During the winter which followed the summer of their union the X.’s became members of a coterie, with which dancing was held in high esteem. Mrs. X. was enciente, but showed her condition scarcely at all, and so danced, and afterward played for the dancers at the hebdomadal reunions, up to within a month of her confinement.
She had left school with fair musical powers fairly cultivated, and with a voice sweet, but not powerful. The lover who had praised her singing, when her husband, spoke in thoughtless, disparaging strain of its quality. This so wounded and discouraged her that no inducement could make her open her lips again. But, as I have said, she continued to play on the piano-forte, more or less on each occasion, “dance music” already at her fingers’ ends, and short, easy, gay compositions with which she was familiar before leaving school, and which needed no notes as reminders. At home she read and studied no new music, or music of a higher character. This was partly because her musical taste was uncultivated, and partly because the new draft on her energy was attended by depression, and she felt justified in yielding to her feelings, and dropping all mental and bodily effort. “I will be more studious, more orderly and hospitable after baby is born. But now I shall drop everything—let things slide.”
The boy born of these ante-natal circumstances resembled his father in his coarser mental calibre, while he lacked the ambition and steady purpose which characterized the latter. He, however, took to the keys of the piano as a duck takes to water. When a lad, his fingers grasped the chords and flew swiftly through the scales. This endless series of polkas, schottisches, and cotillions wearied the entire household. He hated classical music, and cared little for vocal melody or harmony.
Two years after the birth of this boy, a younger sister of Mrs. X. made them a visit of some months’ duration, and she insisted that Clara should take part with her in duets, notwithstanding that her unused voice and pregnant state promised little success from the effort. As soon as Mr. X. was quite out of sight on the way to his business (for the old criticism still rankled in her mind, and the mutual performance was kept a secret from him), the two would be at the instrument with Mendelssohn, Wallace, and others before them, making delicious harmony. There is nothing like singing to free the soul, and awaken its heights and depths. Nothing could have been more fortunate for little Clara, who made her entry into the world before her aunt’s departure, than the antecedent occupation of her mother. In time her voice proved to be as sweet and far stronger than her mother’s, and in all her nature she realized the inspiring effect of those hours when persuaded by her sister, her mother had lost sight of herself in the pure emotions and thoughts of those famous masters.
[GRIEF.]
The cause of grief very seriously affects its character. If it is based on a sense of wrong, as in the case of a husband’s unfaithfulness, then indignation, anger, malice make a part of it, and a pregnant wife, distracted by these emotions, conveys to her child, as we have shown, the violent emotions she herself experienced.
If the bad, the unprincipled conduct of a son from whom we had expected reverence and manliness bows us down, a sense of wrong and shame, a feeling that it might have been avoided, mixes with our grief and embitters it.
But if death, from natural causes, which no woman’s eye could foresee and provide against, strikes down one near and dear to us, we simply mourn, and this grief may open the inner chambers of the soul hitherto closed.
Thus Mrs. W., an external, worldly-minded woman, not wanting in common benevolence or sense of duty, simply without dignity or elevation of character, was married to an energetic, sensible, practical man, the manager and owner of a large foundry. Their circumstances were, therefore, quite easy. An inferior kind of social life occupied much of Mrs. W.’s time, and amid these conditions their first child, a girl, was born. This child, on the principle that inferior fruit ripens early, was as mature as she would ever be at sixteen. At twenty she was shallow, pretentious, illiterate, which last her mother was not.
When five months pregnant with her second child, the news was suddenly brought to Mrs. W. that her husband, whom business had called several hundred miles from his home, had been stricken down with yellow fever, and, among total strangers, had passed away, in his delirium calling wildly on his wife for help. The loss made a more profound impression on Mrs. W. than it would have done had she not been pregnant. She had accepted Mr. W. from sentiments of gratitude, and now she was moved to make a strict self-examination as to her imperfect appreciation of his love and kindness. Worldly motives and thoughts were silenced. Conscience and finer judgment were active.