The Maid of Maiden Lane by Amelia E. Barr (free novels to read TXT) 📗

blazing oak logs, he caught reflections of his handsome person in the mirror, and he began to be comforted. For it is not in normal youth to disdain the smaller joys of life; and Hyde was thinking as his servant dressed him in satin and velvet, that at least there was Annie. Annie was always glad to see him, and he had a great respect for Annie’s opinions. Indeed during the past few weeks they had been brought into daily companionship, they had become very good friends. So then the absence of the Earl and the preoccupation of his mother was not beyond comfort, if Annie was able to receive him. In spite of his grief for Cornelia’s removal from New York, he was not insensible to the pleasure of Annie’s approval. He liked to show himself to her when he knew he could appear to advantage; and there was nothing more in this desire, than that healthy wish for approbation that is natural to self-respecting youth.

He heard her singing as he approached the drawing-room, and he opened the door noiselessly and went in. If she was conscious of his entrance she made no sign of it, and Hyde did not seem to expect it. He glanced at her as he might have glanced at a priest by the altar, and went softly to the fireside and sat down. At this moment she had a solemn, saintly beauty; her small pale face was luminous with spiritual joy, her eyes glowing with rapture, and her hands moving among the ivory keys of the piano made enchanting melody to her inspired longing

Jerusalem the golden, With milk and honey blest, Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart and voice oppressed. O one, O only mansion, O paradise of joy! Where tears are ever banished And smiles have no alloy. O sweet and blessed country! Shall I ever see thy face? O sweet and blessed country! Shall I ever win thy grace?

and as these eager impassioned words rose heavenward, it seemed to Hyde that her innocent, longing soul was half-way out of her frail little body. He did not in any way disturb her. She ceased when the hymn was finished and sat still a few moments, realizing, as far as she could, the glory which doth not yet appear. As her eyes dropped, the light faded from her face; she smiled at Hyde, a smile that seemed to light all the space between them. Then he stood up and she came towards him. No wonder that strangers spoke of her as a child; she had the size and face and figure of a child, and her look of extreme youth was much accentuated by the simple black gown she wore, and by her carriage, for she leaned slightly forward as she walked, her feet appearing to take no hold upon the floor; a movement springing INTERIORLY from the soul eagerness which dominated her. Hyde placed her in a chair before the fire, and then drew his own chair to her side.

“Cousin,” she said, “I am most glad to see you. Everybody has some work to do to-day.”

“And you, Annie?”

“In this world I have no work to do,” she answered. “My soul is here for a purchase; when I have made it I shall go home again.” And Hyde looked at her with such curious interest that she added—“I am buying Patience.”

“O indeed, that is a commodity not in the market.”

“I assure you it is. I buy it daily. Once I used to wonder what for I had come to earth. I had no strength, no beauty, nothing at all to buy Earth’s good things with. Three years ago I found out that I had come to buy for my soul, the grace of Patience. Do you remember what an imperious, restless, hard-to-please, hard-to-serve girl I was? Now it is different. If people do not come on the instant I call them, I rock my soul to rest, and say to it ‘anon, anon, be quiet, soul.’ If I suffer much pain—and that is very often—I say Soul, it is His Will, you must not cry out against it. If I do not get my own way, I say, Soul, His Way is best; and thus, day by day, I am buying Patience.”

“But it is not possible this can content you. You must have some other hope and desire, Annie?”

“Perhaps I once had—and to-day is a good time to speak of it to you, because now it troubles me no longer. You know what my father desired, and what your father promised, for us both?”

“Yes. Did you desire it, Annie?”

“I do not desire it now. You were ever against it?”

“Oh Annie!—”

“It makes no matter, George. I shall never marry you.”

“Do you dislike me so much?”

“I am very fond of you. You are of my race and my kindred, and I love every soul of the Hydes that has ever tarried on this earth.”

“Well then?”

“I shall marry no one. I will show you the better way. Few can walk in it, but Doctor Roslyn says, he thinks it may be my part—my happy part—to do so:” and as she spoke she took from the little pocket at her side a small copy of the gospels, and it opened of its own account at the twentieth chapter of St. Luke. “See!” she said, “and read it for yourself, George—”

“The children of this world marry and are given in marriage. But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage.

“Neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.” [Footnote: St. Luke, chap. xx. 34-36.]

“To die no more! To be like unto the angels! To be the children of God! This is the end and aim of my desires, to be among ‘the children of God!’”

“Dear Annie, I cannot understand this.”

“Not yet. It is not your time. My soul, I think, is ages older than yours. It takes ages of schooling to get into that class that may leave Earth forever, and be as the angels. Even now I know, I am sure that you are fretting and miserable for the love of some woman. For whose love, George? Tell me.”

Then Hyde plunged with headlong precipitancy into the story of his love for Cornelia, and of the inexplicably cruel way in which it had been brought to a close. “And yesterday,” he continued with a sob in his voice—“yesterday I heard that her father had taken her to Philadelphia. I shall see her no more. He will marry her to Rem Van Arenas, or to one of her Quaker cousins, and the taste is taken out of my life, and I am only a walking misery.”

“I do not believe it is Cornelia’s fault.”

“Here is her letter. Read it.” Then Annie look the letter and after reading it said, “If she be all you say, I will vow she wrote this in her sleep. I should like to see her. Why do you think wrong of her? What is love without faith in the one you love? Do you know first and finally what true love is? It is THINKING kindly and nobly. For if we GIVE all we have, and DO all we can do, and yet THINK unkindly, it profits us nothing. Doctor Roslyn told me so. You remember him?”