MARAH'S DREAM.
And now her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned;
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.
--Whittier.
On the same Saturday morning that Herbert Greyson hurried away from his
friend's cottage, to travel post to Hurricane Hall, for the sole purpose
of accelerating the coming of her good fortune, Marah Rocke walked about
the house with a step so light, with eyes so bright and cheeks so
blooming, that one might have thought that years had rolled backward in
their course and made her a young girl again.
Traverse gazed upon her in delight. Reversing the words of the text, he
said:
"We must call you no longer Marah (which is bitter), but we must call
you Naomi (which is beautiful), mother!"
"Young flatterer!" she answered, smiling and slightly flushing. "But
tell me truly, Traverse, am I very much faded? Have care and toil and
grief made me look old?"
"You old?" exclaimed the boy, running his eyes over her beaming face and
graceful form with a look of non-comprehension that might have satisfied
her, but did not, for she immediately repeated:
"Yes; do I look old? Indeed I do not ask from vanity, child? Ah, it
little becomes me to be vain; but I do wish to look well in some one's
eyes."
"I wish there was a looking-glass in the house, mother, that it might
tell you; you should be called Naomi instead of Marah."
"Ah! that is just what he used to say to me in the old, happy time--the
time in Paradise, before the serpent entered!"
"What 'he,' mother?"
"Your father, boy, of course."
That was the first time she had ever mentioned his father to her son,
and now she spoke of him with such a flush of joy and hope that even
while her words referred darkly to the past, her eyes looked brightly to
the future. All this, taken with the events of the preceding evening,
greatly bewildered the mind of Traverse and agitated him with the
wildest conjectures.
"Mother, will you tell me about my father, and also what it is beyond
this promised kindness of Major Warfield that has made you so happy?" he
asked.
"Not now, my boy; dear boy, not now. I must not--I cannot--I dare not
yet! Wait a few days and you shall know all. Oh, it is hard to keep a
secret from my boy! but then it is not only my secret, but another's!
You do not think hard of me for withholding it now, do you, Traverse?"
she asked, affectionately.
"No, dear mother, of course I don't. I know you must be right, and I am
glad to see you happy."
"Happy! Oh, boy, you don't know how happy I am! I did not think any
human being could ever feel so joyful in this erring world, much less
me! One cause of this excess of joyful feeling must be from the
contrast; else it were dreadful to be so happy."
"Mother, I don't know what you mean," said Traverse uneasily, for he was
too young to understand these paradoxes of feeling and thought, and
there were moments when he feared for his mother's reason.
"Oh, Traverse, think of it! eighteen long, long years of estrangement,
sorrow and dreadful suspense! eighteen long, long, weary years of
patience against anger and loving against hatred and hoping against
despair! your young mind cannot grasp it! your very life is not so long!
I was seventeen then; I am thirty-five now. And after wasting all my
young years of womanhood in loving, hoping, longing--lo! the light of
life has dawned at last!"
"God save you, mother!" said the boy, fervently, for her wild, unnatural
joy continued to augment his anxiety.
"Ah, Traverse, I dare not tell you the secret now, and yet I am always
letting it out, because my heart overflows from its fulness. Ah, boy!
many, many weary nights have I lain awake from grief; but last night I
lay awake from joy! Think of it!"
The boy's only reply to this was a deep sigh. He was becoming seriously
alarmed. "I never saw her so excited! I wish she would get calm," was
his secret thought. Then, with the design of changing the current of her
ideas, he took off his coat and said:
"Mother, my pocket is half torn out, and though there's no danger of my
losing a great deal out of it, still I'll get you, please, to sew it in
while I mend the fence!"
"Sew the pocket! mend the fence! Well!" smiled Mrs. Rocke; "we'll do so
if it will amuse you. The mended fence will be a convenience to the next
tenant, and the patched coat will do for some poor boy. Ah, Traverse, we
must be very good to the poor, in more ways than in giving them what we
do not ourselves need, for we shall know what it is to have been poor,"
she concluded, in more serious tones than she had yet used.
Traverse was glad of this, and went out to his work feeling somewhat
better satisfied.
The delirium of happiness lasted intermittently a whole week, during the
last three days of which Mrs. Rocke was constantly going to the door and
looking up the road, as if expecting some one. The mail came from
Tip-Top to Staunton only once a week--on Saturday mornings. Therefore,
when Saturday came again, she sent her son to the post-office, saying:
"If they do not come to-day they will surely write."
Traverse hastened with all his speed, and got there so soon that he had
to wait for the mail to be opened.
Meanwhile, at home the widow walked the floor in restless, joyous
anticipation, or went to the door and strained her eyes up the road to
watch for Traverse, and perhaps for some one else's coming. At last she
discerned her son, who came down the road walking rapidly, smiling
triumphantly and holding a letter up to view.
She ran out of the gate to meet him, seized and kissed the letter, and
then, with her face burning, her heart palpitating and her fingers
trembling, she hastened into the house, threw herself into the little
low chair by the fire and opened the letter. It was from Herbert, and
read thus:
"Hurricane Hall, Nov. 30th, 1843.
"My Dearest and Best Mrs. Rocke--May God strengthen you to read the
few bitter lines I have to write. Most unhappily, Major Warfield
did not know exactly who you were when he promised so much. Upon
learning your name he withdrew all his promises. At night, in his
library, he told me all your early history. Having heard all, the
very worst, I believe you as pure as an angel. So I told him! So I
would uphold with my life and seal with my death! Trust yet in God,
and believe in the earnest respect and affection of your grateful
and attached son,
"Herbert Greyson.
"P.S.--For henceforth I shall call you mother."
Quietly she finished reading, pressed the letter again to her lips,
reached it to the fire, saw it like her hopes shrivel up to ashes, and
then she arose, and with her trembling fingers clinging together, walked
up and down the floor.
There were no tears in her eyes, but, oh! such a look of unutterable woe
on her pale, blank, despairing face!
Traverse watched her and saw that something had gone frightfully wrong;
that some awful revolution of fate or revulsion of feeling had passed
over her in this dread hour!
Cautiously he approached her, gently he laid his hand upon her shoulder,
tenderly he whispered:
"Mother!"
She turned and looked strangely at him, then exclaiming:
"Oh, Traverse, how happy I was this day week!" She burst into a flood of
tears.
Traverse threw his arm around his mother's waist and half coaxed and
half bore her to her low chair and sat her in it and knelt by her side
and, embracing her fondly, whispered:
"Mother, don't weep so bitterly! You have me; am I nothing? Mother, I
love you more than son ever loved his mother, or suitor his sweetheart,
or husband his wife! Oh! is my love nothing, mother?"
Only sobs answered him.
"Mother," he pleaded, "you are all the world to me; let me be all the
world to you! I can be it, mother; I can be it; try me! I will make
every effort for my mother, and the Lord will bless us!"
Still no answer but convulsive sobs.
"Oh, mother, mother! I will try to do for you more than ever son did for
mother or man for woman before! Dear mother, if you will not break my
heart by weeping so!"
The sobbing abated a little, partly from exhaustion and partly from the
soothing influences of the boy's loving words.
"Listen, dear mother, what I will do! In the olden times of chivalry,
young knights bound themselves by sacred vows to the service of some
lady, and labored long and perilously in her honor. For her, blood was
spilled; for her, fields were won; but, mother, never yet toiled knight
in the battlefield for his lady-love as I will in the battle of life for
my dearest lady--my own mother!"
She reached out her hand and silently pressed his.
"Come, come," said Traverse; "lift up your head and smile! We are young
yet--both you and I! for, after all, you are not much older than your
son; and we two will journey up and down the hills of life together--all
in all to each other; and when at last we are old, as we shall be when
you are seventy-seven and I am sixty, we will leave all our fortune that
we shall have made to found a home for widows and orphans, as we were,
and we will pass out and go to heaven together."
Now, indeed, this poor, modern Hagar looked up and smiled at the oddity
of her Ishmael's far-reaching thought.
In that poor household grief might not be indulged. Marah Rocke took
down her work-basket and sat down to finish a lot of shirts, and
Traverse went out with his horse and saw to look for a job at cutting
wood for twenty-five cents a cord. Small beginnings of the fortune that
was to found and endow asylums! but many a fortune has been commenced
upon less!
Marah Rocke had managed to dismiss her boy with a smile, but that was
the last effort of nature; as soon as he was gone and she found herself
alone, tear after tear welled up in her eyes and rolled down her pale
cheeks; sigh after sigh heaved her bosom.
Ah! the transitory joy of the past week had been but the lightning's
arrowy course scathing where it illumined!
She felt as if this last blow that had struck her down from the height
of hope to the depth of despair had broken her heart, as if the power of
reaction was gone, and she mourned as one who would not be comforted.
While she sat thus the door opened, and before she was aware of his
presence, Herbert Greyson entered the room and came softly to her side.
Ere she could speak to him he dropped upon one knee at her feet and
bowed his young head lowly over the hand that he took and pressed to his
lips. Then he arose and stood before her. This was not unnatural or
exaggerated; it was his way of expressing the reverential sympathy and
compassion he felt for her strange, life-long martyrdom.
"Herbert, you here? Why, we only got your letter this morning," she
said, in tones of gentle inquiry, as she arose and placed a chair for
him.
"Yes, I could not bear to stay away from you at such a time; I came up
in the same mail-coach that brought my letter; but I kept myself out of
Traverse's sight, for I could not bear to intrude upon you in the first
hour of your disappointment," said Herbert, in a broken voice.
"Oh, that need not have kept you away, dear boy! I did not cry much; I
am used to trouble, you know; I shall get over this also--after a little
while--and things will go on in the old way," said Marah Rocke,
struggling to repress the rising emotion that, however, overcame her,
for, dropping her head upon her "sailor boy's" shoulder, she burst into
a flood of tears and wept plenteously.
"Dear mother, be comforted!" he said; "dear mother, be comforted!"