4. IV.
The first three months of Ralph's sojourn in
America were spent in vain attempts to obtain a
situation. Day after day he walked down
Broadway, calling at various places of business
and night after night he returned to his cheerless
room with a faint heart and declining spirits.
It was, after all, a more serious thing than he
had imagined, to cut the cable which binds one
to the land of one's birth. There a hundred
subtile influences, the existence of which no one
suspects until the moment they are withdrawn,
unite to keep one in the straight path of rectitude,
or at least of external respectability; and
Ralph's life had been all in society; the opinion
of his fellow-men had been the one force to
which he implicitly deferred, and the conscience
by which he had been wont to test his actions
had been nothing but the aggregate judgment
of his friends. To such a man the isolation and
the utter irresponsibility of a life among
strangers was tenfold more dangerous; and Ralph
found, to his horror, that his character contained
innumerable latent possibilities which the easy-going life in his home probably never would
have revealed to him. It often cut him to the
quick, when, on entering an office in his daily
search for employment, he was met by hostile
or suspicious glances, or when, as it occasionally
happened, the door was slammed in his face, as
if he were a vagabond or an impostor. Then
the wolf was often roused within him, and he
felt a momentary wild desire to become what
the people here evidently believed him to be.
Many a night he sauntered irresolutely about
the gambling places in obscure streets, and the
glare of light, the rude shouts and clamors in
the same moment repelled and attracted him.
If he went to the devil, who would care? His
father had himself pointed out the way to him;
and nobody could blame him if he followed the
advice. But then again a memory emerged from
that chamber of his soul which still he held
sacred; and Bertha's deep-blue eyes gazed upon
him with their earnest look of tender warning
and regret.
When the summer was half gone, Ralph had
gained many a hard victory over himself, and
learned many a useful lesson; and at length he
swallowed his pride, divested himself of his
fine clothes, and accepted a position as assistant
gardener at a villa on the Hudson. And as he
stood perspiring with a spade in his hand, and
a cheap broad-brimmed straw hat on his head,
he often took a grim pleasure in picturing to
himself how his aristocratic friends at home
would receive him, if he should introduce himself
to them in this new costume.
“After all, it was only my position they
cared for,” he reflected, bitterly; “without my
father's name what would I be to them?”
Then, again, there was a certain satisfaction
in knowing that, for his present situation, humble
as it was, he was indebted to nobody but
himself; and the thought that Bertha's eyes, if
they could have seen him now would have dwelt
upon him with pleasure and approbation, went
far to console him for his aching back, his
sunburned face, and his swollen and blistered hands.
One day, as Ralph was raking the gravel-walks in the garden, his employer's daughter, a
young lady of seventeen, came out and spoke
to him. His culture and refinement of manner
struck her with wonder, and she asked him to
tell her his history; but then he suddenly grew
very grave, and she forbore pressing him. From
that time she attached a kind of romantic interest
to him, and finally induced her father to obtain
him a situation that would be more to his
taste. And, before winter came, Ralph saw the
dawn of a new future glimmering before him.
He had wrestled bravely with fate, and had
once more gained a victory. He began the
career in which success and distinction awaited
him, as proof-reader on a newspaper in the city.
He had fortunately been familiar with the English
language before he left home, and by the
strength of his will he conquered all difficulties.
At the end of two years he became attached to
the editorial staff; new ambitious hopes, hitherto
foreign to his mind, awoke within him;
and with joyous tumult of heart he saw life
opening its wide vistas before him, and he
labored on manfully to repair the losses of the
past, and to prepare himself for greater usefulness
in times to come. He felt in himself a
stronger and fuller manhood, as if the great
arteries of the vast universal world-life pulsed in
his own being. The drowsy, indolent existence
at home appeared like a dull remote dream from
which he had awaked, and he blessed the destiny
which, by its very sternness, had mercifully
saved him; he blessed her, too, who, from the
very want of love for him, had, perhaps, made
him worthier of love.
The years flew rapidly. Society had flung its
doors open to him, and what was more, he had
found some warm friends, in whose houses he
could come and go at pleasure. He enjoyed
keenly the privilege of daily association with
high-minded and refined women; their eager
activity of intellect stimulated him, their
exquisite ethereal grace and their delicately chiseled
beauty satisfied his æsthetic cravings, and the
responsive vivacity of their nature prepared him
ever new surprises. He felt a strange fascination
in the presence of these women, and the
conviction grew upon him that their type of
womanhood was superior to any he had hitherto
known. And by way of refuting his own
argument, he would draw from his pocket-book
the photograph of Bertha, which had a secret
compartment there all to itself, and, gazing
tenderly at it, would eagerly defend her against the
disparaging reflections which the involuntary
comparison had provoked. And still, how could
he help seeing that her features, though well
molded, lacked animation; that her eye, with
its deep, trustful glance, was not brilliant, and
that the calm earnestness of her face, when
compared with the bright, intellectual beauty of his
present friends, appeared pale and simple, like
a violet in a bouquet of vividly colored roses?
It gave him a quick pang, when, at times, he
was forced to admit this; nevertheless, it was
the truth.
After six years of residence in America,
Ralph had gained a very high reputation as a
journalist of rare culture and ability, and, in
1867 he was sent to the World's Exhibition in
Paris, as correspondent of the paper on which
he had during all these years been employed.
What wonder, then, that he started for Europe
a few weeks before his presence was needed in
the imperial city, and that he steered his course
directly toward the fjord valley where Bertha
had her home? It was she who had bidden him
Godspeed when he fled from the land of his
birth, and she, too, should receive his first
greeting on his return.