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Page 16
"We have, indeed, dear Madam," replied Arthur, with an effort to control
his voice, "the loss of a very dear friend,"--here the tones visibly
faltered,--"by the burning of a vessel at sea, and the subsequent
upsetting of a boat, in which some of the passengers were endeavoring to
make their escape."
"That is indeed very, very sad news," said the old lady, affectionately
clasping Ella's hand, "and I, my friends, can sympathize with you, for
five years ago to-day, my son, my darling son, the pride of my heart,
the charm and ornament of our dwelling, set sail from his native shores,
for a distant land, and from that moment unto this, no tidings ever
reached me of his fate, for the vessel was heard of never after."
"Do you know," she said to Ella, a few moments after, as Arthur, with
some murmured apology left the room, for he felt that human sympathy,
however precious at other times, seemed but to madden him now, and he
longed to be alone--"Do you know," she repeated, as the young girl's
eyes, swollen with weeping, were upraised to her benevolent countenance,
"that I was standing at the window right opposite, when you drove up to
the door, and as your brother quickly alighted from the carriage, and
tenderly assisted you out, my heart beat quick; the blood forsook my
cheeks, and my whole frame was convulsed with emotion, for so strikingly
did he resemble my lost one in look and manner, that, for the moment, I
wildly dreamed that he had come back to bless me."
The old lady's tears flowed freely.
"I miss him so much, so very much," she said, "and especially on the
anniversary of that fatal day which tore him from my fond embrace, and I
can well appreciate the emotion which lent intensity to David's pathetic
exclamation, 'Oh my son, my son, would to heaven I had died for thee,
oh, my son, my son.'"
While Mrs. Cartwright was thus, by a relation of her own trials,
endeavoring to divert, in some measure, Ella's mind, and prevent her
from dwelling too exclusively on this painful event, Arthur, having
gained his chamber, was now pacing the floor with restless steps, his
whole soul a prey to the most intense emotions of grief, such as he had
never before experienced. At one moment he felt stupefied, at the
suddenness of the blow; the next, aroused again to the consciousness of
its terrible reality. At length a hope, that seemed to up-spring from
the depth of his despair, shed a faint light over the chaotic darkness
that reigned within. "The information may be exaggerated," was his
mental solving, "for it is plain that the writer, in penning it, was
actuated by no feelings of good-will, and there may yet exist a hope of
Anges's escape." With this idea, he opened another epistle, which he had
received, but not yet read. It was from an elderly gentleman, who had
always held Agnes in the deepest esteem, and with a trembling hand he
broke the seal. Alas for his futile hopes! Not at the close of the page,
as in the one received by Ella, but at the very commencement of the
letter, was the mournful intelligence communicated, and while the
narrator deeply deplored the event, he intimated, at the same time, that
not a doubt existed in his own mind, or in the minds of her friends, as
to the certainty of her untimely fate.
Arthur laid the letter aside, and again commenced his restless pacing.
Alas, he had once almost imagined himself a Christian, for had he not
been sedulous in the discharge of every duty, and, like the young man
referred to in Scripture, could have said, with reference to the moral
law as far as outward observances are concerned, "All these have I kept
from my youth up." But now, mitigating, soothing, extracting from grief,
however mighty, some portion of its bitterness, where was the
resignation of the Christian? Not, certainly, in that heart so full of
bitterness, that was ready to contend with heaven for having reclaimed
its own; its power, its goodness, its wisdom, were almost,
unconsciously, arraigned, and finite man presumed to pass judgment on
the acts of infinite benevolence, until, at length, shocked at his own
rebellious feelings,--and startled, nay, terrified, at this the deepest
insight he had ever obtained of the natural depravity of his heart, he
sank into a chair, and in utter recklessness abandoned himself to the
tide of grief which seemed waiting to overwhelm him.
Oh there are terrible moments in human experience, moments when even the
Christian is so haunted by the demon of unbelief, when the dire enemy of
God and man takes advantage of some unpropitious circumstance, some
painful affliction, to taunt the soul, already almost crushed, and to
inquire, with fiendish malignity, "Where is now thy God?" that if not
wholly overcome, he, at least, escapes alone with fearful wounds from
the trying conflict; how then can that one sustain the assault who is
totally unprepared, and who knows but little of the source from whence
alone help can come? Well, indeed, for frail humanity, that there is a
tender, pitying Father, who "knoweth our frame, and remembereth we are
dust," and oftentimes, when our need is sorest, sends, in his own good
way, unexpected relief.
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