CHAPTER IX.
Thou changest not, but I am changed, Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged; The visions of my youth are past, Too bright, too beautiful, to last.
BRYANT.
More than two years had passed since Edith's visit to the old woman ofthe cliff. Changes had taken place in all the personages of my littletale; but in Edith they were most apparent. She who had sung all day asthe birds sing, because she could not help it, at nineteen had learnedto reflect and to analyze; a sensitive conscience had taken the place ofspontaneous and impulsive virtue; and the same heart that could be happyall day long in nursing a young chicken, or watching the opening of aflower, or carrying food to a poor old woman, now closed her days with_thinking_, and moistened her pillow with unbidden tears.
It is the natural course of womanhood. Ah! that we could always bechildren. We have seen that after Edith had learned the story of theLady Ursula, she began to solve some of the mysteries of life. She hadsince turned over many of its leaves, all fair with innocence and truth,but she had not yet found an answer to the question, "Why do we suffer?"
The change that had taken place in young Seymore was deeper and sterner,but not so apparent. Externally, he was the same beautiful youth that hewas when we introduced him to our kind readers, in his attic.
Since then, he had had much to struggle with; but poverty had not beenhis greatest temptation. He could not indeed hope to be exempt from thebitter experience of almost all who at that time were scholars.
To this very day, the sons of clergymen, and many of the mostdistinguished men in New England, have held the plough in the intervalsof their preparation for the university. How many poor mothers havestriven, and labored, and denied themselves all but the bare necessariesof life, that their sons might gain that sole distinction in NewEngland,--an education at one of the colleges.
Poverty was not his greatest trial. When he first saw Edith, her timidand innocent beauty had made an impression on his fancy, that all hissubsequent dreams in solitude, and his lonely reveries, had only servedto deepen. She seemed to embody all his imaginations of femaleloveliness. He had, indeed, never before seen a beautiful girl, and hehad no acquaintance with women, except his grandmother.
The remembrance of his mother came softened to him, like somethingunconnected with earth; and when he thought of the darkened chamber, thepale, faint smile, her hand on his head, and her solemn consecration ofhim to the church, on her death-bed, he felt a sensation of awe thatchilled and appalled him.
After his acquaintance with Edith and her father, life wore a brighterhue. His efforts to gain an education to distinguish himself wereredoubled. Mr. Grafton aided in every way; and with the sympathy of hiskind friend came the image of his beautiful daughter. His labors werelightened, his heart cheered, by the thought that she would smile andapprove.
Thus days of bodily labor were succeeded by nights of study; and, forsome time, with his youth and vigorous health, this was hardly felt asan evil. But we have seen, in our first chapter, that he had moments ofdespondency, and of late they had been of more frequent occurrence.
At such times, the remembrance of his mother, and her solemn dedicationof him to the church, came back with redoubled power, and the time hehad spent in lighter literature, in poetry, and even his dreams ofEdith, seemed to him like sins. A darker and less joyous spirit wasgradually overshadowing him. A morbid sensitiveness to moral evil, anexaggerated sense of his own sins, and of the strict requisitions of thespirit of the times, clouded his natural gayety.
His visits to the parsonage, indeed, always dissipated his fears for alittle time. Edith received him as a valued friend, and he returned tohis studies, cheered by her smiles, and sustained by new hopes.
He never analyzed the cause of this change, or the nature of hisfeelings: but, when he thought of his degree at the college, it was hersympathy and her approbation that came first to his mind; and, when hesent his thoughts forward to a settlement and a parsonage like that ofhis venerable friend's, it would have been empty, and desolate, anduninhabitable, if Edith had not been there.
It was in Edith's beloved father that a year had made the saddestchange. The winter had been unusually severe, and the snow deep. Hisparish was much scattered, and it was his custom to visit them onhorseback; and, in the deepest snows, and most severe storms, he hadnever refused to appear at their bedsides, or to visit and comfort theafflicted. He had lived, and labored, and loved among his simple flock,but he now felt that his ministry was drawing towards a close.
In March, he had returned from one of his visits late at night, and muchwet and fatigued. The next morning he found himself ill with a lungfever. It left him debilitated, and much impaired in constitution; and arapid decline seemed the almost inevitable consequence at his advancedage.