“Aurora’s harbinger,At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,That in cross-ways and floods have burial,Already to their wormy beds are gone.”
“Aurora’s harbinger,At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,That in cross-ways and floods have burial,Already to their wormy beds are gone.”
“Aurora’s harbinger,At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,That in cross-ways and floods have burial,Already to their wormy beds are gone.”
“Aurora’s harbinger,At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,That in cross-ways and floods have burial,Already to their wormy beds are gone.”
“Aurora’s harbinger,
At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,
Troop home to churchyards: damned spirits all,
That in cross-ways and floods have burial,
Already to their wormy beds are gone.”
TO THE HUSBAND.
Speak kindly to her, little dost thou knowWhat utter wretchedness, what hopeless woHang on those bitter words—that stern reply—The cold demeanor and reproving eye;The death-steel pierces not with keener dartThanunkind wordsin woman’strustingheart.The frailer being by thy sideIs of a finer mould—keener her senseOf pain—of wrong—greater her love ofTenderness. How delicately tuned her heart!Each ruder breath upon its strings complainsIn lowest notes of sadness, notheardbutFelt. It wears away her life like a deepUnder current, while the fair mirror ofThe changeless surface gives notone signOf wo.Ella.
Speak kindly to her, little dost thou knowWhat utter wretchedness, what hopeless woHang on those bitter words—that stern reply—The cold demeanor and reproving eye;The death-steel pierces not with keener dartThanunkind wordsin woman’strustingheart.The frailer being by thy sideIs of a finer mould—keener her senseOf pain—of wrong—greater her love ofTenderness. How delicately tuned her heart!Each ruder breath upon its strings complainsIn lowest notes of sadness, notheardbutFelt. It wears away her life like a deepUnder current, while the fair mirror ofThe changeless surface gives notone signOf wo.Ella.
Speak kindly to her, little dost thou knowWhat utter wretchedness, what hopeless woHang on those bitter words—that stern reply—The cold demeanor and reproving eye;The death-steel pierces not with keener dartThanunkind wordsin woman’strustingheart.The frailer being by thy sideIs of a finer mould—keener her senseOf pain—of wrong—greater her love ofTenderness. How delicately tuned her heart!Each ruder breath upon its strings complainsIn lowest notes of sadness, notheardbutFelt. It wears away her life like a deepUnder current, while the fair mirror ofThe changeless surface gives notone signOf wo.Ella.
Speak kindly to her, little dost thou knowWhat utter wretchedness, what hopeless woHang on those bitter words—that stern reply—The cold demeanor and reproving eye;The death-steel pierces not with keener dartThanunkind wordsin woman’strustingheart.The frailer being by thy sideIs of a finer mould—keener her senseOf pain—of wrong—greater her love ofTenderness. How delicately tuned her heart!Each ruder breath upon its strings complainsIn lowest notes of sadness, notheardbutFelt. It wears away her life like a deepUnder current, while the fair mirror ofThe changeless surface gives notone signOf wo.Ella.
Speak kindly to her, little dost thou know
What utter wretchedness, what hopeless wo
Hang on those bitter words—that stern reply—
The cold demeanor and reproving eye;
The death-steel pierces not with keener dart
Thanunkind wordsin woman’strustingheart.
The frailer being by thy side
Is of a finer mould—keener her sense
Of pain—of wrong—greater her love of
Tenderness. How delicately tuned her heart!
Each ruder breath upon its strings complains
In lowest notes of sadness, notheardbut
Felt. It wears away her life like a deep
Under current, while the fair mirror of
The changeless surface gives notone sign
Of wo.
Ella.
SENSE AND SYMPATHY.
———
BY F. E. F.
———
CHAPTER I.
Use every man after his desert, and who shall escapewhipping.Hamlet.
Use every man after his desert, and who shall escapewhipping.Hamlet.
“Did you ever hear a man talk so like a fool as Mr. Barton did yesterday, Sarah?” said Mary Minturn to Miss Gorham. “I declare, I pitied his wife—did not you?”
“No, certainly not,” replied her friend. “Why should I? Mr. Barton does not talk more like a fool now than he did before his marriage. Fanny chose him with her eyes or rather ears open, and if she could put up with his folly then, she may now.”
“True enough,” answered Mary. “And how she came to fall in love with him passes my comprehension. I would not have believed it had it not actually happened.”
“Really, Mary,” said Sarah laughing, “your sympathies and compassions often pass my comprehension. Here you are pitying Fanny for having married a man, who, by your own account, she is in love with.”
“No, Sarah,” replied Mary, “I am not pitying her for marrying the man she is in love with, but for being ashamed of the man she loves.”
“Ashamed of the man she loves!” repeated Miss Gorham with infinite contempt. “Now, really, Mary, you had better reserve your compassion for a more deserving object. If Fanny has married a man she is ashamed of, she should be ashamed of herself.”
“Did you see how painfully she colored as she caught the glance you gave me, when he was attempting an account of Dr. H’s lecture? I could not help feeling for her.”
“I did not remark it,” replied Miss Gorham, “and I have no sympathy for a woman who has so little feeling or principle, I care not which, as to marry a man she despises. She probably does not feel for herself, and I do not know why we should put ourselves to the pain of feeling for her. I remember the time when Fanny Jones used to laugh at Tom Barton as much as either you or I.”
“So do I,” replied Mary. “She little thought then she would ever have him.”
“But finding she could get nobody better, she has thought it as well to marry him, and that is what you call falling in love, Mary.”
“Not at all,” rejoined her friend warmly. “But remember it is three years since Mr. Barton first addressed Fanny, and although she ridiculed him then, she has become attached to him since. His devotion and constancy have really won her.”
“If then she is in love with him,” said Sarah, “she should be satisfied with him; and if she is not she should not have married him; so arrange it any way you will, Mary, I do not see that she is deserving of much pity. If she fancies he has grown wiser during the last three years, so much the better for her; and if she knows he has not, so much the worse. Either way I have no sympathy to bestow upon her, Mary.”
“Well, I have,” replied Mary. “I always pity a sensible person who does a silly thing. It is laying up themselves such a store of suffering for the future.”
“’Pon my word, Mary, you amuse me,” said Sarah, laughing. “Now I might possibly feel for a fool who was committing a folly, as I would for a blind man who walked into the fire, but as to wasting my compassion on those who do such things with their eyes open, is really more than I can undertake. But then,” she continued, half contemptuously, “I have not your stock of sensibilities to go upon, and consequently, perhaps, do well to economize mine, or I certainly should exhaust them before they were called upon for a really deserving object.”
“I consider all suffering as deserving pity,” replied Mary quietly.
“That is more than I do,” returned Sarah with spirit. “Sin and suffering may go together, but I do not consider them equally deserving of compassion, or I should go to the jails and work-houses to bestow my sympathies.”
“And if you did,” replied Mary, “I believe you would go to the places of all others where they would be most called forth. I never pass the city prison without thinking of the many unwritten tragedies it contains. Could we but know the true history of every heart, and the real anguish of every crime that have peopled its walls, I believe we should feel more sorrow than indignation for its unhappy inmates.”
“Then,” replied Sarah, almost angrily, “I think it is well we do not. If in your fine sensibilities we are to lose all sense of right and wrong, I think your ‘unwritten tragedies’ had better remain ‘unwritten’ and unread. They would do infinitely more harm than good. ‘Sorrowing for the unhappy inmates of prisons and work-houses!’ Who would imagine you were talking of jail-birds and vagrants! This is the sickly sentimentality of the day, and I am sorry to see you falling into it, Mary. Let sin meet with its due punishment, and crime call forth the righteous indignation it merits, and then we may hope to see them somewhat diminished.”
“That sin meets with its punishment, even in this world, there can be no doubt, Sarah,” said Mary.
“Does it?” said Sarah, with some bitterness. “And roguery is never successful, nor dishonestyprosperous, I suppose. I think some of our broken institutions and flourishing directors might tell a different story! However, that it will be punished in the next,” she added, in a tone that implied she would be much disappointed if it were otherwise, “is certain, but in this sin and impudence decidedly carry the day. You have only to look around you to see the truth of what I say.”
The discussion, which was growing rather warm, was here fortunately interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Eldon, a married sister of Sarah’s, who as usual had much to hear and to say when she had not seen Sarah for several days, as happened to be the case on the present occasion. A lively and somewhat satirical description of the dinner at Mrs. Barton’s formed the chief topic of conversation for some time, which highly amused Mrs. Eldon, and even Mary could not help joining in the laugh, although she could not always agree with her quick-witted and rather merciless friend. In fact they seldom did agree, for two more opposite characters than Mary and Sarah could scarcely be met; and what the bond of attraction could be that rendered them so intimate, would have puzzled most people to determine. Sarah was endowed with more than an ordinary share of sense, but it was that kind of good clearhardsense that seldom attracts, although it often amuses. Her chief virtue was her justice, on which she prided herself, and she valued principle, while she placed little faith on feeling. Sensibility and imagination she utterly despised.
Mary, on the contrary, was full of quick sympathies and bright theories, and though often wrong in her premises, was always amiable in her conclusions.
Notwithstanding that they seldom thought alike on any subject, Sarah loved Mary, and, moreover, loved to put her down, which, being easily done, was perhaps a charm in itself; and then she could take liberties with Mary’s good temper, which she could not do with every body’s. And Mary respected Sarah’s mind and relied upon her integrity, although she was somewhat afraid of the severity of her judgments. And besides, they had grown up together, and had gotusedto each other, which, after all, explains more attachments than any theory of sympathies and associations we have yet met with.
Mrs. Eldon was often amused with the opposite accounts the young friends gave of the same occurrence, and would frequently say, as she laughed,
“One would really suppose, girls, you had been at different places.”
Sarah boasted that she told things just as she saw them, and was very fond of what she called “the plain English of the case;” while Mary perhaps arrived quite as nearly at the truth in making some allowance for human weakness, and in having some compassion for its inconsistencies.
“Why did you not come to tea last evening, Charlotte?” said Sarah, addressing Mrs. Eldon. “I kept the table waiting almost an hour for you.”
“My dear child, I was in such a fright and agitation at that time, that I forgot all about you and your tea-table. Master Georgey escaped from his nurse, and we could not find him for hours. I was almost wild with anxiety and alarm.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed her sister, with much interest; “and where did you find him?”
“Nearly a mile and a half from home. I don’t know how he managed to wander so far, for you know he is not quite two years old yet.”
“And what did you do to him when you found him?” inquired Miss Gorham.
“Do to him? poor little soul; why I gave him his supper and put him to bed,” replied Mrs. Eldon. “The child was exhausted with crying, besides being half dead with fright and fatigue.”
“You don’t mean to say that you did not punish him for his excursion?” exclaimed Sarah, almost incredulously.
“Punish him! No, certainly not,” replied her sister; “but I did what was much wiser. I had a padlock put upon the gate through which the little dog made his escape; so it cannot happen again, and that, you know, is all that is wanted.”
But upon that point Sarah did not at all agree with her sister. She wanted a little summary justice besides, and she said,
“Well, if that is not spoiling children, I do not know what is. And this is the way you let Georgey disobey with impunity, is it?”
“I am sure even you would have been satisfied if you had seen the state the poor little fellow was in when he was brought home,” replied Mrs. Eldon. “You would have thought him quite punished enough. She will not be so hard-hearted by and by, Mary, when she has children of her own,” continued Mrs. Eldon, smiling.
But Sarah was far from satisfied, and was disposed to contend the point, when her sister, rising, said,
“It is time for me to be going home. Is there any thing you want, or that I can do for you?”
“Nothing,” replied Sarah.
“Without,” said Mary, laughing, “you will give Georgey a whipping as soon as you get home. Now acknowledge, Sarah, that you would feel better if Mrs. Eldon would promise to act upon the suggestion.”
“I think Georgey would be the better, if I am not,” replied Sarah. “It is of great importance that he learns early that no misdemeanor will be overlooked.”
“When I can prevent the recurrence of a fault, I am satisfied,” replied Mrs. Eldon.
But Sarah was not. She was always for punishing the past, whether it had reference to the future or not.
Her sister bade her good morning, and Sarah remarking that “Charlotte would ruin her children if she persisted in her present system,” the subject dropped, and the friends soon after parted.
“Do you think Sarah will ever marry, Mrs. Eldon?” Mary asked one day; to which she replied,
“No, Mary, I fear she never will. Sarah, from having been placed so young, I suppose, at the head of my father’s house, has acquired an independence both of manner and temper, that, I think, willprevent her marrying. With her quick insight into character, and satirical turn of mind, too, she is not easily interested,” and, Mrs. Eldon might have added, was not interesting; for Sarah was now two-and-twenty, and never had had a lover, nor any thing that approached to one.
She was not handsome, and had no charm of manner that supplied the attraction of beauty. It is true she had more mind and information than usually falls to the lot of women, but though she often amused, she never won. She was upright, true, sincere, but there was a hardness in her uprightness, a brusquerie in her truths, and a downrightness in her sincerity, that rendered them any thing but attractive; and, in fact, she was not popular, and never had been admired. The few young men who from time to time visited at her father’s house she ridiculed without mercy, and Mrs. Eldon soon gave up all hope of ever seeing her married. She consoled herself for the fact by saying that Sarah was one of the few women to whose happiness it was not necessary, and that though with her strong mind and active habits she would have made an admirable head of a family, yet, as it was, she would probably become what is termed a “society woman,” and as such be a most useful member of the community. And, in fact, she seemed gradually falling into the course her sister had in her own mind marked out for her. There was so much good sense in all her views, and so much efficiency in carrying them out, that when once she fell into the class just indicated, she was found too useful to be readily relinquished. Nor was the occupation distasteful to her. Her high sense of duty forbade her living for her own pursuits alone, and watching over the poor, and correcting the idle, and directing and dictating generally, suited not less with her tastes than her principles. It was wonderful how much good she did, and how little gratitude she got for it. No one detected an impostor as quickly as she did, and all doubtful and difficult cases were turned over to her management, and every department that fell to her share was directed with vigilance and understanding, but at the same time many of her poor feared, and some of them hated her. She relieved their necessities while she scolded their recklessness, and most of them, as she turned away, said with bitterness, “that she was ahardlady,” while they blessed Mary’s bonny face when she accompanied her, and never failed to call her “a sweet spoken young lady,” for though she seldom went among them, and gave little, she listened kindly, and felt for their trials and distresses. The difference was, that Sarah’s charity was that of principle, Mary’s of feeling, and to the latter the poor and ignorant always respond, while they shrink from the former.
“Sarah,” said Mary one day, with some embarrassment, “I have a secret to tell you.”
“A secret,” said Sarah, “well, what is it?”
Mary colored as she answered, “Perhaps it may surprise you, and yet it seems to me you must half suspect it.”
“I am sure I do not know what you mean,” replied Sarah, “but if it is a long story give me that flannel petticoat I was making. There,” said she, threading her needle, “begin, I am ready.”
But it did not seem so easy to begin as Sarah supposed, for Mary cleared her throat and then said with an effort,
“I am going to be married.”
“You!” exclaimed Sarah, with extreme surprise. “Why, who to?”
“Oh, Sarah!” said Mary with some disappointment, “how can you ask? To Frank Ludlow, to be sure.”
“To Frank Ludlow!” repeated Sarah.
“Yes; you suspected it before, did you not?”
“Not I, indeed,” replied Sarah, so decidedly that Mary saw the surprise was perfect. “I have noticed that he was attentive to you, but I never dreamt of your liking him.”
“And why not?” asked Mary, not without a little mortification.
“Oh! I don’t know,” answered Sarah carelessly. Her manner seemed to imply that she saw nothing in Frank Ludlow to like particularly.
“You are not pleased,” said Mary presently, in a low voice. “I hope you don’t dislike Frank, Sarah?”
“Who! I dislike him?” said Sarah, looking up from her sewing with surprise. “Not at all. I don’t care about him either one way or the other. But that is not the point in question. If you are in love with him, that is enough, provided,” she added with a smile, “you do not require all your friends to be the same.”
Mary smiled faintly as she said, “Oh no!” for there was something in Sarah’s manner that disappointed and chilled her. She made an effort to say something about her long knowledge of his character and principles, to which Sarah replied,
“I dare say he is a very nice young man, Mary,” while she inwardly wondered what Mary could see in him, to think him worth all the sacrifices she must make if she married him.
Mary could say no more. There was something so slighting in the phrase “nice young man,” and it was so evident that Sarah did not think much of him, that her spirits sunk, and she soon after left her friend, more dejected than she had been since her engagement had taken place.
Mary soon after married, and Sarah was left more to herself and her independent ways than ever, and what with her societies and Sunday-schools, and the many occupations she contrived to make for herself, time rolled quietly on, and Sarah continued very much fulfilling the destiny her sister had long since predicted would be her fate.
“Charlotte,” said Mr. Eldon to his wife one day about this time, “what is Allen doing forever at your father’s? It seems to me that I never go there that I do not meet him.”
“I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Eldon carelessly. “Yet, now that you speak of it, I remember that he is there a good deal. He is such a quiet, silent person that one sees him without thinking ofhim. I wonder what does take him there. I suppose it is a habit he has fallen into. You know young men will sometimes visit at a house without any particular object.”
“That may be,” replied her husband, “but I do not think it is so in the present instance. I think Allen admires Sarah.”
“Do you?” said his wife with surprise, for the idea of Sarah’s exciting particular admiration was new to her. “I should be sorry for him if it were so,” she added.
“Why so?” inquired Mr. Eldon.
“Because,” she replied, “he seems an amiable young man, and I should be sorry for his disappointment.”
“But I am not so sure he will be disappointed,” pursued Mr. Eldon.
“My dear husband!” exclaimed Mrs. Eldon almost indignantly, “you surely do not suppose that Sarah would have a man so inferior to herself as Allen—he is a gentlemanly, amiable person, but decidedly weak.”
“Sarah would not be the first clever woman who has married a fool,” continued Mr. Eldon.
“But he must be younger than herself,” pursued Mrs. Eldon.
“About the same age, I imagine,” said her husband. “However, if the idea has not occurred to you before, look to it now. If I am not much mistaken, Sarah is interested in him. It would not be a bad match for her, though certainly not one we would have expected her to make.”
And, strange as it may seem, Mr. Eldon’s observations had not deceived him. Weak men generally admire clever women. Not having the capacity to entertain themselves, they like somebody who can do it for them. Sarah was now upon the point of doing what she had ridiculed others for all her life, viz., falling in love with one who was not her equal. She had often wondered before where the charm, where even the flattery could be, of the admiration of an inferior. But Sarah had reached her twenty-seventh year without even exciting that admiration, and consequently did not understand the charm, and it is wonderful what a difference the thing’s being personal makes in these matters. We often refuse with the utmost sincerity for our friends somebody who, perhaps, would be accepted for ourselves. So it proved with Sarah. She would not have hesitated had Mr. Allen proposed for Mary, but the case was changed when she found herself the object of his humble and devoted attentions, her sayings admired, her opinions adopted, her looks watched, as they had never been admired, adopted, or watched before. Flattery is certainly bewitching, and few can withstand genuine admiration. But when they come with the freshness of novelty, and the charm of unexpectedness, the head must be very sound, or the heart very cold that can altogether repel them. Sarah had abandoned herself to their influence before she was aware of it. She did not yield gracefully, however, nor without a struggle; and she had been engaged several weeks before she could summon courage to communicate the intelligence to Mrs. Eldon. It was in vain she repeated to herself that she “had only her own happiness to consult,” and that “she cared not what others said.” Her usual independence almost deserted her, and for the first time in her life she dreaded a smile, and shrank from hearing “plain English.”
“Dear, dear Sarah!” exclaimed Mrs. Ludlow, as she embraced her friend most affectionately, “how could you keep me so long in the dark? But I am come to congratulate, and not scold you. And now tell me all about it;” and the how, and the when, and the where, followed in quick succession, and was listened to with such animated interest and cordial sympathy, and all that Mary knew or thought, or had ever heard, that was favorable to Mr. Allen, was poured forth so kindly, that Sarah’s spirits rose, and, as she parted with her friend, she felt an elasticity and joyousness of heart that she had not experienced since her engagement.
“Heaven bless her kind nature!” said Sarah, with a degree of enthusiasm that was unusual to her; “I always feel better after I have been with her.”
Had the same observation ever been made on parting with Sarah? We doubt it.
——
It made me laugh to hear Jock skirl in the chimney.“Now,” said I, “you know what hanging is good for.”Heart of Mid Lothian.
It made me laugh to hear Jock skirl in the chimney.“Now,” said I, “you know what hanging is good for.”Heart of Mid Lothian.
“Mr. Allen looks feeble, Sarah,” said Mrs. Eldon to her sister, some time after her marriage—“Is he well?”
“Yes, perfectly,” replied Sarah. “Pray don’t put it into his head that he is not, or you will make him more indolent than ever. He wants exercise, that is all. I wish him to ride on horseback before breakfast.”
“At what hour do you breakfast?” inquired Mrs. Eldon.
“At six,” replied her sister.
“At six at this season!” exclaimed Mrs. Eldon. “Why it can scarcely be light. Does Mr. Allen like such early hours?”
“No,” answered Mrs. Allen, laughing, “he would greatly prefer nine, I believe. But such indolent habits destroy all order and regularity in a household.”
“Now, Mrs. Eldon, I appeal to you,” said her brother-in-law, good-humoredly, “if there is any use in being up at candle-light. I tell Sarah we have the twenty-four hours before us. I do not see the use of hurrying so. It appears to me I hardly get asleep before the bell rings for breakfast.”
“The use of early rising,” replied Sarah, “is that we need never hurry. There is time for every thing, and unless the master and mistress are up, every thing stands still. And, after all, it only depends upon habit whether we dislike it or not;” and there was something in her tone and manner that implied it was a habit her husband must acquire.
Now in fact Mr. Allen was not strong; but Sarah, who had never been ill for an hour, and scarcelyknew what it was to be fatigued, had no more comprehension of the languor of a feeble frame, than she had mercy for a weak mind, and, consequently, the breakfast bell rang as pitilessly at break of day, as if Mr. Allen had been endowed with her own “steel and whalebone constitution.” Strong health makes one sometimes unfeeling, and so it was with Sarah. She thought a good walk or long ride a panacea for all the ills flesh is heir to, and that if sickness was not sin, it was what she considered next to it—laziness.
“And now, Sarah,” said Mrs. Eldon, “I want a favor of you. I want you to ask young Brandon and his wife to your party next week.”
“Which one?” inquired Mrs. Allen. “I did not know Frank was married, for I don’t suppose you mean the other.”
“Yes I do,” replied her sister.
“Not the one who was implicated in that affair some years since?” pursued Mrs. Allen.
“The same,” continued Mrs. Eldon. “He was almost a boy when that happened, and he has quite redeemed himself since. And now that he is married, his friends wish to make an effort to bring him forward again; and I promised to ask you to invite him. It will be of service to him to be seen here.”
“Never!” said Sarah, with decision; “I never will countenance any one who could be guilty of such conduct. I am astonished you could ask it.”
“My dear Sarah, remember what a lad he was at the time,” urged Mrs. Eldon.
“He was old enough to know better,” replied Mrs. Allen.
“Undoubtedly,” resumed her sister—“but, Sarah, if you had a family of boys growing up around you, as I have, you would learn to look with more leniency upon their errors.”
“If I countenance such young men as Brandon,” replied Sarah, “I don’t know what right I should have to look for better things in my own sons. When society overlooks such acts, we may as well abandon all principle and order at once.”
“As a general rule, I agree with you,” returned Mrs. Eldon; “but situated as we are with regard to the Brandon family, I should wish here to make an exception. They were my mother’s earliest friends, and we are under many obligations to them.”
“Any thing that I could do for them but this, I would do cheerfully,” replied Sarah.
“But there is nothing else you can do, Sarah,” persisted Mrs. Eldon. “They want nothing else; and it seems to me that friendship is but a name, if we are not willing to make a sacrifice for our friends.”
“Any but that of principle I am willing to make for them,” replied Mrs. Allen, resolutely.
When Sarah took it up as a matter of principle, her sister desisted at once, as she knew the business to be hopeless. She only sighed, and hoped Sarah might never know some of the trials of a mother’s heart, to teach her mercy and compassion.
Sarah continued, as a married woman, to be very much what she had been as a girl, for marriage does not modify the character as much as people think it does. Her active and energetic nature, which had formerly been expended on societies and paupers, was now devoted to her household, husband and children, and all were managed with the same upright principle and relentless decision which she had ever shown in all her undertakings.
The attachment between herself and husband was strong, although the perfect harmony did not always exist between them that might have been expected, from the sense on her side and the good temper on his.
Mr. Allen, like most weak men, was obstinate, and when he wanted to do a thing, generally did it, and only showed his consciousness of Sarah’s disapprobation by not telling her of what he had done; and many a time was she bitterly provoked to find that projects which she had opposed, and supposed abandoned, had long since been quietly effected. Her heart was often in a “lime kiln,” though perhaps about trifles. Yet upon the whole she enjoyed as much of happiness, probably, as her nature was capable of. Her children were pattern children, orderly, correct and obedient. No act of rebellion had ever been known in the little circle, but one, and that was in her eldest boy, which had been so severely punished that it had become a matter of fearful tradition with the rest. In fact, Sarah was a stern mother, more feared than loved by her children, yet they were generally looked upon as a “remarkably well brought up family,” and Mrs. Allen received no small praise for her admirable management of her young flock.
“Who do you think was suspended to-day?” said Charles Eldon, as he threw down his books on his return from college.
“Who? who?” exclaimed his young brothers and sisters.
“Tom Allen!”
“What, Tommy good-shoes!” exclaimed the children, with shouts of merriment. “Oh, that is too good! Mamma, only think, Tom Allen is suspended!”
“Hush, hush, my dear!” said Mrs. Eldon, gravely, “I am sorry to hear it.”
“That is more than I am,” said Fanny, in a low voice. “It is the best news I have heard this many a day. Aunt Sarah made such a fuss when Lewis got into that scrape, and it was not much after all.”
“What has been the matter, my son?” inquired Mrs. Eldon.
“Nothing of much consequence—only Tom has lagged behind the class almost ever since he has been in it, so now the Puts have suspended him, and he must take a tutor, and try and pull up.”
“To think of one of those pattern children being suspended!” said Frank, laughing. “It is the best joke I ever heard.”
And in spite of all their mother’s proper admonitions and grave looks, the news was matter of perfect jubilee with the young Eldons. Not that they had positively unkind feelings toward their young cousins, but they disliked their aunt heartily, and, inshort, pattern children always incur a certain share of unpopularity among juveniles of their own standing. Free and spirited natures will not brook the superiority which is often accorded by their elders to the tame and correct inferiority of such children. Then, too, the sins of the parents are often visited heavily on their offspring under similar circumstances; and “Aunt Sarah’s lectures,” and “the fuss Aunt Sarah made on such and such an occasion,” “and now Aunt Sarah need not make big eyes at Charley any more,” and “let Aunt Allen shut up about Lewis now,” and many more such reminiscences and ejaculations of the kind, broke forth on all sides. In fact, if the whole truth were known, Mrs. Eldon herself, in spite of her efforts to maintain the proprieties, did not feel, at the bottom of her heart, the sorrow for her sister’s mortification she assumed. “It will do her good,” she said to herself. “Sarah is too hard upon other people’s children. The thing is not a matter of importance in itself, but it is enough to show her that her boys are like other boys.”
“I thought your sister was wrong when she insisted upon that boy’s taking a collegiate education,” remarked Mr. Eldon. “He resembles his father in mind: that is to say, he has none, and besides, is naturally indolent. He showed a disposition to enter the counting-house, and he would have done better there.”
“Sarah thinks it great weakness in parents to yield to what she calls the whims of young people.”
“Undoubtedly; but, at the same time, not to study and make allowances for their natural capacities and dispositions, is equally unwise. Nature is to be guided, but not controlled.”
“You would find it difficult to persuade Sarah that she could not control all events falling within the sphere of her domestic circle,” replied Mrs. Eldon.
“Then probably she has a bitter lesson yet to learn,” replied Mr. Eldon—and so the conversation dropped.
The summer coming on, Mrs. Eldon left the city early with her family, and consequently did not see Mrs. Allen for several months. When she did, she was much struck with the change in her appearance.
“Are you well, Sarah?” she asked.
“No, I am not,” replied Mrs. Allen. “I have heard people talk of being weak and miserable, but I never knew what they meant before. I saw they were not really ill, and I thought it was only imagination or indolence. I now feel that I was wrong. For the first time in my life, I know what it is to be oppressed with languor. Every thing is a burden to me; and when I try to rouse myself and shake it off, my limbs refuse to obey my will.”
“My dear sister,” said Mrs. Eldon, “don’t attempt that. You need repose—If you overtask yourself now, you may feel the ill effects all your life.”
“That is what my dear, kind husband says,” replied Mrs. Allen. “And oh,” she continued, with much emotion, “you don’t know, Charlotte, how my conscience reproaches me for my former want of consideration—for my unkindness, in fact, to him. You always told me he was not strong, but I thought it was only one of your notions, and I laughed at his dislike of early rising, and had, in short, no sympathy for much that I now am convinced was bodily indisposition. Formerly, I could not comprehend what possible good it could do him,evensupposing, according to you, that he was not well, to rise an hour later in the morning. The idea seemed to me absolutely absurd. And now when I wake so languid, I feel that an hour’s rest is of such infinite importance, and I ask myself, ‘Where is the use in getting up?—what matters it whether the household commences its daily routine an hour earlier or later?’ Charlotte, I sometimes feel that this breaking down of my health is sent as a punishment, and a lesson to teach me sympathy and mercy for those of a naturally different constitution from my own.”
When Mrs. Eldon repeated this observation of Mrs. Allen’s to her husband, he dryly remarked that, “it was a pity the lesson had not come earlier.”
Pecuniary losses, too, fell heavily upon the Allens about this time. A public institution failed, in which Mr. Allen had invested much of his wife’s property. It had never been an institution in which she had much confidence, and when he had consulted her on the subject, she decidedly objected to the changing certain for what she considered uncertain property. But Mr. Allen, as we have said, was a weak man, who, when he had once got a notion in his head, never rested until he had executed it. He was just sufficiently under his wife’s influence to make him conceal the fact when it was done. If circumstances discovered it, he would only reply to her remonstrances, which were not always of the gentlest, “Well, well, it is done now, and there is no use in talking about it.” Sarah was not often to be pacified in that way, and if any thing could have provoked her more than the facts themselves, it would have been the quiet, meek, yet obstinate air withal, with which he listened to her lectures on the subject.
Either Sarah was not the woman she once had been, or the magnitude of the present offence seemed to stun her into silence, for she bore with dignity and fortitude what she felt to be a serious misfortune.
What was grief to her, was matter of gossip, however, to the circle of her immediate acquaintance, and that, too, not always in the most sympathizing and good-natured spirit.
“Are you not sorry for the Allens?” inquired one of her set. “It is said they have lost the greater part of their fortune in this company that has just failed.”
The lady thus addressed was one who prided herself on her frankness, and she answered, with a spirit and promptness that caused the other to laugh,
“No, I can’t say I am. Mrs. Allen has hitherto thought that every body else’s misfortunes were their faults. Let her now bring the matter home.”
The other seemed to enjoy the remark, although hardly daring to say as much herself, and she only replied, with an affectation of amiability that her gratified looks denied—
“But it is a hard lesson to learn.”
“My dear Mrs. Binney,” replied her friend, “we have all of us hard lessons to learn in our experience through life. But I have no sympathy for those whoneedthem before they can feel for others.”
“She certainly has been rather hard upon those who fell into misfortune,” gently resumed Mrs. Binney.
“Ratherhard!” ejaculated the other—“I never shall forget when my brother failed—” and then came a stored up host of bitter remembrances and old offences against Mrs. Allen, speeches long forgotten, that had rankled deep, to rise up in judgment when her turn came to call for public sympathy and general discussion.
Mr. Allen seemed to escape without either sympathy or animadversion. If alluded to, he was called “a poor, weak fool,” by the men, and “oh, he is nobody,” was all the consideration deigned him by the women. But Mrs. Allen was canvassed and talked over according to the feelings of the speakers, as if she were both master and mistress of the establishment. Mrs. Ludlow, her early friend, was still her friend, and sympathized, from the bottom of her heart, in all her trials.
Prosperity often seems to mark certain families for its own for years—but when the tide changes, misfortune frequently clings as obstinately to those who have hitherto seemed the favorites of fortune. To most of us, life is as an April day, checkered by clouds and sunshine; but there are others whose brilliant morning and calm noonday suddenly darken into clouds and storm. A certain portion of sorrow is the lot of all, whether it comes drifting through life, or is compassed within any particular period of existence. Come, however, it must to all.
Sarah’s life had hitherto been blessed above that of most women. But youth, health and wealth had now passed from her, and her proud, stern spirit had yet to undergo trials she had never dreamed within the scope of possibility as falling to her lot. Her eldest boy, the “Tommy good-shoes” of former days, was now the source of an anguish a mother’s heart alone can know. Forced upon a course of education for which he had no taste and scarcely any capacity, the four years allotted to collegiate studies were to him four years of unbroken idleness. The same easy, docile nature that had made him the “Tommy good-child” of early years, rendered him still pliant to the influences about him. These, unhappily, as is generally the case in idleness, were not good. College suspensions and remonstrances were the commencement of a course of which little bills soon followed in the wake. When these fell into his father’s hands, they were often paid without a word, for he had learned to dread, scarce less than the boy, the bitterness of his wife’s indignation when they reached her knowledge.
To his mother’s keen reproaches, Tom listened in silence, the same kind of frightened, meek, obstinate silence with which his father had endured many a harangue before him. But they did not mend his ways.
Mrs. Eldon had heard from time to time rumors that “Tom Allen was very wild,” but she had thought that “boys will be boys,” and her husband said “young men will be young men,” and thus they had both attributed the rumors they had heard to the indiscretions of a youthful spirit. But here they were mistaken. Tom’s were not the errors of a youthful but of a weak nature. The influence abroad was bad, and the conduct at home injudicious. If Mr. Allen’s children did not exactly say with the world, “Oh! he is nobody,” they yet felt the fact; while their mother was to them “the everybody” they feared and looked up to. Consequently, if Tom got into a scrape there was nothing he so much dreaded as his mother’s hearing of it. There was scarcely any public opprobrium he would not rather have endured than her anger. In fact, the sort of Coventry in which he was put, the sad, severe looks that were bestowed upon him at home were slight inducements to a weak and timid spirit to reveal difficulties, pour forth confession and implore relief, and thus what had begun in weakness ended in disgrace.
A debt which, though not large in itself, yet of considerable magnitude in the eyes of a youth, had been contracted almost unconsciously, and which he had not courage to avow at home. Harassed, tormented, terrified, he made use of funds which were not his own, and which his situation in a counting-house, where he had at last been placed, put within his reach. Weak, timid and reserved, he neither revealed his situation, nor asked for aid from either his young companions or natural friends—but when he found detection could no longer be warded off—fled.
Public disgrace was the consequence; and the insignificance of the sum and the magnitude of the offence were alike the theme of general discussion. Mingled commiseration and blame were bestowed upon the unhappy parents. People generally love to think that a faulty education is the root of the evil. Some, therefore, censured the system that had restricted him in means; others thought a too ample allowance had been the origin of the sin.
The affair was canvassed in every possible spirit, and though commiseration could not be refused to the heart-stricken parents, yet the tone of it was often qualified by the personal sentiments of the speakers, for it is wondrous how unpopularity will cling to those who have incurred it, even under calamities which one would suppose were enough to bury all old griefs.
“I cannot but feel sorry for any mother under such circumstances,” had been said, “but I feel as little for Mrs. Allen as I could feel for any one so situated. She meets with more sympathy now than she ever would have given to another.”
“Had it been any one else’s son but Sarah Allen’s,” exclaimed another, “I should have been sorry indeed. But hers is a hard temper. Now, however, she knows what trials are.”
“I am sorry for any one so situated, but if suchthings will happen, I had rather it had fallen on Mrs. Allen than on any one else I know.”
The Brandons breathed a deeper but silent comment upon the blow that had fallen on the haughty and unfeeling woman whose early slight they never had forgiven.
“My early, only friend,” cried Mrs. Allen, as she threw herself into Mary Ludlow’s arms, who, ever true to her in sorrow as in joy, was with her now in her hour of bitterest anguish, “you, you alone feel for one who did not feel for others. The heart that was hardened by prosperity deserved to be broken by sorrow.” And then the full tide of anguish, and repentance, and confession, gushed forth with a freedom and humility that wells up alone from a broken and a contrite heart.
The stern lesson had been taught, and received in a spirit that shows that where there is Sense, experience must teach Sympathy. The rock had been smitten, and the waters that gushed forth were pure and regenerating.