ALTHEA.
Several years have passed. We find Althea a matron of twenty or more,
but did we not know her age, we might think her five years older. She
has not lost her beauty; though it is of a softer, more pensive kind.
She is a gentle, quiet woman, beloved by the people of Windsor, for she
makes no pretensions, and they have no shadow of suspicion that she
deems herself their superior. But it is a never-ceasing wonder to the
good and discerning that she ever came to marry Thornton Rush.
Thornton Rush is a man of mark. He has his friends and his foes. To
those whom he deems worthy of conciliating, will he fawn and cringe.
Those whom he despairs of making his friends, or those whose friendship
may do him no good, he alienates determinedly, and without scruple.
For four years has he waged a perpetual warfare with the Captain. The
odds would have been against him, had he not in his wife possessed one
advantage. While Mrs. Sharp possessed by nature the qualities expressed
by her name and made herself unpopular to the good women of Windsor,
Althea, without premeditation or effort, was a universal favorite.
Thornton Rush was well aware of this advantage, and he made the most of
it.
Like many another man, he did not like to come home and find his wife
gone. He missed her as he would the sun from day. Althea was much
inclined to remain at home; and Thornton would not often have found
chance to grumble upon this score. He was not given to habits of
self-denial; nevertheless, to secure good will and triumph over Sharp,
he would encourage Althea to make frequent visits--nay, often insist
upon it, against her inclination and his own private wish. If his wife
could serve his policy, well and good. What was a wife for?
There were those who regarded Thornton Rush with positive fear. They
quailed beneath the flash of his eye. Such dared not openly oppose him
and were outwardly his friends. Some, lacking powers of penetration,
deemed him better than he was, and thought there must be much hidden
good in one who had won so sweet a woman for a wife. Few dared exhibit,
or openly proclaim the intense disaffection with which he had inspired
them. But those who did were bitter and unrelenting in animosity; were
enemies indeed, worthy of the name. Foremost among these was Carlton
Sharp. This Captain still led a company well drilled and faithful. On
the other side, Thornton Rush, since about it was no smell of gunpowder,
trained a goodly crew, with which he met the Captain's line. Victory was
not always upon one side. Politics is a very uncertain _res gestoe_.
And human nature, more uncertain still, would vacillate from
wing to wing, now being a Sharp's retainer, and anon a hanger-on of
Rush. Such changelings would not count, but that their vote weighs
heavily.
Mrs. Lisle had already made one visit to her son, which lasted several
months. During this visit Althea's eyes had been opened, and she had
been led to wonder, as before in the case of her husband, for what
purpose had been assumed the false garb of amiability during the time of
her sojourn at Kennons. Both Mrs. Lisle and that strange woman's son
were mysteries to Althea. To her mind of singular clearness and purity
they were incomprehensible. Their falseness and hardness she was more
ready to believe hallucinations of her own mind, rather than really
glaring faults of character in them. Hence she strove to force herself
to believe them better than they were. But this could not last--and at
length the young wife was driven to the sad conclusion that her
mother-in-law was not only harsh, unamiable, and unforgiving, but
destitute of moral and religious principle, and that the man she had
married was worthy such ignoble parentage.
Did Althea then learn to regard her husband with scorn and contempt? Did
she become a woman's rights woman and inveigh against man's tyranny and
woman's weak submission? Not yet. Althea was motherless, and to all
intents fatherless. She had a warm, loving nature, and there were few in
this world for her to love. She had given her first love to Thornton,
and though she had become aware that it was not the deepest love of
which her nature was susceptible she yet clung to him, shutting her eyes
to his ill-disguised defects, striving to clothe him with the graces
which she had at first supposed him to possess, and, insensibly to
himself, refining and purifying by slight degrees his selfish nature.
Then Althea had a pleasant cottage, situated upon a grassy plain, and
embosomed in native forest trees. She had her flowers, music, books, her
day dreams and hours of inspiration, when she recited to the birds
improvisations which might have thrilled or amused a more appreciative
audience. Her naturally happy, cheerful disposition caught and reflected
but the light, and dispensed warmth and harmony upon all around.
Althea had another grand source of happiness; it was in her one child,
Master Johnny Temple, now just passed his third year. With considerable
likeness to his father, this child possessed the hereditary beauty of
the St. Legers, with that peculiar, queenly poise of the head that had
distinguished Della Lisle.
He was then a remarkably beautiful child, with a winning and loving
nature. To keep him nicely dressed was one of Althea's sweetest cares;
and the little fellow had such a proud air he would have been taken for
a royal prince.
Strange would it have been had not Thornton Rush been proud of such a
wife and child. But he kept his pride and admiration shut away from
their objects. He never took the trouble to tell Althea that she was
dear to him, even if he chanced to think so; reversely he had a sullen
way of appearing to think his family a trouble and burthen. Had Althea
suddenly died some day he would have been shaken into due appreciation;
as it was, her presence was like the sunlight that flooded him
unconsciously, and to which he was so accustomed he never thought to be
grateful for it.
You have seen a little boy with a pet dog. What a life that dog led!
Harnessed to carts, sleds, made to draw heavy loads, after his young
master, besides jerked this way and that, scolded, kicked, cuffed--what
wonder the abused animal ran away or gave up the ghost? Then the boy's
grief! His dear, precious only friend that he loved so devotedly! He
mourns, sighs, weeps, not dreaming that he has himself done his dog to
death. He is lost, having no one to love and torment.
"I will not mind his cross words, his petulance, his spasms of anger,"
constantly repeated the patient wife, but they entered her soul. "I will
disarm him with smiles and pleasant words," she every day resolved; yet
every day was she pierced anew with his arrowy verbality. "He shall have
to remember me only as a good wife and true," she said mentally, even
while her heart was ground as with a heel of iron.
But the time was coming when Althea might not be able thus to fortify
herself.
One August morning the family sat at breakfast. It was earlier than
usual, for Mr. Rush was to take the boat, which was to convey him the
first stages of his journey to his native Thornton Hall. Master Johnny
was already up and in his place; for he was a wide-awake fellow, bound
never to be left behind.
"Johnny will not eat; he has not been well for several days," remarked
the mother anxiously.
"You are always borrowing trouble. It is too early for the child to
eat," said the undisturbed father.
"His stomach must be out of order; he threw up yesterday all he ate,"
continued Althea.
"Because you stuffed him so. You are making a glutton of him. You ought
to know he should not eat more than he can hold," replied Thornton,
amiable as usual.
The child had put his chubby hands upon the table, and laid upon them
his curly head.
"Look up here, sir," said his father, sharply, "what ails you?"
The child raised his head wearily, and looked pleadingly to his mother.
She arose, about to take him in her arms, when the father interposed.
"Let him alone. The boy is well enough. You are making a fool of him; he
will never amount to a row of pins. I am going to take him in my own
hands; he is old enough, and has been babied to death." "Shut up, I tell
you," addressing Johnny, who was now crying for his mother to take him.
"Yes, a new leaf shall be turned over just so soon as I return from
Virginia. And you are about as much of a baby as he is, Althea," whose
eyes he observed to be full of tears. "Here, another cup of coffee; you
have no thought for me--you give all your attention to that
child--there, there is the whistle now! Ten to one I shall be late, and
all your fault, forcing me to talk instead of allowing me to eat. Hand
me my valise--there, good-by and don't fret," and, rushing away, he
gave no kiss to little Johnny, whom he was never more to behold; no kiss
to Althea, whom he was indeed to meet again, to meet again and soon; but
a gulf between him and her, insurmountable as death itself.
She turned to her child, now that there was no voice commanding, "let
him alone." She rocked him in her arms a long time after he had fallen
asleep. Her tears sparkled upon his jet curls, while her heart was heavy
as lead in her bosom.
"Am I, then, so unlovely that my husband does not care for me? Once I
thought it was so beautiful to love, and to be loved! His love is gone;
and mine--O my God, let me not lose the last particle of love for the
one I must live with until 'death do us part.' We might be so happy, but
are so miserable! Is it my fault? My conscience is clear; it does not
accuse me. He is so unhappy, so morose; he makes us all so wretched,
when life ought to be so pleasant."
Althea had placed her low rocker upon the verandah. A gentle breeze
stirred the vines that wreathed the pillars. The birds flew hither and
thither upon boughs that shaded her cottage. The fragrance of flowers
filled the air.
"How beautiful is all this visible world," exclaimed she. "How full
should it be of enjoyment." "Yes, yes," chirped the birds, the breeze
and the flowers.
She laid down her child, who still slept heavily. She gazed at him
intently, resolutely banishing unwelcome thoughts of aught that should
harm him.
The house was in confusion, as it ever is after a hurried departure.
Althea busied herself with setting things straight. Then she sat down to
her piano, and commenced a song; but her voice trembled too much. She
changed into a favorite march, whose notes rose and fell like the
storm-tossed billows of the sea. Battles, quadrilles, waltzes dropped
from her finger-ends, as if they had been magicians, and so mingled,
dislocated and inharmonious, as to make wildest, though still musical
confusion.
Hand-weary, but heart-lightened, she took up a book. It was a new book,
she had but half-read, "Gates Ajar." She came to the child eating her
ginger snaps in Heaven; to the musician playing favorite airs upon the
piano, to the dress-maker fashioning gossamer garments out of aerial
fabrics, etc., etc. She put by the book.
"I do not like that kind of a Heaven. How could an authoress make a
Heaven out of the lowest part of earth? To think of eating, darning and
mending up there! We are to do in perfection there, what we most like to
do here! The drunkard then will take his glass; but he does not go to
Heaven. Wonder if the tobacco chewer enters through the pearly
gates--'nothing that defileth or maketh a lie'--ah, how beautiful and
charming Heaven must be; more than we can conceive, or she, who looked
through 'Gates Ajar,' can imagine. I do not quite like to look through
her eyes. I suppose my mother is there. How little I ever think of
her--wonder if she watches me from above; O my mother, my mother in
Heaven, have pity upon your child!"
A noise from the adjoining room startled her. Had the cat gained
entrance to her sleeping child? She went in hurriedly; Johnny was in
spasms.
She seized him in her arms, and ran screaming for Mary into the kitchen.
Mary ran for the physician, and the distracted mother, still holding the
convulsed child in her arms, walked up and down the verandah, shouting
for help.
Doctors and neighbors came. All that medical skill and friendly sympathy
could suggest was done; but all in vain. When the spasm subsided, the
eye was uprolled in unconsciousness, and the face burned with the
fiercest fever. Then would come the fearful convulsion, and you would
not know the beautiful face so racked and tortured. Again the demon
would die out; but reason returned not from his relaxing hold. What a
scene was there! All had been set in order a brief while before. Now,
again, everywhere was confusion. There lay upon the floor the little
cast-off garments. The child had done with them. His rocking-horse stood
in the corner, his whip and gun near by, his box of marbles, his
countless broken toys and the sled he had never used. The last time he
had been to drive with his parents, he had seen that sled inside a
store. He insisted upon having it.
"But there is no snow to slide upon," objected his father.
"Johnny no slide--Johnny have 'ittle ocken (oxen) draw sled."
So the sled was purchased, packed into the carriage, and that night
little Johnny had wished to sit up all night to admire his treasure.
"These bufully flowers, mamma, see," pointing to the upper surface and
sides of the nosegay, facetiously termed. At length sleep overtook him,
lying under the table side by side with the gaily-painted sled, one
chubby hand grasping the forward rung. The next day the sled had lost
its charms, for Johnny was ill; and the next--alas, here was little
Johnny! We might speak of Althea's bewildered grief; but why should a
mother's hand attempt to write, or a mother desire to read what only a
mother's heart can understand, and but imperfectly express?