 | Dream life |  |
V.
A Broken Home.
IT is Nelly's own fair hand, yet sadly blotted;—
blotted with her tears, and blotted with yours.
—“It is all over, dear, dear Clarence! oh, how I
wish you were here to mourn with us! I can hardly
now believe that our poor mother is indeed dead.”
—Dead!—It is a terrible word! You repeat it,
with a fresh burst of grief. The letter is crumpled in
your hand.—Unfold it again, sobbing, and read on.
“For a week, she had been failing every day; but
on Saturday, we thought her very much better. I told
her, I felt sure she would live to see you again.
`I shall never see him again, Nelly,' said she,
bursting into tears.”
—Ah, Clarence, where is your youthful pride, and
annoy you, crushed in your grasp!
“She sent for Father, and taking his hand in hers,
told him she was dying. I am glad you did not see
his grief. I was kneeling beside her, and she put her
hand upon my head, and let it rest there for a moment,
while her lips moved, as if she were praying.
`Kiss me, Nelly,' said she, growing fainter: `kiss me
again for Clarence.'
“A little while after she died.”
For a long time you remain with only that letter,
and your thought for company. You pace up and
down your chamber: again you seat yourself, and lean
your head upon the table, enfeebled by the very grief,
that you cherish still. The whole day passes thus:
you excuse yourself from all companionship: you have
not the heart to tell the story of your troubles to
Dalton,—least of all, to Miss Dalton. How is this?
Is sorrow too selfish, or too holy?
Toward night-fall there is a calmer, and stronger
feeling. The voice of the present world comes to your
ear again. But you move away from it unobserved to
that stronger voice of God, in the Cataract. Great
masses of angry cloud hang over the West; but
beneath them the red harvest sun shines over the long
reach of Canadian shore, and bathes the whirling
rapids in splendor. You stroll alone over the quaking
edge of the British Fall. You go out to the little
shattered tower, and gaze down with sensations that
will last till death, upon the deep emerald of those
awful masses of water.
It is not the place for a bad man to ponder: it
is not the atmosphere for foul thoughts, or weak ones.
A man is never better than when he has the humblest
sense of himself: he is never so unlike the spirit of
Evil, as when his pride is utterly vanished. You
linger, looking upon the stream of fading sunlight that
plays across the rapids, and down into the shadow of
the depths below, lit up with their clouds of spray:—
yet farther down, your sight swims upon the black
eddying masses, with white ribands streaming across
their glassy surface; and your dizzy eye fastens upon
the frail cockle shells,—their stout oarsmen dwindled to
pigmies,—that dance like atoms upon the vast chasm,—
or like your own weak resolves upon the whirl of Time.
Your thought, growing broad in the view, seems to
cover the whole area of life; you set up your affections
and your duties; you build hopes with fairy scenery,
and away they all go, tossing like the relentless waters
to the deep gulf, that gapes a hideous welcome! You
sigh at your weakness of heart, or of endeavor, and
your sighs float out into the breeze that rises ever from
the shock of the waves, and whirl, empty-handed, to
with round utterance; and your voice like a sparrow's,
is caught up in the roar of the fall, and thrown at you
from the cliffs, and dies away in the solemn thunders
of nature. Great thoughts of life come over you—of
its work and destiny—of its affections and duties, and
roll down swift—like the river—into the deep whirl
of doubt and danger. Other thoughts, grander and
stronger, like the continuing rush of waters, come over
you, and knit your purposes together with their weight,
and crush you to exultant tears, and then leap,
shattered and broken, from the very edge of your
intent,—into mists of fear!
The moon comes out, and gleaming through the
clouds, braids its light, fantastic bow upon the waters.
You feel calmer as the night deepens. The darkness
softens you; it hangs—like the pall that shrouds your
mother's corpse,—low and heavily to your heart. It
helps your inward grief, with some outward show. It
makes the earth a mourner; it makes the flashing
water-drops so many attendant mourners. It makes
the Great Fall itself a mourner, and its roar—a
requiem!
The pleasure of travel is cut short. To one person
of the little company of fellow voyagers, you bid adieu
with regret; pride, love, and hope point toward her,
while all the gentler affections stray back to the broken
not after all, such smile as your warm heart pines for.
Ten days after, you are walking toward the old
homestead, with such feelings as it never called up
before. In the days of boyhood, there were triumphant
thoughts of the gladness, and the pride, with which,
when grown to the stature of manhood, you would
come back to that little town of your birth. As you
have bent with your dreamy resolutions over the tasks
of the cloister life, swift thoughts have flocked on you
of the proud step, and prouder heart, with which you
would one day greet the old acquaintances of boyhood;
and you have regaled yourself on the jaunty manner
with which you would meet old Dr. Bidlow; and the
patronizing air, with which you would address the
pretty, blue-eyed Madge.
It is late afternoon when you come in sight of the
tall sycamores that shade your home; you shudder
now lest you may meet any whom you once knew.
The first, keen grief of youth seeks little of the sympathy
of companions: it lies—with a sensitive man,—
bounded within the narrowest circles of the heart.
They only who hold the key to its innermost recesses
can speak consolation. Years will make a change;—
as the summer grows in fierce heats, the balminess of
the violet banks of Spring, is lost in the odors of a
freshness, but wins breadth.
—Throw a pebble into the brook at its source, and
the agitation is terrible, and the ripples chafe madly
their narrowed banks;—throw in a pebble, when the
brook has become a river, and you see a few circles,
widening, and widening, and widening, until they are
lost in the gentle, every-day murmur of its life!
You draw your hat over your eyes, as you walk
toward the familiar door; the yard is silent; the night
is falling gloomily; a few katydids are crying in the
trees. The mother's window, where—at such a season
as this, it was her custom to sit watching your play, is
shut; and the blinds are closed over it. The honeysuckle
which grew over the window, and which she
loved so much, has flung out its branches carelessly;
and the spiders have hung their foul nets upon its
tendrils.
And she, who made that home so dear to your
boyhood,—so real to your after years,—standing amid
all the flights of your youthful ambition, and your
paltry cares (for they seem paltry now) and your
doubts, and anxieties and weaknesses of heart, like the
light of your hope—burning ever there, under the
shadow of the sycamores,—a holy beacon, by whose
guidance you always came to a sweet haven, and to a
refuge from all your toils,—is gone,—gone forever!
The father is there indeed;—beloved, respected,
esteemed; but the boyish heart, whose old life is now
reviving, leans more readily, and more kindly into that
void, where once beat the heart of a mother.
Nelly is there;—cherished now with all the added
love that is stricken off from her who has left you
forever. Nelly meets you at the door.
—“Clarence!”
—“Nelly!”
There are no other words; but you feel her tears, as
the kiss of welcome is given. With your hand joined
in her's, you walk down the hall, into the old, familiar
room;—not with the jaunty, college step,—not with
any presumption on your dawning manhood,—oh, no,—
nothing of this!
Quietly, meekly, feeling your whole heart shattered,
and your mind feeble as a boy's, and your purposes
nothing, and worse than nothing,—with only one
proud feeling, you fling your arm around the form
of that gentle sister,—the pride of a protector;—the
feeling—“I will care for you now, dear Nelly!”—that
is all. And even that, proud as it is, brings weakness.
You sit down together upon the lounge; Nelly
buries her face in her hands, sobbing.
“Dear Nelly,” and your arm clasps her more fondly.
There is a cricket in the corner of the room, chirping
very loudly. It seems as if nothing else were living—
falls on the chair where she used to sit; it is drawn up
with the same care as ever, beside the fire.
“I am so glad to see you, Clarence,” says Nelly,
recovering herself; and there is a sweet, sad smile now.
And sitting there beside you, she tells you of it all;—
of the day, and of the hour;—and how she looked,—
and of her last prayer, and how happy she was.
“And did she leave no message for me, Nelly?”
“Not to forget us, Clarence; but you could not!”
“Thank you, Nelly; and was there nothing else?”
“Yes, Clarence;—to meet her, one day?”
You only press her hand.
Presently your father comes in: he greets you with
far more than his usual cordiality. He keeps your hand
a long time, looking quietly in your face, as if he were
reading traces of some resemblance, that had never
struck him before.
The father is one of those calm, impassive men, who
shows little upon the surface, and whose feelings you
have always thought, cold. But now, there is a
tremulousness in his tones that you never remember
observing before. He seems conscious of it himself, and
forbears talking. He goes to his old seat, and after
gazing at you a little while with the same steadfastness
as at first, leans forward, and buries his face in his
hands.
From that very moment, you feel a sympathy, and
a love for him, that you have never known till then.
And in after years, when suffering or trial come over
you, and when your thoughts fly, as to a refuge, to
that shattered home, you will recal that stooping image
of the father,—with his head bowed, and from time
to time trembling convulsively with grief,—and feel that
there remains yet by the household fires, a heart of
kindred love, and of kindred sorrow!
Nelly steals away from you gently, and stepping
across the room, lays her hand upon his shoulder, with
a touch, that says, as plainly as words could say it;—
“We are here, Father!”
And he rouses himself,—passes his arm around her;
—looks in her face fondly,—draws her to him, and
prints a kiss upon her forehead.
“Nelly, we must love each other now, more than
ever.”
Nelly's lips tremble, but she cannot answer; a tear
or two go stealing down her cheek.
You approach them; and your father takes your
hand again, with a firm grasp,—looks at you thoughtfully,—drops
his eyes upon the fire, and for a moment
there is a pause;—“We are quite alone, now, my
boy!”
—It is a Broken Home!
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