Dora was the brunette daughter of an established lawyer in our inland
village. I see her as distinctly before me while I write, as if she
_was_ before me. She was some sixteen years of age—had the usual amount
of education and mind—was unaffected—warm-hearted—black haired and
eyed—rosy-lipped—woman-rounded form. Charley fell in
love—astonishingly in love with her. I was amazed. He was of an
intellectual, though impulsive nature; and she had no conversational
power—nothing in the world but a lively, natural, voluptuous sort of
beauty, to recommend her to him.
Astonishingly in love. He made love to her by flowers, and was accepted
in the same way, before he went to college. He was absent a year. The
very night of his return he went to a party at her father’s, which
happened that night. He got a seat near her toward the close of the
evening—in a low voice made a passionate appeal to her, although
surrounded by company—went home—wrote her a still more passionate
letter. He was too impulsive—frightened her—had his letter returned,
and came to me, and as we sat on a log in the moonlight, told me the
whole. He was about twenty years old then, and the affection had
quickened, expanded, strengthened his heart even more than that
chest-exercise had his lungs. There was a depth, and breadth, and force
about his affection for Dora which stirred up his whole being. It rolled
through him like a sea, deepening and washing out the sands of his heart
till that heart became deep and broad. For months that love lived and
worked in him; at last it died out like the steam from the engine of a
steamship.
When I see his hearty affection for his friends—his warm sympathy for
all among whom he mingles, which gives him his wonderful popularity, I
can trace it all back to that development of his heart under the hot
summer of that love of his for Dora Anson. I do believe that the genial
smile, the cordial manner, the melting persuasiveness of his tones, all
owe their development, if not their origin, to that culture of his
heart. The sun may have set which shone on his soul, but it left that
soul all ruddy and ripe from its warm rays. If Dora had jilted him, it
would have left him a soured man. If she had married him, it would have
left him a satiated man. In either case it would have injured him. But
she did not jilt him—did not marry him; he outgrew so sensuous a love
as that, and somehow or other they drifted apart.
I believe, however—and my wife, to whom I have just mentioned it,
agrees with me—that his connection with Mr. Nelson had very much to do
in making him the man he is.
You see, when Charley had finished his law-studies, his father and
mother were dead. He never had any brothers or sisters. One or two
thousand dollars was his fortune. Being a young man—now some
twenty-five—of fine appearance, and talents, and manners, he attracted
the attention of Mr. Nelson, a keen and rich lawyer in the village, and
in a few weeks he was settled in his office as a junior partner. For
some six months Nelson seemed wonderfully attached to
Charley—continually spoke of him with the loudest praise—over-rated
him, in fact. At the close of this period, however, he suddenly took
just as violent a set against Bell as he had before for him. Nobody ever
knew the reason of this. I don’t think Nelson himself did. The truth is,
the elder partner was a singular man. He always dressed neatly in
black—was rather thin, with a stooping shoulder, a retreating forehead,
a quick way of talking, and a rapid step. He was excessively hospitable
and generous, more for the sake of being a sort of protector and
superior of the guest than any thing else. Self-will was _the_ trait of
his character.
But I am writing about Charley, and have got no time to paint this
Nelson. Enough to say that he took as vehement a dislike to Bell as he
before had a liking. He ridiculed and opposed and thwarted him with an
astonishing bitterness. Bell, at first, was staggered with
astonishment—then cut to the very soul with such unkindness from the
last man on earth from whom he expected it. But it did him great good.
It corrected his blind confidence in every man completely, and gave him
a quiet watchfulness of men in all his dealings with them, which was of
immense benefit to him. It destroyed in an instant all his false and
colored ideas of things. The faults of his character which Nelson
pointed out and ridiculed, and made the ostensible cause of his
alienation, were forever corrected—just as a wart is burnt off by
corrosive sublimate. Nelson’s extravagant depreciation of him after such
extravagant praise of him, gave him, in one word, an impulse to prove
himself unworthy that depreciation and more than worthy the former
praise, which did more for him than if his senior partner had given him
years of the most careful instruction and countenance. Besides, it threw
him suddenly on himself—made an independent man of him forever. Just
what that chest-exercise did for his lungs, that Dora affair did for his
heart, this Nelson matter did for his will—it deepened and broadened
and strengthened it to an unusual degree—it did very much toward making
him a Senator.
My wife agrees with me that the little love affair of his with Marie
McCorcle had not much if any effect on our friend. Failing a little in
love with her when he was some twenty-six years old, for a remark she
made in a speech when May Queen, he proposed in a note—was rejected in
a note. Mounting his horse, he took a ride of some eleven days on
business somewhere. On his return he was over with it, except of course
the feeling of pique. The first day of his ride he chanted, as he told
me, the words of her rejection to “Old Hundred,” all day long, over and
over and over. The next day it was to a faster tune. He trotted his
horse rapidly back, making his hoofs keep time to the swiftest jig of
his recollection, as he rode into town with the words of her rejection
still on his lips.
The rest of my task is a pleasant one. I like to think about Annie
Rennaugh—I love even to write her name. She was a cousin of Dora’s and
resided in the same town. I cannot say that she was pretty—but I can
say that she was beautiful. Just in this way. She was of a small,
modest, quiet appearance. You would hardly look at her twice if you saw
her in a promiscuous company. Only become acquainted with her, however,
and an irresistible charm is upon you. There is such a delicious ease in
all she says and does—such a deep mirth and artless confidence in her
that conquers without observation.
She was a special friend of Charley’s. He confided to her from the very
first all his affair with Dora. I saw him one evening at a party with
her. She was seated in a chair by the door, with a saucer of
strawberries and cream in her lap. He was seated at her feet in the
doorway—enjoying the summer air—conversing in a low, earnest tone with
her as they took alternate teaspoonsful of the fruit. They were talking
about Dora—Charley’s _ideal_ Dora—as earnestly as if they were talking
love on their own account.
Well, the full moon of Dora’s influence waxed into the full orb of its
influence upon her lover, and then waned, and waned. His friendship,
however, for Annie increased slowly—slowly, but most surely. When he
was whirled away for those four weeks by Marie McCorcle, he told her all
about it, and had, as usual, all her sympathy. Then he was off for
college and corresponded with her regularly. I was with him in college.
Many a time has he torn up—at my advice—the long letter he had written
her, because it was entirely too warm, even though it was directed in
the most _fraternal_ manner possible to “My dear Sister Annie,” and
signed, “Your affectionate brother, Charles.”
You can see immediately how it all ended. A friendship begun in mere
indifference had ripened through six years into deep, genuine affection.
He never dreamed that he loved Annie until he found that she was
essential to his existence. For the first time he knew what true love
was. He found that it was _not_ the sensual flush of passion, such as
warmed him under the hot beauty of Dora—that it was _not_ the fever of
the imagination which diseased him under the moonlight of Marie. He
found that love was not a passion but a feeling; was not a fit but a
condition; was not a hot flush of blood, but the quick, even,
everlasting flow of the heart’s tide, giving health and life to the
whole man.
I am writing nothing but actual fact, and so I cannot say how he told
Annie his love and how she accepted him. He has talked to me—I do
believe in all it amounts to several hundred hours—about Dora and
Marie. He has quoted to me at least one dozen dozen times every word
that ever passed between him and them, but he never told me any thing
about his love conversation with Annie. They are married. They seem
perfectly happy in the quiet possession of each other and of the
blue-eyed baby boy that laughs in their arms.
This was the making of Charles Bell. A remark of mine has led to the
development of his noble form, and the establishment of that full health
so essential to successful labor. His love for Dora has expanded his
heart and warmed and flushed him all through and through with an
affection and persuasion and love, that shows itself in his every tone
and smile and clasp of the hand and word. His affair with Marie has
cultivated his imagination perhaps. His painful experience with Mr.
Nelson has corrected all false ideas of men—has given him caution,
self-possession, self-reliance and energy. He has learned to meet things
as they come; to do his utmost, and then, not only not murmur at
whatever happens but actually to acquiesce, to rejoice in every event.
Annie is an infinite blessing to him. He is full of impulse, and she, by
a silent, irresistable influence, controls and directs it. He is full of
noble aspiration but inclined to be fickle—she is ever pouring oil on
the fire of his soul as with an unseen angel hand—is silent and
uncongenial when he wanders from his better self—and thus draws him
quietly but irresistibly back.
Of course there were many circumstances in politics and situation which
conspired to elevate him to his present position. I have only alluded to
the quiet under-current of his private life. I wrote what I have written
only because I felt like doing so. I do not think either he or Annie
will be offended at my freedom should they read this—especially as I
have not mentioned his State or his real name. I am heartily sick of all
romance and romantic ideas and descriptions of men and women, but I do
look upon the “Hon. Charles Bell and his amiable lady,” as the
Washington papers will call them, as two of the finest persons in all my
knowledge. Both are most sincere Christians, and singular as it may seem
to some, I regard their companionship and mutual influence as one which
is to last not only through this poor world, but through all eternity. I
would like exceedingly to write out my ideas on this point, but I cannot
do it now. Besides, the editor may be married to a second wife, and in
that case, would most certainly refuse admission to this little sketch
in the pages of his magazine.
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