"As you love me, do as I beg you," she replied, with entreating earnestness. "It does not become me to keep my mother, under any circ.u.mstances, thus waiting at the door, and asking entrance."
Meanwhile, the clamors of Mrs. Clifford were continued. Julia"s aunt was there also, and the controversy was hot and heavy between them. Annoyed as I was, and apprehensive for Julia. I yet could not forbear laughing at the ludicrousness of my position and the whole scene. I began to think, from the equal violence of the two ancient dames without, that they might finally get to blows. This was also the fear of Julia, and another reason why we should throw open the door. I at length did so; and soon had the doubtful satisfaction of transferring to myself all the wrath of the disappointed mother. She rushed in, the moment the door turned upon its hinges, almost upsetting me in the violence of her onset. Bounding into the apartment with a fury that was utterly beyond her own control, I was led to fear that she might absolutely inflict violence upon her daughter, who by this time had sunk, in equal terror and exhaustion, upon a sofa in the remotest corner of the room. I hastily placed myself between them, and did not scruple, with extended hands, to maintain a safe interval of s.p.a.ce between the two. I will not attempt to describe the tigress rage or the shrieking violence which ensued on the part of this veteran termagant. It was only closed at length, when, Julia having fainted under the storm, dead to all appearance, I picked up the a.s.sailant VI ET ARMIS, and, in defiance of screams and scratches--for she did not spare the use of her talons--resolutely transported her from the chamber.
CHAPTER XIV.
ONE DEBT PAID.
Staggering forward under this burden--a burden equally active and heavy--who should I encounter at the head of the stairs, but the liege lord of the lady--my poor imbecile uncle. As soon as she beheld him--foaming and almost unintelligible in her rage--she screamed for succor--cried "murder" "rape," "robbery," and heaven knows what besides.
A moment before, though she scratched and scuffled to the utmost, she had not employed her lungs. A momentary imprecation alone had broken from her, as it were, perforce and unavoidably. Now, nothing could exceed the stentorian tumult which her tongue maintained. She called upon her husband to put me to death--to tear me in pieces--to do anything and everything for the punishing of so dreadful an offender as myself. In thus commanding him, she did not forbear uttering her own unmeasured opinion of the demerits of the man whose performances she required.
"If you had the spirit of a man, Clifford--if you were not a poor shoat--you"d never have submitted so long as you have to this viper"s insolence. And there you stand, doing nothing--absolutely still as a stock, though you see him beating your wife. Ah! you monster!--you coward!--that I should ever have married a man that wasn"t able to protect me."
This is a sufficient sample of her style, and not the worst. I am constrained to confess that some portions of the good lady"s language would better have suited the modes of speech common enough among the Grecian housekeepers at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries. I have omitted not a few of the bad words, and forborne the repet.i.tion of that voluminous eloquence poured out, after the Billingsgate fashion, equally upon myself, her daughter, and husband. During the vituperation she still kicked and scuffled; my face suffered, and my eyes narrowly escaped. But I grasped her firmly; and when her husband, my worthy uncle, in obedience to her orders, sprang upon me, with the bludgeon which he now habitually carried, I confronted him with the l.u.s.ty person of his spouse, and regret to say, that the first thwack intended for my shoulders, descended with some considerable emphasis upon hers. This increased her fury, and redoubled her screams. But it did not lessen my determination, or make me change my mode of proceeding. I resolutely pushed her before me. The husband stood at the head of the stairs and my object was to carry her down to the lower story. The stairs were narrow, and by keeping up a good watch, I contrived to force him to give ground, using his spouse as a sort of battering-RAM--not to perpetrate a pun at the expense of the genders--which, I happened to know, had always been successful in making him give ground on all previous occasions. His habitual deference for the dame, a.s.sisted me in my purpose. Step by step, however, he disputed my advance; but I was finally successful; without any injury beyond that which had been inflicted by the talons of the fair lady, and perhaps a single and slight stroke upon the shoulder from the club of her husband, I succeeded in landing her upon the lower flat in safety. Beyond a squeeze or two, which the exigency of the case made something more affectionate than any I should have been otherwise pleased to bestow upon her, she suffered no hurt at my hands.
But, though willing to release her, she was not so willing herself to be released. When I set her free, she flew at me with cat-like intrepidity; and I found her a much more difficult customer than her husband. Him I soon baffled. A moment sufficed to grapple with him and wrench the stick from his hands, and then, with a moderate exercise of agility, I contrived to spring up the stairway which I had just descended, regain the chamber, and secure the door, before they could overtake or annoy me with their further movements. My wife"s aunt, meanwhile, had been busy with her restoratives. Julia was now recovering from the fainting fit; and I had the satisfaction of hearing from one of the servants that the baffled enemy had gone off in a fury that made their departure seem a flight rather than a mere retreat.
I should have treated the whole event with indifference--their rage and their regard equally--but for my suffering and sensitive wife. Wronged as she had been, and so persecuted as to render all her subsequent conduct justifiable, she yet forgot none of her filial obligations; and, in compliance with her earnest entreaties, I had already, the very day after this conflict, prepared an elaborate and respectful epistle to both father and mother, when an event took place of startling solemnity, which was calculated to subdue my anger, and make the feelings of my wife, if possible, more accessible than ever to the influences of fear and sorrow. Only three days from our marriage had elapsed, when her father was stricken speechless in the street. He was carried home for dead. I have already hinted that, months before, and just after the threatened discovery of those fraudulent measures by which he lost his fortune, his mind had become singularly enfeebled; his memory failing, and all his faculties of judgment--never very strong--growing capricious, or else obtuse and un.o.bserving. These were the symptoms of a rapid physical change, the catastrophe of which was at hand. How far the excitement growing out of his daughter"s flight and marriage may have precipitated this result, is problematical. It may be said, in this place, that my wife"s mother charged it all to my account. I was p.r.o.nounced the murderer of her husband. On this head I did not reproach myself. It was necessary, however, that a reconciliation should take place between the father and his child. To this I had, of course, no sort of objection. But it will scarce be believed that the miserable woman, her mother, opposed herself to their meeting with the utmost violence of her character. Nothing but the outcry of the family and all its friends--including the excellent physician whose secret services had contributed so much toward my happiness--compelled her to give way, though still ungraciously, to the earnest entreaty of her daughter for permission to see her father before he died! and even then, by the death-bed of the unhappy and almost unconscious man, she recommenced the scene of abuse and bitter reproach, which, however ample the reader and hearer may have already found it, it appears she had left unfinished. It was in the midst of a furious tirade, directed against myself, chiefly, and Julia, in part, that the spasms of death, unperceived by the mother, pa.s.sed over the contracted muscles of the father"s face. The bitter speech of the blind woman--blind of heart--was actually finished after death had given the final blow to the victim. Of this she had no suspicion, until instructed by the piercing shrieks of her daughter, who fell swooning upon the corse before her.
CHAPTER XV.
HONEYMOON PERIOD.
It was supposed by Julia and certain of her friends that an event so solemn, so impressive, and so unexpected, as the death of Mr. Clifford, would reasonably affect the mind of his widow; and the concessions which I had meditated to address to herself and her late husband were now so varied as to apply solely to herself. I took considerable pains in preparing my letter, with the view to soften her prejudices and asperities, as well as to convince her reason. There was one suggestion which Julia was disposed to insist on, to which, however, I was singularly averse. In the dest.i.tution of Mrs. Clifford, her diminished and still diminishing resources, not to speak of her loneliness, she thought that I ought to tender her a home with us. Had she been any other than the captious, cross-grained creature that she was--bad her misfortunes produced only in part their legitimate and desirable effects of subduing her perversity--I should have had no sort of objection. But I knew her imperious and unreasonable nature; and I may here add, that, by this time, I knew something of my own: I was a man of despotic character. The constant conflicts which I had had from boyhood, resulting as they had done in my frequent successes and final triumph, had, naturally enough, made me dictatorial. Sanguine in temperament, earnest in character, resolute in impulse, I was necessarily arbitrary in mood. It was not likely that Mrs. Clifford would forget her waywardnesses, and it was just as unreasonable that I should submit to her insolences. Besides, one"s home ought to be a very sacred place. It is necessary that the peace there should compensate and console for the strifes without. To hope for this in any household where there is more than one master, would bo worse than idle. Nay, even if there were peace, the chances are still great that there would be some lack of propriety. Domestic regulations would become inutile. Children and servants would equally fail of duty and improvement under conflicting authorities; and all the sweet social harmonies of family would be jarred away by misunderstandings if not bickerings, leading to coldness, suspicion, and irremediable jealousies. These things seemed to threaten me from the first moment when Julia submitted to me her desire that her mother should be invited to take up her abode with us. I reasoned with her against it; suggested all the grounds of objection which I really felt; and reviewed at length the long history of our connection from my childhood up, which had been distinguished by her constant hostility and hate. "How," I asked, "can it be hoped that there will be any change for the better now? She is the same woman, I the same man! It is not reasonable to think that the result of our reunion will be other than it has been." But Julia implored.
"I know what you say is reasonable--is just; but, dear Edward, she is my mother, and she is alone."
I yielded to her wishes. Could I else? My letter to her mother concluded with a respectful entreaty that she would take apartments in our dwelling, and a chair at our table, and lessen, to this extent, the expenses of her own establishment.
"What!" exclaimed the frenzied woman to Julia"s aunt, to whom the charge of presenting the communication was committed--"what! eat the bread of that insolent and ungrateful wretch? Never! never!"
She flung the epistle from her with disdain; and, to confess a truth, though, on Julia"s account, I should have wished a reconciliation, I was by no means sorry, on my own, that such was her ultimatum. I gave myself little further concern about this foolish person, and was happy to see that in a short time my wife appeared to recover from the sadness and stupor which the death of her father and the temper of her mother had naturally induced. The truth is, she had, for so long a period previously to her marriage, suffered from the persecutions of the latter, and moaned over the shame and imbecility of the former, that her present situation was one of great relief, and, for a while, of comparative happiness.
We lived in a pleasant cottage in the suburbs. A broad and placid lake spread out before our dwelling; and its tiny billows, under the pressure of the sweet southwestern breezes, beat almost against our very doors.
Green and shady groves environed us on three sides, and sheltered us from the intrusive gaze of the highway; and never was a brighter collection of flowers and blossoms cl.u.s.tered around any habitation of hope and happiness before. I rented the cottage on moderate terms, and furnished it neatly, but simply, as became my resources. All things considered, the prospect was fair and promising before us. Julia had few toils, and ample leisure for painting and music, for both of which she had considerable taste; for the former art, in particular, she possessed no small talent.
Our city, indeed, seemed one peculiarly calculated for these arts. Our sky was blue--deeply, beautifully blue; our climate mild and delightful.
Our people were singularly endowed with the genius for graceful and felicitous performances. Music was an ordinary attribute of the great ma.s.s; and in no community under the sun was there such an overflow of talent in painting and sculpture. It was the grand error of our wise heads to fancy that our city could be made one of great trade; and, in a vain struggle to give it some commercial superiority over its neighbor communities, the wealth of the people was thrown away upon projects that yielded nothing; and the arts were left neglected in a region which might have been made--and might still be made--if not exclusively, at least pre-eminently their own. The ordinary look of the women was beauty, the ordinary accent was sweetness. The soft moonlight evenings were rendered doubly harmonious by the tender tinkling of the wandering guitar, or the tones of the plaintive flute; while, from every third dwelling, rose the more stately but scarcely sweeter melodies stricken by pliant fingers from the yielding soul of the divine piano. The tastes even of the mechanic were refined by this language, the purest In which pa.s.sion ever speaks; and an ambition--the result of the highest tone of aristocratic influence upon society--prompted his desires to purposes and a position to which in other regions he is not often permitted to aspire. These influences were a.s.sisted by the peculiar location of our city--by its suburban freedom from all closeness; its innumerable gardens, the appanage of every household; its piazzas, verandahs, porches; its broad and minstrel-wooing rivers; and the majestic and evergreen forests, which grew and gathered around us on every hand. If ever there was a city intended by nature more particularly than another for the abodes and the offices of art, it was ours. It will become so yet: the mean, money-loving soul of trade can not always keep it from its destinies. We may never see it in our day; but so surely as we live, and as it shall live, will it become an Athens in our land--a city of empire by the sea, renowned for genius and taste--and the chosen retreat of muses, younger and more vigorous, and not less lovely, than the old!
Julia was in a very high degree impregnated with the taste and desire for art which seemed so generally the characteristic of our people. I speak not now of the degree of skill which she possessed. Her teacher was a foreigner, and a mere mechanic; but, while he taught her only the ordinary laws of painting, her natural endowment wrought more actively in favor of her performances. She soon discovered how much she could learn from the little which her teacher knew; and when she made this discovery, she ceased to have any use for his a.s.sistance. Books, the study of the old masters, and such of the new as were available to her, served her infinitely more in the prosecution of her efforts; and these I stimulated by all means in my power: for I esteemed her natural endowments to be very high, and very well knew how usual it is for young ladies, after marriage, to give up those tastes and accomplishments which had distinguished and heightened their previous charms. It was quite enough that I admired the art, and tasked her to its pursuit, to make her cling to it with alacrity and love. We wandered together early in the morning and at the coming on of evening, over all the sweet, enticing scenes which were frequent in our suburbs. Environed by two rivers, wide and clear, with deep forests beyond--a broad bay opening upon the sea in front--lovely islands of gleaming sand, strewn at pleasant intervals, seeming, beneath the transparent moonlight, the chosen places of retreat for naiads from the deep and fairies from the grove--there was no lack of objects to delight the eye and woo the pencil to its performances. Besides, never was blue sky, and gold-and-purple sunset, more frequent, more rich, more shifting in its shapes and colors, from beauty to superior beauty, than in our lat.i.tude.
The eye naturally turned up to it with a sense of hunger; the mind naturally felt the wish to record such hues and aspects for the use of venerating love; and the eager spirit, beginning to fancy the vision wrought according to its own involuntary wish, seemed spontaneously to cry aloud, in the language of the artist, on whom the consciousness of genius was breaking with a sun-burst for the first time, "I, too, am a painter!"
Julia"s studio was soon full of beginnings. Fragmentary landscapes were all about her. Like most southrons, she did not like to finish. There is an impatience of toil--of its duration at least--in the southern mind, which leaves it too frequently unperforming. This is a natural characteristic of an excitable people. People easily moved are always easily diverted from their objects. People of very vivid fancy are also very capricious. There is yet another cause for the non-performance of the southern mind--its fastidiousness. In a high state of social refinement, the standards of taste become so very exacting, that the mind prefers not to attempt, rather than to offend that critical judgment which it feels to be equally active in its a.n.a.lysis and rigid in its requisitions. Genius and ambition must be independent of such restraints. "Be bold, be bold, be bold!" is the language of encouragement in Spenser; and when he says, at the end, "Be not too bold," we are to consider the qualification as simply a quiet caution not to allow proper courage to rush into rashness and insane license.
The GENIUS that suffers itself to be fettered by the PRECISE, will perhaps learn how to polish marble, but will never make it live, and will certainly never live very long itself!
With books and music, painting and flowers, we pa.s.sed the happy moments of the honeymoon. I yielded as little of myself and my mind to my office and clients, in that period, as I possibly could. My cottage was my paradise. My habits, as might be inferred from my history, were singularly domestic. Doomed, as I had been, from my earliest years, to know neither friends nor parents; isolated, in my infancy, from all those tender ties which impress upon the heart, for all succeeding years, tokens of the most endearing affection; denied the smiles of those who yet filled my constant sight--my life was a long yearning for things of love--for things to love! While the struggle continued between Julia"s parents and myself, though confiding in her love, I had yet no confidence in my own hope to realize and to secure it. Now that it was mine--mine, at last--I grew uxorious in its contemplation. Like the miser, I had my treasure at home, and I hastened home to survey it with precisely the same doubts, and hopes, and fears, which the disease of avarice prompts in the unhappy heart of its victim To this disease, in chief, I have to attribute all my future sorrows; but the time is not yet for that. It is my joys now that I have to contemplate and describe.
How I dwelt, and how I dreamed! how I seemed to tread on air, in the unaccustomed fullness of my spirit! how my whole soul, given up to the one pursuit, I fondly fancied had secured its object! I fancied--nay, for the time, I was happy! Surely, I was happy!
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HAPPY SEASON.
Surely, I then was happy! I can not deceive myself as to the character of those brief Eden moments of security and peace. Even now, lone as I appear in the sight of others--degraded as I feel myself--even now I look back on our low white cottage, by the sh.o.r.es of that placid lake--its little palings gleaming sweetly through its dense green foliage--recall those happy, halcyon days, and feel that we both, for the time, had attained the secret--the secret worth all the rest--of an enjoyment actually felt, and quite as full, flush, and satisfactory, as it had seemed in the perspective. Possession had taken nothing of the gusto from hope. Truth had not impaired a single beauty of the ideal.
I looked in Julia"s face at morning when I awakened, and her loveliness did not fade. My lips, that drank sweetness from hers, did not cease to believe the sweetness to be there--as pure, as warm, as full of richness, as when I had only dreamed of their perfections. Our days and nights were pure, and gentle, and fond. One twenty-four hours shall speak for all.
When we rose at morning, we prepared for a ramble, either into the woods, or along the banks of the lovely river that lay west of, and at a short distance only from, our dwelling. There, wandering, as the sun rose, we imparted to each other"s eyes the several objects of beauty which his rising glance betrayed. Sometimes we sat beneath a tree, while she hurriedly sketched a clump of woods, the winding turn of the sh.o.r.e, its occasional crescent form or abrupt headland, as they severally appeared in a new light, and at a happy moment of time, beneath our vision. The songs of pleasant birds allured us on; the sweet scent of pines and myrtle refreshed us; and a gay, wholesome, hearty spirit was awakened in our mutual bosoms, as thus, day after day, while, like the d&y, our hearts were in their first youth, we resorted to the ever-fresh mansions of the sovereign Nature. This habit produces purity of feeling, and continues the habit in its earliest simplicity. The childlike laws which it encourages and strengthens are those which virtue most loves, and which strained forms of society are the first to overthrow. The pure tastes of youth are those which are always most dear to humanity; and love is easy of access, and peace not often a stranger to the mind, where these tastes preserve their ascendency.
My profession was something at variance with these tastes and feelings.
The very idea of law, which presupposes the frequent occurrence of injustice, engenders, by its practice, a habit of suspicion. To throw doubt upon the fact, and defeat and prevent convictions of the probable, are habits which lawyers soon acquire. This is natural from the daily encounter with bad and striving men--men who employ the law as an instrument by which to evade right, or inflict wrong; and, this apart, the acute mind loves, for its own sake, the very exercise of doubt, by which ingenuity is put in practice, and an adroit discrimination kept constantly at work.
I was saved, however, from something of this danger. The injustice which I had been subjected to, in my own boyhood, had filled me with the keenest love for the right. The idea of injustice aroused my sternest feelings of resistance. I had adopted the law as a profession with something of a patriotic feeling. I felt that I could make it an instrument for putting down the oppressor, the wrong-doer--for a.s.serting right, and maintaining innocence! I had my admiration, too, at that period, of that logical astuteness, that wonderful tenacity of hold and pursuit, and discrimination of attribute and subject, which distinguish this profession beyond all others, and seem to confirm the a.s.sumption made in its behalf, by which it has been declared the perfection of human reason. It will not be subtracting anything from this estimate, if I express my conviction, founded upon my own experience, that, though such may be the character of the law as an abstract science, it deserves no such encomium as it is ordinarily practised. Lawyers are too commonly profound only in the technicalities of the profession; and a very keen study and acquaintance with these--certainly a too great reliance upon them, and upon the dicta of other lawyers--leads to a dreadful departure from elementary principles, and a most woful (sic) disregard, if not ignorance, of those profounder sources of knowledge without which laws multiply at the expense of reason, and not in support of it; and lawyers may be compared to those ignorant captains to whom good ships are intrusted, who rely upon continual sounding to grope their way along the accustomed sh.o.r.es. Let them once leave the sh.o.r.es, and get beyond the reach of their plummets, and the good ship must owe its safety to fortune and the favor of the winds, for further skill is none.
I did not find the practice of the law affect my taste for domestic pleasures; on the contrary, it stimulated and preserved them. After toiling a whole morning in the courts, it was a sweet reprieve to be allowed to hurry off to my quiet cottage, and hear the one dear voice of my household, and examine the quiet pictures. These never stunned me with clamors; I was never pestered by them to determine the meum et tuum between noisy disputants, neither of whom is exactly right. There, my eye could repose on the sweetest scenes--scenes of beauty and freshness-the shady verdure of the woods, the rich variety of flowers, and pure, calm, transparent waters, hallowed by the meek glances of the matron moon. No creature could have been more gentle than my wife. She met me with a composed smile, equally bright and meek. I never heard a complaint from her lips. The evils of which other men complain--the complaints about servants, scoldings about delay or dinner--never reached my ears. The kindest solicitude that, in my fatigue, or amid the toils of a business of which wives can know little, and for which they make too little allowance, there should be nothing at home to make me irritable or give me disquiet, distinguished equally her sense and her affection. If it became her duty to communicate any unpleasant intelligence--any tidings which might awaken anger or impatience--she carefully waited foi the proper time, when the excitement of my blood was overcome, and repose of blood and brain had naturally brought about a kindred composure of mind.
Our afternoons were usually spent in the shade of the garden or piazza.
Sometimes, I sat by her while she was sketching. At others, she helped me to dress and train my garden-vines. Now and then we renewed our rambles of the morning, heedfully observing the different aspects of the same scenes and object, which had then delighted us, under the mellowing smiles of the sun at its decline. With books, music, and chess, our evenings pa.s.sed away without our consciousness; and day melted into night, and night departed and gave place to the new-born day, as quietly as if life had, in truth, become to us a great instrument of harmony, which bore us over the smooth seas of Time, to the gentle beating of fairy and unseen minstrelsy. Truly, then, we were two happy children.
The older children of this world, stimulated by stronger tastes and more lofty indulgences, may smile at the infantile simplicity of such resources and modes of enjoyment. They were childish, but perhaps not the less wise for that. Infancy lies very near to heaven. Childhood is a not unfit study for angels; and happy were it for us could we maintain the hearts and the hopes of that innocent period for a longer day within our bosoms. In our world we grow too fast, too presumptuously. We live on too rich food, moral and intellectual. The artifices of our tastes prove most fatally the decline of our reason. But, for us--we two linked hearts, so segregated from all beside--we certainly lived the lives of children for a while. But we were not to live thus always. In some worldly respects, _I_ was still a child: I cared little for its pomps, its small honors, its puny efforts, its tinselly displays. But I had vices of mind--vices of my own--sufficient to embitter the social world where all seems now so sweet--where all, in truth, WAS sweet, and pure, and worthy--and which might, under other circ.u.mstances, have been kept so to the last. I am now to describe a change!
CHAPTER XVII.
THE EVIL PRINCIPLE.
Heretofore, I have spoken of the blind hearts of others--of Mr. Clifford and his wilful wife--I have yet said little to show the blindness of my own. This task is now before me, and, with whatever reluctance, the exhibition shall resolutely be made. I have described a couple newly wed--eminently happy--blessed with tolerable independence--resources from without and within--dwelling in the smiles of Heaven, and not uncheered by the friendly countenance of man. I am to display the cloud, which hangs small at first, a mere speck, but which is to grow to a gloomy tempest that is to swallow up the loveliness of the sky, and blacken with gloom and sorrow the fairest aspects of the earth. I am to show the worm in the bud which is to bring blight--the serpent in the garden which is to spoil the Eden. Wo, beyond all other woes, that this serpent should be engendered in one"s own heart, producing its blindness, and finally working its bane! Yet, so it is! The story is a painful one to tell; the task is one of self-humiliation. But the truth may inform others--may warn, may strengthen, may save--before their hearts shall be utterly given up to that blindness which must end in utter desperation and irretrievable overthrow.
If the reader has not been utterly unmindful of certain moral suggestions which have been thrown out pa.s.singly in my previous narrative, he will have seen that, const.i.tutionally, I am of an ardent, impetuous temper--an active mind, ready, earnest, impatient of control--seeking the difficult for its own sake, and delighting in the conquest which is unexpected by others.
Such a nature is usually frank and generous. It believes in the affections--it depends upon them. It freely gives its own, but challenges the equally free and spontaneous gift of yours in return.
It has little faith in the things which fill the hearts of the mere worldlings. Worldly honors may delight it, but not worldly toys. It has no veneration for gewgaws. The shows of furniture and of dress it despises. The gorgeous equipage is an enc.u.mbrance to it; the imposing jewel it would not wear, lest it might subtract something from that homage which it prefers should be paid to the wearer. It is all selfish--thoroughly selfish--but not after the world"s fashion of selfishness. It h.o.a.rds nothing, and gives quite as much as it asks. What does it ask? What? It asks for love--devoted attachment; the homage of the loved one and the friends; the implicit confidence of all around it!
Ah! can anything be more exacting? Cruelly exacting, if it be not worthy of that it asks!
Imagine such a nature, denied from the beginning! The parents of its youth are gone!--the brother and the sister--the father and the friend!
It is dest.i.tute, utterly, of these! It is also dest.i.tute of those resources of fortune which are supposed to be sufficient to command them. It is thrown upon the protection, the charge of strangers. Not strangers--no! From strangers, perhaps, but little could be expected. It is thrown upon the care of relatives--a father"s brother! Could the tie be nearer? Not well! But it had been better if strangers had been its guardians. Then it might have learned to endure more patiently. At least, it would have felt less keenly the pangs inflicted by neglect, contumely, injustice. In this situation it grows up, like some sapling torn from its parent forest, its branches hacked off, its limbs lacerated! It grows up in a stranger soil. The sharp winds a.s.sail it from every quarter. But still it lives--it grows. It grows wildly, rudely, ungracefully; but it is strong and tough, in consequence of its exposure and its trials. Its vitality increases with every collision which shakes and rends it; until, in the pathetic language of relatives unhappily burdened with such enc.u.mbrances, "it seems impossible to kill it!"
I will not say that mine tried to kill me, but I do say that they took precious little care that I was not killed. The effect upon my body was good, however--the effect of their indifference. This roughening process is a part of physical training which very few parents understand. It is essential--should be insisted on--but it must not be accompanied with a moral roughening, which forces upon the mind of the pupil the conviction that the ordeal is meant for his destruction rather than for his good. There will be a recoil of the heart--a cruel recoil from the humanities--if such a conviction once fills the mind. It was this recoil which I felt! With warm affections seeking for objects of love--with feelings of hope and veneration, imploring for altars to which to attach themselves--I was commanded to go alone. The wilderness alone was open to me: what wonder if my heart grew wild and capricious even as that of the savage who dwells only amid their cheerless recesses? With a smile judiciously bestowed--with a kind word, a gentle tone, an occasional voice of earnest encouragement--my uncle and aunt might have fashioned my heart at their pleasure. I should have been as clay in the hands of the potter--a pliant willow in the grasp of the careful trainer. A nature const.i.tuted like mine is, of all others, the most flexible; but it is also, of all others, the most resisting and incorrigible. Approach it with a judicious regard to its affections, and you do with it what you please. Let it but fancy that it is the victim of your injustice, however slight, and the war is an interminable one between you!
Thus did I learn the first lessons of suspiciousness. They attended me to the schoolhouse; they governed and made me watchful there. The schoolhouse, the play-places--the very regions of earnest faith and unlimited confidence--produced no such effects in me. They might have done so, had I ceased, on going to school, to see my relatives any longer. But the daily presence of my uncle and aunt, with their system of continued injustice, at length rendered my suspicious moods habitual.
I became shy. I approached n.o.body, or approached them with doubt and watchfulness. I learned, at the earliest period, to look into character, to a.n.a.lyze conduct, to pry into the mysterious involutions of the working minds around me. I traced, or fancied that I traced, the performance to the unexpressed and secret motive in which it had its origin. I discovered, or believed that I discovered, that the world was divided into banditti and hypocrites. At that day I made little allowance for the existence of that larger cla.s.s than all, who happen to be the victims. Unless this were the larger cla.s.s, the other two must very much and very rapidly diminish. My infant philosophy did not carry me very deeply into the recesses of my own heart. It was enough that I felt some of its dearest rights to be outraged--I did not care to inquire whether it was altogether right itself.