CHAPTER VIII.
"A little cottage built of sticks and weeds, In homely wise, and walled with sods around, In which a witch did dwell, in loathly weedes And wilful want, all careless of her needes; So choosing solitairie to abide. Far from all neighbours."
SPENSER.
I wish I were a painter, or a poet, to describe a little sheltered nookon the sea-shore, where devotion would retire to worship, love to dwellin thought on the beloved, or sorrow to be soothed to rest. It was asmall cove, sheltered on the north by high, overhanging cliffs, that ranout into the ocean in a bold headland. Opposite these rocks the landsloped gently down, and the ocean, lulled to rest, came in like a spentand wearied child, and rippled on a smooth, white sand.
The top of the cliff was covered with many-colored shrubbery. Thedrooping branches of the birch, the sumac, and the aspen, tinted withthe rich coloring of autumn, hung half way down the cliff, and werereflected, like a double landscape, in the water. At sunset, the entireglassy surface was burnished with the red and yellow rays of the settingsun; and when the young moon, like a fairy boat, just rested on thesurface, it was a scene of beauty that could not be surpassed in anycountry.
Immediately under the cliff, and sheltered like a swallow's nest, wasthe smallest of human habitations; so dark, and old, and moss-grown,that it seemed a part of the rock against which it rested. It consistedof one room: a door and single pane of glass admitted the light, and thenets hanging around, and an old boat drawn up on the beach, indicatedthat it was the shelter of a fisherman.
The Indian summer still continued, and a few mornings after the littlejourney, Edith was induced, by the soft beauty of the weather, to visitthe cove. It was a walk of two miles, but the inhabitants of the cottagewere among the poor of her father's parish, and she was never a strangerin their cottages.
The brilliant sun gave to the ever-changing ocean the tints of emeraldgreen, royal purple, crimson, and sapphire, and made a path of light,fit for angels' footsteps. The tide was out, and the smooth beachglittered in the morning sun. The ocean, as far as the eye could reach,was smooth as glass. It was not then, as now, white with the frequentsail: a solitary vessel was then a rare occurrence, and hailed withrapture, as bringing news from _home_. The white-winged curlew waswheeling around in perfect security, and the little bay was dotted, in afew spots, with fishermen's boats. The absence of the old boat from thebeach showed that the owner of the cottage was among them.
Edith was sorry her friend the fisherman was absent, for the old womanwho kept his house was a virago; and, indeed, was sometimes thoughtinsane. Although Edith's moral courage was great, she possessed thatphysical timidity and sensitiveness to outward impressions that belongsto the poetic temperament.
She lingered in her walk, watching the curlews, and listening to themeasured booming of the waves as they touched the shore and thenreceded. The obvious reflection that comes to every mind perhaps came tohers, that thus succeed and are scattered the successive generations ofmen. No; she was thinking that thus arrive and depart the days of hersolitary existence; thus uniformly, and thus leaving no trace behind.Will it be always thus? she sighed; and her eyes filled with tears. Herrevery was interrupted by a rough voice behind her.
"What have you done, that God should grant you the happiness to weep?"said the old woman, who now stood at her side.
Edith was startled, for the woman's expression was very wild, but sheanswered mildly, "Is that so great a boon, mother, that I should deserveto lose it?"
"Ask her," she said, "whose brain is burning, and whose heart is likelead, what she would give for one moist tear. O God! I cannot weep."
Whatever timidity Edith felt when she first saw the malignant expressionof the old woman's countenance, was now lost in pity. She knew that thepoor creature's reason was impaired, and she thought this might be oneof her wild moments.
She laid her hand gently on her arm, and said, with a smile, "Nanny, Ihave come on purpose to visit you. Let us go into the house, and youshall tell me what you think, and all you want to make you comfortablefor the winter."
Nanny looked at Edith almost with scorn. "Tell you what I think!" shesaid. "As well might I tell yonder birds that are hovering with whitewings in the blue sky. What do you know of sorrow? but you will notalways be strangers. Sorrow is coming over you; I see its dark folddrawing nearer and nearer."
A slight shudder came over Edith, but she smiled, and said, soothingly,"I came to talk with you about yourself; let my fate alone for thepresent."
"Ah! no need to shake the glass," answered Nanny; "grief is coming soonenough to drink up your young blood. The cheek that changes like yours,with sudden flushing, withers soonest; not with age, no, not, like mine,with age, but blighted by the cold hand of unkindness; and eyes, likeyours, that every emotion fills with sudden tears, soon have theirfountains dry, and then, ah! how you will long and pray for one drop, asI do now!"
They had entered the poor hovel, and the old woman, who had beenspeaking in a tone of great excitement, now turned and looked full atEdith: her beauty seemed to awake a feeling of envious contempt.
The contrast between them was indeed great. Edith stood in the narrowdoor, blooming with youth and health. Her dark hair, which contrasted sobeautifully with her soft blue eye, had lost its curl by the damp air,and she had taken off her bonnet to put back the uncurled tresses.
The old woman had seated herself in an old, high-backed chair, and, withher elbows on her knees, looked earnestly at Edith. Her face might oncehave been fair; but it was now deeply wrinkled, and bronzed with smokeand exposure. Her teeth were gone, and her thin, shriveled lips had anexpression of pain and suffering; while her eyes betrayed the envy andcontempt she seemed to feel towards others.
"Ah," she said, "gather up your beautiful shining locks. How long, thinkyou, before they will be like mine? But mine were once black and glossyas yours; and now look at them."
She took down from under her cap her long, gray hair, and spread it overher breast. It was dry and coarse, and without a single black hair. Shelaid her dark, bony hand on Edith's white arm.
"Sorrow has done this," she said,--"not time: it has been of this colorfor fifty years."
"And have you then suffered so much?" said Edith,--and her eyes filledwith tears.
The old woman saw that she was pitied, and a more gentle expression cameinto her eyes, as she fixed them on Edith.
"My child," she said, "we can learn to bear sorrow, bereavement, thedeath of all that are twined with our own souls, old age, solitude,--allbut remorse--_all but remorse_;" and the last word was pronounced almostin a whisper.
"And cannot you turn to God?" said Edith; "cannot you pray? God hasinvited all who are sinners to come to him."
She stopped; for she felt her own insufficiency to administer religiousconsolation.
"And who told you I was so great a sinner?" said the old woman, all herfierceness returning immediately.
Edith had felt herself all the comfort of opening her heart in prayer toGod; but she was abashed by the old woman: she said only timidly andhumbly, "Why will you not confide in my father? Tell him your wants andyour misery, and he will pray for you, and help you."
"Tell him! and what does he know of the heart-broken? Can he lift theleaden covering from the conscience? Can he give me back the innocenceand peace of my cottage home in the green lanes of England, or theblessing of my poor old father?" And, while an expression of the deepestsadness passed over her face,--"Can he bring back my children, mybeautiful boys, or bid the sea give up its dead? No, no; let him preachand pray, and let these poor ignorant people hear him; and let me,--ah,let me lie down in the green earth."
Edith was shocked; and the tears she tried in vain to suppress forcedthemselves down her cheeks.
"Poor child!" said the old woman; "you can weep for others, but yours isthe fate of all the daughters of Eve: you will soon weep for yourself.With all your proud beauty and your feeling heart, you cannot keep you
ridols: they will crumble away, and you will come at last to what I am."
Edith tried to direct her attention to something else. She looked aroundthe cottage, which had not the appearance of the most abject poverty.The few articles of furniture were neat, and in one corner stood acomfortable-looking bed. A peat fire slumbered on the hearth, and manydried and smoked fish were hanging from the beams.
She said, very mildly, "I came, Nanny, to see if you did not wantsomething to make you comfortable for the winter. My father sent me, andyou must tell me all you want."
"I want nothing," said the old woman; "at least for myself. All yourblankets cannot keep the cold from the heart."
At this moment, a little girl about five years old came running into thecottage, with a basket of blackberries she had been picking on thecliffs above the house. Edith was well known to her, as she was to allthe children of the parish. The little girl went up to her and presentedthe blackberries, and then ran to her grandmother with the air of afavored child, as if she were sure of a welcome.
An expression that Edith had never seen, a softened expression of deeptenderness, came over the face of the old woman.
"I was going to speak of this child," she said. "I feel that I shallsoon be _there_,"--and she pointed towards the earth,--"and this childhas no friend but me."
The little girl, meantime, had crept close to the old woman, and laidher head on her shoulder. The child was not attractive: her feet andlegs were bare, and her dress was ragged and much soiled; but coveringher eyes and forehead was a profusion of golden-colored ringlets; and,where her skin was not grimmed with dirt and exposure to the sea air, itwas delicately white.
There was something touching in the affection of the poor orphan for theold woman; and the contrast, as they thus leant on each other, wouldhave arrested the eye of a painter.
Edith promised to be a friend to her grandchild, and then entreatedNanny to see her father, and confide her sorrows to him. This shesteadily refused; and Edith left her, her young spirits saddened by themystery and the grief that she could not understand. As she walked home,she thought how little the temper of the old woman was in harmony withthe external beauty that environed her. The beauty was marred by sin andgrief. And even in her own life, pure as it was, how little was there toharmonize with the exquisite loveliness around her!
Edith was not happy: the inward pulse did not beat in harmony with thepulse of nature. She was not happy, because woman, especially in youth,is happy only in her affections. She felt within herself an infinitecapacity of loving, and she had few to love, Her heart was solitary. Heraffection for her father partook too much of respect and awe; and thatfor Dinah had grown up from her infancy, and was as much a matter ofhabit as of gratitude. She longed for the love of an equal, or rather ofsome one she could reverence as well as love. How she wished she couldhave been the companion of the Lady Ursula!
Edith was beginning to feel that she had a soul of infinite longings;but she had not yet learnt its power to create for itself an infiniteand immortal happiness; and the beauty of nature, that excited withoutfilling her mind, only increased her loneliness.
It is after other pursuits and other friends have disappointed us, thatwe go back to the beautiful teachings of nature; and, like a tendermother, she receives us to her bosom.
"O, nature never did betray The heart that loved her."
She alone is unchangeable. We may confide in her promises. I haveplanted an acorn by a beloved grave: in a few years I returned, andfound a beautiful oak overshadowing it.
Nature is liberal and impartial as she is faithful. The green earthoffers a home for the eyes of the poorest beggar; the soft and purifyingwinds visit all equally; the tenderly majestic stars look down on himwho rests in a bed of down, and on him whose pallet is the naked earth;and the blue sky embraces equally the child of sorrow and of joy.
The teachings of nature are open to all. The poor heart-broken mothersees, in the parent leaves that enfold the tender heart of the youngplant, and in the bird that strips her own breast of its down to shelterher young from the night air, the same instinct that teaches her tocherish the child of sorrow. He who addressed the poor and illiteratedrew his illustrations from nature: the lily of the field, the fowls ofthe air, and the young ravens, he made his teachers to those who, likehim, lived in the open air, and were peculiarly susceptible to all theinfluences of nature.
To return from this digression. Perhaps my readers will wish to knowmore of poor Nanny, as she was called.
Nothing was known of her early history. She had come from the mothercountry four years before, with this little child, then an infant, andhad taken a lodging in the poor fisherman's hut. She said the littlegirl was her grandchild, and all her affections were centred in her. Shewas entirely reserved as to her previous history, and was irritated ifany curiosity was expressed about it, though she sometimes gave outhints that she had been an accomplice and victim of some deed for whichshe felt remorse. As she was quite harmless, and the inhabitants weremuch scattered, she was unmolested, and earned a scanty living bypicking berries, fishing, and helping those who were not quite as pooras herself. Edith visited her often, and Mr. Grafton, though she wouldnot acknowledge him as a spiritual guide, ministered to all her temporalwants.