Fashion and Famine

by Ann S. Stephens

We, who know this woman by her right name, and in her true character—that of a disappointed, erring, but still affectionate being—might wonder at her bloom, her smiling cheerfulness, her easy and gentle repose of look and manner; but human nature is full of such contradictions, teeming with serpents, absolutely hidden and bathed in the perfume of flowers.

If Ada Leicester smiled, she was not the less sad at heart. If her manners were easy and her voice sweet, it was habit—the necessity of pleasing others—that had rendered these things a second nature to her. With one great, and, we may add, almost holy object at heart, she pursued it earnestly, while all the routine of life went on as if she had no thought but for the world, and no pleasure or aim beyond the luxurious life which seemed to render her existence one continued gleam of Paradise.

Hitherto we have seen this woman in the agony of perverted love—perverted, though legal, for its object was vile; and worship of a base thing is hideous according to its power. We have seen her bowed down with grief, grovelling to the very soil of her native valley, in passionate agony. But these were phases in her life, and extremes of character which seldom appeared before the world.

It is a mistake when people fancy that any life can be made up of unmitigated sorrow. Even evil has its excitement and its gleams of wild pleasure, vivid and keen. The sting of conscience is sometimes forgotten; the viper, buried so deeply in flowers that his presence is scarcely felt, till, uncoiling with a fling, he dashes them all aside, withered by his hot breath and spotted with venom. This heart-shock, while it lasts, is terrible; but those who have no strength to cast forth the serpent bury him again in fresh flowers, and lull him to a poisonous sleep in some secret fold of the heart, till he grows restless and fierce once more.

With all her splendor, Ada Leicester was profoundly unhappy. The deep under-current of her heart always welled up bitter waters. Let the surface sparkle as it would, tears were constantly sleeping beneath. There is no agony like that of a heart naturally pure and noble, which circumstance, weakness, or temptation has warped from its integrity. To know yourself possessed of noble powers, to appreciate all the sublimity of goodness, and yet feel that you have undermined your own strength, and cast a veil over the beautiful through which you can never see clearly, this is deep sorrow—this is the darkness and punishment of sin. If we could but know how evil is punished in the heart of the evil-doer, charity would indeed cover a multitude of sins.

Ada Leicester was unhappy—so unhappy that the beggar at her gate might have pitied her. The pomp, the adulation which surrounded her, had become a habit; thus all the zest and novelty of first possession was gone, and these things became necessary, without gratifying the hungry cry of her soul.

At this period of her life she was utterly without objects of attachment; and what desolation is equal to this in a woman's heart? The thwarted affections and warm sympathies of her nature became clamorous for something to love. Her whole being yearned over the blighted affections of other days; maternal love grew strong within her. She absolutely panted to fold the child, abandoned in a delirium of passionate resentment, once more to her bosom. But that child could nowhere be found. Her parents, too—that noble, kind old man, who had loved her so—that meek and loving woman, her mother—had the earth opened and swallowed them up? was she never to see them more?—to what terrible destitution might her sin have driven them.

The time had been when this proud woman shrunk from meeting persons so deeply injured—but oh, how fervently loved! Now she absolutely panted to fling herself at their feet, and crave forgiveness for all the shame and anguish her madness had cast upon them. In all this her exertions had been cruelly thwarted; parents, child, everything that had loved her and suffered for her, seemed swept into oblivion. The past was but a painful remembrance, not a wreck of it remained save in her own mind.