“It comes too late; my life is now an aimless one, and riches might only tend to make it a useless one also; there are none to share my fortunes, and why should a solitary and isolated man heap up riches when he knows not who shall gather them? it comes too late!”
Alas! how often has that thought paralized the energies and stricken the heart of the patient sufferer. Even he, who in the flush of manhood can proudly exclaim, “I bide my time,” as if in defiance of fortune’s frowns, is often heard, when all was gained, to sigh mournfully in after life over the chilling reflection, “it comes too late!"—too late for the fulfilment of hope—too late for the attainment of happiness.
Ernest Melvyn never rose above the station of confidential clerk, but the respect and esteem of his employers testified his integrity and usefulness. Mr. Walton learned to regard him with as much friendship as Mr. Allison, and it was not long before he was as welcome a guest in Mary’s new home as he had ever been in the scenes of her joyous childhood. Whatever might have been her feelings towards Ernest, his perfect self-possession and calm demeanor, by convincing her that he had never loved her, aided her in the subjugation of her own rebellious heart. Her husband was kind, affectionate, and good. She had always respected his talents and esteemed his virtues, and now, as time wove the new and strong ties of parental affection between them, the quiet happiness of domestic life gradually effaced the brightest tints of her youth’s romance. It may be that a shadow rested long on her path—it may be that the spectre of blighted love sometimes stood beside the shrine of her household gods—but Time, the true exorciser of all such ghosts, wrought his work of kindness, slowly but surely, and Mary became a cheerful, useful and happy woman.
Ernest experienced the usual changes which come upon a solitary man. He lived alone among his books, and pictures, and shells, until they became actually objects of tender interest to him. Regularly, every afternoon, he visited Mr. Allison, and read the newspapers for his benefactor, whose failing sight rendered the perusal of his favorite journals a task of some difficulty. This done, Ernest returned to his home and passed the remainder of the evening in study—aimless it is true, but still pleasing; or in a dreamy and vague reverie so enticing to a reserved and imaginative man. But on one certain evening in each week, he always took his seat at Mrs. Walton’s tea-table, and as regularly ensconced himself in the chimney-corner as soon as tea was over. To the isolated man this weekly visit, and those claspings of the hand with which he was always greeted, were as dear as the “memorable kiss” with which the “apostle of passion” fed his wild idolatry; aye, full as precious and far more pure was the joy thus imparted than any refinement of infidel philosophy and illicit love. Mary’s children climbed his knee, even as Mary had done in her own glad infancy, and loved him with all the fervent affection which had once characterized her feelings. Like all old bachelors, he became somewhat of a humorist, and, at last, was voted by the dandies of the rising generation, to be decidedly eccentric. But his kindliness of heart, his firm integrity, and his purity and delicacy of feeling never forsook him.
To the day of his death he never disclosed the secret of his early love. When the frosts of three-score winters had whitened his locks, the solitary old man withdrew to his lonely room, and there, amid those inanimate objects which had been his solace through so many weary years, he yielded up his gentle spirit to the God who gave it. He was found one morning lying in the quiet sleep of death—his arms crossed upon his breast, his bible on the table at his bedside, and his features settled in such sweet repose that none looked upon them without feeling that Death had indeed dealt mercifully with the righteous.
His will was found in his cabinet, and Mary Walton was made the sole heiress of his little fortune; although no reason was assigned for this exclusive preference. Perhaps the little casket which was discovered in a secret recess of the same cabinet disclosed somewhat of the truth to her conscious heart. It contained a lock of golden hair, marked: “given me by Mary on her twelfth birthday,” together with a withered bouquet, which, from the silken band around it, Mary remembered to have given him the night preceding her betrothal, and a penciled sketch in which she had no difficulty to recognize her own girlish beauty.
Reader, does my tale seem tame and trite? it is the history of a blighted heart; and if the secrets of that strange world of mystery were more frequently revealed, many such a tale of simple pathos would enlist the sympathies of the glad and gay. The picture of that self-forgetting being, subduing his love, at first, from the very humility of true affection, and, afterwards, crushing it within his heart lest its living presence should mar the happiness of his beloved, is to me one of ineffable tenderness. That he was mistaken in his views of her happiness does not destroy the beauty of his self-devotion; and what shall we say of the moral courage which could relinquish all claims to posthumous sympathy, by bearing his secret to the grave, lest a shadow from the past should fall upon her present peacefulness?
THE RETURN OF YOUTH.
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