 | Dream life |  |
VI.
Family Confidence.
GRIEF has a strange power in opening the hearts
of those who sorrow in common. The father,
who has seemed to you, not so much neglectful, as
careless of your aims, and purposes;—toward whom
there have been in your younger years, yearnings of
affection, which his chilliness of manner has seemed to
repress, now grows under the sad light of the broken
household, into a friend. The heart feels a joy, it
cannot express, in its freedom to love and to cherish.
There is a pleasure wholly new to you, in telling him
of your youthful projects, in listening to his questionings,
in seeking his opinions, and in yielding to his
judgment.
It is a sad thing for the child, and quite as sad for
and many a time, with a bursting heart, you have
longed to tell him of some boyish grief, or to ask his
guidance out of some boyish trouble; but at the first
sight of that calm, inflexible face, and at the first sound
of his measured words,—your enthusiastic yearnings
toward his love, and his counsels, have all turned back
upon your eager, and sorrowing heart; and you have
gone away to hide in secret, the tears, which the lack of
his sympathy has wrung from your soul.
But now, over the tomb of her, for whom you weep
in common, there is a new light breaking; and your
only fear is, lest you weary him with what may seem a
barren show of your confidence.
Nelly, too, is nearer now than ever; and with her,
you have no fears of your extravagance; you listen
delightfully there, by the evening flame, to all that she
tells you of the neighbors of your boyhood. You
shudder somewhat at her genial praises of the blue-eyed
Madge;—a shudder that you can hardly account
for, and which you do not seek to explain. It may be,
that there is a clinging and tender memory yet—
wakened by the home atmosphere—of the divided
sixpence.
Of your quondam friend Frank, the pleasant recollection
of whom revives again under the old roof-tree,
she tells you very little; and that little in a hesitating,
be, you think, that there has been some cause of
unkindness?
—Clarence is still very young!
The fire glows warmly upon the accustomed hearth-stone;
and—save that vacant place, never to be filled
again—a home cheer reigns even in this time of your
mourning. The spirit of the lost parent seems to linger
over the remnant of the household; and the Bible
upon its stand—the book she loved so well—the book
so sadly forgotten,—seems still to open on you its
promises, in her sweet tones; and to call you, as it
were, with her angel voice, to the land that she
inherits.
And when late night has come, and the household
is quiet, you call up in the darkness of your chamber,
that other night of grief, which followed upon the
death of Charlie. That was the boy's vision of death;
and this is the youthful vision. Yet essentially, there is
but little difference. Death levels the capacities of the
living, as it levels the strength of its victims. It is as
grand to the man, as to the boy: its teachings are as
deep for age, as for infancy.
You may learn its manner, and estimate its
approaches; but when it comes, it comes always with
the same awful front that it wore to your boyhood.
Reason and Revelation may point to rich issues that
more to your bodily sense, and no more to your
enlightened hope, than those foreshadowings of peace,
which rest like a halo, on the spirit of the child, as he
prays in guileless tones,—Our Father, who art in
Heaven!
It is a holy, and a placid grief that comes over you;
—not crushing, but bringing to life from the grave
of boyhood, all its better and nobler instincts. In their
light, your wild plans of youth look sadly misshapen;
and in the impulse of the hour you abandon them;
holy resolutions beam again upon your soul like
sunlight; your purposes seem bathed in goodness.
There is an effervescence of the spirit, that carries away
all foul matter, and leaves you in a state of calm, that
seems kindred to the land and to the life, whither the
sainted mother has gone.
This calm brings a smile in the middle of tears,
and an inward looking, and leaning toward that
Eternal Power which governs and guides us;—with
that smile and that leaning, sleep comes like an
angelic minister, and fondles your wearied frame, and
thought, into that repose which is the mirror of the
Destroyer.
—Poor Clarence, he is like the rest of the world,
—whose goodness lies chiefly in the occasional throbs
upon the old level of desire.
As you lie between waking and sleeping, you have a
fancy of a sound at your door;—it seems to open
softly; and the tall figure of your father wrapped in his
dressing-gown stands over you, and gazes—as he gazed
at you before;—his look is very mournful; and he
murmurs your mother's name; and—sighs; and—looks
again; and passes out.
At morning, you cannot tell if it was real, or a
dream. Those higher resolves too, which grief, and
the night made, seem very vague and shadowy. Life
with its ambitious, and cankerous desires wakes again.
You do not feel them at first; the subjugation of holy
thoughts, and of reaches toward the Infinite, leave
their traces on you, and perhaps bewilder you into
a half consciousness of strength. But at the first touch
of the grosser elements about you;—on your very first
entrance upon those duties which quicken pride or
shame, and which are pointing at you from every
quarter,—your holy calm, your high-born purpose,—
your spiritual cleavings pass away, like the electricity of
August storms, drawn down by the thousand glittering
turrets of a city!
The world is stronger than the night; and the
bindings of sense are ten-fold stronger than the most
exquisite delirium of soul. This makes you feel, or will
life,—that life which lends approaches to the Infinite,
and takes hold on Heaven, is not so much a Progress,
as it is a Resistance!
There is one special confidence, which in all your
talk about plans, and purposes, you do not give to
your father; you reserve that for the ear of Nelly
alone. Why happens it, that a father is almost the
last confidant that a son makes in any matter deeply
affecting the feelings? Is it the fear that a father may
regard such matter as boyish? Is it a lingering
suspicion of your own childishness; or of that extreme
of affection which reduces you to childishness?
Why is it always, that a man of whatever age or
condition, forbears to exhibit to those, whose respect for
his judgment, and mental abilities he seeks only, the
most earnest qualities of the heart, and those intenser
susceptibilities of love, which underlie his nature, and
which give a color, in spite of him, to the habit of his
life? Why is he so morbidly anxious to keep out of
sight any extravagances of affection, when he blurts
officiously to the world, his extravagances of action, and
of thought? Can any lover explain me this?
Again, why is a sister, the one of all others, to whom
you first whisper the dawnings of any strong emotion;
—as if it were a weakness, that her charity alone could
cover?
However this may be, you have a long story for
Nelly's ear. It is some days after your return: you
are strolling down a quiet, wooded lane—a remembered
place,—when you first open to her your heart. Your
talk is of Laura Dalton. You describe her to Nelly,
with the extravagance of a glowing hope. You
picture those qualities that have attracted you most;
you dwell upon her beauty, her elegant figure, her
grace of conversation, her accomplishments. You make
a study that feeds your passion, as you go on. You
rise by the very glow of your speech into a frenzy
of feeling, that she has never excited before. You are
quite sure that you would be wretched, and miserable,
without her.
“Do you mean to marry her?” says Nelly.
It is a question that gives a swift bound to the blood
of youth. It involves the idea of possession; and of
the dependance of the cherished one upon your own
arm, and strength. But the admiration you entertain,
seems almost too lofty for this; Nelly's question makes
you diffident of reply; and you lose yourself in a new
story of those excellencies of speech, and of figure,
which have so charmed you.
Nelly's eye, on a sudden, becomes full of tears.
—“What is it, Nelly?”
“Our mother; Clarence.”
The word, and the thought dampen your ardor;
parent, for an instant, make a sad contrast with the
showy qualities you have been naming; and the spirit
of that mother—called up by Nelly's words—seems to
hang over you, with an anxious love, that subdues all
your pride of passion.
But this passes; and now,—half believing that
Nelly's thoughts have run over the same ground with
yours,—you turn special pleader for your fancy. You
argue for the beauty, which you just now affirmed; you
do your utmost to win over Nelly to some burst of
admiration. Yet there she sits beside you, thoughtfully,
and half sadly, playing with the frail autumn
flowers that grow at her side. What can she be
thinking? You ask it by a look.
She smiles,—takes your hand, for she will not let
you grow angry,—
“I was thinking, Clarence, whether this Laura
Dalton, would after all, make a good wife,—such an
one as you would love always?”
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