"LIFE!"
I hold it truth with him who sings,
On one clear harp, in divers tones,
That men may rise, on stepping stones
Of their dead lives, to higher things!
However grievous and crushing we may consider the trials and troubles of
life to be, while they last, they are never altogether unbearable.
The load laid upon us is seldom weighted beyond the capacity of our
endurance; and then, when in course of time our ills become alleviated,
and the burden we have so long borne slides off our backs, the relief we
feel is proportionately all the greater, our sense of light-heartedness
and mental freedom, the more intense and complete.
Existence, to follow out the argument, is not always painted in shadow,
its horizon obscured by dark-tinted nebulosities! On the contrary,
there is ever some light infused into it, to bring out the deeper
tones--"a silver lining" generally "to every cloud," as the proverb has
it. So, I now experienced, as I am going to tell you.
The second year of my residence in America opened much more brightly
than the miserable twelvemonth I had just passed through might have led
me to hope--if I could have hoped on any longer, that is!
Early in the spring, when the warming breath of the power-increasing sun
was slowly unloosing the chains of winter--when the rapid-running Hudson
was sweeping down huge blocks and fields of ice from Albany, flooding
New York Bay with a collection of little bergs, so that it looked
somewhat like the Arctic effect I had seen on the Thames on that happy
Christmas of the past, only on ever so much larger a scale--I received
letters from England that cheered me up wonderfully, changing the whole
aspect of my life.
"Good news from home, good news for me, had come across the deep blue
sea"--in the words of Gilmore's touching ballad; and "though I wandered
far away, my heart was full of joy to-day; for, friends across the
ocean's foam had sent to me good news from home"--to further paraphrase
it.
_Good_ news?--"glorious news," rather, I should say!
Yes, I had not only a glad, welcome letter from Miss Pimpernell, in
which the dear little old lady made me laugh and cry again; but, I also
heard from the good vicar, who was one of the worst correspondents in
the world, never putting pen to paper, save in the compilation of his
weekly sermons, except under the most dire necessity, or kindly
compulsion.
To receive an epistle from him was an event!
And, what do you think he wrote to me about? What, can you imagine,
made dear little Miss Pimpernell's lengthy missive--scribed as it was in
the most puzzling of calligraphies--of so engrossing an interest, that I
read it again and again; valuing it more than all her previous budgets
of parish gossip put together, entertaining as I thought them before?
Once, twice, three times?
No, I do not believe you can guess what it was that gave me such delight
in the "good news from home," sharp and shrewd though you may think
yourself.
If you will take my advice, you had better treat it as a conundrum and
"give it up."
Don't keep you in suspense, eh?
Well then, I will tell you--here goes.
It is a long story--too long to describe in detail; but the upshot of it
was that my kind friend the vicar, cognisant of the sincere affection
that existed between my darling and myself, and knowing the suffering
that had been caused to us both by the enforced silence which we had to
maintain towards each other, had interceded with Mrs Clyde on our
behalf; and, what is more, had done so successfully!
There, fancy that! Don't you think I had sufficient reason to be
rejoiced?
Min and I were to be allowed to write to each other for a year--as
"friends," a condition of intimacy to which her mother seemed to attach
a good deal of point, as she had made it an obligatory proviso to our
correspondence. Mrs Clyde had, in addition to this, tacked on a
sweeping clause to the agreement, to the effect that, in case my
prospects at the end of the year should not warrant my returning to
England and claiming Min as my promised wife--prospects of a short
engagement and an easy settlement being also satisfactory--the whole
negotiation should fall to the ground and be considered null and void;
we, reverting to our original and hopeless position of soi-disant
strangers or "friends" at a distance, and looking upon the interlude of
our letter-writing as if it had never occurred.