Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 - Various
Here he caught sight of Alice's wide-opened eyes, and his smile
changed into his own genial laugh, as he kissed her forehead and went
on.
"That was a little aside, Alice, made to my other self, my
metaphysical man,--not meant at all for my audience. I was meditating
a lecture on the causes of conjugal happiness, but I seem to have
stumbled upon a knot in the very first unwinding of the thread of my
discourse."
"I'll listen to the lecture, Uncle, though I see but one simple and
all-sufficient cause for my happiness."
"That Herbert loves you, ha? Know, my pretty neophyte, that happiness,
married happiness especially, does not come from being loved, but from
loving. What says our Coleridge?
"'For still the source, not fountain, gives
The daily food on which Love lives.'
"And he is right, although you shake your curls. In most marriages, in
all that are not matters of convenience, one party has a stronger
heart, will, character, than the other. And that one loves the most
from the very necessity of his nature, and, loving most, is the
happier. The other falls, after a while, into a passive state, becomes
the mere recipient of love, and finds his or her happiness in
something else, or perhaps does not find it at all."
"Neither side would satisfy me, Uncle John; I hardly know which fate
would be the more terrible. Do you think I would accept such a
compromise in exchange for all I am living and feeling now? I would
rather be miserable at once than so half-happy."
"But, my darling, Colin and Chloe cannot spend their whole lives
singing madrigals and stringing daisies. It is not in human nature to
support, for any length of time, such superhuman bliss. The time will
come when Colin will find no more rhymes to 'dove,' and when Chloe
will tire of hearing the same one. It is possible that Herbert will
some time tire of reading Shelley to you,--nay, it is even possible
that the time may come when you will tire of hearing him; it is of
that time I would talk. The present is as perfectly satisfactory to me
as to you and Herbert, though not exactly in the same degree."
"Well, Uncle, what is your advice to Chloe disillusioned,--if you
insist that such a thing must be?"
"Simply this, my own dear little child," answered Uncle John, and his
voice took almost a solemn tone in its deep tenderness,--"when that
time comes, as come it must, do not worry your husband with idle
regrets for the past; remember that the husband is not the lover;
remember that your sex love through your imagination, and look always
for that clothing and refining of passion with sentiment, which, with
us, belong only to the poetry and chivalry of youthful ardor. We may
love you as well afterward,--nay, we may love you a great deal
better,--but we cannot take the trouble of telling you so every day;
we expect you to believe it once for all; and you,--you like to hear
it over and over again, and, not hearing it, you begin to fancy it no
longer true, and fall to trying experiments on your happiness. A fatal
error this, Alice. There is nothing that men so often enjoy as the
simply being let alone; but not one woman in a hundred can be made to
believe in such a strange enjoyment. Then the wife becomes
_exigeante_ and impatient, and the husband, after fruitless
attempts to find out what he has done, never suspecting that the real
trouble is what he has left undone, finds her unreasonable, and begins
to harden himself to griefs which he classes, like Miss Edgeworth,
under the head of 'Sorrows of my Lord Plumcake.'"
"Miserable fate of the nobler sex, Uncle,--disturbed, even in the
sublime heights of philosophical self-possession, by the follies and
unreasonablenesses of the weaker vessel! I suppose you allow men to
live out their natures unrebuked, while women must live down theirs?"
"Not I, Alice,--but I am by nature a special pleader, and, just now, I
am engaged on Herbert's side of the case. Fee me well, my darling, by
a kiss or a merry look, and bring Herbert up to judgment, and I will
tell him home truths too."
"Let me hear your argument for the other side, most subtile of
reasoners, and I may, perhaps, be able to repeat them at second-hand,
when occasion calls for them."
"Don't think of it, my dear! Second-hand arguments are like
second-hand coffee,--the aroma and the strength have disappeared,
never to be brought back again. But if the husband were really here,
and the wife had paid well for properly-administered advice, I should
say to him, 'Do not fancy that you have done everything for your wife
when you have given her house, servants, and clothes; she really wants
a little attention now and then. Try to turn your thoughts away from
your more important affairs long enough to notice the pretty
morning-wrapper or the well-fitting evening-dress which has cost her
some thought for your sake; do not let a change in the furniture or a
new ornament in the parlor go unnoticed till the bill comes in. And
while, of course, you claim from her the most ready sympathy in all
your interests and enthusiasms, give her, once in a great while, say
every year or so, a little genuine interest in the housekeeping trials
or dressmaker grievances that meet her at every turn.
"Moreover, I would recommend to you, should your wife happen to have
some literary or artistic tastes, not to ignore them entirely because
they do not pay so well as your counting-room accounts do, and are not
so entertaining to you as billiards. I would even indulge her by
sacrificing a whole evening to her, once in a while, even to the
detriment of your own business or pleasure. Depend upon it, it will
pay in the end."
"Now, Uncle, like Rosalind, you have simply misused your whole sex in
your special pleadings, both for and against. If Herbert were here, I
would appeal to him to know if the time can ever come when what I do
can be uninteresting to him. But I know, for myself, that such a thing
cannot be. You are not talking from your own experience, Uncle?"
added she, suddenly looking up in his face.
"My dear Alice, were it possible, should it ever seem likely, that my
experience might benefit you, how readily I would lay it open before
you! But those who have lived their lives are like the prophets of
old,--their words are believed only when they are fulfilled. The
meaning of life is never understood till it is past. Like Moses on the
rock, our faces are covered when the Lord passes by, and we see only
his back. But look behind you, my darling!"
Alice turned suddenly and her face lighted up into the full beauty of
happiness as she saw Herbert standing in the doorway.
"I hope you have room for me, Mr. Delano," said he, advancing, "for
here I am, weather-bound, as well as Miss Alice and Kate. There is a
drizzling rain falling out-of-doors, and your Kentucky roads are fast
growing impassable for walkers."
Uncle John put into words the question that Alice's eyes had been
asking so eagerly.
"Where did you stumble from, my dear fellow,--and at this time of
night, too?"
"Why, I could not find any one at home on Fourth Street, so I took the
last ferry-boat and came over, on a venture, to try the Kentucky
hospitality, of which we New-Yorkers hear so much; and my stumbling
walk through the mud made me so unpresentable, that I found the way
round the house to Aunt Molly's premises, and left the tracks of my
muddy boots all over her white kitchen, till she, in despair, provided
me with a pair of your moccasins, and, shod in these shoes of silence,
I came quietly in upon you. I do hope you are all glad to see me," he
added, sitting down on the low seat that Alice had left, and looking
up in her face as she stood by her uncle.
Alice shook her head with a pretty assumption of displeasure, as she
said, "I told you I did not want to see you till to-morrow." But
hardly half an hour had elapsed before she and Herbert had wandered
off into the parlor, and Uncle John and I were left to watch them
through the open door.
"If he were not so impulsive," said Uncle John, abruptly,--"if he were
not so full of fancies! Kate, you are a wise and discreet little lady,
and we understand each other. Did I say too much?"
Just then Alice looked back.
"Chloe is the one who sings madrigals to-night, Uncle; she is going to
read Colin a lesson"; and, sitting down at the piano, she let her
hands run over the keys and burst out joyously into that variation of
Raleigh's pretty pastoral song,--
"Shepherd, what's Love? I prithee tell."
"It is a fountain and a well,
Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
And this is Love, as I've heard tell:
Repentance, repentance, repentance!"
TALK NUMBER THREE.
Five years have passed since Alice sat at Uncle John's feet and
listened to his words that gave lessons of wisdom while they seemed
only to amuse; and now she sits again on the low stool, looking up in
his face, while I stand behind him and look down on her, marking the
changes that those years have wrought. She has come back to us, our
own Alice still,--but how different from the impetuous, impulsive girl
who left us five years ago! Her face has lost its early freshness,
though it seems to me lovelier than before, in its matured, womanly
expression; but her eyes, which used to be lifted so eagerly, to
glance so rapidly in their varying expression, are now hidden by their
lashes even when she is talking earnestly; her lips have lost their
mobility, and have even something stern in their fixedness; whilst her
hair, brought down smoothly over her forehead and twisted firmly in
the low knot behind, and her close-fitting widow's dress add to the
sobriety and almost matronliness of her appearance.
For Alice is a widow now, and has come back to us in her bereavement.
We have known but little of her real self for some years, so guarded
have been her letters; and not until the whole terrible truth burst
upon us, did we do more than suspect that her married life had not
brought the happiness she anticipated. She is talking freely now she
is at home again among her own people.
"I have sometimes thought, Uncle John, that all you said to me, the
last night I spent here, had some meaning deeper than met the ear. Had
you second sight? Did you foresee the future? Or was there that in
the present which foreshadowed it to you?"
"I am no prophet, Alice. I spoke only from what I knew of life, and
from my knowledge of your character and Herbert's. But I am yet to
know how my words have been fulfilled."
"It makes no difference now," said she, slowly, and with a touching
weariness. "And yet," she added, rousing herself, "it would make all
the difference in the world to me, if I could see clearly where it was
that I was to blame. Certainly I must have done wrong; such
wretchedness could not have come otherwise."
Uncle John drew her hand within his, while he answered calmly,--"It is
very probable you have done wrong, my darling; who of us are wise and
prudent, loving and forbearing, as we should be?"
"You think so? How glad I am to hear you say so! Yes, I can see it
now; I can see how I did that very thing against which you warned
me. First came the time when Herbert forgot to admire everything which
I did and said, and I--I tried little pouting ways, that I did not
feel. Then they were so successful, that I carried them too far, and
Herbert did not pet me out of them. Then I grew anxious and began to
guess at that truth which was only too clear to me at last, that he
did not love me as I loved him. Next,--oh, Uncle John, how much I was
to blame!--I watched every word and look, gave meanings to things that
had none, asked explanations where Herbert had none to give, and
fairly put him under such restraint that he could neither look nor act
himself. He fretted under it,--who would not?--and then began the
thousand excuses for being away from home, business engagements,
club-meetings, some country-customers of the firm, who must be taken
to the theatre, and, at last, no excuse at all but want of time. I
knew then that his love for me had never been more than a passing
fancy, and, woman-like, I grew proud, shut my heart up from him,
buried myself in my books. I never studied before as I did then, Uncle
John, for I studied to get away from myself, and, looking back, I
wonder even now at what I accomplished. Yes, you were right, books are
fast friends,--and mine would have brought me their own exceeding
great reward, had not my spirit been so bitter.
"It was then that mamma was so sick and I came home. Did you think me
wonderfully calm, Kate? I think somebody said I showed astonishing
self-control; but, in truth, I was frightened at myself,--I had no
feeling about anything, Mamma's sickness seemed something entirely
removed from me, something which concerned me not in the least. I was
calm because I felt nothing. I wondered then and wonder now that you
did not find me out, for I knew how unlike I was to my former
self. Then mamma got well, and I was not glad; I went back to New
York, and felt no sorrow at parting with you all.
"But when I got back, oh, Uncle John, I was too late!--too late to do
right, even had I wished it! I don't know,--I made good resolutions on
my way back: Heaven knows if I should have had strength to put them in
practice. But it was all over; not only had I lost Herbert, but he had
lost himself. The first time I saw him he was not himself,--I might as
well say it,--he was drunk.
"There is no need of going through the rest, Uncle,--you will not ask
it. I think I did everything I could;--I threw away my books; I
devoted myself to making his home pleasant to him; never, no, never,
in my girlish days, did I take half the pains to please him that I did
now to win him from himself. I read to him, I sang to him, I filled
the house with people that I knew were to his taste, I dressed for
him, I let myself be admired by others that he might feel proud of me,
might think me more worthy of admiration,--but all to no
purpose. Sometimes I hoped, but more often I despaired; his fall
seemed to me fearfully rapid, though now the three years seem to have
been interminable. At last I had no hope but that of concealing the
truth from you all. You thought me churlish, Kate, in my answer to
your proposal to spend last winter with me? My darling, I dared not
have you in my house. But it is over now. I knew how that last
horrible attack would end when I sent for papa. He had gone through
two before that, and the doctor told me the third would be fatal. Poor
Herbert!--Uncle John, can I ever forgive myself?"
Alice looked up with dry and burning eyes into Uncle John's face, over
which the tears were streaming.
"My child, it is right that you should blame yourself. What sorrow do
we meet in life that we do not in part bring upon ourselves? Who is
there of us who is not wise after time? which of us has not made some
fatal mistake?"
I felt half indignant that Uncle John did not tell her how much more
to blame, how weak, how reckless Herbert had been; but the calmer
expression which came over Alice's countenance showed me that he was
right, that he best knew her heart. She could not now be just to
herself; she was happier in being unjust.
We were still and silent for a long time. The light wood-fire on the
hearth crackled and burned to ashes, but it had done its office in
tempering the chill of the autumn evening, and through the half-open
door stole the 'sweet decaying smell' of the fallen leaves, while the
hush of an Indian-summer night seemed to calm our very hearts with its
stillness.
Uncle John spoke at last. His voice was very gentle and subdued as he
said:
"I told you once, Alice, that my life should be opened to you, if ever
its errors could be either warning or consolation to you. But who am
I, to judge what beacon-lights we may hold out to each other? There is
as much egotism, sometimes, in silence as in the free speech which
asks for sympathy. Perhaps I have been too proud to lay open my
follies before you and my little Kate."
Alice looked up, with a touch of her old eagerness, as Uncle John went
on.
"It was long before you were born, my dear, that, for some college
peccadilloes,--it is so long ago that I have almost forgotten now what
they were,--I was suspended (rusticated we called it) for a term, and
advised by the grave and dignified president to spend my time in
repenting and in keeping up with my class. I had no mind to come
home; I had no wish, by my presence, to keep the memory of my
misdemeanors before my father's mind for six months; so I asked and
gained leave to spend the summer in a little town in Western
Massachusetts, where, as I said, I should have nothing to tempt me
from my studies. I had heard from a classmate what famous shooting and
fishing were to be found there, and I knew something of the beauty of
Berkshire scenery; but I honorably intended to study well and
faithfully, taking only the moderate amount of recreation necessary
for my health.
"I went, and soon established myself in a quiet farm-house with my
books, gun, and fishing-rod, and had passed there a whole month with
an approving conscience and tolerable success both in studies and
sport, when the farmer announced one morning, that, as he had one
boarder, he might as well take another, and that a New York lady had
been inquiring of his neighbor Johnson, when he was in the city last
week, for some farm-house where they would be willing to take her
cheap for the summer. She could have the best room, and he didn't
suppose she'd be in anybody's way, so he had told Johnson that she
might come, if she would put up with their country fare.
"She came the next week. She was a widow, some thirty years old, ten
years older than I was. I did not think her pretty,--perhaps
_piquante_, but that was all. In my first fastidiousness, I
thought her hardly lady-like, and laughed at her evident attempts to
attract my notice,--at her little vanities and affectations. But I do
not know; we were always together; I saw no other woman but the
farmer's wife. There were the mountain walks, the trees, the flowers,
the moonlight; she talked so well upon them all! In short, you do not
know, no young girl can know, the influence which a woman in middle
life, if she has anything in her, has over a young man; and she,--she
had shrewdness and a certain talent, and, I think now, knew what she
was doing,--at any rate, I fell madly in love. I knew my father would
never consent to my marrying then; I knew I was ruining my prospects
by doing so; but that very knowledge only made me more eager to secure
her.
"She was entirely independent of control, being left a widow with some
little property, and threw no obstacles in my way. We were married
there, in that little village, and for a few weeks I lived in a fool's
paradise.
"I could not tell you--indeed, I would not tell you, if I could--how
by degrees I found out what I had done,--that I had flung away my
heart on a woman who married me simply to secure herself the position
in society which her own imprudence had lost; how, when she found I
had nothing to offer her but a home in my father's house, entirely
dependent upon him, she accused me of having deceived her for the sake
of her own miserable pittance; how she made herself the common talk of
Newport by her dissipation, her extravagance, her affectations; how
her love of excitement led her into such undisguised flirtations,
under the name of friendships, with almost every man she met, that her
imprudences, to call them by no harsher name, made my father insist,
that, for my mother's sake, I should seek another home.
"I did so, but it was only to go through a repetition of similar
scenes, of daring follies on her part, and reproaches on mine. At
last, desperate, I induced my father to settle on her what would have
been my share of his property on condition that she should return to
New York,--while I, crushed down, mortified, and ashamed to look my
friends in the face, and sick of the wrongs and follies of civilized
life, grasped eagerly at an opportunity to join a fur-trading party,
and buried myself alive in the wilds of the Northwest.
"I had no object in going there but to escape from my wife and from
myself; but, once there, the charm of that free life took possession
of me; adventure followed adventure; opportunities opened to me, and I
grew to be an influential person, and made myself a home among the
Indians. It is a wild life that the Indian traders live up in that
far-away country, and many a reckless deed is done there which public
opinion would frown upon here. I am afraid I was no better than my
companions; I lived my life and drew from it whatever enjoyment it
would bring; but, at least, I did not brutalize myself as some of them
did; for that I may thank the refining influence of my early
education. Meantime, I was almost lost to my family and, indeed, I
hardly regretted it, for nothing would have brought me back while my
wife lived, and, if I were not to be with my friends, why eat my heart
out with longings for them? So, for nearly twenty years, I lived the
life of adventure, danger, and privation, that draws its only charm
from its independence.
"At last came a letter from your mother. It found its way to me from
fort to fort, brought up part of the way with the letters to the
troops stationed at our upper forts, then carried by the Indian
runners to the trading-posts of the fur-companies till it reached me
in the depths of the Rocky Mountains. My wife was dead,--she had died
suddenly; my property, all that she had not squandered, (and it was so
tied up by my father's forethought that she could only throw away a
part of it,) was my own again; my sister longed to see me, and
promised me a welcome to her house and heart. I grew restless from
that moment, and, converting into money the not inconsiderable wealth
with which I had surrounded myself in the shape of furs, horses,
buffalo-robes, and so forth, I came down to the States again to begin
life anew, a man of forty-five, my head whitened, and my features
marked before their time from the life of exposure which I had
led. Alice, I, too, was too late. I had dropped out of the tide of
life and progress in my twenty years' seclusion, and, struggle as I
might, I could not retrieve the time lost. The present age knew not of
me,--I had lost my place in it; the thoughts, feelings, habits, of all
around were strange to me; I had been pushed out of the line of march,
and never could I fall into step again. In society, in business, in
domestic life, it was all the same. Trial after trial taught me, at
last, the truth; and when I had learned not only to believe it, but to
accept it, I came home to my father's house, now mine, and made myself
friends of my books,--those faithful ones who were as true to me as if
I had never deserted them. They have brought me content, if not
happiness; and you, Alice, you and Kate, you have filled fully an old
man's heart."
Alice's tears were dropping fast on Uncle John's hand as she said,--
"I will be more to you henceforward than ever before. I have nothing
else to live for now. Kate is the home child; but I--I will stay with
you, and you shall teach me, too, to be contented,--to find my
happiness, as you do, in making the happiness of all around."
Uncle John passed his other hand over her hair,--
"You shall stay with me for the present, my darling,--perhaps as long
as I live. But life is not over for you, Alice. You have youth,--you
have years in store. For you it is not _too late_."
AN EVENING MELODY.
Oh that yon pines which crown the steep
Their fires might ne'er surrender!
Oh that yon fervid knoll might keep,
While lasts the world, its splendor!
Pale poplars on the wind that lean,
And in the sunset shiver,
Oh that your golden stems might screen
For aye yon glassy river!
That yon white bird on homeward wing
Soft-sliding without motion,
And now in blue air vanishing
Like snow-flake lost in ocean,
Beyond our sight might never flee,
Yet onward still be flying;
And all the dying day might be
Immortal in its dying!
Pellucid thus in golden trance,
Thus mute in expectation,
What waits the Earth? Deliverance?
Ah, no! Transfiguration!
She dreams of that New Earth divine,
Conceived of seed immortal:
She sings, "Not mine the holier shrine,
But mine the cloudy portal!"
CHESUNCOOK
[Concluded.]
Early the next morning we started on our return up the Penobscot, my
companion wishing to go about twenty-five miles above the Moosehead
carry to a camp near the junction of the two forks, and look for moose
there. Our host allowed us something for the quarter of the moose
which we had brought, and which he was glad to get. Two explorers from
Chamberlain Lake started at the same time that we did. Red flannel
shirts should be worn in the woods, if only for the fine contrast
which this color makes with the evergreens and the water. Thus I
thought when I saw the forms of the explorers in their birch, poling
up the rapids before us, far off against the forest. It is the
surveyor's color also, most distinctly seen under all circumstances.
We stopped to dine at Ragmuff, as before. My companion it was who
wandered up the stream to look for moose this time, while Joe went to
sleep on the bank, so that we felt sure of him; and I improved the
opportunity to botanize and bathe. Soon after starting again, while
Joe was gone back in the canoe for the frying-pan, which had been
left, we picked a couple of quarts of tree-cranberries for a sauce.