CHAPTER VIII.
WHICH TREATS OF ROMANCE.
THERE is no word in the English language more unceremoniously andindefinitely kicked and cuffed about, by what are called sensiblepeople, than the word _romance_. When Mr. Smith or Mr. Stubbs hasbrought every wheel of life into such range and order that it is onesteady, daily grind,—when they themselves have come into the habitsand attitudes of the patient donkey, who steps round and round theendlessly turning wheel of some machinery—then they fancy that theyhave gotten ‘the victory that overcometh the world.’
All but this dead grind, and the dollars that come through the mill,is by them thrown into one waste ‘catch-all’ and labelled _romance_.Perhaps there was a time in Mr. Smith’s youth,—he remembers itnow,—when he read poetry, when his cheek was wet with strange tears,when a little song, ground out by an organ-grinder in the street, hadpower to set his heart beating and bring a mist before his eyes. Ah, inthose days he had a vision!—a pair of soft eyes stirred him strangely;a little weak hand was laid on his manhood, and it shook and trembled;and then came all the humility, the aspiration, the fear, the hope, thehigh desire, the troubling of the waters by the descending angel oflove,—and a little more and Mr. Smith might have become a man, insteadof a banker! He thinks of it now, sometimes, as he looks across thefireplace after dinner and sees Mrs. Smith asleep, innocently shakingthe bouquet of pink bows and Brussels lace that waves over her placidred countenance.
Mrs. Smith wasn’t his first love, nor, indeed, any love at all; butthey agreed reasonably well. And as for poor Nellie,—well, she is deadand buried,—all that was stuff and romance. Mrs. Smith’s money set himup in business, and Mrs. Smith is a capital manager, and he thanks Godthat he isn’t romantic, and tells Smith Junior not to read poetry ornovels, and to stick to realities.
‘This is the victory that overcometh the world,’—to learn to be fat andtranquil, to have warm fires and good dinners, to hang your hat on thesame peg at the same hour every day, to sleep soundly all night, andnever to trouble your head with a thought or imagining beyond.
But there are many people besides Mr. Smith who have gained thisvictory,—who have strangled their higher nature and buried it, andbuilt over its grave the structure of their life, the better to keep itdown.
The fascinating Mrs. T., whose life is a whirl between ball and opera,point-lace, diamonds, and schemings of admiration for herself, andof establishments for her daughters,—there was a time, if you willbelieve me, when that proud, worldly woman was so humbled, under thetouch of some mighty power, that she actually thought herself capableof being a poor man’s wife. She thought she could live in a little,mean house, on no-matter-what-street, with one servant, and make herown bonnets, and mend her own clothes, and sweep the house Mondays,while Betty washed,—all for what? All because she thought that therewas a man so noble, so true, so good, so high-minded, that to live withhim in poverty, to be guided by him in adversity, to lean on him inevery rough place of life, was a something nobler, better, purer, moresatisfying, than French laces, opera-boxes, and even Madame Roget’sbest gowns.
Unfortunately, this was all romance,—there was no such man. There was,indeed, a person of very common, self-interested aims and worldlynature, whom she had credited at sight with an unlimited draft on allher better nature; and when the hour of discovery came, she awokefrom her dream with a start and a laugh, and ever since has despisedaspiration, and been busy with the _realities_ of life, and feeds poorlittle Mary Jane, who sits by her in the opera-box there, with all thefruit which she has picked from the bitter tree of knowledge. Thereis no end of the epigrams and witticisms which she can throw out, thiselegant Mrs. T., on people who marry for love, lead prosy, worky lives,and put on their best cap with pink ribbons for Sunday. ‘Mary Janeshall never make a fool of herself;’ but, even as she speaks, poor MaryJane’s heart is dying within her at the vanishing of a pair of whiskersfrom an opposite box, which whiskers the poor little fool has creditedwith a _résumé_ drawn from her own imaginings of all that is grandestand most heroic, most worshipful in man. By-and-by, when Mrs. T. findsthe glamour has fallen on her daughter, she wonders; she has ‘tried tokeep novels out of the girl’s way,—where did she get these notions?’
All prosaic, and all bitter, disenchanted people talk as if poetsand novelists _made_ romance. They do—just as much as craters makevolcanoes,—no more. What is romance? whence comes it? Plato spoke tothe subject wisely, in his quaint way, some two thousand years ago,when he said, ‘Man’s soul, in a former state, was winged and soaredamong the gods; and so it comes to pass, that, in this life, when thesoul, by the power of music or poetry, or the sight of beauty, hath herremembrance quickened, forthwith there is a struggling and a prickingpain as of wings trying to come forth,—even as children in teething.’And if an old heathen, two thousand years ago, discoursed thus gravelyof the romantic part of our nature, whence comes it that in Christianlands we think in so pagan a way of it, and turn the whole care of itto ballad-makers, romancers, and opera-singers?
Let us look up in fear and reverence, and say, ‘GOD is the great makerof romance. HE, from whose hand came man and woman,—HE, who strung thegreat harp of Existence with all its wild and wonderful and manifoldchords, and attuned them to one another,—HE is the great Poet of life.’Every impulse of beauty, of heroism, and every craving for purer love,fairer perfection, nobler type and style of being than that whichcloses like a prison-house around us, in the dim, daily walk of life,is God’s breath, God’s impulse, God’s reminder to the soul that thereis something higher, sweeter, purer, yet to be attained.
Therefore, man or woman, when thy ideal is shattered—as shattered athousand times it must be; when the vision fades, the rapture burnsout, turn not away in scepticism and bitterness, saying, ‘There isnothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink,’ butrather cherish the revelations of those hours as prophecies andfore-shadowings of something real and possible, yet to be attainedin the manhood of immortality. The scoffing spirit that laughs atromance, is an apple of the Devil’s own handing from the bitter tree ofknowledge;—it opens the eyes only to see eternal nakedness.
If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship—a boundlessworship and belief in some hero of your soul; if ever you have soloved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations, havegone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain fromheaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast yourwhole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before thefeet of another, and all for nothing,—if you awoke bitterly betrayedand deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpseof heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblestcapability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you;treasure it, as the highest honour of your being, that ever you couldso feel,—that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul.
By such experiences are we taught the pathos, the sacredness of life;and if we use them wisely, our eyes will ever after be anointed to seewhat poems, what romances, what sublime tragedies lie around us in thedaily walk of life, ‘written not with ink, but in fleshly tables of theheart.’ The dullest street of the most prosaic town has matter in itfor more smiles, more tears, more intense excitement, than ever werewritten in story or sung in poem; the reality is there, of which theromancer is the second-hand recorder.
So much of a plea we put in boldly, because we foresee grave headsbeginning to shake over our history, and doubts rising in reverend anddiscreet minds whether this history is going to prove anything but alove-story, after all.
We do assure you, right reverend Sir, and you, most discreet Madam,that it is not going to prove anything else; and you will find, ifyou will follow us, that there is as much romance burning under thesnow-banks of cold Puritan preciseness as if Dr. H. had been brought upto attend operas instead of metaphysical preaching; and Mary had beennourished on Byron’s poetry instead of ‘Edwards on the Affections.’
The
innocent credulities, the subtle deceptions, that were quietly atwork under the grave, white curls of the Doctor’s wig, were exactly ofthe kind which have beguiled man in all ages, when near the sovereignpresence of her who is born for his destiny;—and as for Mary, what didit avail her that she could say the Assembly’s Catechism from end toend without tripping, and that every habit of her life beat time topractical realities, steadily as the parlour clock? The wildest Italiansinger or dancer, nursed on nothing but excitement from her cradle,never was more thoroughly possessed by the awful and solemn mystery ofwoman’s life, than this Puritan girl.
It is quite true, that, the next morning after James’s departure,she rose as usual in the dim gray, and was to be seen opening thekitchen-door just at the moment when the birds were giving the firstlittle drowsy stir and chirp,—and that she went on setting thebreakfast-table for the two hired men, who were bound to the fieldswith the oxen,—and that then she went on skimming cream for thebutter, and getting ready to churn, and making up biscuit for theDoctor’s breakfast, when he and they should sit down together at asomewhat later hour; and as she moved about, doing all these things,she sung various scraps of old psalm-tunes; and the good Doctor, whowas then busy with his early exercises of devotion, listened, as heheard the voice, now here, now there, and thought about angels andthe Millennium. Solemnly and tenderly there floated in at his openstudy-window, through the breezy lilacs, mixed with low of kine, andbleat of sheep, and hum of early wakening life, the little silveryripples of that singing, somewhat mournful in its cadence, as if agentle soul were striving to hush itself to rest. The words were thoseof the rough old version of the psalms then in use:—
‘Truly my waiting soul relies In silence God upon: Because from him there doth arise All my salvation.’
And then came the busy patter of the little footsteps without, themoving of chairs, the clink of plates, as busy hands were arrangingthe table; and then again there was a pause, and he thought she seemedto come near to the open window of the adjoining room, for the voicefloated in clearer and sadder:—
‘O God, to me be merciful, Be merciful to me! Because my soul for shelter safe, Betakes itself to thee.
‘Yea, in the shadow of thy wings My refuge have I placed, Until these sore calamities Shall quite be overpast.’
The tone of life in New England, so habitually earnest and solemn,breathed itself in the grave and plaintive melodies of the tunes thensung in the churches; and so these words, though in the saddest minorkey, did not suggest to the listening ear of the auditor anything morethan that pensive religious calm in which he delighted to repose. Acontrast indeed they were, in their melancholy earnestness, to theexuberant carollings of a robin, who, apparently attracted by them,perched himself hard by in the lilacs, and struck up such a merry_roulade_ as quite diverted the attention of the fair singer; in fact,the intoxication breathed in the strain of this little messenger, whomGod had feathered and winged and filled to the throat with ignorantjoy, came in singular contrast with the sadder notes breathed by thatcreature of so much higher mould and fairer clay,—that creature bornfor an immortal life.
But the good Doctor was inly pleased when she sung; and when shestopped, looked up from his Bible wistfully, as missing something, heknew not what; for he scarce thought how pleasant the little voicewas, or knew he had been listening to it,—and yet he was in a mannerenchanted by it, so thankful and happy that he exclaimed with fervour,‘The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodlyheritage.’
So went the world with him, full of joy and praise, because the voiceand the presence wherein lay his unsuspected life, were securelynear,—so certainly and constantly a part of his daily walk, that he hadnot even the trouble to wish for them. But in that other heart how wasit?—how with the sweet saint that was talking to herself in psalms andhymns and spiritual songs?
The good child had remembered her mother’s parting words the nightbefore,—‘Put your mind upon your duties,’—and had begun her firstconscious exercise of thought with a prayer that grace might be givenher to do it. But even as she spoke, mingling and interweaving withthat golden thread of prayer was another consciousness, a life inanother soul, as she prayed that the grace of God might overshadow him,shield him from temptation, and lead him up to heaven; and this prayerso got the start of the other, that, ere she was aware, she had quiteforgotten self, and was feeling, living, thinking in that other life.
The first discovery she made, when she looked out into the fragrantorchard, whose perfumes steamed in at her window, and listened to thefirst chirping of birds among the old apple-trees, was one that hasastonished many a person before her;—it was this: she found that allthat had made life interesting to her was suddenly gone. She herselfhad not known that, for the month past, since James came from sea,she had been living in an enchanted land; that Newport harbour, andevery rock and stone, and every mat of yellow seaweed on the shore,that the two-mile road between the cottage and the white house ofZebedee Marvyn, every mullein-stalk, every juniper-tree, had all had alight and a charm which were suddenly gone. There had not been an hourin the day for the last four weeks that had not had its unsuspectedinterest,—because he was at the White House; because, possibly, hemight be going by, or coming in: nay, even in church, when she stoodup to sing, and thought she was thinking only of God, had she not beenconscious of that tenor voice that poured itself out by her side? andthough afraid to turn her head that way, had she not felt that he wasthere every moment?—heard every word of the sermon and prayer for him?The very vigilant care which her mother had taken to prevent privateinterviews had only served to increase the interest by throwing over itthe veil of constraint and mystery. Silent looks, involuntary starts,things indicated, not expressed—these are the most dangerous, the mostseductive aliment of thought to a delicate and sensitive nature. Ifthings were said out, they might not be said wisely,—they might repelby their freedom, or disturb by their unfitness; but what is onlylooked is sent into the soul through the imagination, which makes of itall that the ideal faculties desire.
In a refined and exalted nature it is very seldom that the feeling oflove, when once thoroughly aroused, bears any sort of relation to thereality of the object. It is commonly an enkindling of the whole powerof the soul’s love for whatever she considers highest and fairest;it is, in fact, the love of something divine and unearthly, which,by a sort of illusion, connects itself with a personality. Properlyspeaking, there is but One true, eternal Object of all that the mindconceives in this trance of its exaltation. Disenchantment must come,of course; and in a love which terminates in happy marriage there isa tender and gracious process, by which, without shock or violence,the ideal is gradually sunk in the real, which, though found faultyand earthly, is still ever tenderly remembered as it seemed under themorning light of that enchantment.
What Mary loved so passionately, that which came between her and Godin every prayer, was not the gay, young, dashing sailor,—sudden inanger, imprudent of speech, and, though generous in heart, yet worldlyin plans and schemings,—but her own ideal of a grand and noble man,such a man as she thought he might become. He stood glorified beforeher—an image of the strength that overcomes things physical; of thepower of command which controls men and circumstances; of the couragewhich disdains fear; of the honour which cannot lie; of constancy whichknows no shadow of turning; of tenderness which protects the weak;and, lastly, of religious loyalty, which should lay the golden crownof its perfected manhood at the feet of a Sovereign Lord and Redeemer.This was the man she loved; and with this regal mantle of glories sheinvested the person called James Marvyn: and all that she saw and feltto be wanting, she prayed for with the faith of a believing woman.
Nor was she wrong; for, as to every leaf and every flower there is anideal to which the growth of the plant is constantly urging, so isthere an ideal to every human being,—a perfect form in which it mightappear, were every defect removed and
every characteristic excellencestimulated to the highest point. Once, in an age, God sends to someof us a friend who loves in us, _not_ a false imagining, an unrealcharacter, but, looking through all the rubbish of our imperfections,loves in us the divine ideal of our nature,—loves, not the man thatwe are, but the angel that we may be. Such friends seem inspired bya divine gift of prophecy,—like the mother of St. Augustine, who, inthe midst of the wayward, reckless youth of her son, beheld him in avision, standing, clothed in white, a ministering priest at the righthand of God—as he has stood for long ages since. Could a mysteriousforesight unveil to us this resurrection form of the friends with whomwe daily walk, compassed about with mortal infirmity, we should followthem with faith and reverence through all the disguises of human faultsand weaknesses, ‘waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.’
But these wonderful soul-friends, to whom God grants such perception,are the exceptions in life; yet, sometimes are we blessed with one whosees through us, as Michel Angelo saw through a block of marble when heattacked it in a divine fervour, declaring that an angel was imprisonedwithin it: and it is often the resolute and delicate hand of such afriend that sets the angel free.
There be soul-artists, who go through this world, looking amongtheir fellows with reverence, as one looks amid the dust and rubbishof old shops for hidden works of Titian and Leonardo; and, findingthem, however cracked or torn, or painted over with tawdry daubsof pretenders, immediately recognise the divine original, and setthemselves to cleanse and restore. Such be God’s real priests, whoseordination and anointing are from the Holy Spirit; and he who hath notthis enthusiasm is not ordained of God, though whole synods of bishopslaid hands on him.
Many such priests there be among women; for to this silent ministrytheir nature calls them, endowed, as it is, with fineness of fibre anda subtile keenness of perception outrunning slow-footed reason,—and sheof whom we write was one of these.
At this very moment, while the crimson wings of morning were castingdelicate reflections on tree, and bush, and rock, they were alsoreddening innumerable waves round a ship that sailed alone, with a widehorizon stretching like an eternity around it; and in the advancingmorning stood a young man, thoughtfully looking off into the ocean,with a book in his hand—James Marvyn,—as truly and heartily a creatureof this material world as Mary was of the invisible and heavenly.
There are some who seem made to _live_,—life is such a joy to them;their senses are so fully _en rapport_ with all outward things; theworld is so keenly appreciable, so much a part of themselves; theyare so conscious of power and victory in the government and controlof material things, that the moral and invisible life often seems tohang tremulous and unreal in their minds, like the pale, faded moon inthe light of a gorgeous sunrise. When brought face to face with thegreat truths of the invisible world, they stand related to the higherwisdom much like the gorgeous, gay Alcibiades to the divine Socrates,or like the young man in Holy Writ to Him for whose appearing Socrateslonged;—they gaze, imperfectly comprehending, and at the call ofambition or riches turn away sorrowing.
So it was with James: in full tide of worldly energy and ambition therehad been forming over his mind that hard crust—that scepticism of thespiritual and exalted which men of the world delight to call practicalsense. He had been suddenly arrested and humbled by the revelationof a nature so much nobler than his own that he seemed worthless inhis own eyes: he had asked for love; but when _such_ love unveileditself, he felt like the disciple of old in the view of a divinertenderness,—‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.’
But it is not often that all the current of a life is reversed in onehour: and now, as James stood on the ship’s deck, with life passingaround him, and everything drawing upon the strings of old habits,Mary and her religion recurred to his mind, as some fair, sweet,inexplicable vision. Where she stood he saw; but how _he_ was ever toget there seemed as incomprehensible as how a mortal man should pillowhis form on sunset clouds.
He held the little Bible in his hand as if it were some amulet charmedby the touch of a superior being; but when he strove to read it, histhoughts wandered, and he shut it, troubled and unsatisfied. Yet therewere within him yearnings and cravings, wants never felt before, thebeginning of that trouble which must ever precede the soul’s rise to ahigher plan of being.
There we leave him. We have shown you now our three differentcharacters, each one in its separate sphere, feeling the force of thatstrongest and holiest power with which it has pleased our great Authorto glorify this mortal life.