Our afternoons were usually spent in the shade of the garden or piazza. Sometimes, I sat by her while she was sketching. At others, she helped me to dress and train my garden-vines. Now and then we renewed our rambles of the morning, heedfully observing the different aspects of the same scenes and object, which had then delighted us, under the mellowing smiles of the sun at its decline. With books, music, and chess, our evenings passed away without our consciousness; and day melted into night, and night departed and gave place to the new-born day, as quietly as if life had, in truth, become to us a great instrument of harmony, which bore us over the smooth seas of Time, to the gentle beating of fairy and unseen minstrelsy. Truly, then, we were two happy children. The older children of this world, stimulated by stronger tastes and more lofty indulgences, may smile at the infantile simplicity of such resources and modes of enjoyment. They were childish, but perhaps not the less wise for that. Infancy lies very near to heaven. Childhood is a not unfit study for angels; and happy were it for us could we maintain the hearts and the hopes of that innocent period for a longer day within our bosoms. In our world we grow too fast, too presumptuously. We live on too rich food, moral and intellectual. The artifices of our tastes prove most fatally the decline of our reason. But, for us—we two linked hearts, so segregated from all beside—we certainly lived the lives of children for a while. But we were not to live thus always. In some worldly respects, I was still a child: I cared little for its pomps, its small honors, its puny efforts, its tinselly displays. But I had vices of mind—vices of my own—sufficient to embitter the social world where all seems now so sweet—where all, in truth, WAS sweet, and pure, and worthy—and which might, under other circumstances, have been kept so to the last. I am now to describe a change!
CHAPTER XVII. — THE EVIL PRINCIPLE.
Heretofore, I have spoken of the blind hearts of others—of Mr. Clifford and his wilful wife—I have yet said little to show the blindness of my own. This task is now before me, and, with whatever reluctance, the exhibition shall resolutely be made. I have described a couple newly wed—eminently happy—blessed with tolerable independence—resources from without and within—dwelling in the smiles of Heaven, and not uncheered by the friendly countenance of man. I am to display the cloud, which hangs small at first, a mere speck, but which is to grow to a gloomy tempest that is to swallow up the loveliness of the sky, and blacken with gloom and sorrow the fairest aspects of the earth. I am to show the worm in the bud which is to bring blight—the serpent in the garden which is to spoil the Eden. Wo, beyond all other woes, that this serpent should be engendered in one's own heart, producing its blindness, and finally working its bane! Yet, so it is! The story is a painful one to tell; the task is one of self-humiliation. But the truth may inform others—may warn, may strengthen, may save—before their hearts shall be utterly given up to that blindness which must end in utter desperation and irretrievable overthrow.
If the reader has not been utterly unmindful of certain moral suggestions which have been thrown out passingly in my previous narrative, he will have seen that, constitutionally, I am of an ardent, impetuous temper—an active mind, ready, earnest, impatient of control—seeking the difficult for its own sake, and delighting in the conquest which is unexpected by others.
Such a nature is usually frank and generous. It believes in the affections—it depends upon them. It freely gives its own, but challenges the equally free and spontaneous gift of yours in return. It has little faith in the things which fill the hearts of the mere worldlings. Worldly honors may delight it, but not worldly toys. It has no veneration for gewgaws. The shows of furniture and of dress it despises. The gorgeous equipage is an encumbrance to it; the imposing jewel it would not wear, lest it might subtract something from that homage which it prefers should be paid to the wearer. It is all selfish—thoroughly selfish—but not after the world's fashion of selfishness. It hoards nothing, and gives quite as much as it asks. What does it ask? What? It asks for love—devoted attachment; the homage of the loved one and the friends; the implicit confidence of all around it! Ah! can anything be more exacting? Cruelly exacting, if it be not worthy of that it asks!
Imagine such a nature, denied from the beginning! The parents of its youth are gone!—the brother and the sister—the father and the friend! It is destitute, utterly, of these! It is also destitute of those resources of fortune which are supposed to be sufficient to command them. It is thrown upon the protection, the charge of strangers. Not strangers—no! From strangers, perhaps, but little could be expected. It is thrown upon the care of relatives—a father's brother! Could the tie be nearer? Not well! But it had been better if strangers had been its guardians. Then it might have learned to endure more patiently. At least, it would have felt less keenly the pangs inflicted by neglect, contumely, injustice. In this situation it grows up, like some sapling torn from its parent forest, its branches hacked off, its limbs lacerated! It grows up in a stranger soil. The sharp winds assail it from every quarter. But still it lives—it grows. It grows wildly, rudely, ungracefully; but it is strong and tough, in consequence of its exposure and its trials. Its vitality increases with every collision which shakes and rends it; until, in the pathetic language of relatives unhappily burdened with such encumbrances, “it seems impossible to kill it!”
I will not say that mine tried to kill me, but I do say that they took precious little care that I was not killed. The effect upon my body was good, however—the effect of their indifference. This roughening process is a part of physical training which very few parents understand. It is essential—should be insisted on—but it must not be accompanied with a moral roughening, which forces upon the mind of the pupil the conviction that the ordeal is meant for his destruction rather than for his good. There will be a recoil of the heart—a cruel recoil from the humanities—if such a conviction once fills the mind. It was this recoil which I felt! With warm affections seeking for objects of love—with feelings of hope and veneration, imploring for altars to which to attach themselves—I was commanded to go alone. The wilderness alone was open to me: what wonder if my heart grew wild and capricious even as that of the savage who dwells only amid their cheerless recesses? With a smile judiciously bestowed—with a kind word, a gentle tone, an occasional voice of earnest encouragement—my uncle and aunt might have fashioned my heart at their pleasure. I should have been as clay in the hands of the potter—a pliant willow in the grasp of the careful trainer. A nature constituted like mine is, of all others, the most flexible; but it is also, of all others, the most resisting and incorrigible. Approach it with a judicious regard to its affections, and you do with it what you please. Let it but fancy that it is the victim of your injustice, however slight, and the war is an interminable one between you!
Thus did I learn the first lessons of suspiciousness. They attended me to the schoolhouse; they governed and made me watchful there. The schoolhouse, the play-places—the very regions of earnest faith and unlimited confidence—produced no such effects in me. They might have done so, had I ceased, on going to school, to see my relatives any longer. But the daily presence of my uncle and aunt, with their system of continued injustice, at length rendered my suspicious moods habitual. I became shy. I approached nobody, or approached them with doubt and watchfulness. I learned, at the earliest period, to look into character, to analyze conduct, to pry into the mysterious involutions of the working minds around me. I traced, or fancied that I traced, the performance to the unexpressed and secret motive in which it had its origin. I discovered, or believed that I discovered, that the world was divided into banditti and hypocrites. At that day I made little allowance for the existence of that larger class than all, who happen to be the victims. Unless this were the larger class, the other two must very much and very rapidly diminish. My infant philosophy did not carry me very deeply into the recesses of my own heart. It was enough that I felt some of its dearest rights to be outraged—I did not care to inquire whether it was altogether right itself.