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

The next morning Hyde left his father’s home forever. It was impossible that such a parting should be happy. No hopes, no dreams of future joy, could make him forget the wealth of love he was leaving. Nor did he wish to forget. And woe to the man or woman who would buy composure and contentment by forgetting!—by really forfeiting a portion of their existence—by being a suicide of their own moral nature.

The day was a black winter day, with a monotonous rain and a dark sky troubled by a ghostly wind. Inside the house the silence fell on the heart like a weight. The Earl and Countess watched their son’s carriage turn from the door, and then looked silently into each other’s face. The Earl’s lips were firmly set, and his eyes full of tears; the Countess was weeping bitterly. He went with her to her room, and with all his old charm and tenderness comforted her for her great loss.

At that moment Annie was forgotten, yet no one was suffering more than she was. Hyde had knelt by her sofa, and taken her in his arms, and covered her face with tears and kisses, and she had not been able to oppose a parting so heart-breaking and so final. The last tears she was ever to shed dropped from her closed eyes, as she listened to his departing steps; and the roll of the carriage carrying him away forever, seemed to roll over her shrinking heart. She cried out feebly—a pitiful little shrill cry, that she hushed with a sob still more full of anguish. Then she began to cast over her suffering soul the balm of prayer, and prostrate with closed eyes, and hands feebly hanging down, Doctor Roslyn found her. He did not need to ask a question, he had long known the brave self-sacrifice that was consecrating the child-heart suffering so sharply that day; and he said only—

“We are made perfect through suffering, Annie.”

“I know, dear father.”

“And you have found before this, that the sorrow well borne is full of strange joys—joys, whose long lasting perfumes, show that they were grown in heaven and not on earth.”

“This is the last sorrow that can come to me, father.”

“And my dear Annie, you would have been a loser without it. Every grief has its meaning, and the web of life could not be better woven, if only love touched it.”

“I have been praying, father.”

“Nay, but God Himself prayed in you, while your soul waited in deep resignation. God gave you both the resignation and the answer.”

“My heart failed me at the last—then I prayed as well as I could.”

“And then, visited by the NOT YOURSELF in you, your head was lifted up. Do not be frightened at what you want. Strive for it little by little. All that is bitter in outward things, or in interior things, all that befalls you in the course of a day, is YOUR DAILY BREAD if you will take it from His hand.”

Then she was silent and quite still, and he sat and watched the gradual lifting of the spirit’s cloud—watched, until the pallor of her face grew luminous with the inner light, and her wide open eyes saw, as in a vision, things, invisible to mortal sight; but open to the spirit on that dazzling line where mortal and immortal verge.

And as he went home, stepping slowly through the misty world, he himself hardly knew whether he was in the body or out of it. He felt not the dripping rain, he was not conscious of the encompassing earthly vapours, he had passed within the veil and was worshipping

“In dazzling temples opened straight to Him, Where One who had great lightnings for His crown Was suddenly made present; vast and dim Through crowded pinions of the Cherubim.”

And his feet stumbled not, nor was he aware of anything around, until the Earl met him at the park gates and touching him said reverently—

“Father, you are close to the highway. Have you seen Annie?”

“I have just left her.”

“She is further from us than ever.”

“Richard Hyde,” he answered, “she is on her way to God, and she can rest nothing short of that.”