The Black Prophet Part 56

"But what on earth," said Mave, "could make you be so mad as to let her know anything of that kind?"

"Why, she sent me to get word," replied the simple creature, "and you wouldn't have me tell her a lie, an' the poor girl on her death-bed, I'm afeard."

Her mother went over and stood opposite where she lay, that is, near the foot of her bed, and putting one hand under her chin, looked at her long and steadily. Mave went to her side and taking her hand gently up, kissed it, and wept quietly, but bitterly.

It was, indeed, impossible to look upon her without a feeling of deep and extraordinary interest. Her singularly youthful aspect--her surprising beauty, to which disease and suffering had given a character of purity and tenderness almost etherial--the natural symmetry and elegance of her very arms and hands--the wonderful whiteness of her skin, which contrasted so strikingly with the raven black of her glossy hair, and the soul of thought and feeling which lay obviously expressed by the long silken eye-lashes of her closed eyes--all, when taken in at a glance, were calculated to impress a beholder with love, and sympathy, and tenderness, such as no human heart could resist.

Mave, on glancing at her mother, saw a few tears stealing, as it were, down her cheeks.

"I wish to G.o.d, my dear daughter," exclaimed the latter, in a low voice, "that I had never seen your face, lovely as it is, an' it surely would be betther for yourself that you had never been born."

She then pa.s.sed to the bed-side, and taking Mave's place, who withdrew, she stooped down, and placing her lips upon Sarah's white broad forehead, exclaimed--"May G.o.d bless you, my dear daughter, is the heart-felt prayer of your unhappy mother!"

Sarah suddenly opened her eyes, and started.--"What is wrong? There is something wrong. Didn't I hear some one callin' me daughter? Here's a strange woman--Charley Hanlon's aunt--Biddy, come here!"

"Well, acushla, here I am--keep yourself quiet, achora--what is it?"

"Didn't you tell me that my mother swore my father's life away?"

"It's what they say," replied the matter-of-fact nurse.

"Then it's a lie that's come from h.e.l.l itself," she replied--"Oh, if I was only up and strong as I was, let me see the man or woman that durst say so. My mother! to become unnatural and treacherous, an' I have a mother--ha, ha--oh, how often have I thought of this--thought of what a girl I would be if I was to have a mother--how good I would be too--how kind to her--how I would love her, an' how she would love me, an' then my heart would sink when I'd think of home--ay, an' when Nelly would spake cruelly an' harshly to me I'd feel as if I could kill her, or any one."

Her eye here caught Mave Sullivan's, and she again started.

"What is this?" she exclaimed; "am I still in the shed? Mave Sullivan!--help me up, Biddy."

"I am here, dear Sarah," replied the gentle girl--"I am here; keep yourself quiet and don't attempt to sit up; you're not able to do it."

The composed and serene aspect of Mave, and the kind, touching tones of her voice, seemed to operate favorably upon her, and to aid her in collecting her confused and scattered thoughts into something like order.

"Oh, dear Mave," said she, "what is this? What has happened? Isn't there something wrong? I'm confused. Have I a mother? Have I a livin' mother, that will love me?"

Her large eyes suddenly sparkled with singular animation as she asked the last question, and Mave thought it was the most appropriate moment to make the mother known to her.

"You have, dear Sarah, an' here she is waitin' to clasp you to her heart, an' give you her blessin'."

"Where?" she exclaimed, starting up in her bed, as if in full health; "my mother! where?--where?"

She held her arms out towards her, for Mave had again a.s.sumed the mother's station at her bedside, and the latter stood at a little distance. On seeing her daughter's arms widely extended towards her, she approached her, but whether checked by Sarah's allusion to her conduct, or from a wish to spare her excitement, or from some natural coldness of disposition, it is difficult to say, she did it with so little appearance of the eager enthusiasm that the heart of the latter expected, and with a manner so singularly cool and unexcited, that Sarah, whose feelings were always decisive and rapid as lightning, had time to recognize her features as Hanlon's aunt whom she had seen and talked to before.

But that was not all; she perceived not in her these external manifestations of strong affection and natural tenderness for which her own heart yearned almost convulsively; there was no sparkling glance--no precipitate emotion--no gus.h.i.+ng of tears--no mother's love--in short, nothing of what her n.o.ble and loving spirit could, recognize as kindred to itself, and to her warm and impulsive heart. The moment--the glance--that sought and found not what it looked for--were decisive: the arms that had been extended remained extended still, but the spirit of that att.i.tude was changed, as was that eager and tumultuous delight which had just flashed from her countenance. Her thoughts, as we said, were quick, and in almost a moment's time she appeared to be altogether a different individual.

"Stop!" she exclaimed, now repelling instead of soliciting the embrace--"there isn't the love of a mother in that woman's heart--an'

what did I hear?--that she swore my father's life away--her husband's life away. No, no; I'm changed--I see my father's blood, shed by her, too, his own wife! Look at her features, they're hard and harsh--there's no love in her eyes--they're cowld and sevare. No, no; there's something wrong there--I feel that--I feel it--it's here--the feelin's in my heart--oh, what a dark hour this is! You were right, Biddy, you brought me black news this day--but it won't--it won't throuble me long--it won't trouble this poor brain long--it won't pierce this poor heart long--I hope not. Oh!" she exclaimed, turning to Mave, and extending her arms towards her, "Mave Sullivan, let me die!"

The affectionate but disappointed girl had all Mave's sympathies, whose warm and affectionate feelings recoiled from the coldness and apparent want of natural tenderness which characterized the mother's manner, under circ.u.mstances in themselves so affecting. Still, after having soothed Sarah for a few minutes, and placed her head once more upon the pillow, she whispered to the mother, who seemed to think more than to feel:

"Don't be surprised; when you consider the state she's in--and indeed it isn't to be wondered at after what she has heard--you must make every allowance for the poor girl."

Sarah's emotions were now evidently in incessant play.

"Biddy," said she, "come here again; help me up."

"Dear Sarah," said Mave, "you are not able to bear all this; if you could compose yourself an' forget everything unpleasant for a while, till you grow strong--"

"If I could forget that my mother has no heart to love me with--that she's cowld and strange to me: if I could forget that she's brought my father to a shameful death--my father's heart wasn't altogether bad; no, an' he was wanst--I mane in his early life--a good man. I know that--I feel that--'dear Sarah, sleep--deep, dear Sarah'--no, bad as he is, there was a thousand times more love and nature in the voice that spoke them words than in a hundred women like my mother, that hasn't yet kissed my lips. Biddy, come here, I say--here--lift me up again."

There was such energy, and fire, and command, in her voice and words now, that Mave could not remonstrate any longer, nor the nurse refuse to obey her. When she was once more placed sitting, she looked about her--

"Mother," she said, "come here!"

And as she p.r.o.nounced the word mother, a trait so beautiful, so exquisite, so natural, and so pathetic, accompanied it, that Mave once more wept. Her voice, in uttering the word, quivered, and softened into tenderness, with the affection which nature itself seems to have a.s.sociated with it. Sarah herself remarked this, even in the anguish of the moment.

"My very heart knows and loves the word," she said. "Oh! why is it that I am to suffer this? Is it possible that the empty name is all that's left me afther all? Mother, come here--I am pleadin' for my father now--you pleaded against him, but I always took the weakest side--here is G.o.d now among us--you must stand before him--look your daughter in the face--an' answer her as you expect to meet G.o.d, when you leave this throubled life--truth--truth now, mother, an' nothin' else. Mother, I am dyin'. Now, as G.o.d is to judge you, did you ever love my father as a wife ought?"

There was some irresistible spirit, some unaccountable power, in her manner and language,--such command and such wonderful love of candor in her full dark eye--that it was impossible to gainsay or withstand her.

"I will spake the thruth," replied her mother, evidently borne away and subdued, "although it's against myself--to my shame an' to my sorrow I say it--that when I married your father, another man had my affections--but, as I'm to appear before G.o.d, I never wronged him. I don't know how it is that you've made me confess it; but at any rate you're the first that ever wrung it out o' me."

"That will do," replied her daughter, calmly; "that sounds like murdher from a mother's lips! Lay me down now, Biddy."

Mave, who had scarcely ever taken her eyes from off her varying and busy features, was now struck by a singular change which she observed come over them--a change that was nothing but the shadow of death, and cannot be described.

"Sarah!" she exclaimed; "dear, darling Sarah, what is the matter with you? Have you got ill again?"

"Oh! my child!" exclaimed her mother--"am I to lose you this way at last? Oh! dear Sarah, forgive me--I'm you mother, and you'll forgive me."

"Mave," said Sarah, "take this--I remember seein' yours and mine together not very long ago--take this lock of my hair--I think you'll get a pair of scissors on the corner of the shelf--cut it off with your own hands--let it be sent to my father--an' when he's dyin' a disgraceful death, let him wear it next his heart--an' wherever he's to be buried, let him have this buried with him. Let whoever will give it to him, say that it comes from Sarah--an' that, if she was able, she would be with him through shame, an' disgrace, an' death; that she'd support him as well as she could in his trouble--that she'd scorn the world for him--an' that because he said wanst in his life that he loved her; she'd forgive him all a thousand times, an' would lay down her life for him."

"You would do that, my n.o.ble girl!" exclaimed Mave, with a choking voice.

"An' above all things," proceeded Sarah, "let him be told, if it can be done, that Sarah said to him to die without fear--to bear it up like a man, an' not like a coward--to look manfully about him on the very scaffold--an'--an' to die as a man ought to die--bravely an' without fear--bravely an' without fear!"

Her voice and strength were, since the last change that Mave observed, both rapidly sinking, and her mother, anxious, if possible, to have her forgiveness, again approached her and said:

"Dear Sarah you are angry with me. Oh! forgive me--am I not your mother?"

The girl's resentments, however, had all pa.s.sed, and the business of her life, and its functions, she now felt were all over--she said so--

"It's all over, at last now, mother," she replied--"I have no anger now--come and kiss me. Whatever you have done, you are still my mother.

Bless me--bless your daughter Sarah, I have nothing now in my heart but love for everybody. Tell Nelly, dear Mave, that Sarah forgave her, an'

hoped that she'd forgive Sarah. Mave, I trust that you an' he will be happy--that's my last wish, an' tell him so. Mave, there's sweet faces about me, sich as I seen in the shed; they're smilin' upon me--smilin'

upon Sarah--upon poor, hasty Sarah McGowan--that would have loved every one. Mave, think of me sometimes--an' let him, when he thinks of the wild girl that loved him, look upon you, dearest Mave, an' love you, if possible, better for her sake. These sweet faces are about me again.

Father, I'll be before you--die--die like a man."

While uttering these last few sentences, which were spoken with great difficulty, she began to pull the bedclothes about with her hands, and whilst uttering the last word, her beautiful hand was slightly clenched, as if helping out a sentiment so completely in accordance with her brave spirit. These motions, however, ceased suddenly--she heaved a deep sigh, and the troubled spirit of the kind, the generous, the erring, but affectionate Sarah M'Gowan--as we shall call her still--pa.s.sed away to another, and, we trust, a better life. The storms of her heart and brain were at rest forever.

Thus perished in early life one of those creatures, that sometimes seem as if they were placed by mistake in a wrong sphere of existence. It is impossible to say to what a height of moral grandeur and true greatness, culture and education might have elevated, her, or to say with what brilliancy her virtues might have shone, had heart and affections been properly cultivated. Like some beautiful and luxuriant flower, however, she was permitted to run into wildness and disorder for want of a guiding hand; but no want, no absence of training, could ever destroy its natural delicacy, nor prevent its fragrance from smelling sweet, even in the neglected situation where it was left to pine and die.