CHAPTER XXXVII. — “AND STILL THE BITTER IN THE CUP OF JOY.”
Once more I had sunshine. The clouds seemed to depart as suddenly as they had risen, and that same rejoicing and rosy light which had encircled the brow of manhood at its dawn long shrouded, seemingly lost for ever, and swallowed up in darkness—came out as softly and quietly in the maturer day, as if its sweet serene had never known even momentary obscuration.
Love, verily, is the purple light of youth. If it abides, blessing and blessed, with the unsophisticated heart, youth never leaves us. Gray brows make not age—the feeble step, the wrinkled visage, these indicate the progress of time, but not the passage of youth. Happy hearts keep us in perpetual spring, and the glow of childhood without its weaknesses is ours to the final limit of seventy. The sense of desolation, the pang of denial, the baffled hope, and the defrauded love, these constitute the only age that should ever give the heart a pang. I can fancy a good man advancing through all the mortal stages from seventeen to seventy-five, and crowned by the sympathies of corresponsive affections, simply going on from youth to youth, ending at last in youth's perfect immortality!
The hope of this—not so much a hope as an instinct—is the faith of our boyhood. The boy, as the father of the man, transmits this hope to riper years; but if the experience of the day correspond not with the promise of the dawn, how rapidly old age comes upon us! White hairs, lean cheeks, withered muscles, feeble steps, and that dull, dead feeling about the heart—that utter abandonment of cheer—which would be despair were it not for a certain blunted sensibility—a sort of drowsy indifference to all things that the day brings forth, which, as it takes from life the excitement of every passion, leaves it free from the sting of any. Yet, were not the tempest better than the calm? Who would not prefer to be driven before the treacherous hurricane of the blue gulf, than to linger midway on its shoreless waters, and behold their growing stagnation from day to day? The apathy of the passions is the most terrible form in which age makes its approaches.
With an earnest, sanguine temperament, such as mine, there is little danger of such apathy, The danger is not from lethargy but madness. I had escaped this danger. It was surprising, even to myself, how suddenly my spirits had arisen from the pressure that had kept them down. In a moment, as it were, that mocking troop of fears and sorrows which environed me, took their departure. It seemed that it was only necessary for me to know that I was about to lose the presence of William Edgerton to find this relief.
And yet, how idle! With an intense egoisme, such as mine, I should conjure up an Edgerton in the deepest valleys of our country. We have our gods and devils in our own hearts. The nature of the deities we worship depends upon our own. In a savage state, the Deity is savage, and expects bloody sacrifices; with the progress of civilization his attributes incline to mercy. The advent of Jesus Christ indicated the advance of the Hebrews to a higher sense of the human nature. It was the advent of the popular principle, which has been advancing steadily ever since and keeping due pace with the progress of Christian education. The people were rising at the expense of the despotism which had kept them down. It does not affect the truth of this to show that the polish of the Jewish nation was lessened at this period. Nay, rather proves it, since the diffusion of a truth or a power must always lessen its intensity In teaching, for the first time, the doctrine of the soul's immortality, the Savior laid the foundation of popular rights, in the elevation of the common humanity—since he thus showed the equal importance, in the sight of God, of every soul that had ever taken shape beneath his hands.
The demon which had vexed and tortured me was a demon of my own soliciting—of my own creation. But, I knew not this. I congratulated myself on escaping from him. Blind fancy!—I little knew the insidious pertinacity of this demon—this demon of the blind heart. I little knew the nature of his existence, and how much he drew his nutriment from the recesses of my own nature. He could spare, or seem to spare, the victim of whom he was so sure; and by a sort of levity, in no ways unaccountable, since we see it in the play of cat with mouse, could indulge with temporary liberty, the poor captive of whom he was at any moment certain. I congratulated myself on my escape; but I was not so well pleased with the congratulations of others. I was doomed to endure those of my exemplary mother-in-law, Mrs. Delaney. That woman had her devil—a worse devil, though not more troublesome, I think, than mine. She said to me, when she heard of my purpose of removal: “You are right to remove. It is only prudent. Pity you had not gone some months ago.”
I read her meaning, where her language was ambiguous, in her sharp, leering eyes—full of significance—an expression of mysterious intelligence, which, mingled with a slight, sinister smile upon her lips, for a moment, brought a renewal of all my tortures and suspicions. She saw the annoyance which I felt, and strove to increase it. I know not—I will not repeat—the occasional innuendos which she allowed herself to utter in the brief space of a twenty minutes' interview. It is enough to say that nothing could be more evident than her desire to vex me with the worst pangs which a man can know, even though her success in the attempt was to be attained at the expense of her daughter's peace of mind and reputation. I do not believe that she ever hinted to another, what she clearly enough insinuated as a cause of fear to me. Her purpose was to goad me to madness, and in her witless malice, I do believe she was utterly unconscious of the evil that might accrue to the child of her own womb from her base and cruel suggestions. I wished to get from her these suggestions in a more distinct form. I wished at the same time, to deprive her of the pleasure of seeing that I understood her. I restrained myself accordingly, though the vulture was then again at my vitals.