Tears were running fast down the face of the good little schoolmistress. She hurried away; but her Magic Words were not spoken in vain.
Day & Son, lithrs to the Queen.
CHAPTER IV.
Beautifully dawned the last morning of the old year. How lovely are some few winter sunrisings! A cold, grey sky, and dim, glimmering light, scarcely reveals surrounding objects. Presently a delicate blush appears, gently stealing over the east. It deepens to a ruddy glow; and then bright, golden clouds, tinged with many a varied hue, overspread the sky, lighting up in the strongest relief every leafless tree, even to the most fibre-like branches.
Everything is very still. Edith sits silently at the window of her dressing-room, watching that lovely dawn. Presently a few starlings appear on the frosty slopes, with their quick, impatient gestures and rapid movements, seeking a breakfast. A pair of beautiful blackbirds droop their jetty wings, and seem numbed with cold. A robin, cheerful even in adversity, trills a few grateful notes on a shrub near the window, and Edith thinks that no new-year’s serenade could be half as touching as that low, sweet song. She thinks, too, what a lesson it teaches; for her melancholy eye had been straying mournfully over the broad lands stretching far and wide before her, and—“’tis an old tale, and often told,”—she had almost envied the humblest cottager in those her lordly possessions. “Farewell, old year!” she exclaimed; “none other will ever dawn upon me as you did. May the new bear happiness and joy to many! Oh, Marion! you little thought how desolate I am, when you prophesied that there was yet much in store for me.”
Marion’s picturesque cottage could be plainly seen in the distance, shut in by the blue range of hills above, and sheltered with sweeping larches. The morning sun now shone brightly upon it, and Edith pictured to herself the beaming, happy countenance of her friend.
“May God bless you, Marion!” she continued with emotion; “for to the example of your gentle goodness I owe all that is now left me,—the knowledge of that usefulness, that patient love and forbearance, which makes you so dear to others, so happy in yourself, and without which all that the world calls beauty and talent is hollow and heartless indeed! You taught me the value of true affection—the folly and littleness of the false pride I rejoiced in; and yet so sweetly, that I was only humbled to myself—not to you. Would that it had been but a few short months before! Oh, Percy! how willingly would I now confess myself in the wrong! But now I am forgotten! In your benevolent plans, in your honourable successes, there is no thought of me; or I am only remembered as a wilful, imperious woman, whom you once foolishly loved. I shall never see you again—mine the sorrow, mine the fault! But I am earning the right to self-esteem; I am doing all that I believe you would approve of, did you care for me now.”
Her heart was very full as she descended to the breakfast-room. No one was there; but on the table lay a simple nosegay. “From Marion,” was written on a slip of paper. Edith mentally thanked her friend for the love which she knew was expressed in the fragrant gift; but tears sprang into her eyes as she looked on it; for a few lovely roses, the little blue periwinkle, with its shining green leaves and “sweet remembrances,” and a few early primroses and violets, were arranged almost exactly as she had received them from a still more beloved hand the year before. She started as her mother entered the room, and turned hastily to conceal her emotion; but touched by the look of anxious love which she caught fixed on herself, exclaimed, while she suffered the large tears to fall down her face, “Oh, my mother, I will not be proud to you—Heaven knows there would be little merit in that! I was thinking”—and her beautiful head lay on her mother’s gentle bosom—“of the happiness which I have thrown away—of one who has forgotten me.”
“Ah, my dear child!” said her mother, as she tenderly pressed her hand on the throbbing brow, “in the doubtfulness of our nature we often accuse those of forgetfulness whose hearts may be breaking for our sake.”