ONE CHAPTER FROM HESTER HALLAM'S LIFE.
"Ah! Hester, Hester, keep back your tears. Be the brave little wife and woman now. Have faith, hope, and courage; the year will soon speed by, and, lo! here shall I find you again! God grant it! And good-by, my wife, my children—my all and only treasures."
They are engraven on my memory—these last words of Henry Hallam, my husband, my beloved. They were spoken hopefully, cheerfully, though I knew they were intended to cover the sorrow of a heart that ached, even as did mine, at our final parting.
Henry Hallam was to go to South America as chief engineer of a proposed road from some inland city to the Pacific. After a marriage of eight years, this was our first separation. I never did consent to it. Better poverty and the humblest life together than that mountains and seas should divide us, I argued.
But Henry was proud, as he was tender and loving; he could not bear to see his wife, delicately reared, doing menial service; nor his little girls deprived of waxen dolls, because they would usurp the ragged dollar that must go for bread.
Our situation had fallen from bad to worse; an expensive lawsuit had been decided against us, to liquidate the cost of which an out-West piece of land, that was to have been our children's fortune, had to be sold at a sacrifice; and when all was paid, except our scanty furniture, we had but three hundred dollars in the world. We lived in a rented house in the beautiful suburbs of Brooklyn; three months' rent would consume our all. Meantime, upon what should we live, and wherewithal should we be clothed? This was a serious question, which vexed my husband for many days. He suddenly answered it by accepting with alacrity this lucrative position in South America. My only living relative in all America was one sister, widowed and childless. She came from the West to abide with me during my husband's absence. She, too, had comparative poverty for her dowry, her only income arising from the interest of less than a thousand dollars.
No thought of poverty haunted us, however; heretofore all our wants had been supplied, and we had lived almost luxuriously, counting upon the fortune which had been for six years dwindling to less and less in courts of law.
It was with no dread of poverty, I repeat, that I saw my husband take his departure. I thought only how the light had gone from our house, and joy from existence. I am distressed whenever I read of the ever-recurring matrimonial quarrels and divorces which appear now the order of the day. I could have lived with Henry Hallam through the countless eternal years, and—God forgive me!—desired no other heaven.
We had no particular creed or faith. The Hallams had been Methodists; the Griffeths, my father's family over in Wales, had been members of the Church of England.
Henry and I, reading here and there indifferently, had become somewhat inclined to Swedenborg's theories. We read Dr. Bushnell and his colleagues with some faith and more interest. But we fashioned the great hereafter—the heaven we all talk of and dream so much of—after our own ideals. Those may have been in the right, thought we, from whom Shelley and many another poetical dreamer imbibed the idea that the Godhead was but the universal spirit pervading and animating nature; that man was immortal, and was to arise from the dead, clothed in purity and beauty, and was to wander endlessly in some limitless, enchanting paradise, where should be all things lovely to charm the eye, all sounds to entrance the ear, all spirits gentle, and wise, and good for communion of intellect and heart. In this heaven stood no stately throne upon which sat a God of justice, receiving one unto life, banishing another unto everlasting perdition. It was the same here as upon earth; the beauty, bloom, fragrance, and glory were permeated with an essence subtle, invisible, intangible, but present, the life and source of all—and this was God! The ancients had a heaven and a hell, which Christianity had adopted; but we lived in the XIXth century, and we need not pin our faith to such notions borrowed from the heathen. Were youth and health on earth immortal, we would prefer never to pass through the iron gate of death and the pearly gate of life; since, however, all must yield to the inexorable fiat, and all men must die, we would make a virtue of necessity, and be willing to go to that sensual heaven, which wore all the beauty of earth, with naught of its thorns and blight. Ah! we, Henry and I, were still in the glow of youth and hope; life seemed a beautiful vista, and the end far off! Of the great beyond we but carelessly dreamed—as carelessly as if our feet were never there to stand, nor our souls to tremble upon its awful brink.
With Henry gone, I was like a child bereft of its mother. I wept and would not be comforted. I counted the hours of every day; they seemed so inconsiderable, deducted from the almost nine thousand which the three hundred and sixty-five days yielded. I see now how foolish, weak, and wicked I was!
I was seized with a slow fever, which lasted me through the summer. In my weakness and wakefulness I saw visions and dreamed dreams which haunted me constantly. I began to fancy that I was to die. I would have been satisfied to have fallen in a sleep that should have known no waking until the dread year was over.
Early in September I heard from my room an unusual bustle in the house—the feet of men, and the unwonted sound of boxes or trunks laid heavily upon the floor. But why need I go into details?
Henry Hallam had died of yellow fever, and his trunks had been sent home!
In my despair, one thought overpowered me. I had made myself wretched counting over the hours until Henry should return. Now he would never, never come back, no matter how many hours; I might count for an eternity, and he would not come at the end. Oh! could he but some time come, even in the distant years, when his step was feeble and his hair was gray, how patient I would be, how hopeful, cheerful, in the waiting for that certain time!
Why had I not been happy when I knew that he still lived; when the fond hope was mine that, after a few months, I should again behold him?
We never know—alas! we never know! With my beloved gone, I fancied myself sunk in the lowest depth of desolation.
More than two years elapsed. My sister struggled bravely to keep a roof above our heads and the wolf of hunger from our door. Notwithstanding her closest economy, untiring industry, and fertile ingenuity, her small principal had become reduced one-half. Her zeal and energy were a reproach to me, and I had already commenced heroic endeavors to imitate and assist her. We might still have done well, educated my two little girls, and taken comfort in each other, now that my hopeless grief had become partially assuaged, and I had begun to take an interest in the management of our affairs. A fresh grief, however, was in store for me. Maria, my sister, upon whom alone I had come to depend, was stricken with an incurable disease, and, after lingering through months of pain, which often amounted to torture, died, and was buried.
I was not allowed to remain in my stupor of grief after I had beheld the cruel grave close over my only sister. The fact that but a trifle remained after all expenses had been paid aroused me to most painful apprehensions for the fate of my children. But for them I fully believe I should have adopted the advice of his friends to Job, the patient—curse God, and die!
The dear little children, however, who had no friends but their unhappy mother, and who clung to me as if they had in me all that was sufficient and all the world, were an incentive to further endurance and fresh exertion.
In a moment of discouragement and gloom I wrote an unaccustomed letter of six pages to a lady who had been my friend while sojourning in the West. I had spent a year with my husband in a growing village upon the banks of the Mississippi where this lady resided. She had a delightful home in the midst of charming grounds, an indulgent, devoted husband, three lovely children, with wealth enough to command the desirable and good things of this world. We had corresponded for a time, but since my great affliction I had written no letters.
Without delay came Mrs. Bell's reply. In my selfish grief I had not thought that upon others also might be falling showers of the self-same woe. The thought of Mrs. Bell, with her happy surroundings, had formed a pleasant picture, comforting to dwell upon. Ah! how my eyes filled and my heart throbbed as I read her letter!
The beautiful home, with its pictures, books, its nameless household gods, was in ashes; the husband, really the handsomest, most elegant gentleman I have ever met, full of health, vigor, and cheerfulness, a year after the fatal fire had died suddenly, leaving his large property in an involved and unavailable condition; and my friend was living in a small cottage amidst the ashes and blackened trunks of trees—which stood like weird spectres about her former home. The letter, half read, fell from my nerveless grasp, and I clasped tightly my trembling hands, bowing down upon them my throbbing head, murmuring:
"Doth all of beauty fade to blight, and all of joy to gloom? Are all human loves so vain and transient? Are all hopes and dreams fleeting and unsubstantial as the goodly shadow of a summer cloud? Is it true of all beneath the sun, 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust'?" Gathering courage to finish the letter, another surprise awaited me. My friend had become a Roman Catholic. After giving brief details of her conversion, she thus addressed me:
"At this moment I feel more sorrow for you than for myself. My dearest earthly loves and hopes lie, like yours, in ashes. But out of my desolation hath sprung the green branches of heavenly peace. I weep not unavailing tears at the loss of what so charmed my heart as to separate my soul from God. Arise out of the ashes watered with your tears. Go to the nearest Catholic priest; ask him for books, counsel, and prayer that shall lead you upward and onward toward the kingdom of rest. Make the effort, I entreat you, in the name of God. If you find no peace to your soul, what will you have lost? If you find comfort and rest, will not all have been gained?"
Had I learned, in the midst of my happiness, that Miriam Bell had become a Catholic, I might have wondered, thought strange of it, but set it down as one of the unaccountable things, and not puzzled my brain by studying into it. But now it was different. Her afflictions, so similar to my own, brought her very near to me in sympathy. I would have as soon thought of myself becoming deluded by the snares of Popery as my friend, Mrs. Bell. Yea, sooner; she was more matter-of-fact, calm, philosophical, more highly educated, with a mind more thoroughly disciplined, and naturally more inquiring and comprehensive than my own. And she had heartily embraced this religious faith which, without ever having bestowed much thought upon, I had naturally regarded as one of superstitions and lies.
The sun went down, the twilight fell. Charlotte and Cora helped themselves to a slice of bread, and lay down to rest. The sewing-machine had for hours been idle, and the unfinished white shirt, suspended by the needle, looked like a ghost in the gathering gloom; and still I held my hands and deeply thought, or walked the floor with stilly tread.
And so Miriam Bell had found a balm for her sorrow, a light amid her darkness. How? By becoming a Catholic. And what was it to become a Catholic? To believe impossibilities, and to worship idols; to behold, in a tiny wafer of human manufacture, the body and blood, soul and divinity, of an incarnate God? Does Miriam Bell believe this? If she can believe it with all her heart and soul, then might she well be comforted! To fall upon one's knees before the relics of a saint, and beg his prayers, as if he could see and hear? To implore the Blessed Virgin to succor and defend, as if she were not a creature, but omnipotent and divine? To reverence the priest as a being immaculate, an angel with hidden wings walking upon earth, unto whose feet you must kneel, and unveil, as unto God, all the thoughts and interests of your heart? I pondered over this last suggestion. Standing in the white moonlight that silvered a space of the floor, I lifted up both weary heart and waiting hands, and, with eyes toward the unknown and infinite, I cried:
"Unto God would I pour forth the sins and sorrows of my soul; but I am all unworthy. He whom I have disregarded and failed to acknowledge is shut out from my vision and approach. Between him and me is the thick wall of my offences. Oh! if, in his infinite mercy, he could send forth one little less than an angel—who should have something of the human, that he might compassionate and pity; of the divine, that he might comprehend, guide, and assist—to that one I might yield in reverence. All the sins, and follies, and rebellions of my life should be poured into his ear; perhaps, oh! perhaps the hand of such an one might lift me into the light, if light there be indeed for soul so dyed as mine."
How this fancied being, uniting the human and angelic, became gradually, and by slow degrees, associated in my mind with the Catholic priest, I know not. Certain only I am that, after a few days of mental struggle, of resolve and counter-resolution, I complied with my friend's entreaty, and, accompanied by my little girls, sought the nearest priest.
I took this step not with faith, nor yet altogether with doubt. I went, not willingly, but as if irresistibly impelled. I was like one shipwrecked—floating in maddened waters, threatened death below, an angry sky above, and darkness everywhere. A friend in whom I trusted had pointed out to me a life-preserver.
"Stretch forth thy hand, hold it fast; it will save thee," she had said.
"It is but a straw," I murmured, clutching at it, drowning.
The priest entered the parlor a few moments after our admission by a domestic.
I scanned him narrowly as he walked straight up to us, rubbing one hand against the other, slightly elevating his shoulders. He was a middle-aged man, whose benevolent countenance wore the reflection of a happy, cheerful soul at peace with God and man.
My first thought on viewing him was of the woman who wished but to "touch the hem of our Saviour's garment"; and, when he uttered his first salutation: "And what can I do for you, my child?" I said involuntarily: "Oh! that I may be made whole."
"Ah! you would go to confession. Go into the church, and pray before the altar; I will be there presently." And he turned to leave the room.
I did not speak nor move. At the door he said:
"You are a stranger in the city?"
"No—yes—that is, I have lived here several years, but I have no friends; I am indeed a stranger."
"You understand and attend to your religious duties?"
"I have no religious duties; I have no particular religion. I am beginning to think myself a heathen."
"And have you not been brought up a Catholic?" he questioned in surprise, returning to where I still sat.
"The furthest from it. If you have time to listen, I will tell you what has brought me to you." And I went on to tell him of the advice of my friend, received in the depth of my afflictions and despair. If my conversion to the Catholic faith, entire, absolute, blessed, thanks be to God! was not instantaneous; if, being blind, I received not sight, being deaf, I received not hearing, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as did those whom Christ himself touched and healed, still do I believe it to have been the work of Almighty God, and marvellous unto my own eyes. If God commissioned Miriam Bell, instead of his own holy angel, to direct me to the priest of his own anointing, I believe myself no less to have been sent to pious F. Corrigan than was Paul sent to Annanias, or Cornelius to Simon.
From regrets and lamentations, from dulness and despair, my heart bowed low unto God in rejoicing and thanksgiving.
Aside from this, the Catholic religion and the history of the church became to me an attractive, fascinating study. I seemed philosophizing with sages, praying with religious, meditating with saints. The whole world seemed newly peopled, unnumbered voices joining in that grand chant that the church for almost nineteen centuries hath sung: "Glory be unto God, and on earth peace to men of good-will."
F. Corrigan had sent a young priest to a new town in the interior, made by the opening up of new railroads. Here F. McDevitt had built a small church, and, in his report to his superior, spoke of having need of a teacher for a parish school. F. Corrigan offered me the situation, and in one week I was at Dillon's Station.
On the first day of our arrival, F. McDevitt asked my eldest little girl her name.
"Charlotte Griffeth Hallam," she replied promptly.
"Charlotte Griffeth?" he repeated; then turning to me:
"And for whom was she named?"
"For my mother," I replied.
"And is your mother living?"
"She died in my infancy."
"She must have been the person advertised." And taking a slip of paper from his memorandum-book, handed it me.
It was an advertisement for Charlotte Griffeth or her heirs in America, to whom an estate in Wales had descended, valued at one hundred thousand pounds! And what interest had this possessed for F. McDevitt? His brother had a short time previously married a Miss Griffeth, and it was to send in a letter to his brother that he had extracted from the paper this brief paragraph. Was not this too much? I closed my eyes to keep back the tears, and pressed my hand against my side, to still the tumultuous throbbings of my heart.
God! my God! so long time from me hidden, giving me now the true faith, and then this unexpected fortune! What should I do with it? A few months before, I would have purchased a splendid house, perfect in all its appointments. I would have gathered about me all that would have pleased the taste and gratified the senses.
Now was it thrown in my way as a temptation? Before the sun had set upon this wondrous change of fortune, my decision was formed. I would go on in the way I had intended. It had evidently been God's way chosen for me, and I would follow in it. I would go into a temporary cabin, and teach the children of the Irish laborers.
The fortune should be divided into three shares. My children should have two; the third, which was mine, should go to build a home for widows and orphans.
And I? Every morning, with my troop of little girls and boys, I go to the holy sacrifice of the Mass, where adoration is perpetually blended with thanksgiving—the latter one of the deepest emotions of my heart. I never expected to be so content and happy in this world.
Through thee I have found, O God! that "thou art the fountain of all good, the height of life, and the depth of wisdom. Unto thee do I lift up mine eyes; in thee, O my God! Father of mercies, do I put my trust.
"Bless and sanctify my soul with heavenly benediction, that it may be made thy holy habitation and the seat of thy eternal glory; and let nothing be found in the temple of thy divinity that may offend the eyes of thy majesty!"