So you especially enjoyed your stay at Florence,” said Isa, after the conversation had taken a less serious turn.
“I was very happy there; it was so beautiful, and we knew such very nice people. I should have liked to have stayed there much longer.”
“And why did you not remain there?” asked Isa. “Did not Sir Digby enjoy Florence too?”
“Very much indeed, until—until a lady came to stay there who spoilt all his pleasure in the place.”
“How was that?” said Isa.
“Why, the lady was witty; at least people said so; but if her kind of talking was wit, I wish that there were no such thing in the world. All her delight seemed to be to gossip and make her friends merry; and so long as they laughed, she did not much mind what they laughed at. You see,” continued Edith in a confidential tone, “her mother had lived in the Castle, and she talked a great deal about that. Now, of course, it was quite right and noble in papa to let strangers come here while we were away—and there had been difficulties, as you know—but he did not like its being talked about to every one.”
Isa could easily comprehend that her proud uncle had been very sensitive on the subject of the letting of his ancestral mansion.
“And then,” pursued Edith, “she mixed up what was true with what was not true; and how could strangers tell whether she spoke in jest or in earnest? She said that papa had been harsh and violent to his servants; and that was shamefully false!” exclaimed the girl, with a flush of indignation on the face usually so gentle and calm—“he had been only too indulgent and trustful. In short, this lady made Florence so unpleasant by her gossip, that papa could bear it no longer. He said that he would never willingly be for a day in the same city with Cora Madden.”
“Cora Madden!” repeated Isa, with a little start; and Edith, who had been looking up at her cousin, saw with surprise a stern, gloomy expression pass over her countenance like a shadow.
“Do you know Miss Madden?” inquired the baronet’s daughter.
“Do I know her?” repeated Isa slowly, with her hazel eyes bent on the ground. Then suddenly she raised them, as she uttered the abrupt question, “Edith, do you know what it is to hate?”
“Hate? no, not exactly,” replied the gentle girl; “but there are some persons whom I do not like at all—some with whom I feel angry at times. I was angry with Miss Madden one day when she was laughing at Mr. Eardley, and mimicking his manner. I thought her doing so was so silly, so wrong. Besides, rudeness to one’s friends tries one’s patience a great deal more than unkindness to one’s self.”
“Cora reminds me of the description of the wicked in the Psalms,” observed Isa—“‘They shoot out their arrows, even bitter words.’ She cares little where the darts alight, or how deep they may pierce.”
Edith, who had a very tender conscience, was very doubtful whether such an application of a text from Scripture was consistent with Christian charity. Without venturing, however, to reprove, she merely observed in her gentle tone, “I am sorry that I spoke of Cora at all. It was breaking a rule which I had made.”
“What is your rule?” asked Isa.
“Never to speak of those whom I cannot like, except to God,” replied Edith.
“And what do you say of them to God?”
“Oh, if I speak of them to God, I must speak for them,” answered little Edith; “I dare not do anything else, for the Lord has told us to love our enemies, and we could not bring malice into our prayers.”
“Yours is a good rule, darling,” said Isa, and she turned to imprint a kiss on the forehead of her cousin. “Let us speak no more of Cora Madden, and may God help us to obey the most difficult command contained in all the Bible!”
To explain why the command appeared such a hard one to the young maiden—why the very name of Cora called up bitter remembrances to her mind—it is needful that I should let the reader know something of the previous history of Isa Gritton.
Like her cousin Edith, Isa had early lost her mother, and had been the only daughter in her father’s home; but otherwise there had been little resemblance between the early childhood of the two. Edith, a crippled, suffering invalid, had been the unmurmuring victim of nursery oppression; and in her splendid mansion had had more to endure than many of the children of the poor. Isa, on the contrary, fondly tended by a devoted nurse, herself strong, vigorous, and full of spirits, had found her childhood flow pleasantly past, like a stream dimpling in sunshine and bordered with flowers. Isa had scarcely known what it was to feel weary, sick, or sad. Her father called her his little lark, made only to sing and to soar. She was beloved by all who knew the bright, playful child, and her affectionate nature disposed her to love all in return. The religion which was carefully instilled into Isa partook of the joyful character of her mind. Isa was troubled by no doubts and few fears. The thoughts of heaven and bliss which were suggested to her, were congenial to the spirit of the child. Isa looked forward to the joys of Paradise without letting imagination dwell either on the dark valley or “the narrow stream.” Her idea of death was simply a peaceful removal to a yet brighter and happier home.
There were some spiritual dangers attending this existence of ease and joy. The very sweetness of Isa’s disposition dimmed her perception of inward corruption. If she was tempted to make an idol of self, it was an idol so fair that she scarcely recognized it as one. Sometimes, indeed, Isa’s conscience would accuse her of vanity as she lingered before her mirror, surveying with girlish pleasure the smiling image within it, or recalled words of fond admiration, or committed some little extravagance in regard to dress, for Isa at that time had a weakness for dress. But the accusation was made in a whisper so soft, that it scarcely disturbed her serenity. It affected her conduct, however; for on the day when Isa first received a regular allowance of her own, she made on her knees a resolution which never was broken—not to spend money on the adornment of her person without devoting an equal sum to the relief of the poor. Thus early the love of God combated the love of the world; a bridle was placed upon vanity, which was still but a bridle of flowers; for Isa felt as much pleasure in helping the poor as in wearing a new robe, or in clasping the jewelled bracelet round her soft white arm.
Isa’s brightness of spirit did not pass away with childhood; it rather increased, as the bud expands into the perfect flower. But in life’s school Providence has appointed various teachers, and few of God’s children pass many years upon earth without coming under the discipline of disappointment, bereavement, and care. Isa was to know all three. The first came to her when the blooming girl felt herself at the very summit of earthly bliss, when a halo of happiness was thrown around every object near her. Isa believed herself to be the most blest of women in being beloved by Lionel Madden. Young and inexperienced as she was, Isa’s fancy invested her hero with every noble and sterling quality; she believed all that she desired, and the bright bubbles blown by hope glittered with all the prismatic tints of the rainbow. The bubble suddenly broke! Lionel became cold, alienated, shortly after the arrival of his sister, who seemed to have taken an instinctive dislike to Isa. What had been said against her Isa never exactly knew; but whatever poisoned shaft had destroyed her hopes, she knew that it came from the quiver of Cora. What marvel if bitter, resentful feelings arose towards the author of her deep, though hidden, anguish? As Isa’s gaiety was suddenly changed into gloom, so her kindly loving nature for awhile seemed altered into one sternly vindictive. Like Satan intruding in a paradise of peace, and blighting its flowers by his presence, hatred, and even a lurking desire for vengeance, suddenly arose in a soul which had previously appeared to be formed only for happiness and love.
CHANGED AFFECTION.
But had Cora really injured Isa? Nay; the malicious enemy had done more to shield the young maiden from misfortune than her most tender friend could have done. Cruel may be the hand which tears to pieces the half-formed nest which a bird is building on a hedge by the wayside, but it is well for the bird if it be thus constrained to choose a higher and safer bough. Lionel was unworthy of the affection of a faithful, confiding young heart. It was well for Isa that her bubble was broken, that her cherished hopes were scattered to the winds. She did not think so, she could not feel so; even Lionel’s very worldly marriage, which took place a few months afterwards, did not fully open her eyes to this truth. Isa deemed all that was unworthy in the conduct of young Madden the result of the influence of his sister; and regarded Cora not only as her own evil genius, but that of the man whom she had loved. Startled and alarmed by the fierce passions which, for the first time, struggled for the possession of her heart, Isa looked upon Cora as the cause not only of misery, but of sin also. Isa’s self-knowledge was deepened by trial, but it was a self-knowledge that mortified and pained her. She found that she was far from what she had hoped to become, from what the world believed her to be; she was no calm angel soaring above earth and its trials, but a weak tempted woman, who found it hard not to murmur, and almost impossible truly to forgive.
And yet Cora had been but an instrument in a higher Hand, and to Isa an instrument for good. We may praise God in another world even more for the malice of our bitter enemies, than for the tender love of our friends. Jacob’s paternal affection would have shielded his best-beloved son from every touch of misfortune; but it was the hatred of Joseph’s brethren, the malice of his false accuser, that led him—through the pit and the prison—to exaltation and to honour. Satan himself became, through God’s over-ruling goodness, an instrument of blessing to Job; his cruel assaults led to deeper experience in the man whom he sought to destroy, more close communion with God, and doubtless more exalted blessedness hereafter. No enemy, human or infernal, has power to do us aught but good, except by leading us into sin. Could we realize this, our wounded hearts might find it less difficult to forgive the wrongs which are “blessings in disguise.”
Not a year after the stroke of disappointment had fallen upon Isa, she had to endure that of sudden bereavement. A few—very few—days of anxious watching by a parent’s sick-bed, and Isa found herself fatherless as well as motherless in the world. Very heavy lay the burden of loneliness upon the young orphan’s heart. It is true that Isa had a half-brother yet living, but Gaspar was many years older than herself, and Isa had seen very little of him, as the greater part of his life had been passed in Jamaica. Still the affections of Isa clung fondly around the nearest relative left for her to love, especially as she knew her brother to be in broken health; and she resolved that to watch over him and minister to his comfort should be the object thenceforth of an existence from which all the brightness appeared to have departed.
Even with thoughts of Gaspar, however, were linked associations of mystery and pain. Isa had never imparted to any one a care which to her young spirit was more oppressive than sorrow itself. She had never told how, when the shadow of approaching dissolution lay on her father, when the delirium of fever had passed away, he had fixed his glazing eyes upon his daughter, at that midnight hour the sole watcher beside him. The dying man had seemed anxious to disburden himself of something that weighed on his mind; he struggled to speak, but his parched lips could scarcely frame articulate words. Isa strained her ear to catch the almost inaudible accents, bending down so low that she could feel the dying man’s breath on her cheek. A few scattered sentences were gathered, deeply imprinted on her memory by the solemnity of the time when they were uttered.
“Gaspar—you will be with him—something wrong—the Orissa—not her money lost—he should deal fairly by that orphan—tell him from me—” But whatever was the message intended, death silenced the lips that would have sent it, and Isa was left to ponder painfully over what could be “wrong,” and how Gaspar could have not “dealt fairly” by an orphan, at least in the opinion of his father.
The remembrance of these dying words, the dread of some painful explanation with Gaspar, alone threw a damp upon the earnest desire with which Isa looked forward to her only brother’s return to England. Her affectionate spirit yearned for the sympathy of one bound to her by the tie of blood, and she longed once more to possess a settled home. About a year after Mr. Gritton’s death, Gaspar arrived from Jamaica. Isa was at the time residing with a friend in London, and her brother took a lodging near her. Being a good deal occupied with business during the day, and too much an invalid to venture out in the evening, Gaspar did not see much of his sister,—far less than Isa desired. Her brother’s manner towards her was gentle and courteous, his kindness won her gratitude, his broken health her sympathy. Isa wished to devote herself to the care of her brother, but he preferred delaying the time when they should reside together in a settled home, until he should have built a house into which he could receive his young sister. During this period spent in London, Isa either found no opportunity of speaking to Gaspar on the subject of their father’s mysterious message, or she put off making the effort till a more quiet season, when her brother might have recovered his health. She could not bear to risk exciting him when he was so delicate, or offending him when he was so kind. Isa gladly availed herself of any excuse to delay the performance of a duty from which she intuitively shrank.
Isa felt grateful to her half-brother for selecting as the place of their future residence a spot near Castle Lestrange. She had paid many a delightful visit to her uncle’s lordly mansion, both before and after the death of his wife, and she deemed it a proof of Gaspar’s considerate affection for herself, that he should purchase a site for his house but a mile from the dwelling of those who were her relatives, but not his own. Isa could have wished, indeed, that it had not been on the Wildwaste side of the Castle, as memory recalled a flat expanse of common surrounding a miserable hamlet, and an unsightly manufactory; but she had not visited her uncle’s home for nearly six years, and many changes might have taken place during that period. Isa also encouraged herself with the thought that a little paradise might stand even in the midst of a barren heath, like an oasis in a desert; and that as Gaspar had chosen to build a house instead of buying one, it was evident that his was a taste which could not be satisfied by any ordinary attractions in a dwelling.
During the time when Gaspar was building, Isa never once saw her brother. He took a lodging above the single shop in Wildwaste, that he might superintend operations. He kept a sharp eye over the workmen who were brought from London, not suffering them, it was said, to mix with the cottagers around, or spend their evenings at the small county inn. There was no doubt that Gaspar Gritton was eccentric, and Isa was aware of the fact; but she was disposed to look at her only brother in the most favourable light, and persuaded herself that she rather liked a dash of eccentricity in a character; it redeemed it from being commonplace.
Isa was very impatient for the completion of her new home, and would, if permitted, have entered it before it was sufficiently dry to be a safe residence for her. Buoyant hope had again sprung up within her young heart, long cast down, but not crushed by affliction. Life might yet have joys in store for the bright girl. Isa would be, as she thought, everything to her brother; his nurse, companion, and friend. She would make his home a fairy dwelling, where everything on which the eye might rest should be graceful and pretty. Isa knew that her brother had sufficient means to procure every comfort; and though her own patrimony was but slender, she hoped, dispensing Gaspar’s alms, to become a benefactress to all the poor around them. Again the fairy bubble was glittering before Isa, and if its colours were now less splendid, and it rose to less lofty a height still the emblem of earthly hope was not without its beauty and brightness.
It was on a day in March that Isa joined her brother. She had enjoyed her journey by train; the sunshine had been brilliant, her companions agreeable, and her mind was full of pleasant expectation. Isa’s pleasure was damped by the little disappointment of not finding Gaspar ready to welcome her at the station. It was with a sensation of loneliness that she took her seat in a hired open conveyance to be driven to Wildwaste Lodge. The sunshine was now overclouded, a fierce north-east wind was blowing, from the chilling effects of which the young lady from London tried to protect herself in vain. The horse was lame, the drive seemed long.
“Are we far from Wildwaste Lodge?” asked Isa at last of the driver, as they skirted a dreary common of which she fancied that she could recognize some of the features.
“That be’s the house,” replied the man, pointing with his whip towards a narrow three-storied dwelling, looking staringly new, without sheltering shrubbery or even hedge, with no blinds to the windows, no porch to the door, nothing that could redeem its aspect from absolute vulgarity. Could this be the rural retreat to which Isa had given the name of home!
ISA’S ARRIVAL AT WILDWASTE.
Disheartened and chilled felt Isa as her conveyance passed through the wretched hamlet, where groups of untidy women and barefooted children stood staring at the unwonted apparition of anything in the shape of a carriage. She scarcely liked to look again at the house, as the lame horse stopped at the dark green door. Gaspar did not come forth to welcome her; he dared not face the cutting wind which had chilled his sister to the heart. Cold and numbed after her journey, Isa—when a deaf elderly woman had answered the knock—descended from the conveyance; herself saw her boxes carried into the narrow hall by the driver, paid the man and dismissed him, and then hastened into the parlour, where she found her brother. His reception, though not uncourteous, was by no means calculated to dispel the chill which had fallen on the spirits of Isa. Gaspar was so full of his own complaints that he had scarcely leisure to observe that his sister was tired and cold. After conversing with him for a while, Isa arose to explore the other apartments of the house. She suppressed a little sigh of disappointment as she ascended the uncarpeted stair.
The interior of Wildwaste Lodge was, if possible, more unattractive than its outward appearance. Gaspar had reserved the ground-floor for himself, and no one had a right to complain if in his own peculiar domain he preferred simplicity to ornament, and neglected the little elegancies which Isa deemed almost essential to comfort. But Isa was deeply mortified when she entered her own apartments, which were immediately over those of her brother, and found them furnished with a regard to economy which amounted to actual penuriousness. A few chairs, not one of which matched another, and which seemed to have been chosen at haphazard out of some broker’s shop; a table of painted wood, one of the legs of which did not touch the uncarpeted floor; and a shelf to serve as a bookcase: these formed the entire furniture of the young lady’s boudoir. There was not so much as a curtain to the window. Isa, weary and chilled after her journey, felt inclined to sit down and cry from mortification and disappointment. Little joy could she anticipate from a life to be passed with one who from the first showed such disregard for her pleasure and comfort.
Isa’s misgivings were painfully realized. There are some persons who are pleasing in society, agreeable when only met on casual occasions, with whom it is very annoying to be brought into closer contact. It is trying to the temper to transact business with them, still more trying to dwell under the same roof. The character of such persons seems to be made up of angles, that on every side chafe and annoy. A graphic writer[1] has humorously described them as unpruned trees. “Little odd habits, the rudiments of worse habits, need every now and then to be cut off and corrected. We should all grow very singular, ridiculous, and unamiable creatures, but for the pruning we have got from hands kind and unkind, from our earliest days.... Perhaps you have known a man who has lived for forty years alone; and you know what odd shoots he had sent out; what strange traits and habits he had acquired; what singular little ways he had got into. There had been no one at home to prune him, and the little shoots of eccentricity, of vanity, of vain self-estimation, that might have easily been cut off when they were green and soft, have now grown into rigidity.”
Mr. Gritton, from living much alone, had become a man of this kind. The most unsightly branch on the unpruned tree was that of penuriousness. Isa had had little opportunity of knowing her brother’s infirmity until, when she became a resident in his house, it affected her daily, her hourly, comfort. Herself generous and open-handed, fond of having the conveniences and elegancies of life around her, yet esteeming as the greatest of luxuries the power of giving freely to others, Isa could not understand, far less sympathize with, the love of money for money’s sake, which was the leading characteristic of Gaspar. It seemed to her so grovelling, so mean, that Isa had to struggle against emotions not only of irritation but of contempt. She was also deeply wounded to find that Gaspar’s affection for his only sister was so subordinate to his avarice. The young lady, accustomed to luxury and refinement, had the utmost difficulty in persuading her brother even to allow her to find an assistant to the ill-tempered elderly woman whom he had engaged as a general servant. Though Isa succeeded in gaining her point, Mr. Gritton would only give such wages as would be accepted by none but an inexperienced girl like Lottie Stone. The efforts which it cost Isa to carry out even this small domestic arrangement made her aware of another unpleasant fact—that Gaspar had a peevish, irritable temper, more trying to one residing constantly with him than a passionate one would have been. The dying charge of her father lay now like an oppressive weight upon the heart of poor Isa: her new insight into the character of Gaspar gave to their parent’s words a more forcible meaning, and she dreaded more and more the idea of being compelled by a sense of duty to open the subject to her brother.
The first weeks of Isa’s residence at her dreary home would have been weeks of positive misery, but for the cheering prospect of the speedy return of her uncle and cousin, and the comfort which she derived from the visits of the pastor of Axe, whose fatherly interest in her young servant had first led his steps to her dwelling. Smiling April came at last; and with it—more welcome to Isa than the nightingale’s song—Edith Lestrange returned to the Castle. It was now arranged that Isa should pass with her cousin a portion of each of those days on which an evening lecture should be held at the steward’s cottage, and return to Wildwaste in the baronet’s carriage at night. It was something to Isa to be thus sure of at least two pleasant days in the week; though the contrast between the refined elegance of Edith’s home and the dreary discomfort of her own, increased the sense of bitterness in the soul of Isa.
But that sense of bitterness seemed for a time to pass away, and domestic trials to be forgotten, when the cousins entered together the flower-covered porch of the dwelling of Holdich, to unite with their poorer brethren in the simple cottage service. Edith’s heart was overflowing with thankful delight at being permitted again to worship in that place where some of her earliest impressions of religion had been received. Isa felt that here at least the carking cares of life might be shut out: she might lift up her soul, as in happier days, unto her Father in heaven.
The subject chosen by Mr. Eardley was the history of the triumph of Gideon, the hero and saint, over the hosts of Midian. It was his object in this, as in former courses of lectures,[2] to draw simple practical lessons from the narratives contained in the Word of God; and as such lessons are required by us all, I shall weave the brief addresses of the clergyman, though in separate chapters, into the web of my story.
[1] Vide “Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson.”
[2] Vide “The Shepherd of Bethlehem,” “Exiles in Babylon,” and “Rescued from Egypt.”
