[FRAGMENTS FROM A YOUNG WIFE'S DIARY.][3]
I have been married seven weeks. * * * I do not rave in girlish fashion about my perfect happiness—I do not even say I love my husband. Such words imply a separate existence—a gift consciously bestowed on one being from another. I feel not thus: my husband is to me as my own soul.
[3] By the Authoress of "Olive," "The Ogilvies," and "The Head of the Family," three charming works, recently published by Harper and Brothers.
Long, very long, it is since I first knew this. Gradually, not suddenly, the great mystery of love overshadowed me, until at last I found out the truth, that I was my own no more. All the world's beauty I saw through his eyes—all the world's goodness and greatness came reflected through his noble heart. In his presence I was as a child: I forgot myself, my own existence, hopes, and aims. Every where—at all times and all places—his power was upon me. He seemed to absorb and inhale my whole soul into his, until I became like a cloud melting away in sunshine, and vanishing from the face of heaven.
All this reads very wild and mad; but, oh! Laurence—Laurence! none would marvel at it who had once looked on thee! Not that he is a perfect Apollo—this worshiped husband of mine: you may meet a score far handsomer. But who cares? Not I! All that is grand, all that is beautiful, all that makes a man look godlike through the inward shining of his godlike soul—I see in my Laurence. His eyes, soft, yet proud—his wavy hair—his hand that I sit and clasp—his strong arm that I lean on—all compose an image wherein I see no flaw. Nay, I could scarce believe in any beauty that bore no likeness to Laurence.
Thus is my husband—what am I? His wife—and no more. Every thing in me is only a reflection of him. Sometimes I even marvel that he loved me, so unworthy as I seem: yet, when heaven rained on me the rich blessing of his love, my thirsty soul drank it in, and I felt that had it never come, for lack of it I must have died. I did almost die, for the joy was long in coming. Though—as I know now—he loved me well and dearly; yet for some reason or other he would not tell me so. The vail might never have fallen from our hearts, save for one blessed chance. I will relate it. I love to dream over that brief hour, to which my whole existence can never show a parallel.
We were walking all together—my sisters, Laurence Shelmerdine, and I—when there came on an August thunder-storm. Our danger was great, for we were in the midst of a wood. My sisters fled; but I, being weak and ill—alas! my heart was breaking quietly, though he knew it not—I had no strength to fly. He was too kind to forsake me: so we staid in an open space of the wood, I clinging to his arm, and thinking—God forgive me!—that if I could only die then, close to him, encompassed by his gentle care, it would be so happy—happier far than my life was then. What he thought, I knew not. He spoke in hurried, broken words, and turned his face from me all the while.
It grew dark, like night, and there came flash after flash, peal after peal. I could not stand—I leaned against his arm. At last there shone all around us a frightful glare, as if the whole wood were in flames—a crash of boughs—a roar above, as though the heavens were falling—then, silence.
Death had passed close by us, and smote us not—and Death was the precursor of Love.
We looked at one another, Laurence and I: then, with a great cry, our hearts—long-tortured—sprang together. There never can be such a meeting, save that of two parted ones, who meet in heaven. No words were spoken, save a murmur—"Adelaide!" "Laurence!"—but we knew that between us two there was but one soul. We stood there—all the while the storm lasted. He sheltered me in his arms, and I felt neither the thunder nor the rain. I feared not life nor death, for I now knew that in either I should never be divided from him.