At length, there was a glimpse of dawn amid all this darkness. The world was not altogether evil. All hearts were not shut against me; and in the sweet smiles of Julia Clifford, in her kind attentions, soothing a.s.surances, and fond entreaties, there was opportunity, at last, for my feelings to overflow. Like a mountain-stream long pent up, which at length breaks through its confinements, my affections rushed into the grateful channel which her pliant heart afforded me. They were wild, and strong, and, devoted, in proportion to their long denial and restraint. Was it not natural enough that I should love with no ordinary attachment--that my love should be an impetuous torrent--all-devoted--struggling, striving--rushing only in the one direction--believing, in truth, that there was none other in the world in which to run?

This was a natural consequence of the long sophistication of my feelings. I knew nothing of the world--of society. I had shared in none of its trusts; I had only felt its exactions. Like some country-boy, or country-girl, for the first time brought into the great world, I surrendered myself wholly to the first gratified impulse. I made no conditions, no qualifications. I set all my hopes of heart upon a single cast of the die, and did not ask what might be the consequences if the throw was unfortunate.

One of the good effects of a free communication of the young with society is, to lessen the exacting nature of the affections. People who live too much to themselves--in their own centre, and for their own single objects--become fastidious to disease. They ask too much from their neighbors. Willing to surrender their OWN affections at a glance, they fancy the world wanting in sensibility when they find that their readiness in this respect fails to produce a corresponding readiness in others. This is the natural history of that enthusiasm which is thrown back upon itself and is chilled by denial. The complaint of coldness and selfishness against the world is very common among very young or very inexperienced men. The world gets a bad character, simply because it refuses to lavish its affections along the highways--simply because it is cautious in giving its trusts, and expects proofs of service and actual sympathy rather than professions. Men like myself, of a warm, impetuous nature, complain of the heartlessness of mankind. They fancy themselves peculiarly the victims of an unkind destiny in this respect; and finally cut their throats in a moment of frenzy, or degenerate into a cynicism that delights in contradictions, in sarcasms, in self-torture, and the bitterest hostility to their neighbors.

Society itself is the only and best corrective of this unhappy disposition. The first gift to the young, therefore, should be the gift of society. By this word society, however, I do not mean a set, a clique, a pitiable little circle. Let the sphere of movement be sufficiently extended--as large as possible--that the means of observation and thought may be sufficiently comprehensive, and no influences from one man or one family shall be suffered to give the bias to the immature mind and inexperienced judgment. In society like this, the errors, prejudices, weaknesses, of one man, are corrected by a totally opposite form of character in another. The mind of the youth hesitates. Hesitation brings circ.u.mspection, watchfulness; watchfulness, discrimination; discrimination, choice; and a capacity to choose implies the attainment of a certain degree of deliberateness and judgment with which the youth may be permitted to go upon his way, supposed to be provided for in the difficult respect of being able henceforward to take care of himself.

I had no society--knew nothing of society--saw it at a distance, under suspicious circ.u.mstances, and was myself an object of its suspicion. Its attractions were desirable to me, but seemed unattainable. It required some sacrifices to obtain its entree, and these sacrifices were the very ones which my independence would not allow me to make. My independence was my treasure, duly valued in proportion to the constant strife by which it was a.s.sailed. I had that! THAT could not be taken from me. THAT kept me from sinking into the slave the tool, the sycophant, perhaps the brute; THAT prompted me to hard study in secret places; THAT strengthened my heart, when, desolate and striving against necessity, I saw nothing of the smiles of society, and felt nothing of the bounties of life. Then came my final emanc.i.p.ation--my success--my triumph! My independence was a.s.sailed no longer. My talents were no longer doubted or denied. My reluctant neighbors sent in their adhesion. My uncle forbore his sneers. Lastly, and now--Julia was mine! My heart's desires were all gratified as completely as my mind's ambition!

Was I happy? The inconsiderate mind will suppose this very probable--will say, I should be. But evil seeds that are planted in the young heart grow up with years--not so rapidly or openly as to offend--and grow to be poisonous weeds with maturity. My feelings were too devoted, too concentrative, too all-absorbing, to leave me happy, even when they seemed gratified. The man who has but a single jewel in the world, is very apt to labor under a constant apprehension of its loss. He who knows but one object of attachment--whose heart's devotion turns evermore but to one star of all the countless thousands in the heavens--wo is he, if that star be shrouded from his gaze in the sudden overflow of storms!--still more wo is he, when that star withdraws, or seems to withdraw, its corresponding gaze, or turns it elsewhere upon another worshipper! See you not the danger which threatened me? See you not that, never having been beloved before--never having loved but the one--I loved that one with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength; and required from that one the equal love of heart, soul, strength? See you not that my love--linked with impatient mind, imperious blood, impetuous enthusiasm, and suspicious fear--was a devotion exacting as the grave--searching as fever--as jealous of the thing whose worship it demands as G.o.d is said to be of ours?

Mine was eminently a jealous heart! On this subject of jealousy, men rarely judge correctly. They speak of Oth.e.l.lo as jealous--Oth.e.l.lo, one of the least jealous of all human natures! Jealousy is a quality that needs no cause. It makes its own cause. It will find or make occasion for its exercise, in the most innocent circ.u.mstances. The PROOFS that made Oth.e.l.lo wretched and revengeful, were sufficient to have deceived any jury under the sun. He had proofs. He had a strong case to go upon.

It would have influenced any judgment. He did not seek or find these proofs for himself. He did not wish to find them. He was slow to see them. His was not jealousy. His error was that of pride and self-esteem.

He was outraged in both. His mistake was in being too prompt of action in a case which admitted of deliberation. This was the error of a proud man, a soldier, prompt to decide, prompt to act, and to punish if necessary. But never was human character less marked by a jealous mood than that of Oth.e.l.lo. His great self-esteem was, of itself, a sufficient security against jealousy. Mine might have been, had it not been so terribly diseased by ill-training.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PRESENTIMENTS.

Without apprehending the extent of my own weakness, the forms that it would take, or the tyrannies that it would inflict, I was still not totally uninformed on the subject of my peculiar character; and, fearing then rather that I might pain my wife by some of its wanton demonstrations, than that she would ever furnish me with, an occasion for them, I took an opportunity, a few evenings after our marriage, to suggest to her the necessity of regarding my outbreaks with an indulgent eye.

My heart had been singularly softened by the most touching a.s.sociations.

We sat together in our piazza, beneath a flood of the richest and balmiest moonlight, screened only from its silvery blaze by interposing ma.s.ses of the woodbine, mingled with shoots of oleander, arbor-vitae, and other shrub-trees. The mild breath of evening sufficed only to lift quiveringly their green leaves and glowing blossoms, to stir the hair upon our cheeks, and give to the atmosphere that wooing freshness which seems so necessary a concomitant of the moonlight. The hand of Julia was in mine. There were few words spoken between us; love has its own sufficing language, and is content with that consciousness that all is right which implores no other a.s.surances. Julia had just risen from the piano: we had both been touched with a deeper sense of the thousand harmonies in nature, by listening to those of Rossini; and now, gazing upon some transparent, fleecy, white clouds that were slowly pressing forward in the path of the moonlight, as if in duteous attendance upon some maiden queen, our mutual minds were busied in framing pictures from the fine yet fantastic forms that glowed, gathering on our gaze. I felt the hand of Julia trembling in my own. Her head sank upon my shoulder; I felt a warm drop fall from her eyes upon my hand, and exclaimed--

"Julia, you weep! wherefore do you weep, dear wife?"

"With joy, my husband! My heart is full of joy. I am so happy, I can only weep. Ah! tears alone speak for the true happiness."

"Ah! would it last, Julia--would it last!"

"Oh, doubt not that it will last. Why should it not t What have we to fear?"

Mine was a serious nature. I answered sadly, if not gloomily:--

"Because it is a joy of life that we feel, and it must share the vicissitudes of life."

"True, true, but love is a joy of eternal life as well as of this."

There was a beautiful and consoling truth in this one little sentence, which my self-absorption was too great, at the time, to suffer me to see. Perhaps even she herself was not fully conscious of the glorious and pregnant truth which lay at the bottom of what she said. Love is, indeed, not merely a joy of eternal life: it is THE joy of eternal life!--its particular joy--a dim shadow of which we sometimes feel in this--pure, lasting, comparatively perfect, the more it approaches, in its performances and its desires, the divine essence, of which it is so poor a likeness. We should so live, so love, as to make the one run into the other, even as a small river runs down, through a customary channel, into the great deeps of the sea. Death should be to the affections a mere channel through which they pa.s.s into a natural, a necessary condition, where their streams flow with more freedom, and over which, harmoniously controlling, as powerful, the spirit of love broods ever with "dovelike wings outspread." I answered, still gloomily, in the customary world commonplaces:--

"We must expect the storm. It will not be moonlight always. We must look for the cloud. Age, sickness, death!--ah! do these not follow on our footsteps, ever unerring, certain always, but so often rapid? Soon, how soon, they haunt us in the happiest moments--they meet us at every corner! They never altogether leave us."

"Enough, dear husband. Dwell not upon these gloomy thoughts. Ah! why should you--NOW?'

"I will not; but there are others, Julia."

"What others? Evils?"

"Sadder evils yet than these."

"Oh, no!--I hope not."

"Coldness of the once warm heart. The chill of affection in the loved one. Estrangement--indifference!--ah, Julia!"

"Impossible, Edward! This can not, MUST not be, with us You do not think that I could be cold to you; and you--ah! surely YOU will never cease to love me?"

"Never, I trust, never!"

"No! you must not--SHALL not. Oh, Edward, let me die first before such a fear should fill my breast. You I love, as none was loved before.

Without your love, I am nothing. If I can not hang upon you, where can I hang?"

And she clung to me with a grasp as if life and death depended on it, while her sobs, as from a full heart, were insuppressible in spite of all her efforts.

"Fear nothing, dearest Julia: do you not believe that I love you?"

"Ah! if I did not, Edward--"

"It is with you always to make me love you. You are as completely the mistress of my whole heart as if it had acknowledged no laws but yours from the beginning."

"What am I to do, dear Edward?"

"Forbear--be indulgent--pity me and spare me!"

"What mean you, Edward?"

"That heart which is all and only yours, Julia, is yet, I am a.s.sured, a wilful and an erring heart! I feel that it is strange, wayward, sometimes unjust to others, frequently to itself. It is a cross-grained, capricious heart; you will find its exactions irksome."

"Oh, I know it better. You wrong yourself."

"No! In the solemn sweetness of this hour, dear Julia--now, while all things are sweet to our eyes, all things dear to our affections--I feel a chill of doubt and apprehension come over me. I am so happy--so unusually happy--that I can not feel sure that I am so--that my happiness will continue long. I will try, on my own part, to do nothing by which to risk its loss. But I feel that I am too wilful, at times, to be strong in keeping a resolution which is so very necessary to our mutual happiness. You must help--you must strengthen me, Julia."

"Oh, yes! but how? I will do anything--be anything."

"I am capricious, wayward; at times, full of injustice. Love me not less that I am so--that I sometimes show this waywardness to you--that I sometimes do injustice to your love. Bear with me till the dark mood pa.s.ses from my heart. I have these moods, or have had them, frequently.

It may be--I trust it will be--that, blessed with your love, and secure in its possession, there will be no room in my heart for such ugly feelings. But I know not. They sometimes take supreme possession of me.

They seize upon me in all places. They wrap my spirit as in a cloud.

I sit apart. I scowl upon those around me. I feel moved to say bitter things--to shoot darts in defiance at every glance--to envenom every sentence which I speak. These are cruel moods. I have striven vainly to shake them off. They have grown up with my growth--have shared in whatever strength I have; and, while they embitter my own thoughts and happiness, I dread that they will fling their shadow upon yours!"

She replied with gayety, with playfulness, but there was an effort in it.

"Oh, you make the matter worse than it is. I suppose all that troubles you is the blues. But you will never have them again. When I see them coming on I will sit by you and sing to you. We will come out here and watch the evening; or you shall read to me, or we will ramble in the garden--or--a thousand things which shall make you forget that there was ever such a thing in the world as sorrow."

"Dear Julia--will you do this?"

"More--everything to make you happy." And she drew me closer in her embrace, and her lips with a tremulous, almost convulsive sweetness, were pressed upon my forehead; and clinging there, oh! how sweetly did she weep!