"What a noble forest!" cried Annie, as she gazed with rapturous admiration on a noble specimen of the engraver's art—so noble, indeed, that the absence of color seemed hardly to be felt. It was a richly-wooded scene, with interesting figures forming a procession in the centre and foreground of the landscape. The original might have been painted by RuysdaËl. "Those old oaks," she exclaimed, "with their gnarled and crooked branches, look as though they might have formed part of the Druidical groves whose solemn mysteries inspired even the arrogant Roman with awe. This picture, however, belongs to a later period—that of the Crusades, perhaps, for here is a procession in which appear figures in the long robe of the monk, and I think I can discern a cross on that banner borne at their head. But what, dear Aunt Nancy, could you possibly find in our land of yesterday, to associate with such a scene?"
"Our people may be of yesterday, Annie, but our land bears no marks of recent origin. The most arrogant boaster of the Old World may feel himself humbled as he stands within the shadow of our forests, and looks up to trees which we might almost fancy to have waved over the heads of 'the patriarchs of an infant world?'"
"And you have seen some such forests, and on the branches of these old trees 'hangs a tale' which you will tell us. Is it not so, Aunt Nancy?""I have seen such a forest, and I have a sketch of certain events occurring within its circle. The narrative was given me by my friend, Mrs. H., who was acquainted with the parties. You will find it in her handwriting in the compartment of my desk from which you took the engraving."
Annie found the paper, and I saw a quiet smile pass around as she read aloud its title. Mr. Arlington, at my request, took the reader's place, and we spent our evening in listening to
It is an almost universal belief among those who have faith in man's immortality, that when his spiritual nature has been divested of its present veil—the bodily organization by which it at pleasure reveals or conceals itself—it shall be manifested to all at a glance in the unsullied beauty of holiness, or the dark deformity of vice. Shall our vision extend further? Shall we read the soul's past history? Shall we know the struggles which have given strength to its powers? The fears which have shadowed, and the hopes which have lighted, its earthly path? Shall we learn the unspoken sacrifices which have been laid on the altar of its affections or its duty? Shall we see how a single generous impulse has shaped the whole course of its being, and been as a heavenly flame, to which every selfish desire and feeling have been committed in noiseless devotion? If this be so, how many such records shall be furnished by the life of woman? How often shall it be found, that from such a flame has risen the light with which she has brightened the existence of others!
Meeta Werner was the daughter of industrious, honest Germans, who had emigrated to the western part of Pennsylvania when she was a child of only seven years old. Only a quarter of a mile from the spot on which Carl Werner had fixed his residence lived a brother German, Franz Rainer. Franz was a widower, with one child, a son, named Ernest. He was a hard, stern man, and the first smiles which had lighted the existence of the young Ernest were caught from the sprightly Meeta and her kind-hearted mother. The children became playfellows and friends. It was a wild country in which they lived. A very short walk from their own doors brought them into a forest which seemed to their young imaginations endless; where gigantic trees interlaced their branches, and with their green foliage shut out the sun in summer, or in winter reflected it in dazzling brightness, and a thousand gorgeous colors, from the icicles which cased their leafless branches and pendent twigs. There was not a footpath, a sunny hill or flowery dell, for miles around their homes, which had not been trodden together by Meeta Werner and Ernest Rainer before their acquaintance was a year old. Now they would come home laden with wood-flowers, and now they might be seen treading wearily back from some distant spot, with baskets filled with blackberries, or with the dark-blue whortleberries. There were no schools in the neighborhood, but they had been taught by their fathers to read and write their own language, and Ernest afterwards acquired some knowledge of English from the good pastor who had accompanied the emigrants from Germany, and who acted as their interpreter when they required one. Having access to few books, they seemed likely to grow up with little more learning than might be gathered from their own observation of the world around them; but when Ernest was eighteen and Meeta fifteen years of age, circumstances occurred which gave an entirely new coloring to their lives.
Franz Rainer had not always been so stern and hard as he now seemed. He had married imprudently, in the world's acceptation of that term; that is, he had made a portionless but lovely girl his wife, and in doing so had incurred his father's lasting displeasure. He had been banished from a home of plenty with a small sum, "to keep him from starving," he was told. With that sum and a young delicate wife he sailed for America, and found a home for himself and his boy, and a grave for his wife, in the forests of Pennsylvania. Too proud to seek a reconciliation with those who had cast him off, he had held no communication with his own family after leaving Germany; and it was not till Ernest was, as we have said, eighteen, that the silence of his home was broken by what seemed a voice from the past. After many hindrances and delays, and passing through many hands for which it had not been intended, a letter reached him from a merchant in Philadelphia, who had been requested to institute a search for Franz by his only brother. The old Rainer was dead, and the family estate had descended to this brother, a scholar and a man of solitary habits. Finding himself growing old in a lonely home, and retaining some kindly memory of the brother in whose companionship his childhood had been passed, he wished him to return to Germany, and again dwell with them in the house of their fathers. To this Franz would by no means consent. His nature was cast in too stern a mould to re-knit at a word the ties which had been so violently sundered. He consented, however, after some correspondence with his brother, to send Ernest to Germany, to be educated there; at least, to receive such an education as could be gained in four years; for he insisted that at the end of that time he should return to America, and remain there while his father lived. "After my death, if he choose to return to the home from which his father was banished, he may," wrote the still resentful Franz.
And how was this change in all the prospects of his life received by the young Ernest and his companion Meeta? By him with mingled feelings; regret, joy, fear, hope, by turns ruled his soul. The regret was all for Meeta and her mother; they were the sources of all his pleasant memories; and as he gazed upon Meeta's hitherto bright face, now clouded with sorrow, and kissed from her cheek the first tears he had ever known her to shed for herself, he was ready to give up all his fair prospects abroad and live with her for ever. Meeta herself, however, gave a new direction to his thoughts, by generously turning from the subject of her grief in parting, to dwell on the idea of the delight with which they would meet again, and especially on her peculiar pleasure in seeing Ernest come back "riding in a grand coach, with servants following him on horseback, as she remembered to have seen in Germany, and knowing enough to teach Parson Schmidt himself!" After listening to such prophecies, Ernest no longer expressed any desire to remain with Meeta; he contented himself, instead, with promising to return as soon as he could, and with winning from her a promise that, come when he might, she would be his wife. This was not a new thought or a new word to either. They could scarcely tell themselves when the idea had first arisen in their minds that they would one day live together, and be what Carl Werner and his wife were to each other. They had even chosen a site for their house; and Ernest had more than once of late expressed the opinion that they were old enough to inform their parents of their intentions; but the more timid Meeta objected. Now, however, she could refuse Ernest nothing, and before the day of parting came they had made a confidante of Meeta's mother, and from her the two fathers had learned the desires of their children. Carl Werner heard the story with a smile; but a denser shadow gathered on the dark brow of Franz. For a moment something of his father's pride was in his heart; but his own blighted life arose before him, and he said, "The boy may do as he pleases. No man has a right to control another on such a subject."
The sun had not yet risen, though its rays were gilding the few light clouds that flecked the eastern sky, when Meeta and Ernest stood together beneath an old oak which had long been their favorite "trysting-tree," to say those words and give and receive those last looks which are among life's most sacred treasures. Smiles and blushes mingled with tears on Meeta's cheek as Ernest pressed her to his bosom, kissed her again and again, and promised that his first letter from Germany should be addressed to her, and that in exactly four years from that date he would be again beneath that tree, to claim her promise to be his for ever. The voice of Carl Werner, who was to accompany Ernest the first stage of his journey, startled them in the midst of their adieus; and bursting from the arms of her companion, Meeta plunged deeper into the woods to escape her father's eye. When Carl returned in the evening he handed her a small parcel, saying, "There's some foolery that Ernest bought for you, Meeta. Silly boy! I hope they'll teach him in Germany to take better care of his money!"
The parcel contained a very plain locket, with one of Ernest's dark curls inclosed in it. Plain as it was, it seemed to Meeta, as it probably had seemed to Ernest, a magnificent present; yet she valued more the few simple words written on the paper which enveloped it: "For Meeta, my promised wife." Four months passed away before Meeta heard again of her lover. Then there came a letter to her, which was full of the great cities through which Ernest had passed, the home to which he had come, and the new life which was opening to him there. In his descriptions his uncle seemed a very grand gentleman, and his uncle's housekeeper almost as grand a lady. He told of the new wardrobe which had been provided for him, the acquaintances to whom he had been introduced, and the studies he had commenced. And in all this Meeta saw but the first step towards that grandeur which she had predicted for him, and she rejoiced.
Four or five such letters were received by Meeta, each full of her lover himself; but they came at lengthening intervals, and during the third year she received from him only messages sent through his father, though every message still conveyed a promise to write soon. The letters of Ernest showed that he had made great advances in scholarship during his residence in Germany, and to all but Meeta herself, and perhaps her mother, they gave equal evidence that his heart was not with the home or the friends he had left in America. But no shadow ever passed over the transparent face of Meeta. Ernest was to her still the frank, ardent, simple-hearted boy whom she had loved so long and so truly. She was still his promised wife. Her quick sensibility to all which touched him made her feel that there was a change in the tone with which her father named him, and an expression, half of anger, half of pity, on his face when she alluded to him. It was an expression which gave her pain, though she did not understand its meaning; and she ceased to speak of Ernest, lest she should call it up; but his locket lay next her heart, his letters were well-nigh worn away with frequent reading, and no day passed in which she did not visit the oak beneath which they had parted, and beneath which she fondly believed they were to meet again.
During the fourth year of Ernest's absence his letters to his father became more frequent, and sometimes inclosed a few lines to Meeta. To both he expressed a strong desire to stay one more year abroad, alleging that to interrupt his studies now would be to render all his past labors unavailing. There was hardly a struggle in Meeta's mind in yielding her almost matured hopes to what seemed so reasonable a wish of Ernest; but the elder Rainer was not so easily won to compliance. Urgent representations from his brother as well as Ernest, did at length, however, induce him to consent to the absence of his son for another year.
This was an important year to Meeta. It brought her an acquaintance through whom her dormant intellect was aroused, and her manners fitted for something more than the rude life by which she had been hitherto surrounded. This was Mrs. Schwartz, the wife of a young pastor, who had come to assist Mr. Schmidt in those duties to which his advancing years rendered him unequal. Mrs. Schwartz was a woman of no ordinary stamp. Highly educated, with an intense enjoyment of every form of beauty and grace, she saw something of them embellishing the homeliest employments and most common life with which a sentiment of duty was connected. Severe illness had confined her to her bed for many weeks soon after her arrival, and before she had been able to establish that perfect domestic economy, which renders the daily and hourly inspection and interference of the mistress of a mansion needless to the comfort of its inmates. During this period, Meeta, whose sympathies had been deeply interested in the stranger, nursed her, and planned for her, and worked for her, until she made herself a place in her heart among her life-friends. As Mrs. Schwartz saw her moving around her with such busy kindness, the thought often arose in her mind, "What can I do for her?" This is a question we seldom ask ourselves of any one sincerely without finding an answer to it.
We have said that Meeta had access to few books in early life; we might have added that she had little opportunity of hearing the conversation of persons more cultivated than herself. Thus were the two great sources of intellectual development sealed to her. She had a thoughtful, earnest mind. She loved the beautiful world around her, and the Great Being who made and sustained that world. But if the contemplation of these things awakened thoughts of a higher character than the daily baking and brewing, milking and scrubbing in her father's house, she had no language in which to clothe them, and vague and undefined, they fleeted away like the morning mists, leaving no impress of their presence. Her acquaintance with Mrs. Schwartz, and the conversation she sometimes heard between her and her husband, gave to these shadows substance and form, and awakened a new want in Meeta's soul—the want of knowledge. As in all else, Ernest was present in this. He would doubtless be intelligent, wise, like Mr. Schwartz, and how could she be his companion? Something of these new experiences in Meeta was divined by Mrs. Schwartz, and with a true womanly tact she became her teacher without wounding her self-love. The road to knowledge once opened to Meeta, her advance on it was rapid. How could it be otherwise, when every step was bringing her nearer to Earnest! The elevation and refinement of mind which Meeta thus acquired impressed themselves on her agreeable features. Her dark eyes became bright with the soul's light, and her whole aspect so attractive, that her old friends exclaimed, as they looked upon her, "How handsome Meeta Werner grows, she who used to be so plain!"
After a time these superficial observers thought they had found the cause of this change in Meeta's change of costume, for a new sense of beauty had been awakened in her, under whose guidance her dark hair was brought in soft silken braids upon her cheeks, wound gracefully around her well-shaped head, and sometimes ornamented with a ribbon or a cluster of wild flowers: while her dresses where remodelled so as to resemble less the fashion which her mother and her sister emigrants had imported thirteen years before from Germany, and to give a more natural air to her really fine figure.
"How wonderfully Meeta has improved," said Mr. Schwartz, one evening to his wife, as he looked after the retreating form of her friend.
"Yes, and I am truly rejoiced that she has so improved before her lover returns to claim her."
"I wish he could have taken away with him such an impression as our handsome and intelligent Meeta would now make. He would have been much more likely to remain constant to her. There must be a painful contrast between the cultivated and graceful women he has known in Germany, and his memory of his early love."
"Love is a great embellisher," said Mrs. Schwartz, with a gay smile, and the conversation passed to more general topics.
The fifth year of Ernest's absence was gone, and still he came not; but he was coming soon, at least so his father said, though he did not show Meeta the letters on which he founded his assertion. It was the first time he had withheld them; a circumstance the more remarkable, because of late he seemed to regard Meeta with greater affection and confidence than he had ever done before. He now sought her society, and seemed pleased and even proud of the connection to which he had at first consented with some reluctance. It was very soon after the reception of the letter from Ernest to which we have alluded, that Franz Rainer's health began to fail, and that so rapidly, that Meeta feared Ernest could not arrive in time to see him. She was to the old man an angel of consolation, and he clung to her as to his last hope. In pity to his lonely condition, her own parents were willing to spare her for a time, and Meeta, that she might take care of him by night as well as by day, had removed to his house a week before Ernest's arrival. He came not wholly unwarned of the sorrow that awaited him, for he had found a letter from Meeta at the house of the merchant in Philadelphia through whom he had corresponded with his father, tenderly yet plainly revealing her fears, and urging him to hurry homeward without delay. He travelled with little rest or refreshment for two days and nights, and arrived late on the third day at his father's house. It was a still summer evening, and while the old man slept, Meeta sat near him in the only parlor the house afforded, reading by a shaded night lamp. She heard the sound of carriage wheels, and paused to listen; the sound ceased; a shadow darkened the moonlight which had been streaming through an open window, and then Ernest, the playfellow of her childhood, the lover of her youth, stood before her; but how changed, how gloriously changed thought Meeta, even in that hour of hurry and agitation. They gazed on each other in silence for a moment, and then Meeta with a bright smile, yet in a whisper, for even then she forgot not the dying man, asked:
"Do you not know me, Ernest?"
"Meeta!" he ejaculated, as he took the hand she extended to him, but dropping it almost immediately, he said anxiously: "My father! he lives, Meeta?"
"He does, Ernest, and may live, I think will live, for many days yet."
"Thank God! then I shall see him again!"
The conversation had till now been in whispers, but Ernest uttered his ejaculation of thankfulness aloud. There was a movement in the old man's room, a sound, and Meeta glided to his side.
"Who were you talking with, my daughter?" he murmured feebly. For many days Franz Rainer had called Meeta daughter, as though he found pleasure in recalling the tie between them.
"With one who tells me Ernest has arrived, and will see you soon," said Meeta.
"It is Ernest himself. I knew his voice: Ernest, my son!" And the old man's tones were loud and strong, as Meeta had heard them for days. In another moment, Ernest was bending over his father, and they were gazing on each other with a tenderness whose very existence they had not before suspected. Tears were rolling down the face of the once stern old man, as he pressed his son's hand again and again, and murmured blessings on him, and thanks to God for his safe return; and Ernest, as he marked the death-shadow on his father's brow, felt that a tie was tearing away which had been woven more intimately than he had supposed with his heart's fibres. The weeping Meeta composed herself that she might soothe them.
"Ernest, I cannot let you stay longer here; I am your father's nurse."
"My nurse, my daughter, my all, Ernest; your gift to me, my son, which, thank God! you have come in time to receive again from my hands. Take her to you, Ernest."
The old man held Meeta's hand clasped in his own towards his son, and Ernest touched it, but so slightly and with a hand so cold, that Meeta looked up in alarm. There was a beseeching expression in the eyes that met hers; a look which she did not understand, and yet on which she acted.
"Ernest," she said, "you are fatigued to death, and your father has been too much agitated already. Go, I pray you, for the present; I cannot leave your father, but you will find coffee and biscuits by the kitchen fire, and there is a bed prepared in your own room. Good-night; we shall meet again to-morrow," she added with a smile to the old man.
Ernest gave her a more cordial glance and pressure of the hand than she had yet received from him; told his father that he would only snatch an hour's sleep and be with him again, and left the room.
"Go with him, Meeta; you must have much to say."
"Nothing that we cannot say as well to-morrow. And now you must take another sleeping draught, for I see Ernest has carried off all the effect of your last."
Meeta spoke cheerfully, yet her heart was sad, she scarcely knew why. She would not think Ernest unkind, yet how different had been their meeting from that which fancy had so often sketched for her!Franz Rainer fell asleep, and again Meeta returned to the parlor. A lamp was still burning there, and by its dim light she saw the form of Ernest extended on a settee with his cloak and valise for his bed and pillow. At first she drew timidly back into the chamber, but as the slight noise she had made before perceiving him, had failed to disturb him, she felt assured that he slept soundly, and an irresistible desire arose in her heart to draw near him, and look at him more closely than she had yet ventured to do. She stood beside him; her heart bounded against the locket, his gift, which lay in its accustomed place, as she marked with a quick eye how the handsome but uncouth stripling had expanded into the man of noble proportions, whose features had, like her own, acquired a new character under the refining touch of intellect. Meeta looked on him till her eyes grew dim with tears pressed from a heart full of emotion, compounded of happy memories and glad hopes, shadowed by disappointment and saddened by doubt. Above all other feelings, however, rose the undying love which had "grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength." Suddenly, by an irrepressible impulse, she laid her hand softly on the dark locks of waving hair which clustered over his broad brow, and breathed in low, tender accents, "My Ernest!"
On leaving his father's room, Ernest had thrown himself on his hard couch, not to sleep, but to rest; and when slumber overpowered him, he had yielded to it unwillingly, and with the determination to be on the alert and ready to arise on the first summons. Sleep that comes thus, howsoever it may continue through other disturbing causes, rarely resists a touch, or the sound of our own name, and light as was Meeta's touch, and low as were her tones, Ernest was partially aroused by them. He stirred, and she would have retreated noiselessly from his side, but as his eyes unclosed, they fell upon her with an expression of such rapturous love as she had never seen in them before, and in an instant he had encircled her form with his arm, and drawn her to his bosom. In glad surprise she rested there a moment; it was but a moment.
"Sophie—my Sophie!" were the murmured words that met her ear, and gave her strength to burst from his embraces and glide rapidly, noiselessly back into the darkened chamber. There, sheltered by the darkness, she could see Ernest raise himself slowly up from his couch, look almost wildly around him, and then seemingly satisfied that he had only dreamed, sink back again to rest.
A dream it had indeed been to him; a shadow of the night; to Meeta a dark cloud, in whose gloom she was henceforth to walk for ever. Hours of conversation could not so fully have revealed the truth to Meeta as those simple words: "Sophie—my Sophie!" uttered by Ernest in such a tone of heart-worship. Ernest loved with all the fond idolatry which she had thought of late belonged not to man's affections; but he loved another. Jealousy; the bitter consciousness of her own slighted love; the memory of his vows; the crushing thought that she was nothing to him now; that while he had been the life of her life, another had filled his thoughts and ruled his being, created a wild tempest in her soul. All was still around her. The sick man, the tired Ernest slept; and without, not even the rustling of a leaf disturbed the repose of Nature. She seemed to herself the only living thing in the universe; and to her, life was torture. An hour passed in this still concentrated agony, and she could endure it no longer; she must be up and doing; she would wake Ernest; she would tell him the revelation she had made; upbraid him with her blighted life, and leave him. Let him send for his Sophie; what did she, the outcast, the rejected, there in his house?—why should she nurse his father? She arose and approached again the couch of Ernest; she was about to call to him, but she was arrested by the expression of agony in his face. His brow was contracted, and as she continued to gaze, low moans issued from his quivering lips. Ernest too was a sufferer; how that thought softened the hard, cold, icy crust that had been gathering around her heart! The bitterness of pride and jealousy gave place to tenderer emotions. Tears gathered in her eyes, and stealing softly back to her sheltered seat, she wept long and silently.
"In sorrow the angels are near;" and Meeta's heart was now full of sorrow, not of anger. Sad must her life ever be, but what of that, if Ernest could be happy? Perhaps he suffered for her; the good, true Ernest. It might be that only in dreams he had told his love to Sophie, bound to silence, painful silence, by his vows to her. She then could make him happy, and was not that her first desire? If it were not, her love was a low, selfish, unworthy love, and she would pray that it might be purified. She did pray, not as she would have done an hour before, to be taken out of the world, but that she might be made meet to do the will of her Father while in the world. She prayed for herself, for Ernest; and sweet peace stole into her heart, and before the morning light came, she had resolved not to leave the old man who loved her, during his few remaining days, yet not to keep Ernest in doubt of his own freedom. She was impatient that he should awake, and fell asleep imagining various modes of making her communication to him. Exhausted by mental agitation even more than by watching, she slept long and heavily. When she awoke, Ernest was shading the window at her side, through which the sun was shining brightly into the room. As she moved he looked at her kindly, and said:
"I am afraid I awoke you, Meeta, when I meant only to prolong your sleep by shutting out this light.""I have slept long enough," was all that Meeta could say. The old Rainer was awake, and dreading above all things some allusions from him to the supposed relations of Ernest and herself, she hastened from the room and busied herself in the preparation of breakfast. Having seen that meal placed upon the table, she returned to the sick room and begged that Ernest would pour out his own coffee, while she did some things that were essential to his father's comfort. She lingered till Ernest came to see whether he could take her place, and then, as the old man slept peacefully, and she could make no further excuse, she accompanied him back to the table. The breakfast, a mere form to Meeta at least, proceeded in silence, or with only a casual remark from Ernest, scarcely heard by her, on the weather, the rapidity with which he had travelled, or his father's condition. Suddenly Meeta seemed to arouse herself as from a deep reverie:
"Why do you not talk to me of Sophie?" she said, attempting to speak gayly, though one less embarrassed than Ernest could not have failed to note the tremulousness of her voice, and the quivering of the pallid lip which vainly strove to smile.
But Meeta's agitation was as nothing to that of Ernest. For a moment he gazed upon her as though spell-bound, then dropping his face into his clasped hands, sat actually shivering before her. It was plain that Ernest had not lightly estimated his obligations to her. If he had sinned against them he had not despised them, and this conviction gave new strength to Meeta. She rose for the hour superior to every selfish emotion. Laying her hand upon his arm, she said, gently:
"Be not so agitated, Ernest; can you not regard me as your friend, and talk to me as you did in old days of all that disturbs you; and why should you be disturbed at my speaking of—of your Sophie? You do not suppose that—you know that—in short, Ernest, we cannot be expected to feel now as we did five years ago; but surely that need not prevent our being friends."
Meeta had been herself too much confused of late, to remark her companion. When she now ventured with great effort to meet his eyes, she found them fixed upon her with an expression of lively admiration and grateful joy.
"Meeta, dear Meeta!" he exclaimed, seizing her hand and kissing it. "You give me new life. I have been a miserable man for weeks past, torn by conflicting claims upon my heart and my honor. You had claims on both, Meeta; sacred claims, which I could never have asked you to forego; and so had Sophie, for though I resisted long, there came a moment of mad passion, of madder forgetfulness, in which, abandoning myself to the present, I sought and obtained an avowal of her love. It was scarcely over ere I felt the wrong I had done. I revealed that wrong to her; pity me, Meeta! I told her all—your claims, your worth. To you I resolved to be equally frank, and my only hope was in your generosity. But my father had never suffered me to doubt that your heart was still mine, and though I was assured that you would enable me to fulfil my obligations to Sophie, I feared, I mean, I could not hope, that it would be without any sacrifice; I mean without any regrets on your part."
Ernest paused in some embarrassment; but Meeta could not speak, and he resumed:
"You have made me perfectly happy, Meeta, which even Sophie could not have done, had I been compelled in devoting myself to her to relinquish the friend and sister of my childhood."
"Always regard me thus, Ernest, as your friend and sister, and I shall be satisfied."
Meeta had risen to return to the sick room, but Ernest caught her hand and held her back, while he said:"But you must see my Sophie, Meeta; you must know her and then you will love her too. She will be here soon with her sister, Mrs. Schwartz."
"Mrs. Schwartz her sister? Then my last doubt is removed Ernest. She is worthy of you."
"Worthy of me!" And Ernest would have run into all a lover's rhapsodies on this text, but Meeta had escaped from him.
Hitherto Meeta's life had been one of quietness, of inaction, and now in a few short weeks ages of active existence seemed crowded. One object she had set before her as the great aim of her life; it was to secure Ernest's happiness and preserve his honor. She understood now the coldness with which her father had of late named him. It was essential to her peace that this coldness should not deepen into anger. Not even in her own family then must she have rest from the strife between her inner and her outer life. Sympathy she must not have, since sympathy with her was almost inseparably connected with reproach of Ernest. Time had another lesson to teach, and Meeta soon learned it; that in a combat such as she had to sustain, no half-way measures would suffice, that she must not drive her griefs down to the depths of her heart, shutting them there from every human eye, but she must drive them out of her heart. We talk of feigning cheerfulness, of wearing a mask for the world and throwing it off in solitude, and we may do this for a week, a month, a year, but those who have a life-grief to sustain, from whose hearts hope has died out, know that there are only two paths open to them in the universe; to lie down in their despair and breathe out their souls in murmurs against their God, and lamentations over their destiny; or, humbly kissing the rod which has smitten them, to go forth out of themselves, where all is darkness and woe, and find a new and happier life in living for and in others. And thus did Meeta.We may not linger over the details of the next few weeks of her existence. The old Rainer died; died blessing his children, Ernest and Meeta, and praying for their happiness. Often would Ernest have told him all; but Meeta kept back a disclosure which would have given him pain. "Do not disturb him now, Ernest," she said; "he will know all soon, and bless your Sophie from heaven, where there is no sorrow."
Meeta returned home, and exhaustion won for her a few days rest; rest even from her mental struggles; but when the funeral was over, and things returned to their usual routine, she felt that she must prepare her father and mother to receive Ernest in the character in which they were henceforth to regard him. She found strength for this in her lofty purpose and her simple dependence upon Heaven, and her voice did not falter nor her color change as she said to her mother:—
"Do you not think Ernest is much altered?"
"Yes, he is greatly improved."
"Improved! Well, he may be so to the eyes of others, but—"
"Is he not as tender to you, my daughter?" asked the sensitive mother.
"That is not it," said Meeta, coloring for the first time: "we neither of us feel as we once did; it was a childish folly to suppose that we should. I have told Ernest that I could not fulfil our engagement, and he is satisfied."
Madame Werner looked long at her daughter, but Meeta met the glance firmly.
"And is this all, Meeta?"
"All! What more would you have, dear mother?"
"And are you happy, Meeta?"
"Happier than I should be in marrying Ernest now, dear mother."
Madame Werner explained all this to her husband, at her daughter's request. He was not grieved at it. "Ernest," he said, "had never valued Meeta as she deserved. He was glad she had shown so much spirit."
Meeta had a more difficult task to perform. Mrs. Schwartz's sister has come at last. She came from Germany at the same time with Ernest, but stopped to make a visit to another sister in Philadelphia, and arrived here only last night. "I will go and see her," said Meeta one morning to Madame Werner. She went. As she approached the house, there came through the open windows the sound of an organ, accompanied by a rich and highly cultivated voice. Meeta would not pause for a moment, lest she should grow nervous. It was essential to Ernest's happiness that Sophie should be friendly with her; and the difficulties were of a nature which, if not overcome at once, would not be overcome at all. Meeta entered the small parlor without knocking, and found herself tÊte-À-tÊte with the musician; a young, fair girl, delicately formed, with beautiful hands and arms, and pleasing, pretty face. As she saw the visitor, her song ceased. Meeta smiled on her, and extending her hand, said: "You are Sophie—Ernest's Sophie?"
"And you," said the fair girl, with wondering eyes, "are—"
"Meeta."
This was an introduction which admitted no formality, and when Mrs. Schwartz entered half an hour later, she was surprised to find those so lately strangers conversing in the low and earnest tones which betoken confidence, while the lofty expression on the countenance of the one, and the moist eyes and flushed cheeks of the other, showed that their topic was one of no ordinary interest.
Six months passed rapidly away, and then Ernest felt that he might, without disrespect to his father's memory, bring home his bride. Their engagement had been known for some time, and had excited no little surprise; though perhaps less than the continued and close friendship between them and Meeta. Many improvements in Sophie's future home had been suggested by Meeta's taste, and Ernest had acquired such a habit of consulting her, that no day passed without an interview between them. At length the evening preceding the bridal-day had arrived, and Ernest and Sophie had gone to secure Meeta's promise to officiate as bridesmaid in the simple ceremony of the morrow. They were to be married at the parsonage, in the presence of a few witnesses only, and were immediately to set out on an excursion which would occupy several weeks. They had urged Meeta to accompany them, but she had declined. "But she cannot refuse to stand up with me—do you think she can?" said Sophie to her sister, as she prepared to accompany Ernest to Carl Werner's.
"I do not think she will refuse," Mrs. Schwartz replied.
"You do not think she will!" repeated Mr. Schwartz, in an accent of surprise, to his wife, when Ernest and Sophie had left them. "How does that consist with your idea of Meeta's love for Ernest?"
"It perfectly consists with a love like Meeta's; a love without any alloy of selfishness. Dear Meeta! how little is her nobleness appreciated! Even I dare not let her see that she is understood by me, lest I should wound her delicate and generous nature."
There was a pause, and then Mr. Schwartz said, hesitatingly, "If it be as you think, Meeta is a noble being; but——"
"If it be!" interrupted Mrs. Schwartz, with warmth. "Can you doubt it? Have you not seen the loftier character which her generous purpose has impressed upon her whole aspect? the elevation—I had almost said the inspiration, which beams from her face when Ernest and Sophia are present? Sophie is my sister, and I love her truly; yet I declare to you, at such times I have looked from her to Meeta, and wondered at what seemed to me Ernest's infatuation.""Sophie is fair, and delicate, and accomplished, the very personification of refinement, natural and acquired, and the antipodes of all which Ernest, ere he saw her, had begun to dread in the untaught Meeta of his memory. I am not surprised at all at his loving Sophie, but I cannot at all understand how the simple and single-hearted Meeta can feign so long and so well, as on your supposition she has done."
"Feign! Meeta feign! I never said or thought such a thing. A course of action lofty as Meeta's must have its foundation deep in the heart, in principles enduring as life itself. Had Meeta's been the commonplace feigned satisfaction with Ernest's conduct to which pride might have given birth, she would have been fitful in her moods; alternately gay or gloomy; generous and kind, or petulant and exacting. The serenity, the composure of countenance and manner which distinguish our Meeta, spring from a higher, purer source. It is the sweet submission of a chastened, loving spirit, which can say to its Father in Heaven:—
"A state of feeling to be preferred certainly to the gratification of any earthly affection; but I scarcely see how it can accord with Meeta's continued love of Ernest."
"That is because you do not separate love from the selfish desires with which it is too generally accompanied. Meeta loves Ernest so truly, so entirely, that she cannot be said to yield her happiness to his, but rather to find it in his; his joy, his honor, are hers."
"And can woman feel thus?" asked Mr. Schwartz, as he looked with admiration upon his wife, her cheeks glowing and her eyes lighted with the enthusiasm of a spirit akin to Meeta's.
"There are many mysteries in woman which you have yet to fathom," said Mrs. Schwartz, with a smile.
To the good pastor and his wife, the next day, even Sophie was a less interesting object of contemplation than Meeta, who stood at her side. She was pale, very pale, and dressed with even more than usual simplicity; yet there was in her face so much of the soul's light, that she seemed to them beautiful. Her congratulations were offered in speechless emotion. The brotherly kiss which Ernest pressed upon her cheek called up no color there, nor disturbed the graceful stillness of her manner; and when Sophie, who had really become sincerely attached to her, threw herself into her arms, she returned her embrace with tenderness, whispering as she did so, "Make Ernest happy, Sophie, and I will love you always!"
And now what have we more to tell of Meeta? It cannot be denied that there were hours of darkness, in which the joyous hopes and memories of her youth rose up vividly before her, making her present life seem sad and lonely in contrast. But these visitors from the realm of shadows were neither evoked nor welcomed by Meeta. Resolutely she turned from the dead past, to the active, living present, determined that no shadow from her should darken the declining days of her father and mother. She is the light of their home, and often they bless the Providence which has left her with them. What would they have done without her cheerful voice to inspire them in bearing the burdens of advancing life?
But not only in her home was Meeta a consolation and a blessing. The poor, the sick, the sorrowing, knew ever where to find true sympathy and ready aid. She was the "Lady Bountiful" of her neighborhood. But there was one house where more especially her presence was welcomed; where no important step was taken without her advice; where sorrow was best soothed by her, and joy but half complete till she had shared it. This house was Ernest Rainer's. To him and Sophie she was a cherished sister, to whose upright and self-forgetting nature they looked up with a species of reverence; and to their children she was "Dear Aunt Meeta! the kindest and best friend, except mamma, in the world!"
How many more useful, more noble, or happier persons than our old maid can married life present? Is she not more worthy of imitation than the "Celias" and "Daphnes" whose delicate distresses have formed the staple of circulating libraries, or than those feeble spirits in real life, who, mistaking selfishness for sensibility, turn thanklessly from the blessings and coldly from the duties of life, because they have been denied the gratification of some cherished desire?
