"Love is a great embellisher," said Mrs. Schwartz, with a gay smile, and the conversation pa.s.sed to more general topics.

The fifth year of Ernest's absence was gone, and still he came not; but he was coming soon, at least so his father said, though he did not show Meeta the letters on which he founded his a.s.sertion. It was the first time he had withheld them; a circ.u.mstance the more remarkable, because of late he seemed to regard Meeta with greater affection and confidence than he had ever done before. He now sought her society, and seemed pleased and even proud of the connection to which he had at first consented with some reluctance. It was very soon after the reception of the letter from Ernest to which we have alluded, that Franz Rainer's health began to fail, and that so rapidly, that Meeta feared Ernest could not arrive in time to see him. She was to the old man an angel of consolation, and he clung to her as to his last hope. In pity to his lonely condition, her own parents were willing to spare her for a time, and Meeta, that she might take care of him by night as well as by day, had removed to his house a week before Ernest's arrival. He came not wholly unwarned of the sorrow that awaited him, for he had found a letter from Meeta at the house of the merchant in Philadelphia through whom he had corresponded with his father, tenderly yet plainly revealing her fears, and urging him to hurry homeward without delay. He travelled with little rest or refreshment for two days and nights, and arrived late on the third day at his father's house. It was a still summer evening, and while the old man slept, Meeta sat near him in the only parlor the house afforded, reading by a shaded night lamp. She heard the sound of carriage wheels, and paused to listen; the sound ceased; a shadow darkened the moonlight which had been streaming through an open window, and then Ernest, the playfellow of her childhood, the lover of her youth, stood before her; but how changed, how gloriously changed thought Meeta, even in that hour of hurry and agitation. They gazed on each other in silence for a moment, and then Meeta with a bright smile, yet in a whisper, for even then she forgot not the dying man, asked:

"Do you not know me, Ernest?"

"Meeta!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as he took the hand she extended to him, but dropping it almost immediately, he said anxiously: "My father! he lives, Meeta?"

"He does, Ernest, and may live, I think _will_ live, for many days yet."

"Thank G.o.d! then I shall see him again!"

The conversation had till now been in whispers, but Ernest uttered his e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of thankfulness aloud. There was a movement in the old man's room, a sound, and Meeta glided to his side.

"Who were you talking with, my daughter?" he murmured feebly. For many days Franz Rainer had called Meeta daughter, as though he found pleasure in recalling the tie between them.

"With one who tells me Ernest has arrived, and will see you soon," said Meeta.

"It is Ernest himself. I knew his voice: Ernest, my son!" And the old man's tones were loud and strong, as Meeta had heard them for days. In another moment, Ernest was bending over his father, and they were gazing on each other with a tenderness whose very existence they had not before suspected. Tears were rolling down the face of the once stern old man, as he pressed his son's hand again and again, and murmured blessings on him, and thanks to G.o.d for his safe return; and Ernest, as he marked the death-shadow on his father's brow, felt that a tie was tearing away which had been woven more intimately than he had supposed with his heart's fibres. The weeping Meeta composed herself that she might soothe them.

"Ernest, I cannot let you stay longer here; I am your father's nurse."

"My nurse, my daughter, my all, Ernest; your gift to me, my son, which, thank G.o.d! you have come in time to receive again from my hands. Take her to you, Ernest."

The old man held Meeta's hand clasped in his own towards his son, and Ernest touched it, but so slightly and with a hand so cold, that Meeta looked up in alarm. There was a beseeching expression in the eyes that met hers; a look which she did not understand, and yet on which she acted.

"Ernest," she said, "you are fatigued to death, and your father has been too much agitated already. Go, I pray you, for the present; I cannot leave your father, but you will find coffee and biscuits by the kitchen fire, and there is a bed prepared in your own room. Good-night; we shall meet again to-morrow," she added with a smile to the old man.

Ernest gave her a more cordial glance and pressure of the hand than she had yet received from him; told his father that he would only s.n.a.t.c.h an hour's sleep and be with him again, and left the room.

"Go with him, Meeta; you must have much to say."

"Nothing that we cannot say as well to-morrow. And now you must take another sleeping draught, for I see Ernest has carried off all the effect of your last."

Meeta spoke cheerfully, yet her heart was sad, she scarcely knew why.

She would not think Ernest unkind, yet how different had been their meeting from that which fancy had so often sketched for her!

Franz Rainer fell asleep, and again Meeta returned to the parlor. A lamp was still burning there, and by its dim light she saw the form of Ernest extended on a settee with his cloak and valise for his bed and pillow.

At first she drew timidly back into the chamber, but as the slight noise she had made before perceiving him, had failed to disturb him, she felt a.s.sured that he slept soundly, and an irresistible desire arose in her heart to draw near him, and look at him more closely than she had yet ventured to do. She stood beside him; her heart bounded against the locket, his gift, which lay in its accustomed place, as she marked with a quick eye how the handsome but uncouth stripling had expanded into the man of n.o.ble proportions, whose features had, like her own, acquired a new character under the refining touch of intellect. Meeta looked on him till her eyes grew dim with tears pressed from a heart full of emotion, compounded of happy memories and glad hopes, shadowed by disappointment and saddened by doubt. Above all other feelings, however, rose the undying love which had "grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength." Suddenly, by an irrepressible impulse, she laid her hand softly on the dark locks of waving hair which cl.u.s.tered over his broad brow, and breathed in low, tender accents, "My Ernest!"

On leaving his father's room, Ernest had thrown himself on his hard couch, not to sleep, but to rest; and when slumber overpowered him, he had yielded to it unwillingly, and with the determination to be on the alert and ready to arise on the first summons. Sleep that comes thus, howsoever it may continue through other disturbing causes, rarely resists a touch, or the sound of our own name, and light as was Meeta's touch, and low as were her tones, Ernest was partially aroused by them.

He stirred, and she would have retreated noiselessly from his side, but as his eyes unclosed, they fell upon her with an expression of such rapturous love as she had never seen in them before, and in an instant he had encircled her form with his arm, and drawn her to his bosom. In glad surprise she rested there a moment; it was but a moment.

"Sophie--my Sophie!" were the murmured words that met her ear, and gave her strength to burst from his embraces and glide rapidly, noiselessly back into the darkened chamber. There, sheltered by the darkness, she could see Ernest raise himself slowly up from his couch, look almost wildly around him, and then seemingly satisfied that he had only dreamed, sink back again to rest.

A dream it had indeed been to him; a shadow of the night; to Meeta a dark cloud, in whose gloom she was henceforth to walk for ever. Hours of conversation could not so fully have revealed the truth to Meeta as those simple words: "Sophie--my Sophie!" uttered by Ernest in such a tone of heart-worship. Ernest loved with all the fond idolatry which she had thought of late belonged not to man's affections; but he loved another. Jealousy; the bitter consciousness of her own slighted love; the memory of his vows; the crushing thought that she was nothing to him now; that while he had been the life of her life, another had filled his thoughts and ruled his being, created a wild tempest in her soul. All was still around her. The sick man, the tired Ernest slept; and without, not even the rustling of a leaf disturbed the repose of Nature. She seemed to herself the only living thing in the universe; and to her, life was torture. An hour pa.s.sed in this still concentrated agony, and she could endure it no longer; she must be up and doing; she would wake Ernest; she would tell him the revelation she had made; upbraid him with her blighted life, and leave him. Let him send for his Sophie; what did she, the outcast, the rejected, there in his house?--why should she nurse his father? She arose and approached again the couch of Ernest; she was about to call to him, but she was arrested by the expression of agony in his face. His brow was contracted, and as she continued to gaze, low moans issued from his quivering lips. Ernest too was a sufferer; how that thought softened the hard, cold, icy crust that had been gathering around her heart! The bitterness of pride and jealousy gave place to tenderer emotions. Tears gathered in her eyes, and stealing softly back to her sheltered seat, she wept long and silently.

"In sorrow the angels are near;" and Meeta's heart was now full of sorrow, not of anger. Sad must her life ever be, but what of that, if Ernest could be happy? Perhaps he suffered for her; the good, true Ernest. It might be that only in dreams he had told his love to Sophie, bound to silence, painful silence, by his vows to her. She then could make him happy, and was not that her first desire? If it were not, her love was a low, selfish, unworthy love, and she would pray that it might be purified. She did pray, not as she would have done an hour before, to be taken out of the world, but that she might be made meet to do the will of her FATHER while in the world. She prayed for herself, for Ernest; and sweet peace stole into her heart, and before the morning light came, she had resolved not to leave the old man who loved her, during his few remaining days, yet not to keep Ernest in doubt of his own freedom. She was impatient that he should awake, and fell asleep imagining various modes of making her communication to him. Exhausted by mental agitation even more than by watching, she slept long and heavily.

When she awoke, Ernest was shading the window at her side, through which the sun was shining brightly into the room. As she moved he looked at her kindly, and said:

"I am afraid I awoke you, Meeta, when I meant only to prolong your sleep by shutting out this light."

"I have slept long enough," was all that Meeta could say. The old Rainer was awake, and dreading above all things some allusions from him to the supposed relations of Ernest and herself, she hastened from the room and busied herself in the preparation of breakfast. Having seen that meal placed upon the table, she returned to the sick room and begged that Ernest would pour out his own coffee, while she did some things that were essential to his father's comfort. She lingered till Ernest came to see whether he could take her place, and then, as the old man slept peacefully, and she could make no further excuse, she accompanied him back to the table. The breakfast, a mere form to Meeta at least, proceeded in silence, or with only a casual remark from Ernest, scarcely heard by her, on the weather, the rapidity with which he had travelled, or his father's condition. Suddenly Meeta seemed to arouse herself as from a deep reverie:

"Why do you not talk to me of Sophie?" she said, attempting to speak gayly, though one less embarra.s.sed than Ernest could not have failed to note the tremulousness of her voice, and the quivering of the pallid lip which vainly strove to smile.

But Meeta's agitation was as nothing to that of Ernest. For a moment he gazed upon her as though spell-bound, then dropping his face into his clasped hands, sat actually shivering before her. It was plain that Ernest had not lightly estimated his obligations to her. If he had sinned against them he had not despised them, and this conviction gave new strength to Meeta. She rose for the hour superior to every selfish emotion. Laying her hand upon his arm, she said, gently:

"Be not so agitated, Ernest; can you not regard me as your friend, and talk to me as you did in old days of all that disturbs you; and why should you be disturbed at my speaking of--of your Sophie? You do not suppose that--you know that--in short, Ernest, we cannot be expected to feel now as we did five years ago; but surely that need not prevent our being friends."

Meeta had been herself too much confused of late, to remark her companion. When she now ventured with great effort to meet his eyes, she found them fixed upon her with an expression of lively admiration and grateful joy.

"Meeta, dear Meeta!" he exclaimed, seizing her hand and kissing it. "You give me new life. I have been a miserable man for weeks past, torn by conflicting claims upon my heart and my honor. You had claims on both, Meeta; sacred claims, which I could never have asked you to forego; and so had Sophie, for though I resisted long, there came a moment of mad pa.s.sion, of madder forgetfulness, in which, abandoning myself to the present, I sought and obtained an avowal of her love. It was scarcely over ere I felt the wrong I had done. I revealed that wrong to her; pity me, Meeta! I told her all--your claims, your worth. To you I resolved to be equally frank, and my only hope was in your generosity. But my father had never suffered me to doubt that your heart was still mine, and though I was a.s.sured that you would enable me to fulfil my obligations to Sophie, I feared, I mean, I could not hope, that it would be without any sacrifice; I mean without any regrets on your part."

Ernest paused in some embarra.s.sment; but Meeta could not speak, and he resumed:

"You have made me perfectly happy, Meeta, which even Sophie could not have done, had I been compelled in devoting myself to her to relinquish the friend and sister of my childhood."

"Always regard me thus, Ernest, as your friend and sister, and I shall be satisfied."

Meeta had risen to return to the sick room, but Ernest caught her hand and held her back, while he said:

"But you must see my Sophie, Meeta; you must know her and then you will love her too. She will be here soon with her sister, Mrs. Schwartz."

"Mrs. Schwartz her sister? Then my last doubt is removed Ernest. She is worthy of you."

"Worthy of me!" And Ernest would have run into all a lover's rhapsodies on this text, but Meeta had escaped from him.

Hitherto Meeta's life had been one of quietness, of inaction, and now in a few short weeks ages of active existence seemed crowded. One object she had set before her as the great aim of her life; it was to secure Ernest's happiness and preserve his honor. She understood now the coldness with which her father had of late named him. It was essential to her peace that this coldness should not deepen into anger. Not even in her own family then must she have rest from the strife between her inner and her outer life. Sympathy she must not have, since sympathy with her was almost inseparably connected with reproach of Ernest. Time had another lesson to teach, and Meeta soon learned it; that in a combat such as she had to sustain, no half-way measures would suffice, that she must not drive her griefs down to the depths of her heart, shutting them there from every human eye, but she must drive them out of her heart. We talk of feigning cheerfulness, of wearing a mask for the world and throwing it off in solitude, and we may do this for a week, a month, a year, but those who have a life-grief to sustain, from whose hearts hope has died out, know that there are only two paths open to them in the universe; to lie down in their despair and breathe out their souls in murmurs against their G.o.d, and lamentations over their destiny; or, humbly kissing the rod which has smitten them, to go forth out of themselves, where all is darkness and woe, and find a new and happier life in living for and in others. And thus did Meeta.

We may not linger over the details of the next few weeks of her existence. The old Rainer died; died blessing his children, Ernest and Meeta, and praying for their happiness. Often would Ernest have told him all; but Meeta kept back a disclosure which would have given him pain.

"Do not disturb him now, Ernest," she said; "he will know all soon, and bless your Sophie from heaven, where there is no sorrow."

Meeta returned home, and exhaustion won for her a few days rest; rest even from her mental struggles; but when the funeral was over, and things returned to their usual routine, she felt that she must prepare her father and mother to receive Ernest in the character in which they were henceforth to regard him. She found strength for this in her lofty purpose and her simple dependence upon Heaven, and her voice did not falter nor her color change as she said to her mother:--

"Do you not think Ernest is much altered?"

"Yes, he is greatly improved."

"Improved! Well, he may be so to the eyes of others, but--"

"Is he not as tender to you, my daughter?" asked the sensitive mother.

"That is not it," said Meeta, coloring for the first time: "we neither of us feel as we once did; it was a childish folly to suppose that we should. I have told Ernest that I could not fulfil our engagement, and he is satisfied."

Madame Werner looked long at her daughter, but Meeta met the glance firmly.

"And is this all, Meeta?"