In this household I gradually acquired an intimacy. This was partially owing to the circumstance that I had solaced the many lonely hours of my bachelorhood in acquiring by memory and rehearsing many scraps of poetry. Mr. Bell's favorite method of passing the evening was in teaching his children to read and declaim poetry with dramatic expression, and in this delightful occupation I was an acceptable assistant. Many were the domestic dramas which we produced,—pieces of our own invention,—in addition to our readings from the poets.
Frederick and Clara were to pass a year or two in schools at the North, and thither Mr. B. removed. The first winter of their absence, I received a letter from him relating that Clara had succumbed to the rigor of a northern climate. Soon came the father and brother with the corpse of their darling, which was placed within the cemetery mausoleum. Into this I entered for the first time, but the interior differed in no respect from others. Within its walls the mother and daughter were left together. In less than a week it was again opened, to receive the son. He had been drowned while attempting the rescue of a companion.
To my surprise at the time, the desolate father exhibited no grief. There was in his demeanor an appearance of satisfaction that their removal had preceded his own,—that he would leave none of his heart's treasures behind him, but be enabled to claim them all in the future existence.
The days lengthened and shortened through three years, in which the routine of my life was varied by no incident. With Mr. Bell my relations continued the same. At all times he spoke cheerfully of the past and the future, frequently giving utterance to the feelings above attributed to him. In one of these conversations I ventured to inquire concerning his wife. His whole countenance was irradiated. It seemed that some bright and glorious recollection of her had been recalled. The fancy impressed itself on me that he had a visible consciousness of her presence. The animation subsided into a quiet self-communing, and he soon proceeded to relate the history of her whose marble similitude had so excited my wonder and admiration.
It is nearly thirty years since I came from a New England country house to this city, as a clerk in the branch house of Sampson Brothers. I was then a raw youth; but my New England training had given me the serious and money-seeking characteristics of that part of our country. For ten years I applied myself exclusively to the details of business, having but few associates, devoting my leisure to self-improvement, and steadily accumulating a competency. On the death of a member of the firm I took his place. Five years passed, and I had attained a fortune. Some friends from the North called upon me in their travels, and during the week of their visit, I participated in more gaieties than had been comprised in my whole previous life. One evening it was proposed to visit the theatre. Into a place of dramatic representation I had never before entered, and the enchantment of all its accessories was irresistible. But when the heroine of the evening appeared, I was deprived of every faculty except that of the most absorbing adoration. What was the drama enacted mattered not,—I had no perception of it, nor of anything except the person who had fascinated me. Tall in figure, commanding in gesture, scarcely developed into the full wealth of womanhood, with an eye of piercing blackness, yet changing with every gradation of passion, profuse black tresses, and a voice whose intonations swayed the audience to every mood of feeling, SHE for the first time appeared to me.
Well, I had passed my premiére jeunesse, and had arrived at that age when a passion, once called into active life, becomes unappeasable. I need not particularize the effects upon me of my first experience of love. For weeks and months I had no desire, no ability to do anything else than frequent the theatre. My want of acquaintance with all the peculiar circumstances connected with actors and actresses almost maddened me; for I knew of no method by which I might ever be able to exchange a word with her who had become to me more than an idol to a devotee, or the dream of fame to a poet. I sickened. To the physician called in attendance, after much shrewd questioning on his part, I revealed my secret. With a jocose laugh he left me, but in a half-hour returned, accompanied by a somewhat vulgar-looking female, whom he introduced as the mother of Evelyn Afton—the name of her for whom my life was wasting and my soul pining.
The mother was the widow of an actor, and Evelyn her only daughter, who had been bred for the stage, and her beauty and ability having secured success, she had been enabled to attain all the accomplishments of cultivated womanhood.