“Sarah, the gentleman has come again; he is waiting for you in the housekeeper’s room.”
She went accordingly; but her self-possession almost deserted her when, on looking up in the face of the stranger as she entered, she recognised at once her cousin Reuben—pale, thin, and worn indeed, but still himself, and it required a powerful effort, even in that strong and simple mind, to evince no feeling but surprise and welcome.
Few words, however, at the first moment passed between them. Reuben sprang forward as she entered, and clasped both her hands in his, which were cold and trembling; and she saw his lip quiver painfully, and, to her grief and almost terror, as she spoke to him he gradually let go her hands, and, sinking on the nearest chair, covered his face with his handkerchief, and wept like a child.
“I terrify you, dear cousin, do forgive me,” he said at length, as he heard the gentle voice which sought to soothe him falter in spite of herself. “Sarah, dear Sarah, I do not know why your kind voice should affect me thus. I cannot tell you why I have come to grieve you with my grief, except that when I least desired it, you were always kind and good and feeling, and gave me comfort when I could not console myself; and my heart has so yearned to you now—now, when your own word has come to pass, to tell you you were right. In prosperity I might be happy, though God knows it was but a strange unnatural happiness; but in affliction—Sarah, do you remember your own words?”
She did remember them; but she had no voice to repeat them then, and her quivering lip alone gave answer. Her cousin continued, almost choked with many emotions—
“‘If affliction, if death—may you never repent your engagement then,’ These were the words you said; and oh, how often the last few months have they returned to me. Affliction has come, my own cousin; affliction, oh, such affliction that God alone could send—death, even death!” The word was almost inaudible.
“Death!” repeated Sarah, startled at once into perfect consciousness. She looked at his dress—the deepest mourning—and the words more fell from her than were spoken. “Not Jeanie, your own Jeanie—tell me, it is not she?” Then, as she read his answer in the tighter pressure of his hand, the convulsive movement of his lips, she threw her arms round him, and faintly exclaiming, “Reuben, my poor Reuben, may God grant you His comfort!” burst into tears.
Nothing is so true a balm to the afflicted as unaffected sympathy; and Reuben roused himself from his own sorrow, to bless his cousin for her tears, yet bid her not weep for him.
“It is better thus, my gentle cousin. The God of my parents has revealed Himself to their sinful offspring, even in His chastening. I cannot tell you all now, dear Sarah; how, even when life seemed all prosperous around me, there was still a void within—I was not happy. I had returned to virtue, turned aside from all irregular and sinful pursuits, kept steady to business, and in doing kind acts towards men; and more still, I had a gentle being who so loved me, that she forced me into loving her more than when I first sought her; for then, then—Sarah, do not hate me—I did but seek her, because I thought a union with a Christian would put a final barrier between me and the race I had taught myself to hate—would mark me no more a Jew; and so for this, this dreadful sin, I banished feelings which had once been mine. Sarah, do not ask me what they were. Yet still, still, even when I did love my fair and gentle wife, when she lavished on me such affection it ought to have brought but joy, I was not happy. I was away from all who knew my birth and race; the once hated name, a Jew, no longer hurt my ears; courted, flattered, admired, Sarah, Sarah, was it not strange there was still that gnawing void?”
She looked up with streaming eyes. “It was a void no man could fill, dear cousin. You thought its cause was of earth, and sought with earth to fill it; but now, oh, let us thank God, His image fills it now.”