Volume 4 — KNIGHTS OF THE CROSS.

ST. GEORGE’S CROSS.

BY CAROLINE CHESEBRO’.

A dull November evening: ghosts of a fog aspiring to the summit of a mountain, which formed the startling feature in the background of a landscape: a melancholy dissonance of swelling, rolling, breaking waves—strong, though not violent, moaning of autumnal winds through the valley, and up the mountain side: dark, heavy masses of cloud—red, and silvery, and leaden lines alternating on the horizon, at the point where the sun had disappeared: a girl standing on an enormous stone that was nearly surrounded by the water, a boy seated on the same rock near her feet; they were Ella, the clergyman’s daughter, and George, a shoemaker’s son.

An arm, white, round, and smooth as a girl’s, bared to the elbow, besmeared with blood and India ink, a hand, gliding over it rapidly, making strange tracery as it moved; a voice, soft and melodious, but tremulous in its tones, telling of a heart beating within the speaker’s breast that was keenly susceptible to every emotion—that voice saying,

“Did I show you the verses that I wrote about our Cross, Ella?”

“No! no—did you write verses about it?”

Without replying to the words, the boy laid down the needle he was using, drew from his pocket a little book, took from it a paper which he gave to the girl, silently resuming his work.

And in the gloom and cold she read,

FOR ELLA.

THE SYMBOL AND MEMORIAL.

“A rare library I have,” said the boy, with bitter accent—“yet I have made use of no poetic license in speaking of my shelves of books—I have just two shelves, and there are at least a dozen books in each.”

“I know of some men who have great libraries, and they might be glad to know as much as you do about books,” said the girl, soothingly. “Never mind, you’ll write more books than you own, one of these days.”

“Oh, Ella, you speak like a child—you are a child indeed,” he repeated, surveying her as if he had not thought of such a thing before. “I shall never, never write a book, I have got another life marked out for me.”

“Who says so? who put such a thing into your head?” she asked, quickly. “Why, you write now—you write verses and prose—so you are an author already.”

“I wish to God I were!”

“You are, you are, I tell you.”

“I have a mother—I am to be a preacher!” the words were almost hissed forth—but having uttered them, he seemed immediately to regain tranquillity. “Do you remember the day when we two had a pic-nic here, and gathered moss from the rocks, and made those crosses?” he said, tenderly.

“Why, yes,” she answered, with evident surprise—“to be sure I remember—it was only last week. What a lovely day it was—and what a beautiful cross that was you shaped for me. I look at it every day—I believe it will never fade.”

“It can not fade.... You spoke of my writing books ... what should I write them for?”

“Money and Fame—what all authors write for.”

“Oh, what a mistake! not all! Sit down here, Ella. There’s a good girl. Don’t you know there are some persons who don’t write for money, and who don’t care for fame? Some who write because they must, who’d go crazy outright, if they didn’t, but who would just as soon dig a hole in the ground, and throw what they write in there, or make a burial place of this sea, as they’d have their writings printed? They write to satisfy their own great spirits, not to please others.”

“No, I never heard of such a thing, and I don’t believe it either. You are talking in fun, to hear yourself—or to get me into a dispute with you—nothing pleases you better.”

The boy looked up, his eyes met those of the girl beside him—they smiled on each other. What children they were. How strangely forgetful of the gulf that lay between them!

“See, Ella, I have finished my work.”

It was getting very cold and cheerless there on the sea-side, and she shivered as she turned to look at the completed work, whose progress she had shrunk from watching.

“What did you call it? Oh, I remember, that is the anchor. But there’s another mark below it, an old one too,” she said, bending lower, that she might see it more distinctly. “You never told me about this—what is it?”

“Shall I make an anchor on your arm?”

The girl drew back.

“You are afraid it will hurt you,” he said, half in scorn.

She looked on his arm where the blood was mingling with the ink.

“No,” she said, resolutely,“I’m not afraid it will hurt me, but the mark, will it not last always?”

“To be sure it will. Oh! you will be a beauty—you will shine in ball-rooms with those fair white arms uncovered! Such stuff as this would deface them!”

“No such thing! you like to tease me, and that’s the reason you talk so. How wild you are! I’m not at all afraid of the pain—nor of marring my beauty. You know, in the first place, I have no beauty, and I don’t want any either.”

“Tut—but I’m not going to flatter you. Do you really want to know what this other mark here is?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a cross, Ella.”

“A cross, George? What’s the reason you wear it there?”

“Why do you wear that gold thing attached to the gold chain hung around your neck? That is a cross too.”

“This? Oh, mamma gave it to me.”

“What good does it do you? Do you say your prayers over it?”

“No—I think it very pretty—I wear it for mamma’s sake.”

The boy folded his arms, and turning half away from her said, scornfully, as if to himself:

As he finished the recitation, or improvisation, whichever it might be, the youth quietly turned toward the maiden, lifted the slight chain which secured the ornament over her head, and glancing at the “bauble” contemptuously, flung it far into the water.

She was so astonished that, though his movement was comprehended, she made no attempt to stay his purpose—her eyes followed his hand, and the bright golden cross as it flashed on the waves and disappeared—then she turned away, without speaking, as if to leave him.

“Stay!” he said, and she stopped short—“come and sit down here beside me,” but she looked at him as though she did not hear.

“It vexes me,” he said, in an apologetic, conciliatory way, “it vexes me to see every holy, sacred thing made vain, by vain unmeaning people. What business has any one to wear a golden cross? Had you worn one of lead or iron, I would not have thrown it into the sea. I wish you would wait a few minutes—don’t go! I want to tell you about this cross on my arm. You asked me about it. To me it means endure. Ella, you can’t guess how much it means; because it isn’t possible for you ever to look into the future as I do. You can’t imagine what I see before me. I don’t know as I should have thought of engraving an anchor here, under this cross, but when I came down to the beach to-night I was very desperate—I saw you standing up here on this rock, the sunlight was shining on your hair and face, the breeze making sport with your shawl and dress, and you looked to me just like Hope, standing so firm on the rock, looking up so calmly into heaven. Oh, Ella, you can’t guess what quiet the sight of you sent into my soul. If you had been an angel, and had stood repeating the words of Jesus as He walked on the waters, I could not have heard you say Peace more distinctly.... One has no right to hope, who can not endure. I don’t like to see such awful realities as the cross turned into vain symbols, that’s the truth about it. But I want you to forgive me for throwing your cross into the sea, I only wish I could tear every cross from you as easily, as you go through life. I couldn’t bear to think that you would very soon, let me see, you are fifteen years old! go among gay people wearing that thing, forgetful of its meaning. Will you forgive me?”

The “Yes” she said was more than a half sob—but as if ashamed of the emotion she could not conceal, Ella gave the boy her hand, with a frankness that conveyed all the pardon he wanted.

“Will you let me mark the anchor on your arm then, Ella?”

“No, but you may do the cross.” She sat down beside him again, and he traced on her tender arm, with the fine point of the needle, a symbol and a badge.

“And you will not have the Hope?”

“That is in my heart.”

“In truth it is the safest place for it. Your arm might have to be amputated some day, but your heart, I know, will never die while you live.”

“Can the heart die?”

“Yes, it can be killed—it can die of disease, of cold, of fever, a thousand things can destroy it—just as the body is destroyed.”

“Don’t you keep your hope in your heart too?”

“Yes, when I have any. There’s no moon to-night. Let’s go. We shall have a storm before morning. See the waves! they look as if they had been saturated in the Blackness of Darkness, and were just escaped from it. And, do look up! what a fit pavilion are those clouds for the Angel of Wrath! oh, how I wish he would appear!”

“George! George!”

“Yes, Ella—for he would be sure to do away these cursed distinctions we know so much of! Then I should have no need for feeling as I do, when I shut your gate after you, and go on to the shed where the shoemaker’s widow lives with her son, whom people are so very kind, so exceeding kind, as to call a poet. Ella, neither you nor I will live to see it—but the old things shall pass away on this earth, and new powers reign here ere long. And then, in that blessed day when Justice shall rule, a girl like you may walk up this village street with a boy even like me, and take his arm, and speak with him as an equal, and none shall stare and think the condescension wonderful. As it is—walk alone—go on before me—though you are weary and cold, I am not fit to support or to shelter you.”

He opened the gate for her, for they stood now before the parsonage—as she passed through he said, more gently, “I am sorry that I threw your cross away; it was a violent, and passionate, and childish act. Besides, you prized it—for your mother’s sake; you love your mother. And no good will ever come of its being torn away from you. There was no cause for treating you so.”

“Yes, there was, George—don’t mind—good has come of it already.”

“Oh, Ella—how?”

“I’m ready, this moment, to bear another cross, to take it up and bear it, if God will.”

“Woe to the human hand that lays a heavier cross on your shoulder than that I threw away from you.”

“Good-night, George.”

“Good-night, Ella.”

“George, you don’t believe I feel as you say people do about being seen walking or talking—with—you? I am, indeed, very proud of you, and—”

“Yes—I don’t doubt it, since you say so—you’re proud of me, though I can’t see why. But you’re not proud for me, nor with me.”

“Yes—I am.”

“No! no! you don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m glad you don’t—if I called ‘the whole world a cheat, and all men liars,’ you wouldn’t say yea and amen to that?”

“No; for I could prove to you that you mistook all about you. Oh, if you only knew how—”

“No more—good-night. You are not like other people, Ella, or we could not speak as we do together.”

II.

A dull November morning—rain had fallen in great quantities during the night, as George Waldron had predicted, and clouds yet covered the entire heaven. Amid the leafless forest trees that covered the mountain side, stood here and there a few evergreens, like ghosts, robed in funereal gloom—the wind was fierce and cold—the waters of the lake rolled high and furiously, they dashed madly on the beach—they rolled far back and up, with maniac force.

The boy was there again, standing on the seashore—the sun had not yet risen—he stood where the sunlight had fallen the night before on Ella, but the light that had enveloped her as a glory-robe, was not on him. He looked pale, and very anxious, and from the rock where she had stood he restlessly and curiously scanned every wave that broke upon the beach.

He had been roused long before daylight from his slumbers, by the parson, Ella’s father, and at his request had gone for a physician, for Ella was very ill.

And all that night, after the leech was summoned, he walked or ran along the beach, waiting with an impatience so fierce that one could not call it childish, for day to come. His garments were soaked with rain, but he knew it not, neither was he conscious of fatigue, or cold, or faintness, but incessantly, as he went to and fro, wild prayers burst from his lips. In the gloom, and storm, and darkness, he harbored but one thought, one hope, the rescue of Ella’s golden cross from the waters. The moment he heard that she was ill, he said to himself, she will die, and his fiery soul, recalling her mild, reproachful look as she watched his sudden motion, and her gently-expressed regret when the cross was lost, began to torture him. The act of passion became a thousand times exaggerated, and the recollection maddened him.

All day he walked along that stormy beach, and when night came, it was not till thick darkness began to gather over land and flood, that he arose to go back to his mother’s house. Mrs. Waldron had but just come in from the parsonage—she was going back again for the night, for Ella was very ill—and this good woman was noted as an efficient nurse,

“How is she, mother?” was his abrupt salutation, as he closed the door behind him, and walked up to the table where she sat at work for him.

“Who?” asked the mother, forgetting her neighborly, in her maternal anxiety, as she looked upon the pale and haggard face of her boy.

“The girl at the parsonage. I went for the doctor for her last night, you know.”

“Oh—she is very ill indeed, very ill; I’m going to watch there to-night.”

“It will tire you. You’re not well yourself.”

“Oh, well, son, when a neighbor’s sick, and wants my help, I hope I shall always be ready to give it—even if I don’t feel over and above smart myself.”

“Neighbor!” he repeated, furiously. “If it was you they talked of visiting, or helping, they’d say, it is a poor woman that lives near us—they wouldn’t call you ‘neighbor,’ mother—they’ve a different way of talking.”

“Oh, son! son! how awful proud you are. You’re hard on ’em. I’m feared you haven’t the right sort of spirit in you. It’s not the mood to take into the world—if you knock people down you’ll have to pay for it; the best way is just to ask leave to go by, and if they won’t make room, apologize for pushing on.”

“Mother,” he said, abruptly interrupting her, “did you see El—the sick girl, to-day?”

“Why, yes! I staid in the room all the time. Poor child, I don’t think she quite knew what she was talking about. She was wild-like—running on about the storm, and the night, and a cross, which was give to her by her mother—and it’s lost, they say. You never see folks so done up as the minister and his wife. When sorrow comes to us we’re all alike. But they are knocked up complete.”

“Was she grieving about the cross? Why don’t they get another like it, and make her think it’s found!”

“Oh, they wouldn’t deceive her! That would be agin the parson’s principles. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Don’t trouble yourself about getting tea, mother. I’m not at all hungry. Lie down and take a little nap. I’ll help myself, and I’ve got a book I want to read now.”

Though the words were kindly uttered, he spoke as one having authority; and without attempting a remonstrance, the mother complied with his suggestion, and was soon in a deep sleep. Early in the evening he aroused her, hurried away to the parsonage, and there left her for the night.

Exhausted by the excitement to which both mind and body had been subject for the last twenty-four hours, he returned home, but not to read, nor to study. The door to his humble home made fast, he passionately flung himself upon the floor, and until the fire-light died away he lay there, his eyes glaring about like a maniac’s, scanning the discolored walls, and the humble furniture, familiar to him since he first learned to take note of things, and understand the contrasts in the world. He slept not for one moment, nor could he think connectedly on any subject. His hopes were all dashing to and fro, confused and stormy as he knew the waves were, that beat along the shore on that wild night. One moment a gleam of glory, like a lightning flash, would break upon his soul, and the next the thunder-crash of the decision of Destiny and Doom, would peal through his excited intellect. He never for an instant thought of her recovery. He looked upon her death as a necessity that concerned him, and him alone, and he looked beyond her grave to his own future, as though he could tread on to it across that mound alone.... He thought upon his mother, and an icy chill made him nerveless—he painted his own portrait, and stood apart from the work, and gazed upon it with a critic’s eyes. It was always in the light of a Preacher that he looked upon himself; but while one of these pictured similitudes, that of the Poet-Preacher, whose parish lay in Author-Land, won him again and again, as by a siren charm, to bestow upon it one more, and one more look, from the other he turned with shuddering and aversion.

And while he lay on the hard floor, and thought, and groaned, and agonized through all that night, the wild and pitiless storm raged over sea and land—it was a desolating storm, but not so dreadful as that which convulsed the soul of this poor youth.

All the following day he kept up his vain search along the beach, until night came again, when dizzy with the incessant watch he kept over the dashing, breaking waves, and faint from his long fasting, and suddenly mindful that there might be some new tidings of Ella waiting him, he returned from the dreary watching place.

He did not find his mother at home, but she had been there since he left in the morning, for the table was spread in readiness for him. She had remembered him in the sick room, and mindful of his comfort had come, prepared the meal for him, and gone again. The boy’s heart smote him for the many ungrateful and hard thoughts he had borne her that day.

He was removing the things from the table, for he thought that he would write when she came in. He saw at once that she had been weeping, and his assumed indifference vanished in an instant; he cried out,

“Is she dead?”

“No; but they’re in dreadful trouble over to that house. Oh, son! if you could see that dear angel lying there so beautiful on the bed, and the room so quiet, and the poor creature’s pa and ma taking on so, and she not knowing it! It’s a dreadful sight! It’s strange, it is!”

“But is she no better, mother? Won’t she recover?”

“No hope of such a thing. I wanted to go back to-night to sit there in the room with her, but they said I’d tire out, and maybe they’d have to call on me again; and so I must rest to-night.”

“But do you feel so very tired?”

“No; I could sit there just as well as sleep here. I’m so anxious. I’ll have time enough to rest when I can’t do nothing for them, poor things!”

“Oh, do go then! Has she been in her right mind to-day?”

“Not a minute. But it’s strange though, how her thoughts has kept on to one thing the whole time. I wish you could see her arm! It’s dreadful inflamed; and it’s stained with something like ink, and odd enough, just in the shape of a cross. It couldn’t be no supernatural work, George. I told you her gold cross was lost.”

“And does her arm pain her?”

“Not that, I guess. But it’s all about having her hope amputated, and then she’ll lift her arm, as if she couldn’t do it hardly, and talk about the cross being heavy to bear. And then she cries about the Angel of Wrath, and says he’s coming—and whispers, and takes on the queerest you ever see. Oh, it would be dreadful if she wasn’t so lovely, and so angel-like, when she talks about these horrid things!”

“What horrid things?” he asked, abruptly and coldly, as though just waking from a sleep.

“Oh, but you’re heartless! I believe you don’t care for the dying no more than you do for the living. I believe you’ve slept all the time I was talking!”

“If I didn’t care about her being nursed every minute, would I ask you to go back, when I know you’re tired? They are nothing to me, and you are my mother! Would I ever ask you to go, if I could sleep while you are talking about her? Will you go?”

“Yes, yes; I mean to go. I’m glad you have some feeling in you. But you—you look like a ghost! I declare you look frightful! Your face is as pale! and your eyes stare out of your head so! Son! son! what’s the use of killing yourself just to get a little learning? What manner of good can come of it? Somebody, oh, the doctor, Dr. Williams, was asking me to-day if you was writing a book. I told him no; but I didn’t tell him what I thought about it—that you had as good as promised me that you would be a preacher. I shall be so proud of you then. These fiddling poets! I like a man, as long as he is in the world, to be of some use in it.”

“Don’t get in a passion, mother. I am no poet. No son of yours will disgrace you by ever publishing a book.” He spoke with frantic energy.

“But it’s getting late. I will now go with you.”

“No, no, you won’t—I’ll not hear of it, you look a’most as bad as Ella does.”

“Do you call her ‘Ella’ over there?”

“No—you know I haven’t much acquaintance with ’em.”

“Then I wouldn’t condescend to call her so here,” was the bitter rebuke.

His mother did not answer him, but went out of the house lamenting her son’s pride, rather audibly.

And he kept another watch that night, and in a solemn passion vowed a vow; and wherever his eyes turned through the darkness he beheld a cross uplifted before him—and a voice was ringing in his ear—“this for thee,” and the shadow of that cross he could not escape, for it lay upon his soul.

III.

Another day-dawn, but how unlike those wild preceding days! Again the sun arose, and was no longer hid by threatening clouds—the wind swept steadily and keenly, but not fiercely over the waters; and the waves beat against the shore, upon the beach, and the rock, but not with angry violence, and the splendor of the dazzling sunlight was upon them all.

And again a boyish form, in which a man’s heart and a giant’s soul were beating, paced to and fro upon that beach—and a vow made in the solitude of night was on his lips, and he spoke it calmly in that lonely place where there was only the mountain, and the waters, the singing petrel, and the sandy beach, and the Maker of them all, to testify against him if he should break the vow: “Oh ye waves, only give up that treasure dear to her, and I will obey my mother—I will not let one dream of Fame tempt me—I will forget that I too could be a poet, and an author. Yes, yes, I will be a preacher, as she would have me. God! hear me!”

He stepped upon the rock, the rock on which she stood, that night—for the stormy petrel, singing as it went, was floating just then under it—but for a moment when he stood there he made no effort to advance, for the doom he had feared, yet invoked, met him there! Upon a shrub, that was lodged upon the rock in a handful of earth, the glittering cross and golden chain were hanging. He paused, as if blasted by the recollection of his vow—a phantom, horrible as death stood between him and the cross—then he went forward resolutely, as one who walks upon a sacrificed hope, to work for another some good thing.... In solemn silence he lifted the bauble, turned away from the sea-side, passed up the village-street, through the parsonage-gate, and for the first time in his life up to the parsonage-door.

He did not even pause to knock, but went on, as led by instinct, to the very door of her chamber—it stood open, and Dr. Williams was there alone with Ella. She must have been speaking of the youth even then, for the physician did not look surprise upon George—on the contrary he stepped aside, and while the boy remained with Ella none other of the household were permitted to enter the room.

Ella had wakened that morning from her fever-dream, and was once more quite conscious—of her danger—but not of the hopelessness of those around her: what all the household now knew, that she would not recover, had not yet been told her.

George took her hand—she recognized him with a smile, and directed his eyes to the inflamed arm which, through all her delirium, and now in her consciousness, she would not suffer to be covered. The red cross glared upon his sight.

“Where is the Anchor, Ella?”

“Here,” she said, laying her hand upon her breast.

“Ella, have you forgiven me for robbing you of the cross your mother gave you?”

“Oh, yes; I had forgotten it, George.”

He held it up before her—the sea-weed clinging to it still. “See,” he said, “the waves were too generous to keep it. I found it just now on the rock—the place where you stood that night.”

“Keep it, George. Though I never thought to leave you such a remembrancer. Oh, George! I should have been just as this sea-weed, and perhaps have clung to the Cross of Christ with not a bit more energy, if I had staid in the world.”

“You are not going away! You are not going!” he cried; but his voice faltered and fell as he said it, for he felt that she was going.

“Doctor, I left a little book on my desk, will you bring it to me?”

It was laid before her.

“This,” she said, again addressing the youth, “I meant for you. It pleased me, and I thought perhaps you would like it—and won’t you lay it on your shelf nearest to your cross, the one we made. It has a pretty name—The Shadow of the Cross. See, I wrote your name in it after I came home that night. You could write a better book”—he shuddered, and half turned away—she observed his look and motion, and said quickly, “Yes, you will. And all the world will love you. But you will keep this, if only for my sake. And don’t ever, ever think, George Waldron, that I wouldn’t have been proud to have taken your arm and walked with you in the broad daylight through our streets. I was very tired and sick that night, or I wouldn’t have let you go home without convincing you. Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” he said, and something of the calmness passed from her face into his, as he bent over her. “Do you know, can you guess, what my cross in this life is? I know, for it is laid on me already. Oh, Ella, if you could live, it would not be with me as it must be now!”

Perhaps she had grown too weak to answer him, for she pressed his hands closely between her own, and made no other reply.

He saw her only once after that day. They had removed her from the bed, and from her pleasant chamber then. She was in the little parlor of the parsonage—and the shadow of a cross was lying on her sweet, pale face, for her coffin was near the mantle, and on that stood the “symbol” which they had fashioned one bright October day. He only looked upon her for a moment on that morning, but the brief glance was more than he could bear composedly, and the widowed boy went out hastily from the little group of mourners, to weep such tears as he could never, never in his life weep again.

He kept that vow, made in the frenzy of despair, religiously. Did he not? Question his witness—it is not voiceless—it stands unimpeachable at this moment; on a now populous sea-side, there, in the very place where, one dull November night, the first act of a most sad life-drama was read, in a wild and dreary solitude, by two young, dreaming children. It stands a seamen’s chapel, whose corner-stone he laid, whose foundation is the rock whereon Ella stood that night. A cross surmounts its spire, and if you walk along the pleasant beach its shadow will be sure to fall upon you. Many a day and many a night George Waldron walked there: and this is his monument on earth.

But—who can tell the heaviness of that cross he bore? The cross his mother lifted to his shoulder, which, from the moment of Ella’s death, he bore in uncomplaining silence? There was energy in his heart, and in his brain; he was zealous, he was loving, he had respect, and sorrow, and compassion for the poor; and these were the characteristics he took with him on his way of life, when the priestly office was conferred upon him. That vow his fiery spirit made, which was induced by a conviction of his mother’s will and hope (we state it as a fact merely, not as an extenuation), that vow was all the seal he ever recognized, to himself, as set upon his ministry, and yet, he was an honor to his calling; in all his human “walk and conversation” he was a holy example, and a shining light. But heavy, heavy was the cross he bore! Through the poet’s dreaming youth, and thoughtful, striving manhood, he went, and never a hope of Fame, nor praise of men beguiled him. Every freshly-tinted cloud that rose and floated over the fairy land of his imagination was suffered to dissolve, in unseen and unsuspected mist and dew, upon the hearts and lives of other men.

He steadily trode a straight and beaten path, when the panting soul within him urged his intellect forth on the wings of genius to discovery and portrayal, he suffered his aspiring nature to exhaust herself in a round of daily, common duties, than which indeed none are nobler, when inspired by the Spirit of Grace! than which none can be more glorious in result, if God incite to their performance; but, which are dreadful in enduring, and in working out, which are presumptuously and impiously endured and wrought by the poor cross-bearer, if another human being’s will, and not his own prayerful desire be the incitement.

It was this heavy cross that George Waldron bore. He died young, a maniac some said, a martyr and a saint assuredly. And in compliance with the only request made in his will, his body was lowered on his funeral day, a dull November day, from the Chapel Rock to the deep sea beneath. Oh, must it not have been with joy unspeakable and full of glory that his chastened, fettered spirit at last, at last, burst forth in its release, with thanksgiving and a wondrous voice of melody?