The services commenced—the prayers of the congregation had arisen to Heaven, the incense of praise had floated upward on the solemn melody of the organ, the exhortation to the candidates had been affectionately uttered by an aged pastor, and the moment came when the presentation of the two was made to the Bishop by the officiating clergyman. The solemn appeal was then uttered—
“Brethren, if there be any of you who knoweth any impediment or any notable crime on either of these persons for the which he ought not to be admitted to the holy office, let him come forth in the name of God and show what the crime or impediment is.”
At these words a sudden terror seemed to seize upon Alfred Graham. His frame shook with suppressed emotion, his countenance became livid, and his fine features were strangely contorted as if some sudden pang had convulsed him. The next instant he uttered a faint cry and fell prostrate to the ground, while his very life-blood was poured at the foot of the altar which he had dared to touch with polluted hands.
He was borne to his home in utter insensibility. The sting of conscience had finished the work which disease had long since begun, and the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs had been the consequence of his unnatural excitement and self-command. All that medical skill could effect was tried, but without success, and ere the lapse of another day it was known that Alfred Graham was sinking into the arms of death. There was no time for repentance—no time to combat prejudices and awaken better impulses. He lay as if in the deep torpor of insensibility, until aroused by some cordial administered by his physician, when his strength seemed to rally, and raising himself on his pillow, he addressed his sister in words which fell like molten lead upon her heart. With all the eloquence of passion he poured forth a wild confession of his errors and his doubts, and then, in language equally fervid but far more bitter, he reproached her—her who had devoted her whole life to his welfare—as the cause of all his guilt. He accused her of having crushed his timid spirit by sternness and unbending rigor—of having taught him hypocrisy by her fierce contempt for his weaknesses—of having killed him by forcing him to a profession which he hated and contemned.
“I am not mad, Madeline,” he exclaimed, in a hoarse voice, broken by his difficult and long-drawn breath, “I am not mad, but so surely as I am now stretched upon the bed of death, so surely has your ambition and your mistaken zeal laid me here to die. I seek not to excuse myself, and may God forgive me my many secret sins; but never, never would my soul have been so deeply stained had it not been for your unrelenting indignation at my boyish follies, and your determined will in the choice of my future destiny. I forgive you, Madeline, but you will not forgive yourself.”
The exertion of uttering these terrible words was too great, and ere the sounds yet died upon the ear of the horror-stricken sister, the spirit of the misguided youth had gone to its dread account.
From that hour Madeline was utterly and entirely changed. Whatever were her feelings she shared them with none, but shrunk alike from question and sympathy. Those dying reproaches, unjust as she felt them to be, were yet engraven in ineffacable characters upon her heart, and with a feeling akin to the mistaken austerity which punishes the body for the sins of the soul, she resolved to make her future life a penance for her involuntary error. Lonely and desolate, she took up her abode in a place well suited to her embittered and almost misanthropic feelings. For more than ten years the gray cottage was her abode, and the labors of the seamstress furnished her scanty subsistence. During all that period not a creature was ever admitted beyond the threshold of her door, and all curiosity about her had quite subsided long before the termination of her lonely career. At length she was missed from her usual lowly seat in church. A second Sabbath came, and still the black and veiled form of the recluse was not seen. Common humanity demanded some inquiry into her fate, and after several vain attempts to procure admission into the cottage, the door was forced. Upon a truss of straw, in one corner of the desolate chamber, lay the emaciated form of the unfortunate Madeline, stiff, and cold, and ghastly, as if days had passed since the spirit had escaped from its clay tenement. She died as she had lived, lonely, and unknown, for it was not until years had elapsed that I heard the story of the brother and the sister from the lips of one who had known them in early days; while other incidental circumstances enabled me to identify Madeline Graham with the tall “weird woman” who had so terrified my childish fancy.
The erring brother sleeps beneath the shadow of the sanctuary, in ground still consecrated by holy usage, but all trace of the hapless sister has vanished from the earth. The village graveyard is now a populous highway, bordered by tall houses and traversed by busy feet, while the green hillock which once marked the burial place of Madeline Graham has long since been crushed beneath the weight of pavements, echoing to the noisy tread of many a thoughtless wayfarer.
Alas, for human love! and, alas, for human error! How dreary and desolate would seem many a scene of unmerited suffering did we not know that there is a brighter world, where all tears shall be wiped from all eyes, and where there shall be no sorrow nor sighing through an eternity of happiness!