“But it is to be a long while, and my heart will be so lonely without him, granny.”
The old lady gives her head a dispirited shake.
“It is all going and coming in this world,” says she. “To-day here, to-morrow there: ’tis like breathing on a mirror.”
“No, no!” cries the young fellow, “that is a melancholy simile. Life is something more than a breath. I would be content to know nothing but its sorrows, rather than think it the hollow illusion people call it. Oh, Dolly, you must cheer up and help to give me heart. I want all the courage I can get. After this voyage we needn’t be separated any more. Remember, next year I shall be skipper, and then I can take you to sea with me.”
“If next year had only come!” the poor little girl sobs, and lets her face fall upon her husband’s hand.
“Nay, nay,” the old lady chides, gently, “’tis thy business to help and support thy husband, Dolly. Will tears help him? Resolution is softened by them, and made weak and womanish. Your mother before you, my child, knew what it was to part from your father. He once went to Spain, and for many months we knew not whether he was living or dead. You were a little child then. What came to her, came to me, and must come to you as it comes to all women who will needs transplant their own hearts into men’s. Know this, Dolly, that no love is purely sweet that has not known trials and afflictions.”
“Hear that, my little one,” says the young husband, stooping his head until his lips touch his wife’s ears. “Let us seek a blessing in our grief, and we shall find one. It teaches me to know my love for you—our love for each other. Is not such knowledge blessed?”
“See here, Dolly,” continued the grandmother, battling with the tears provoked by the influx of hurrying memories which followed her reference to her own child, Dolly’s mother. “When John is gone, we will put up a calendar against the wall in your bedroom; and every night, after we have worshipped God, we will prick off a day, and you shall see how quickly the calendar grows small under our hands. I am seventy years old, and it was but the other day that I was dancing your mother in my arms, and I was a young woman, and your grandfather a hearty man, with brown hair under his wig, and bright big eyes like yours. Why, that was fifty years ago, and it seems but yesterday! Many’s the bitter tear I have shed, and the grief I have borne; but the times I mourn cannot come back to me, they are gone for ever—my life is but an empty chamber now; there is no fire in the grate, and the chairs are vacant, and I feel so lonely that I sometimes wish I was dead. But what is your grief? It is but a few months’ separation, and every day that dies will give you happiness. It is not so with others, nor with me—no! no!”
As the old grandmother spoke, with some perception, perhaps, of that rather discreditable characteristic of human nature which finds the best solace for its own trouble in the consolation that is wrought out of the griefs of others, the girl gradually raised her head and fixed her eyes wistfully on her husband’s, then laid her cheek against his shoulder, as a child would whom its tears have worn out.
“Grandmother,” said the young man, “I leave my Dolly to your care, and I know you will love and cherish her as though you were sure that any ill that came to her would break my heart.”