Coincidences

Originally published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (Harper and Brothers) vol.10 #57 (Feb 1855).

        There are a thousand mysterious circumstances occurring every day of our lives, the solution of which philosophy fails to reach. And because this is the case, the wise heads dispose of them in a very summary way, by denying the facts.
        There are a thousand strange and mysterious sympathies linking us with each other and drawing our hearts together, so that, even when separated far away, we often have the same thoughts and feelings at the same precise moment of time. The same sigh heaves breasts ocean-wide apart, when the same longing desire springs up for communion face to face. And these, these same philosophers dispose of quite as summarily, by calling them "striking coincidences"—as if this were any explanation of the phenomena.
        The wildest dreams of the night are not more wild and strange than those traits of the human mind in our waking hours, and which, unaccounted for as they may be, still demonstrate to us a hidden chain of sympathies running down the whole course of life, and binding our hearts together. Call them by what name we will—they are still there, and still the same. We can not get rid of them by denying their existence—and it does not explain them to call them "coincidences."
        The following sketch, although, perhaps, not strictly professional in its character, is drawn from notes made at the time the incidents occurred. I had formed a close intimacy with Albert Carver, a gentleman of about my own age, and in many respects of similar tastes and feelings, who had purchased a large estate in — County, New York, about three miles from my office, upon which he had erected very costly and elegant buildings. He lived alone, having no family but his servants. He sought no society, and it was by the merest accident that our acquaintance began, which soon ripened into the closest and most familiar friendship. I never passed his house without calling, and often drove down there in the evening to spend an hour or two with him, and my visit was not rarely drawn out to the early hours of the morning.
        He had one of the finest, and most manly, and intelligent faces I ever saw, and his mind was filled with large stores of information, which he had acquired from books and extensive travel at home and abroad, and intercourse with men. To me he was always talkative—to others, taciturn, He was not what you would call cheerful, though he was far from being morose or gloomy, and when he smiled—which was very rarely—it was a calm, cold smile, that seemed frozen upon his face. He was kind to every one, and lavish in his generosity to the poor.
        During an intercourse of more than two years he had never spoken to me on the subject of his health, and though thin and remarkably pale, he seemed always to be well. I was therefore not a little surprised, when one evening, which we were spending perhaps more cheerfully than usual, he referred to the subject in a way that led me, on my return home, to make a note of our conversation. In answer to his remark, I said that I had never suspected him of being the subject of disease. He replied,
        "Yet, I am dying, my friend; I feel it every day more and more—dying by inches. You will tell me I have no disease. Well—perhaps I have not—at least, none within the reach of medical skill. Yet, I have a disease—a malady rather, which is slowly and steadily sapping the foundations of life. You have never felt my pulse, Doctor. Put your finger on it now."
        He turned up the sleeve of his elegant dressing-gown and extended his wrist. I felt of his pulse for two or three minutes, thinking I might possibly detect some intermission or variation in it which would betray a hidden disease, although I never had any reason to suspect any. But it was as calm, and regular, and healthy a pulse as ever I felt.
        "Your heart, at all events, is sound," I said, as I relinquished his hand.
        There was a singular expression in the glance which he turned upon me as I said this; or, rather, in the steady and intense gaze which he fixed upon my face, and which he did not remove till my eye sunk under it. What did it mean? Was it possible that, after all the time through which our acquaintance had extended, I had overlooked a derangement of mind—or was such a malady just now about to develop itself? If such a suspicion crossed my mind at the time, it was instantly dissipated when he spoke.
        "There are maladies, Doctor, which are out of sight of the eye, and which do not manifest themselves in the alteration of any of the functions of the body, and yet as surely and effectually waste away the powers of life as the plague or the cholera. You could discover no variation in my pulse?"
        I shook my head.
        "Nor I," he continued. "I Have examined it every day for many months—not as the chimerical hypochondriac who is always feeling it to see if he is not ill, but with the simple curiosity to see how much a man may suffer, and how calm he may keep his own heart. I can not now tell you all I mean; but what I wish you to understand is this, that when I first began to suffer as I do now, my heart would struggle at times as if it would break from my bosom, or burst. I taught it to be calm—to beat as it does now, and has through years of untold misery."
        He paused; and, as I looked up, I met his eye fixed upon me with the same steady gaze, which gradually faded away into his ordinary cold smile, and he made some remark upon another subject. But it was impossible for me to draw away my thoughts from the impression he had made upon my mind, and I soon left.
        "Come oftener and see me, Doctor," he said, as he gave me the usual warm grasp of his hand. "I would come to your office if I knew when to find you at home, for you are all the society I have, and I am always glad to see you come. You can drive down here any or every evening, and rest yourself after your day's ride, and be secure for an hour or two against being called out—stop a moment. My brother has sent me, to-day, a few bottles of what he says is excellent wine, and you shall try it. I know nothing about it, for I drink nothing but water."
        "And I am in the same predicament. Good-night."
        "Don't forget that I am sick," said he, laughing, as I stepped into my carriage, "and come often to see how I am. I shall not promise to take any of your medicine, however, till I am worse."
        Had it not been for my entire confidence in the straightforward truthfulness of my friend, I should have suspected him of jesting with me. As it was, our conversation was rarely out of my mind for the three days that intervened before I saw him again. I then received a note from him, inviting me to spend the evening with him. He wanted to see me professionally now, he said, as well as to have my company for the evening. I was struck with a sort of nervousness of the writing, and half made up my mind to drive down at once and see him.
        Having another call to make in his neighborhood, I however deferred it till late in the afternoon, and then drove to his house. It was almost dark when I arrived. He was walking on the piazza, and as I alighted and shook his hand, I was surprised at the alteration in his countenance. It was not exactly haggard, but there was an expression of wild and excited anxiety upon it which alarmed me, as I immediately recurred to the last evening I had passed with him, and his conversation at that time. He tried to smile as he met me, but the smile was full of distress.
        I, of course, immediately inquired after his health, and he said,
        "Never mind that now—I have kept tea waiting, expecting you, and we will talk about that afterward."
        At the table he ate nothing, and only sipped a cup of tea while I was eating. We soon retired to the library, and he handed me the cigars with which we usually regaled ourselves, but he took none himself. He noticed my look of surprise, and said,
        "No—I have neither slept nor eaten nor smoked since you were here. I can not. I have taken out a bottle of wine repeatedly, and prepared to open it, for I felt that it might benumb my senses. But it is the resort of fools, and I will not drink it for such a purpose. It is my mind, Doctor; I feel as if some terrible calamity were hanging over me—a dreadful presentiment of evil—and I can not banish it. I have had the same feelings before, but not so intense. I have soon subdued them, for my mind is usually its own master."
        He paced the floor for a few moments in a silence which I did not know how to break. I began to feel that there was some mystery in the case—some terrible cause which was at the bottom of this.
        Presently he drew a chair to my side and sat down.
        "You could find nothing the matter with my pulse the other night," he said; "see how it is now," and he extended his arm.
        The hot blood was coursing through it in wild and rapid torrents.
        "Can you stop it—can you do any thing to arrest that flood?" he asked.
        "There is some cause for this which I am ignorant of, my dear friend," I replied; "and till I know what it is I can do nothing to remove it."
        "It is for that very purpose I have wanted to see you to-night," said he. "I want to talk to you about myself—to tell you the cause, and what the confidence will do to aid me in bearing this new accession of agony. It is said that there is relief in sympathy, and that the mind eases itself by unburdening its griefs to another. I know nothing of this, for I have never before sought human sympathy, though, God knows, I have needed it as few others need it, for years. I owe it to myself that I am wretched as I am, and my punishment is just. There are the cigars. Now smoke on, and do not look at me till I am done, and then you may curse me, if you will, as I curse myself."
        During the whole narration of what follows I did not look at him, but I felt all the time, as he sat near me, that he never but once removed his eye from mine. I give his story in his own words, as nearly as I can recollect them, omitting such of the details as are not necessary.
        "I told you three nights since that I was dying, and you said my heart was sound. This only shows how men of your profession—who are accustomed to judge of the ravages of disease by physical symptoms—are too apt to overlook those moral affections that are often the disease which, without those outward manifestations, silently, yet surely gnaws, and cankers, and eats out the heart. Three nights since my pulse was calm and even as an infant's—now it is rushing on, mad as a swollen mountain torrent. Yet I was then suffering and dying of the same malady which is killing me now. Then I could control all the external signs of it—now I am subdued by it.
        "My father was a poor country clergyman, and from my earliest years I was fond of study. This inclination he encouraged to its utmost extent; and being unable, from his limited means, to send me away to school, he took upon himself the whole task of my education. He was a man of rare powers of mind and most extensive learning. So much gratified was he with my progress and the development of my mind, that at the age of eighteen he became very anxious that I should spend at least one year in college, for the sake of mingling more with young men of my own age, and thinking that I might derive advantages there which I could not at home. I have often thought there was some unconscious feeling of pride mixed up in his mind with this wish, for when afterward I graduated with the honors of my class, he was filled with exultation and delight, and I never saw his humble demeanor before lost, as it seemed to be then, in the almost haughty air with which he received the congratulations of my teachers. But let that pass. It was only a momentary and pardonable flashing up of his human feelings above his uniform Christian humility.
        "It was necessary that I should have the means of meeting the expenses of this year; and for the first time in his life I saw his poverty weighing heavily on his mind; and it was the only cause, since the death of his wife, years before, that had interrupted the uniform cheerfulness and equanimity of his character. I therefore proposed that I should spend a year in teaching before I entered college, and this at once quieted all his anxiety.
        "I need not speak now of my own feelings, nor the dawnings of ambition which began already to cast forward bright flashes of light on my future life. They were there, however, and I felt a good deal of self-satisfaction in taking this first step toward making my own way in the world, I had my day-dreams, as all boys have, and had begun to build airy castles, which, like all others built on the same foundation, are doomed to perish. It never entered into my head that at the age of thirty I should be, what I am now—rich and wretched.
        "In my daily wanderings, during my leisure hours, about the neighborhood of the little village where I was patiently pursuing my humble occupation, I frequently met a lady of middle age, attended by another much younger, whom I judged to be her daughter. Meeting so often seemed to give us a sort of claim to acquaintance which we mutually acknowledged by a bow when we passed each other. This amount of recognition continued to nearly the close of the year which I passed in the place, and would probably have extended no farther, as I made no effort to form acquaintances, and was so entirely absorbed in my duties and studies that I did not even know where they lived, but for an accident which brought us together.
        "In one of my rambles, about a mile from the village, I took refuge from a sudden shower under the portico of the nearest house. It was a neat cottage with a small yard in front, planted out tastefully with shrubbery, and trailing roses were carefully trained up the pillar of the piazza. There was an air of beauty and refinement about the whole place which had often struck me when passing, and I now found myself speculating about the occupants.
        "I was looking at the fine beds of choice flowers interspersed here and there through the closely shaven grass plat, when the door opened, and the lady I have mentioned invited me to come in till the rain was over. I learned that Mrs. Montrose was the widow of a merchant in the city, who had died a few years before, leaving her in easy circumstances, and she had selected this place as her residence. Here she was living in retirement with her daughter, Edith, the young lady I had met with her in her walks.
        "I can not describe Edith. She was far from being beautiful, but there was something in the quiet and earnest welcome with which she received me that induced me to call again and again. I became a frequent visitor at the house, and talked of my hopes and dreams of life, till at length I found the calm blue eyes, and ever-thoughtful face of Edith, lingering in my memory after I had left her. All this was new tome. A chord was touched in my heart that had never vibrated before. A new power was gaining control over me, and gradually I yielded to its sweet and delightful influence.         "I entered college and distinguished myself throughout the single year that I spent there. Edith Montrose was then in all my dreams of the future. I could have yielded up all my hopes, which ambition had begun to point to, for her. We wrote frequently to each other, and the spell gathered stronger and stronger about my heart. We loved as, I believe, few others ever love. It was no bright fancy, no transient passion to burn in my heart for a few days and expire. It was the deepest and intensest affection, and cast forward upon life the brightest and most gorgeous hues. It was a passion which excited me in all my studies and pursuits, for I felt then that it would be a pride and joy to cast all the honors my loftiest expectations looked to into the lap of Edith. I love her now as I loved her then, and as I have loved her ever since, cruelly as I wronged her.
        "Let me pass rapidly over the rest, till the fatal hour that made me a villain. I betrayed her and ruined her. And not her alone. Guilt such as mine reaches in its effects farther than the one object of its aim. Her shame could not be concealed, and the discovery of it was fatal to her mother. She sunk and died almost as soon as the blow fell. Edith came to me, and besought me to marry her. I know not what devil was in my heart to drive me on, but I put her off with some specious excuse, and she submitted. She would have borne disgrace forever for me, without a murmur, if she could only know that I loved her still. And I did, with all the intensity of my strong heart. But my ambition was again urging me on, and pointing upward, and I began to feel that she stood in my way, and, double villain that I was, I deserted her, and left her to her shame.

*                *                *                *                *

        "There are, probably, hours in the life of every villain, not entirely lost, in which he repents and wishes to repair the wrongs he has done. It was so with me. I sought her again, and she wept tears of joy on my breast as she laid her babe in my arms. We sat long together that night, and talked of the past and looked forward to the future, till she fell asleep on my bosom. We were sitting thus when I saw the corner of a letter in the bosom of her dress. I know not what possessed me to take it out and read it. It was in the handwriting of a man, and its contents set my heart on fire with jealousy.
        "It was true, all I had said to her that night. I had come to her full of repentance and joyful resolution to atone for all the past, and she slept not on my bosom more trustfully than my heart reposed in the quiet peace of doing right, and the whole tenderness of the past seemed compressed into that one short hour, as with her head on my breast, and our babe in my arms, I forgot all the ambition and pride that had been my master before, and blissfully dreamed that now I had found rest. It was then that I discovered that fatal note. I knew the child was my own, but now its mother was playing the wanton, while she pretended still to love me. With wonderful coolness of purpose I laid her head from my breast, so softly that she did not wake, and, with the babe in my arms, I left the house.
        "I provided a nurse, but from that hour the child pined away, till one day, in the momentary absence of the woman, some one entered the house and stole it away. I, of course, suspected that Edith had discovered it, and had taken this method of reclaiming it. But this I could never ascertain.
        "I believe that I wronged Edith in my suspicions. But never till the child was gone did I stop to think, and then it was too late for us all. How I cursed myself then in my deep shame and humiliation. I gathered her letters and put them in a package with her picture, and they have never left me in all my wanderings for years.
        "In casting about in my mind the subject of a profession, I had fixed upon the law. Now I applied myself with ten-fold diligence, for I had a double purpose to answer—to attain to eminence, and, above all, to forget. In the former I was rapidly succeeding, and partially in the latter, when I resolved upon another step which I thought one of policy, but which only added another brazen link to the chain of my destiny, and involved another innocent victim in my fate.
        "Do you believe in a special Providence, Doctor? I do—one that keeps a sleepless watch over us at every moment, and so orders our lives as to make our voluntary acts often bring about the retribution that our crimes call for. One of my clients, a man of large wealth and influence, and at whose house I often visited, had a daughter, whose beauty alone, aside from her great intelligence, and the character of her father, was calculated to attract admirers of whom she had not a few. Should I class myself among the number? Could I make her my wife, I should secure at once the whole weight of her father's influence and his numerous friends, not only in my profession, but in those higher and more public objects which my ambition was reaching after. It was with me a cool matter of business—not so much, by a great deal, of dollars and cents, as of reputation and gratified pride.
        "My proposals were accepted, and I felt sudden and sharp pang as I heard the consent. Often before the day came did I draw back from the commission of the act which I felt in my heart was base and mean. But I stifled the accusing voice and persevered.
        At length the day came on—the day in which I was to perjure myself—to betray Edith again, and her whom I was about to make my wife. The vows were said, and we sat down with our guests at the supper-table. All was joy and hilarity in the brilliantly lighted room. Was the shade of Edith by my side the cause of my shuddering with a silent fear? No, not then; but a servant whispered in my ear that a lady wished to speak to me a moment in the library.
        "It was Edith, and with the sight of her came back all the love of former years. But now how hopelessly. Pride, ambition, all sank down in one instant to the narrow measure of shame and remorse. All other considerations and obligations were forgotten. The vow I had just spoken—the bride I had a moment ago made mine—the hopes and aspirations of life—all that I had dreamed of being—all that was expected from me by others—vanished from my mind and was whelmed in the agony and shame and guilt of the past.
        "She spoke to me. She called me by name. I threw myself on my knees beside her. I took her unresisting hand in mine. I besought her to fly with me—to be mine—mine forever.
        "She started and cast me from her as if I had been a viper that had stung her. Her eye, usually calm as the evening sky in its sunset hues, burned with indescribable fury. It seemed the wrath of a pent-up volcano.
        "'Be yours!' she said, with a fierce calmness that was awfully contradicted by her looks, 'be yours! murderer of my mother—destroyer of my own rest—traitor, twice perjured.'
        "I sank to the floor, crushed down with the weight of my remorse. I heard the outer door shut, and sprang to my feet. She was gone. I rushed to the window, and pressing my wild and haggard face against it, saw her passing out of sight. It was the last time I ever saw her.
        "I turned away from the window, and met the face of my new-made wife. The pallid hue of her countenance—her compressed lip—her flashing eye—her look of ineffable scorn, told me at a glance that she had heard or understood the whole; she waited to speak no word, and I had none to say. She left the room, and left me forever. Efforts were afterward made to annul our marriage, but they failed, and thus the innocent was chained to the guilty for life. The hope of reparation to her or Edith was gone forever.
        "For weeks afterward I was in a raving delirium. What comfort could it bring to me, on my restoration to consciousness and health, that I found myself, by the will of a rich uncle on my mother's side, possessed of large wealth? The capacity to enjoy it was gone. I would have given it all to be again the guiltless man I was when I first knew Edith, and be again worthy of her love. It was now too late. I was given up a prey to the bitterest remorse. I yielded passively to the decree. I could not complain of my punishment, for it was right and just. I deserved it all. I could not justify my deeds unto myself.
        "I went abroad and spent three years in travel—visiting all the classic haunts of the old world, if possible to learn to forget. I failed in this, and came home to try in quiet and retirement to teach myself to bear suffering. In this I have succeeded, so far as external manifestations of it are concerned, but the canker has been steadily gnawing away at my heart."
        Thus ended my friend's story, which I have given very briefly, for it was almost midnight when he finished it. It was a history of crime and shame of which I could not have suspected him. It was capable of no palliation, and I attempted none. What could I say? We maintained an unbroken silence for some minutes.
        A pile of newspapers lay unopened on the table by my side. They had been aceumulating for some days. I took up one and opened it, and my eye fell upon the list of deaths. I always read them, especially when the age is mentioned at which the individuals die, for I want to see how many die in their youth. It is a fancy I have. In this list I saw the name of a female of the same name with my friend. I mentioned it to him, thinking it might divert his mind for a moment from himself. He read it, and for a moment his face became if possible, more deadly pale, while he sat with the paper clenched firmly in his hand. Then rising slowly from his seat, with his eye fixed as if seeing some object at a great distance, he extended his arms beseechingly, as he passionately exclaimed,
        "Edith, my early and only loved! will you not come to me, Edith?"
        It was the death of his wife he had read.

*                *                *                *                *

        It was Edith who had stolen the child. She had believed entirely in all Albert had said to her on the fatal night in which he robbed her of her babe, and had sunk to sleep trustingly on his heart. She had never been false to him in a single thought; but through all her life of shame and sin, and in spite of his mean and cruel desertion, she had loved and trusted on. She knew in her heart that he would one day come back, and then he would atone for all—such is woman's true-hearted affection, and now all her hopes were about to be realized. Her heart was at peace. Why should she not sleep now where she ought to have slept months before, and dream of the bliss she was soon to taste?—ay, why not? And she did sleep.
        But when she woke and found him gone, and her child gone, then she felt, for the first time, that she had been deceived, and she believed that all his honeyed words which he had spoken that night were only intended to beguile her and allay suspicion—were all false, and spoken to lull her mother's heart to sleep that he might rob her of her jewel. Then she believed that all the vows and pretended love of years were but the cunning wiles of a villain to destroy her peace. She was almost frenzied now. What should she do?
        Was it the strong instinct of the mother that guided her, as soon as her mind had settled down into a sort of calmness, in her search—guided her at last to the discovery of her betrayer, and then by tracking his footsteps day after day, unseen by him, to follow him at last to the house where he had placed her child? I do not know. But this she did, and after watching for days for an opportunity, at last succeeded in carrying it away. She then returned to her old home, and sold the place, and left that part of the country. Albert was in the city, and she went there to be near him, not actuated by her affection for him—for that she had lost, or at least persuaded herself that she had—but goaded on now by a feeling of most malignant vengeance. She could watch him in all his paths, and the time will come, she said to herself, when she could punish him for his treachery.
        And the time did come. She heard that he was about to be married, and she determined to call upon the lady and tell her the history of her shame, and who was the author; and thus dash the cup from his lips before he could taste it. But she was a few minutes too late. Ignorant how soon it was to take place, she had selected the very evening of the marriage; and when she arrived, she learned from a servant that it was done, but on this very account the retribution was ten-fold more severe upon her victim.
        These facts, and those that follow, I heard by one of those singular "coincidences" I have spoken of. It was about two months after my interview with Carver that I was summoned to his house in great haste. The horses attached to a stage-coach, while descending a hill, had been frightened, and dashed the coach in pieces in front of his door, and all the passengers were more or less injured. On my arrival I found my friend in a state of the highest excitement, yet not so but he could give me an account of the accident. None of the passengers were seriously injured, he told me, except a lady, and she lay insensible. He directed me to the room where she was lying, and as I was entering the door he called me back, and taking my hand, said,
        "Doctor, you must save her. She must not die now. Restore her to life, or to her reason, if only for one hour, and all I have is yours."
        "Why, what is this, my friend?"
        "It is Edith, Doctor. Edith; and—"
        "I understand you, my friend. All shall be done that human skill can do."
        Promising to let him know soon as to her state, I left him, When I entered the room she was beginning to show signs of reanimation, under the use of such restoratives as the housekeeper had been diligently using; and it was not long before I was able to satisfy myself that her injuries were not likely to be serious. I communicated this to Carver at once, and he begged to be allowed to see her. I assured him he should do so as soon as it was prudent, and left him, promising to call in the evening. Upon my return I found him anxiously waiting for me, with a face radiant with joy. He had seen her—told her all—pointed her to his wasted form and features as evidence of his remorseful repentance, and she— But let me tell in my own way the substance of what she told us that night as we sat by her bedside. In a few days she had entirely recovered.

*                *                *                *                *

        The parsonage stood a few rods from the church in the outskirts of the little village of M—. Here, for nearly twenty years, had lived the minister of the parish, a noble-hearted and self-denying man. He was not married—some said because he had met with a disappointment in his early life—and others because he was too poor to support a wife and family. Neither of these reasons was the true one.
        The population about him were generally poor and humble, but they loved and almost worshiped their minister. He was with them in sickness and sorrow, and aided them in all their trials and difficulties with his counsels and his prayers, and he rejoiced with them in all their happiness. Although not more than forty years old, he was looked up to, not as a leader only, but almost as a father, by his little flock, and every one wondered where he found the means that enabled him to do so many deeds of charity.
        He was sitting one evening in his study when a lady was introduced, leading by the hand a little girl of about two years. She was a stranger, and he arose and kindly asked her to be seated. There was an air of melancholy sadness about her face which touched his heart, and he asked her if he could be of any service to her.
        "I have arrived in your village," she replied, "but a few moments since, where I intend to make my residence, and I have called immediately upon you to state to you my wishes and ask your advice."
        "And what do you wish to do," he kindly inquired.
        "I would make myself useful in some way among your people—in any way, so that I may do them good."
        "We are a humble people, and you will find a life among such as we are to have few charms for one who has been accustomed to live in better society. We have to use much of self-denial and patience, and be content with giving sympathy when, perhaps, we feel that we need it as much ourselves. You have not, perhaps, inquired or well-considered the character of the people among whom you have come."
        "It makes little difference to me where I am, so I am afar from the distractions of the world, and where I can do good while I am bringing up my child out of the reach of temptations."
        "I fear you will hardly find the place, this side of heaven, where temptations are not; for they come alike to rich and poor, even under the sheltering wing of our Saviour. He suffered them himself—but you are weeping—pardon me if I have said any thing to cause these tears."
        "I have suffered much," she replied, "and your words of kindness touch me. Perhaps I might teach the children. If they are poor, they still need instruction; and I am rich—that is, I have enough to support myself and some to spare. I should be a burden to no one, and might do some good."
        "Well, we will see, when you have had time to know what we are. You are wearied now. I have no accommodations which I can ask you to accept, but I will direct you to lodgings for the night. I have not inquired your name."
        "Edith Montrose."
        "And your child?" he asked, taking the hand of the little girl, whose tired head had fallen asleep on its mother's knee.
        "It is Edith, also."
        The minister called his servant, and directed him to take his lantern and show Mrs. Montrose to the house of Mrs. Wilson, and say that he requested her to accommodate her.
        "You will find her a kindly woman," he said, "although one of my humblest parishioners."
        When Edith laid her head on her humble pillow that night, and wet it with her tears, they were not tears of sorrow alone. The bitter repentance of the past was mingled with sincere and joyous resolutions for the future, and earnest prayers that all the dark and sinful past, so full of shame, and sorrow, and revenge, might be blotted from her memory and her heart. She slept that night more peacefully than she had slept for years.
        In a few days she purchased a cottage at the other extremity of the village from the parsonage, and supplied it with the little furniture she needed. She called at the cottages of the poor, and learned their wants, and relieved them. She was by the side of the sick, and soothed them with her gentle voice, while her own hand administered their medicines. She taught their children to read, and gave them lessons of virtue. Thus Edith won her way silently to the hearts of all the humble cottagers, and became a sort of guardian angel to the village. But to none did she communicate the history of her life, though they often wondered, when they looked upon her quiet face, why the angel had chosen to live in such a place as theirs, rather than in its home in heaven. The good minister, too, forgot the cautiousness with which he had first received her, and felt that she was relieving him of a large part of his labors, But the reserve which she always maintained toward him, as well as others, with regard to her former life, and her shrinking from confidence with any, deterred him from seeking any familiarity with her till accident brought it about.
        Edith found, even here, that sorrow belongs to this world; for her child sickened and died—the child of her shame, but for all that, the child of her earnest and faithful love. The memories of the past had been dying, one by one, and now the last link was broken. She was alone now—utterly alone. Yet unconsciously she clung to that past with an indefinable longing, and she could not consent that the only object that bound her to it should be severed entirely from her sight; and so the grave was digged, and the dead child was buried among the clustering rose-bushes that grew in front of her window, where the rain and the dew-drops, laden with the sweet fragrance of the flowers, might fall upon her bed, and where she could look forth in the smiling days or the moonlit nights and see that she was sleeping well. It was at this time that the minister seemed, for the first, to comprehend entirely the deep fountains of feeling and love that were flowing in Edith's heart; and as the twilight closed in when they had finished the burial and heaped up and smoothed down the green turf over the little grave, he entered the house with her and sat down. It was late that night when he returned to his home. They had talked earnestly and long of the future—of what was to be done by both of them for the benefit of their humble neighbors—they had talked of the glorious hope that was linking them and drawing them on to the world to come; and they had prayed together for strength and grace to aid them in their labors of love.
        When he sat down in his study that night, he looked around with a strange feeling that something was wanting there. He felt that he was alone. And every night after that, for days and weeks, he felt it more and more; for now he was a frequent visitor at Edith's cottage, and when he came from there he always entered his own home with a sigh.
        Nor is it wonderful that Edith detected in herself a sort of satisfaction and pleasure in his society and sympathy, which she was by no means disposed to repel. It seemed to her that the avenues of joy and peace were again opening in her heart; and should she not let in the heavenly guests? She did; and thus months rolled on—months of sad repentance, but largely mingled with holy and calm promises of rest—till the minister one evening told his love, and she threw herself upon his heart and wept tears of joy, such as she had wept once before, though she forgot them now.
        There can be no doubt but Edith really believed she loved the minister, and when she had once consented to be his wife, did look forward with a degree of satisfaction such as she had not felt for many years, to her bridal-day. Her heart, crushed and broken and bowed down in sorrow for so many long and weary years, had rebounded at the voice of love, and she did feel as if the object she had yearned for all her life long was about to be won. Old joys came back—not the memory of them, for that would have poisoned all her present bliss, but the very joys themselves. She felt again as she had felt when, in her girlhood, she had listened to the words of love which Albert poured into her ear; but his name or his image did not rise now to mingle with her thoughts, or, if they did, she put them down with an iron resolution that forbade them to intrude. She longed and wished to be loved as she believed the minister loved her, and she hoped in that love to find rest. Thus she persuaded herself that she loved him, though something would every now and then rise in her mind like a prophecy of evil.
        But as the day drew near on which they were to be married, she began to fear that she was deceiving herself and him. At first she banished the suspicion at once as hateful; but the next moment she found herself examining her heart, and unconsciously comparing her present feelings with those she used to have for Albert. The comparison was unfavorable to her present position, and as old and long-forgotten thoughts came back, the habit of years began to resume its mastery, and she found Albert oftener in her mind than the minister. Her memory accused her; the image of the maniac, Albert, as she last saw him, with eyes of fire glaring from the window; the grave of their child—his child and hers; all these rose in her thoughts, and she could not banish them. Indeed, she found after a little time that she did not care to repel them. She loved them and cherished them more and more every day.
        Finally, the night preceding the bridal arrived. She had requested the minister to leave her to herself and the communion of her own thoughts that night; and as the twilight drew on, she sat by the window gazing upon the little grave in the clustering rose-bushes. She sat thus till almost midnight, gathering to herself all the holy memories of her pure but humble girlhood, and all the unhallowed love and revenge of her after years.
        What should she do? Should she wait for to-morrow and keep her vow? Distracted with hesitation, and tortured with doubts, she could net decide. She had undeceived herself, how should she undeceive the minister? how make him the talk of the place, and bring sorrow and despair to a heart whose nobleness and love she could not despise, even if she could no longer accept it for herself? That she earnestly yearned and longed for the bliss of such love she could not—she did not—deny. But it could not be his.
        The voices of other days were sounding in her ear, and telling her that her destiny lay not here; that there was an early love, which, to her, it would be sin to forget. She had not forgotten it. Its memory was seared and burned in upon her heart. Again and again she trod over, in her memory, all the tear-washed paths of the past, and that evening lived over again years of sorrow.
        Wild and wavering, she arose and paced the narrow room of her cottage. She opened the door, and walked out into the gentle moonlight. Its rays were sleeping on the little mound before the window, and she knelt beside it, when suddenly she seemed to hear a voice, as if at a great distance, yet distinct and plain as if spoken at the portals of her ear; and the voice said, ‘Come to me, Edith!"
        All her doubts and hesitation were gone. She arose joyfully and entered the cottage. Her resolution was fully formed. She knew the voice, and she could not refuse to listen. Did it call her to the embrace of love, or did it compel her to tread the path of thorns still longer, it mattered not to her. She had persuaded herself that, in the love of the minister, she had found the well under the shade of the palm-trees. She now opened her eyes to see that she was still in the midst of the desert, though that voice, she hoped, might call her to a green and shady rest.
        "Yes, Albert," she replied, "I will come!"
        But she could not leave the minister without some explanation. So much true love as, she felt in her heart of hearts, he bore for her, ought not to receive from her even the semblance of being slighted, or scorned, or trifled with. If she deserted him, and left him to the utter desolation and ruin which must fall upon his spirit, ought she not to make him some reparation? Would he not curse her in his heart if she did not? And would he not, with all that nobleness of soul that belonged to him, appreciate the step she was about to take, even with all its bitter consequences to himself, if she put him in possession of the simple story of her life, with its burden of sin and sorrow? Might he not thank her for not linking his pure life to one of so much guilt, and pray for her rest?
        With a hurried hand, but a calm soul, she wrote the story, and laid it where she knew he would find it in the morning, when he should come to lead her forth to their bridal. One deep sigh as she placed it there bore witness to the sorrow she felt for its effect upon him, though no tear fell from her eye. Then hastily arranging the furniture of her apartment, and making a small bundle of such clothing as she might need, she passed forth from her cottage-door a homeless wanderer. One instant she paused by the side of the little grave. She seemed agitated by a powerful emotion, which she instantly pressed down and subdued, as a single tear fell upon the sod, and then she turned away to retrace her path of sorrow and shame.
        The morning star rose on her footsteps as she left the spot. Shall it be an omen for good to her weary and toil-worn spirit?
        It never occurred to her how vain might be her search for Albert; that she had no clew to lead her to the spot where he was; but in the morning she was far on her way. She went first to the city where she had last seen him; but he had been gone and unheard-of for years. She went and stood upon the deserted hearth-stone of her early days. She was herself forgotten there, and they only remembered him as the one who had ruined Edith Montrose. But she knelt there in the home of her childhood, where she had been pure and where she had fallen, and prayed—prayed for pardon and peace, and that before she died she might also be able to say to him that she forgave him; and she shed again bitter tears of sorrow and repentance.
        It was but two days after when the accident occurred which brought them together.