“Oh! death, whatever may have been our thoughts or fears, ever comes unexpectedly at last. My son often—often told me, that he was dying, and I saw that it was so ever since Christmas. But how could I prevent hope from entering my heart? His sweet happy voice—the calmness of his prayers—his smiles that never left his face whenever he looked or spoke to me—his studies, still pursued as anxiously as ever—the interest he took in any little incident of our retired life—all forced me to believe at times that he was not destined to die. But why think on all these things now? Yes! I will always think of them, till I join him and my husband in heaven!”
It seemed now as if the widow had only noticed me for the first time. Her soul had been so engrossed with its passion of grief, and with the felt sympathy and compassion of my venerable friend. She asked me if I had known her son; and I answered, that if I had, I could not have sat there so composedly; but that I was no stranger to his incomparable excellence, and felt indeed for her grievous loss. She listened to my words, but did not seem to hear them, and once more addressed the old man.
“He suffered much sickness, my poor boy. For although it was a consumption, that is not always an easy death. But as soon as the sickness and the racking pain gave way to our united prayers, God and our Saviour made us happy; and sure he spake then as never mortal spake, kindling into a happiness that was beautiful to see, when I beheld his face marked by dissolution, and knew, even in those inspired moments (for I can call them nothing else), that ere long the dust was to lie on those lips now flowing over with heavenly music!”
We sat for some hours in the widow’s hut, and the minister several times prayed with her, at her own request. On rising to depart, he said that he would send up one of her dearest friends to pass the night with her, and help her to do the last offices to her son. But she replied that she wished to be left alone for that day and night, and would expect her friend in the morning. We went towards the outer door, and she, in a sort of sudden stupor, let us depart without any farewell words, and retired into the room where her son was lying. Casting back our eyes before our departure, we saw her steal into the bed beside the dead body, and drawing the head gently into her bosom, she lay down with him in her arms, and as if they had in that manner fallen asleep.
THE CRUSHED BONNET.
Towards the close of a beautiful autumnal day in 18—, when pacing slowly on my way, and in a contemplative mood admiring the delightful scenery between Blair Athole and Dunkeld, on my return from a survey of the celebrated pass of Killiecrankie, and other places rendered famous in Scottish story, I was accosted by a female, little past the prime of life, but with two children of unequal age walking by her side, and a younger slung upon her back. The salutation was of the supplicatory kind, and while the tones were almost perfectly English, the pronunciation of the words was often highly Scottish. The words, a “sodger’s widow”—“three helpless bairns”—and “Waterloo,” broke my meditations with the force of an enchantment, excited my sympathy, and made me draw my purse. While in the act of tendering a piece of money—a cheap and easy mode of procuring the luxury of doing good—I thought the countenance, though browned and weather-beaten, one which I before had seen, without exactly recollecting when or where. My curiosity thus raised, many interrogatives and answers speedily followed, when at last I discovered that there stood before me Jeanie Strathavon, once the beauty and the pride of my own native village. Ten long and troublous years had passed away since Jeanie left the neighbourhood in which she was born to follow the spirit-stirring drum; and where she had gone, or how she had afterwards fared, many enquired, though but few could tell. The incident which led to all her subsequent toil and suffering seemed but trivial at the time, yet, like many other trivial occurrences, became to her one fraught with mighty consequences.
She was an only daughter, her father was an honest labourer, and though not nursed in the bosom of affluence, she hardly knew what it was to have a wish ungratified. She possessed mental vivacity, and personal attractions, rarely exhibited, especially at the present day, by persons in her humble sphere of life. Though she never could boast what might properly be called education, yet great care had been taken to render her modest, affectionate, and pious. Her parents, now in the decline of life, looked upon her as their only solace. She had been from her very birth the idol of their hearts; and as there was no sunshine in their days but when she was healthy and happy, so their prospects were never clouded but when she was the reverse. Always the favourite of one sex, and the envy of another, when not yet out of her teens, she was importuned by the addresses of many both of her own rank and of a rank above her own, to change her mode of life. The attentions of the latter, in obedience to the suggestions of her affectionate but simple hearted parents, she always discouraged, for they never would allow themselves to think that “folk wi’ siller would be looking after their bairn for ony gude end.” Among those of her own station, she could hardly be said to have yet shown a decided preference to any one, though the glances which she cast at Henry Williams, when passing through the kirkyard on Sundays, seemed to every one to say where, if she had her own unbiassed will, her choice would light. Still she had never thought seriously upon the time when, nor the person for whom, she would leave her fond and doting parents. Chance or accident, however, in these matters, often outruns the speed of deliberate choice; at least such was the case with poor Jeanie.
Decked out one Sabbath morning in her best, to go to what Burns calls a “Holy Fair,” in the neighbouring parish, though viewed in a far different light by her, Jeanie had on her brawest and her best; and among other things, a fine new bonnet, which excited the gossip and the gaze of all the lasses in the village. Having sat for an hour or two at the tent, listening earnestly and devoutly to a discourse which formed a complete body of divinity, she, with many others, was at length obliged to take refuge in the church, to shun a heavy summer shower, which unexpectedly arrested the out-door devotions. Here, whether wearied with the long walk she had in the morning, or overpowered with the heat and suffocation consequent upon such a crowd, she began to feel a serious oppression of sickness, and before she could effect her escape she entirely fainted away, requiring to be carried out in a state of complete insensibility.
It was long before she came to herself; and when she did, she found that the rough hands of those who had caught her when falling, and borne her through the crowd to the open air, had, amidst the anxiety for her recovery, treated her finery with but very little ceremony. Among other instances of this kind, she found that her bonnet had been hastily torn from her head, thrown carelessly aside, and, being accidentally trod upon, had been so crushed, as to render it perfectly useless. The grief which this caused made her forget the occasion which produced such disaster; and adjusting herself as well as she could, she did not wait the conclusion of the solemn service, but sought her father’s cottage amidst much sorrow and confusion.
When she reached home, she found her parents engaged in devotional reading, their usual mode of spending the Sabbath evenings. As it was not altogether with their consent that she had not accompanied them that day to their usual place of being instructed in divine things, the plight in which she returned to them excited, especially on the mother’s part, a hasty burst of displeasure, if not of anger; and the calm improving peace of the evening was entirely broken. Sacred as to them the day appeared, they could not restrain inquiry as to the cause of her altered appearance, and maternal anxiety gave birth to suspicions which poor Jeanie’s known veracity and simple unaffected narrative could not altogether repress. Thus, for the first time in her life, had Jeanie excited the frown of her parents, and every reproving look and word was as a dagger to her heart.