Though each young flower had died,
There was the root—strong, living not the less
That all it yielded now was bitterness;
Yet still such love as quits not misery’s side,
Nor drops from guilt its ivy-like embrace,
Nor turns away from death’s, its pale heroic face.
—MRS. HEMANS.
Another four years passed away! The whirlwind which wrecked many a tall
commercial house, and strangled many a long accumulated fortune, had
passed over Philadelphia, carrying dismay, desolation and anguish. The
firm of which Mr. Laverty was the head, bent, but did not break.
Confidence in him was not impaired, for he was an unexceptionable
business man; but it was well known that he had sacrificed more than
half his fortune to secure the remainder.
And who that visited, during the summer of 1837, the various fashionable
watering-places, does not remember that pale girl, who, attended by a
doating father, sought a restoration of impaired health. Amy was lovely
still; true, the sunny smile was gone—but, in the place of that garish
splendor of radiance, which was wont “to burn like the mines of
sulphur,” there remained the calm and dreamy beauty of the moonlighted
sky. The rose had fled her cheek, but the lily, in all its purity, shone
from her Parian brow. She had felt, at last, that she possessed a heart.
She was no longer “a lump of ice in the clear, cold morn.” But her heart
was an unwritten scroll, upon which none of late dared attempt to
inscribe the word “love.” Many admired, some adored,—but her name had
gone forth, as of a heartless coquette. To win her love, would have been
ineffably sweet; but, like the French gallant, no one thought it
reasonable to thrust his head into a hive in search of the honey!
“Amy Laverty looks better, to-night, and begins to beam radiantly again,
Walton,” said a gay lounger, to his friend.
“Yes,” was the reply, “chaste as the icicle, and every whit as cold!
Like the henchman of Harold the Dauntless, she has, or had, the faculty
of chilling all who ventured within her influence!”
“Oh! you speak feelingly,” laughed Withers, “for I remember, now, that
she had you ‘within her influence,’ some years since, when you held a
clerk-ship at Washington; and then she placed her icy fingers on you! A
frozen child dreads the frost, I perceive, as much as a burned child
does the fire!”
“Rail away, Tom! With honest Grumio, ‘I confess the cupe!’” replied our
old friend Stanton, who, at the Jackson Inaugural Ball, had been the
subject of Pennant’s remarks to Amy, during the flirtations of the
dance. “The undeniable fact is, I was jilted.” In those few words are
embodied the history of Amy’s life. “Van Buren never had so many
applications for office, since he was inaugurated, in March last, as she
has had proposals, and the disappointed applicants have been about as
numerous under one administration as the other. I was deeply,
desperately, madly in love with her, but she cured me—chilled me off!”
“Has she a heart, think you, Stanton?” continued Withers, with mock
solemnity. “I have read of a French surgeon, who dissected a man, and
found him without that organ. Do you not think that ‘the Laverty’ might
be coupled with him, in this Noah’s ark of a world, as the two of a
kind?”
“Nay, hardly as bad as that! Amy has been thoughtless, ambitious, and
possessed of the pride of Lucifer—like him, she is a fallen angel;
fallen from the effects of that pride, but I sincerely believe she has
been humbled in a measure—that she has a heart, and that it has been
touched. I have seen much of her; for my dismissal as her lover, never
interrupted our friendly relations; and she has been an altered woman
ever since Frank Pennant married Kate Stanton;—but the change came too
late, and she now stands a fair chance to “lead apes,” for I know not
the man who would venture to address her! The days of your Petrucios and
Duke Aranzas are past, and live but in the drama. And so she attained
the reputation of a coquette, and therefore—”
“Yes, I understand,” interrupted Withers; “but see, yonder goes Mr.
Stanton, another of her discarded ones. I am told she passed some bitter
slight on him.”
“Yes, she made no secret of her scorn at the humble lot of his parents.
But she little knew the brilliant career which destiny and perseverance
had marked out for him. Henry Stanton goes to Congress this winter; and
no man of his age was ever elected under such brilliant auguries of
success. He has never married, and I have reason to believe that her
conduct has had a marked influence upon his whole past life.”
“How so?”
“Shortly after his rejection by her his father died. A frugal life had
done as much as all the stock speculations at the Exchange could have
effected, and he was found to be extremely rich—a round hundred
thousand at the least. Stanton could have lived in ease and
independence; but his honorable pride was stung, and he seemed
determined to win his way to eminence, that the proud beauty might see
that mind, not money, was the true standard of nature’s nobility.”
“And do they ever meet now?”
“Oh, yes—as cold friends. I have sometimes thought—and were it any
other man than Henry Stanton, I should be certain—that he loves her
still. I have watched him gaze upon her, when he thought himself
unobserved, and having known myself what it was to feel an unrequited
passion, have been almost convinced that the old flame was only
smothered or concealed, but not burned out.”
This conversation details what “the world” thought upon the persons in
whose fate our story is interested. And how was it with Amy Laverty? Was
the proud, imperious beauty brought to feel the nothingness of pride
when it would shut out from the heart the pleadings of youth, talent,
and high chivalric honor? Had a miracle been wrought? It had, indeed;
she would now have exchanged the world’s wealth for the love of Henry
Stanton. She had watched his brilliant career, at first with
indifference, but at length the thought would intrude itself, that he,
upon whose eloquence admiring listeners hung enraptured; whose fame was
ringing through the land, and whose smile was courted by all, might have
been hers. At such times the monitor within would say, what a noble
pride it would have been to call such a man all her own. By almost
imperceptible degrees the imperious girl was changed to an humbled and
deep-loving woman.
This change of feeling, from one extreme to the other most opposite, is
a curious constitution of human nature. It is only in the mysterious
workings of Providence, and its various applications for the benefit of
mankind, that we can trace the solution of this apparent paradox, that
actions or feelings frequently produce effects the very reverse of those
which we would have expected. Thus joyous sensations often leave a tinge
of pain, and sorrows bring a cordial balm to the afflicted heart. Tell
the mother, who weeps the ruin of her hopes and joys over the grave of a
darling child, that her offspring is now reaping the fruits of an
innocent life in a world of never-ending bliss, and her rising sobs will
show that these consoling reflections strongly augment her grief. The
angry man is more deeply incensed at every mark of favor, and the
conduct of the lover assures us, that “fears and sorrows fan the fire of
joy.”
The influence of this converted passion, if the term may be allowed, is
co-existent with all our thoughts and actions, and occurs when the mind
is occupied by some powerful feeling, whose commanding influence seems
to subdue every inferior emotion. The patriot forgets individual wrongs
in his love of country; the soldier knows not fear, anxiety, or hope,
when the “big war” makes “ambition virtue.” Even religion itself is not
uninfluenced by this principle. The apostles, we are told, when confined
in the prisons of Thyatira, sang praises unto God at midnight; as if the
darkness and gloom of their dungeon, and the aggravating circumstances
of their confinement, heightened the triumph of their devotion, and
enabled them, notwithstanding the fearful earthquake which shook the
foundations of their prison, to conduct with moderation and fortitude.
The flames of persecution, while consuming the bodies of suffering
martyrs, seem to have given new energy to the pious emotions of their
minds, and enabled the fervency of their devotions to rise superior to
every external object. The design of such a constitution of our nature
is easily seen; it is thus the powers of the human mind are made to
correspond with the occasion on which they are excited. It is a
principle salutary in its effects upon ourselves, and illustrative of
His character who has established all things in benevolence and wisdom.
Thus we may see how the chastening hand can convert the proudest scorn
to the timidity of love, feeling itself hopelessly unrequited; and by
tracing the arcana of the heart’s mysteries, discover how natural was
the process, or rather the retribution, which turned the pride of Amy,
and made her recoil from the contemplation of her former self.