Fairy Fingers / A Novel

by Anna Cora Ogden Mowatt Ritchie

He was only spared from passing a judgment upon his father, more correct than filial, by throwing the blame of his conduct upon the shackling customs, and false opinions, and arbitrary laws of his native land. He could not but be forcibly struck by the wide dissimilarity between the usages and views of life which distinguished the two nations. In America, he saw men, self-made and self-educated, at an age when young Frenchmen have scarcely begun to be aware that they have any independent existence, rising to prominent and honorable positions, taking a bold part in public affairs, and asserting by their achievements the maturity of their brains. He saw men, who had been forced by circumstances to commence their lives of toil and self-support at fifteen and eighteen, a few years later not only gaining their own livelihood, but contributing to the maintenance of their families, and laying the foundation of future fortune. He saw artistic tastes, literary talents, professional, legislative, and military abilities, brought to opulent fruition in men but a few years his senior; and though every one seemed to work at high pressure, every one appeared to live rapidly, crowding each day with actions, still men lived, lived consciously, planting along the pathway of their pilgrimage the landmarks of positive deeds; and they sowed, and reaped, and rejoiced in their harvests, and if some of them grew old faster than their European brethren, their age was at least enriched by varied memories, vast experiences, manifold mental gains, that testified to the value of their lives.

And was it imperative, Maurice asked himself, that the accident of noble blood should paralyze a man's volition, and that the bearing of a noble name should render his life inertly ignoble? He recognized that, in the seeming curse which condemned man to "work," God had hidden the richest blessing, even as he buried golden veins in the dark bosom of the earth. "Labor was privilege," and gave its sweetest flavor to the daily cup of life.

As for Ronald, though he loved his country with the enthusiasm which characterized all his affections, he had never been fully cognizant of the advantages it possessed over the land in which he had lately sojourned until he saw them through the eyes of Maurice.

Nothing is more true than that we can render no service to another by which we are not served ourselves, served spiritually, therefore actually, and in the highest sense; and not merely in his new appreciation of the land of his birth, but in numerous other ways, Ronald was the unconscious gainer by the helpful influence he exerted over his friend. The youthful Mentor confirmed himself in grand and vital truths while imparting them to Maurice; his own noble resolves were quickened into activity while he sought to infuse them into the mind of another; his own spirit acquired strength while he was endeavoring to render his companion strong of soul. Ronald's character was perhaps more affluent and expansive, had more force and fixedness of purpose, than that of Maurice, yet it derived fresh vigor from the less hopeful, less confident nature upon which it acted.

Though Maurice owed much to the young art-student, he soon owed more to that gentle but potent hand by which Ronald had been moulded, refined, and spiritualized. Ronald's mother opened wide her large heart and her loving arms to take in the motherless youth thrown by an apparent accident within her sphere.

Mrs. Walton was one of those beings to whom life is a poem, read it in sorrow or gladness, read it whatever way you will, because all things to her mind had a divine significance; she knew that nothing had either its end or origin here, and felt that the very day-dreams and aspirations of impulsive youth descended by influx from those supernal regions in which all causes exist, though we darkly behold them through effects ultimated upon our earthly plane. Her eyes were never bent upon the ground, to search out stumbling-blocks of doubt, but looked up Godward until the heavens grew less distant, and earth's perplexing mysteries were solved; and daily joys and daily pains only acquired importance through their bearing upon the joys and pains of eternity; and celestial light, flowing through her pure thoughts, reflected its mellow glory upon her humblest surroundings, and tinged them with ineffable beauty.

Maurice, who had been so deeply impressed by Ronald's attributes and aims, quickly recognized the fountain-head from whence flowed the living waters he had drank, and, humbly bending to quaff at the same stream, became conscious that his whole being was vitalized and renewed. The great ends of existence, for the first time, became apparent to him; and as he learned to look upon the present and temporal as only of moment through their effect upon the future and eternal,—as he renounced a senseless belief in the very names of chance and accident, and yielded to the conviction that the simplest as the gravest occurrences all tend to lay some stone in the great architectural edifice which every man is building for his own dwelling-place in the hereafter,—his trials, by some wondrous transmutation, wore a holy aspect, and gently into his unfolding spirit stole the comforting assurance that those very trials might be the fittest, the strongest, the appointed instruments to hew out the pathway he panted to tread, and carve for him a future which could never have been wrought by such tools as the velvety hands of prosperity hold in their feeble grasp.

The morbid melancholy into which Maurice had fallen, and which deepened with his vain pondering over the mysterious fate of Madeleine, rolled from his spirit before the breath of hope,—hope breathed through sunshine, from the lips of a woman whose sympathetic voice, tender looks, and quick comprehension of his emotions insensibly melted away reserve, and drew out all his confidence. He could talk to Mrs. Walton of Madeleine with an absence of reticence, an unchecked gush of feeling, which would not have been possible when he conversed with Ronald, or with any one but a woman, and such a woman.

Far from advising him, as a worldly-wise counsellor would have done, to struggle against a passion which did not promise to prove fortunate, she bade him cherish the image of the one he so ardently loved with perfect trust, that if that woman were indeed his other self,—that separate half which makes man's full complement,—he would, in spite of all adverse circumstances, be drawn to her, by mysterious and invisible cords, until their union was consummated.