THE DEVOTION OF LOVE.
Oh! sweeter far than wealth, than fame, than all,
Is first and passionate love; it stands alone.
_—Byron._
There was a much larger, but not so select, a company invited by the
genial, social Judge Jacky than that assembled by the proud and reserved
General Garnet. And by “early candle light”—the country hour for
assembling for a ball—the whole house—parlors, chambers, family rooms,
and saloon—were crowded to overflowing. The dining room only was kept
shut up, for there the two long tables were to be set for supper. The
saloon, or “big room,” as it is plainly called in old-fashioned country
houses, was blazing with light and splendor, and pealing with music, and
alive with young men and maidens in ball dresses, laughing, talking,
wooing, flirting, dancing. It was something like General Garnet’s ball
on a larger and somewhat coarser scale, it must be confessed, but then
it was such a joyous, jubilant, exultant scene! The young folks laughed,
and talked, and danced, and jested with so much gladness and freedom!
And Judge Jacky moved about laughing, talking, joking, gallanting all
the ugly old maids, making love to all the low-spirited old widows,
flattering and complimenting all the plain girls, encouraging all
shamefaced young gentlemen, and electrifying into jocund life all the
“flat, stale, and unprofitable” folks in the joyous company.
But it is not with the gay and thoughtless of that merry throng that we
have to do, but with our great-hearted Magnus and our dear Elsie. You
know at this moment, just as well as I do, that they both had too much
on their minds to think of dancing. They had each come to the ball
chiefly to meet the other and have a talk. General Garnet would
willingly have kept Elsie away, but he did not think it polite to offend
Judge Wylie by doing so. But one thing he had taken care to do—to send
for Lionel Hardcastle to escort her there. And Lionel had ridden in the
carriage alone with Elsie from Mount Calm to Point Pleasant, and had had
every opportunity of pursuing a courtship that he had commenced almost
from the first evening of his return. Elsie cut him short in the midst
of one of his finest speeches by telling him that he was making love to
his cousin’s wife—or to one who would be so on Thursday week! Yes, Elsie
compelled herself to say exactly that to Lionel, to crush his hopes at
once. On reaching the house at Point Pleasant, Elsie said aloud to
Magnus, who came out to meet them:
“Dr. Hardcastle, help me to thank your cousin for the kind manner in
which he has supplied your place in attending me here,” and, bowing
courteously to Lionel, she took the arm of Magnus and entered the
saloon.
They were now seated at the farthest extremity of the vast saloon,
within the bay window. Elsie was looking very beautiful this evening.
She was dressed in a gossamer white crape, over white satin. Her snowy
arms and neck were bare, and encircled by diamond bracelets and
necklace. She was always beautiful, but now her usually happy, joyous
face was softened and deepened into an expression of serious thought and
feeling ineffably charming.
They had been conversing. Elsie had told him all that had passed between
herself and her father. And Magnus had recounted a similar scene that
had taken place between himself and General Garnet. He had, as Elsie
had, asserted his determination to abide by their betrothal. He repeated
the same thing to Elsie now. It was this—this saving of her heart’s
fondest hopes amid the crash of fortune—that made Elsie feel and look so
very blessed.
They were still conversing. He raised her hand—she had an exquisitely
beautiful hand, elegantly shaped, and white as snow, and now diamond
rings sparkled upon it; appropriate ornaments for it, as one may see.
Well, he raised that small, white, jeweled hand, and looking tenderly,
half-remorsefully upon it, said—and his voice was full-toned and
melodious with love and sorrow:
“This tiny, snow-white hand, sparkling with diamonds—this fresh, pure,
delicate thing!—a jewel itself!—how can it be put to the uses to which
my wife’s hand must be put, Elsie?”
She looked at him with passionate devotion, saying:
“Take the jewels off and cast them from thee, Magnus—do!”
“And this slender wrist—you have such a beautiful arm, Elsie! What a
round, full, graceful curve from the elbow to the forearm, and how
elegantly it tapers off to the slender wrist! Ah! this arm, so pure and
fresh, so well decked with this sparkling diamond bracelet—like icicles
upon snow! How will it support labor?”
“The bracelet offends you, too? It was my father’s birthday gift; but I
like it no longer—it offends you. Take it off and cast it from you.
Press your thumb and finger around my arm instead. Press it tightly, so
that you will leave a ring there. It will be a red bracelet—or even a
black one; so that when I can no longer see you, I may close my eyes,
and, feeling the impress of your fingers, cheat my heart with the fancy
that you still grasp my wrist with a sweet violence. It will be another
dearer bracelet that I will wear in remembrance of you. Oh, don’t you
know I understand now the enthusiasm of the saints?”
“Dearest Elsie, let us go forth from here. The light, the glare, the
crowd, the noise here is insufferable. Let us go forth in the fresh air
under the light of the holy stars. Come, love! My heart hungers, faints,
to press you to itself. Come, love!” And opening a leaf of the bay
window, he led her forth. It was a mild, clear, beautiful starlight
night for the season, yet the air was chill, and Elsie was lightly clad.
He looked at her and glanced around. The lighted window of a sitting
room in the angle of the building showed that apartment to be vacant. He
led her there. It was one of those small, conical wainscoted parlors so
common in old houses. A fine fire was burning in the chimney, and a
little old-fashioned green settee drawn up on one side of the fireplace.
The room had an air of delightful snugness, comfort, and repose. He led
her to this sofa and seated himself beside her, opened his arms, and
whispered: “Come to my bosom, my own soul’s love!” and folded her
closely there. “Elsie, my pure, fresh, delicate, elegant Elsie, can you
go with me indeed to share my lot of poverty and struggle? Oh, Elsie! if
you do, will you never repent? Oh, Elsie! do you know what poverty is?
Born and brought up in luxury and wealth, do you know what poverty is?
Oh, Elsie, my little idealist, there is no poetry in poverty. Oh, Elsie,
my little epicurienne, every sense is shocked and tortured in poverty.
You see unsightly things, you hear discordant sounds, you come in
contact with roughness, you partake of coarse food; oh, Elsie! ideality
is wounded and saddened, sense is shocked, and love itself, perhaps,
revolted!”
“Never! oh, never!” she said fervently.
“Oh, Elsie! my bright, beautiful Elsie! my delicate, elegant Elsie! I am
worse than an executioner to marry you. I feel it, and yet I shall do
it. God knows that I will have you, and let the future take care of
itself!” he said, pressing her strongly to his bosom.
“Yes, have me, have me; let me be always with you. It will be bliss
ineffable. I should die if you were to leave me. My heart would consume
itself in its own fires. I do not care for wealth, or rank, or
distinction, or for ease or luxury. I only care for the wealth and
luxury of your affection, and your constant society. I do not fear to
have ‘ideality wounded and saddened.’ No, for the soul creates its own
poetry. I do not fear to have every sense shocked. I do not fear to live
amid unsightly objects and discordant sounds, and rough contacts; oh,
no, for the soul creates its own heaven of beauty and harmony. I do not
fear to have love revolted. Oh! no, no, no! I only fear a separation
from you. My whole being trembling, tends toward you—so strong, as it
would lose itself in you. Shut out the world, shut out light and sound,
only let me feel your arms around me, pressing my bosom to your heart as
now. All my life is compressed within my heart, and it is bursting to
meet yours. I am blind, deaf, dead to all but you. I have scarcely self
enough to say ‘I have no self.’ I love myself in you. Oh, my greater
self! my larger life!”
So the softly flushed and moist cheeks, the heavy, liquid eyes, and the
palpitating bosom said, but no word escaped the parted and glowing lips.
Nor could a word have escaped between the kisses that were pressed upon
them. Then he released her, and they sat upon the old-fashioned sofa by
the glowing hickory fire in the old wainscoted parlor, and, hand in
hand, talked. Oh, how they talked! Sometimes with profound earnestness,
sometimes with light and bantering gayety.
“Yet you have had many admirers, Elsie,” said Magnus.
“Have I?” she asked.
“Oh, Elsie, you know that you have.”
“I try not to know it.”
“Why, dearest?”
“Because I wish I was an Eastern bride for you. Oh, yes! I wish that I
had been reared in conventual seclusion, that no man’s eye had seen me
until my husband came to claim me; that, then, I could have gone apart
from the world and seen only him. That would have been exquisite; that
would have been blissful; for I do not want admiration; I want only your
heart’s approval! There would be such intense and concentrated joy in
knowing only you. My joy would be diluted if my heart were divided among
many.”
“But your numerous admirers, dearest?”
“Oh, my numerous admirers! I did not finesse when I asked you if I
really had any; for, in truth, my ‘admirers’ never came near enough to
me to breathe their admiration.”
“Why was that? How was that? Tell me.”
“Look in my eyes, love, and read your answer there. Peruse my heart,
love. It lies open to you as a book.”
“Nay, tell me. I love to hear you talk. It delights me to listen to you.
Tell me now. It is some sweet secret that will give me heaven to know.
Come, love, be generous. Breathe the secret out upon my bosom,” he
whispered softly, and drew her again to his heart. “Come, love——”
“Yes, I will. I will repress this feeling of reluctance, and tell you
all my thoughts. Yes, for surely I feel you have a right to have an
answer to any question you ask me, my higher self. Listen, then. Bend
low, for I shall whisper very low, lest the air around should hear me.
When you first drew me on to love you, when leaf by leaf my heart
unfolded and developed under the life-giving warmth of your eyes, of
your touch, just as a rose buds and blossoms under the rays of its
sovereign, the sun—my heart, I mean, or something rising within
it—taught me many mysteries that neither prophet, priest, nor sage could
have taught me. Among other things, it revealed to me the knowledge of
all that would please and all that would displease you in myself, and
impelled me to follow the first and eschew the last. It made me wish to
isolate myself for you. It killed the very first germ of vanity in my
heart, and made me wish that none should come near enough to me to know
whether I were beautiful or otherwise, far less so near as to tell me of
it. It made me shrink from all those little gallantries from gentlemen
which make up so large a portion of a belle’s life. I was so afraid of
being found unworthy of you when you should take me. I should not have
felt good enough for you if my hand, that awaited your hand, had been
squeezed and kissed, and my waist, that awaited the dear girdle of this
arm—fold it closer around me now—had been pressed, and I, your expectant
bride, had been twined and whirled about in the giddy waltz. But none of
these things have happened to me. I come to you almost an Oriental bride
for exclusiveness, and that makes me so happy. I should have else been
unhappy, should else have been unworthy of you.”
All this was murmured slowly, softly, dreamily, as though the truth
stole out of a slumbering heart, while she lay upon his bosom, and the
last words were breathed forth in an almost inaudible sigh. But he
answered with passionate vehemence, clasping her to his heart:
“Unworthy of me! You! so beautiful! so good! so intellectual!—save when
your highest intellect is whelmed in feeling!—yet, no—your highest
intelligence—your spirit—is never so whelmed! You, the heiress of the
haughtiest family in Maryland—and I—who am I?”
“My greater self! my life-giver!—by these titles only I know you. Does
my rank and fortune offend you? Pluck me away from them; for I am yours.
Bury me with yourself, in some lone forest cabin, in the wilderness,
whither your footsteps tend; and there my hunter’s wife will forget the
world, while preparing the cabin for his return at eve. And she will not
think the hours of his absence long, for they will be filled with
fervent thoughts of him. Oh, that hunter’s lodge in the wild! I see it
even in my dreams!”
And this was not romance; but the passionate fanaticism of first, of
early love.
“Oh, Elsie! how you talk!” he exclaimed, gazing on her eloquent face
with wonder, reverence, and passion.
She blushed deeply, and bowed her crimson brow upon his bosom,
murmuring:
“Do I? I am sorry. I suppose maidens do not talk so; do they?”
“I do not know how maidens do or should talk, any more than you do,”
answered Magnus, and then a singular expression passed over his
countenance. He bent his gaze upon her, with a look of profound thought
and searching inquiry, as though to read the depths of that heart she
had so freely laid open to his perusal. And he said, very seriously: “I
do not know how maidens talk, for I have spoken with but one maiden
before of love.” He paused and gazed down deeply into her eyes, as if to
read her most hidden thought and feeling—possibly he expected to see
some trace of jealousy there—he saw only the calm, profound repose of
love, deep joy, and infinite trust. He resumed: “I never talked with but
one maiden of love before; she was my first love.” Again he looked down,
and saw upon her beautiful face the same ineffable peace. He continued:
“I loved her passionately. I lost her. It nearly maddened me.” For the
last time he gazed down upon her, as she lay quietly over his arm, with
her face turned up to his, but her whole countenance radiated with a
sort of calm, rapt ecstasy, as though she were then in the possession of
all the bliss possible on earth. He gazed for a moment, full of
astonishment, and then quietly asked: “Is it possible that this gives
you no uneasiness, my love?”
“Does what?”
“The thought of my first love.”
“No, dearest. Why should it?”
“‘Why should it?’ What a question. Why should it not?”
“I don’t know, I am sure. When I do, I’ll tell you.”
“Yet,” said Magnus thoughtfully, “though the idea of my having had a
first love gives you no pain, you felicitated yourself and me very much
upon the fact of your having had no other lover.”
“Oh, that was a very different thing. Don’t you feel that it was?”
“Yes; I feel it. But tell me now—think—why is it that the thought of my
first love does not distress you?”
“Indeed, I do not know at all. I only know by the sure inspiration of my
soul, and feel in every nerve of my body, that you love me; and I am so
ineffably blessed.”
“My darling Elsie!” he said, joyously kissing the lids down upon her two
sweet eyes. “My darling Elsie, you are not selfish or jealous for
yourself at all. I only wished to probe your heart a little. You were so
jealous for me that I thought perhaps you might be so for yourself. You
are not, my darling Elsie; my light of life! You are the only woman I
ever loved! Yet, dearest, I told you no fiction. You, yourself, were
‘the maiden to whom I spoke before of love.’ But it was soon after you
returned from school. You, yourself, were the maiden whom I lost,—for a
little while, during our short misunderstanding,—and whose loss nearly
maddened me. Oh, come! enter the heart of hearts, and live there
forever!” He clasped her closer, and they subsided into silence, or
conversed only with their eyes.
Long, long they remained in that still trance of joy, but at last Elsie
withdrew herself, laughing, from his arms, sat down beside him, and they
began to talk of their future home. He told her it would be indeed a
cabin in the backwoods of Maryland; but not a hunter’s cabin, as she
fancifully supposed. Oh, no! but a country doctor’s dwelling, in a new
settlement. And that he would not return at eve in the hunter’s
picturesque costume, with a gun and a nine-antlered deer across his
shoulders, but upon the back of a stout mule, with a country doctor’s
saddle-bags behind him. How would she like that?
“Oh, very well, dearest Magnus! for then you will be saving life instead
of taking it. Oh, yes, I do like—I do love—your profession, Magnus.
Since you must have one, I like it better than any other you could have
chosen. I think physicians do more disinterested good than any other set
of men on earth. I will not even except the preachers. Oh, yes! I do
love your profession, dear Magnus, and love you better, if possible, for
being a poor country doctor. God love and bless you! When you shall have
come home tired, from your long round—oh, you shall have sweet repose,
love—indeed you shall! God bids me to assure you that you shall.
Whatever our cabin home may be, I can make it a little haven of repose—a
little heaven of bliss for you. Oh, indeed I do not fear; my whole full
soul assures me that we shall be happy and victorious over fate. Let me
kiss your eyes—you kissed mine just now, so sweetly. God bless those
grand eyes! Oh, Magnus, can a cabin or a garb of homespun hide the
light, the greatness that is in you? Oh, Magnus, I saw a king and
several princes of the blood when I was presented at court by General
Armstrong; but their foreheads were low and receding, their presence had
the strut without the dignity of majesty. Oh, Magnus, their kingly crown
could not have given either that magnificent forehead of yours. Oh,
Magnus, there is something greater in you than any surrounding you can
have. Do not any more dread that I shall be either pained or revolted at
anything in the circumstances of our condition. The rough walls of a log
cabin will not shock or sadden me.”
“No, darling, for the rough walls of our log cabin, like the rough bark
of an oak tree, has something really picturesque about it; but”—said he,
in a half-sorrowful, half-comic way—“the pots and kettles, the mops and
brooms!”
“What! the humble little household gods and goddesses that set up no
pretension to worship, or even to honorable mention, and yet confer so
much benefit? No, indeed. I have a kindly feeling for all such. Mine, if
they can’t be beautiful, shall be neat and pretty. Oh, don’t you
remember when we were children, and used to run in out of the snow to
old Aunt Polly’s kitchen, and how she’d press us in to help her every
time she could? Oh, I know a great deal about cooking, and I always had
a turn for housekeeping.”
He arose, took her hand, and raised her up, and looked at her from head
to foot, as she stood—that delicate, beautiful girl, in her elegant ball
dress of gossamer crape over white satin, diamonds sparkling on her arms
and neck, as he had said, like icicles upon snow. He surveyed her, from
her white rose-wreathed auburn hair to the tip of the white satin
slipper. He clasped her hand, and looked at it.
“I know,” she said, “what you are thinking of again—‘Elsie must doff
this dress, and this style of dress, for some years to come’; but do not
fear, within ten years, and by the time that the beauty of your love has
matured, Elsie will weave a more elegant dress than this, when her
husband’s talents shall have ‘achieved greatness.’ And this little hand
that you look at so fondly, so sadly—‘this pure, fresh, delicate thing,
a jewel itself,’ as you called it just now—under this soft, white
cushion of flesh are nerves and sinews of steel. I am very strong, dear
Magnus, very strong every way. And I can work; this hand shall toil and
retain its beauty, because you prize it, too.”
He clasped her again to his breast, and drew her white arms up around
his neck. And then that notion of isolation came upon her again like a
fond superstition, and she whispered:
“I do not want neighbors or friends where we live, love. I want only
you. I want no one that can take me off from you. It is late. Shall I
go?”
“Yes, dear love,” she answered, untwining her arms from about his neck.