THE MOTHER'S GRIEFS.
The business upon which Mrs. Hinkley sought the chamber of her guest was
a very simple one, and easily expressed. Not that she expressed it in
few words. That is scarcely possible at any time with an ancient lady.
But the long story which she told, when compressed into intelligible
form, related to her son William. She had some maternal fears on his
account. The lad was a decided melancholic. His appetite was bad; his
looks were thin and unhappy; he lacked the usual spirit of youth; he
lacked his own usual spirit. What was the cause of the change which had
come over him so suddenly, she could not divine. Her anxiety was for
the remedy. She had consulted Brother Cross on the subject before he
departed; but that good man, after a brief examination of the patient,
had freely admitted his inability to say what was the matter with him,
and what was proper for his cure. To the object of this solicitude
himself, he had given much good counsel, concluding finally with a
recommendation to read devoutly certain chapters in Job and Isaiah.
It appears that William Hinkley submitted to all this scrutiny with
exemplary fortitude, but gave no satisfactory answers to any of the
questions asked him. He had no complaints, he denied any suffering;
and expressed himself annoyed at the inquisition into his thoughts and
feelings. This annoyance had been expressed, however, with the subdued
tones and language of one habitually gentle and modest. Whenever he was
approached on the subject, as the good old lady assured her guest, he
shook off his questioners with no little haste, and took to the woods
for the rest of the day. “That day,” said she, “you needn't look for
William Hinkley to his dinner.”
Stevens had been struck with the deportment of this youth, which had
seemed to him haughty and repulsive; and, as he fancied, characterized
by some sentiment of hostility for himself. He was surprised therefore
to learn from the old lady that the lad was remarkable for his
gentleness.
“How long has he been in this way, Mrs. Hinkley?” he asked with some
curiosity.
“Well now, Brother Stevens, I can't tell you. It's been growing on him
for some time. I reckon it's a matter of more than four months since I
first seen it; but it's only been a few weeks that I have spoken to him.
Brother Cross spoke to him only Monday of last week. My old man don't
seem to see so much of it; but I know there's a great change in him now
from what there used to be. A mother's eye sees a great way farther into
the hearts of her children, Brother Stevens, than any other persons; and
I can see plainly that William is no more the same boy--no! nor nothing
like it--that he once was. Why, once, he was all life, and good humor;
could dance and sing with the merriest among them; and was always so
good and kind, and loved to do whatever would please a body; and was
always with somebody, or other, making merry, and planning the prettiest
sports. Now, he don't sing, nor dance, nor play; when you see him, you
'most always see him alone. He goes by himself into the woods, and he'll
be going over the hills all day, nobody with him, and never seeming to
care about his food, and what's more strange, never looking at the books
that he used to be so fond of.”
“He has been fond of books, then--had he many?”
“Oh, yes, a whole drawer of them, and he used to get them besides from
the schoolmaster, Mr. Calvert, a very good man that lives about half a
mile from the village, and has a world of books. But now he neither gets
books from other people nor reads what he's got. I'm dubious, Brother
Stevens, that he's read too much for his own good. Something's not right
here, I'm a thinking.”
The good old lady touched her head with her finger and in this manner
indicated her conjecture as to the seat of her son's disease. Stevens
answered her encouragingly.
“I scarcely think, Mrs. Hinkley, that it can be anything so bad. The
young man is at that age when a change naturally takes place in the
mind and habits. He wants to go into the world, I suspect. He's probably
tired of doing nothing. What is to be his business? It's high time that
such a youth should have made a choice.”
“That's true, Brother Stevens, but he's been the apple to our eyes,
and we haven't been willing that he should take up any business that
would--carry him away from us. He's done a little farming about the
country, but that took him away, and latterly he's kept pretty much at
home, going over his books and studying, now one and now another, just
as Mr. Calvert gave them to him.”
“What studies did he pursue?”
“Well, I can't tell you. He was a good time at Latin, and then he wants
to be a lawyer;--”
“A lawyer!”
“Yes, he had a great notion to be a lawyer and was at his books pretty
hard for a good year, constant, day by day, until, as I said before,
about four months ago, when I saw that he was growing thin, and that he
had put down the books altogether, and had the change come over him just
as I told you. You see how thin he is now. You'd scarce believe him to
be the same person if you'd seen him then. Why his cheeks were as full
and as red as roses, and his eye was always shining and laughing, and
he had the liveliest step, and between him and Ned Hinkley, his cousin,
what with flute and fiddle, they kept the house in a constant uproar,
and we were all so happy. Now, it isn't once a month that we hear the
sound of the fiddle in the house. He never sings, and he never dances,
and he never plays, and what little he lets us see of him, is always so
sad and so spiritless that I feel heartsick whenever I look upon him.
Oh! Brother Stevens, if you could only find out what's the matter, and
tell us what to do, it would be the most blessed kindness, and I'd never
forget it, or forget you, to my dying day.”
“Whatever I can do, Mrs. Hinkley, shall surely be done. I will see and
speak with your son.”
“Oh! do--that's a dear good sir. I'm sure if you only talk to him and
advise him it will do him good.”
“Without being so sure, ma'am, I will certainly try to please you.
Though I think you see the matter with too serious eyes. Such changes
are natural enough to young people, and to old ones too. But what may be
your son's age.”
“Nineteen last April.”
“Quite a man for his years, Mrs. Hinkley.”
“Isn't he?”
“He will do you credit yet.”
“Ah! if I could believe so. But you'll speak to him, Brother Stevens?
You'll try and bring all to rights?”
“Rely upon me to do what I can;--to do my best.”
“Well, that's as much as any man can do, and I'm sure I'll be so
happy--we shall all be so much indebted to you.”
“Do not speak of it, my dear madam,” said Stevens, bowing with profound
deference as the old lady took her departure. She went off with light
heart, having great faith in the powers of the holy man, and an equal
faith in his sincerity.
“What a bore!” he muttered as he closed the door behind her. “This is
one of the penalties, I suppose, which I must pay for my privileges. I
shall be called upon to reform the morals and manners, and look into the
petty cares of every chuckle-headed boor and boor's brat for ten miles
round. See why boys reject their mush, and why the girls dislike to
listen to the exhortations of a mamma, who requires them to leave undone
what she has done herself--and with sufficient reason too, if her own
experience be not wholly profitless. Well, I must submit. There are
advantages, however; I shall have other pupils to tutor, and it shall
go hard with me if all the grapes prove sour where the vines are so
various.”
The student of divinity, after these conclusions, prepared to make his
toilet. Very few of these students, in their extreme solicitude for the
well being of the inner man, show themselves wholly regardless of their
externals. Even mourning, it appears, requires to be disposed by a
fashionable costumer. Though the garments to which the necessities of
travel limited Brother Stevens were not various, they were yet select.
The good young man had an affection for his person, which was such
certainly as to deserve his care. On this occasion he was more than
usually particular. He did not scruple to discard the white cravat.
For this he substituted a handkerchief which had the prettiest sprig
of lilac, on a ground of the most delicate lemon color. He consulted
complexions, and his mirror determined him in favor of this pattern.
Brother Stevens would not have worn it had he been summoned, in his
new vocation, to preach or pray at the conventicle; nor would he have
dreamed of anything but a black stock had his business been to address
the democracy from the top of a cider-barrel. His habits, under such
necessities, would have been made to correspond with the principles
with which such a situation more distinctly called for.
But the thoughts of our worthy brother ran upon other objects. He was
thinking of Margaret Cooper. He was about to pay that damsel a visit.
His progress, we may suppose, had not been inconsiderable when we are
told that his present visit was one of previous arrangement. They were
about to go forth on a ramble together--the woods were so wild
and lovely--the rocks surrounding Charlemont were so very
picturesque;--there was the quietest tarn, a sort of basin in the bosom
of the hills at a little distance, which she was to show him; and
there was the sweetest stream in the world, that meandered in the
neighborhood; and Brother Stevens so loved the picturesque--lakes
embosomed in hills, and streams stealing through unbroken forests, and
all so much the more devotedly, when he had such a companion as Margaret
Cooper.
And Margaret Cooper!--she the wild, the impassioned. A dreamer--a
muse--filled with ambitious thoughts--proud, vain, aspiring after the
vague, the unfathomable! What was her joy, now that she could speak her
whole soul, with all its passionate fullness, to understanding ears!
Stevens and herself had already spoken together. Her books had been his
books. The glowing passages which she loved to repeat, were also the
favorite passages in his memory. Over the burning and thrilling strains
of Byron, the tender and spiritual of Shelley, the graceful and soft of
Campbell, she loved to linger. They filled her thoughts. They made her
thoughts. She felt that her true utterance lay in their language; and
this language, until now, had fallen dead and without fruit upon the
dull ears of her companions in Charlemont. What was their fiddling and
festivity to her! What their tedious recreations by hillside or
stream, when she had to depress her speech to the base levels of their
unimaginative souls! The loveliness of nature itself, unrepresented
by the glowing hues of poetry, grew tame, if not offensive; and when
challenged to its contemplation by those to whom the muse was nothing,
the fancy of the true observer grew chilled and heavy, and the scenes of
beauty seemed prostituted in their glance.
We have all felt this. Nothing can more annoy the soul of taste or
sensibility than to behold its favorite scene and subject fail in
awakening others to that emotion which it has inspired in ourselves.
We turn away in haste, lest the object of our worship should become
degraded by a longer survey. Enthusiasm recoils at a denial of sympathy;
and all the worth of our companion, in a thousand other respects, fails
to reconcile us to his coldness and indifference.
That Alfred Stevens had taste and talent--that he was well read in the
volumes which had been her favorite study, Margaret Cooper needed no
long time to discover. She soon ascribed to him qualities and tastes
which were beyond his nature. Deceived by his tact, she believed in his
enthusiasm. He soon discovered HER tastes; and she found equally soon
that HIS were like her own. After this discovery, she gave him credit
for other and more important possessions; and little dreamed that,
while he responded to her glowing sentiments with others equally
glowing--avowed the same love for the same authors, and concurred with
her in the preference of the same passages--his feelings were as little
susceptible of sympathy with hers as would have been those of the cold
demon Mephistopheles! While her eye was flashing, her cheek flushed, her
breast heaving with the burning thoughts and strains of the master to
whom her beautiful lips were giving utterance, he was simply sensible
to HER beauty--to its strange, wild charms--and meditating thoughts
from which the soul of true poetry recoils with the last feelings of
aversion. Even the passion which he felt while he surveyed her, foreign
as it was to those legitimate emotions which her ambition and her genius
would equally have tended to inspire in any justly-minded nature,
might well be considered frigid--regarded as the result of deliberate
artifice--the true offspring of an habitual and base indulgence.
It was to meet this unsophisticated, impassioned, and confiding girl,
that Alfred Stevens bestowed such particular pains on his costume. He
felt its deficiencies, and, accordingly, the necessity of making the
most of it; for, though he perfectly well knew that such a woman as
Margaret Cooper would have been the very last to regard the mere garment
in which a congenial nature is arrayed, yet he also well knew that the
costume is not less indicative of the tastes than the wealth of the
wearer. You will see thousands of persons, men and women, richly
dressed, and but one will be WELL dressed: that one, most generally,
will be the individual who is perhaps of all others possessed of
the least resources for dress, other than those which dwell in the
well-arranged mind, the well-disposing taste, and the happy, crowning
fancy.
His tasks of the toilet were at length ended, and he was preparing to
go forth. He was about to leave the chamber, had already placed his hand
upon the latch of the door, when he heard the voice of his hostess, on
the stairway, in seeming expostulation with her son. He was about to
forbear his purpose of departure as the parties had retired, when,
remembering the solicitude of the lady, and thinking it would show that
zest in her service which he really could not entertain, he determined
at once to to join the young man, and begin with him that certain degree
of intimacy without which it could scarcely be supposed that he could
broach the subject of his personal affairs. He felt somewhat the
awkwardness of this assumed duty, but then he recollected his vocation;
he knew the paramount influence of the clergy upon all classes of
persons in the West, and, with the conscious superiority derived
from greater years and better education, he felt himself fortified
in undertaking the paternal office which the fond, foolish mother had
confided to his hands. Accordingly, descending the stairs briskly, he
joined the two at the entrance of the dwelling. The son was already on
the outside; the mother stood in the doorway: and, as Stevens appeared
and drew nigh, William Hinkley bowed, and turned away as if to withdraw.
“If you have no objections, Mr. Hinkley,” said Stevens, “I will join
you. You seem to be about to go my way.”
The young man paused with an air of reluctance, muttered something
which was not altogether intelligible, but which Stevens construed into
assent, and the two set forth together--the good old matron giving a
glance of gratitude to the benevolent young student which her son did
not fail to note, while, at the same time, a sentence which evidently
conveyed some motherly rebuke, was addressed to his already-irritated
ears.