could not see. No daggers of reproach were sheathed in those reposing eyes. Oh! how remorse and shame shrink from being arraigned before that throne of light where the immortal spirit sits enthroned--the human eye! If thus conscious guilt recoils from the gaze of man, weak, fallible, erring man, how can it stand the consuming fire of that Eternal Eye, in whose sight the heavens are not clean, and before which archangels bend, veiling their brows with their refulgent wings!

It was about a week after the arrival of Louis and the coming of Alice, that, as the family were a.s.sembled round the evening fireside, a note was brought to Louis.

"Clinton is come," cried he, in an agitated voice, "he waits me at the hotel."

"What shall I say to him, father?" asked he, turning to Mr. Gleason, whose folded arms gave an air of determination to his person, which Louis did not like.

"Come with me into the next room, Louis," said Mr. Gleason, and Louis followed with a firm step but a sinking heart.

"I have reflected deeply, deliberately, prayerfully on this subject, my son, since we last discussed it, and the result is this: I cannot, while such dark doubts disturb my mind, I cannot, consistent with my duty as a father and a Christian, allow this young man to be domesticated in my family again. If I wrong him, may G.o.d forgive me--but if I wrong my own household, I fear He never will."

"I cannot go--I will not go!" exclaimed Louis, das.h.i.+ng the note on the floor. "This is the last br.i.m.m.i.n.g drop in the cup of humiliation, bitterer than all the rest."

"Louis, Louis, have you not merited humiliation? Have _you_ a right to murmur at the decree? Have I upbraided you for the anxious days and sleepless nights you have occasioned me? For my blasted hopes and embittered joys? No, Louis. I saw that your own heart condemned you, and I left you to your G.o.d, who is greater than your own heart and mine!"

"Oh, father!" cried Louis, melted at once by this pathetic and solemn appeal, "I know I have no right to claim any thing at your hands, but I beg, I supplicate--not for myself--but another!"

"'Tis in vain, Louis. Urge me no more. On this point I am inflexible.

But, since it is so painful to you, I will go myself and openly avow the reasons of my conduct."

"No, sir," exclaimed Louis, "not for the world. I will go at once."

He turned suddenly and quitted the apartment, and then the house, with a half-formed resolution of fleeing to the wild woods, and never more returning.

Mittie, who was fortunately in her room above, (fortunately, we say, for her presence would have been as fuel to flame,) heard the quick opening and shutting of doors, and the sound of rapid steps on the flag-stones of the yard.

"Louis, Louis," she cried, opening the window and recognizing his figure in the star-lit night, "whither are you going?"

"To perdition!" was the pa.s.sionate reply.

"Oh, Louis, speak and tell me truly, is Clinton come?"

"He is."

"And you are going to bring him here?"

"No, never, never! Now shut the window. You have heard enough."

Yes, she had heard enough! The sash fell from her hand, and a pane of gla.s.s, s.h.i.+vered by the fall, flew partly in s.h.i.+ning particles against her dress, and partly lay scattered on the snowy ground. A fragment rebounded, and glanced upon her forehead, making the blood-drops trickle down her cheek. Wiping them off with her handkerchief, she gazed on the crimson stain, and remembering her bleeding fingers when they parted, and Miss Thusa's legend of the Maiden's Bleeding Heart, she involuntarily put her hand to her own to feel if it were not bleeding, too. All the strong and pa.s.sionate love which had been smouldering there, beneath the ashes of sullen pride, struggling for vent, heaved the bosom where it was concealed. And with this love there blazed a fiercer flame, indignation against her father for the prohibition that raised a barrier between herself and Bryant Clinton. One moment she resolved to rush down stairs and give utterance to the vehement anger that threatened to suffocate her by repression; the next, the image of a stern, rebuking father, inflexible in his will, checked her rash design.

Had she been in his presence and heard the interdiction repeated, her resentful feelings would have burst forth; but, daring as she was, there was some restraining influence over her pa.s.sions.

Then she reflected that parental prohibitions were as the gossamer web before the strength of real love,--that though Clinton was forbidden to meet her in her father's house, the world was wide enough to furnish a trysting-place elsewhere. Let him but breathe the word, she was ready to fly with him from zone to zone, believing that even the frozen regions of Lapland would be converted into a blooming Paradise by the magic of his love. But what if he loved her no more, as Helen had a.s.serted? What if Helen had indeed supplanted her?

"No, no!" cried she, aloud, shrinking from the dark and evil thoughts that came gliding into her soul; "no, no, I will not think of it! It would drive me mad!"

It was past midnight when Louis returned, and the light still burned in Mittie's chamber. The moment she heard his step on the flag-stones, she sprang to the window and opened it. The cold night air blew chill on her feverish and burning face, but she heeded it not.

"Louis," she said, "wait. I will come down and open the door."

"It is not fastened," he replied; "it is not likely that I am barred out also. Go to bed, Mittie--for Heaven's sake, go to bed."

But, throwing off her slippers, she flew down stairs, the carpet m.u.f.fling the sound of her footsteps, and met her brother on the threshold.

"Why will you do this, Mittie?" cried he, impatiently. "Do go back--I am cold and weary, and want to go to bed."

"Only tell me one thing--have you no message for me?"

"None."

"When does he go away?"