Harry has crept to his little bed, shivering with childish dread of the
dark. Ungentle hands have placed him there, guardians careless of his
comfort and chary of kind words and looks, and a coarse-voiced girl has
said, as she took the light away, and banged the door behind her:
'Cry out loud, you little imp, and I'll send the black bears to catch
you.'
So Harry is choking down his sobs, and crying silently, very silently.
The chill and melancholy night wind, as it comes moaning through the
casement and rustling the light leaves of the tall poplar as they rest
against the window panes, and the great round tears as they fall with a
dull, heavy drop, drop on his lonely pillow, are the only sounds that
break the dismal stillness, excepting now and then, when a great sob,
too mighty to be choked down, bursts from the little, overcharged heart.
And then Harry fancies he feels, through the thin coverlet and torn
night dress, the huge black paws of these same bears grasping the tender
round shoulder, blue with the cold, while the little boy lies there
shivering and shuddering in an agony of apprehension. Darkness above and
around him, terrible, black, silent darkness; darkness which enwraps and
enfolds him and takes away his breath, like the heavy, stifling folds of
a hideous black mantle; darkness that the active imagination of the
timid child peoples with phantom shapes, grotesque and horrible--forms
made unnaturally visible by their own light, that mouth and leer, and
stretch out distorted arms to seize him, whose appalling presence fills
the room from floor to ceiling, and which eddy and circle around him in
horrid demon dances, whirling gradually nearer and nearer, until myriads
of hideous faces are thrust close to his own, or grin above him, while
he chokes for breath--forms that make the cold sweat stand on his baby
forehead, and freeze the blood in his veins, that he watches night after
night, with his blue eyes starting from their sockets and his hair
standing on end, that make of the desolate nighttime a dread and a
horror! And there is no one to kneel beside his lonely bed and tell the
frightened child, sick with dread, that there are no such things as
odious black dwarfs, who drag young children off to dark and dismal
dungeons by the hair of their head, nor great giants, who grow always
bigger as you look at them, and who eat up, at a mouthful, little boys
who cry in the dark. No tender mother bends low with all but divine
compassion to listen to his little sorrows, or soothe his childish
fears--to teach him his simple prayers, or tell him sweet stories of a
little child like himself, before whose lowly cradle wise men bowed as
at a shrine, and to do whom reverence shining ones came from a
far-distant country. There is no one to pillow his curly head upon a
loving bosom, and lull him to sleep with quaint old lullabies. Harry is
worse than motherless.
So on the night in question, as on all other nights preceding, poor
Harry, worn out with fright and weariness, is dropping to sleep from
sheer exhaustion, closing his swollen eyes in troubled slumber, when,
half unconsciously turning his curly head upon the pillow to find a dry
place for the wet cheek to rest against, something bright and shining
makes long lines of light in the tears still wet on Harry's lashes, and
wakes him up again.
Such a bright, beautiful star it is. One that has been slowly rising,
climbing the blue outside, until it reaches a break in the foliage of
the tree before the window, and shines straight into Harry's eyes.
Something of that strange solemnity that fills minds of a maturer growth
when gazing on the starry heavens, hushes that baby's soul into
reverence as he looks upon it. The terrible shapes melt away into the
gloom, he feels no dread of the dark now, and vaguely and gradually
there arises the first dim consciousness of the deep spiritual want
within him--the first awakened desire of the finite soul to see and find
the Infinite Father and claim his protection. Fragments of childish
hymns, parts of simple prayers, such poor and scattered crumbs of
spiritual instruction as he has gleaned here and there somehow, and on
which the infant soul has been but meagrely fed, crowd in upon him. Then
come wondering thoughts of that great good Being, that strange,
unfathomable mystery, whose name is God, Who lives up in the blue
somewhere, and yet is everywhere. This problem of Omnipresence he has
pondered and pondered over, and reasoned upon, in his childish fashion,
but now it dawns with a newer and clearer light on Harry's mind. God is
everywhere. To his awakened spiritual perception this holy, mysterious,
and invisible presence seems pervading the sky, the air, the earth,
filling and enfolding all things. Night after night, as he had lain
there sobbing and crying and thought himself all alone in the darkness,
this great good God had been with him all the time, and he had never
known it, never felt it until now; and, overwhelmed by the mighty
thought, powerfully felt, though imperfectly comprehended, awestruck
Harry, tremulous with reverence, obedient to some childish fancy that
the name of father is not holy and reverent enough for such a Being,
folds his tiny hands, earnestly praying:
'Our Grandfather which art in heaven, stay near poor Harry in the dark,
and keep the bears away!'
Is it faith or fancy, that soft, gentle, summery atmosphere that fills
the room, and makes the little, lonely heart thrill as with the pleasant
consciousness of a loving presence? It is real to Harry, with his
child's undoubting faith. Stretching forth his rounded arms, and
clasping the dark, impalpable air in a joyous embrace, he nestles
closely to the wet pillow as if it were a loving bosom, and falls asleep
with a smile upon his lip. A childhood robbed of childish joys and
pleasures, the little, insignificant trifles which form its sum of
happiness, denied the sympathetic love and tenderness which is the life
of little hearts, deprived of the pleasures suited to its state, yet too
immature to turn within itself for comfort in its need, its life without
and within a dull, joyless, dreary blank--such was poor Harry's, for a
shadow dark and terrible rested on his baby heart and home, a something
that darkened and deepened day by day, and grew more and more
insupportable as the weary time crept on. What it was, and how long it
had rested there before he became conscious of its presence, and whether
his miserable home had ever been free from it and ever been a happy one,
little Harry never knew. All his brief life it had lain there. Its
shadow had crept into the violet eyes with the first faint glimmer of
intelligence, and when the new-born soul, mysterious breath of God,
first woke from its mystic dreaming, and looked consciously out upon the
world into which it had come, its baleful presence crept into that holy
sanctuary, and darkened what should have been cloudless as well as
sinless. He had drawn it in with every breath from the atmosphere of the
little world around him; it rested on all he came in contact with, and
gradually and sadly there arose in the mind too immature to comprehend
the cause and the nature of this desolating power, yet feeling vaguely
day by day its blighting effects, sorrowful and earnest
questionings--questionings like the following, to which there came back
no answer to the little, suffering heart:
Why his home (if home it may be called in which the heart finds no
resting place), the four walls that enclosed the place where he ate and
slept, was such a dull, joyless, lonesome spot? What that dark something
was that shadowed its light and took from it all joy and comfort,
causing every face within it to wear a melancholy or forbidding aspect?
Why there was no glad smile even on his father's lips, when he came to
seek the sad young creatures that crept silently to his knee and looked
wistfully up into the care-worn face; and why, though loving and kind,
he was always kind with that sorrowful tenderness which makes sad hearts
the sadder? Why this craving that he feels within him, this
half-undefined, insatiable longing for maternal love and sympathy? What
had sealed from the thirsting heart this purest fountain of earthly
tenderness?
A mother's form was present to him day by day, but where was the
maternal heart of love which should have beat within that bosom? 'Can a
mother forget her children?' There is a fell and terrible destroyer,
which murders peace in hearts and homes, whose very breath is a mildew
and a blight, in whose desolating track follow woe, want, and ruin; a
fierce, insatiable appetite, trebly cursed, that makes of life a
loathsome degradation, and fills dishonored graves, blighting all that
is divine and godlike in human nature, sealing the gushing fountain of
maternal tenderness, and teaching even a mother's heart forgetfulness. O
God! of what punishment shall thy justice deem those worthy, who, by
cold neglect, cruelty, or shameful slavery to such a passion, shut out
the light, and check the rich and limitless expansion of all that is
divine in the souls committed to their charge? Ah! what did it matter
that there were honorable titles affixed to the name so disgraced, that
in the home thus blighted were all the luxuries and appliances of
wealth, that rare pictures hung against its walls, carpets covered the
floors whose velvet surface muffled the footfalls, costly curtains shut
out the too garish light, that servants were at command, well paid to
take care of the neglected children, paid to care for the house, and all
fine things within it, and--paid to keep its secrets! What did all this
matter to the miserable possessor of wealth and name, the disgraced
husband, the heart-broken father? He could comprehend this woe in all
its bearings, could measure the length, the breadth, the depth of the
curse that had lighted upon him? Homes there were whose walls and floors
were bare, whose windows were shaded by no costly curtains, but from
which happy faces looked--lowly homes, poor in this world's wealth, but
rich in domestic peace and love; and for the blessed quiet of their
lowly hearthstones, he would joyfully have bartered wealth and fame, and
all such dross as men call happiness. And Harry saw them too. The
little, lonely heart, saddened by a shadow it could not comprehend, from
its own gloomy home turned longingly to their homely cheerfulness, as
flowers turn to the light.
One in particular had attracted his childish notice. It was just across
the road; he could see it from the window of the nursery where he
played, and he used to leave his play to watch it. Such glimpses of a
happy home had streamed through its opening portals and fallen on the
heart of the little solitary watcher like a benison. What hasty peeps he
took at its homely brightness as the door opened and closed, and what
long, long looks he bestowed upon it, when it stood open for hours
together, as it did now in the fine June weather! It was only a simple
cottage. Too unpretending for hall or entry, the little parlor opened
into the street, and from the window where he stood, Harry could see
straight into it. There it was, with its bright papered walls, and gay
red carpet, its deep low window seat looking like a garden, where
flowers bloomed and frail exotics stretched forth their delicate leaves
to bathe in the sunlight that came streaming in, and cunning little
yellow birds, in quaint, tiny cages, sang the long day through. And
there--oh, busy fingers! making neat and bright the little home--heart
of love, shedding blessed sunlight around it--there, so busy and blithe,
so happy and gay, sat the presiding genius of the place, with a face so
bright and good--just such a face as you would expect to see in such a
home; one that sad and disappointed mortals, meeting in the street,
would turn to for a second look, and bless it as it passed; a face to
which childhood cleaves instinctively, sure of ready sympathy with its
little joys and sorrows; one that would never be disfigured by envy or
malice; never grow black with passion, and oh! never, never look
senseless, idiotic, and drivelling, as another face on which he looked
so often did; but to Harry's fancy, it was like the sky on a calm
summer's day, always pure and bright, and always the same. It was
brighter and happier and better altogether when, in the fresh morning
time, the little lady went tripping by on the pavement beneath the
window with a small market basket on her arm. Then Harry, clambering to
the sill, and leaning out, could see straight into it; and sometimes it
happened that, attracted by that fixed gaze of earnest admiration, that
happy face would be turned upward, and break into a beaming smile, as
the sunny eyes met the large, blue, mournful orbs looking down upon
them. Then there would be a smile on the lip and a song in the heart of
the little watcher for the rest of the day. Cheering and dear as that
face had ever been to him since he had first had the happiness of
beholding it, much as he had watched and loved it, it had drawn him with
a more potent attraction still and grown doubly dear of late. He had
been within the sacred precincts of a true home; he had breathed that
atmosphere of heaven; he knew how that small, snug, cosy room looked to
its inmates now. Yes, he had been there, and his going in chanced in the
following manner:
This lady, whose cheerful presence was fast becoming a benison to Harry,
had, among her other bright possessions, a rosy-cheeked, laughing-eyed,
frolicsome mischief, about Harry's age, and he had recently come from
the country happier, merrier, and fresher than ever, having still, as it
were, about him the fragrant breath of the wood-violets, the purity of
the unvitiated air, the freedom of the broad, green fields, the fragrant
atmosphere of all the delightful things with which he had been so
recently in contact.
One morning, not long after his coming, the cross girl who put Harry to
bed at night, marshalled him and his brother out (as was her wont in
fine weather) for a dreary promenade, which usually agreeable exercise
consisted in the present instance in marching down a dusty stone
pavement, by a long, unbroken line of brick buildings, up one street,
and down another (for they always went the same way), until they came to
a huge, dreary-looking schoolhouse, where they left Charley, and came
back more drearily than they went. Well, on this particular morning,
Charley had forgotten his slate, and he and the girl returning to search
for it left Harry at the gate to await their return. The little urchin,
just at that precise moment, spying Harry solus, and impelled by the
agreeable prospect of a playfellow, rushed across the street, at the
imminent danger of being run over, to scrape acquaintance.
'Come, and play with me,' cried the little fellow, bounding up to Harry
in all the ardor of a glowing anticipation, eagerly folding one thin
hand in both his dimpled ones, and flashing a whole flood of sunlight
into the sad young eyes that so timidly met his sunny ones. 'Come, and
play with me, _do!_ and we'll play at horse and build mud houses, and
ma'll give us lots of candy and raisins, and a great big doughnut, ever
so big, as big as my hands and your hands, and all our hands put
together.'
'I can't,' said Harry, sadly resigning all thought of these rare
dainties. 'Betty'll scold so!'
'We'll sit on the bank under the willow at the back of the house,'
pursued the tempter, folding the hand he held still tighter within his
own, 'where she can't see us; and when she comes to take you away, I'll
bite her.'
The youthful pleader had unconsciously used the most potent argument
possible. Harry wavered. To sit on a green bank under a willow, with
such a sunny-faced companion as that, and listen to the birds singing in
the branches, and the rustling of the leaves--to look up through the
green, and see patches of blue sky through breaks in the foliage--and
then, too, oh, blessed hope! to see the lady whom he regarded with such
enthusiastic and reverent devotion, and to whose love he clung with all
the wild tenacity of a desolate heart--to see her smile, and hear her
speak--to _him_, perhaps; all this rose like a glorious vision before
Harry, and the possibility of its realization sent the light to his eyes
and the color to his face.
The contemplated walk in the hot, dusty streets, with the cross
Betty--(which tyrannical young female, having brought the children, as
it were, under military rule, and being a rigid disciplinarian, seldom
failed to punish some fancied dereliction of duty by sundry shakes and
pinches as they went along)--this prospect, placed beside the bright,
cool picture his fancy had conjured up, seemed more unendurable than
ever. With one quick glance toward the house, to see if that ogre,
having in custody that form a little taller and face a little older and
sadder than his own, was making her appearance, Harry, seized by an
irresistible impulse, and still holding fast the chubby hand that had
taken his so confidingly, bounded from the pavement, dashed across the
road, and both dashed through the garden and into the cosy parlor in a
trice, panting like young racehorses. And there, in the brightest spot
of the snug, bright room, by that bower of a window, sat the sunny-faced
lady whom Harry's childish imagination had exalted into a superior
being. Abashed at having so rudely rushed into that revered presence,
Harry stood shyly by the door, trembling with embarrassment, while his
more active companion, releasing his hand, bounded across the room, and,
clambering up into his mother's lap and putting his arms around her neck
and his rosebud of a mouth close to her ear, commenced a whispered
explanation.
There was something strangely attractive in that mother's face, as she
pushed back the clustering hair, after smilingly listening to the story,
and pressed a fervent kiss upon that baby brow--a look which had never
been on any face for him, but which he had dreamed of at night, and
longed for by day, with a strange, undefined, half-conscious longing. It
was as if he had found something he had been blindly searching,
something for which the solitary heart had vaguely felt an ever-present
need; and the timid child, forgetting his timidity, his awe of the
presence into which he had come--forgetting all but his heart's great
need--in a burst of pathetic longing, more sorrowful than tears, cried:
'Give _me_ a kiss, too, just one!'
He was across the room and in her arms in a moment. Blessings on the
true mother's heart! it gave not one kiss, but a dozen. Ah! feeling the
blessing of those tears upon his head, pressed close against the breast
throbbing with pure maternal sympathy, his own starved heart eagerly
drinking from that overflowing fountain, the word _mother_ rose
naturally to his lips _then_.--Alas for her from whom alone that beating
heart, throbbing with a new delight, should have received that
revelation! Alas for the heart thus robbed of its lawful heritage, to
whom the highest and holiest of earth's affection had manifested itself
but as a brutish instinct, which, in fits of maudlin tenderness, could
fold the little form in a loathsome embrace, and smother the pure breath
with drunken kisses! No other love, however high and pure it may be, can
atone to the wronged heart that has been cruelly robbed of this.
In this new-found joy all heavy sorrows were forgotten. Pressed close
against that sympathetic bosom, he was happy _now_, happier than he had
ever been before; and when at last she wiped her tears away, and,
lifting the hand on which his grateful tears were falling (for Harry
cried too), and smilingly up-turning the tear-wet face to meet her own,
that face was so changed by joy that she hardly knew it, and Harry
wondered why it was that she laughed and cried together when she looked
at it, and kissed him over and over again more times than he could
count. Laughing and chatting gayly until she saw her own smiles
reflected on the little, sorrowful features, she, with a tender mother's
care, bathed the flushed face, combed out the bright silky hair,
smoothed and arranged the rumpled dress, and, taking the small hand,
went out to the garden gate to meet the expedition sent in search of
Harry.
Now this was his red-letter day. Harry was in luck. Therefore it was not
one of the many servants of the establishment, or any straggling
acquaintance that had joined in the search. Luckily, it was not one of
these, or the cross Betty, who first espied Harry and the lady:
otherwise he would have been borne away from his friend and his recently
discovered Eden in triumph, in spite of all cries and protestations. It
was Harry's own papa; and it did not take many words, when the
bright-faced lady was the pleader (backed by that little face, with that
strange flush of joy upon it, that spoke more eloquently to the father's
heart than any words could have done), to induce that gentleman to allow
Harry to remain where he was all day; likewise to extort a promise that
he might come to see the lady whenever and as often as she chose to
trouble herself with the care of him: and this being nicely arranged,
Harry's papa went his way and they went theirs. And Harry did that day
what is seldom done in this world of disappointment--more than realized
his anticipations. He sat on the bank and heard the birds sing; he
played at horse until he was tired; and though he did not build mud
houses, he ate sugar ones, which was, in every respect, a vast
improvement on the original design; and, what was more than all, his
little playfellow, whose temper was as sunny as his face, never gave
him a cross word or look the whole day through. They had supper, when
the time came, under the rustling leaves of a huge green tree; and there
were raisins and nuts and candy, cakes grotesquely cut and twisted into
every conceivable shape, and every imaginable dainty. All through that
memorable day, Harry was the happiest of the happy. Other days succeeded
this that were but a thought less bright. A time had come when the rough
path seemed smooth to the little pilgrim's feet, and flowers sprang up
by the lonely wayside, and golden sunlight fell through the rifted
clouds and crowned the little head with its blessing, and light and
warmth crept into the chilled and desolate life, and made existence
beautiful: a brief and joyful time, on which was written, as on all
bright things of earth, those words of mournfulness unutterable:
'Passing away!'