Why all this toil and trouble?”
then taking her favorite seat on a low ottoman beside me, she rested her beautiful head on my lap, its rich fall of ringlets almost sweeping the ground, and with her steady, brilliant eye, looked up in my face most coaxingly. I submitted; for, to tell the truth, I was not sorry to be made to read over “Ida’s Journal;” so many years had passed since the events it narrated had taken place, that it seemed to possess more of interest on account of the lapse of time. Ida was the daughter of a second cousin of my mother’s. This cousin was an orphan ward of my grandfather’s, and had been brought up from infancy in his family. I never saw her, but judging from a picture of her in my mother’s possession, she must have been a remarkably beautiful woman. She was very superior in mind, but wild and wayward in disposition. My Uncle Walter, my grandfather’s only son, loved his beautiful cousin—doated on her; but she, with willful opposition, rejected his love, and the worldly advantages attending on it, to follow the fortunes of a young German artist, who had taught her music, and who she fancied was the realization of the ideal her illy regulated fancy had formed. Her marriage with Hermann Bernstorf, and departure from her country, brought great sorrow to her friends, my mother said, and it was feared my Uncle Walter would never recover from the disappointment it caused him; but time is an excellent physician, and my Uncle Walter not only recovered from the disappointment, severe as it was, but became a model of husbands; and his devotion to my gentle, lovely Aunt Mary, was a constant subject of admiring remark with his nephews and nieces, who did not know the romance of his student days.
Madame Bernstorf had removed to Germany immediately after her marriage. So much opposed was my grandfather to her marriage, that he would never see her after her engagement was disclosed; and she left home and kindred, who had worshiped her, and spoiled her with indulgence, to follow the uncertain fortunes of a stranger in a strange land. My mother loved her cousin dearly, and though she regretted the willfulness of her conduct, she did not feel unkindly toward her; and when my grandfather refused to see her, or remain under the same roof with her, to my mother’s house did she come, and there was her sad, tearful wedding celebrated.
Years rolled around, and when I was a little girl I used to hear my mother talk of her cousin Agnes Morton—Agnes Bernstorf she never called her—and listen with childish eagerness to the letters she constantly received from her. Madame Bernstorf though willful, was warm-hearted; and she never failed to write regularly to my mother and aunts, and cherish for them the warmest feelings. We never knew, except by inference, what her circumstances had proved to be on her removal to her husband’s home. Her letters, though affectionate, were short; and she never entered into details of her situation. One child, a daughter, she spoke of—her little Ida; and my first letter was written to this little stranger cousin. Appended to each letter of our mothers was always a tiny, childish scrawl; and from childhood to girlhood the correspondence continued, until we began to write whole letters to each other.
Although Madame Bernstorf was so reserved and laconic in her letters, especially about her domestic affairs, it was evident she wished to keep up her connection with home and home friends. She seldom mentioned her husband’s name in her letters; and when she did, it was but casually. Trouble she had, it was certain, for her letters gave evidence of it in the serious tone which they breathed. There was no allusion to certain, specified trouble, but there was a lack of hope and brightness in them. Several children she gave birth to, but the letters announcing their different births, were followed a few months after with announcements of their deaths. This might have caused sorrow to her; she never expressed it so, however; on the contrary, each letter announcing the death of a child, was filled with expressions of thankfulness, that they were taken from a world of trouble and trials. Actual poverty she could not be suffering from, for the income of her little property was semi-annually remitted to her; the principal was small, but it was left in trust by her father, settled upon her children, and only the income of it could she have. It was not much, it is true, but it was sufficient to keep actual want from her door we felt certain. Bernstorf, her husband, had been a wild, visionary young man, though fascinating in his manners and appearance, and from this remembrance of him her family argued that disappointment had attended her obstinate imprudent marriage, and mortification and pride prevented her acknowledgment of it. Ida’s letters, as she grew older, gave marks of cultivation and refinement. She wrote of her studies, to which her time seemed to be devoted. She spoke of the beauty of their country home; from that we supposed that if they were not enjoying wealth, they were above want. Isolated seemed to be their situation, for she never alluded to friends around her. When she was about sixteen her father died; but Madame Bernstorf announced his death with calmness, as though she had been prepared for it, although none of her previous letters mentioned his sickness. But at last came letters of deep agony, only a few months following the one announcing her husband’s decease; one from Madame Bernstorf, an unfinished one, to my Aunt Miriam, who had taken my mother’s place in the correspondence, enclosed in a few lines from poor Ida, wet with tears, and expressive of the greatest wretchedness, announcing her mother’s death. Madame Bernstorf’s letter had been written in evident anticipation of death.
“I know I am dying, dear Miriam,” she wrote, “trouble and anxiety of mind have at last worn out my poor body. I have been hoping my strength would last, even so long that I might see my kindred once more before I die; but all hope is, I fear, gone. How sunny was my life previous to my marriage. Not a care had I. Since that unhappy event all has been bitterness. But I must not murmur; I consulted only my own will and selfish desires, and I have suffered as I deserved. Hermann Bernstorf, whom I idolized with all the wild devotion of an ill-regulated spirit, proved to be a neglectful, careless, and at last an intemperate husband; and his death was, indeed, a relief to me. On my death-bed I can at last admit it, although mortification and pride have heretofore kept me silent. Ah! Miriam, I cannot tell you how much I have suffered. I hoped my cup of sorrow was drained to the dregs; but I find the bitterest drop remaining, the leaving of my child alone in life. I cannot bring my mind to look calmly on my approaching death. Oh! how wildly have I besought Heaven to spare me, if only for a few months, that I might see her safe with my own family; but in vain—death creeps on apace, and I feel something must be done. Ida cannot be left here. With my husband’s family, I have never had any intercourse; he had forfeited their countenance and regard long before his marriage with me; pride has always kept me from seeking them. I have no one to look to for aid but in my own family. Will you not, dear Miriam, take charge of my child? The little property my father so wisely provided for his grandchild, will prevent her from being an actual dependent upon any one; but she will need, when I am gone, a home—some one to protect and love her. She is a delicate flower, and needs nurturing. I know you will grant this request of a dying woman, and though comforted by this knowledge, remorse embitters even this comfort, when I recall, that I have given only to you and your family trouble and vexation, while from you I have always received kindness and doting indulgence.
“I write with pain and difficulty. Ida does not dream of her approaching trouble—her mild, dove-like eyes beam on me hopefully, and she talks of our future with certainty. I cannot tell her the sad truth. Oh, Father above! why am I thus sorely afflicted?”
Ida’s letter told us her mother had been found senseless over this letter, and only revived a few moments to bless her child. She then yielded up her tried spirit into the hands of the Wise Power who had first gifted her with every worldly blessing, then, when those blessings were abused, had visited her with every earthly trouble.
There was no hesitation on my Aunt Miriam’s part; immediately were letters from all of us dispatched to welcome the orphan amongst us, and proper means employed to bring her safely to us. To our amazement my Aunt Mary and Uncle Walter, upon hearing of Madame Bernstorf’s death and application to Aunt Miriam, insisted upon adopting Ida themselves. They had but one child, a son, who was finishing his studies at an eastern university. An orphan niece of Aunt Mary’s, a wealthy heiress, Adelan Lee, resided with them; but my aunt urged she had no daughter, and Ida seemed, she said, providentially provided for them. She knew of her husband’s early love for Madame Bernstorf, but, with angelic singleness of heart, she persisted in claiming Ida, because she felt it would be gratifying to him. We did not wonder at Uncle Walter’s devotion to his wife, when we saw this decided proof of her pure, confiding, self-forgetting spirit.
Ida at last arrived. She remained with me a few weeks before going to my uncle’s mountain home, which was situated in a romantic county quite in the interior of the state. We renewed during this visit the declarations of friendship we had expressed by letters. She was a beautiful creature—totally unlike her mother. Her person was tall, but graceful and finely proportioned. She had a great quantity of beautiful hair, of that pure Madonna, auburn tint painters delight in. Her complexion was exquisitely clear, and one could well fancy when looking at her, why her mother had called her a “delicate flower;” delicate and fragile indeed did she seem. Her eyes were deep and melting in their expression. I never could decide on their color; sometimes they seemed a soft, dark gray, sometimes an auburn brown, like her hair; but their expression was truly poetic. There was a great naïveté, and tender pathos in her manner and countenance, that was bewitching; a total disregard of self, and an innate desire to contribute to every one’s comfort. Her mother had evidently cultivated in her daughter the qualities her own character needed. Poor girl! she was overwhelmed with sorrow for her mother’s death, but was filled with gratitude for our kindness. My aunt and uncle came to the city for her, and greeted her with parental fondness, which quite encouraged her, and softened the regret she felt at parting with me. The journal commences at the first day of her arrival at her new home, and will tell her story better than I can.