"Hers is a careless, indolent nature, but this insult would have aroused her. She would never have forgiven him or me, had she suspected a warmer sentiment on either side than that of friendship."
"But an honorable, affectionate man like your husband, who thought his wife the most precious thing in the world, was to forget his disappointment, overlook your lack of love and truth towards him, only because you allowed that he had found out your real feelings at last, and all the excuse you could give was that you could not help them! You were the one in fault all the way through, from the day you engaged to marry him, up to the minute when you would not say the word he begged from you to keep him at home. It is right that all the advance should come from you."
High-spirited as Sarah was, she was not angered by this plain-speaking. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend;" and she felt that she had but this one. Aunt Sarah studied her thoughtful countenance before she renewed the argument.
"I am an old-fashioned woman, dear—born and bred in the country, where, thank God! I have spent all my life. But I've been thinking about your story of the way people act and feel up there in York, and maybe in all other great, fine, money-making cities, and my notion is just this. I look back of their pushing and straining after riches, and show, and worldly vanities; every man for himself, and the one that climbs highest, forgetting as soon as he gets there that he was ever any lower, and ready to kick over anybody that tries to get alongside of him; and I see that they have lost sight of the second great commandment—'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Then I look back of this too, and I see where the greatest sin is, and—dear, bear with me! I see where you have gone furthest astray. Here's a passage I was reading this morning that tells the whole story." She raised the Bible from the table, and laid it upon Sarah's lap, pointing as she did so to these words enclosed in brackets:
"Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips. In the day thou shalt make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish; but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and desperate sorrow!"
Mrs. Hunt would have regarded as an insult any expressed doubt of her religious principles and practice. She had a desirable pew in the fashionable church which was nearest her residence, and, stormy Sabbaths excepted, it was generally full at morning service. When her children were presentable as to looks, very young babies being seldom pretty, they were offered in fine lawn and Valenciennes at the font for the rite of baptism; and not a confirmation had passed since her daughters were grown, that she did not fancy how interesting they would look, kneeling before the surpliced bishop, heads gracefully bowed, and the regards of the whole congregation fixed upon them. Sarah never could be brought to the performance of the commonest act of public worship, unless it was to rise with the rest, when a standing posture was prescribed by the prayer-book; and she shocked her mother by declaring that she only did this because she was tired of sitting! Lucy's serene grace of devoutness was beautiful, if not edifying to behold. Those who occupied adjacent pews involuntarily suppressed their responses as her mellow tones repeated, with melancholy sweetness—"Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!" And as the melting cadences entranced their ears, the lovely penitent was speculating upon the probable cost of Miss Hauton's Parisian hat, or coveting Mrs. Beau Monde's sable cloak.
If Sarah had even heard of regeneration, it was as a technical phrase of the church articles and christening service. Of its practical meaning, its inward application, its absolute necessity to the safety of the soul, she had as vague a conception as a Parsee or New Zealand cannibal would have formed. She had read the Bible in connection with rhetorical lectures, and admired it as a noble specimen of Oriental literature. What other associations could she have with it? A handsome copy of the Holy Scriptures, surmounted by a book of common prayer, lay on a stand in Mrs. Hunt's third and rear parlor, and was dusted when a like attention was paid to the other ornaments of tables and etageres. An Oxford edition, russet antique, formed one of the wedding-gifts of each of the sisters, and in due time was laid in pious pomp on its purple pillow in the library corner. It was hardly strange, then, that the quotation, so apposite to the case in point, should fail to impress her very strongly. Aunt Sarah had gone out, deeming solitary reflection the best means of enforcing the lesson she had tried to inculcate, and, after re-reading the two verses, without further appropriation of their meaning, Sarah turned leaf after leaf of the volume, catching here and there a sentence of the large print, so grateful to the failing sight of her who was its daily student.
"David said unto his servants—'Is the child dead?' And they said, 'He is dead!'"
The smitten chord in the mother's heart sent out a ring of pain, and her listless hand paused upon the open page. It is a simple story—the royal parent's unavailing wrestle with the Chastener, the dread end of his suspense, and the affliction, made manifest in the calm resignation, the sanctified trust of the mourner. But when received as Sarah read it, with the vision of a similar death-scene intermixing itself with its unadorned details, the fresh blood still welling from the wound made by the tearing away of a portion of one's own life, every line is fraught with truth and pathos.
"Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me!"