“Pity old age within whose silver hairs
Honor and reverence evermore do lie.”
“Thank God, dear Henry,” said her mother, “she is not at all events an idiot. Children,” said she, “I trust you will remember your father’s advice, and bear this—this——.” But here the heart and strength of the mother herself were overcome, and she was sinking down when her son caught her ere she fell, and carried her out in his arms, accompanied by Maria and Agnes.
It would be difficult for any pen to paint the distraction of her father, thus placed in a state of divided apprehension between his daughter and his wife.
“Oh, my child, my child,” he exclaimed, “Perhaps in the midst of this misery, your mother may be dying! May the God of all consolation support you and her! What, oh what will become of us!”
“Well, well,” his daughter went on; “life’s a fearful thing that can work such anges; but why may we not as well pass at once from youth to old age as from happiness to misery? Here we are both old; ay, and if we are gray it is less with age than affliction—that’s one comfort—I am young enough to be beautiful yet; but age, when it comes prematurely on the youthful, as it often does—thanks to treachery and disappointment, ay, and thanks to a thousand causes which we all know but don’t wish to think of; age, I say, when it comes prematurely on the youthful, is just like a new and unfinished house that is suffered to fall into ruin—desolation, naked, and fresh, and glaring—without the reverence and grandeur of antiquity. Yes—yes—yes; but there is another cause; and that must be whispered only to the uttermost depths of silence—of silence; for silence is the voice of God. That word—that word! Oh, how I shudder to think of it! And who will pity me when I acknowledge it—there is one—one only—who will mourn for my despair and the fate, foreordained and predestined, of one whom he loved—that is my papa—my papa only—my papa only; for he knows that I am a castaway—-A CAST-AWAY!”
These words were uttered with an energy of manner and a fluency of utterance which medical men know to be strongly characteristic of insanity, unless indeed where the malady is silent and moping. The afflicted old man now discovered that his daughter’s mind had, in addition to her disappointment, sunk under the frightful and merciless dogma, which we trust will soon cease to darken and distort the beneficent character of God. Indeed it might have been evident to him before that in looking upon herself as a castaway, Jane’s sensitive spirit was gradually lapsing into the gloomy horrors of predestination. But this blindness of the father to such a tendency was very natural in a man to whose eye familiarity with the doctrine had removed its deformity. The old man looked upon her countenance with an expression of mute affliction almost verging on despair; for a moment he forgot the situation of his wife and everything but the consequences of a discovery so full of terror and dismay.
“Alas, my unhappy child,” he exclaimed, “and is this, too, to be added to your misery and ours? Now, indeed, is the cup of our affliction full even to overflowing. O God! who art good and full of mercy,” he added, dropping on his knees under the bitter impulse of the moment, “and who wiliest not the death of a sinner, oh lay not upon her or us a weight of sorrow greater than we can bear. We do not, O Lord! for we dare not, desire Thee to stay Thy hand; but oh, chastise us in mercy, especially her—her—Our hearts’ dearest—she was ever the child, of our loves; but now she is also the unhappy child of all our sorrows; the broken idol of affections which we cannot change. Enable us, O God, to acquiesce under this mysterious manifestation of Thy will, and to receive from Thy hand with patience and resignation whatsoever of affliction it pleaseth Thee to lay upon us. And touching this stricken one—if it were Thy blessed will to—to—but no—oh no—not our will, oh Lord, but Thine be done!”
It was indeed a beautiful thing to see the sorrow-bound father bowing down his gray locks with humility before the footstool of his God, and forbearing even to murmur under a dispensation so fearfully calamitous to him and his. Religion, however, at which the fool and knave may sneer in the moments of convivial riot, is after all the only stay on which the human heart can rest in those severe trials of life which almost every one sooner or later is destined to undergo. The sceptic may indeed triumph in the pride of his intellect or in the hour of his passion; but no matter on what arguments his hollow creed is based, let but the footstep of disease or death approach, and he himself is the first to abandon it and take refuge in those truths which he had hitherto laughed at or maligned. When Mr. Sinclair arose, his countenance, through all the traces of sorrow which were upon it, beamed with a light which no principle, merely human, could communicate to it. A dim but gentle and holy radiance suffused his whole face, and his heart, for a moment, received the assurance it wanted so much. He experienced a feeling for which language has no terms, or at least none adequate to express its character. It was “that peace of God which passeth all understanding.”
In a few minutes after he had concluded his short but earnest prayer, Agnes returned to let him know that her mamma was better and would presently come in to sit with Jane, whom she could not permit, she said, to regain out of her sight. Jane had been silent for some time, but the extreme brilliancy of her eyes and the energy of her excitement were too obvious to permit any expectation of immediate improvement.
When her mother and Maria returned, accompanied also by William, she took no note whatsoever of them, nor indeed did she appear to have an eye for anything external to her own deep but unsettled misery. Time after time they spoke to her as before, each earnestly hoping that some favorite expression or familiar tone of voice might impinge, however slightly, upon her reason, or touch some chord of her affections. These tender devices of their love, however, all failed; no corresponding emotion was awakened, and they resolved, without loss of time, to see what course of treatment medical advice recommend them to pursue on her behalf. Accordingly William proceeded with a heavy heart to call in the aid of a gentleman who can bear full testimony to the accuracy of our narrative—we allude to that able and eminent practitioner, Doctor M’Cormick of. Belfast, whose powers, of philosophical analysis, and patient investigation are surpassed only by the success of the masterly skill with which he applies them. The moment he left the room for this purpose, Jane spoke.