The weapon of her weakness she can wield
To save, subdue—at once her spear and shield.
But there are some men that can look on woman’s grief, and yet coolly calculate on turning it to their own purposes; and so it was in the present case. Elsie Morrice was lovely, and that was enough for him. He promised everything, and her heart overflowed with gratitude. He not only promised this, but he requested her grandmother’s lease, to draw it out anew in her name. Elsie ran home, and, in a few minutes, without consulting her grandmother, the lease was in his hands: for who could doubt the intentions of him who had pledged his word that William Gordon should be put ashore? This was no sooner done, than came the sneer at her lover, the information that his Majesty’s navy must be manned, the hint at the injury to the landlord in old leases, and the proposal of the remedy that was to remove all these evils. The colour fled from Elsie’s face. She stood the picture of complete despair, and, for a little time, reason had to dispute for her sovereignty in her mind. She rushed from his presence, and, in her way back to Sunnybrae, saw, without shedding one tear, the vessel that contained her lover spread her broad sails to the wind and depart. Janet Morrice reproached her not when she told her what she had done, but, taking her in her arms, said, “Come, my Elsie, we maunna bide to be putten out. I’ve sitten here, and my fathers afore me, an’ I’m wae to leave it; but age and innocence will find a shelter somewhere else.” Next day they removed to a cottage on a neighbouring estate. A verbal message was all that William could send her; but it was the assurance he would be soon back to her. Elsie seemed now to live in another state of existence. She toiled in the fields, and seemed anxious to make up to her grandmother the effects of her imprudence. Time passed on, and no letter arrived from William, and Elsie grew sorrowful and melancholy. Grief and labour bore down a constitution naturally delicate, and she drooped.
There is something to my mind particularly holy and heavenly in the death-bed of a lovely woman. When I look on the pale cheek, which now and then regains more than its former colour in some feverish flush—on the sunk eye which occasionally beams with a short and transient hope—on the pale lips which utter low sounds of comfort to those around—and, more especially, on that whole countenance and appearance which bespeak patient resignation and a trust in that Word which has said there is another and a better world—I cannot help thinking that the being, even in her mortality, is already a deserving inmate of that place where all is immortality. I have stood at the grave while some of my earliest friends have been lowered into the ground, and I have wept to think that the bright hopes of youth were for ever fled—that the fair promises of youthful genius were wrapt within the clay-cold tomb—and that all the anticipations of the world’s applause had ended in the one formal bow of a few friends over mouldering ashes; but I confess I have sorrowed more at the grave of a young and lovely woman who had nothing to excite my compassion but her beauty and her helplessness; and often have the lines of that poet, who could be pathetic as well as sublime, come to my lips,—
Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead,
Or that thy corpse corrupts in earth’s dark womb,
Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed,
Hid from the world in a low-delvèd tomb.
It was on a lovely morning in the month of May that a sad and sorrowful company assembled to accompany the remains of poor Elsie Morrice to her last cold dwelling-place. According to that old-fashioned and most becoming custom, she was borne on the bier, and carried, as is the practice in that part of the country, for some way by the young maidens dressed in white. No mother had she to weep for her, no relation to bear her head to the grave; but her old grandmother followed her corpse to the door—farther she could not; and, when it was placed on the bier, she attempted not to speak or to moan, but she leaned her palsied hands on her staff, and followed the coffin with her eyes, while down her furrowed cheeks rolled two big tears that told too well her inward grief. Elsie’s young companion, May Leslie, who was to have been her bestmaid at the marriage, who had promised to assist at her marriage dress, and make her marriage bed, had, in sorrow and in grief, fashioned that last dress in which beauty is offered, not to the arms of a lover, but to the crawling worm, now supported her head for a few steps to that bed from which there is no rising till the last dread trumpet shall sound. The females then gave the corpse to the young men, and I could perceive, as they returned, that many a handkerchief was soaked in briny tears, and many a head turned to take a last look at the departure of her who had been their companion and their pride. We moved on, and, after an hour’s walking, arrived at the old churchyard of ——. It is situated on the front of a bleak and barren hill, with neither tree nor shrub for some way around it; and a few moss-covered tombstones alone told us that it was the resting place for the dead. The church had been rebuilt in a more convenient place; but, like the sojourner in distant lands, who sighs for his native soil, however barren, there are some that still cling to the spot which is the grave of their fathers. Though it may betray some weakness in reason, still I hope it is an excusable failing, in feeling minds, that they desire to mingle in their ashes with their friends. Here we deposited the remains of Elsie Morrice, and, when the grave had been closed over, the company departed in groups, chiefly engaged in talking over her unfortunate love.
The heather sods had long become fast, and the hare-bell had blossomed and withered for some summers on the grave of Elsie Morrice, when one day a seaman, singing a merry sea-song to himself, tript up the pathway leading to Sunnybrae. It was William Gordon. The joy he had felt on again entering amongst scenes so well known to him, sent itself forth in a song; but, as he approached the house, it died away, and gave place to far different feelings. He had never heard from Elsie; but, while aboard of ship, he had hushed any fears that arose, by ascribing this to the letters miscarrying from the ever changing station of a sailor. Still he was not well at ease; and as he came in front of the house, and saw the woodbine torn from the walls, the windows here and there broken and covered with paper, and the pretty flower-garden of Elsie turned into a kail-yard, the most fearful forebodings arose in his breast, and with a trembling and hurried hand he lifted the latch. He started back on perceiving some children playing on the floor, but again advanced when he saw a middle-aged woman nursing a child, and asked, in the best way he was able, if she could tell him where Janet Morrice lived? She gave him a direction, and, without taking one other look at the cottage he had so often visited, he made his way to the new dwelling, and on entering, addressed her in the usual salutation, “How are you, Granny, and how is Elsie?”