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 associations. We sat together in our piazza, beneath a flood of the richest and balmiest moonlight, screened only from its silvery blaze by interposing masses 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 assurances. 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 pass 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 assured, 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 passes 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!
“You will tire of my waywardness—of my exactions. Ah! I shall force you from my side by my caprice.”
“You can not, Edward, if you would,” she replied, in mournful accents like my own, “I have no remedy against you! I have nobody now to whom to turn. Have I not driven all from my side—all but you?”
It was my task to soothe her now.
“Nay, Julia, be not you sorrowful. You must continue glad and blest, that you may conquer my sullen moods, my dark presentiments. When I tell you of the evils of my temper, I tell you of occasional clouds only. Heaven forbid that they should give an enduring aspect to our heavens!”
She responded fervently to my ejaculation. I continued:—
“I have only sought to prepare you for the management of my arbitrary nature, to keep you from suffering too much, and sinking beneath its exactions. You will bear with me patiently. Forgive me for my evil hours. Wait till the storm has overblown; and find me your own, then, as much as before; and let me feel that you are still mine—that the tempest has not separated our little vessels.”
“Will I not? Ah! do not fear for me, Edward. It is a happiness for me to weep here—here, in your arms. When you are sad and moody, I will come as now.”
“What if I repulse you?”
“You will not—no, no!—you will not.”
“But if I do I Suppose—-”
“Ah! it is hard to suppose that. But I will not heed it. I will come again.”
“And again?”
“And again!”
“Then you will conquer, Julia. I feel that you will conquer! You will drive out the devils. Surely, then, I shall be incorrigible no longer.”
Such was my conviction then. I little knew myself.