Pity and sorrow, as the portress spoke,
And asked the stranger’s bidding: “Take me in,”
She faltered, “Sister Monica, from sin,
And sorrow, and despair, that will not cease;
Oil take me in, and let me die in peace!”
With soothing words the sister bade her wait,
Until she brought the key to unbar the gate.
The beggar tried to thank her as she lay,
And heard the echoing footsteps die away.
But what soft voice was that which sounded near,
And stirred strange trouble in her heart to hear?
She raised her head; she saw she seemed to know
A face that came from long, long years ago:
Herself; yet not as when she fled away,
The young and blooming Novice, fair and gay,
But a grave woman, gentle and serene:
The outcast knew it what she might have been.
But as she gazed and gazed, a radiance bright
Filled all the place with strange and sudden light;
The nun was there no longer, but instead,
A figure with a circle round its head,
A ring of glory; and a face, so meek,
So soft, so tender.... Angela strove to speak,
And stretched her hands out, crying, “Mary mild,
Mother of mercy, help me! help your child!”
And Mary answered, “From thy bitter past,
Welcome, my child! oh, welcome home at last!
I filled thy p’lace. Thy flight is known to none,
For all thy daily duties I have done;
Gathered “thy flowers, and prayed, and sang, and slept;
Didst thou not know, poor child, thy place was kept?
Kind hearts are here; yet would the tenderest one
Have limits to its mercy: God has none.
And man’s forgiveness may be true and sweet,
But yet he stoops to give it. Move complete
Is love that lays forgiveness at thy feet,
And pleads with thee to raise it. Only Heaven
Means crowned, not vanquished, when it says ‘Forgiven!’”
Back hurried Sister Monica; but where
Was the poor beggar she left lying there?
Gone; and she searched in vain, and sought the place
For that wan woman, with the piteous face:
But only Angela at the gateway stood,
Laden with hawthorn blossoms from the wood.
But the old portress, with a sigh of pain,
Would sorrow for her loitering: with a prayer
That the poor beggar, in her wild despair,
Might not have come to any ill; and when
She ended, “God forgive her!” humbly theri
Did Angela bow her head, and say “Amen!”
How pitiful her heart was! all could trace
Something that dimmed the brightness of her face
After that day, which none had seen before;
Not trouble but a shadow nothing more.
Saw all the sisters kneeling round a bet),
Where Angela lay dying; every breath
Struggling beneath the heavy hand of death.
But suddenly a flush lit up her cheek,
She raised her wan right hand, and strove to speak.
In sorrowing love they listened; not a sound
Or sigh disturbed the utter silence round;
The very taper’s flames were scarcely stirred,
In such hushed awe the sisters knelt and heard.
And thro’ that silence Angela told her life:
Her sin, her flight; the sorrow and the strife,
And the return; and then, clear, low, and c.ilm,
“Praise God for me, my sifters;” and the psalm
Rang up to heaven, far, and clear, and wide,
Again and yet again, then sank and died;
While her white face had such a smile of peace,
They saw she never heard the music cease;
And weeping sisters laid her in her tomb,
Crowned with a wreath of perfumed hawthorn bloom.
Something is hidden in the mystery,
Besides the lesson of God’s pardon, shown
Never enough believed, or asked, or known.
Have we not all, amid life’s petty strife,
Some pure ideal of a noble life
That once seemed possible? Did we not hear
The flutter of its wings, and feel it near,
And just within our reach? It was. And yet
We lost it in this daily jar and fret,
And now live idle in a vague regret;
But still our place is kept, and it will wait,
Ready for us to fill it, soon or late.
No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been.
Since good, tho’ only thought, has life and breath,
God’s life can always be redeemed from death;
And evil, in its nature, is decay,
And any hour can blot it all away;
The hopes that, lost, in some far distance seem,
May be the truer life, and this the dream.
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Mr. Beaver, on being “spoke” (as his friend and ally, Jack Governor, called it), turned out of an imaginary hammock with the greatest promptitude, and went straight on duty. “As it’s Nat Beaver’s watch,” said lie, “there shall be no skulking.” Jack looked at me, with an expectant and admiring turn of his eye on Mr. Beaver, fall of complimentary implication. I noticed, by the way, that Jack, in a naval absence of mind with which he is greatly troubled at times, had his arm round my sister’s waist. Perhaps this complaint originates in an old nautical requirement of having something to hold on by.
These were the terms of Mr. Beaver’s revelation to us:
What I have got to put forward, will not take very long; and I shall beg leave to begin bv going back to last night just about the time when we all parted from one another to go to bed.
The members of this good company did a very necessary and customary thing, last night they each took a bedroom candlestick, and lit the candle before they went up-stairs. I wonder whether any one of them noticed that I left my candlestick untouched, and my candle unlighted; and went to bed, in a Haunted House, of all the places in the world, in the dark? I don’t think any one of them did.
That is, perhaps, rather curious to begin with. It is likewise curious, and just as
