“It will be hard,” she said, “and I need not conceal it, for my very thought has a voice at the footstool of the Almighty; the intelligences of other worlds know it; all; the invisible spirits of the universe know it; those that are evil rejoice, and the good would murmur if the fulness of their own happiness permitted them. No—no—I need not conceal it—hearken, therefore—hearken;” and she lowered her voice to a whisper—“the Fawn of Springvale—Jane Sinclair—is predestined to eternal misery. She is a cast-away. I may therefore speak and raise my voice to warn; who shall dare,” she added, “who shall dare ever to part from the truth! Those—those only who have been foredoomed—like me. Oh misery, misery, is there no hope? nothing but despair for one so young, and as they said, so gentle, and so beautiful, Alas! alas! Death to me now is no consoler!”
She clasped her beautiful hands together as she spoke, and looked with a countenance so full of unutterable woe that no heart could avoid participating in her misery.
“Jane, oh darling of all our hearts,” said her weeping mother, “will you not come over and sit beside your mamma—your mamma, my treasure, who feels that she cannot long live to witness what you suffer.”
“The Fawn of Springvale,” she proceeded, “the gentle Fawn of Springvale, for it was on the account of my gentleness I was so called, is stricken—the arrow is here—in her poor broken heart; and what did she do, what did the gentle creature do to suffer or to deserve all this misery?”
“True, my sister—too true, too true,” said Maria, bursting into an agony of bitter sorrow; “what strange mystery is in the gentle one’s affliction? Surely, if there was ever a spotless or a sinless creature on earth, she was and is that creature.”
“Beware of murmuring, Maria,” said her father; “the purpose, though at present concealed, may yet become sufficiently apparent for us to recognize in it the benignant dispensation of a merciful God. Our duty, my dear child, is now to bear, and be resigned. The issues of this sad calamity are with the Almighty, and with Him let us patiently leave them.”
“Had I never disclosed my love,” proceeded Jane, “I might have stolen quietly away from them all and laid my cheek on that hardest pillow which giveth the soundest sleep; but would not concealment,” she added, starting; “would not that too have been dissimulation? Oh God help me!—it is, it is clear that in any event I was foredoomed!”
Agnes, who had watched her sister with an interest too profound to suffer even the grief necessary on such an occasion to take place, now went over, and taking her hand in one of hers, placed the fingers of the other upon her sister’s cheek, thus attempting to fix Jane’s eyes upon her own countenance—
“Do you not know who it is,” said she, “that is now speaking to you?—Look upon me, and tell me do you forget me so soon?”
“Who can tell yet,” she proceeded, “who can tell yet—time may retrieve all, and he may return: but the yew tree—I fear—I fear—why, it is an emblem of death; and perhaps death may unite us—yes, and I say he will—he will—he will. Does he not feel pity? Oh yes, in a thousand, thousand cases he is the friend of the miserable. Death the Consoler! Oh from how many an aching brow does he take away the pain for ever? How many sorrows does he soothe into rest that is never broken!—from how many hearts like mine, does he pluck the arrows that fester in them, and bids them feel pain no more! In his house, that house appointed for all living—what calmness and peace is there? How sweet and tranquil is the bed which he smoothes down for the unhappy; there the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Then give me Death the Consoler?—Death the Consoler!”