Beulah - Page 259/348

"Sometimes I think if I could only live, and be strong, I would make

myself useful in the world--would try to be less selfish and

exacting, but all regrets are vain, and the indulged child of luxury

must take her place in the pale realms of death along with the

poverty-stricken and laboring. Beulah, I was in pain last night, and

could not sleep, and for hours I seemed to hear the words of that

horrible vision: 'And he saw how world after world shook off its

glimmering souls upon the sea of Death, as a water-bubble scatters

swimming lights on the waves.' Oh! my mind is clouded and my heart

hopeless, it is dismal to stand alone as I do, and confront the

final issue, without belief in anything. Sometimes, when the

paroxysms are severe and prolonged, I grow impatient of the tedious

delay, and would spring, open-armed, to meet Death, the deliverer."

Beulah was deeply moved, and answered, with a faltering voice and

trembling lip: "I wish I could comfort and cheer you; but I cannot--I cannot! If

the hand of disease placed me to-day on the brink beside you, I

should be as hopeless as you. Oh, Cornelia! it makes my heart ache

to look at you now, and I would give my life to be able to stand

where you do, with a calm trust in the God of Israel; but--"

"Then be warned by my example. In many respects we resemble each

other; our pursuits have been similar. Beulah, do not follow me to

the end! Take my word for it, all is dark and grim."

She sank back, too much exhausted to continue the conversation, and

Beulah rose to go.

"Can't you stay with me?" said the feeble girl.

"No; my companionship is no benefit to you now. If I could help you

I would not leave you at all."

She pressed her lips to the forehead furrowed by suffering, and

hastened away.

It was dusk when she reached home, and, passing the dining room,

where the tea table awaited her arrival, she sought her own

apartment. A cheerful fire blazed in welcome; but just now all

things were somber to her vision, and she threw herself into a chair

and covered her face with her hands. Like a haunting specter,

Cornelia's haggard countenance pursued her, and a dull foreboding

pointed to a coming season when she, too, would quit earth in

hopeless uncertainty. She thought of her guardian and his skeptical

misanthropy. He had explored every by-path of speculation, and after

years of study and investigation had given up in despair, and

settled down into a refined pantheism. Could she hope to succeed

better? Was her intellect so vastly superior to those who for

thousands of years had puzzled by midnight lamps over these

identical questions of origin and destiny? What was the speculation

of all ages, from Thales to Comte, to the dying girl she had just

left? Poor Beulah! For the first time her courage forsook her, and

bitter tears gushed over her white cheeks. There was no stony

bitterness in her face, but an unlifting shadow that mutely revealed

the unnumbered hours of strife and desolation which were slowly

bowing that brave heart to the dust. She shuddered, as now, in self-

communion, she felt that atheism, grim and murderous, stood at the

entrance of her soul, and threw its benumbing shadow into the inmost

recesses. Unbelief hung its murky vapors about her heart, curtaining

it from the sunshine of God's smile. It was not difficult to trace

her gradual progress if so she might term her unsatisfactory

journey. Rejecting literal revelation, she was perplexed to draw the

exact line of demarcation between myths and realities; then followed

doubts as to the necessity, and finally as to the probability and

possibility, of an external, verbal revelation. A revealed code or

system was antagonistic to the doctrines of rationalism; her own

consciousness must furnish the necessary data. But how far was

"individualism" allowable? And here the hydra of speculation reared

its horrid head; if consciousness alone furnished truth, it was but

true for her, true according to the formation of her mind, but not

absolutely true. Admit the supremacy of the individual reason, and

she could not deny "that the individual mind is the generating

principle of all human knowledge; that the soul of man is like the

silkworm, which weaves its universe out of its own being; that the

whole mass of knowledge to which we can ever attain lies potentially

within us from the beginning; that all truth is nothing more than a

self-development."