The Maid of Maiden Lane

Shall I ever win thy grace?

and as these eager impassioned words rose heavenward, it seemed to Hyde that her innocent, longing soul was half-way out of her frail little body. He did not in any way disturb her. She ceased when the hymn was finished and sat still a few moments, realizing, as far as she could, the glory which doth not yet appear. As her eyes dropped, the light faded from her face; she smiled at Hyde, a smile that seemed to light all the space between them. Then he stood up and she came towards him. No wonder that strangers spoke of her as a child; she had the size and face and figure of a child, and her look of extreme youth was much accentuated by the simple black gown she wore, and by her carriage, for she leaned slightly forward as she walked, her feet appearing to take no hold upon the floor; a movement springing INTERIORLY from the soul eagerness which dominated her. Hyde placed her in a chair before the fire, and then drew his own chair to her side.

"Cousin," she said, "I am most glad to see you. Everybody has some work to do to-day."

"And you, Annie?"

"In this world I have no work to do," she answered. "My soul is here for a purchase; when I have made it I shall go home again." And Hyde looked at her with such curious interest that she added—"I am buying Patience."

"O indeed, that is a commodity not in the market."

"I assure you it is. I buy it daily. Once I used to wonder what for I had come to earth. I had no strength, no beauty, nothing at all to buy Earth's good things with. Three years ago I found out that I had come to buy for my soul, the grace of Patience. Do you remember what an imperious, restless, hard-to-please, hard-to-serve girl I was? Now it is different. If people do not come on the instant I call them, I rock my soul to rest, and say to it 'anon, anon, be quiet, soul.' If I suffer much pain—and that is very often—I say Soul, it is His Will, you must not cry out against it. If I do not get my own way, I say, Soul, His Way is best; and thus, day by day, I am buying Patience."

"But it is not possible this can content you. You must have some other hope and desire, Annie?"

"Perhaps I once had—and to-day is a good time to speak of it to you, because now it troubles me no longer. You know what my father desired, and what your father promised, for us both?"

"Yes. Did you desire it, Annie?"

"I do not desire it now. You were ever against it?"

"Oh Annie!—"

"It makes no matter, George. I shall never marry you."

"Do you dislike me so much?"

"I am very fond of you. You are of my race and my kindred, and I love every soul of the Hydes that has ever tarried on this earth."

"Well then?"

"I shall marry no one. I will show you the better way. Few can walk in it, but Doctor Roslyn says, he thinks it may be my part—my happy part—to do so:" and as she spoke she took from the little pocket at her side a small copy of the gospels, and it opened of its own account at the twentieth chapter of St. Luke. "See!" she said, "and read it for yourself, George—"

"The children of this world marry and are given in marriage. But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage.

"Neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." [Footnote: St. Luke, chap. xx. 34-36.]

"To die no more! To be like unto the angels! To be the children of God! This is the end and aim of my desires, to be among 'the children of God!'"

"Dear Annie, I cannot understand this."

"Not yet. It is not your time. My soul, I think, is ages older than yours. It takes ages of schooling to get into that class that may leave Earth forever, and be as the angels. Even now I know, I am sure that you are fretting and miserable for the love of some woman. For whose love, George? Tell me."

Then Hyde plunged with headlong precipitancy into the story of his love for Cornelia, and of the inexplicably cruel way in which it had been brought to a close. "And yesterday," he continued with a sob in his voice—"yesterday I heard that her father had taken her to Philadelphia. I shall see her no more. He will marry her to Rem Van Arenas, or to one of her Quaker cousins, and the taste is taken out of my life, and I am only a walking misery."

"I do not believe it is Cornelia's fault."

"Here is her letter. Read it." Then Annie look the letter and after reading it said, "If she be all you say, I will vow she wrote this in her sleep. I should like to see her. Why do you think wrong of her? What is love without faith in the one you love? Do you know first and finally what true love is? It is THINKING kindly and nobly. For if we GIVE all we have, and DO all we can do, and yet THINK unkindly, it profits us nothing. Doctor Roslyn told me so. You remember him?"

"Your teacher?"

"My teacher, my friend, my father after the spirit. He told me that our thoughts moulded our fate, because thought and life are one. So then, if you really love Cornelia, you must think good of her, and then good will come."

"If thought and life are one, Annie, if doing good, and giving good, are nothing to thinking good, and we are to be judged by our quality of thinking, there will be a greater score against all of us, than we can imagine. I, for one, should not like to be brought face to face with what I think, and have thought about people; it would be an accounting beyond my power to settle."

"There is no accounting. If all the priests in Christendom tell you so, believe them not. Do you think God keeps a score against you? Do you think the future is some torture chamber, or condemned cell? Oh, how you wrong God!"

"But we are taught, Annie, that the future must correct the past."

"True, but the future, like the present, is a school—only a school. And the Great Master is so compassionate, so ready to help, so ready to enlighten, so sure to make out of our foolishness some wise thing. If we learn the lesson we came here to learn, He will say to us 'Well done'—and then we shall go higher."

"If we do not learn it?"

"Ah then, we are turned back to try it over again! I should not like to be turned back—would you?"

"But He will punish us for failure."

"Our earthly fathers are often impatient with us; His compassions fail not. Oh this good God!" she cried in an ecstasy—"Oh that I knew where I might find Him! Oh that I could come into His presence!" and her eyes dilated, and were full of an incomparable joy, as if they were gazing upon some glorious vision, and glad with the gladness of the angels.

Hyde looked at her with an intense interest. He wondered if this angelic little creature had ever known the frailties and temptations of mortal life, and she answered his thought as if he had spoken it aloud.

"Yes, cousin, I have known all temptations, and come through all tribulations. My soul has wandered and lost its way, and been brought back many and many a time, and bought every grace with much suffering. But God is always present to help, while quest followed quest, and lesson followed lesson, and goal succeeded goal; ever leaving some evil behind, and carrying forward some of those gains which are eternal."

"If Adam had not fallen!" sighed George, "things might have been so different."

"But the angels fell before Adam," she answered. "I wonder if Adam knew about the fallen angels? Did he know about death before he saw Abel dead? He was all day in the garden of Eden after eating of the fruit of sin and death, and yet he did not put out his hand to take of the Tree of Life. Did he know that he was already immortal? Was he—and are we—fallen angels, working our way back to our first estate through many trials and much suffering? Doctor Roslyn talked to me of these things till I thought I felt wings stirring within me. Wings! Wings! Wings to fly away and be at rest. Wings! they have been the dream of every race and every age. Are they a memory of our past greatness, for they haunt us, and draw us on and on, and higher and higher?—but why do you look so troubled and reluctant?"

Before Hyde could answer, the Earl came into the room and the young man was glad to see his father. A conversation so unusual, so suggestive and cleaving made him unhappy. It took him up the high places that indeed gave him a startling outlook of life, but he was not comfortable at such altitude. He rose with something of this strange air about him, and the Earl understood what the trend of the conversation had been. For Annie had talked much to him on such subjects, and he had been sensibly moved and impressed by the wisdom which the little maid had learned from her venerable teacher. He lifted her head in passing, and kissed her brow with that reverent affection we feel for those who bring out what is noblest and best in our character, and who lead us higher than our daily walk.

"My dear George," he said, "I am delighted to see you. I was afraid you would stay in the city this dreadful weather. Is there any news?"

"A great deal, sir. I have brought you English and French papers."

"I will read them at my leisure. Give me the English news first. What is it in substance?"

"The conquest of Mysore and Madras. Seringapatam has fallen; and Tippoo has ceded to England one half his dominions and three millions of pounds. The French have not now a foothold left in India, and 'Citizen Tippoo' can no longer help the agents of the French Republic. Faith, sir! Cornwallis has given England in the east, a compensation for what she lost in the west."

"To make nations of free men, is the destiny of our race," replied the Earl.

"Perhaps so; for it seems the new colony planted at Sydney Cove, Australia, is doing wonderfully; and that would mean an English empire in the south."

"Yet, I have just read a proclamation of the French Assembly, calling on the people of France 'TO ANNIHILATE AT ONCE, the white, clay-footed colossus of English power and diplomacy.' Anything else?"

"Mr. Fox and Mr. Burke are quarrelling as usual, and Mr. Pitt is making the excesses of France the excuse for keeping back reform in England. It is the old story. I did not care to read it. The French papers tell their side of it. They call Burke a madman, and Pitt a monster, and the Moniteur accuses them of having misrepresented the great French nation, and says, 'they will soon be laid prostrate before the statue of Liberty, from which they shall only rise to mount the scaffold, etc., etc.'"

"What bombastic nonsense!"

"Minister Morris is in the midst of horrors unmentionable. The other foreign ministers have left France, and the French government is deserted by all the world; yet Mr. Morris remains at his post, though he was lately arrested in the street, and his house searched by armed men."