Ten years had slipped away, and I was now in my sixteenth year. Of
course, my little cabinet picture had been joined by many others. It
was now but one in an extensive gallery; and the modest little gem,
dimmed with dust, and hidden by larger pieces, had not been thought of
for many a day.
External circumstances had remained much the same with us; only one
great change, the death of my dear grandmother, having occurred in the
family. My aunt presided over her father's household, and the
admirable order and good taste which pervaded every department bore
witness how well she understood combining the elements of a home.
Aunt Linny, now twenty-seven years of age, had lost nothing of her
former attractiveness. The brilliant, impulsive girl had but ripened
into the still more lovely woman. Her cheek was not faded nor her eye
dimmed. There was the same frankness, the same heart in her glance,
her smile, the warm pressure of her hand, but tempered by experience,
reflection, and self-control. One felt that she could be loved and
trusted with the whole heart and judgment. Her personal attractions,
and yet more the charm of her sensible, genial, and racy conversation,
brought to our house many pleasant visitors, and made her the
sparkling centre of every circle into which she could be drawn. But it
was rarely that she could be beguiled from home; for, since her
mother's death, she had devoted herself heart and soul to her widowed
father.
The relation between myself and my aunt was somewhat peculiar. Neither
of us having associates of our own age in the family, I had become her
companion, and even friend, to a degree which would have been
impossible in other circumstances. She had scarcely outgrown the
freshness and simplicity of childhood when I first came to live with
her, and my mind and feelings had expanded rapidly under the constant
stimulus of a nature so full of rich life; so that at the date I now
speak of, we lived together more as sisters than as aunt and niece. An
inexpressible charm rests on those days, when we read, wrote, rambled
together, shared the same room, and had every pleasure, every trouble
in common. All show of authority over me had gradually melted away;
but her influence with me was still unbounded, for I loved her with
the passionate earnestness of a first, full-hearted friendship.--But
to proceed with my story.
One sweet afternoon in early summer, we two were sitting alone. The
windows towards the garden were open, and the breath of lilacs and
roses stole in. I had been reading to her some verses of my own,
celebrating the praise of first love as an imperishable sentiment. My
fancy had just been crazed with the poetry of L.E.L., who was then
shining as the "bright particular star" in the literary heavens.
"The lines are very pretty," said my aunt, "but I trust it's only
poetizing, Kate; I should be sorry indeed to have you join the school
of romantic misses who think first love such a killing matter."
"But, Aunty," I cried, "what a horribly prosy, matter-of-fact affair
life would be in any other view! I believe poetry itself would become
extinct."
"So, then, if a woman is disappointed in first love, she is bound to
die for the benefit of poetry!"
"But just think, Aunt Linny--if Ophelia, instead of going mad so
prettily, and dying in a way to break everybody's heart, had soberly
set herself to consider that there were as fine fish yet in the sea as
ever were caught, and that it was best, therefore, to cheer up and
wait for better times! Frightful!"
"Never trouble your little head, Kate, with fear that there will not
be Ophelias enough, as long as the world stands. But I wouldn't be
one, if I were you, unless I could bespeak a Shakspeare to do me into
poetry. That would be an inducement, I allow. How would you fancy
being a Sukey Fay, Kate?"
"Oh, the poor old wretch, with her rags and dirt and gin-bottle! Has
she a story?"
"Just as romantic a one as Ophelia, only she lacks a poet. But, in
sober truth, Katy, why is there not as true poetry in battling with
feeling as in yielding to it? To me there seems something far more
lofty and beautiful in bearing to live, under certain circumstances,
than in daring to die."
"If you only spoke experimentally, dear Aunty! Oh that Plato, or John
Milton, or Sir Philip Sydney would reappear, and lay all his genius
and glory at your feet! I wonder if you'd be of the same mind then!"
"And then, of course, this sublime suitor must die, or desert me, to
show how I would behave under the trial.--Katy," continued my aunt,
after a little pause, with a smile and slight blush, "I have half a
mind to tell you a little romance of my early days, when I was just
your age. It may be useful to you at this point of your life."
"Is it possible?" cried I,--"a romance of your early days! Quick, let
me hear!"
"I shouldn't have called it a romance, Katy; for as a story, it is
just nothing. It has no interest except as marking the beginning of
my education,--the education, I mean, of real life."
"But let me hear; there's some spice of poetry in it, I know."
"Well, then, it's like many another story of early fancy. In my
childhood I had a playmate. Our fathers' houses stood but a few rods
apart, and the families lived in habits of the closest intimacy. From
my earliest remembrance, the brave little boy, four years older than
I, was my sworn friend and protector; and as we increased in years, an
affection warm and frank as that of brother and sister grew up between
us. A love of nature and of poetry, and a certain earnestness and
enthusiasm of character, which separated us both from other children,
drew us closely together. At fifteen he left us to fit for college at
a distant school, and thenceforward he was at home only for brief
visits, till he was graduated with distinguished honor at the age of
twenty-one. During those six years of separation our relation to each
other had suffered no change. We had corresponded with tolerable
regularity, and I had felt a sister's pride in his talents and
literary honors. When, therefore, he returned home to recruit his
health, which had been seriously impaired by study and confinement, I
welcomed him with great joy, and with all the frankness of former
times.
"Again we read, chatted, and rambled together. I found him unchanged
in character, but improved, cultivated, to a degree which delighted,
almost awed me. When he read our favorite authors with his rich,
musical voice, and descanted on their beauties with discriminating
taste and fervent poetic feeling, a new light fell on the
page. Through his eyes I learned to behold in nature a richness, a
grace, a harmony, a meaning, only vaguely felt before. It was as if I
had just received the key to a mysterious cipher, unlocking deep and
beautiful truths in earth and sea and sky, by which they were invested
with a life and splendor till now unseen. But it was his noble
sentiments, his generous human sympathies, his ardent aspirations
after honorable distinction to be won by toil and self-denial, which
woke my heart as by an electric touch. My own unshaped, half-conscious
aims and aspirations, stirred with life, took wing and soared with his
into the pure upper air. Ah! it was a bright, beautiful dream, Kate,
the life of those few months. I never once thought of love, nor of the
possibility of separation. All flowed so naturally from our life-long
intimacy, that I had not the slightest suspicion of the change which
had come over me. But the hour of waking was at hand. We had looked
forward to the settled summer weather for a marked improvement in his
health. But June had come and he still seemed very delicate. His
physician prescribed travelling and change of climate; and though his
high spirits had deceived me as to his real danger, I urged him to
go. He left us to visit an elder brother residing in one of the Middle
States. Ten years this very month!" added Aunt Linny, with an absent
air.
"Ten years ago this very month," I exclaimed, "did my distinguished
self arrive at this venerable mansion. What a singular conjunction of
events! No doubt our horoscopes would reveal some strange entanglement
of destinies at this point. Perchance I, even I, was 'the star malign'
whose rising disturbed the harmonious movement of the spheres!"
"No doubt of it; the birth of a mouse once caused an earthquake, you
know."
"But could I have seen him? Did I arrive before he had left?"
"Oh, yes, very likely; but of course you can have no recollection of
him, such a chit as you were then."
"What was his name?" I cried, eagerly. A long-silent chord of memory
began to give forth a vague, uncertain murmur.
"Oh, no matter, Kate. I would a little rather you shouldn't know. It
doesn't affect the moral of the story, which was all I had in view in
relating it."
"A plague take the moral, Aunty! The romance is what I want; and
what's that without 'the magic of a name'?"
"Excuse me."
"Tell me his Christian name, then,--just for a peg to hang my ideas
on; that is, if it's meat for romance. If it is Isaac or Jonathan, you
needn't mention it."
"Well, then, you tease,--I called him Cousin Harry."
"Cousin Harry!" I screamed, starting forward, and staring at her with
eyes wide open.
"Yes; but what ails you, child? You glare upon me like a maniac."
"Hush! hush! don't speak!" said I.
As I sunk back, in a sort of dream, into the rocking-chair in which I
had been idling, the garden caught my eye through the open window. The
gate overarched with honeysuckle, the long alley with its fragrant
flowering border, the grape arbor, the steep green hill behind, lay
before me in the still, rich beauty of June. In a twinkling, memory
had swept the dust from my little cabinet picture, and let in upon it
a sudden light. The ten intervening years vanished like a dream, and
that long-forgotten garden scene started up, vivid as in the hour when
it actually passed before my eyes. The clue to that mystery which had
so spellbound my childish fancy was at length found. I sat for a time
in silence, lost in a delicious, confused reverie.
"The Button-Rose was a gift from him, then?" were my first words.
"What, Kate?" said Aunt Linny, now opening her large blue eyes with a
strange look.
"Did you give away the flower-pot too? That was so pretty! Whom did
you give it to?"
"Incredible!" she exclaimed, coloring, and with the strongest
expression of surprise. "Truly, little pitchers have not been
slandered!"
"But the wonderful humming-bird, Aunty! What had that to do with it?"
"Kate," said my aunt, "you talk like one in sleep. Wake up, and let me
know what all this means."
"I see it all now!" I rattled on, more to myself than her. "First
young love,--parting gift,--Cousin Harry proves fickle,--Aunt Linny
banishes the Button-Rose from her window,--takes to books, and
educating naughty nieces, and doing good to everybody,--'bearing to
live,' as more heroic than 'daring to die,'--in ten years gets so that
she can speak of it with composure, as a lesson to romantic
girls. So?"
"Even so, Katy!" she replied, quietly; "and to that early
disappointment I owe more than to anything that ever befell me."
She said this with a smile; but her voice trembled a little, and I
perceived that a soft dew had gathered over her eyes. By an
irresistible impulse I rose, and stealing softly behind her, clasped
my arms round her neck, and kissing her forehead whispered, "Forgive
me, sweet Aunty!"
"Not a bit of harm, Katy," she replied, drawing me down for a warm
kiss. "But what a gypsy you must be," she added, in her usually
lively tone, "to have trudged along so many years with this precious
little bundle, and said never a word to anybody!"
"I've not thought of it myself, these ever so many years," said I,
"and it seems like witchwork that it should all have come to me at
this moment."
I then related to her my childish reminiscences and speculations,
which amused her not a little. Her hearty, mirthful zest showed that
the theme was not a disquieting one. I now begged her to proceed with
her story.
"But stay a moment," said I; "let me fetch our garden bonnets, that we
may enjoy it in the very scene of the romance."
"Ah, Kate, you are bent on making a heroine of me!" was the reply, as
she took her seat in the grape arbor; "but there are really no
materials. I shall finish in fifteen minutes by my watch, and you'll
drop me as an Ophelia, I venture to say. Cousin Harry had left us, as
I told you, to visit his brother. For some months his letters were
very frequent, and as the time approached for his return they grew
increasingly cheerful, and--Katy, I cannot but excuse myself in part,
when I recall the magic charm of those letters. But no matter; all of
a sudden they ceased, and for several weeks not a word was heard from
him by his own family. At length, when my anxiety had become wellnigh
intolerable, there came a brief letter to his father, announcing his
marriage with the sister of his brother's wife, and his decision to
enter into business with his brother."
"Did you know anything of the young lady?"
"He had once or twice mentioned her in his letters as a beautiful,
amiable creature, whose education had been shamefully neglected. Her
kindness to him in his illness and loneliness, added to her natural
charms, won his heart, no doubt many a wise man has been caught in
that snare."
"But what base conduct towards you!"
"Not at all, my dear! My dream had suffused his words with its own
coloring,--that was all. As soon as reason could make her voice heard,
I acquitted him of all blame. His feelings towards me had been those
of a brother,--no more."
"But why, then, did he cease to write? why not share his new
happiness with so dear a friend?"
"That was not unnatural, after what he had said of the young lady's
deficiencies. Probably the awkwardness of the thing led him to defer
writing from time to time, till he had become so absorbed in his
domestic relations and his business, that he had ceased to think of
it. Life's early dewdrops often exhale in that way, Kate!"
"Then life is a hateful stupidity!"
"Yes; if it could be morning all day, and childhood could outlast our
whole lives, it would be very charming. But life has jewels that don't
exhale, Kate, but sparkle brightest in the hottest sun. These lie
deep in the earth, and to dig them out requires more than a child's
strength of heart and arm. One must be well inured to toil and weather
before he can win these treasures; but when once he wears these in his
bosom he doesn't sigh for dewdrops."
"Well, let me hear how you were inured."
"The news of this marriage revealed to me, as by a flash of lightning,
my whole inner world of feeling. When I knew that he was forever lost,
I first knew what he had become to me. The pangs of disappointment, of
self-humiliation,--I hardly know which were the stronger,--were like
poisoned arrows in my heart. It was my first trouble, and I had to
bear it in silence and alone. Not for worlds would I have had it
guessed that I had cherished an unreturned affection, and it would
have killed me to hear him blamed. Towards him I had, in my most
secret heart, no emotion of resentment or reproach. A feeling of
dreary loss, of a long, weary life from which all the flowers had
vanished, a sort of tender self-pity, filled my heart. It is not worth
while to detail the whole process by which I gradually forced myself
out of this miserable state. One thing helped me much. As soon as the
first bitterness of my heart was passed, I saw clearly that the
indulgence of such a sentiment towards one who was now the husband of
another could not be innocent. It must not be merely concealed; it
must be torn up, root and branch. With this steadily before my mind
as the central point of my efforts, I worked my way step by
step. First came the removal of the numerous little mementos of those
happy days in dreamland, the sight of which softened my heart into
weakness and vain regret. Next I threw aside my favorite works of
imagination and feeling, and for two years read scarcely a book which
did not severely task my mind. I devoted myself more to my mother, and
interested myself in the poor and sick. Last, not least, I resolved on
taking the whole charge of your education, Katy; and of my various
specifics, I think I would recommend the training of such an elf as
the 'sovereignest remedy' for first love. The luxuriant growth of your
character interested, stimulated, kept me perpetually on the alert. I
soon began to work _con amore_ at this task; my spirits caught at
times the contagious gayety of yours; my poor heart was refreshed by
your warm childish love. In short, I began to live again. But, ah!
dear Kate, it was a long, stern conflict. Many, many months, yes,
years, passed by, ere those troubled waters became clear and
still. But I held firmly on my way, and the full reward came at
last. By degrees I had created within and around me a new world of
interest and activity, in which this little whirlpool of morbid
feeling became an insignificant point. I was conscious of the birth of
new energies, of a bolder and steadier sweep of thought, of fuller
sympathies, of that settled quiet and harmony of soul which are to be
gained only in the school of self-discipline. That dream of my youth
now lies like a soft cloud far off in the horizon, beautiful with the
morning tints of memory, but casting no shadow."
She paused; then added, in a lively tone: "Well, Kate, the fifteen
minutes are not out, and yet my story is done. Think you now it would
really have been better to go a-swinging on a willow-tree over a pond,
and so have made a good poetical end?"
"Oh, I am so glad you were not such a goose as to make a swan of
yourself, like poor Ophelia!" said I, throwing my arms around her, and
giving her half a dozen kisses. "But tell me truly, was I indeed such
a blessing to you, 'the very cherubim that did preserve thee'? To
think of the repentance I have wasted over my childish naughtiness,
when it was all inspired by your good angel! I shall take heed to this
hint."
"Do so, Kate, and your good angel will doubtless inspire in me a
suitable response."
"But tell me now, Aunt Linny, who the living man was. Was he a real
cousin?"
"I may as well tell you, Kate, or you will get it from your
'familiar.' You have heard of our rich cousin in Cuba, Henry
Morrison?"
"Oh, yes; I have heard grandfather speak of him. So, then, he was
Cousin Harry! I should like one chance at his hair, for all his
goodness. Did you ever meet again?"
"Never. His father's family soon removed to a distant place, so that
there was no necessity for visiting the old home. But I have always
heard him spoken of as an upright merchant and a cultivated and
generous man. He has resided several years in Cuba. A year or two
since, he went to Europe for his wife's health, and there she
died. Rumor now reports him as about to become the husband of an
Englishwoman of high connections. I should be very glad to see him
once more.--But come now, Kate, let's have a decennial celebration of
our two anniversaries. Lay the tea-table in the grape arbor, and then
invite grandpapa to a feast of strawberries and cream."
I hastily ornamented our rural banquet-hall with long branches of
roses and honeysuckles in full bloom, stuck into the leafy roof. As we
sat chatting and laughing over our simple treat, a humming-bird darted
several times in and out. "A messenger!" whispered I to Aunt
Linny. "Depend upon it, Cousin Harry didn't marry the English lady."