A New Atmosphere Part 6

Perthes, shamed out of his worldliness into at least an attempt at sympathy, replies: "Your answer was just what it ought to have been; only don't forget that my inward love for you is as eternal as yours is for me; but I have so many things to think of."

Undoubtedly, after all his evasion, the truth came out at last,--"I have so many things to think of." It was the best excuse he could offer, and it is a great pity he had not brought it forward in the beginning. He had suffered the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of business to choke his love; but it would have been far more honorable to himself and far more comfortable to his wife to confess it frankly, than to affirm his indifference and neglect to be the natural course of events. A love overgrown with weeds may be revived, but for a love lost by natural decay there is no resurrection. "I did not write to you from Brunswick, because we pa.s.sed through quickly." Did he pa.s.s through any more quickly than his companion G., who found time to write to his newly-married wife? "We understand each other thoroughly, and therefore there is an end of all those little tendernesses of expression"; but there was no end of them on Caroline's part. Her understanding was not less thorough than his, yet her love craved expression. "My inward love for you is as eternal as yours for me"; yet just before he had been pleading his increasing years as an excuse for his diminishing tenderness, while Caroline's stanch heart declared, "My affection knows neither youth nor age, and is eternal. I can detect no change, except that I now _know_ what formerly I only hoped and believed." Shortly afterwards, while spending a summer at Wandsbeck for her health, almost daily letters were exchanged between herself and her husband. "While those of Perthes were devoted to warnings and entreaties to take care of her health, (a cheap subst.i.tute for affection which Perthes was not alone in employing,) the few lines in which Caroline was wont to reply were full of expressions of love, and of sorrow on account of their necessary separation. 'I am seated in the garden,' she writes, 'and all my merry little birds are around me. I let the sun shine upon me, to make me well if he can. G.o.d grant it! if it only be so far as to enable me to discharge my duties to my family.'--'I hope, my dear Perthes, that you will again have pleasure in me; the waters seem really to do me good. Come to-morrow, only not too late. My very soul longs for you.'--'You shall be thanked for the delightful hours that I enjoyed with you yesterday,' she writes, after a short visit to Hamburg, 'and for the sight of your dear, kind face, as I got out of the carriage.'--'I only live where you are with me. Send Matthias to me, if it does not interfere with his lessons: if I cannot have the father, I must put up with the son.'--'The children enjoy their freedom, and are my joy and delight.... But you, dear old father! you, too, are my joy and delight. Let me have a little letter; I cannot help longing for one, and will read it, when I get it, ten times over.'--'It is eighteen years to-day since I wrote you the last letter before our marriage, and sent you my first request about the little black cross. I have asked for many things in the eighteen years that have pa.s.sed since then, dear Perthes, and what shall I ask to-day? You can tell, for you know me well, and know that I have never said an untrue word to you. Only you cannot quite know my indescribable affection, for it is infinite. Perthes, my heart is full of joy and sadness,--would that you were here! This day eighteen years ago I did not long for you more fervently or more ardently than now. I thank G.o.d continually for everything. I am and remain yours in time, and, though I know not how, for eternity, too! Be in a very good humor, when you come to-morrow. Affection is certainly the greatest wonder in heaven or on earth, and the only thing that I can represent to myself as insatiable throughout eternity.'"

Do these extracts indicate that many years of mutual interchange of feeling and thought had put an end to little tendernesses of expression? Does his love seem as eternal as hers? It is true that he falls back upon "inward" love; but we only know saints in their bodies. Inward love that denies outward manifestation may satisfy men, but it will never pa.s.s current with women. Little children, who have been idle during their study-hour, will often excuse their failures by declaring that they "know, but cannot think." No teacher, however, is imposed on. A scholar that does not know his lesson well enough to recite it, does not know it at all. A love that does not, in one way or another, express itself sufficiently to satisfy the object of its love, is not love. To satisfy the _object_ of its love, I say, for love can never satisfy itself. It was not love that Perthes's letter contained, but an apology for its absence.

What men love is the comforts of the married state, not the person who provides them,--wifely duties rather than the wife. A man enjoys his home. He likes the cheery fireside, the dressing-gown and slippers, the bright tea-urn and the brighter eyes behind it. He likes to see boys and girls growing up around him, bearing his name and inheriting his qualities. He likes to have his clothes laid ready to his hand, stockings in their integrity, b.u.t.tons firm in their places, meals pleasant, prompt, yet frugal. He likes a servant such as money cannot hire;--attentive, affectionate, spontaneous, devoted, and trustworthy.

He likes very much the greatest comfort for the smallest outlay, and certainly he likes to be loved. His love runs in the current of his likings, and is speedily indistinguishable from them; but does he love the woman who is his wife? Would he say to her, as poor Tom sadly pleaded in "A Half-Life and Half a Life,"--"But I love you true and if you can only fancy me, I'll work so hard that you'll be able to keep a hired girl and have all your time for reading and going about the woods, as you like to do"? Would he say, as Von Fink said to Lenore,--"You will have no need to make my shirts, and if you don't like account-keeping, why let it alone"? Listen, for it is good to know that a man has lived and written who did not look for his domestic happiness entirely in a bread-pan and a work-basket. "Just as you are, Lenore,--resolute, bold, a little pa.s.sionate devil,--just so will I have you remain. We have been companions in arms, and so we shall continue to be.... Were you not my heart's desire, were you a man, I should like to have you for my life's companion; so, Lenore, you will be to me not only a beloved wife, but a courageous friend, the confidante of all my plans, my best and truest comrade."

Lenore shook her head; "I ought to be your housewife," sighed she (the new love not yet having quite purged out the old leaven).

Fink--(but no matter what Fink did. We are concerned now only with what he said.) "Be content, sweetheart," said he, tenderly, "and make up your mind to it. We have been together in a fire strong enough to bring love to maturity, and we know each other thoroughly. Between ourselves, we shall have many a storm in our house. I am no easy-going companion, at least for a woman, and you will very soon find that will of yours again, the loss of which you are now lamenting. Be at rest, darling, you shall be as headstrong as of yore; you need not distress yourself on that account; so you may prepare for a few storms, but for hearty love and merry life as well." Would your latter-day lover sign such articles of agreement on his marriage-day?

Of course he would not. The shirts and the account-keeping are what he marries for, and it would be a manifest absurdity to annul the conclusion of the whole matter. It is not a question what women _like_ to do; they must bake and brew and make and mend, whether they like it or not. Men do not marry for the purpose of making women happy, but to make themselves happy. A girl looks forward in her marriage to what she will do for her husband's happiness. A man, to what he will enjoy through his wife's ministrations. "He needs a wife," say the good women who were born and bred in these opinions and do not suspect their grossness.

"It is a grand good match; I don't know anybody that needs a wife more than he," said one of these at a little gathering, speaking of a recent marriage.

"Why?" innocently questioned another woman, who was supposed to have somewhat peculiar views concerning these things.

"O, you never want anybody to marry!" burst out a chorus of voices,--which was surely a very broad inference from one narrow monosyllable.

"But why does he need a wife?" persisted the questioner.

"For sympathy and companionship," triumphantly replied the first woman, knowing that to such motives her interlocutor could take no exception. But a third woman, not knowing that anything lay behind these questions and answers, and feeling that the original position was but feebly maintained by such unsubstantial things as sympathy and companionship, being also a near neighbor of the person in question, and acquainted with the facts, proceeded to strengthen the case by adding, "Well, he was all alone, and he wa'n't very well, and he was taken sick one night and couldn't get anybody to take care of him."

"But why not hire a nurse?"

"Well he did, and she was very good; but she wouldn't do his washing."

Only wait long enough, and you are tolerably sure to get the truth at last. It was not sympathy and companionship, after all, that the man wanted: it was his washing!

You see a most unconscious, but irrefragable testimony concerning the relations which are deemed proper between a man and his wife in the very common use of the phrase, "kind husband." It is often employed in praise of the living and in eulogy of the dead. Compared with a cruel husband, I suppose a kind husband is the more tolerable; but compared with a true husband, there is no such thing as a kind husband. You are kind to animals, to beggars, to the beetle that you step out of your path to avoid treading on. One may be kind to people who have no claims upon him, but he is not kind to his wife. He does not stand towards her in any relation that makes kindness possible. He can no more be kind to his wife than he can be to himself. His wife is not his inferior, to be condescended to, but his treasure to be cherished, his friend to be loved, his adviser to be deferred to. It is an insult to a woman for her husband to a.s.sume, or for his biographer to a.s.sume for him, that he _could_ be kind to her. Did you ever hear a woman praised for being kind to her husband? Did you ever hear an obituary declare a woman to be a dutiful daughter, a kind wife, a faithful mother? You may be sure the phrase is never used by any one who has a just idea of what marriage ought to be.

If love cannot outlast a few years of life, it is idle to lament that it is so surely quenched by death. Absence cannot be blamed for dissipating a love that has been already conquered by presence.

Nevertheless, in the alacrity with which one is off with the old love and on with the new may be read the shallowness, the flimsiness, the earthliness, of that which pa.s.ses for the deepest, the most lasting, and the most divine. Weary feet, aching brow, and disappointed heart are at rest; or a vigorous young life is smitten before its heyday was clouded; or the ripened sheaf is garnered at the harvest-time; but no proprieties, no shock of premature loss, nor the "late remorse of love," avails to make the impression indelible. The dead past may bury its dead out of sight; the resurrection may adjust its own perplexities; but in this world there must be good cheer. The funeral baked meats shall coldly furnish forth the marriage-table. _La Reine est morte: Vive la Reine!_ And when the loving wife is gone away from the heart that entertained its angel unawares, people will tell you with a sober face how "beautifully he bears it!" "perfectly resigned!"

"Christian calmness!" "kiss the rod!" It were to be wished he did not bear it quite so beautifully. When a wife is prematurely torn from her home, the only proper att.i.tude for her husband is to sit in sackcloth and ashes. It is fit that he should be stricken to the dust. It is not becoming for him to indulge in pious reflections. Ill-timed resignation is a breach of morals. He is not to be supposed capable of a lasting fidelity, but he may be expected to be temporarily stunned by the blow. It would be more decorous for him to follow the example of the powerful and wealthy king in the fairy-tale, who, having lost his wife, was so inconsolable that he shut himself up for eight entire days in a little room, where he spent his time chiefly in knocking his head against the wall!

It is pitiful to see a strong man tottering into a wrong path from sheer lack of strength to walk in the right one, which yet he does not lack clear vision to see. But the spectacle may be profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Perhaps no more faithful and graphic presentation of the diplomacy that is employed in compa.s.sing a second marriage can be given than is found in the proceedings of Perthes. When, after twenty-four years of married life, his wife, the mother of his ten children, left him, he repaired to Gotha and lived three years in the family of a married daughter. In an early stage of his bereavement he writes of his loneliness, and mentions, but almost with repugnance, certainly with no apparent intention of entering it, or any intimation of a possibility of receiving joy from it, "a new wedlock."

Nevertheless, the thought is there. His daughter's sister-in-law, a widow of thirty years, and mother of four children, lives next door.

Presently comes down his mother-in-law to pay a visit. "She was much concerned about Perthes's situation, and one day, while they were walking in the orangery, expressed herself openly to him. She told him that he was no more a master of his own house, that soon his younger children would be leaving him, and that his strong health gave promise of a long life yet to come; that for him solitude was not good, that he could not bear it, and consequently that he ought not to put off choosing a companion for the remainder of his life." All of which of course came to him with the freshness of entire novelty. But immediately we find that at these words "the thought of Charlotte shot like lightning through his soul." So it seems that he had already outstripped his mother-in-law. She dealt, only in generals, but he had advanced to particulars. However, "he made no reply, but he had a hard battle to fight with himself from that time forth. In September he communicated to his mother-in-law the _pros_ and _cons_ which agitated him so much, but without giving her to understand that it was no longer the subject of marriage in general, but of one marriage in particular, which now disquieted him. After stating the outward and inward circ.u.mstances, which made a second marriage advisable in his case, he goes on to say: 'I am quite certain that Caroline foresaw, from her knowledge of my character and temperament, a second marriage for me, and I am equally certain that no new union could ever disturb my spirit's abiding union with her. [It is to be hoped that Charlotte was duly made acquainted with this fact.] My inner life is filled with her memory, and will be so till my latest day; but I must own that this is possible only while I incorporate in thought her happy soul, and think of her as a human being, still sharing my earthly existence, still taking interest in all I do; and I cannot disguise from myself, while viewing her under this aspect, that my dear Caroline would prefer my living on alone, satisfied with her memory. Again, there can be no doubt that Holy Scripture, although permitting a second marriage, does so on account of the hardness of our hearts. The civil law contains no prohibition either, and yet there has always existed a social prejudice against such a marriage, and youth, whose ideal is always fresh and fair, and women who are always young in soul, look with secret disgust upon it. I know, too, that my remaining alone would be, not only with reference to others, but in itself, the worthier course; but, on the other hand, I know it would be so in reality only if this worthiness were not a.s.sumed for the purpose of appearing in a false light to myself, to other men, and perhaps even before G.o.d, or for the purpose of cloaking selfishness under the guise of fidelity to the departed.' It was not, however, by answering this question, nor by reflecting upon the lawfulness of second marriages in general, that Perthes's irresolution was subdued, but by an increasing attachment to the lady whose character had attracted him."

Very honorable appears Perthes here, in that he argues the case against himself with fulness and frankness, revealing to himself without disguise the weakness under which he finally falls, and conscious all the while that it is a weakness. He does not attempt to hide the fact that Caroline would have preferred to live alone in his memory, and he falls back on his only defensible ground,--the hardness of his heart. Confession is forgiveness. Let him pa.s.s on to the new bride, and the second family of eleven children that will spring up around them.

But there are men, and women too,--there are always women enough to echo men's opinions,--who a.s.sume that the spirit of the departed will be delighted in her heavenly abode to know that the husband decides not to spend his life in solitude. Some women indeed show the last infirmity of n.o.ble minds by _recommending_ their husbands to take a second wife, although it seems a pity to waste one's last breath in bestowing advice which is so entirely superfluous. If a man will marry, let him marry, but let no patient Griselda "gin the hous to dight" for the "newe lady." If a man will marry, let him marry, but let him not offer the world an apology for the act. The apology is itself an accusation; a dishonor to both wives instead of one. He knows his own motives and emotions. If they are upright and sufficient, it is no matter what people say about him; he and the other person immediately concerned should be so self-satisfied as to be indifferent to outside comment. If they are not upright and sufficient, attempting to make them appear so is an additional offence.

I have said on this subject more than I intended. I meant only to state a fact clearly enough to use it. The rest "whistled itself."

Practically, I do not know that I have any quarrel with any marriage that is real, whether it come after the first or fiftieth attempt.

Judging from general observation, I should suppose that most people might marry half a dozen times, and not be completely married then.

If, as Perthes seems to have thought, all this is the natural course of events, why do you make all womanly honor and happiness converge in the one focus of marriage, unless like a Mussulman you believe that on such condition alone can women aspire to immortality? But even then it would be a hard bargain. Immortality is dearly bought at the price of immorality. When all other arguments fail, and you would mount to your sublimest heights of moral elevation, you a.s.sure a woman that, no matter how lofty her life may be, nor how deep her satisfaction may seem, if she fails of marriage she fails of the highest development, the deepest experience, the greatest benefit. You tell her that she misses somewhat which Heaven itself cannot supply. But, on the other hand, you have previously shown that marriage is but a temporary arrangement, an entirely mundane affair. Love belongs as completely to this world as houses and barns,--is in fact rather supplementary to them,--especially to the house. It is of the body, and not of the spirit; for the spirit lives forever, but when the body dies, love dies also. There are no claims beyond the grave. Nay, it does not reach to the grave. The delight, the spontaneity, the satisfaction, the keenness, all die out before the person dies. The pulp shrivels, and only a wrinkled skin of habit remains. But a woman is immortal.

Can a mortal love satisfy an immortal heart? Is it possible that an undying soul must find its strongest development in a dying love? Does a creature of the skies incur an irreparable loss, miss an irreclaimable jewel, suffer an incurable wound, when it loses, or misses, or suffers _anything_ which is but of the earth earthy? Can anything finite be indispensable to an infinite life?

Again, if this accession of toil, and this diminution and decay of perceptible love, and this falling back on inward love, is the natural course of events, why not say so in the beginning? If inward love be satisfactory at one time, why not at another, as well before marriage as after? Why, when a man has once made and received affidavit of love, should he not be content, and neither proffer nor demand manifestations? Let men be satisfied with inward love during courtship, and the honeymoon, if inward love is so all-sufficient. Not in the least. Men are not one tenth part so capable of inward love as women,--I mean of an inward love without outward expression. Their inward love becomes outward love almost as soon as it becomes love at all. They are ten times more tumultuous, more demonstrative, more _phenomenal_, than women. They are as impatient as children, and more unreasonable. They cannot, or they will not, brook delay, suspense, refusal. Women accept all these drawbacks as a part of the programme, and with "the endurance that outwearies wrong," while men fiercely, if vainly, kick against the p.r.i.c.ks and talk about _inward love_!

And if the true object of marriage be to help acc.u.mulate or frugally to manage a fortune, to cook dinners, and act as a sewing-machine, "warranted not to ravel," say that frankly also in the beginning. Tell women plainly what you want of them. Do not lure them into your service under false pretences. Do not wait till they are irrevocably fastened to you, and then lay on them the burdens of labor and take away the supports of love, and lecture them into acquiescence through the newspapers. While there is yet left to them a freedom of choice, make them fully acquainted with the circ.u.mstances of the case, that they may be able to choose intelligently. When one does not expect much, one is not disappointed at receiving little. One is not chilled at heart by snow in winter. It is walking over sunny Southern lands, and finding frosts when you looked for flowers, that freezes the fountains of life. If you do not overwhelm a woman with your protestations, if you do not lure her to your heart by presenting yourself to her and praying her to be to you friend, comrade, and lover, when what you really want is cook, laundress, and housekeeper, she will at least know what is before her. But do not swear to her eternal fidelity, knowing that, as soon as you thoroughly understand each other, there will be an end of all little tendernesses of expression. Do not span her with a rainbow, and spread diamond-dust beneath her feet, knowing all the while that a very little time will bring for the one but a cold, penetrating rain, and will change the other into coa.r.s.e, sharp pebbles that shall bruise her tender feet.

Change the formula of your marriage vows, and instead of promising to love, honor, and cherish till death you do part, promise to do it only till you understand her thoroughly, and then to make the best of the bargain!

If we were forced to believe that these right-hand fallings-off and left-hand defections were indeed the legitimate workings of the human heart, the natural history of mankind, then should we be forced to believe that this world is a stupendous failure, and the sooner it is burned up the better. We should be forced to believe in the thorough degradation and destructibility of both mind and matter. For the essence of value is durability. A soap-bubble is as beautiful as a pearl and as brilliant as a diamond; for what is called practical service, for warmth, or shelter, or sustenance, one is quite as good as another. What makes their different worth is, that the soap-bubble yields up its lovely life to the first molecule that sails through the air to solicit it, while the gems outlast a thousand years. But if life is a soap-bubble, and not a pearl, shall a woman sell all that she has and buy it? What advantageth the possession of a happiness which melts in the grasp,--which is satisfactory only for the short time that it is novel? Who would care to enter a path of roses, knowing that a few steps will take him into a vast and barren desert, whence escape is impossible? If this is real life, let us rather pitch our tents in fairy-land; for then, when the Prince is at last restored to his true manly form and his rightful throne, and united to the beautiful, constant Princess, we invariably find, not only that their happiness was quite inexpressible, but it lasted to the end of their lives.

If we are to believe such propositions, we might as well call ourselves infidels, and have done with it. To deny the existence of love takes away no more hope from humanity than to deny the immortality of love. It is no worse to take away life from the soul than to give it a life which is but a protracted death. To make a distinction between earthly and heavenly love hardly affects the case.

The direction of love is not love. All love is heavenly,--"bright effluence of bright essence increate." If a man gives himself to the pursuit of unworthy objects, or to the indulgence of unhallowed pleasures, a pure name need not be dragged down into the mire that his error may have a seemly christening. If that is love which fades out long before its object; if, when its object disappears behind the veil love rightly returns to earth, then are we of all creatures most miserable; for we abnegate a future. We thought it had been he which should have redeemed Israel; but thou shalt return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken. Dust art thou, O love, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Nay, let us have falsehood rather than truth, if this be truth. But this cannot be truth. Love sets up his ladder on the earth, but the top of it reaches unto heaven, and if the eye be clear and the heart pure, the angels of G.o.d shall be seen ascending and descending on it.

The fashion of this world pa.s.seth away,

"But love strikes one hour,--LOVE."

Hear a woman's voice mingling now with angels' voices,--the voice of a woman whose pathway to the skies was a line of light shining still more and more unto the perfect day.

"I cla.s.sed, appraising once, Earth's lamentable sounds: the welladay, The jarring yea and nay, The fall of kisses on unanswering clay, The sobbed farewell, the welcome mournfuller But all did leaven the air With a less bitter leaven of sure despair Than these words,--'I loved ONCE.'

"And who saith, 'I loved ONCE'?

Not angels, whose clear eyes love, love foresee, Love through eternity, Who by To Love do apprehend To Be.

Not G.o.d, called LOVE, his n.o.ble crown-name, casting A light too broad for blasting!

The great G.o.d, changing not from everlasting, Saith never, 'I loved ONCE.'

"Nor ever the 'Loved ONCE'

Dost THOU say, Victim-Christ, misprised friend!

The cross and curse may rend; But, having loved, Thou lovest to the end!

It is man's saying,--man's. Too weak to move One sphered star above, Man desecrates the eternal G.o.d-word Love With his No More and Once.

"Say never, ye loved ONCE!

G.o.d is too near above, the grave below, And all our moments go Too quickly past our souls, for saying so.

The mysteries of life and death avenge Affections light of range: There comes no change to justify that change, Whatever comes,--loved ONCE!"

XII.

Men, by reason of their hardness of heart, gravitate towards the material theory, and women, by reason of their softness of heart, lower to the same level. Men defy heaven and earth to compa.s.s self-indulgence, and women defy the divine law written in their hearts rather than thwart men. Instead of setting their faces like a flint against this tendency, they accept it, excuse it, try to think it inevitable, a matter of organization, and make the best of it. They will counsel young girls not to reckon upon receiving as much love as they give! Fatal advice! Disastrous generalization! Yet neither unnatural nor unkind, for it is the fruit of a sad and wide experience. They would gladly spare fresh souls the apples of Sodom, whose fair seeming bewrayed themselves; but they should teach them to avoid disappointment, not by counting upon bitterness, but by rejecting apples of Sodom altogether, and receiving only such fruit as cheers the heart of G.o.d as well as man. Why shall not women receive as much love as they give? Is man less capable of loving than woman?

Where in nature or in revelation is the warrant for such an hypothesis? When He commands, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength," is he not speaking to men as well as women? and are a man's heart, soul, mind, and strength less than a woman's? Are not husbands commanded to love their wives even as Christ loved the Church? and did he love the Church less than the Church loved him? Is not every man commanded in particular to love his wife even as himself,--to love his wife as his own body? and is a man's love to himself, his love to his own body, a feeble and untrustworthy sentiment? You find in the Bible no letting a man off from his duties of love; no letting him down. Old-fashioned as it is, written for a state of society far different from ours, often brought forward to prop up old wrongs and bluff off newly-found rights, the Bible is still the very storehouse of reforms. It contains the germs not only of spiritual life, but of spiritual living. Glows on its pages the morning-red which has scarcely yet gilded the world.

Women must not expect to receive as much love as they give! It is inviting men to esteem lightly what should be a priceless possession.

It is not waiting for them to drag down the banner to the dust; it is making haste to trail it for them with malice aforethought. Men now are not too constant, too devoted to the higher aims of life; but let constancy and devotion not be expected of them, and in what seven-league boots will they stride down the broad road! It is doing them but left-handed service thus to throw the door open to weakness and wavering concerning higher interests, and a blind devotion to the G.o.d of this world. To a.s.sume that their tone may be low, is to lower their tone. Men are less good than they would be if goodness were demanded of them. The current is turbid and unwholesome, because it is not strictly required to be pure and clear. The way for women to be truly serviceable to men, is to be themselves exacting.