TOO LATE, TOO LATE.
"A year to-day since I became a wife, a year into which has been crowded
an eternity of sorrow and regret; can I never learn to endure in
silence! Did my husband mean to deceive me when he told me that James
Harrington was plighted to another. I spoke of it to-day trembling as
the words left my mouth. My husband laughed pleasantly, and answered
'oh, child, that was a love ruse. I had a vague fancy that the young
fellow might be in my way, and so disposed of him poetically. There was
nothing in it. The fellow has not spirit enough to win a beautiful
woman.'
"Great Heaven! did he know how faint and cold those words left me--how I
almost loathed him for this awful fraud. God help me--God help me to
forgive him! It seems now as if I never could. How this portion of my
life has passed I hardly know; seldom have I made a record of its
secrets. Much of the time has been spent in the gay world, for my
husband--how strangely the word husband sounds even now--seems to grow
every day fonder of its pleasures. The months thus spent have been most
wearisome to me; I like better the calm retreat where I have spent my
summers, with only a few servants to disturb the quiet of the house, and
faithful Ben Benson, who has never left us, to gratify, as if by magic,
every wish of his capricious mistress. But there is to be a
change--henceforth we are to reside wholly at the North, and _he_ is
coming home to live with us.
"A new blessing has been granted to me! Forgive me my God, that I have
dared thus to repine and forget that Thy protecting care was over me! I
am a mother! My baby sleeps in his cradle by my side, and one glance at
his face makes me forget all the misery I have endured. James returned
during my illness. My heart was too full of its new bliss for any other
feeling. With my child folded over my heart, I could meet him without
one of its pulses being stirred--there is a sacredness in the duties God
has now given me, which I should not have dared profane by one human
regret.
"He looks ill and careworn--would that I might speak of his affairs, but
I can do nothing, though it is fearful to see him thus; to know that he
suffers and feel that I have no power to relieve him. He seems to love
my baby. Heaven bless him for that! The General's indifference has
pained me, but the nurse says men never like children--when he grows
older and his father sees him all that is noble and good he will love
him; how could he do otherwise?--my precious, precious child.
"This little girl, poor, forsaken, young, innocent, she seems to have
been sent to be the companion of my boy. How he loves her already;
bending over the cradle where she lies to touch her little face with his
dimpled hands, his great eyes lit up, and his whole countenance aglow
with feeling, such as one seldom witnesses in a child. This is only
another kind act for which I have to bless Ben Benson. He found the
infant wandering away from some unknown home in a fearful storm, almost
perished, and unable to tell even her name.
"It is a beautiful child, and the nurse pronounces her a very healthy
one. The General seems quite willing that I should adopt her; so I have
now a daughter--the word sounds sweet, very sweet to me. James looks at
me strangely as I sit with Lina in my lap, and little Ralph by my side,
there is a mournfulness in his face which wrings my very heart;
doubtless he reflects upon the happiness denied him--ah! he need not
envy me a few blessings which have been bestowed upon me.
"Am I happier now! My children are growing all that I could wish. I have
wealth, kind friends--say, am I happy? I would not repine nor be
ungrateful, but, oh! were it not for the little ones Heaven has confided
to my care, how gladly would I seek a quiet resting place in the grave!
"I know now that time cannot alleviate suffering, that nothing can teach
the heart to forget or still it into quietude, save for a little season.
Yet my existence is not wholly vain, and while those youthful creatures
need my care I am willing to live, but there are times when the burden
forced upon my soul seems harder than I can endure. When I fling myself
down in utter despair, feeling unable to tread longer the weary path
which lies before me.
"It seems to me that I should suffer less could I but see James happy,
but his sad silence increases my own pain. He is always gentle and kind,
devoted to the children; full of respect and quiet attentions for me;
but how changed from the bright youth of former years. How distant that
season--through what a fearful gloom I look back upon the brightness of
those summer years! How often I ask myself if I am indeed the dreaming
girl who, in her chamber at Neathcote watching the stars out in a vigil
which was like a charmed vision, believing that life was to be one long
fairy dream of delight.
"I have been thinking of that sail upon the lake. I could not help it!
Ralph brought me some water lilies that he and Lina had gathered; as if
the odor of those flowers had possessed a spell to conjure up the past,
the fleeting happiness of that summer day came back to me.
"Ralph left me alone, and for a long hour I gave myself up to the
feelings which his simple offering had aroused. I had not thought there
could be so much of passion in my suffering now--the tears I shed burned
my cheek like flame; and, when the storm gust had spent its might, I
lay back on my couch, weak and faint.
"I was roused from those haunting memories by voices beneath my
window--it was _his_ voice; he was conversing with Ralph. I leaned
forward, and looked down upon them--then I realized how fearful was the
change which had passed over him. I had been dreaming of him, as he
appeared upon that blessed day, and the being I beheld beneath my
casement looked like the ghost of the happy-eyed boy of my vision.
"O, had he but confided in me--would he but have trusted me as his
sister--hush! am I not a wife? Whither have my mad thoughts led me! My
God, have mercy upon me, stay the terrible tempest which has desolated
my whole being, and now breathes its deadly simoon through the sepulchre
which was once a heart. I will neither write, nor think more--there must
be an end of this weakness--how unlike the fortitude I had promised
myself to acquire.
"Yet it seems strange that I have no right to indulge in these memories
of an era in my existence gone forever! How few and fleeting were those
moments of unshadowed sunlight; the brightest twin memories which my
soul can recall, were given to me under such different auspices. Of the
first sweet hour, I have just promised my soul never again to
think--upon the gloomy waters of my existence, no lilies are blossoming
now--the last withered flowers have been torn from their roots, and
swept idly down the current to perish, leaving only a faint perfume in
my heart, which is but an added pain.
"Now I know that its very bliss was a delusion of my fancy, like the
words, I believed to have heard, wrung from Harrington's breast during
that fearful tempest, when we stood upon the deck of the ill-fated
vessel, and death seemed so near us. Could I have died then, died with
his arms enfolding me, his manly heart against my own, the measure of
my existence had been complete--it began beneath the sunlight of his
smile, it would have ended with the last life-pulse within his noble
bosom.
"Now I will lay this book aside nor shall my hand again turn its pages,
until I have taught myself something of the quiet I have so long striven
to attain. If in the sight of Heaven I have sinned, cannot my sufferings
atone for it?--the evil, if evil there has been, was involuntary; the
penitence has been deep and earnest; surely the angels watching over me
will not let it be without avail.
* * * * *
"Great heavens! will this heart never have rest--will years do nothing
for me? Ralph is now a man; Lina, one of the most lovely creatures I
ever saw. These two children, whose infant kisses seem, even now, upon
my lips, have sprung up into sudden youth, and seem ready to escape my
love. Yesterday, Lina came to me with a world of innocent blushes, and
hung about my chair, as if longing to whisper some secret into my ear,
yet without the courage to speak. I wondered what the child wanted, but
would not force her confidence.
"I thank God, oh! I thank my God that I am alive. The terrible shock of
that night is still through my frame. I have been so close to death,
that the vitality at my heart seems unreal. Last night I was hurled into
the depths of the river, that is even now rushing onward to the ocean so
near to my window, that the eternal sweep of its waters haunt me like a
threat of death.
"He saved me--or rather they--for Ben Benson was in the midst of the
storm, resolute, like the other. I must have been dead for a time, for,
when my memory came back, it seemed as if I had forgotten all these
miserable years of married life, and was upon that heaving raft again,
with his arms around me, and whispering those low, passionate words in
my ear. Why did that dream come back then? Was it to lay my heart open,
and reveal to me how little prayer and time have done to wrest this
first and last love from my heart?"