“By grace divine my heart towards Thee draw, By due afflictions check presumptuous pride,
With hope and love turn fell despair aside,
And make my chief delight Thy holy law!”
Robert Tudor Tucker.
The great red sun, like a huge globe of fire, was sinking in the west,—I would have said the horizon, but that word gives the idea of a point nearly level with the eye, while the orb appeared far beneath them to the travellers in the Eaglet. The red light tinted with a fiery glow the lower hemisphere of the balloon, which was all that met the eye of the earl, for he had cautiously abstained for many hours from glancing downwards towards the earth.
Dashleigh was now perfectly calm, though silent and thoughtful. That one fearful day had effected upon the young nobleman the work of years. Deeply solemn were his reflections. With a conscience neither dead nor unenlightened, the earl had needed no prophet to decipher for him the fiery “letters on the wall” of affliction. Heavily and yet more heavily had descended on him the Almighty’s chastening[209] hand, and every blow had evidently been aimed at his pride! Had he not been humiliated in the presence of his friend,—satirized by his wife, ridiculed by the world, and had he not now by an unconquerable weakness, which a girl would have blushed to betray, been the actual cause of the fearful position in which he and his companions appeared! Bitter, bitter was the humiliation of the proud man! Had he been destitute of the faith which supports, and the hope which cheers, Dashleigh would have been utterly crushed by the successive strokes laid upon him. But in him there was much of the gold, which beneath the hammer “does not break, but extend.” Dashleigh resembled less the son of Kish whom trial drove into fierce despair, than the haughty Assyrian king who, having endured that most humbling degradation which was the appointed punishment for pride, “lifted up” his “eyes unto heaven,” and “blessed the most High,” with a spirit subdued.
Strangely had passed the day; as light as the feather down, the balloon floated in the ocean of air. The party in the car had partaken of the slight refreshment which had been provided, in little expectation that even that would be required during a two hours’ expedition. Beverage there was none, for the wine had exploded both the bottles from the cause mentioned in a preceding chapter. The lips of each of the sufferers was parched and dry, and a painful sensation of thirst was added to the trials of the hour.
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Augustine and Mabel had exhausted all their inventive powers in contriving means to cut an opening in the ball of the balloon. Several attempts had been made, but all had ended in disappointment. The knife, flung upwards with a steady hand, had glanced back from the varnished silk, and fallen through depths which the mind shuddered to calculate. Every effort but strengthened the conviction that all effort was unavailing.
There had been silence for a long time in the car,—silence of which dwellers upon earth can scarcely form a conception. There was here no rustling leaf, no buzz of an insect’s wing to break the awful stillness! Motion itself was impalpable, being unaccompanied by the slightest sound!
“Augustine,” said the earl, raising himself on his elbow, for he still in a reclining posture occupied the lower part of the car, “do you believe that you can hide from me the fact that you have no power over the balloon; that our condition is hopeless?”
“Nay,” replied his friend, “let us never despair. The gas may yet find some vent. There was never yet balloon made so air-tight that it would not leak in the course of time.”
Mabel thought that she had never seen the pale, delicate features of the earl invested with such true dignity, as when with low, but distinct utterance he made his reply: “I would rather look the danger in the face. My brain is not dizzy now,—none are[211] dizzy who look above rather than below them. I have a presentiment that we shall never reach the ground alive.”
Not a word was uttered in contradiction or reply, and the earl continued in the same calm, deliberate tone: “Death is a great preacher, Augustine; he tells us startling truths! He tarnishes with a touch the gilding on objects that once appeared to us bright! He levels the prince and the peasant. He has been preaching to me a soul-searching sermon, and from a very solemn text.”
“What is the text?” inquired Augustine, while Mabel bent forward to listen.
“The loftiness of man shall be bowed down and the haughtiness of man shall be laid low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.”
Again there was solemn, deathlike silence! Perhaps, as Mabel and her uncle sat watching the last edge of the sun’s disc disappear, and the sky gradually darken into night, the self-reliant genius, the high-spirited girl, were secretly applying to themselves the sublime words of the prophet of Judah.
While twilight still lingered, a thought struck Mabel. She remembered that she had brought with her an envelope ready directed to her sister, with a sheet of blank paper enclosed, for her fancy had been pleased with the idea of dating a letter from “the clouds.” Making a table of her seat in the car, Mabel knelt down, and with a pencil wrote a sad[212] and touching farewell to the parent and sister so tenderly loved. Many names were kindly remembered in that note, for the proud spirit of Mabel was softened and subdued by the pressure of trial, and no one was then recalled to her mind but with a feeling of kindness. To her step-mother Mabel sent a long message. She confessed her fault with frank regret, and asked the pardon of Mrs. Aumerle, not only for the last act of open disobedience which was now............