“But there is something about it still that prevents your being happy here.”
“O no, no. Nothing to prevent my being happy. I am very happy,—happier than you will ever be, I am afraid, Walter; for, try as you will, you always find something to be fretted and anxious about, though you take more and more pains to hide it, even from me.”
“I am sure,” said Walter, very seriously, “I grow less and less anxious and distrustful;—ever since——not exactly ever since I knew you, for we knew each other before we could talk; but ever since I knew——”
“Very well; I understand what you mean; and you began describing that moment to me one day, just as if I knew nothing of it myself. O, Walter, do you really think there are any people that have passed through life without knowing what that moment was,—that stir in one’s heart on being first sure that one is beloved? It is most like the soul getting free of the body, and rushing into Paradise, I should think. Do you suppose anybody ever lived a life without having felt this?”
Walter feared it might be so; but if so, a man missed the moment that made a man of one that was but an unthinking creature before; and a woman, the moment best worth living for, and that which joined her past life to the nothing that went before, and her future life to the heaven of realities that was to come after. But one thing he grieved to be sure of;—that this moment was not received as the token from God which it was designed to be; but in far, far too many cases, put away and denied. If this was done as a duty, and altogether as an act of the conscience, it only remained to be sorry that such a putting away was a duty,—but he was more than sorry,—he was ashamed and angry to witness the expectation in so many that they could bring back this moment whenever they pleased;—that they could call upon God to breathe into their hearts as often as they could bring their worldly interests to agree with His tokens.
“It seems to me,” said Effie, “that though God has kindly given this token of blessedness to all,—or to so many that we may nearly say all,—without distinction of great or humble, rich or poor,—the great and the lowly use themselves to the opposite faults. The great do not seem to think it the most natural thing to marry where they first love; and the lowly are too ready to love.”
“That is because the great have too many things to look to, besides love; and the lowly have too few. The rich have their lighted palaces to bask in, as well as the sunshine; and they must have a host of admirers, as well as one bosom friend. And when the poor man finds that there is one bliss that no power on earth can shut him out from, and one that drives out all evils for the time,—one that makes him forget the noonday heats, and one that tempers the keen north wind, and makes him walk at his full height when his superiors lounge past him in the streets,—no wonder he is eager to meet it, and jogs the time-glass to make it come at the soonest. If such a man is imprudent, I had rather be he than one that first let it slip through cowardice, and would then bring it back to gratify his low ambition.”
“And for those who let it go by for conscience’ sake, and do not ask for it again?”
“Why, they are happy in having learned what the one feeling is that life is worth having for. They may make themselves happy upon it for ever, after that. O, Effie, you would not believe,—nothing could make you believe what I was the day before and the day after I saw that sudden change of look of yours that told me all. The one day, I was shrinking inwardly before everything I had to do, and every word of my father’s, and everybody I met; and was always trying to make myself happy in myself alone, with the sense of God being near me and with me. That other day, I looked down upon everybody, in a kindly way;—and yet I looked up to them too, for I felt a respect that I never knew before for all that were suffering and enjoying; and I felt as if I could have brought the whole world nearer to God, if they would have listened to me. I shall never forget the best moment of all,—when my mind had suddenly ceased being in a great tumult, which had as much pain as pleasure in it. I had left my father getting up from breakfast, and I was just crossing yonder to take up my rake, when I said distinctly to myself, ‘she loves me;’ and heaven came down round about me that minute.”
Effie could have listened for aye; but the cry was heard from below—“Ferry!”—and she must go. Her husband “crossed to take up his rake,” and found occasion to remark at the instant that Effie tripped along as like the Effie of that day as if no day had intervened. Only her face showed the difference; and that was as if a new and higher spirit had come down to dwell in her.