Part 22 (1/2)
THE TEST OF LOVE:
A STORY OF THE LAST WAR.
When Mr. Sinclair, the rector of St John's, in Havre de Grace took possession of his pretty parsonage, and persuaded the fair and gentle Lucy Hillman to preside over his unpretending _menage_, and to share the comforts that lay within the compa.s.s of his stipend of one thousand dollars per annum, he felt that his largest earthly desires were fulfilled. A daughter was given to him, and with a grateful heart he exclaimed--”Surely Thou hast made my cup to overflow.”
But he too was a man ”born to trouble.” He too must be initiated into those ”sacred mysteries of sorrow,” through which the High-priest of his profession had pa.s.sed. In the succeeding ten years, three other children opened their soft, loving eyes in his home, made its air musical with their glad voices and ringing laughter, and just as he had learned to listen for the pattering of their dimpled foot, and his heart had throbbed joyously to their call, they were borne from his arms to the grave, and the echoes which they had awakened in his soul were hushed for ever. Still his Lucy and their first-born were spared, and as he drew them closer to his heart he could ”lift his trusting eyes” to Him from whom his faith taught him no real evil could come to the loving spirit. The shadow of earth had fallen on his heart, but the light of heaven still beamed brightly there. Years pa.s.sed with Mr. Sinclair in that deep quiet of the soul which is ”the sober certainty of waking bliss.” His labors were labors of love, and he was welcomed to repose by all those charms which woman's taste and woman's tenderness can bring cl.u.s.tering around the home of him to whom her heart is devoted. But a darker trial than any he had yet known awaited him.
War is in our borders, and that quiet town in which Mr. Sinclair's life has pa.s.sed is destined to feel its heaviest curse. Its streets are filled with soldiery. The dark canopy of smoke from which now and then a lurid flame shoots upward, shows that their work is destruction, and that they will do it well. Terrified women flit hither and thither, mingling their shrieks in a wild and fiend-like concert with the crack of musketry, the falling of houses, and the loud huzzas and fierce outcries of excited men. At a distance from that quarter in which the strife commenced, stands a simple village church, within whose shadow many of those who had wors.h.i.+pped in its walls during the last half century, have lain down to rest from the toils of life. No proud mausoleum shuts the suns.h.i.+ne from those lowly graves. Drooping elms and willows bend over them, and the whispering of their long pendent branches, as the summer breeze sweeps them hither and thither, is the only sound that breaks the stillness of that hallowed air. Near the church, on the opposite side from this home of the dead, lies a garden, whose roses and honey-suckles perfume the air, while its bowers of lilac and laburnum, of myrtle and jessamine, almost shut from the view the pretty cottage to which it belongs. All around, all within that cottage, is silent. Have its inmates fled?
The neighboring houses have been long deserted, and those who left them would gladly have persuaded their pastor to accompany them; but when they called to urge his doing so, he could only point to the bed on which, already bereft of sense, and evidently fast pa.s.sing from life, lay one ”all lovely to the last.” Mrs. Sinclair's health, delicate for years, had rapidly failed in the last few months, till her anxious husband and child, aware that a moment's acceleration of the pulse, a moment's quickening of the breath from whatever cause, might s.n.a.t.c.h her from their arms, learned to modulate every tone, to guard every look and movement in her presence. But they could not shut from her ears the boom of the cannon which heralded the approach of the foe--they could not hush the startling cries with which others met the announcement of their arrival, and the first evidences of that savage fury which desolated their homes, and left a dark stain on the escutcheon of Britain. Mrs.
Sinclair uttered no cry when her terrors were thus excited, she even strove to smile upon her loved ones, to raise their drooping hearts; and in this, woman's holiest task, the springs of her life gave way--not with a sudden snap, but slowly, gently--so that for hours her husband and daughter stood watching the shadow of death steal over her, hoping yet to catch one glance of love, one whispered farewell ere she should pa.s.s for ever from them.
”Fear not, my child,” said Mr. Sinclair, when their sad vigils were first interrupted by those who urged their flight--”they are enemies, it is true, but they are Englishmen, a peaceful clergyman, a defenceless woman, are safe in their hands--they will not harm us.”
”I have no fear, no thought of them, father!” said Mary Sinclair, as she turned weeping to the only object of fear, or hope, or thought, at that moment.
But soon others of Mr. Sinclair's paris.h.i.+oners came to warn him that his confidence had been misplaced, that no character, no age, no s.e.x, had proved a protection from the ruthless fury of their a.s.sailants. He would now have persuaded his daughter to accompany her friends to a place of safety, and when persuasions proved vain he would have commanded her, but, lifting her calm eyes to his, she said, ”Father have you not taught me that, in all G.o.d's universe, the only safe place for us is that to which our duty calls us--and is not my duty here?”
A colder heart would have argued with her, and might, perhaps, have proved to her that her duty was not there--that her father could watch the dying, and that it was her duty to preserve herself for him; but Mr.
Sinclair folded her in his arms while his lips moved for an instant in earnest prayer, and then, turning to his waiting friends, he said, ”Go, go, my friends--I thank you--but G.o.d has called us to this, and he will care for us.”
When the work of desolation had been completed in the quarter first attacked, parties of soldiers straggled off from the main body in search of further prey. Fearful was it to meet these men--their faces blackened with smoke, their hands stained with blood, fierce frowns upon their brows, and curses on their lips. The parsonage presented little attraction in its external aspect to men whose object was plunder, and they turned first to larger and more showy buildings. These were soon rifled; the noise of their ribald songs, their blasphemous oaths and drunken revelry penetrating often the chamber of death, yet scarcely awakening an emotion in the presence of the great Destroyer. At length the little gate is flung rudely open, and unsteady but heavy steps ascend from the court-yard to the house. They cross the piazza, they enter the parlor where life's gentlest courtesies and holiest affections have hitherto dwelt, the door of the room beyond is thrown open, and two men stand upon its threshold, sobered for an instant by the scene before them. There, pale, emaciated, the dim eyes closed, and the face wearing that unearthly beauty which seems the token of an adieu too fond, too tender, too sacred for human language, from the parting spirit to its loved ones, the wife and mother, speechless, senseless, yet not quite lifeless, lay propped by pillows. At her side knelt Mr. Sinclair; the pallor of deep, overpowering emotion was on his cheek, yet in his lifted eyes there was an expression of holy faith, and you might almost have fancied that a smile lay upon the lips which were breathing forth the hallowed strains of prayer--”Save and deliver us, we humbly beseech Thee, from the hands of our enemies, that we, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore from all perils, to glorify Thee, who art the only giver of all victory, through the merits of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord--Amen.”
Dark, sinful men as they were, fresh from brutal crime, those strains touched a long silent chord in their hearts--a chord linked with the memory of a smiling village in their own distant land--with a mother's love and the innocence of childhood. Faint--faint, alas! were those memories, and Mr. Sinclair's ”amen” had scarcely issued from his lips, when the eyes of the leader rested on the beautiful face of Mary Sinclair, as, pressed to the side of her father, she stretched her arms out over her dying mother, and turned her eyes imploringly on their dreaded visitors. The ruffians sprang forward with words whose meaning was happily lost to the failing sense of the terror-stricken girl. Mr.
Sinclair started to his feet, and with one arm still clasped around his daughter, stood between her and the worse than murderers before him, prepared to defend her with his life. For the first time he thirsted for blood, and looked around for some weapon of destruction--but his was the abode of peace--no weapon was there. Unarmed, with that loved burden--loved at this moment even to agony, resting upon him--he stood opposed to two fierce men armed to the teeth. A father's strength in such a cause, who shall estimate?--yet, alas! his adversaries were demons, relentless in purpose, and possessed of that superhuman force which pa.s.sion gives. Weary of killing, or influenced by that superst.i.tion which sometimes rules the soul from which religion is wholly banished, they did not avail themselves of their swords. With fierce threats they unclasped his arm from that senseless form, which sank instantly to the floor at his feet, and drew him across the room.
They would have forced him into the parlor, but his resistance was desperate, and ere they could accomplish this, the sound of a drum beating the recall was borne faintly to their ears. Leaving his comrade to hold the wildly struggling father, the bolder ruffian turned back toward the still prostrate Mary. At that moment, before she had been polluted by a touch, the door was thrown violently back, and a tall, manly form strode through it. The gilded epaulettes and drooping feather told his rank, before the step of pride and countenance of stern command had conveyed to the mind the conviction that you stood in the presence of one accustomed to be obeyed. The man who grasped Mr. Sinclair loosened his hold and shrank cowering away. He went unnoticed, for the eye of the officer had fallen upon him who was in the act of stooping to lift Mary Sinclair from the floor. With a single spring he was at his side, and catching him by the collar of his coat, he hurled him from him with such force that he fell stunned against the farther wall. Mr.
Sinclair was already bending over his daughter. As he raised her on his arm her head fell back, exposing her face, around which her dark hair swept in dense ma.s.ses. Her features were of chiselled beauty, and had they been indeed of marble they could not have been more bloodless in their hue, while her jetty lashes lay as still upon her cheek as though the hand of death had sealed her eyes for ever. Mr. Sinclair had no such fear. He knew that she had only fainted, and rejoiced that G.o.d in his mercy had spared her the worst horrors of the scene; but as Captain Percy's eyes rested on her, a deeper scowl settled on his brow, and in a hoa.r.s.e whisper he asked:--
”Have they harmed her, sir?”
”Not by a touch, thank G.o.d! not by a touch!” exclaimed the father, as he pressed her with pa.s.sionate joy to his heart--ay, joy, even in the presence of her so long the light of his life now pa.s.sing for ever from earth. For a few minutes the dying had been forgotten, for what was death--a death of peace--to the long misery into which man's base, brutal pa.s.sion would have converted the life of that pure and lovely girl? Now, however, she was safe, and still supporting her on his arm, Mr. Sinclair turned to his wife and tenderly moistened her parched lips.
What a mockery of all human cares seemed that pale, peaceful brow--peaceful, while he whose lightest sorrow had thrown a shadow on her life was suffering anguish inexpressible, and the child who had lain in her bosom, to the lightest throb of whose heart her own had answered, lay senseless from terror in his arms. It was a scene to touch the hardest heart, and Captain Percy's heart was not hard. He looked around for the men whom he had interrupted in their h.e.l.lish designs--they were not there.
”Is this their work?” he asked of Mr. Sinclair, pointing to his scarcely breathing wife.
”No--no--this is the gentle hand of our Father,” said Mr. Sinclair, as he bent his head and touched with his lips the sunken cheek dearer to him now than it had been in all its girlish roundness. The blood had begun to cast a slight tinge of red into the lips of Mary Sinclair before Captain Percy had left the room in search of the men whom he was unwilling to leave behind him, and when he returned, the tremor of her form and the close clasp with which she clung to her father, proved that her consciousness and her memory were awake. His step had startled her, and as he entered he heard Mr. Sinclair say, ”Fear not, my daughter, that is the step of your deliverer, and though he is an English soldier----”
”I pray you, sir, judge not Englishmen by ruffians like these--a disgrace to the name of man. Believe me, every country has within it wretches, who, at moments such as this, when all social restraints are withdrawn, become demons. But I must leave you, in safety, I trust, as I have sent to the s.h.i.+ps all the soldiers whom I could discover in your neighborhood.”
”Farewell, sir,” said Mr. Sinclair, extending his hand--”G.o.d reward you for the timely aid you have this day brought to the defenceless. Look up, my child, and join your thanks with mine.”
Mary Sinclair raised her head from her father's bosom, and lifting her eyes for an instant to the face of Captain Percy, unclosed her lips to speak, but voice and words were denied her.
”G.o.d bless you, lady!” he exclaimed, as taking her hand he raised it to his lips, and relinquis.h.i.+ng it with one glance of sympathy at the dying, turned away and pa.s.sed from the room. He returned once more, but it was only to leave his pistols with Mr. Sinclair.
”They are loaded, sir, and in such a cause as you needed them just now, even a Christian minister may use them.”
Captain Percy spoke rapidly, only glancing at Mary, who was already bending with self-forgetful devotion above her mother's pillow, and before Mr. Sinclair could answer he was gone.