Thus immersed in study, weeks, months, and years glided by, bearing her young life swiftly across the Enna meads of girlhood, nearer and nearer to the portals of that mystic temple of womanhood, on whose fair fretted shrine was to be offered a heart either consumed by the baleful fires of Baal, or purified and consecrated by the Shekinah, promised through Messiah.
CHAPTER IX.
During the first year of Mr. Murray's absence his brief letters to his mother were written at long intervals; in the second, they were rarer and briefer still; but toward the close of the third he wrote more frequently, and announced his intention of revisiting Egypt before his return to the land of his birth. Although no allusion was ever made to Edna, Mrs. Murray sometimes read aloud descriptions of beautiful scenery, written now among the scoriae of Mauna Roa or Mauna Kea, and now from the pinnacle of Mount Ophir, whence, through waving forests of nutmeg and clove, flashed the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, or the silver ripples of Malacca; and, on such occasions, the orphan listened eagerly, entranced by the tropical luxuriance and grandeur of his imagery, by his gorgeous word-painting, which to her charmed ears seemed scarcely inferior to the wonderful pen-portraits of Ruskin. Those letters seemed flecked with the purple and gold, the amber and rose, the opaline and beryline tints, of which he spoke in telling the glories of Polynesian and Malaysian skies, and the matchless verdure and floral splendors of their serene spicy dells. For many days after the receipt of each, Mrs. Murray was graver and sadder, but the spectre that had disquieted Edna was thoroughly exorcised, and only when the cold touch of the golden key startled her was she conscious of a vague dread of some far-off but slowly and surely approaching evil. In the fourth year of her pupilage she was possessed by an unconquerable desire to read the Talmud, and in order to penetrate the mysteries and seize the treasures hidden in that exhaustless mine of Oriental myths, legends, and symbolisms, she prevailed upon Mr. Hammond to teach her Hebrew and the rudiments of Chaldee. Very reluctantly and disapprovingly he consented, and subsequently informed her that, as he had another pupil who was also commencing Hebrew, he would class them, and hear their recitations together. This new student was Mr. Gordon Leigh, a lawyer in the town, and a gentleman of wealth and high social position. Although quite young, he gave promise of eminence in his profession, and was a great favorite of the minister, who pronounced him the most upright and exemplary young man of his acquaintance. Edna had seen him several times at Mrs. Murray's dinners, but while she thought him exceedingly handsome, polite, and agreeable, she regarded him as a stranger, until the lessons at the Parsonage brought them every two days around the little table in the study. They began the language simultaneously; but Edna, knowing the flattering estimation in which he was held, could not resist the temptation to measure her intellect with his, and soon threatened to outrun him in the Talmud race. Piqued pride and a manly resolution to conquer spurred him on, and the venerable instructor looked on and laughed at the generous emulation thus excited. He saw an earnest friendship daily strengthening between the rivals, and knew that in Gordon Leigh's magnanimous nature there was no element which could cause an objection to the companionship to which he had paved the way.
Four months after the commencement of the new study, Edna rorse at daylight to complete some exercises, which she had neglected to write out on the previous evening, and as soon as she concluded the task, went down stairs to gather the flowers. It was the cloudless morning of her seventeenth birthday and as she stood clipping geraniums and jasmine and verbena, memory flew back to the tender years in which the grisly blacksmith had watched her career with such fond pride and loving words of encouragement, and painted the white-haired old man smoking on the porch that fronted Lookout, while from his lips, tremulous with a tender smile, seemed to float the last words he had spoken to her on that calm afternoon when, in the fiery light of a dying day, he was gathered to his forefathers:
"You will make me proud of you, my little Pearl, when you are smart enough to teach a school and take care of me, for I shall be too old to work by that time."
Now, after the lapse of years, when her educational course was almost finished, she recalled every word and look and gesture; even the thrill of horror that shook her limbs when she kissed the lips that death had sealed an hour before. Mournfully vivid was her recollection of her tenth birthday, for then he had bought her a blue ribbon for her hair, and a little china cup and saucer; and now tears sprang to her eyes as she murmured: "I have studied hard and the triumph is at hand, but I have nobody to be proud of me now! Ah Grandpa! if you could only come back to me, your little Pearl! It is so desolate to be alone in this great world; so hard to have to know that nobody cares specially whether I live or die, whether I succeed or fail ignominiously. I have only myself to live for; only my own heart and will to sustain and stimulate me."
Through the fringy acacias that waved their long hair across the hothouse windows, the golden sunshine flickered over the graceful, rounded, lithe figure of the orphan—over the fair young face with its delicate cameo features, warm, healthful coloring, and brave, hopeful expression. Four years had developed the pretty, sad-eyed child into a lovely woman, with a pure heart filled with humble unostentatious piety, and a clear, vigorous intellect inured to study, and ambitious of every honorable eminence within the grasp of true womanhood.
Edna had endeavored to realize and remember what her Bible first taught her, and what moralists of all creeds, climes and ages, had reiterated—that human life was at best but "vanity and vexation of spirit," that "man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward"; yet as she stood on the line, narrow and thin as Al-Sirat, that divides girlhood and womanhood, all seemed to her fresh, pure heart as inviting and bewitching as the magnificent panorama upon which enraptured lotophagi gazed from the ancient acropolis of Cyrene.
As Edna turned to leave the hothouse, the ring of horse's hoofs on the rocky walk attracted her attention, and a moment after, Mr. Leigh gave his horse to the gardener and came to meet her.
"Good morning, Miss Edna. As I am bearer of dispatches from my sister to Mrs. Murray, I have invited myself to breakfast with you."