Dawn: Chapter 50
Chapter 50
Three months had passed since that awful Christmas Day. Angela was
heart-broken, and, after the first burst of her despair, turned
herself to the only consolation which was left her. It was not of this
world.
She did not question the truth of the dreadful news that Lady Bellamy
had brought her, and, if ever a doubt did arise in her breast, a
glance at the ring and the letter effectually quelled it. Nor did she
get brain-fever or any other illness; her young and healthy frame was
too strong a citadel to be taken out of hand by sorrow. And this to
her was one of the most wonderful things in her affliction. It had
come and crushed her, and life still went on much as before. The sun
of her system had fallen, and yet the system was not appreciably
deranged. It was dreadful to her to think that Arthur was dead, but an
added sting lay in the fact that she was not dead too. Oh! how glad
she would have been to die, since death had become the gate through
which she needs must pass to reach her lover's side.
For it had been given to Angela, living so much alone, and thinking so
long and deeply upon these great mysteries of our being, to soar to
the heights of a noble faith. To the intense purity of her mind, a
living heaven presented itself, a comfortable place, very different
from the vague and formularised abstractions with which we are for the
most part satisfied; where Arthur and her mother were waiting to greet
her, and where the great light of the Godhead would shine around them
all. She grew to hate her life, the dull barrier of the flesh that
stood between her and her ends. Still she ate and drank enough to
support it, still dressed with the same perfect neatness as before,
still lived, in short, as though Arthur had not died, and the light
and colour had not gone out of her world.
One day--it was in March--she was sitting in Mr. Fraser's study
reading the "Shakespeare" which Arthur had given to her, and in the
woes of others striving to forget her own. But the attempt proved a
failure; she could not concentrate her thoughts, they would
continually wander away into space in search of Arthur.
She was dressed in black; from the day that she heard her lover was
dead, she would wear no other colour, and as she gazed, with her hands
idly clasped before her, out at the driving sleet and snow, Mr. Fraser
thought that he had never seen statue, picture, or woman of such
sweet, yet majestic beauty. But it had been filched from the features
of an immortal. The spirit-look which at times had visited her from a
child now continually shone upon her face, and to the sight of sinful
men her eyes seemed almost awful in their solemn calm and purity. She
smiled but seldom now, and, when she did, it was in those grey eyes
that the radiance began: her features scarcely seemed to move.
"What are you thinking of, Angela?"
"I am thinking, Mr. Fraser, that it is only fourteen weeks to-day
since Arthur died, and that it is very likely that I shall live
another forty or fifty years before I see him. I am only twenty-one,
and I am so strong. Even this shock has not hurt me."
"Why should you want to die?"
"Because all the beauty and light has gone out of my life; because I
prefer to trust myself into the hands of God rather than to the tender
mercies of the world; because he is there, and I am here, and I am
tired of waiting."
"Have you no fear of death?"
"I have never feared death, and least of all do I fear it now. Why,
the veriest coward would not shrink back when the man she loved was
waiting for her. And I am not a coward, and if I were told that I must
die within an hour, I could say, 'How beautiful upon the mountains are
the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!'
Cannot you understand me? If all your life and soul were wrapped up in
one person, and she died, would you not long to go to her?"
Mr. Fraser made no reply for a while, but in his turn gazed out at the
drifting snow, surely not more immaculately pure than this woman who
could love with so divine a love. At length he spoke.
"Angela, do you know that it is wrong to talk so? You have no right to
set yourself up against the decrees of the Almighty. In His wisdom He
is working out ends of which you are one of the instruments. Who are
you that you should rebel?"
"No one--a grain, an atom, a wind-tossed feather; but what am I to do
with my life, how am I to occupy all the coming years?"
"With your abilities, that is a question easy to answer. Work, write,
take the place in scholastic or social literature which I have trained
you to fill. For you, fame and fortune lie in an inkstand; your mind
is a golden key that will open to your sight all that is worth seeing
in the world, and pass you into its most pleasant places. You can
become a famous woman, Angela."
She turned upon him sadly.
"I had such ideas; for Arthur's sake I wished to do something great;
indeed I had already formed a plan. But, Mr. Fraser, like many
another, when I lost my love I lost my ambition too; both lie buried
in his grave. I have nothing left to work for; I do not care for fame
or money for myself, they would only have been valuable to give to
him. At twenty-one I seem to have done with the world's rewards and
punishments, its blanks and prizes, its satisfactions and desires,
even before I have learnt what they are. My hopes are as dull and
leaden as that sky, and yet the sun is behind it. Yes, that is my only
hope, the sun is behind it though we cannot see it. Do not talk to me
of ambition, Mr. Fraser. I am broken-spirited, and my only ambition is
for rest, the rest He gives to His beloved----"
"Rest, Angela! that is the cry of us all, we strive for rest, and here
we never find it. You suffer, but do not think that you are alone,
everybody suffers in their degree, though perhaps such as you, with
the nerves of your mind bared to the roughness of the world's weather,
feel mental pain the more acutely. But, my dear, there are few really
refined men and women of sensitive organization, who have not at times
sent up that prayer for rest, any rest, even eternal sleep. It is the
price they pay for their refinement. But they are not alone. If the
heart's cry of every being who endures in this great universe could be
collected into a single prayer, that prayer would be, 'Thou who made
us, in pity give us rest.'"
"Yes, we suffer, no doubt, all of us, and implore a peace that does
not come. We must learn
"'How black is night when golden day is done,
How drear the blindness that hath seen the sun!'
"You can tell me that; but tell me, you who are a clergyman, and
stronger to stand against sorrow than I, how can we win even a partial
peace and draw the sting from suffering? If you know a way, however
hard, tell it me, for do you know," and she put her hand to her head
and a vacant look came into her eyes, "I think that if I have to
endure much more of the anguish which I sometimes suffer, or get any
more shocks, I shall go mad? I try to look to the future only and to
rise superior to my sorrows, and to a certain extent I succeed, but my
mind will not always carry the strain put upon it, but falls heavily
to earth like a winged bird. Then it is that, deprived of its higher
food, and left to feed upon its own sadness and to brood upon the bare
fact of the death of the man I loved--I sometimes think, as men are
not often loved--that my spirit almost breaks down. If you can tell me
any cure, anything which will bring me comfort, I shall indeed be
grateful to you."
"I think I can, Angela. If you will no longer devote yourself to
study, you have only to look round to find another answer to your
question as to what you are to do? Are there no poor in these parts
for you to visit? Cannot your hands make clothes to cover those who
have none? Is there no sickness that you can nurse, no sorrow that you
can comfort? I know that even in this parish there are many homes
where your presence would be as welcome as a sunbeam in winter.
Remember, Angela, that grief can be selfish as well as pleasure."
"You are right, Mr. Fraser, you always are right; I think I am selfish
in my trouble, but it is a fault that I will try to mend. Indeed, to
look at it in that light only, my time is of no benefit to myself, I
may as well devote it to others."
"If you do, your labour will bring its own reward, for in helping
others to bear their load you will wonderfully lighten your own. Nor
need you go far to begin. Why do you not see more of your own father?
You are naturally bound to love him. Yet it is but rarely that you
speak to him."
"My father! you know he does not like me, my presence is always a
source of irritation to him, he cannot even bear me to look at him."
"Oh, surely that must be your fancy; probably he thinks you do not
care about him. He has always been a strange and wayward man, I know,
but you should remember that he has had bitter disappointments in
life, and try to soften him and win him to other thoughts. Do this and
you will soon find that he will be glad enough of your company."
"I will try to do as you say, Mr. Fraser, but I confess I have only
small hopes of any success in that direction. Have you any parish work
I can do?"
Nor did the matter end there, as is so often the case where parish
work and young ladies are concerned. Angela set to her charitable
duties with a steady determination that made her services very
valuable. She undertook the sole management of a clothing club, in
itself a maddening thing to ordinary mortals, and had an eye to the
distribution of the parish coals. Of mothers' meetings and other
cheerful parochial entertainments, she became the life and soul.
Giving up her mathematics and classical reading, she took to knitting
babies' vests and socks instead; indeed, the number of articles which
her nimble fingers turned out in a fortnight was a pleasant surprise
for the cold toes of the babies. And, as Mr. Fraser had prophesied,
she found that her labour was of a sort which brought a certain
reward.