SWEETENED WITH SORROW
People who suffer in the slow fire of sorrow are purified from many of the weaknesses and faults of humanity. Perfection comes only after we have paid the price. Men are always better and kinder to their second wife than they were to their first, for in the loss of the first wife sorrow opened the door to a wider vision and a broader view. Sorrow is part of our education. The giddy young have not yet been purified in sorrow’s flames, and they are blind to many things that must be learned before they win the hearts of the people.
The kindest man I ever knew was the saddest looking when his face was in repose. He had a good word for everybody. He seemed to know why men and women go wrong and could find an excuse for all their short-comings and evil doings. He came into our village life as though by accident, setting up housekeeping with his white-haired mother and two hired servants on the little farm just west of the town. They farmed only a little bit, keeping but one horse and two cows. The postmistress said he sent some large packages of first-class mail matter to a certain publishing house in the city, and we guessed that the man was an author or journalist.
I met him afterwards when we sat together at the old stone bridge fishing in the deep pool at the mouth of the little creek. It was a good place to catch the fish when gathering there previous to their migrating up the creek for the season. Bit by bit, I learned his story, for he was hungry for sympathy. A woman had broken his heart. She had married him for his money. He had been a business man in the big city—a banker, but occasionally writing for a newspaper in which he held some stock.
A family moved into the neighborhood where the bank was located, and he met the daughter at the house of a friend. A mutual admiration began from the first. She was of a literary turn, and was in sympathy with his ambition and hopes, and showed in many ways that she admired him. She was pretty and intelligent, and he was recovering from a love disappointment and was hungry for love and sympathy. He proposed, was accepted, and in a few months after the first meeting they were married. He was only twenty-five then, frivolous and happy and without a care.
Six weeks after the wedding he discovered by sheer accident that the woman had a living husband from whom she was not divorced, and whom she met clandestinely and gave him money with which to gamble. She wasn’t his wife at all, but an unscrupulous adventuress who associated with criminals.
He sold out his interest in the bank and came out into the country with his widowed mother to live a quiet life and try to forget.
That same summer a strange woman came to the village to spend a few months in this quiet retreat, and one night I sat with my melancholy friend in church when the strange lady sang a solo. She had the sweetest voice I ever heard—mournfully sweet, with a peculiar cadence that filled one’s eyes with moisture and sent thrills of unknown feelings tingling through every nerve. And oh, how beautiful was her face when she sang. I turned to my companion at the conclusion of the song and remarked: “God only bestows a voice like that upon a very few women.”
“Yes,” he replied sadly, “upon the few women who involuntarily pay the great price.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“No woman can sing so sweetly who has not suffered. Somebody has broken that frail woman’s heart. She has suffered in the slow fire of deep sorrow. A man is driven into great philanthropy; music, or literary work that touches the heart, through deep sorrow, but the woman who has a voice for singing pours all her sorrow out through the channel of sweetened song.”
I glanced at him and knew he had learned the story that can only come to a man whose heart has been broken; and I knew that he had guessed whence came the sweet cadence in the singer’s voice. Somehow it struck me forcibly that these two people who had been made sweet and lovable in the fire of sorrow would make life companions, if they could be brought together. I told my wife all I had on my mind and she fell in with my views at once. She is a chronic matchmaker.
She courted the woman’s society and learned her story. Her husband had been a defaulter, embezzler, bigamist and scoundrel. He had since been killed by a woman. She was making her living singing on the stage. I told her, when better acquainted, of how my friend had guessed of her sorrow, and she became greatly interested in my sad friend’s history. We finally brought the two strangers together. She sang for us and he read his latest poem. The sweetness of sorrow touched us all. She sang again and we all cried together. The charm of sorrow was over us all—over the entire house.
That was two years ago. They are now happily married. The sweetness of sorrow is in their love for each other, and life is filled with love’s sweet song.