University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.

But youth—the youth which has been accustomed
to indulgence—lives so much in the gratification
of its passions and desires, that reflection,
which is the result of training and habit, does not
often disturb the enjoyment of the present moment.
As for happiness, this is, at no period, a
proper question. We have very little, in this
life, to do with happiness. We have only to live
as long as we can, endure as sturdily as we can,
and do our duty with our best strength and manhood.
A lad of eighteen, brought up as I had
been, to be very much his own master, is chiefly
considerate of the day, and of what it shall bring
forth. With a very different signification and commentary,
the scripture apothegm is his—sufficient
for the day is the evil thereof—and the good
also. In boy-language, I was happy, in spite of
the momentary misgivings that disturbed me at
the altar. I was a husband. I had taken the
highest duties of manhood upon me, and this fact
was an appeal to my vanity, which thus, in turn,
became a minister to my other impulses. My
wife was beautiful and accomplished, intelligent
and gentle—tender, and full of love for me—giving
me hourly proofs, not only that she regarded
her happiness as complete, but that she was womanly
solicitous of mine. Had all the circumstances

of my marriage suited—had it taken
place with the family sanction, and had her connections
been such as I could have wished them,
I could have found no better wife. She, by herself,
was all that I could have desired; and, hurt
as I had been, in my pride, stung, mortified and
harrassed, by the events which preceded my
nuptials, my honey-moon was yet without a
cloud. Bud Halsey kept out of sight, and, in our
little islet and cottage, we revelled in all the intoxicating
delight of a first passion gratified. We
lay in the sun like two children, thoughtless of
the coming on of night, thoughtless of all things
but the dear shady solitude which love had peopled
with its own ministering forms, all wooing
and beautiful, all sweet and musical, all sympathetic
and devoted to the tender mood which
prevailed equally over the souls of both. Thus
we walked and rode—rambled through silent
groves, and, sitting on the trunks of fallen trees,
under the shade of their mightier descendants,
wove into blossoms, the pretty, petty fancies of
a youth, that might well—at that period—have
furnished a similitude for the first garden experience
of our luckless ancestors. That honey-moon
was certainly an Eden, while it lasted, to
us both. But it was not to last. Helen, however,
was not the one in our case to pluck the
forbidden fruit. The error was mine. I have
already said, or shown, that I was of an impetuous,
impatient character, not disposed to forego my object,
yet soon gratified, and restless after novelty
With such a person, the thing once attained is
apt to lose its attractions, and it is sufficient to
brush away the gold and beauty from the more
delicate forms of human enjoyment, that we
grasp them rudely to our embrace. The first
enthusiastic burst of passion over, reflection followed,
and then recurred to me, in all their force,
those vexing and unanswerable questions which
had disturbed me at the altar. What had I become?
An outlaw? No! But next kin to one!
Certainly, should the government of the United
States, or of Mississippi, ever find it necessary to
send a sufficient force into our swamp retreat,
for the purpose of rooting out its profligate possessors,
I must share their obloquy and punishment;—and,
even if this fate were not to be apprehended,
was the doom less humiliating and
painful to which I was now apparently fated. It
was forbidden me to leave the swamp! I had
not even the rogue's privilege, but, as I refused
to participate in the deeds of the outlaws, I was
regarded as one not only not to be trusted, but
one to be watched. The melancholy prospect
was before me of wasting my days in a region in
which I was a prisoner—denied even the indulgences
of the reprobates around me, and with no
hope of a change for the better, unless by qualifying
myself for the privileges of the ruffian, in the
commission of his crimes. There was no outlet
to society or ambition. I could neither hope for
the external resources, nor for the distinctions of
the world. My talents were denied a field of action.
I was to rust disused, a sword in the scabbard,
a shield against the wall,—the blood-steed
chafing in the stable, the mountain bird beating
his wings against the bars of his cage. These
reflections naturally followed, when the delights
of my new condition had become familiar. Even
love is a food that can satisfy few men. It is
the blanc-mange, the syllabubs, the comfits, in the
great feast of life. But we must beware how we
would make a meal of it. It is to be taken sparingly
after other meats, and by way of giving
them a relish. The only food which never cloys
the human spirit, is the prosecution of our daily
tasks, in obedience to the natural tendencies of
our intellect, and our training. These tasks performed,
love consoles us in the shade, binds up
our wounds, soothes us in our prostration and defeat,
and cheers us with song and sentiment. But
as we neither want song nor consolation always,
so we may suffer love to wait for us in the shade,
while we follow our employments in the sun.
By attending to this wholesome rule, we shall
discover, that, while the burden of labor diminishes,
love undergoes increase; and, from a sickly,
and somewhat affected damsel, becomes a bright-eyed,
cheerful matron, who rears our children
with fruitful breakfast, and sees that dinner is
ready for us, at the proper hour, when we return
from work. But I did not philosophize after this
fashion, until long afterwards. In that heyday
of my hot youth, and while that first—would it
were the last!—struggle was going on, I simply
felt and deplored the ennui, without undertaking
to ascertain what were its true sources. Had
my reflective powers been equal to this, I should
probably have been the better for it. But, as it
was, seemingly remediless as the condition of
things appeared, I was miserable, without the
hope of redress. The ardency of my love lessened,
and, instead of now going forth ever with
Helen, I stole forth more frequently alone. I
wandered off into the deepest woods, and wearied
at every step, with myself and everything
around me, I still felt how much more wearisome
it was to return. Still, I strove to hide from my
wife, the discontent of which I was now myself
fully conscious. I was generous enough, and
man enough, to endeavor to conceal from her the
signs of that inquietude, which I too well knew
she would ascribe to my lessening attachment.
In her presence I strove to be cheerful, to smile,
to meet her eye with the same expression of love
in mine, which it had been so easy a task with
me to exhibit until now. Nor was it always difficult
to simulate this appearance. She was so really
beautiful, with eyes of such dewy brightness, so
gentle, so yielding and dependant, that, really, I
could not but curse the capricious nature which
had grown dissatisfied, so soon, with a creature
so truly excellent and charming. Still, she hung
upon my arm, yielded herself upon my bosom,
sung to me in deep embowering woods, and by
the petty chafing streams that ran through our
swamp fastnesses, and still I thought at moments,
that I ought to be, and was, satisfied and happy.

But these gleams were only transient. Love,
alone, has no means of continuing its excitements,
after conquest. With this event life begins, with
all its solemn duties. Unless these duties provoke
the fitting performances—unless the man
then brings into exercise all the energies of his
intellectual nature, and addresses them to the
business which seems to be most particularly
called for by the tendency of his morale—he cannot
well be said to live, and none of his enjoyments
will be lasting. This must be the fate of
all persons brought up in idleness. Life, with
such, must be a sort of mill-service, a perpetual
rounding of the circle in a beaten track, which,
as it demands no mental exercise, furnishes no
mental supply, keeps up no mental life, and leaves
the intellectual nature as thoroughly blind as
horses are said to become, habituated to the same
motive service which has afforded us the comparison
above. But a truce to these reflections,
which I did not then make. My wife began to
discern the change in me. What change is there,
however slight, in the man she loves, which the
woman will not discern? I soon saw that she
felt the change. Perhaps, it was no small proof
of my own continued attachment, that I could so
soon discern that she had made the discovery.
Of course I did my best to lessen this impression.
I renewed my efforts to appear happy—we resumed

our walks together—followed the same
streams, sat beneath the same shade,—but we
both felt that it was now a task to pursue the
same life, which was once a pleasure only. The
green and the freshness seemed to me to have
gone from life—the glory and the gladness—we
felt the misery which the departure had occasioned,
but knew not, in our ignorance of heart and
life, where to look for the remedy. It was soon
very evident to me, that her father beheld the
change. He looked more gravely when we met,
—more sadly—but without severity. On the
contrary, his endeavors to console and to conciliate
me were redoubled; and when in his society,
I generally found myself more cheerful, and
if not more reconciled to my imprisonment, at
least more easily inclined, for the moment, to dismiss
it from my thoughts. That he ascribed my
demeanor to any change in my regards for his
daughter, I did not imagine. He knew me better
than I did myself. My own conscience reproached
me with such a change. He, more wisely,
ascribed it all to the natural impatience of my
mind, under the novel restraints to which it was
subjected—restraints, which not only deprived
me all opportunity for its exercise, but denied me
to see those friends and connections, in whom I
was naturally so deeply interested. As for poor
Helen, she was still so loving, so considerate, so
desirous to win me to pleasure, to see me happy
—and failing,—so sad,—that, when not thinking
absolutely and only of myself, my heart smote
me for its coldness to her. Coldness shall I call
it? No! it was not coldness. I had not then
any idea that any woman could be half so dear
to me as she was, even in those moments when
I felt least satisfied. But she was not to know
this. My discontent increased, and at length
settled down into positive clouds and gloom. I
no longer made any effort to conceal it, and it
was some consolation to me that my wife, with a
prudence which is seldom exercised by wives,
never once called upon me to account for it.
She was content to do her best to cheer me, to
prove that her love for me had not lessened, and
she left to the delicate unpremeditated attentions
of a fond heart, and tender solicitude, to heal
those hurts, which any attempt to probe might
only have rendered worse.