"She came the next week. She was a widow, some thirty years old, ten years older than I was. I did not think her pretty,--perhaps piquante, but that was all. In my first fastidiousness, I thought her hardly lady-like, and laughed at her evident attempts to attract my notice,--at her little vanities and affectations. But I do not know; we were always together; I saw no other woman but the farmer's wife. There were the mountain walks, the trees, the flowers, the moonlight; she talked so well upon them all! In short, you do not know, no young girl can know, the influence which a woman in middle life, if she has anything in her, has over a young man; and she,--she had shrewdness and a certain talent, and, I think now, knew what she was doing,--at any rate, I fell madly in love. I knew my father would never consent to my marrying then; I knew I was ruining my prospects by doing so; but that very knowledge only made me more eager to secure her.
"She was entirely independent of control, being left a widow with some little property, and threw no obstacles in my way. We were married there, in that little village, and for a few weeks I lived in a fool's paradise.
"I could not tell you--indeed, I would not tell you, if I could--how by degrees I found out what I had done,--that I had flung away my heart on a woman who married me simply to secure herself the position in society which her own imprudence had lost; how, when she found I had nothing to offer her but a home in my father's house, entirely dependent upon him, she accused me of having deceived her for the sake of her own miserable pittance; how she made herself the common talk of Newport by her dissipation, her extravagance, her affectations; how her love of excitement led her into such undisguised flirtations, under the name of friendships, with almost every man she met, that her imprudences, to call them by no harsher name, made my father insist, that, for my mother's sake, I should seek another home.
"I did so, but it was only to go through a repetition of similar scenes, of daring follies on her part, and reproaches on mine. At last, desperate, I induced my father to settle on her what would have been my share of his property on condition that she should return to New York,--while I, crushed down, mortified, and ashamed to look my friends in the face, and sick of the wrongs and follies of civilized life, grasped eagerly at an opportunity to join a fur-trading party, and buried myself alive in the wilds of the Northwest.
"I had no object in going there but to escape from my wife and from myself; but, once there, the charm of that free life took possession of me; adventure followed adventure; opportunities opened to me, and I grew to be an influential person, and made myself a home among the Indians. It is a wild life that the Indian traders live up in that far-away country, and many a reckless deed is done there which public opinion would frown upon here. I am afraid I was no better than my companions; I lived my life and drew from it whatever enjoyment it would bring; but, at least, I did not brutalize myself as some of them did; for that I may thank the refining influence of my early education. Meantime, I was almost lost to my family and, indeed, I hardly regretted it, for nothing would have brought me back while my wife lived, and, if I were not to be with my friends, why eat my heart out with longings for them? So, for nearly twenty years, I lived the life of adventure, danger, and privation, that draws its only charm from its independence.
"At last came a letter from your mother. It found its way to me from fort to fort, brought up part of the way with the letters to the troops stationed at our upper forts, then carried by the Indian runners to the trading-posts of the fur-companies till it reached me in the depths of the Rocky Mountains. My wife was dead,--she had died suddenly; my property, all that she had not squandered, (and it was so tied up by my father's forethought that she could only throw away a part of it,) was my own again; my sister longed to see me, and promised me a welcome to her house and heart. I grew restless from that moment, and, converting into money the not inconsiderable wealth with which I had surrounded myself in the shape of furs, horses, buffalo-robes, and so forth, I came down to the States again to begin life anew, a man of forty-five, my head whitened, and my features marked before their time from the life of exposure which I had led. Alice, I, too, was too late. I had dropped out of the tide of life and progress in my twenty years' seclusion, and, struggle as I might, I could not retrieve the time lost. The present age knew not of me,--I had lost my place in it; the thoughts, feelings, habits, of all around were strange to me; I had been pushed out of the line of march, and never could I fall into step again. In society, in business, in domestic life, it was all the same. Trial after trial taught me, at last, the truth; and when I had learned not only to believe it, but to accept it, I came home to my father's house, now mine, and made myself friends of my books,--those faithful ones who were as true to me as if I had never deserted them. They have brought me content, if not happiness; and you, Alice, you and Kate, you have filled fully an old man's heart."
Alice's tears were dropping fast on Uncle John's hand as she said,--
"I will be more to you henceforward than ever before. I have nothing else to live for now. Kate is the home child; but I--I will stay with you, and you shall teach me, too, to be contented,--to find my happiness, as you do, in making the happiness of all around."
Uncle John passed his other hand over her hair,--
"You shall stay with me for the present, my darling,--perhaps as long as I live. But life is not over for you, Alice. You have youth,--you have years in store. For you it is not too late."