The Maid of Maiden Lane by Amelia E. Barr (mobi reader android txt) 📕

“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.”

“But this is an insult to the American nation! Why does he endure it? He ought to return home.”

“Because he will not abandon his duty in the hour of peril and difficulty. Neither has the President given him permission to do so. How could he desert American citizens unlawfully imprisoned, American vessels unlawfully seized by French privateers, and American captains detained in French ports on all kinds of pretences. I think Minister Morris is precisely where he should be, saving the lives of American citizens; many of whom are trembling to-day in the shadow of the guillotine.”

“It is to be hoped that Jefferson is now convinced of the execrable nature of these brutal revolutionists.”

“I can assure you, sir, he is not. He still excuses all their abominations and says Minister Morris