University of Virginia Library

33. CHAPTER XXXIII.
TWO YEARS AFTER.

IT is the opinion of certain wise philosophers that the
happiest month of human life, whether manly or
womanly, is the month which immediately follows
marriage. The first philosopher who is supposed to have
discovered this great and delectable fact was our primal ancestor
Adam; and it is said in learned circles that he arrived
at it, not by intuition, nor by a process of reasoning, nor by
mathematical calculation, but by sweet experience. Since
him innumerable multitudes of other physicists have made the
experiment of matrimony and become converts to the honeymoon
hypothesis. Thus the philosophers of this school have
raised up, and in point of fact, propagated disciples, until it is
probable that no other scientific truth is so widely promulgated
and so respectably supported as this blessed theory.
Nor is it likely that it will ever lack proselytes until the last
man, coming marriageable, finds himself without a last woman.

That it should be a happier month than any that has gone
before it is to the credit of human nature. It speaks well for
men and women both, that among the multitudinous enjoyments
with which their beneficent Maker has crowded earth,
they can find no benison so pure and complete as the right to
love without restraint and to resign one's self utterly to the
object of love. That it should in general be a happier month

than any that comes after it is a wise and kind dispensation.
Excess of the sunlight of pleasure will scorch away strength;
content, altogether self-contained and unbroken, will kill
activity and thus usefulness. The Master of Life did not
make us to be satisfied until we awake in his likeness.

As Mary and I had seen Europe, we took an American
journey. Amid flocks of other brides and grooms we flew
across New York to Niagara, went down the Rapids, saw
Montreal and Quebec, climbed the White Mountains, and
reached Saratoga. It is curious how easily you can pick out
a bride from a crowd of other young women, married and
unmarried. She is so blushing and meek and noiseless; she
colors so violently when she meets an old acquaintance; she
shows in her face such a sweet fear lest every stranger should
suspect her secret; she looks so happy and so proud of her
husband, yet so ashamed to have it seen; that, no matter how
costumed, whether in white, brown or black, you detect her
at a glance. “There goes another bride,” we used to hear
people say, until Mary got amusingly provoked, and wished
that she had brought along her old dresses. She did not
know, dear child! that there was a new light in her eyes, a
halo of young wifehood on her face, which rayed out the fresh
life of her soul so clearly that none gifted with human sympathy
could misunderstand it. Have we not read that Moses,
when he came down from the mount of mystery, was not
aware that his face shone? To a modest woman marriage is
a great, an almost terrible mystery, full of knowledge never
before conceived and of emotions until then incredible.

At Saratoga we were joined by all the Westervelts, including
Genevieve, who soon saw herself enthroned, whether she
would or no, as the belle of the season. She was even handsomer
now in the full bloom of nineteen than I had found her
in the budding flush of seventeen. In manner and character,
too, she was far sweeter; no longer positive, dictatorial, quick-tempered
and impertinently sarcastic; but possessed of that
most insinuating grace, that most useful talent of womanhood,

gentleness. The old corroding grievance which so long fretted
her had suddenly changed into one of those crushing calamities
which bow the will and make the heart soft.

She is still in society, more of a belle than ever; and it is
one of the questions of the day, we think, who shall have her?
I might name several who have tried their luck and failed,
and who are not in the least angry about it, but more or less
resolved to try it again, according to the usual spirit of rejected
lovers. In the mean time my wife is constantly in
arms, fighting off, first this one, then that one, in the honest
belief that they are not half good enough for her sister. I
charitably hope that she may find herself beaten one day, and
see Genevieve captured by some true prince who was ordained
of old to cut his way through her guarding enchantments
and dragons, and bear her in triumph out of the Castle
of Single Blessedness.

Robert is still in the market, one of the most marriageable
of men, and as he imprudently confesses, dying for a wife.
He is a great admirer of Mrs. Fitz Hugh, but could easily be
brought to forsake her by the right kind of a girl; who, I am
persuaded, would find his heart sound and his two hundred
thousand dollars well invested.

Before consigning Mrs. Van Leer to the oblivion of fashionable
life, let us blow a penny trumpet in commemoration of
her growth in the moral graces. I was pleased to observe at
Saratoga that her conversation and deportment were by no
means so gallant as they used to be at Seacliff. She was no
more a she knight-errant in search of amorous adventures,
offering battle to those dangerous giants and caitiffs commonly
known as fast men, and running risk every day of being
swooped upon by the wicked magician, Scandal. The change
in her positively astonished me, for I had not supposed that
she possessed sense enough to take warning from any experience,
however terrible, unless it were her own. I do not
know that her husband was much the happier for this reformation.
He was not an exacting, suspicious man, and had

always, I believe, been pretty well satisfied with his wife,
except during that spasm of fierce jealousy which came upon
him in the hour when our Seacliff demon was unveiled. He
loved his Jule stupidly, and had always loved her so, even
while she was unworthy of it.

By the way, how completely had I been mistaken in this
man and his brother as regarded the interest I should take in
them and the sympathies we should have together! I thought
at our first meeting that I should find little to note in them,
because they were not handsome nor clever enough to be interesting,
not ugly nor vicious enough to be picturesque; yet
I had had to come into passionate contact with them, to watch
their movements, to study their characters, and to acknowledge
at times that Van Leer was a terrible name to me.
Would it not have become so if she had consented to bear it?
Depend upon it that every man has power in him which circumstances
can bring out with effect memorable to some other
man; that the weakest of us is Archimedes enough to move
his earth whenever occasion gives him a proper stand-point.

Mr. Hunter, I am sorry to say, has really become what he
once emptily pretended to be, a dissipated character, and is
as vain as ever of his vices, real and simulated. Whether he
will reform or not is a question sufficiently doubtful to be
almost interesting.

My wife! How shall I speak of her with worthy praise,
yet with worthy reserve! Rousseau says that within two
years after marriage a man does not care whether his wife is
handsome or not; and the remark, absurd as it may appear to
bachelors and maidens, has very little of exaggeration. Let
it not be supposed that I consider her less perfect in form and
feature than I did once. No; but now her beauty is of less
consequence to me; other qualities of hers have shown themselves
far more essential to my happiness; it is upon them
that I have invariably found myself falling back for comfort
when the world went hard; yes, it is her affection
which has become altogether precious, always necessary;

her beauty of soul has made me forget that her person is
lovely.

Well, I will have done. I shall not prate of her; she
demands nothing but silence; she prefers to shine only in
the quiet of my heart; there let her stay until it falls sweetly
to dust.