graceful figure, and fold her to your bosom with the swift and blessed
assurance that your fullest and noblest dream of love is won!
V.
_Cheer and Children._
What a glow there is to the sun! What warmth--yet it does not oppress
you: what coolness--yet it is not too cool. The birds sing sweetly; you
catch yourself watching to see what new songsters they can be: they are
only the old robins and thrushes, yet what a new melody is in their
throats!
The clouds hang gorgeous shapes upon the sky,--shapes they could hardly
ever have fashioned before. The grass was never so green, the buttercups
were never so plentiful; there was never such a life in the leaves. It
seems as if the joyousness in you gave a throb to nature that made every
green thing buoyant.
Faces, too, are changed: men look pleasantly; children are all charming
children; even babies look tender and lovable. The street-beggar at your
door is suddenly grown into a Belisarius, and is one of the most
deserving heroes of modern times. Your mind is in a continued ferment;
you glide through your toil--dashing out sparkles of passion--like a
ship in the sea. No difficulty daunts you: there is a kind of buoyancy
in your soul that rocks over danger or doubt, as sea-waves heave calmly
and smoothly over sunken rocks.
You grow unusually amiable and kind; you are earnest in your search of
friends; you shake hands with your office-boy as if he were your second
cousin. You joke cheerfully with the stout washerwoman, and give her a
shilling over-change, and insist upon her keeping it, and grow quite
merry at the recollection of it. You tap your hackman on the shoulder
very familiarly, and tell him he is a capital fellow; and don't allow
him to whip his horses, except when driving to the post-office. You even
ask him to take a glass of beer with you upon some chilly evening. You
drink to the health of his wife. He says he has no wife; whereupon you
think him a very miserable man, and give him a dollar by way of
consolation.
You think all the editorials in the morning papers are remarkably well
written,--whether upon your side, or upon the other. You think the
stock-market has a very cheerful look, even with Erie--of which you are
a large holder--down to seventy-five. You wonder why you never admired
Mrs. Hemans before, or Stoddard, or any of the rest.
You give a pleasant twirl to your fingers as you saunter along the
street, and say,--but not so loud as to be overheard,--"She is mine; she
is mine!"
You wonder if Frank ever loved Nelly one half as well as you love Madge.
You feel quite sure he never did. You can hardly conceive how it is that
Madge has not been seized before now by scores of enamored men, and
borne off, like the Sabine women in Roman history. You chuckle over your
future, like a boy who has found a guinea in groping for sixpences. You
read over the marriage service,--thinking of the time when you will take
_her_ hand, and slip the ring upon _her_ finger,--and repeat, after the
clergyman, "for richer--for poorer; for better--for worse!" A great deal
of "worse" there will be about it, you think!
Through all, your heart cleaves to that sweet image of the beloved
Madge, as light cleaves to day. The weeks leap with a bound; and the
months only grow long when you approach that day which is to make her
yours. There are no flowers rare enough to make bouquets for her;
diamonds are too dim for her to wear; pearls are tame.
----And after marriage the weeks are even shorter than before: you
wonder why on earth all the single men in the world do not rush
tumultuously to the Altar; you look upon them all as a travelled man
will look upon some conceited Dutch boor who has never been beyond the
limits of his cabbage-garden. Married men, on the contrary, you regard
as fellow-voyagers; and look upon their wives--ugly as they may be--as
better than none.
You blush a little at first telling your butcher what "your wife" would
like; you bargain with the grocer for sugars and teas, and wonder if he
_knows_ that you are a married man. You practise your new way of talk
upon your office-boy: you tell him that "your wife" expects you home to
dinner; and are astonished that he does not stare to hear you say it!
You wonder if the people in the omnibus know that Madge and you are just
married; and if the driver knows that the shilling you hand to him is
for "self and wife." You wonder if anybody was ever so happy before, or
ever will be so happy again.
You enter your name upon the hotel books as "Clarence ---- and Wife"; and
come back to look at it, wondering if anybody else has noticed it,--and
thinking that it looks remarkably well. You cannot help thinking that
every third man you meet in the hall wishes he possessed your wife; nor
do you think it very sinful in him to wish it. You fear it is placing
temptation in the way of covetous men to put Madge's little gaiters
outside the chamber-door at night.
Your home, when it is entered, is just what it should be,--quiet,
small,--with everything she wishes, and nothing more than she wishes.
The sun strikes it in the happiest possible way; the piano is the
sweetest-toned in the world; the library is stocked to a charm;--and
Madge, that blessed wife, is there, adorning and giving life to it all.
To think even of her possible death is a suffering you class with the
infernal tortures of the Inquisition. You grow twin of heart and of
purpose. Smiles seem made for marriage; and you wonder how you ever wore
them before!
* * * * *
So a year and more wears off of mingled home-life, visiting, and travel.
A new hope and joy lightens home: there is a child there.
----What a joy to be a father! What new emotions crowd the eye with
tears, and make the hand tremble! What a benevolence radiates from you
toward the nurse,--toward the physician,--toward everybody! What a
holiness and sanctity of love grows upon your old devotion to that wife
of your bosom--the mother of your child!
The excess of joy seems almost to blur the stories of happiness which
attach to heaven. You are now joined, as you were never joined before,
to the great family of man. Your name and blood will live after you; nor
do you once think (what father can?) but that it will live honorably and
well.
With what a new air you walk the streets! With what a triumph you speak,
in your letter to Nelly, of "your family!" Who, that has not felt it,
knows what it is to be "a man of family!"
How weak now seem all the imaginations of your single life; what bare,
dry skeletons of the reality they furnished! You pity the poor fellows
who have no wives or children--from your soul; you count their smiles as
empty smiles, put on to cover the lack that is in them. There is a
freemasonry among fathers that they know nothing of. You compassionate
them deeply; you think them worthy objects of some charitable
association; you would cheerfully buy tracts for them, if they would but
read them,--tracts on marriage and children.
----And then "the boy,"--_such_ a boy!
There was a time when you thought all babies very much alike;--alike? Is
your boy like anything, except the wonderful fellow that he is? Was
there ever a baby seen, or even read of, like that baby!
----Look at him: pick him up in his long, white gown: he may have an
excess of color,--but such a pretty color! he is a little pouty about
the mouth,--but such a mouth! His hair is a little scant, and he is
rather wandering in the eye,--but, Good Heavens, what an eye!
There was a time when you thought it very absurd for fathers to talk
about their children; but it does not seem at all absurd now. You think,
on the contrary, that your old friends, who used to sup with you at the
club, would be delighted to know how your baby is getting on, and how
much he measures around the calf of the leg! If they pay you a visit,
you are quite sure they are in an agony to see Frank; and you hold the
little squirming fellow in your arms, half conscience-smitten for
provoking them to such envy as they must be suffering. You make a
settlement upon the boy with a chuckle,--as if you were treating
yourself to a mint-julep, instead of conveying away a few thousands of
seven per cents.
----Then the boy develops astonishingly. What a head,--what a
foot,--what a voice! And he is so quiet withal,--never known to cry,
except under such provocation as would draw tears from a heart of
adamant; in short, for the first six months he is never anything but
gentle, patient, earnest, loving, intellectual, and magnanimous. You are
half afraid that some of the physicians will be reporting the case, as
one of the most remarkable instances of perfect moral and physical
development on record.
But the years roll on, in the which your extravagant fancies die into
the earnest maturity of a father's love. You struggle gayly with the
cares that life brings to your door. You feel the strength of three
beings in your single arm; and feel your heart warming toward God and
man with the added warmth of two other loving and trustful beings.
How eagerly you watch the first tottering step of that boy; how you riot
in the joy and pride that swell in that mother's eyes, as they follow
his feeble, staggering motions! Can God bless his creatures more than
he has blessed that dear Madge and you? Has Heaven even richer joys than
live in that home of yours?
By-and-by he speaks; and minds tie together by language, as the hearts
have long tied by looks. He wanders with you feebly, and with slow,
wandering paces, upon the verge of the great universe of thought. His
little eye sparkles with some vague fancy that comes upon him first by
language. Madge teaches him the words of affection and of thankfulness;
and she teaches him to lisp infant prayer; and by secret pains (how
could she be so secret?) instructs him in some little phrase of
endearment that she knows will touch your heart; and then she watches
your coming; and the little fellow runs toward you, and warbles out his
lesson of love in tones that forbid you any answer,--save only those
brimming eyes, turned first on her, and then on him,--and poorly
concealed by the quick embrace, and the kisses which you shower in
transport! Still slip on the years, like brimming bowls of nectar!
Another Madge is sister to Frank; and a little Nelly is younger sister
to this other Madge.
----Three of them! a charmed and mystic number, which, if it be broken
in these young days,--as, alas, it may be!--will only yield a cherub
angel to float over you, and to float over them,--to wean you, and to
wean them, from this world, where all joys do perish, to that seraph
world where joys do last forever.
VI.
_A Dream of Darkness._
Is our life a sun, that it should radiate light and heat forever? Do not
the calmest and brightest days of autumn show clouds, that drift their
ragged edges over the golden disk, and bear down swift with their weight
of vapors, until the sun's whole surface is shrouded; and you can see no
shadow of tree or flower upon the land, because of the greater and
gulping shadow of the cloud?
Will not life bear me out; will not truth, earnest and stern, around me
make good the terrible imagination that now comes swooping, heavily and
darkly, upon my brain?
You are living in a little village not far away from the city. It is a
graceful and luxurious home that you possess. The holly and the laurel
gladden its lawn in winter; and bowers of blossoms sweeten it through
all the summer. You know each day of your return from the town, where
first you will catch sight of that graceful figure flitting like a
shadow of love beneath the trees; you know well where you will meet the
joyous and noisy welcome of stout Frank, and of tottling Nelly. Day
after day and week after week they fail not.
A friend sometimes attends you; and a friend to you is always a friend
to Madge. In the city you fall in once more with your old acquaintance
Dalton,--the graceful, winning, yet dissolute man that his youth
promised. He wishes to see your cottage home. Your heart half hesitates;
yet it seems folly to cherish distrust of a boon companion in so many of
your revels.
Madge receives him with that sweet smile which welcomes all your
friends. He gains the heart of Frank by talking of his toys and of his
pigeons; and he wins upon the tenderness of the mother by his attentions
to the child. Even you repent of your passing shadow of dislike, and
feel your heart warming toward him as he takes little Nelly in his arms
and provokes her joyous prattle.
Madge is unbounded in her admiration of your friend: he renews, at your
solicitation, his visit: he proves kinder than ever; and you grow
ashamed of your distrust.
Madge is not learned in the arts of a city life; the accomplishments of
a man-of-the world are almost new to her; she listens with eagerness to
Dalton's graphic stories of foreign _fêtes_ and luxury; she is charmed
with his clear, bold voice, and with his manly execution of little
operatic airs.
----She is beautiful,--that wife who has made your heart whole by its
division,--fearfully beautiful! And she is not cold, or impassive: her
heart, though fond and earnest, is yet human;--we are all human. The
accomplishments and graces of the world must needs take hold upon her
fancy. And a fear creeps over you that you dare not whisper,--that those
graces may cast into the shade your own yearning and silent tenderness.
But this is a selfish fear, that you think you have no right to cherish.
She takes pleasure in the society of Dalton,--what right have you to say
her--nay? His character indeed is not altogether such as you could wish;
but will it not be selfish to tell her even this? Will it not be even
worse, and show taint of a lurking suspicion, which you know would wound
her grievously? You struggle with your distrust by meeting him more
kindly than ever; yet at times there will steal over you a sadness,
which that dear Madge detects, and sorrowing in her turn, tries to draw
away from you by the touching kindness of sympathy. Her look and manner
kill all your doubt; and you show that it is gone, and piously conceal
the cause by welcoming in gayer tones than ever the man who has fostered
it by his presence.
Business calls you away to a great distance from home: it is the first
long parting of your real manhood. And can suspicion, or a fear, lurk
amid those tearful embraces? Not one,--thank God,--not one!
Your letters, frequent and earnest, bespeak your increased devotion; and
the embraces you bid her give to the sweet ones of your little flock,
tell of the calmness and sufficiency of your love. Her letters too are
running over with affection;--what though she mentions the frequent
visits of Dalton, and tells stories of his kindness and attachment? You
feel safe in her strength; and yet--yet there is a brooding terror, that
rises out of your knowledge of Dalton's character.
And can you tell her this; can you stab her fondness, now that you are
away, with even a hint of what would crush her delicate nature?
What you know to be love, and what you fancy to be duty, struggle long;
but love conquers. And with sweet trust in her, and double trust in God,
you await your return. That return will be speedier than you think.
You receive one day a letter: it is addressed in the hand of a friend,
who is often at the cottage, but who has rarely written to you. What can
have tempted him now? Has any harm come near your home? No wonder your
hands tremble at the opening of that sheet; no wonder that your eyes run
like lightning over the hurried lines. Yet there is little in them, very
little. The hand is stout and fair. It is a calm letter, a friendly
letter; but it is short, terribly short. It bids you come home--"_at
once!_"
----And you go. It is a pleasant country you have to travel through;
but you see very little of the country. It is a dangerous voyage,
perhaps, you have to make; but you think very little of the danger. The
creaking of the timbers, and the lashing of the waves, are quieting
music compared with the storm of your raging fears. All the while you
associate Dalton with the terror that seems to hang over you; and yet,
your trust in Madge is true as Heaven!
At length you approach that home: there lies your cottage resting
sweetly upon its hill-side; and the autumn winds are soft; and the
maple-tops sway gracefully, all clothed in the scarlet of their
frost-dress. Once again as the sun sinks behind the mountain with a
trail of glory, and the violet haze tints the gray clouds like so many
robes of angels, you take heart and courage, and with firm reliance on
the Providence that fashions all forms of beauty, whether in heaven or
in heart, your fears spread out, and vanish with the waning twilight.
She is not at the cottage-door to meet you; she does not expect you; and
yet your bosom heaves, and your breathing is quick. Your friend meets
you, and shakes your hand.--"Clarence," he says, with the tenderness of
an old friend,--"be a man!"
Alas, you are a man;--with a man's heart, and a man's fear, and a man's
agony! Little Frank comes bounding toward you joyously--yet under traces
of tears:--"Oh, papa, mother is gone!"
----"Gone!" And you turn to the face of your friend; it is well he is
near by, or you would have fallen.
He can tell you very little; he has known the character of Dalton; he
has seen with fear his assiduous attentions--tenfold multiplied since
your leave. He has trembled for the issue: this very morning he observed
a travelling carriage at the door;--they drove away together. You have
no strength to question him. You see that he fears the worst: he does
not know Madge so well as you.
----And can it be? Are you indeed widowed with that most terrible of
widowhoods? Is your wife living, and yet--lost! Talk not to such a man
of the woes of sickness, of poverty, of death; he will laugh at your
mimicry of grief.
----All is blackness; whichever way you turn, it is the same; there is
no light; your eye is put out; your soul is desolate forever! The heart
by which you had grown up into the full stature of joy and blessing, is
rooted out of you, and thrown like something loathsome, at which the
carrion dogs of the world scent and snuffle!
They will point at you, as the man who has lost all that he prized; and
she has stolen it, whom he prized more than what was stolen! And he, the
accursed miscreant----. But no, it can never be! Madge is as true as
Heaven!
Yet she is not there: whence comes the light that is to cheer you?
----Your children?
Ay, your children,--your little Nelly,--your noble Frank,--they are
yours,--doubly, trebly, tenfold yours, now that she, their mother, is a
mother no more to them forever!
Ay, close your doors; shut out the world; draw close your curtains; fold
them to your heart,--your crushed, bleeding, desolate heart! Lay your
forehead to the soft cheek of your noble boy;--beware, beware how you
dampen that damask cheek with your scalding tears: yet you cannot help
it; they fall--great drops--a river of tears, as you gather him
convulsively to your bosom!
"Father, why do you cry so?" says Frank, with the tears of dreadful
sympathy starting from those eyes of childhood.
----"Why, papa?"--mimes little Nelly.
----Answer them, if you dare! Try it;--what words--blundering, weak
words--choked with agony--leading nowhere--ending in new and convulsive
clasps of your weeping, motherless children!
Had she gone to her grave, there would have been a holy joy, a great and
swelling grief indeed,--but your poor heart would have found a rest in
the quiet churchyard; and your feelings, rooted in that cherished grave,
would have stretched up toward Heaven their delicate leaves, and caught
the dews of His grace, who watcheth the lilies. But now,--with your
heart cast underfoot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world,--finding
no shelter and no abiding place!--alas, we do guess at infinitude only
by suffering!
----Madge, Madge! can this be so? Are you not still the same sweet,
guileless child of Heaven?
VII.
_Peace._
It is a dream,--fearful, to be sure, but only a dream! Madge _is_ true.
That soul is honest; it could not be otherwise. God never made it to be
false; He never made the sun for darkness.
And before the evening has waned to midnight, sweet day has broken on
your gloom;--Madge is folded to your bosom, sobbing fearfully,--not for
guilt, or any shadow of guilt, but for the agony she reads upon your
brow, and in your low sighs.
The mystery is all cleared by a few lightning words from her indignant
lips, and her whole figure trembles, as she shrinks within your embrace,
with the thought of that great evil that seemed to shadow you. The
villain has sought by every art to beguile her into appearances which
should compromise her character and so wound her delicacy as to take
away the courage for return; he has even wrought upon her affection for
you as his master-weapon: a skilfully contrived story of some accident
that had befallen you, had wrought upon her--to the sudden and silent
leave of home. But he has failed. At the first suspicion of his falsity,
her dignity and virtue shivered all his malice. She shudders at the bare
thought of that fiendish scheme which has so lately broken on her view.
"Oh, Clarence, Clarence, could you for one moment believe this of me?"
"Dear Madge, forgive me if a dreamy horror did for an instant palsy my
better thought;--it is gone utterly; it will never, never come again!"
And there she leans with her head pillowed on your shoulder, the same
sweet angel that has led you in the way of light, and who is still your
blessing and your pride.
He--and you forbear to name his name--is gone,--flying vainly from the
consciousness of guilt with the curse of Cain upon him,--hastening
toward the day when Satan shall clutch his own!
A heavenly peace descends upon you that night,--all the more sacred and
calm for the fearful agony that has gone before. A Heaven, that seemed
lost, is yours. A love, that you had almost doubted, is beyond all
suspicion. A heart, that in the madness of your frenzy you had dared to
question, you worship now, with blushes of shame. You thank God for this
great goodness, as you never thanked him for any earthly blessing
before; and with this twin gratitude lying on your hearts, and clearing
your face to smiles, you live on together the old life of joy and of
affection.
* * * * *
Again with brimming nectar the years fill up their vases. Your children
grow into the same earnest joyousness, and with the same home faith,
which lightened upon your young dreams, and toward which you seem to go
back, as you riot with them in their Christmas joys, or upon the velvety
lawn of June.
Anxieties indeed overtake you, but they are those anxieties which only
the selfish would avoid,--anxieties that better the heart with a great
weight of tenderness. It may be that your mischievous Frank runs wild
with the swift blood of boyhood, and that the hours are long which wait
his coming. It may be that your heart echoes in silence the mother's
sobs, as she watches his fits of waywardness, and showers upon his very
neglect excess of love.
Danger perhaps creeps upon little, joyous Nelly, which makes you tremble
for her life; the mother's tears are checked that she may not deepen
your grief; and her care guards the little sufferer like a Providence.
The nights hang long and heavy; dull, stifled breathing wakes the
chamber with ominous sound; the mother's eye scarce closes, but rests
with fond sadness upon the little struggling victim of sickness; her
hand rests like an angel touch upon the brow, all beaded with the heats
of fever; the straggling, gray light of morning breaks through the
crevices of the closed blinds,--bringing stir and bustle to the world,
but in your home--lighting only the darkness.
Hope, sinking in the mother's heart, takes hold on Faith in God; and her
prayer, and her placid look of submission,--more than all your
philosophy,--add strength to your faltering courage.
But little Nelly brightens; her faded features take on bloom again; she
knows you; she presses your hand; she draws down your cheek to her
parched lip; she kisses you, and smiles. The mother's brow loses its
shadow; day dawns within as well as without, and on bended knees God is
thanked!