Chapter X: Part 10

I asked myself how would this sweet flower bear transplanting? She had no ties but those of gratitude to the place she was in, and as a sphere of usefulness, some one more strong and hardy could fill it better than she did. She evidently looked and longed for the arrival of her father, more from “the necessity of loving” than from a filial feeling. I did not myself believe that he was in existence, or that if he were, he was worthy of her affection, or he would long ere this have sought her out. Thoughts like these kept me wakeful, and when I undrew the curtain again to speak to Claire, I found she had gone softly out, and her place was supplied by a stout “Sister,” to whom I had no inclination to speak. She told me, in answer to my query, that day was nearly breaking, and I sunk to sleep in the hearing of the distant music of the morning-hymn.

The sun was already high in the heavens when I awoke. Claire was sitting by the side of my bed, and at my first motion, spoke to me with a cheerful smile that well corresponded with the serene brightness of the day.

“Father Angelo has been here for some time, madam; I have been telling him about you, for truly, madam, I feel as if I had known you a long time, instead of only one night. He will be glad to see you.”

“And I shall like to see him, Claire. But as I feel myself, thanks to your kindness, quite recovered, I will not receive him so entirely in dishabille.”

In a few momenta I was dressed, and walking in the small garden attached to the convent. Claire left me for a short time, and then came out followed or rather attended by her friend.

He was dressed in the common black robe of his order, with the cowl thrown back so as fully to display his head and throat. For the first time, I understood that he was not a monk, but only a clergyman, as we should say. A priest, and not a very old one either. Certainly he had never numbered more than thirty-five years. His face was entirely pale, and his temples covered with dark hair, while his red lips and white, even teeth had the grace of feminine contour.

I was struck with the gravity, even to sadness, of his manner, no less than with the beauty of his person. He uttered in a low, quiet voice the usual benediction, and then asked me to listen to him, as he had much to say to me. I replied with some surprise, that I was quite at his service, and leading me to a rude garden-seat, over which honeysuckles and roses made a natural bower, he said quietly to Claire—

“You will leave us, Claire, for half an hour; and send Sister Mary with some of her coffee and best buns.”

This was not precisely the confessional I had anticipated; and in spite of the little flutter of my spirits, this picture of myself, in high colloquy with a Catholic priest, sipping hot coffee and eating nice buns, was so laughable, that I could hardly keep my face in a state of suitable gravity.

Sister Mary’s white buns and fragrant coffee were delicious indeed. While I partook of them, Father Angelo leaned his head on his hand in profound abstraction. His complete absorption continued for some minutes after the nun had left us alone. At length he raised his head, and looking steadily at me, said abruptly,

“I suppose it is vain to attempt any thing like a conversion of your principles to the true church.”

“Entirely so,” I answered, “as I was born and educated I shall probably remain.”

“So I thought.”

Again there was a long silence. What it was to end in, I could not guess; but I determined not to break it. My companion was evidently agitated and uncomfortable. His red lips became pale and quivering, and his brow bent. He rose from his seat, and paced back and forward on the graveled walk. After some time had elapsed in this inward conflict, he seated himself once more by my side, and taking my hand, addressed me thus:

“Pardon me for saying that I require from you a solemn promise of secrecy in regard to what I am about to communicate.”

I was somewhat prepared for a communication, it is true; but not at all disposed to bind myself to secrecy with a stranger. He seemed to read my thoughts, for he fixed his bright eyes on mine, and then dropped them with an expression of embarrassment.

“I should not have asked you, madam, for this pledge of secrecy, but that it is of much importance—and—and I think you can receive no inconvenience—possibly—”

He stopped entirely, but again raised his eyes with an expression so imploring, that I said at once,

“Say on, sir. I promise you that nothing but the most imperative necessity shall make me disclose to any one what you may tell me.”

“Thank you,” said he, eagerly; “it is not on my account that I desire secrecy. But there are many reasons—the good of the church—evil tongues. When I have told you all, these reasons will readily suggest themselves to your own mind. You are surprised that I should choose to make an entire stranger my confident in a secret. But in the first place, you are not entirely unknown to me. I have interested myself in you somewhat; and there have been persons enough ready to tell me of your ‘birth, parentage, and education.’ Of your mind and heart, Claire has told me much this morning, in a long conversation we have had; and, in short, circumstances make it necessary that I should confide in you.”

There was something so heartfelt in the tone in which Father Angelo spoke, something so entirely sincere, notwithstanding the mystery in which the affair was enveloped, that I repeated what I had before said:

“Whatever you wish to say to me, sir, I am ready to hear, to keep entirely to myself, and to assist you to the best of my power.”

He looked greatly relieved, and proceeded.

“You have divined, before this, madam, the reason of my wish to confide in you. You are a foreigner, a Protestant, a widow, and independent in your actions. Claire needs all these for her friend and efficient adviser.”

“Claire! then it is of her you wish to speak? I supposed your secret concerned yourself. She has told me of her own life.”

“She has told you what she knew,” said Father Angelo, with the same abruptness as before. Indeed, through the whole of our interview, there was an earnestness which dispensed with the usual forms almost of civility.

“I have been waiting, watching for such an event as your coming, ever since last year, when I first became fully acquainted with Claire, and saw how unsuited she was to a conventual life. She has warm feelings and superior intellect, and she is fretted continually by the discrepancy between her inward and outward life. She would be a companion to you, and—she has some means—” he stopped, and a slight flush passed over his pale face. “I should not wish her to be a dependent on the bounty of any person.”

“I understand, however, from Claire herself,” said I, “that her mother died poor, and that she has been indebted to charity for her support. This father of hers—if he be living—”

“You think he must be a wretch,” said Father Angelo, calmly, “so to desert those who have every claim on his care. Be it so. He is a wretch. And most wretched is he, that, seeing before him the form of his child, and listening to the outpourings of her angelic soul, he should be barred from acknowledging kindred with it, and forced, for the very love he bears her, to tear her from him forever.

“If you will accede to my earnest request, take Claire with you to America—care for her—watch over her—be to her all that, alas! her father must not be—and I shall feel that all, and a thousand times more than all I deserve, and all I live for, is granted, and shall at once enter a convent of La Trappe. I long for it—I long for eternal silence; and have only retained my present position, that I might find Claire, read her character, and do what I could to unfold and strengthen it. That mission is accomplished. Her native strength of wing has already carried her mind beyond what my feeble flights can follow. She soars to regions of purity and peace, where my soul cannot revel, unless after long years of penance and suffering. She loves the ideal parent, who is to her the personification of all virtue; and it is impossible, and ought to be so, for me to sully her thoughts with the reality which to her must always be a source of disappointment and mortification, and to me inexpressible shame.”

This revelation was not unexpected to me, so far as regarded the relationship of the two parties; but it filled me with much matter for meditation. I had no curiosity to know the events of Father Angelo’s past life. The lines of suffering, and the traces of strong passions, were marked deeply on his marble brow, and composed even to severity as his manner now was, I could read under the habitual restraint of his expressive face, that no slight agony had wrought on a naturally proud and sensitive spirit, before it could compel itself to forego its sweetest pleasures rather than breathe on the purity of the beloved object.

After some time passed on my side in revolving what I had heard, and what I was expected to do, and on his, in a distressful silence that watched painfully for my first word, I asked,

“But about Claire’s religious influences. She will have few of the kind she has been accustomed to; and all her indirect influences, you must be aware, will not be very favorable to her religious constancy.”

“I think she will become a Protestant. You are surprised that I should be willing to trust her in such an atmosphere. But there are some minds that are cast, so to speak, in a Protestant mould; and hers is one. She has not a great deal of faith, and her mind naturally tends so much to inquiry, perhaps I should say skepticism, that I found it difficult to lead her. I may as well say at once, that my own reasons for adopting the profession and character of a priest, were first to discover her, and know her mind more intimately than I could do in any other position; and secondly, because the Catholic faith promises more to me than any other religion. I feel the need of what it has to give; but to Claire, I can see its spirit and forms are not so necessary. I am not bigoted nor intolerant, as you see. Perhaps I am not a good Catholic. But I wish you to understand that I am not acting against my conscience.”

“These are strange words from a Catholic priest,” said I, looking at him. A flush of impatience crossed his face again.

“I need not qualify my words to you, I am sure. What I need—a wretched, debased sinner—stripes—fasting—silence—and digging my own grave daily—are not the necessary aliment of Claire’s soul, fresh from the forming hand of the All-Pure.”

“Then I understand that Claire, if I take her, is to be like my own child; that no interference of any kind with my authority or influence is to be allowed?”

“There is no person living authorized to interfere,” said Father Angelo, sadly. “Her father will be dead to her. And God will reward or punish you as you deal by this forlorn and most angelic child.”

“I accept the trust,” said I, with the same solemnity that was expressed in the manner of the unhappy father. He took my hand in his, and holding it up, repeated a short prayer in Latin, which I took to be an invocation, but I said nothing; and, indeed, was so agitated and exhausted that I could not speak.

“I shall leave this place this morning,” said he, with a more composed voice, “and shall send to you such information as may be necessary to her future welfare in any possible contingency.”

He rung a bell which stood on the table, and Claire came into the garden, as if she had been in waiting. He made a sign to her to attend to me, and as soon as I had taken the restorative she hastened to offer, rose to go. I shall never forget the look of anguished affection that spread over his pale face, as he murmured above Claire’s bright head the customary benediction. His whole being seemed one thrill of pain. Stooping over he pressed on her forehead a kiss of such love! and then without another word hurried away.

Claire looked astonished, as well she might, for she had never seen him agitated before, though, as she said, she conjectured he must have suffered much.

“He feels sorrowfully at leaving you, my child,” said I, “he tells me he is about leaving this part of the country.”

She looked at me, as if she wondered at his communicating such an intention to me, rather than to herself, but was too delicate to inquire further.

The same afternoon a package came to the convent, directed to me, and contained, among other things, a letter from Father Angelo “to his beloved daughter in Christ Jesus”—in which he recommended her to accept the proposal I had made of taking her with me to America, and containing besides some affectionate words of advice. It was brief, and I could easily see that many feelings had prevented his being more prolix.

I then entered more fully into the subject with Claire, of her leaving her native country for mine. I found, to my great joy, that she was not only willing but desirous to go with me, and that a night’s free converse with me had given me much of her affection.

“I have not dared to think, dear madam,” she said tearfully, “how ‘doubly lone’ I should be when you were gone.”

“And you think you shall not long for the seclusion of Chaillot, and the hymns of the Sisters?”

“Oh, I dare say I shall long to see them. But meanwhile I do so long to be with you, and to see something and somebody in the world!”

“And you will be my own daughter?” I asked her now more seriously—“do you know how much that implies? If I give you all I shall require much from you.”

“Not more than all my heart,” answered she gayly, “and that you shall certainly have.”

“Till somebody else asks for it,” said I to myself.

The remainder of my stay at Chaillot was cheered by the occasional visits of Claire, but the most of the time she spent at the convent, and among the poor of the village, who loved her and mourned her departure. When at last the vessel bore us both away from France she was deeply affected. I was glad to see it: glad that mere curiosity and interest in novelty had not dulled her heart to one sympathy.

Arrived at Boston, we met the kind faces of friends, how kind and how dear, we never feel till an ocean has separated us, and soon found ourselves quietly established at my own residence, as if not a week had passed since I was last there. Claire gained in a northern climate all she needed to make her perfect—strength of body, and consequent strength of mind. She was never weary of the bold natural scenery in which New England abounds, and wandered and climbed till I used to beg her to take care of herself for my sake.

All this time I had a plot in my head. For what woman was ever without one? Had I not a son, whose image was seldom absent an hour from my memory, yet whose name I was careful not to mention to Claire? Who could tell what might be in the future, if I did not mar its brightness by my own interference? So I patiently waited the result of accidental influences. I expected Herbert home by the next packet. He had been prevented from meeting me in France, and accompanying us home, by illness, and I had availed myself of the escort of some friends who were coming to America, without waiting for his recovery.

We had been returned for more than two months. The autumnal tints already brightened with consumptive red the rich verdure of summer, and the harvest-moon shone out with a calm brilliancy that almost mocked the daily sun. Claire was delighted with Nature under its bold American features. As I watched the daily development of her taste, and delighted to see its refinement and richness, I felt that I could not have desired more in a daughter, than was thrown as it were by the bounty of Providence into my lap.

We had been sitting in the old portico, with shawls wrapt about us, and watching the moonlight on the clumps of trees, as it silvered and sprinkled them with heavenly glory, and neither of us had for a long time spoken. Claire, who connected all still, solemn beauty with the thought of her lost mother, was, I doubted not, thinking of heaven and her; and I was myself recalling my short and eventful acquaintance with her father. Claire rose from her seat, and walked down the avenue a short distance, then turned and stood by a fountain, which played by the side of a larch tree. It was a pretty picture. The fountain, the tree, and the moon, that embathed the girl, the fountain, and the tree in soft splendor. Claire had removed her shawl from her shoulders, and stood with it dropping off her arm, as motionless as a statue. Her bright, waving hair lay over her shoulders—and like the spirit of the scene she stood.

As I, too, followed down the walk, I was conscious of a second figure, which, as I approached, came out from the shadow of a tree. Once in the light, I recognized Herbert, and did _not_ scream. Neither did I beckon to him to look at, and fall in love with, the beautiful being before us, because I felt very certain that if it were to be done, there could not be a better time for him to do it without my aid. And with a self-command, which I believe is rare among match-makers, I beckoned to him to retire to the house, while I went forward to Claire.

She was still motionless, absorbed in thoughts of a not painful character, as was evident from the placid expression of her lifted eyes.

“You will take cold, Claire,” said I, gently.

“Thank you,” she answered, in her sweet French accent, “I am not afraid. You know I am used to all hours and weathers.”

“But I am going in now. My son has arrived. You have never heard me speak of him, I believe—but I have felt considerable anxiety about him. An anxiety which is now happily relieved by his arrival.”

She looked a little surprised, but made no inquiry and followed me into the house. I was curious to see the effect of this her first acquaintance with an accomplished and eminently attractive man. Hitherto she had seen no person above the common peasantry of the small town of Chaillot, except Father Angelo.

Three weeks after this evening, Herbert came into my room, whence Claire had just gone to take a walk, and throwing himself into a chair, wiped the wet from his forehead and hair in a state of unquestionable agitation.

“Come, mother! help me—help me, or I sink!”

“What, really overcome? You, the redoubtable! the renowned! the invincible! Can I believe my eyes!” answered I, laughing heartily—for love-sickness, like sea-sickness, gets no sympathy—and I was really pleased to see Herbert, for once, undoubtedly in earnest.

“Now, a truce to your satire, mother mine. And a truce to your smiles even. I wont allow that there is any occasion for grief either; but the fact is, I cannot live, now, without Claire and her love—and she knows it—”

“Knows it!”

“Yes!” said Herbert, impatiently; “and that’s the devil of it! While I was endeavoring to wind myself softly, soothingly, you see, into her tender heart, not to break it, you know, but just to set all its faculties and springs fluttering, like pigeons, and to watch how she should blush, and sigh, and droop—till, just at the right point, I meant, when she least hoped and expected it, when she should despairingly throw herself down, half senseless with excitement and hopelessness—then, I meant to have stepped in. Now, mother, don’t _say_, What an insufferable puppy! for I feel it enough, I assure you. The fact is, I didn’t know myself what I did mean till half an hour ago.”

“Is it possible! Why, Claire has been reading to me nearly or quite half an hour, and has just gone out to carry some comfort to old Nurse Dobbins. No appearance of maiden agitation about her, my poor son, but as calm as a clock.”

The fact was, I had noticed that her cheek had a slight pallor, and had recommended the walk myself; but this I did not think it necessary to mention.

“Doubtless!” was the pettish reply. “I wonder if she is not all ice—or rather, whether she has a heart for any thing but old women!”

“She certainly has a heart, and one well worth the winning, Herbert. But not in the fashion you have been used to. All-conquering knight that you are—you must lay down your tinsel and frippery, and don the helmet of sterling gold, and break a lance for honor bright, if you would win favor from this child of nature.”

“Isn’t she, mother?” said Herbert, enthusiastically, “isn’t she the noblest, and loveliest, and sweetest creature that ever the earth presumed to bear up? You love her, I know; teach me how to love her, so that she may love me! for it is true what I tell you. I cannot live without her pure and beautiful heart!”

I had never seen Herbert thoroughly moved before. Under an exterior of frivolity he concealed the real fervor and enthusiasm of which I knew him capable. But it had been long since I had seen him at all excited about any thing. That Claire should interest him, was only allowing him a pure natural taste; but that Claire should not have reciprocated the sentiment she excited, puzzled me, I allow—for I was a parent.

“Tell me, mother,” he continued—or would have done so, but that Claire just at that moment entered the room, with her basket on her arm. Her pale cheek now flushed with a rapid walk, was brilliant with health, and her eyes met both Herbert’s and mine with a buoyancy and serenity, as little like a love-stricken girl as could well be imagined. I saw Herbert’s cheek turn pale, as he suddenly rose and springing through the window upon the lawn, whistled to his dog, and walked rapidly away.

Claire looked after him, and then meeting my inquiring eye, she stood with hers looking clearly into my face.

“And so my poor Herbert has no chance?” said I.

She seated herself by me with a little embarrassment, which became her a thousand times more than the serene self-possession so habitual to her.

“My beloved mother—my benefactress!” she stopped.

“Not a word of that, Claire. Hearts are to be given, and not bought. But how comes it that you see nothing lovable or winning about Herbert? He seems perfectly hopeless.”

“I might have seen, indeed I did see, a thousand charming qualities in Mr. ——,” said Claire, with grave simplicity, “but that he seemed to be only amusing himself with me, and not in earnest about any thing. Least of all did I believe him in earnest when he professed love for me. Love! which I have always looked on as something so holy, so sacred, so ennobling! a trust so solemn as another’s heart, not to be taken without awe and trembling! Believe me, dearest mother, I did not once think, nor can I now, that Mr. —— had an earnest thought in the whole matter. Evidently he has only been amusing himself, and trying perhaps to amuse me with the idea of having made a conquest. He mistook me altogether.” She drew her head up a very little, with an expression that spoke of wounded pride; but instantly dismissed it, and resumed her usual affectionate look.

“I hope you will not think any more about it, dear Claire. These things are best dismissed from the thoughts. Shall we go on with our reading?”

I spoke hurriedly, for, in truth, I was severely disappointed. I did not think how much so, until I listened to the calm, decided tone, and looked on the quiet face of Claire. Things looked hopeless for Herbert; and I could not help sympathizing with him in his keen disappointment. Meantime, as I knew affection could not be reproached into existence, I endeavored to divert both my own mind and hers from a painful subject.

Absence is said to be the death of love, I believe it is sometimes the birth of it. Certainly, Herbert, if he had tried a thousand ways to Claire’s heart, could not have hit on a likelier road than that which led him away from her, under the pretence of going to Niagara Falls.

“My body will go in search of the picturesque, mother,” said he, with a faint attempt at gayety, “but my soul remains at home. It will haunt you—both; and I charge you listen to its whispers that shall be in your ears night and day!”

“Farewell, Claire!” was all he said to her; and when he was gone, she sat for some minutes, looking into the heart of a flower she was holding in her hand, as if trying to solve a problem too difficult for her.

Days passed, and weeks. We talked, and walked, and rode, and read by turns, as we were wont to do, before this vision of Herbert had passed over and breathed on the mirror of her pure heart. But no longer was her eye clear, and her brow serene. She was disturbed and restless. An enemy had come in to her heart to steal away its peace. When we read poetry, a consciousness in her voice, gave meaning and depth to every passionate tone; and when we walked in the November woods, their melancholy beauty woke sad feelings kindred to the scene. I saw that her sensitive nature was touched to its depths. She had begun to think, not that she was loved, for her standard of that passion was too high to leave her in such an error; but how sweet it would be to be loved. Her heart, like a lonely harp-string, vibrated in every breeze, and seemed asking vainly for its completing harmony.

She did not ask me to read to her any of Herbert’s letters. I wished she would, and once read to her what I thought a very capital description of the cataract. But she only said composedly that my son had described the scenery, and not his own impressions on seeing it.

“I don’t believe any reality on earth could equal the descriptions we have had of Niagara. It would need heaven and hell almost to body forth the ideas that travelers have called up. I can only hope to be able, if ever I see it, to forget all that I have ever heard about it, so as to shrink before its magnificence as I should feel bound to do.”

“Suppose we try, Claire?” said I.

“With all my heart,” answered she, evidently glad in her restless state to be going somewhere. I had previously told her that Herbert had gone to Quebec.

In a week’s time Claire and myself, with a man-servant, had reached Albany, and there took the canal-boats to Buffalo. The wearisome journey by stage-coach had admirably prepared us for the monotonous ease of the boat. Fortunately there were very few passengers, and we lay in our little clean white berths and rested and read as quietly as if we had been in our own rooms.

On reaching the Falls we were too thoroughly wearied to attempt more that night, and went to our beds.

On our way, a fellow passenger, experienced in sight-seeing, had recommended to us to take our first view from the American side, and from below, instead of the usual view from Table Rock. We therefore crossed the river a little distance below the Falls, without giving way to the temptation of gazing for a moment at the view before us, though the roar was terrible in our ears. Then we walked on the American side, closer, closer till we were within twenty feet of the cataract. The spray dripped over us, the rocks were slippery to our feet, the roar of a thousand floods seemed in our bewildered ears; and below, as it were, the reverberating yells of damned spirits tossing, and whirling, and dashing and howling forever. Then we looked up. The volume of water seemed coming down from the very heavens upon us. We uttered a faint cry of terror—turned round and fled. That is to say, we fled several yards. No matter. We were impressed sufficiently with the physical grandeur of the scene. It was oppressive, overwhelming. Afterward, when we roamed over all these rocks and took views from every point, and gazed at the cataract’s wondrous beauty as well as power, we found a moral grandeur with which our souls sympathized, and to which they rose to enjoy and adore. These jottings down of our impressions can give no idea to one who has not visited the Falls, and to one who has, will scarcely enhance his recollections. I mention them only to illustrate a trait of Claire’s character.

A mother with her child were wandering along among the loose stones and sharp rocks close to the terrible whirlpool from which we had just turned. The mother had let go the child’s hand, and he, a lad of some four or five years old, slipped from the stone on which he stood, and as a natural consequence was in imminent danger of his life. But one rock, and that slippery and sloping, intervened between the little fellow and certain death. The mother screamed, but was motionless from mere horror; Claire, who at once forgot every thing about her but what was connected with the living drama before her, pulled at a stroke her scarf from her neck, and giving me one end to hold, while she held the other, slid her feet rapidly down to the very brink of the torrent, caught the boy firmly by his foot and stood holding him. She was as pale as death, but as firm and strong in her attitude as if she stood on the parlor floor. She dared not move, and I had not strength, and was too distrustful of the strength of the scarf, to dare to pull them up.

As we stood thus it seemed hours, though it could scarcely be half a minute before relief was obtained by a rope thrown by a strong arm from behind over the form of Claire, which fully supported her in her perilous position. Immediately after she was clasped in the arms of a man in a cloak, whom we had seen sitting near us in an absorbed attitude, seemingly regardless of all about him. He had sprung from his seat, caught up a boat-rope, which I perfectly remembered afterward to have stepped over, thrown it around Claire, so as to support her, and then giving the noose to my servant, who stood close but inactively behind, steadied himself by the other end of the rope, slipped and sprang down by Claire, caught up the boy with one hand and tossed him up to his mother, and then bore the now fainting Claire carefully up to the bank.

The boy screamed wildly with fright, and the mother was voluble with her thanks and offers of assistance. Claire remained still and motionless in the arms of the stranger, and I watched the spray dash over her marble face. Presently her eyes opened slowly, with a deep sigh. She looked at her preserver and a beautiful color overspread her face. Then for the first time I also looked at him, for to this moment no one had spoken but the woman whose carelessness had put in jeopardy three lives.

He had bent his head down to hers and had kissed her forehead, rosy with returned consciousness. She replied by pulling her arm over his neck and kissing, not his forehead, but his very lips. The woman and her boy had gone, the servant discreetly retired, and there in the sound and rush of many waters, in the turmoil of elemental war, the still, small voice of two loving hearts, lately so near to death, was heard and registered.

“But you wrote me, Herbert, that you were setting off for Quebec last week. Who could have dreamed of finding you here?”

“And so I did go to Quebec. But I used it up in two days, and then came on here once more. In my then state of mind it was a relief to place myself where you found me, and listen to the roar of the water from morning till night. Now, I don’t care how soon we go away.”

We did journey, however, for some weeks; and when we returned and were once more in our own quiet parlor at home, I asked Herbert to come with me to my room.

“I am going to read you something, Herbert. Something about Claire.”

Then I opened the packet which Father Angelo had given me. First there was the official announcement, or rather a copy of it, of Father Angelo’s admission to the Convent of la Trappe, in Piedmont, and his consequent death to the world and every body in it. Then a separate packet contained such particulars of his life as he deemed necessary for me to know, and to communicate to Claire, if I thought proper, or to whomsoever she should hereafter marry. There were also papers conveying a small amount of property to her. Enough for her subsistence should she be deprived by misfortune of my support.

The man had been sinned against and was also a great sinner. He had sinned against the young English girl, Clara, whom he had seduced from her home under the false pretence of marriage, and whose fidelity to him and trust in him had continued to her gentle death. Afterward to win for himself the means of keeping up his dissipated habits he had recourse to forgery, and had escaped in disguise, and narrowly, with his life. After that he went to Rome; by a run of luck in gambling he obtained the means of making a handsome appearance in society there, and by his cultivation, taste and fine manners, so impressed an Italian family of some distinction that he married one of the daughters. The marriage was an unhappy one. His wife eloped with his friend, and the old drama of a duel was acted over. Finally his resources were exhausted, and either reason or conscience suggested to him the claim which a wife and child had on his memory. At all events, he became an altered man, took holy orders, obtained permission to travel, and did travel in search of his long-forgotten wife and child. After a long search he found Claire. He sought her society. He became her confessor and her friend. He learned her pure heart, and her enthusiastic devotion to the memory of her parents. Then the iron entered into his soul. He felt the impossibility of presenting himself to such an innocent being as the realization of such an ideal as hers. He now dreaded any chance by which his relationship could become known to her, as much as he had heretofore eagerly sought her. All he could do for her he did, but he constantly watched an opportunity to secure to her an efficient friend, who could take her into the world, and withdrawing her from the dull and confined life she then had, put her into the way of forming connections for herself which would in some degree lead her to forget or cease to look for her father. The agony of being forced to deny himself every parental caress, lest he should be forced to explain his relationship, and consequently the reasons for his long and unpardonable estrangement, made him wish a thousand times he were dead indeed, and he said he longed every hour for the time to arrive when he should take the vow of eternal silence, for such only harmonized with the gloom of his soul.

It would be wearisome to go through all the details of such a life, of such talents abused, of such a mournful old age.

We talked the matter over freely and fully, and Herbert concluded with me that it was best to burn the package, that under no possible combination of circumstances could it fall into her hands. It should be his happiness he said to make her forget to look for her father.

How he found out how much she could bless him—and when she discovered that though he was full of faults, she loved him, faults and all, I cannot tell; but every body’s experience will furnish similar instances for themselves or others.

* * * * *

APPEARANCES.

BY J. HUNT, JR.

It is not by an outward show
To judge where sorrows first begin
An old, thatched cot, for aught we know,
May have a “banquet hall” within.

How true this rule will oft apply,
To some who fill life’s lowly part;
Their very looks may Pain descry,
And Joy be seated in their heart.

* * * * *

HOW CHARLEY BELL BECAME SENATOR.

The whole matter is this.

The tea-things had just been cleared away, the baby just got fast asleep and laid in his crib, my wife just got fixed by the round-table making a blue velvet cap for him, and I had just got comfortably settled in my arm-chair on the other side of the table, when Tom returned from the post-office through the rain and mud and dark bringing one letter. My wife gave a pish! when I told her it was not from her mother, but apologized immediately for her expression when I informed her that the letter—broad, thick and with a vast deal of ink in the superscription—was from Charley. Giving the wick of the lard-lamp another turn she begged me to read it aloud.

Tearing off the envelope—drawing my chair a little nearer the fire and clearing my throat I read—

Rev. W.——

“_My dear W._—Elected! Apart from all nonsense and affectation
I am heartily glad of it! of course I received the
congratulations of every body here quietly, as if it was all a
matter of course that I should be elected Senator, but with you
I have no reserve. Know then, my _very_ dear W., that I am glad
I am elected. For three reasons. First, because I am elected
while just barely of the requisite age: Second, because I am
elected by an overwhelming majority—20 to 1: Third, because it
places me out in a free and higher field of usefulness and
energy. Why I feel as if I had just begun my life. I have not
attained the _end_—only the beginning of my ambition. I don’t
think that it ought to be branded as _ambition_—this feeling of
mine either. I _don’t_ think it is ambition. It is a purer
feeling—A wish, an eagerness, a _nature_ to be doing,
influencing, bettering as wide a sphere as I possibly can. I was
elected without any _art_ on my part whatever. I told the people
exactly what I was, and what I intended to try to do if they
elected me. I intend to be just exactly what I am! If I were to
try to appear other than exactly _that_ I would look as well as
feel mean—my arm would falter in every gesture, my tongue
stammer, my knees shake—I would become weak—weak physically,
mentally, utterly! A pure-minded, single-intentioned,
whole-souled manner in thought, word and deed has borne me thus
far like a straight arrow from a true bow. It is the shortest,
best way to cleave the future, I know.

“There is a fourth reason why I do rejoice in my election. It is
because I know that _you_ will rejoice in it. It is _you_ my
friend who have made me high-thoughted and far-thoughted. It is
_you_ who during the last twenty years have been my good
genius—in your conversation when present with me—in your
correspondence when absent from——”

I read the rest of the letter to my wife, but it is entirely too flattering to me to be coolly written out here. Indeed I remarked all along, through the three more pages which followed, to my wife, that his encomiums were only the warm expressions of a warm soul unusually excited, and which must be taken with all allowance.

Charley’s letter flushed me through and through. That my old friend should be elected Senator to congress from his State I hoped but hardly expected. Intimate companionship with a friend, you know, has a tendency to dwindle him in our eyes. Don’t misunderstand! Intimacy with such a man as Charles Bell makes one love and prize him more and more—but does _not_ make one think more and more that such a man is suited to be a grave and reserved Senator. It is just as it is with the Swiss peasant whose cabin is on a side of Mont Blanc—the hoary old mountain does not appear a tithe so sublime to him as it does to some traveler in the distance.

I say I felt thoroughly warmed and rejoiced. I arose, put all my wife’s spools and scraps off the table into her lap, laid my portfolio and ink-stand upon it, begged my wife to absorb herself in her baby’s velvet cap, dipped my pen in the ink and now have written thus far.

All my past intercourse with Charley rushes to my lips now, as tears do sometimes to one’s eyes. I want to tell just as briefly and distinctly as possible how he has risen from nothing to what he now is. I know much better than he—and if he reads this, it will do him good. Any-how, I feel in the mood of writing, and before I go to bed, if my baby don’t wake with the colic and my wife don’t interrupt me I will tell you exactly how Charley Bell became a United States Senator.

The fact is, too, that I have a half-hope that some youth may read this and may get a word which may wake _him_ to a higher and nobler life than he has ever yet dreamed of. If the eye of any such a one rests on these pages, just one word my fine fellow. Forget for a little while that everlasting Julia whom you fell in love with last Tuesday a week ago, and read with all your soul of souls.

I cannot exactly say when I did _not_ know Charley. He is some three years older than myself—he being about eighteen, and I about fifteen years of age when our friendship began to be a thing to be remembered. He looked when I saw him a year ago exactly as he did when we used first to chat cosily beside his fire-side, about Bulwer and Dora Anson. He is of a medium size, handsome, earnest face, forehead broad rather than high. There is a peculiar gentleman-look about him, wherever he is or whatever he is doing. He has such an enthusiastic sympathy with every man, woman and child he meets with that he is popular of course.

His peculiarity, however, always consisted in a hunger after personal excellence. From our first acquaintance we made a distinct arrangement to tell each other of our faults as plainly as words could convey meaning. If he did not faithfully do his part toward me in this arrangement I am very, very much mistaken. He thought _aloud_ about me—told me exactly what I _was_, and what I was _not_. I did the same in regard to him. We have acted thus for many years now. We have been of vast benefit to each other—and will continue to be till we die.

I do verily believe that this arrangement had a good deal to do in making him the man he is.

Just in this way.

When we first became intimate, and had made our arrangement as above, I opened the war by talking to him as follows:

“Charley, my fine fellow, you are ambitious to be a good speaker. Now—you remember our little arrangement about correcting the faults of each other?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the plain fact is you have got a most miserable, squeaking voice. Your chest is narrow, you stoop, you don’t have that broad, strong, manly appearance which is almost essential to a speaker.”

I saw he winced under this. He _felt_ eloquence deeply—he _thought_ eloquently—and forgot that the thought must be _expressed_ eloquently, or it is eloquence only to himself.

That afternoon he made a pair of dumb-bells—and I do verily believe that he has hardly missed a day from that to this in which he has not exercised his chest and his voice in every possible way. No one would ever think _now_ that he was not always the broad-chested, powerful-voiced orator he is.

It strikes me that even this little event had something to do with Charley in his becoming a Senator. You never saw a narrow-chested man who had any voice, energy or eloquence in your life. If _you_ have got a stoop, my boy, you had better correct it if you ever intend being any thing.

I received from him one day a very, very plain exposition of one of my many faults. Never mind what it is. He pointed it out to me as you would point out a rattlesnake in a thicket to any companion you chanced to be walking with. I saw it—this vile fault of mine—and have been hunting it, and striking savagely at it, whenever I detect it stealing through my conduct with its accursed insidiousness ever since. Alas! it is “only skotched not killed” yet. But that is another matter. I only mention it to say that his very plain remarks gave an edge to my remarks, as I observed—

“You are right, Charley, perfectly so—and I war against that accursed fault forever. But it reminds me of one of _yours_.”

“Eh?”

“Charley, you have a vile, offensive, disgusting habit of chewing tobacco. It is loathsome. If you would only keep the weed in your mouth, why it would only poison yourself—but you will be everlastingly spitting out its juice—and it poisons _me_—poisons me through sight, smell, hearing and feeling. Don’t use it any more.”

True to his own true nature, he never took another quid. Whether this is one cause of his blooming health and firm nerve I will not say. I _will_ say that it is one cause of his astonishing popularity with the ladies—whether _they_ know that it is or not—and thus one cause of this election of his as Senator.

These faults of ours! I said they are like snakes. So they are. Sometimes a man catches sight of one of them lying full-length in its loathsomeness in his own conduct or conversation. Suppose the fault is self-conceit?—a disease of mentioning one’s self at all times, which you have contracted. Well, you see the same fault in some fool or other, or some Charley Bell tells you of it. The knowledge falls like a flash of daylight on the vice—you see it! If it would only perish—crawl _out_ of you, it would be well. But the vile thing—crawls _into you_—like a snake into its hole. It does not show its head while you are watching for it. A day or two passes. You forget about it—and it is out—drawing its filthy trail through all your conduct again.

This is _not_ a digression. Because I wanted to say that Charley was a man of too strong a desire after personal excellence not to wage eternal war after such vermin. A shrewd observer would have known the existence of his besetting faults only by the unusual prominence of just the opposite virtues, just as you recognize the former drunkard in the man who has a special horror now of all that can intoxicate.

There were several minor defects in Charley’s character, which I pointed out to him, but which he has so completely conquered that I have forgotten what they were.

I really must say something about that Dora Anson affair.

Dora was the brunette daughter of an established lawyer in our inland village. I see her as distinctly before me while I write, as if she _was_ before me. She was some sixteen years of age—had the usual amount of education and mind—was unaffected—warm-hearted—black haired and eyed—rosy-lipped—woman-rounded form. Charley fell in love—astonishingly in love with her. I was amazed. He was of an intellectual, though impulsive nature; and she had no conversational power—nothing in the world but a lively, natural, voluptuous sort of beauty, to recommend her to him.

Astonishingly in love. He made love to her by flowers, and was accepted in the same way, before he went to college. He was absent a year. The very night of his return he went to a party at her father’s, which happened that night. He got a seat near her toward the close of the evening—in a low voice made a passionate appeal to her, although surrounded by company—went home—wrote her a still more passionate letter. He was too impulsive—frightened her—had his letter returned, and came to me, and as we sat on a log in the moonlight, told me the whole. He was about twenty years old then, and the affection had quickened, expanded, strengthened his heart even more than that chest-exercise had his lungs. There was a depth, and breadth, and force about his affection for Dora which stirred up his whole being. It rolled through him like a sea, deepening and washing out the sands of his heart till that heart became deep and broad. For months that love lived and worked in him; at last it died out like the steam from the engine of a steamship.

When I see his hearty affection for his friends—his warm sympathy for all among whom he mingles, which gives him his wonderful popularity, I can trace it all back to that development of his heart under the hot summer of that love of his for Dora Anson. I do believe that the genial smile, the cordial manner, the melting persuasiveness of his tones, all owe their development, if not their origin, to that culture of his heart. The sun may have set which shone on his soul, but it left that soul all ruddy and ripe from its warm rays. If Dora had jilted him, it would have left him a soured man. If she had married him, it would have left him a satiated man. In either case it would have injured him. But she did not jilt him—did not marry him; he outgrew so sensuous a love as that, and somehow or other they drifted apart.

I believe, however—and my wife, to whom I have just mentioned it, agrees with me—that his connection with Mr. Nelson had very much to do in making him the man he is.

You see, when Charley had finished his law-studies, his father and mother were dead. He never had any brothers or sisters. One or two thousand dollars was his fortune. Being a young man—now some twenty-five—of fine appearance, and talents, and manners, he attracted the attention of Mr. Nelson, a keen and rich lawyer in the village, and in a few weeks he was settled in his office as a junior partner. For some six months Nelson seemed wonderfully attached to Charley—continually spoke of him with the loudest praise—over-rated him, in fact. At the close of this period, however, he suddenly took just as violent a set against Bell as he had before for him. Nobody ever knew the reason of this. I don’t think Nelson himself did. The truth is, the elder partner was a singular man. He always dressed neatly in black—was rather thin, with a stooping shoulder, a retreating forehead, a quick way of talking, and a rapid step. He was excessively hospitable and generous, more for the sake of being a sort of protector and superior of the guest than any thing else. Self-will was _the_ trait of his character.