It is a most delightful place. All about the house and domain there is a perfection of comfort and domestic taste, an amplitude of convenience, which could have been brought about only by the slow ingenuity and labor of many successive generations, intent upon adding all possible improvement to the home where years gone by and years to come give a sort of permanence to the intangible present. An American is sometimes tempted to fancy that only by this long process can real homes be produced. One man's lifetime is not enough for the accomplishment of such a work of Art and Nature, almost the greatest merely temporary one that is confided to him; too little, at any rate,—yet perhaps too long, when he is discouraged by the idea that he must make his house warm and delightful for a miscellaneous race of successors, of whom the one thing certain is, that his own grandchildren will not be among them. Such repinings as are here suggested, however, come only from the fact, that, bred in English habits of thought, as most of us are, we have not yet modified our instincts to the necessities of our new forms of life. A lodging in a wigwam or under a tent has really as many advantages, when we come to know them, as a home beneath the roof-tree of Charlecote Hall. But, alas! our philosophers have not yet taught us to see what is best, nor have our poets sung us what is beautifullest, in the kind of life that we must lead; and therefore we still read the old English wisdom, and harp upon the ancient strings. And thence it happens, that, when we look at a time-honored hall, it seems more possible for men who inherit such a home, than for ourselves, to lead noble and graceful lives, quietly doing good and lovely things as their daily work, and achieving deeds of simple greatness when circumstances require them. I sometimes apprehend that our institutions may perish before we shall have discovered the most precious of the possibilities which they involve.
* * * * *
MR. AXTELL.
PART VI.
"The leaves of the second autumn were half-shrivelled in drawing near to the winter of their age.
"I had been to see your mother. She was ill. Mary's death was slowly, surely bringing her own near. We had had a long talk that afternoon. Her visions of life were rare and beautiful. She was like Mrs. Wilton, the embodiment of all that is purely woman. She had wrought a solemn spell over me,—made Eternity seem near. I had been changed since that prayer on the sea-shore, fourteen months before, but now I felt a longing to go away. Earth seemed so drear,—mother was sick,—Abraham unhappy,—my father deep in the perplexing cares of his profession, mostly from home,—Mrs. Percival was dying,—the year was passing away,—and I, too, would be going; and as I went out of the house to go home, I remembered the day wherein I had waited in the viny arbor for Mary to awaken from sleep, how I had gone down to the sea to waken myself to a light that burned before it blessed. Since then I had avoided the place, barred with so many prison-wires. Now I felt a longing to go into it. The leaves were frost-bitten. I sympathized with them. Autumn winds went sighing over their misfortunes; spirit-winds blew past me, on their way to and from the land that is and the land that is not to us. The arbor was dear with a newborn love. I went out to greet it, as one might greet a ship sailing the same great ocean, though bound to a different port. There was a something in that old vine-clad arbor that was in me. I felt its shadows coming out to meet me. They chilled a little, but I went in. I looked at the little white office, across the yard, in the corner. I thought of the face that came out that day to see me,—the face that drank up my heart in one long draught, begun across Alice dead, finished when I read that letter. The cup of my heart was empty,—so empty now! I looked down into it; it was fringed with stalactites, crystallized from the poison of the glass. Oh! what did I see there? A dead, dead crater, aching for the very fire that made it what it was, crying out of its fierce void for fiery fusion. Why did our God make us so,—us, who love, knowing we should not? I knew from the beginning that Bernard McKey ought not to be cared for by me; but could I help it? Now the veil of death, I believed, hung between, and the cup of my heart might be embalmed: the last change, I thought, had come to it, and left it as I that day found.
"Chloe came around the corner, throwing her apron over her head. She looked up and down the way, as if in search of some one, went down the walk to the gate, looked as I had once seen her do at our house, taking it window by window, and finding no one, (the day seemed deserted,) she was walking back. I called to her from the arbor.
"'I was just looking for you, Miss Lettie. I've got a letter here.
Mistress is too sick to read it for me, and Master's away. Would you?'
"It was addressed to Chloe. I broke the seal and opened it. It seemed a long letter. I gave a sigh at the task before me, and looked over to the end. I saw the signature: it was Bernard H. McKey. After that I saw Chloe's troubled black face written on my vision, and felt dripping drops about my head.
"'There, Miss Lettie, it's all over, now. I's so glad you're come to! I won't bother you with reading anymore letters. It would have to be much good in it that 'ud pay me for seeing you so.'